County cash

Politicians reveal their priorities by spending millions on outside lawyers.

How do you defend the indefensible?

If you’re Harris County, you hire a professional.

Commissioners Court voted last week to hire famous Washington D.C. lawyer Charles Cooper to aid 15 county judges in the ongoing lawsuit alleging the county’s bail system is unconstitutional.

Cooper has an impressive résumé for any litigant aspiring to be on the wrong side of civil rights history. Most recently, he unsuccessfully tried to defend a ban on same-sex marriage before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Now he’s lined up to advocate for Harris County’s miserable bail system — a system that most of Commissioners Court will admit unfairly penalizes the poor. Consider it a preemptive move. Cooper will only work on appeals stemming from a potential pre-trial suspension of the current bond structure.

Your property taxes already pay for the county’s in-house legal department, headed by duly elected County Attorney Vince Ryan, a Democrat. That hasn’t stopped most misdemeanor court judges from asking for a $550-perhour attorney to supplement the $2 million already spent on outside law firms in the case. Judge Darrell Jordan, the lone Democrat on the county’s misdemeanor bench, wants to settle.

If Harris County leaders had been willing to spend that kind of money on indigent defense and diversion programs in the first place, this whole lawsuit would be utterly unnecessary.

But that’s how politics works: Commissioners Court can find spare cash to spend on Cooper, who formerly was named the national Republican Lawyer of the Year. Funding defense attorneys for the poor in Harris County is a nonstarter unless someone threatens a lawsuit.

If only those busted for trespassing or driving without a license had a Super PAC. Maybe then we’d have a bail system that targets people based on their danger to the public, rather than the size of their wallets. More than 75 percent of the 10,000 inmates in Harris County jail haven’t even been convicted of a crime — they’re just waiting for trial. Nearly 80 percent of people charged with a misdemeanor will spend time in jail. And about a quarter of those folks are stuck simply because they can’t afford a $500 bond.

Faced with the choice between quick freedom or waiting for a trial, plenty of poor Houstonians will end up pleading out instead of insisting on their constitutional right to a trial by jury. The threat of losing a job, being separated from family and having to endure a decrepit and dangerous jail is enough to convince people to fess up to a crime even if they didn’t do it.

The danger that lurks behind bars isn’t reserved for the guilty. A majority of the 1,100-plus who died in Texas jails over the past decade were simply awaiting trial. More than 50 of them were from Harris County.

For far too many Houstonians, $500 can mean the difference between life and death. But for Charles Cooper and the Harris County commissioners who authorized his employment, it is just another hour at work.

The danger lurking behind bars isn’t reserved for the guilty. A majority of the 1,100-plus who died in Texas jails over the past decade were simply awaiting trial.