AUSTIN, Texas — Could Travis County taxpayers be on the hook for missed deadlines by District Attorney José Garza that have left defendants sitting in jail?
That question comes amid growing interest among civil rights attorneys and advocates who point to a groundbreaking case that could set the stage for suits against Travis County after Garza’s administration has repeatedly missed deadlines to indict defendants.
The case unfolding in U.S. District Court centers on arrests made during Gov. Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star immigration enforcement effort. Two years into that effort, Washington, D.C., attorneys filed a novel civil rights lawsuit against a border county jailing arrestees.
The suit, brought on behalf of a 38-year-old Mexican immigrant, claimed Kinney County had kept them behind bars for days, weeks and months past a state-mandated deadline to bring formal charges – in violation of his Constitutional rights.
Kinney County officials asked to be dismissed from the suit, arguing they hold no liability. But a federal judge rejected their argument last month, ruling the case against the county could proceed.
“I think the Kinney County case makes it clear that over-detention is an issue that federal judges are paying attention to and that they understand the Constitutional implications of over-detention,” said Lia Sifuentes Davis, who leads the Civil Rights Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law.
Legal experts say the case could serve as a template for future claims against Travis County, where Garza’s administration has recently come under fire for repeatedly missing a similar deadline to indict jailed suspects.
“It has really far-reaching implications. It has a financial cost, it has a Constitutional costs and really speaks to a system that is allowing this to happen,” Davis said.
Under Texas law, defendants who have not been indicted on felony charges within 90 days must be released on an affordable bond under the “Release Because of Delay” provision.
The KVUE Defenders have found dozens of instances in recent weeks in which defendants charged with both violent and non-violent offenses remained in jail past that 90-day deadline.
“And at the end of the day, it is on the county to make sure they are not illegally detaining who may be innocent and not even charged with a crime,” said Nate Fennell, a policy attorney at the Southern Methodist University’s Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center. “What the state law says really simply is that a person not charged in the relevant time period must be released, and if a county is holding people consistently when they don’t have legal authority to detain, that could be a real problem for them.”
KVUE contacted Travis County commissioners, who control the county’s budget and are usually among those named as defendants in lawsuits against the county. They released a joint statement saying, “The Travis County Commissioners Court believes any person who enters the criminal justice system should be processed fairly, justly and expediently.”
In a statement to the KVUE Defenders, Garza’s office did not say whether it was concerned about the possibility of litigation and reiterated that it had made changes to ensure post-deadline indictments are a rarity.