We must reduce the court backlog
Violent crime in Houston won’t go down until the system operates efficiently.
The Houston police blotter reads like a document from a much deadlier era decades ago. A murder-suicide in southwest Houston. A woman robbed at gunpoint in her driveway in northwest Houston. A man shot and killed in north Houston following a dispute over money. A teen shot on the freeway on the way home from an Astros game, later dying of his wounds.
And that’s just the past two weeks. The uptick surged during the pandemic and continues with near-daily incidents adding up to one of the highest homicide rates in three decades. To date, there have been more than 250 homicides in Houston — a 35 percent increase from this time last year.
During the crime spike 30 years ago, when crack cocaine still raged and the city was becoming a hub for the illicit drug trade, Houston recorded so many murders — 617 in 1991 alone — that curfews were being discussed. Then, as now, Houston faced a public safety crisis. Then, as now, fear led to fingerpointing and convenient narratives for political opportunists.
History suggests that this downward spiral, if sustained, could usher in draconian measures and regressive tactics that threaten to stall the progress the state and city have made on smarter, fairer criminal justice policies.
Armchair criminology is in full swing as some on the right weaponize opposition to bail reform, falsely blaming efforts to end unconstitutional poverty jailing in minor cases for fueling a rise in violent crime. Joined by victim advocates and police union representatives, politicians in Austin point to increasing numbers of charges against people out on bond as evidence that misdemeanor bail reform and the use of no-cash bonds in Harris County are to blame.
Some have even dubbed the crime spike the “bond pandemic.”
This gross oversimplification of the issue is not solving the problem. It’s making it worse by skewing the public’s view of the situation, drowning out serious discussion with political hyperbole that does nothing to identify true causes or elevate solutions.
Most of the people out committing new crimes while awaiting trial on other charges aren’t on the loose because of “bail reform” or “liberal judges.” They’re out on bail because they paid bail — a right that has been long allowed in Texas, even for defendants who pose a danger to the community. In Texas, one of the few tools judges have to hold such people initially is higher bail. Defendants who are innocent until proven guilty can only be denied bail in rare circumstances, including in capital murder cases. It would take a constitutional amendment to change that and this editorial board is open to considering such a change if lawmakers tailor it narrowly enough.
What’s different now in this crime spike, besides a global pandemic driving up crime everywhere, is that massive backlogs in the courts are delaying justice — hearings, pleas, trials and potential prison sentences — for everyone, including truly violent offenders who really did commit the crimes for which they’re charged, allowing them more time to roam free and commit new crimes.
In Harris County, a year of court closures and delays that ground the justice system to a halt is a disaster on top of a disaster because we’re still digging out of the years-long backlog from Hurricane Harvey.
We’ll leave the root causes of the pandemic-era violent crime increase to the experts. There is little doubt that the haze of unemployment, social isolation and stress have exacerbated pockets of poverty in cities across the country, and combined with diminished social services to create conditions ripe for social unrest.
But while many of the causes of this crisis were out of our hands, the solutions are not.
As courtrooms reopen, Harris County has a backlog of 148,000 cases — including 98,000 criminal cases, roughly split evenly between felonies and misdemeanors — and only 367 prosecutors and 38 judges in district and county courts to handle them.
The justice system in Harris County is on the verge of buckling under the weight of an untenable volume of cases. There are 5,500 violent offenders in jail awaiting trial, but tens of thousands more are out on bail, and at least
4,000 of them are repeat and violent, high-risk offenders wearing ankle monitors, according to the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.
The threat of the backlog isn’t just that people awaiting trial will re-offend; it’s that existing cases against dangerous offenders will fall apart. Criminal cases stagnating in our sclerotic court system become less winnable because witnesses disappear, memories fade, arresting officers may retire or leave the force, all of which weakens the prosecution’s likelihood of a conviction and erodes public trust in the justice system. It's not fair to the victims or the defendants sitting in jail.
Clearing the backlog is a grueling endeavor but three things can help: more prosecutors, more judges and some form of compassionate forgiveness — such as dismissal and diversion — for older nonviolent cases, particularly those that do not involve victims.
Thankfully, District Attorney Kim
Ogg recently announced a plan to rereview more than 30,000 misdemeanors and state jail felonies. Every possible non-victim case will be considered for an “alternative solution” instead of jail, prison or formal supervision such as an ankle monitor.
On the need for more prosecutors, the DA has secured $3 million in funding from the county for a pilot program for prosecutors to review and resolve
cases after-hours for overtime compensation. County commissioners should permanently fund this program, allowing the district attorney to hire additional full-time staff and alleviate the potential for burnout from the prosecutors working extra hours.
Incidentally, this is not a time to get bogged down in political spats or disagreements over criminal justice philosophies. Ogg’s repeated requests for more prosecutors have been rejected in years past, with some liberals and advocates arguing that more prosecutors means more prosecutions of lower-level crimes. That view was off-base then and even less credible now that the DA’s need for more lawyers to clear the case backlog is undeniable.
Prosecutors aren’t just needed to pursue guilty verdicts, but to determine which cases to prioritize, which are still viable, which are good candidates for alternative solutions. Taking this backlog seriously means the county must add significant staffing capacity to its court system, and that includes public defenders as well.
The District Attorney’s Office should also take a hard look at recommendations offered by the nonprofit Justice Management Institute last year to county commissioners that outline a more aggressive approach of dismissing all non-violent felony cases older than 9 months, with exceptions for
DWI and other cases involving victims awaiting justice. The fact is, most defendants don’t end up in prison anyway. The nonprofit noted in its report that only 42 percent of all felony cases in 2019 resulted in conviction, with the rest either dismissed, deferred or acquitted. Most of those convicted were released back into the community on probation. Doing away with these cases allows prosecutors, defense and courts to focus existing resources on newer cases entering the system and, most importantly, violent cases.
For their part, judges need to step up and do all they can — including working full days and extra hours — to get dockets moving and to ensure trial dates. Setting an actual trial date can light a fire under strapped prosecutors, helping them prioritize their workloads and spurring them to do the necessary leg work to assess which cases have a high or low likelihood of conviction.
But judges also need help. The number of courts in Harris County pales in comparison to major cities such as
New York and Chicago. The county has not added a criminal district court since 1984, when the average caseload per court was a mere 888 new filings per year. That number has more than doubled.
We applaud the $17 million proposal recently unveiled by County Judge Lina Hidalgo, Sheriff Ed Gonzalez and other local leaders that would add six associate judges to assist the 22 criminal district courts, expand jury operations at NRG Stadium, and fund visiting judges. The associate judges specifically would be directed to address the most violent cases that have sat dormant in the backlog, while the visiting judges could assist with pretrial motions, hearings and daily docket proceedings.
The crisis in our criminal justice system is serious — but it need not cause panic or be left to decay into easy pickings in culture war politics. It need not resurrect “tough on crime” rally cries or a new age of over-incarceration fueled by fear.
No solution can instantly cease the tragic killings across Houston. But there’s an obvious way to get a handle on the situation. We call on our elected leaders to get our courts moving. Clear the backlogs. Bring violent, repeat offenders to justice and get them off our streets and in prison where they belong.
That approach won’t win the soundbite rodeo on cable news or rev up a stump speech in a Republican primary, but it just might save lives.