Lawyers challenge emergency docket intended to reduce backlog in Harris County courts

Harris County officials have leaned on shuffling some court proceedings out of the 23 district courts and to a makeshift docket to reduce the backlog of felony cases first caused by Hurricane Harvey damage and later exacerbated by the pandemic. But that docket, where hired-out jurists handle older and more cumbersome proceedings to free up the district courts for newer cases, has become the subject of a legal dispute before the Court of Criminal Appeals. Defense attorneys have expressed concerns in court documents that the county created a court — something only the legislature can do. Defense attorney Drew Willey learned in August that a client’s pending prostitution case from 2019 had been transferred from the 183rd District Court to the Emergency Relief Docket to hasten a resolution — such as a dismissal, plea or trial.

The court coordinator told Willey in emails the case was moved to “get it to trial sooner.” He fears defendants will face tougher punishments in the docket because many of the judges who run it are Republicans who retired years ago or lost their benches during the 2018 blue wave. Many of them may favor the prosecution, he said. “The way that they’re reducing the backlog is by having retired judges, who are often very conservative judges who were part of the old way of doing things around the courthouse, handle the cases,” said Willey, founder of Restoring Justice, which provides legal aid to indigent defendants. Elected judges can pick which judges oversee the docket from a pool of regional jurists, former and retired, through the Eleventh Administrative Judicial Region of Texas. Willey’s co-counsel in the appellate case, Pat McCann, argues that the docket is a court in disguise, and illegitimate as a result — unlike the 482nd District Court created in September 2021 through a legislative vote. The docket, approved and funded through Commissioners Court, takes place in a courtroom with its own court staff.