Texas Continues to Establish
New Public Defender Offices
The Texas Task Force on Indigent Defense (Task Force) recently awarded
multi-year discretionary grants to Travis, Willacy and Kaufman Counties
for the purposes of creating public defender offices. For fiscal year
2005, two counties in Texas, Bexar and Hidalgo Counties, received
multi-year discretionary grants from the Task Force to establish new
public defender offices. The five counties listed above join the FY
2004 discretionary grant recipients: Dallas, El Paso, Limestone and
Val Verde Counties. Grants to all nine counties total more than $2.1
million.
The Texas Task Force on Indigent Defense was created in 2002 through
the passage of the Fair Defense Act to administer statewide indigent
defense appropriations and policies. As part of its mandate, the Task
Force awards discretionary grants “to encourage courts and counties
to examine their indigent defense processes to improve the local system
by developing innovative programs.” Grants are awarded on a
competitive basis and to be eligible to receive grant money counties
must comply with the requirements of the Fair Defense Act. Counties
must agree to contribute monetarily to the programs, eventually taking
over the full responsibility for funding the new public defender programs.
Bexar County was awarded $370,076 to establish an appellate public
defender’s office in San Antonio. Hidalgo County was awarded
nearly $395,490, to establish a misdemeanor public defender office
that will represent in-custody defendants charged with a misdemeanor
and the office will be able to handle co-current felonies. The Spangenberg
Group recently completed an initial evaluation of the public defender
offices in Bexar and Hidalgo Counties. The report Initial Interim
Report to the Texas Task Force on Indigent Defense: An Analysis of
the Newly Established Bexar and Hidalgo Public Defender Offices, provides
a baseline assessment of the status of indigent defense before the
Bexar County Appellate Public Defender Office and the Hidalgo County
Public Defender Office, which handles misdemeanors only, were established,
using both qualitative and quantitative factors. In addition, the
report discusses the accomplishments of the newly established offices
and initial suggestions made by Bob Spangenberg on how to develop
the offices. The report is available on-line at http://www.courts.state.tx.us/oca/tfid/Final%20Revised%20Version%20Initial%20Interim%20Report.pdf.
Travis County, where the City of Austin is located, will use its discretionary
grant to establish a mental health public defender office to serve
indigent defendants with serious mental illness. The office will staff
case workers in addition to attorneys and will be able to provide
clients with information about available services and treatment options.
According to a press release from the Task Force, “the office
also will seek solutions to get and keep defendants with mental illness
out of the criminal justice system.” Willacy County, in the
lower Rio Grande Valley, and Kaufman County, near Dallas, were also
awarded grants to open public defender offices.
Previous multi-year discretionary grants have been awarded to create
a mental health division added to the existing public defender office
in Dallas County; a mental health public defender unit in El Paso
County; and a mental health/mental retardation office in Limestone
County. For FY 2006, Val Verde County was added to the list of multi-year
discretionary grantees, receiving money to create a regional public
defender, covering several neighboring counties. Other counties have
received single year grants for video teleconferencing systems between
courtrooms, law enforcement centers and defense attorneys and indigency
determination systems.
For more information contact tsg@spangenberggroup.com
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