Stack of cases from 2014 shocks DA
Williamson’s new district attorney inherited 218 unexamined cases left behind by Duty, her staff.
GEORGETOWN — One January day, a staff member for the Williamson County district attorney’s office walked into a vacant administrative office and made a surprising discovery. She found a stack of papers with dates on them from 2014.
“As she briefly looked at each piece of paper, she began to realize that the paperwork appeared to be the basic paperwork that police officers would submit to our office for our review and further prosecution,” said Shawn Dick, who took over as district attorney Jan. 2.
The documents included 218 unexamined cases left behind by the previous district attorney, Jana Duty, and her staff, Dick said.
“I was alarmed,” he said. “What we didn’t realize at the time was how many there were and how serious they were.”
The cases included all levels of
felonies, ranging from sexual assault to forgery, Dick said. He said that because Duty’s office was short-staffed, he had expected to be behind on casework by three to four months when he took over. But the 2014 cases, he said, have created a four- to six-month backlog that also includes cases from 2015 and 2016.
The backlog is also exacerbated by 1,500 discovery requests from the last four months of 2016 that the district attorney’s office needs to handle, he said. Discovery requests are made by defense attorney seeking to see the evidence the district attorney’s office has in cases where charges are filed.
“Being behind by 1,500 individual discovery requests far exceeded the normal backlog,” Dick said.
The extra work has affected the speed with which new cases are handled, but Dick said he couldn’t say exactly by how much.
“My team has been amazing and many of the lawyers are working very long hours to see that justice is done,” he said. Prosecutors, Dick said, have made a “big dent” in the 218 cases.
He said he has never contacted Duty to ask her if she knew about the 2014 cases that were not examined. She never responded to his request for help transitioning into the office, he said.
“There’s no reason she would be any more help now than she was in the last year,” Dick said.
District attorneys are not aware of every case that comes into their office, he said. “I am trying to be fair to her (Duty),” Dick said. “Whether she should have been aware is a different question.”
He said he thinks what happened was Duty’s office was short-staffed during her last year. “In the end, not that many lawyers were there working, and from what I understand Jana wasn’t there working,” Dick said.
Duty did not respond to a request for comment about the 2014 cases, whether her office was short-staffed or what her work schedule was during her final months in office.
She lost her re-election bid to Dick in the Republican primary in March 2016. She also faced two lawsuits asking for her removal in her final year in office. Those lawsuits were unsuccessful and Duty remained in office until the end of her term.
Jack Strickland, a former deputy chief prosecutor for the Fort Worth district attorney’s office from 2011 to 2014, said it was unusual for 218 cases from 2014 to be left behind especially since Williamson County is not that big. “I’ve never heard of anyone having a backlog like that,” said Strickland, who is now a private criminal defense lawyer.
“It would really be a mess to inherit,” he said. “I think it sends the wrong message to the public that this stuff is just languishing because people don’t think it’s important to get to.”
Dick said six of his prosecutors also worked for Duty but that they were not involved in accepting cases, so they didn’t know anything about the unresolved ones. He now has 15 prosecutors including himself and is hiring two more prosecutors in March and April, he said.
The two prosecutors being hired plus another one hired in February are part of a new intake division Dick created to handle incoming cases after he was elected last year. Williamson County commissioners agreed in August to allow him to hire the three new attorneys for the intake division.
“This request was made in anticipation of facing population growth and the need for an intake structure in the DA’s office,” Dick said. “At the time I requested these positions, I was relying on publicly available numbers because I had no access to the inner workings of Ms. Duty’s office.”