In parts of rural Texas, awaiting trial behind bars for months on end is a regular occurrence.
Take, for example, Maverick County, where reporter Jolie McCullough found there’s a “dysfunctional” court system in which “basic tenets of American justice often do not apply.”
McCullough, a local investigations fellow with The New York Times, shared her reporting with Texas Standard. Listen to the interview in the player above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Of all of Texas’ 254 counties, how did the border county of Maverick capture your attention?
Jolie McCullough: This is actually something I’ve been looking into, rural indigent defense, over the last year.
And looking at counties across the state, I saw problems pretty much everywhere in terms of very low level of appointments of attorneys to poor defendants who in misdemeanor cases can go to jail for up to a year.
But what I saw in Maverick County really stood out in that, aside from almost never appointing lawyers to these defendants, these people were in jail for months and months at a time waiting just to be charged with a crime.
How is the criminal justice system failing these defendants?
It’s this dysfunctional court system where police often take weeks, they take months, sometimes even longer, to send over an arrest file to the prosecutors for prosecutors to even know that someone has been arrested.
Prosecutors then also take weeks or months or however long to file a charge on something as simple as trespassing or running from police.
And the whole time, no one usually is really checking to see if that defendant is in jail that entire time.
What did you hear from local officials about this?
In talking to the county judge there, who oversees misdemeanor court – he was elected in 2022; he’s been there now a little over two years – and he said this is something he’s been working on and he claimed that these jailings are unjust.
How can this happen? There’s a constitution, there are criminal justice statutes in Texas. Is it that those statutes are not being enforced? Is it that unconstitutional detention is not being pursued by anyone? That there’s not been a spotlight on this issue or what exactly?
I think that’s exactly right.
This is a small town. They have a “this is the way it’s always been” mentality in many places like this. And yes, there are state laws that are meant to protect criminal defendants. Specifically, if you don’t bring a charge within 90 days, people are not supposed to be held in jail anymore. But that requires a system of checks and balances.
And in this system, when I was talking to all of the people who would be able to ensure these releases, they tend to all blame each other. It’s a county that has a lot of political feuds, and it’s something where everyone seems to be pointing the blame at everyone else.
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Is it your sense that this is isolated to Maverick County or that this might be happening elsewhere in Texas?
On smaller scales, I have seen this happen elsewhere – like I’ve found people in jail on very minor crimes for six, seven, nine months without being charged. And I see that happening not as long, but for longer than state deadlines allow in other counties. And I see people not getting attorneys even after asking.
But in Maverick County, it’s one of the poorest in the state. It’s just almost, it is guaranteed in the way that the system is set up right now. These people are just falling through the cracks left and right.
I know there’s no magic solution here. But if something can be done, what? What are people telling you?
What I’ve heard after this and before this from experts, from defense attorneys, is it relies on the county officials to step up and take accountability and take action. And we have state lawmakers who are at the Capitol right now making decisions on how much money goes into local indigent defense.
People have mentioned lawsuits and, obviously, that’s not something that’s really come into play in this county. But those are generally the things that spur change, right? Accountability on the local level, at the state level, or in the courts.
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