AUSTIN, Texas — As his administration faced a firestorm for not pursuing cases by state-mandated deadlines, Travis County District Attorney José Garza implied other Texas prosecutors are losing the same battle against time.
Although no state agency tracks how often prosecutors miss those targets, the KVUE Defenders found no pervasive problem across Texas.
It is all but impossible to find out exactly how often Garza’s peers are also failing to bring indictments within the 90-day period specified by Texas law. However, the KVUE Defenders uncovered that in Travis County, it has resulted in felony defendants being locked up for weeks or months past the deadline.
The Texas Judicial Council, a policy-making body for the state’s judiciary, said it is considering a policy that would start tracking how often defendants are released from jail because prosecutors did not indict in time.
The KVUE Defenders talked to public defender offices in Harris County, Dallas County, Bexar County in San Antonio and El Paso County who say those counties have systems in place to make sure both prosecutors and defense attorneys know when a 90-day deadline is approaching to indict felony defendants.
In Bexar County, for instance, both parties receive notifications at 30, 60, 75 and 90 days.
Travis County has largely relied upon the DA’s office to act on cases within 90 days. But when Garza took office in 2021, he all but disbanded that unit and assigned the duty to trial court attorneys who are already busy with settings and trials.
“There are a number of really legitimate reasons why cases are not indicted within 90 days, and just as an aside, that’s not only true in Travis County, but it’s true across the state of Texas,” Garza said in an interview on Feb. 26.
Experts, including Nate Fennell, a policy attorney at Southern Methodist University’s Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center, say the justice system statewide should better monitor how many people remain in jail past the deadline to indict.
“There’s no one who can really say how many people are sitting in jails across Texas who have not been charged with a crime and how many have been held beyond the time period that they can legally be held,” Fennell said.
He added, “This is a basic state law that gives a very clear timeline and a very simple resolution. It says that if you don’t charge someone within 90 days if it is a felony you have to be released. And if people aren’t doing that and going that consistently, people should know and people should care.”
After controversy hit his administration for routinely not indicting defendants within 90 days, Garza’s top aide sent a memo with new directions on monitoring cases, saying: “While missing the 90-day deadline when a case is ready to be presented to the grand jury is extremely rare in our office, it is unacceptable.”