Travis County Commissioners Court
February 14, 2006
Item 12
12. Consider and take appropriate action on request for a feasibility study on a felony public defender's office for the Travis County criminal justice system. The boll of my little -- the bottom of my little memo I recommend basically that we discuss this briefly today. Mull over it a week, take action next week. Yesterday after I shared kimberly's memo and mine with the court, I did -- I did have delivered a hard copy of both of them to the district criminal judges and the district attorney's office for them to mull over between now and next week. I will touch base with them by telephone if they want to provide input next week we will provide that opportunity. Kimberly?
>> judge, Commissioners, kimberly pierce with criminal justice planning. Actually the judge said up here this morning to request for feasibility study of a public defenders office for Travis County. With your backup, you should have my two page memo that I sent out last Friday. Also deborah hill provided me a report entitled creating a blueprint for the public defenders office in Texas, it was created for the Texas task force for indigent defense. 2004, that's that packet of information that I gave you so that your staff may have the opportunity to read it. The task force, by the way, Commissioner Sonleitner we had a conversation a few weeks ago about changing the name of the task force, our monthly meeting is this Thursday at noon. That is one of our many agenda items. To let you know that we will be covering that. Anyway we continue to examine areas of the criminal justice system for improvement. Two things that has been a recurring theme over the course of a number of years is the amount of dead time that attorneys spend travelling up and down floors of the cjc and different courses that they have their cases assigned to. Secondly defense attorneys using the first setting as the first time they see their client. They are not -- most of them are not going out to del valle to visit their clients. They are using the first setting as the first time that they see their clients. Those two things has increased our transportation costs that the sheriff's office has to absorb enormously. It's also increased the number of resets that we are seeing over the last year. So criminal justice planning is recommending to do this study and let me see. Some of the key decision points on whether we should do this study is would it be right for Travis County, what would be the effect of the quality of justice? Would a public defender be good, bad or worse for the can? Will the local bar association be in support? How much would it cost, obviously how much we would compare that to what we are paying for now, what would be the long-term financial impact? Some of the advantages that are noted within the report is that public defenders are chosen for three reasons. One is to be most cost effective. Two to ... Obviously the budget would be predictable. There would be an increase in the quality of control and the county would have hands on administration and supervise authority as something that we do not have today. Underneath the cost of the reports, public defenders can provide a comparable service that can -- comfortable service, which would eliminate duplication and inefficiencies. They would have the ability to train and supervise their staff. I think which is very important that they noted in their report is that the -- this type of office would be more likely to qualify for constituent and federal grants. It would save criminal court administration time and it would also decrease the novaceks the auditor's office is having to cut every month. Public defenders may also increase the dependability of the county's defense representation. It would be easier for them to supervise and oversee the quality of each attorney's work. This type of office would also provide the criminal courts with a single point of contact. It would also allow us to be able to assign attorneys to specific courtrooms to avoid them travelling up and down courtroom floors. We would also have the ability to oversee office policy, training and supervision. Something that I feel is very important. When a new law is passed by the legislature. It's more likely to be implemented properly by a team of attorneys than by individual private attorneys. Some of the disadvantages two of the most common bearsier is resistance to change. Contracting with individual attorneys we have done for quite some time. Second disadvantage would be the start up costs. We don't know what they are now, but obviously that would be included in our study. What we are here to do today is ask permission from the court that I would like to schedule a meeting with the task force of folks comprising of prosecutors, the defense bar, judges, clerks, p.b.o., the auditor's office as well as cca and in fact I would really recommend to the court that judge you asked some of the district court judges to maybe appoint somebody from cca to be involved and partner with cjp in conducting this study. So it not just criminal justice planning doing the study, but also partnership but a team effort with cca. Part of our study would also include, do we just want to look at felony filings or include or also look at including misdemeanor filings? Having a public defenders office for both felony misdemeanors. We would prepare an estimate of what the public defenders caseload would be, what their staffing needs would be, a draft budget, a cost per case, compare that to what we are paying for now. Just an overview, very brief overview of the report that deborah provided. I spoke with deborah at length last week, also with johnson who heads up the juvenile public defenders as well as medina, all of those parties are very supportive that we at least look at the feasibility of placing this tune of office here in Travis County. I don't know if deborah or cameron is here today, but --
>> is there a model somewhere else in the state of Texas that has something similar to this? What we are trying to study? El paso, this came so quickly I have not been able to contact all of the different urban counties that I would like to. I also happened out a little spread sheet here. El paso is the only county that is doing a public defenders office the way that we are looking at it. Photo say that the other counties are not moving in that direction or using half and half. But I do intend within the next month or two to contact each one of these counties personally and possibly even going out to el paso, having a very lengthy conversation with them about what are they doing right, what type of things would they do differently, things of that nature.
>> [one moment please for change in captioners]
>> now, are we convinced that we can do the first stage of this in-house?
>> yes, sir.
>> and in my view we really need -- need the judges to provide representation, and if we can get cameron or somebody there to sort of provide input. As far as I know, the juvenile defenders office has worked well. It was at Travis County when I arrived and nobody has suggested that we could do without it.
>> right.
>> 100% of the cases do not go through the juvenile public defenders' office. We have criteria to help us decide what goes there and what we have to get private, outside counsel for. And my guess is even with a felony public defenders office, you would still need to contract out for some services. Capital cases stand out as being the obvious. But the question is whether this would be a better system. We can look at whatever evaluation criteria we choose to look at, four, five or six of them are pretty obvious, but I wanted to lay this out to the court maybe between now and next week, chat with some of the judges and encourage them to come over with whatever questions, comments, concerns they may have as well as the defense bar. In addition to what we pay lawyers, there are other costs that over the last three or four years have increased some a lot more than others. None of these unfortunately are going down. And I have a feeling that we are really not in control of the situation. And the public defenders office may give us that level of control and it may not. So I’m open. And if the facts say we should not do it, that's fine with me. I just think we ought to go ahead and take a good look.
>> yeah.
>> the things that also just come to mind in terms of other relevant considerations in addition to capital cases, which of course is one of the obvious ones, it's so specialized. I want to be able to leverage and build upon what we've been able to do with the mental health wheel. That is also a very specialized area and I want us to build upon the good work in cooperation and collaboration with those very special lawyers that are doing it for us and not lose any momentum there. I think it also very important that as we talk about trying to get something more effective and efficient that we think about fairness and quality of the justice being served out. So I want to make sure at whatever point it is appropriate, but always at the beginning of the best, that we hear from the voices in this community who are very strong advocates for effective counsel. And that is the no brainer ones of the acla, jim harrington over at the Texas civil rights project. And there's another group of folks, project apple seed, which was working with some of the grants in terms of helping us get the grants in relation to our requirements under the indigent attorney bill that got passed by senator ellis. So I want to make sure that all voices, in addition to we've got to have the defense lawyer there, but there are folks who are really focusing more on the effectiveness of counsel and have their own issues that I think need to be brought in very early.
>> now, I did put on the second page of my memo number five, determine the extent to which Travis County officials and court appointed attorneys are committed to achieve the same benefits without implementing a public defender model. I do not think it is accept acceptable for us to accept the status quo, but I think it's obvious that some of the problems may be dealt with without going to a public defender model. If so, then I think we ought to be open to that discussion. And number five is to suggest that I am, and I hope we are. The five of us sit here and make policy and approve funding and many others are out there where the rubber meets the road, and I just think that the way the rubber is meeting the road right now is such that it is financially costing us more and more and more, and I’m not sure that other than complying with state law we have a whole lot to brag about. Indigent defendants are not going without legal representation, but I don't know whether we have the cadillac version or the ford taurus -- and by the way, I drive a ford taurus. As officials and funders, I think these are the questions that we need to look at and try to answer.
>> I think this is where we are on health insurance. We were contracting out for that and we reached a tipping point because of the expense and wanting to control our own data and the quality and having more sale over the benefits. I think it's a great discussion. It's been years and time. And if it's not time right now, this is going to be one that at some point will reach a tipping point.
>> it will take several months after we get the green light to get the study, if we do it. My desire is to have a limited agenda because Monday is a holiday and we lose one workday and there are other matters that consume time. But if we can whether or not to proceed with this and if we need another week, so be it, but if we can give green light to proceed next week, I can be comfortable.
>> and it's perfect timing, too, judge. Like I said a second goal, the taskforce meeting is Thursday, so it's really perfect timing.
>> kimberly whrks you do this feasibility study, have you looked at things like how would we be able to bring more money into the system from the perpetrator? I’m not convinced that we do a very good job of that. I mean, I think it's easy for people just to say I’m indigent. Give me an attorney and pay for everything. I realize that there are a lot of folks that really can't, but I think there are a lot of folks that as soon as they walk out over there, they go spend money on something that I would go, you didn't have any money to go do that, but you had money to go do that.
>> I think it's as important as any other aspect of it. We want to look at it from a to z. But a lot of that stuff, Commissioner, is guided by statute. Our hands are tied at some of that stuff, but we look at how we're appointing attorneys and why.
>> I don't always disagree with you, kimberly, but I think that's a very convenient excuse a lot of times, well, statute says. Well, we pay people to go two blocks over here to say, hey, can we change this? You get enough people behind you that says we really do need to look at things like that, especially when the state is going, it's y'all's deal, just shove it down to us. So I want to make sure that that's part of it.
>> yes, sir.
>> so who are we providing court appointed legal counsel for and why? And another question that would be approximately what percentage of the defendants that we provide lawyers for are incarcerated and what percentage are not? Now, the funny thing is that the law does not require that you be incarcerated, it simply requires that you be indigent, but I know historically we sort of de facto required that you be in custody, the assumption being that if you were in the free world then you should get yourself a job and get your own lawyer. The law really is sort of contrary to that, but the point which I agree with is we need to make sure that we are exercising maximum diligent efforts to ascertain ability to pay.
>> yes, sir. Ars.
>> and only in cases where we have determined that in fact you cannot provide your own legal counsel and other court related costs should we step in and help you dispose of the case. Anybody else here on this item today? If so, please come forward. There will be another opportunity next week, and we will make sure that others are invited to do that. Our memos came out kind of late, during one of our jps meetings. It made sense for us to go ahead and put this on the agenda, have the court look at it and get it done. So unless there is something further today, we will have it back on next week.
>> sure.
>> okay.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, February 15, 2006 11:17 AM