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Travis County, Da José Garza, says that the accusation deadline is not firm

Travis County, Da José Garza, says that the accusation deadline is not firm

Sakege016 mins

For almost 50 years, local prosecutors in Texas have interpreted a section of state law as a deadline of the Holy Grail: they have 90 days to accuse the accused of serious crimes or allow them to be released.

But as his administration faces increasing scrutiny to repeat that objective repeatedly, Travis County District Prosecutor, José Garza, issued a surprising statement: he does not believe that his office has the obligation to accuse cases that quickly, even when many defendants sit in jail long after the deadline. In some rare cases, the Garza office ends up rejecting charges months later.

“We really have the statute of limitations to accuse a case,” he said in an interview last week.

When the Garza office was first criticized earlier this month, the Center for Attention fell in two cases in which two murder suspects were released dramatically reduced because they were not accused within the 90 -day timeline.

But since then, the American-Statesman and the KVUE-TV have discovered that the Garza approach has not only resulted in the questionable versions of suspects of murder, but has also led the defendants who languish in jail for days, weeks and months after 90 days.

On February 18, the day when the statesman and Kvue revealed the cases that involved the accused murderers, there were 26 accused of serious crimes in the Travis county jail that had been there for 90 days or more without an accusation. One in the list of snapshots in time had been there for 224 days only after an arrest for driving third offensive, he found an analysis of the media.

While those defendants represent only 0.01% of the daily population of a daily jail of the County of 2,148, the defense lawyers say that it is still an important problem, since many of the defendants are denied due process.

Not only are they behind bars without being convicted of a crime, but prosecutors have not taken the basic step to follow the case against them.

Garza’s philosophy has caused growing confusion and frustration among Austin’s defense lawyers, especially for those who have clients after bars. Many have taken measures to free them.

“That is not the way in which the system is supposed to work,” said Charlie Baird, former District Judge of the County of Travis and former judge in the highest criminal court. “This is one of the largest deadlines in the prosecutor.”

Angelica Cogliano, former immediate president of the Austin Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, described the Garza approach as “alarming in many ways.”

“The State needs to keep up and make sure you do its job in a timely manner,” he said, so that “someone innocent not only is waiting for evidence against them or simply sitting and waiting for no reason.”

Under no obligation?

Traditionally, prosecutors throughout the State, including those who lead the Office of the District Prosecutor of Travis County, who handles only cases of serious crimes – They have prioritized obtaining accusations within 90 days for imprisoned defendants. This is due to a provision of “delay release” of 1977 in the State Criminal Code, which stipulates that a defendant must be released if they are not accused within that period.

Both the Urban and smaller district prosecutors offices have frames built around the guarantee that the accused were accused in 90 days. The policy of the Office of the District of the County of Williamson, for example, says that “in the absence of mitigating circumstances, all the defendants must be accused within 90 days after the arrest of a defendant” and that prosecutors must “constantly monitor the state of cases not noted” and immediately inform a lost deadline that results in a release.

“That is one of your main priorities. You execute your jail list, see who approaches 90 days and prioritizes those cases against the Grand Jury, ”said Andrew Roundtree, former prosecutor of Harris County and Travis and current Defense lawyer of Austin. Losing the 90 -day window “was the cardinal sin of a new serious crime prosecutor,” he said.

However, Garza argues that the 1977 law only provides “a trigger” for free client defense lawyers, but “it is not a deadline” for prosecutors.

“To the question of whether we have an obligation or a deadline to accuse within 90 days, the answer is ‘no’,” said Garza, a progressive one that ran on a criminal justice reform platform and began a second mandate in January.

Even so, he said that it is “our expectation that in appropriate cases, our prosecutors are accusing these cases in time.”

The past fall, Garza established a new “adefluence unit” to help address a larger portfolio of unheated cases among bail -free defendants. And after the controversy in cases of murder, he issued a directive to the prosecutors to try to accuse cases of accused imprisoned within 90 days, even when he argued that it is not a legal requirement.

But another change of policy that Garza did during his first mandate ask questions about whether that was the right approach.

Until 2021, the Travis County District Prosecutor’s Office had a “unity of admission of the grand jury”, where prosecutors had the task of accusing the accused imprisoned or resolving their cases, within 90 days.

The Garza administration mainly placed the duty of accusation with prosecutors in the nine Criminal District Courts of County. Defensor lawyers argue that prosecutors are already overwhelmed with judicial environments, hearings and judgments.

“It’s very difficult to do, if not impossible,” Roundtree said about balance.

In the last two weeks, Garza said the office has also promulgated more systems to mark cases when a suspect is about 90 days in jail. He said he recently learned that not all court managers were using the system and since then “imposed more supervision.”

Veteran lawyer Keith Lauerman said he believes that cases are not being accused within 90 days due to the lack of tax organization. Separately, he said that he has requested more and more dismissals from other cases among the defendants released from prison who have not had their cases accused of two jury cycles, as required by law.

“They don’t have a good monitoring system,” said Lauerman. “That seems to be the problem.”

‘We are on alert’

Garza said he did not know how many unplayed defendants remained imprisoned beyond 90 days after the revelations about the defendants of liberated murder.

But he spoke with several of the 26 cases in the February 18 list of unhealthy defendants, obtained by the statesman and Kvue of the Travis County Court Administration Office.

Several defendants were not eligible for liberation due to immigration stopators, they were sought in other counties or did not report before the courts in other cases. But others who were clearly eligible for liberation had been there for seven months.

That was the situation of Brahim El Hanaoui, who spent the longest of any uncoated defendant.

Austin’s police arrested him in July after responding to a car accident in South Congress Avenue in which Hanaoui led his Ford sedan to a concrete wall. An affidavit of arrest noticed two previous arrests.

Garza said prosecutors sought documents outside the State in August related to those cases. They arrived in February.

“We just didn’t have the evidence until this month to prove the accusations,” he said.

On Friday, Hanaoui declared himself guilty of a minor crime, received credit for the time fulfilled and was released from the prison.

El Hanaoui’s lawyer, Lindsay Richards, said: “Mr. Hanaoui left with a satisfactory result. Ultimately, the load is in the state to accuse in a timely manner.” She declined to make more comments.

The other 25 cases included defendants who were in jail for violent and non -violent crimes.

Garza openly recognized that in some cases, prosecutors lacked evidence to move forward, but as in the case of Hannaoui, he believed that it existed and were waiting for him from the agencies of application of the law.

But that was not the case in which a man remained in jail for almost four months without an accusation for a position of possession of drugs with the intention of distributing.

“We just don’t have the evidence in that case,” Garza said.

Prosecutors rejected the case last week against man, who has since been released.

Garza also acknowledged that in other cases, prosecutors have lost contact with the necessary victims to follow the case.

That is what happened to a man released with a personal bond last week after he had not been accused in 114 days. The man was arrested for an aggravated assault with a mortal weapon charge for allegedly taking the tablet electronic card and the benefits of a woman’s government. Police said that when he confronted him, he held a knife, hit her in the eye and threw it to the ground. She told Police that “he thought he was going to die.”

The lawyer Raymond Esperson said his client “had the right to be released on bail.”

Garza said he would be “disappointed” if the prosecutors had proceeded with accusations of large jury without the entire body of evidence or contributions of victims.

But lawyers say it’s not how the system should work. Rather, the Garza office must dismiss cases for greater investigation in the 90 -day brand, free the defendants or accuse them based on the available information. Waiting for months to seek additional evidence to mistakenly punishes the defendants, lawyers said.

Bradley Hargis, Executive Director of the Private Defense Service of the Capital Area, which provides lawyers for the suspects of homeless, said the problem is increasing urgency among lawyers.

“We are on alert,” he said. “This is a worrying situation. Any day that a person has to spend in jail that does not have to do it is an injustice. ”

Kvue’s executive producer Joe Ellis contributed to this report.

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