close
close

Fleurdaya

Bringing You the Latest News, Insights, and Stories That Matter

Da says that accusation deadlines are a challenge in Texas. The test is thin

Da says that accusation deadlines are a challenge in Texas. The test is thin

Sakege016 mins

Austin American-Statesman

At the end of last month, when Travis County District Prosecutor, José Garza, was under fire for losing a deadline to accuse the defendants, the Democrat gave an account that he was not the only local prosecutor who struggled to meet the requirement.

“From my perspective, this is a challenge that exists throughout the state,” he told the American-Statesman in an interview on February 26. “It is not only true in Travis County, it is true throughout the state of Texas.”

It is almost impossible to find out exactly how often, Garza’s partners cannot bring accusations within the 90 -day period specified in state law, which in Travis County has turned out that accused of serious crimes are locked up for weeks or months after the deadline.

This is because almost nobody follows up on it, and they are not obliged to do so.

But an American-Statesman exam based on more than a dozen interviews with legal experts, lawyers, defenders and public defenders throughout Texas found that local prosecutors in other important urban counties do not seem to routinely lose the deadline to ensure accusations.

“This is not a state problem,” said David Guinn, defense lawyer of Lubbock and president of the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association. “But to the extent that there is one, it is limited by the place.”

The defenders of the criminal justice indicated some isolated examples in specific areas, even in the nearby Bastrop county and on the border of Texas-Mexico, where they said that the defendants often remained imprisoned for long durations without charges as part of the lonely operation of the operation of Governor Abbott. They also cited a handful of recent demands and judicial appeals in which the defendants successfully argued that they should have been released after 90 days without accusation.

But the statesman could not find anyone to describe last minute deadlines as a generalized and generalized problem.

The deadline in question was a provision in a 1977 law that stipulates that a serious crime must be released if they are not accused within a period of 90 days.

In Travis County, a care center appeared on the deadline required in early February after the statesman revealed two cases of murder in which prosecutors lost the window to bring accusations against the defendants, which led to their release. The publication also found that in a particular day last month, 26 suspects of serious crimes remained in the prison of more than 90 days without an accusation. The longest was after bars more than 220 days with a third drunk driving charge that resulted in a guilt agreement for a minor crime.

Garza, a progressive chosen for a second term in November, said in the February 26 interview that he did not believe that state law gave prosecutors a deadline to accuse; Instead, he said that the provision is intended to give the defendants a path to release.

In a follow -up interview, Garza did not provide evidence to support his statement that this is a state challenge, but said that his office had established measures to ensure that cases are not accused “due to lack of attention.”

A memo from his office said the lost deadlines are “extremely rare.”

Bastrop and the border

Defenders and lawyers for years have indicated what they consider a variety of injustices as part of the Lone Star operation, including the lack of timely appointment of public defenders, which results in the arrests remain in jail beyond the deadlines to accuse.

Angelica Cogliano, former immediate president of the Austin Criminal Defense Lawyers Association who carried out pro-bone works on the border until six months ago, said he found “dozen and dozen” of accused in Kinney County who were in jail beyond the deadlines.

He often took measures to free those arrested in his four years of work there, he said.

A pending collective claim in the Federal Court in the claims of San Antonio, among other accusations, that a defendant was imprisoned for 222 days after being arrested by search. The lawsuit said they did not give him a lawyer for weeks and that once he received a lawyer appointed by the court, that lawyer did not act for several more weeks. The county finally did not bring charges against the man, the lawsuit said.

Lawyers in the Austin area also say that a practice declared in Bastrop County that is not standard to otherwise leaves the defendants in the prison of more than 90 days.

Under the district prosecutor Bryan Goertz, who has been in office for almost 20 years, prosecutors do not present cases of accusation until they have most of the evidence gathered by the police in an investigation. Most prosecutors generally trust sufficient evidence that establishes a probable cause for a large jury.

Goertz’s approach leads to “many cases missing 90 days” and efforts between lawyers to release customers, said lawyer Zach Bidner, who practices in Travis and Bastrop counties.

But in Travis, instead of intentional practice, “cases seem to fall through cracks more and more often.”

Goertz said about his approach: “Do you enter the dark or do you expect evidence? Unless I know what I’m talking about, I’m not accusing you of a crime. “

He said that he can have more than 90 days to obtain cell phone data or narcotics laboratory reports, which acknowledges that the defendants are released.

“We have as many as we have to have,” he said.

Goertz said that in cases where prosecutors do not act within 90 days, their office still does not move to free those arrested because “it is not our work to get them out of jail.”

Throughout the state, lost deadlines seem rare

In other places, particularly in urban areas, public defenders and associations of defense lawyers say that counties have systems to ensure that accused of serious crimes are released or accused by the 90 -day mark.

In the most populous county of the State, the public defender of Harris County, Alex Bunin, said he rarely finds out of a case in which a prosecutor loses the deadline. Prosecutors closely monitor calendar entries to ensure that they act in time, he said.

If a great jury is not taken, Bunin said that prosecutors are generally aware of the deficiencies that could hinder the ability to advance, such as the lack of evidence, and they are almost never lost without knowing a deadline.

“I have not seen it is a big problem,” he said.

The public defender of the Dallas County, Paul Blocker, whose office handles about 15,000 cases of serious crimes a year, said that both prosecutors and their personnel closely supervise the cases that are close to 90 days. He said he can only remember a handful of cases in recent years in which lawyers sought to free a arrested because a person was not accused of the deadline.

“We don’t have that very often,” said Blocker.

Bexar County Prosecutor Steven Gilmore, who has worked at the Public Defender’s office since 2022, said the county operates a notification system that alerts prosecutors and defense lawyers when a case is at certain reference points: 30, 60, 75 and 90 days, before an issue. It is possible that prosecutors have not decided to advance with a case for 90 days, but they generally work with defense lawyers on how to resolve it.

El Paso County has had multiple practices in recent years to ensure that accused of serious crimes act within 90 days.

Chief Public Defender Kelli Childress said that when he joined the county about four years ago, the judges kept the lists with the time of the defendants in jail and notified the prosecutors when they were about 90 days. He argued that the practice gave prosecutors an unfair advantage, and transferred responsibility to a county agency that now notifies both parties.

Prosecutors are “at the top of the deadlines. If someone is in custody, that period of time has not been flying,” he said.

Travis county does not have such a system and, on the other hand, has been based largely on the Garza office to see the calendar.

That is after a “division of admission of the Grand Jury” that closely monitored the 90 -day deadlines when he assumed the position in 2021. He assigned that duty to the prosecutors of the Court of First Instance, who were already juggling with hearings and trials of the Court.

In a memorandum of March 3, the first Garza assistant, Trudy Strassburger, instructed the court managers that they must review the status of the cases weekly and “for any more than 70 days, the expectation is that it will communicate with the prosecutor assigned to obtain a date for the presentation of the Grand Jury.”

“While losing the deadline of 90 days when a case is ready to be presented to the Grand Jury is extremely rare in our office, it is unacceptable,” concluded the memorandum.

‘Something that should worry everyone’

The recent attention on the subject has stimulated the discussion about whether a government entity must monitor better if the prosecutors are fulfilling their duty to pursue cases and if the defendants hope unfairly in jail.

The Texas Judicial Council, a policy formulation agency for the State Judicial Power, is considering a proposal to collect data on accused liberated from jail after the lost deadlines, said Megan Lavoie, administrative director of the Administration Office of the Texas Court. The Texas Indigent Defense Commission, created in 2001 to supervise public defense in the State, only monitors the speed with which a defendant is appointed lawyer.

“There is no one who really can say how many people are sitting in Texas prisons who have not been accused of a crime and how many have been carried out beyond the period of time that can be legally celebrated,” said Nate Fennell, a policy lawyer at the Center for Criminal Justice Reform Dason at the Southern Methodist University. “That is something that should worry everyone.”

Related News

Back To Top