Travis County Commissioners Court
February 21, 2006
Item 15
15. 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.
>> [indiscernible] last week if you will recall we came in front of the court, laid out several objectives of the feasibility study. For public defenders office. I have with me today cameron johnson, our juvenile public defender. I asked him to come to give you all some thoughts on what he thinks that the direction may be.
>> okay.
>> good morning judge Biscoe and Commissioners. I’m -- I’m glad to be here, first of all to talk about what has been working for us over at the public, juvenile public defender. One that probably is the most pressing thing is going to be the area of cost. I’m looking at what we have been doing over the last few years as compared to the private costs of handling the attorney cases, we have been able to do, we have been able to be cost efficient. To give you an idea, the last -- over the last couple of years, the private attorney costs in juvenile court has been about $517 a case. And up until -- up until let's see probably this fiscal year, we were running about -- about $384 costs to handle those cases. Even though we -- we were grateful to receive a funding for an additional full-time employee, our costs now is still going to be about $422. We are still looking at about $90 per case that we are going to be less than the private attorneys on handling the same caseload. What I really wanted to focus on is sort of like those -- the intrinsic costs, things that we were able to do that we are not able to put a cost -- at least I haven't been able to put a cost figure on. I think that the goal for a smoother administration of the court system. One is that we have the ability to -- to meet with the judges, meet with the district attorney's office and we will sit down. What we have -- we all have the objective improvement of court efficiency. So through our regular meetings, communications with the district attorney's office, we -- we handle the cases a lot more efficiently, a lot more expeditiously and we also feel as though with the staff that we are able to do them at a higher level of competence. One of the things that we focused on is training. We have -- we have eight attorneys, four of our attorneys have -- have board specialization. To give you an idea, less than probably about 5% of the attorneys state doosh wide have board specialization, that's something we are proud of. Half of our staff, those that don't have it, some that aren't eligible haven't been licensed for five years. With that the training, we provide not only in-house training, we also provide training for private attorney council whereas not only the judges, district attorney's provide so we have been trying to -- to be forward thinking, about a model. I think that those are some of the advantages of having a public defender system. Not only that, we work with the private bar. We work on the state-wide. We work with the Texas criminal defense lawyers association. So we have got support and we have got a network of services that have made us given us the opportunity to be really successful in my opinion.
>> cameron do you know how many of the other I guess medium to large sized counties have a juvenile public defenders office?
>> well, what we have is there's a total of nine public defenders offices in the state. Two of them are new. That's the san antonio and I believe the -- another -- that's the san antonio does appeal I can't tell, but as far as -- appellate, but as far as juvenile, dallas and el paso the two larger. Last time I checked I believe dallas had six lawyers, the el paso public defender, probably comparable to Travis County, about five attorneys in the juvenile division. Actually, we like to say we have the largest juvenile public defender in the state.
>> some of the cases, though, are still referred to outside council. Juvenile cases.
>> that is true. What we have historically looking over the years, we have been doing probably about a little over 90% of all of the cases that are coming in juvenile because of the guidelines. However, probably what you are going to find historically about -- we have been averaging about 7% of our cases that we -- that we have a conflict of interest which we are going to be prevented from handling the representation. Most of those come in the area of multiple cases where multiple juveniles are arrested for the same offense. So it's -- we don't provide representation in most of those cases. So there's always going to be a certain amount of those type of cases.
>> uh-huh.
>> but even with that, like I say, we have still been averaging between 90, 93% of handling all of the cases in the county.
>> questions?
>> that's very helpful.
>> the juvenile public defenders office has been at Travis County for how long?
>> I should know this, but we are about -- about 34 years. 34 years.
>> all right.
>> the only other idea that came to me, it was fresh, did come from one of the district judges, in addition to felony cases, we ought to although at misdemeanor cases.
>> yes, sir.
>> which is fine to me.
>> otherwise I didn't get much feedback from anybody, this is a study, may well be after looking at it closely, we decide that -- that we should, you know, stick with what we have. But I think that a comprehensive, serious study is warranted at this time. The other thing is that I do think in addition to -- to -- to our staff, we ought to ask the district judges to designate a person to -- to participate.
>> or persons.
>> alternate just to make sure that they always had a --
>> right.
>> and we ought to at least I guess make the offer to -- to the criminal defense bar.
>> yes, sir, I received an e-mail from deborah hale this morning with three or four defense attorneys that were wanting to be a part of this task force. That's encouraging. She also sent me a couple of names of county district court judges as well. I have looked over my notes from last week and during our court session and some of our conversations, judge, I have about a -- 30 people to invite. Not -- not including these defense bar, so 30, 35 talks that's a lot of folks to initially have come to a meeting to discuss this.
>> okay. Thank you.
>> that include, we talked also last week about either project apple seed, aclu.
>> all of those are included, yes, ma'am.
>> so do we think that -- that owe there's this blueprint that you shared with us, I guess, that the task force on indigent --
>> indigent defense.
>> put together. There's no need for us to come up with an outline. Basically we ought to turn the committee lose and make this information available to the members, makes sense to me. I do we think we ought to go ahead and do it. Luckily jill population numbers are -- jail population numbers are down, I haven't seen them for today. But I know as of Friday they were down. Over the last 10 days or so, seem to be moving in the right direction. I keep my fingers crossed, hoping the jail will go down to two items and stay there. Anything else on this item?
>> huh-uh.
>> move approval. That would include the study that would include misdemeanor and felony cases, issue inhave itations to the persons mentioned by kimberly. Make sure that we give the district and county judges an attorney to add persons should we call it a working group?
>> sure.
>> and at the appropriate time in the future put it back on the court's agenda for further consideration. Anything else? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Thank you all very much. Thanks for coming down, cameron.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, February 22, 2006 10:26 AM