"New law aims to save McLennan County time, money by streamlining courts," is the Waco Tribune-Herald report by Tommy Witherspoon. It appeared in yesterday's edition.
McLennan County judges are hoping that a new law passed earlier this month will create sort of a one-stop shopping form of judicial economy for criminal defendants charged with both felonies and misdemeanors.
The local bill, which takes effect Sept. 1 and affects only McLennan County, gives the five state district judges here, who have concurrent jurisdiction over felony cases, the authority also to handle misdemeanor cases.
The change won’t be putting anybody out of work or straining the busy felony court dockets. Mike Freeman and Mike Gassaway, the county’s two county court-at-law judges who preside over misdemeanor cases, still will have plenty of cases to hear.
But the new law is designed to streamline the judicial process in cases involving people jailed on both felony and misdemeanor charges, which happens fairly often, courthouse officials say.
The vast majority of those defendants seek court-appointed attorneys, and most of the time, defendants with multiple charges get an attorney appointed for their misdemeanor charges and another attorney appointed for their felony charges.
Officials hope that tweaking the court-appointment process after the new law takes effect will cut down on the $1.9 million McLennan County paid out last year to lawyers who represented indigent clients, help move cases through the courts more efficiently and, in turn, ease overcrowding in the jail.
And:
With approval of the bill
filed by State Sen. Kip Averitt, R-Waco, McLennan County and Brazos
County are the only counties in the state where state district judges
have misdemeanor authority, Johnson said. “We believe that this will enable us to streamline the system, save
taxpayers’ dollars, make the courts more efficient and, hopefully,
reduce the jail population,” Johnson said. Gassaway and Freeman agree that the changes could be good ones. “We know the felony judges don’t want to do our work for us, and
there is certainly going to be plenty for all of us to do,” Gassaway
said. “But as we all know, many times when someone is caught and
charged, they have both misdemeanor and felony charges, and it just
makes sense while the lawyers and the clients are all in front of a
criminal judge to take care of their business all at once and get it
done.” Any change to long-standing judicial policies creates ripple
effects. This change also will affect the district clerk’s office,
which keeps felony criminal case files; court coordinators, who process
paperwork, schedule court dates and myriad other duties; the district
attorney’s office, which decides which charges to pursue; and defense
attorneys. “There are still issues to be resolved by the district and county
court-at-law judges in implementing policies and procedures for
handling misdemeanors in the district court,” Johnson said.
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