Judicial Uproar...You 'Memmer, Memmer?

A few years ago a guy named Manny Barraza very famously declared in a debate in the courthouse that "there is no corruption in this courthouse".

That was after the FBI had raided then County Judge Anthony Cobos' office. 

That guy Barraza would eventually become a judge. Then he faced charges himself and did some prison time. He's now a paralegal with some attorney here in town. I forget who.

Well I used to think no other quote would ever approach Barraza's in terms of irony. 

Until last year. You memmer, memmer?

When one of the judges charged up to Commissioner's Court, thumped his chest and defiantly questioned County Commissioner Vince Perez, "What is the problem?"

It was quite the scene. He did so because he was pissed about what the Commissioner was looking into regarding indigent defense. 

How dare he interfere with the judiciary? was the prevailing sentiment among the judges. Not all of them of course. And certainly not all of the attorneys either. 

You aren't an attorney, you don't know what this data even means was what many in the legal community said of the effort to discuss the increase in expenditures toward indigent defense from one fiscal year to the next. 

The problems that have been outlined in a recent article in the El Paso Times were raised by Commissioners Court when they were doing their job for tax payers. There were asking why there was such an increase in costs for indigent defense spending (20% increase from one fiscal year to the next). 

That led to more questions about the system and if it is in compliance with the Fair Defense Act. Commissioner Perez also wanted to know why so much of the money allocated for indigent defense went to so few attorneys. 

Ultimately the article in the El Paso Times laid out the findings of a Texas Indigent Defense Commission review of the way attorneys are appointed to indigent cases by judges in El Paso county. So to answer the question posed to Commissioner Perez by the aforementioned judge, according to the TIDC, apparently there are a lot of problems.

Specifically the Commission found that cases were not fairly distributed among defense lawyers and inmates were not assigned legal representation in a timely manner. 

Let me explain why the timely manner is a big deal. The Texas Code of Criminal Procedure states that for a county our size that the person should get counsel within one working day of the request for counsel around 90% of the time. Well the TIDC found that El Paso County meets the 1 business day standard only 62% of the time in felony cases. El Paso County falls short by nearly 30%.

That has a huge financial impact to the community when you consider it costs tax payers around $100 a day to house an inmate. Do the math...HUGE FISCAL IMPACT.

The Times article has statements from the Council of Judges that distances themselves from the findings but also sorta pats themselves on the back for changes they've made that aren't reflected in the report.

What the statement doesn't tell you is that the only reason those changes even came about what because Commissioner Perez and Commissioners Court started asking questions and called for a state audit. From my recollection there was no move by the Council of Judges to institute reform prior to Commissioner Perez raising the issue. Instead, they publicly defended the system and didn't want it to change. 

In an effort to explain his position to defense attorneys the Commissioner set up a meeting with the lawyers so that he could tell him what he was asking about and get their feedback. They practically tarred and feathered Perez at the meeting.

Interestingly the ones that would've benefited most from a more fair case distribution system were defense attorneys. But some of the most vocal attorneys that did everything they could to cross-examine Perez when they had the chance were the same attorneys that benefited from the old system. It makes sense, they were doing quite well financially under the system that was found to be out of compliance with the Fair Defense Act and were blistering Perez with their commentary. It got downright rude in that meeting. One attorney, Joe Spencer even brought Commissioner Perez's father into the conversation for some reason.

It was ugly.

Now its pretty much quiet. But for a while it got pretty rough around the courthouse. Rumors were flying all over the place about unhappy judges and lawyers threatening to try to find an opponent for Perez. 

That talk has died down now. 

In the following spring there was an episode of ABC 7 Xtra devoted to the topic and it followed the Council of Judges decision to postpone a pay increase for defense lawyers. Again the Council of Judges patted themselves on the back but never explained the necessity of implementing a pay raise for the defense lawyers in the middle of the fiscal year that would've cost county tax payers about $500,000 in an immediate budget impact.. Nonetheless they took credit for postponing it.

My favorite part of the ABC 7 Xtra show about the topic that featured Commissioner Perez and prominent attorney Jim Darnell was the part where Darnell quotes Mark Twain when discussing the preliminary statistics that the Precinct 3 office had compiled and analyzed. Check this video out at 8:28 seconds. Its priceless. 

Darnell quoted Twain saying, "There are liars, there are damned liars, and there are statistics." He goes on to say, "These statistics simply aren't accurate. They paint a nice picture but they don't tell the story..."

Wonder if Darnell still thinks the "statistics simply aren't accurate" now that the TIDC has pretty much said, as Commissioner Perez puts it in the Times article, "We were not wrong on a single point...My whole request was based on the way attorneys were appointed with the wheel. There was no rotation, so that was confirmed."

Make no mistake about this. No part of this is good. El Pasoans get hung up on the wrong things. We worry about the superficial but let the big stuff get by us. We pay some of the highest costs for our jails compared to the rest of the state. Indigent defense costs went up by 20% in one year.

That is a lot more than Valenti's bonus.

We can't afford any of it.