Texas Task Force on Indigent Defense - second meeting March 22, 2002

The Texas Task Force on Indigent Defense held its second meeting on March 22, 2002.  The agenda centered mainly on three matters: (1) a presentation by Task Force Director James Bethke about the submission of indigent defense plans by the various counties; (2) a presentation and discussion of an independent evaluation of the quality of county indigent defense plans conducted by the Equal Justice Center and Texas Appleseed; (3) discussion and adoption of emergency rules governing indigent defense grants to counties for 2002.

The Task Force welcomed its new executive director, James Bethke who had been chosen to head the Task Force staff several weeks before.  Bethke reported  that nearly all the counties had submitted new indigent defense plans at the start of 2002 as required.  He provided the exact number of separate district, county, and juvenile court plans and the number of combined plans.  He indicated that additional analysis of the plan contents would be reported in the future.

Bill Beardall, executive director of the Equal Justice Center and Hanna Liebman Dershowitz of Texas Appleseed presented the Task Force with the findings of a report by the two organizations assessing the Quality of Initial County Indigent Defense Plans.  An overview presentation of the findings was followed by an extended discussion during which Task Force members asked a number of thoughtful questions.  The full report and the executive summary are available on this website.

Finally the Task Force took up discussion and adoption of emergency rules to govern first year indigent defense grants to the counties.  There was considerable debate about the distribution formula, particularly about whether the baseline minimum grant to very small counties should be $5,000.00 or $2,500.00.  In the end the Task Force adopted grant rules for the first year grants which provide that:

-- Grant funds will be allocated to qualifying counties based on each counties total population, except that each qualifying county will receive a minimum grant of at least $5,000.00.  (The Task Force agreed to consider the possibility of basing the allocation on poverty population in future years, even though the time pressures of the first year made it impossible to consider that during this first year.)

-- Eligibility for the first year's grant will be conditioned on a showing by each county that it is in compliance with the required time limits governing prompt appointment of counsel.  Time pressures to get grants awarded by the end of the fiscal year precluded more extensive compliance reviews in the first year.  However, more comprehensive compliance measures are likely to be used in future years.

Grant information and grant application packets are available at the Task Force website.

An exact date for the next meeting was not scheduled, though it was anticipated that it would occur sometime in June.