Under Texas law, district attorneys in Texas must indict felony suspects within 90 days, or those suspects must be released on bond.
But an investigation from the Austin American-Statesman and KVUE finds that in Travis County, that 90-day deadline is frequently being unmet, with suspects spending more time behind bars without being indicted. Many of them ultimately had charges dropped.
Investigative reporter Tony Plohetski spoke with the Standard about his team’s reporting on why Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza’s office has failed to prosecute within the window, and what it means for public safety.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Your investigation found that more than 180 suspects had been in jail for more than 90 days without indictment last year. Why is that happening?
Tony Plohetski: Well, the answer from the local District Attorney Jose Garza here in Austin has evolved dramatically since this issue first became on the forefront of the public’s attention here. That actually started in February with the release of two murder suspects.
But initially, he blamed the release of those two murder suspects in February on a former prosecutor who is no longer with the agency. However, in the subsequent weeks, he asserted – much to the surprise of many people in the criminal justice community – that based on his interpretation of the law, prosecutors don’t have a deadline to indict or bring a formal charge against someone in jail, that the only formal deadline that they have to contend with is the statute of limitations.
Most recently, however, he has said that his office has put new policies and new strategies in place to ensure that indictments are brought in a timely manner.
But he’s not saying what a timely manner means?
Well, I think he is asserting that the timely manner is within that 90-day deadline.
But he’s just saying that it’s a policy, that there’s not a state law that he is bound by?
He has not acknowledged a state law and the necessity under that state law to make a charging decision within 90 days. As to the underpinning of all of this, we’ve talked to, over the course of our investigation, more than 40 people, including many practitioners here in the criminal justice system in Austin.
And what they assert is that the district attorney, when he took office in 2021, made some fundamental shifts in terms of the deployment of personnel within the office and in doing so actually disbanded an entire unit whose job it was to watch the calendar and make sure cases were presented to a grand jury within that three-month period.
I was going to ask, are you picking up on any trends in which certain kinds of cases appear to be exceeding this 90-day red line?
We did a case-by-case analysis of 263 cases involving 181 defendants. What we found is that about 70 of those cases were violent offenses in which people were ultimately released after they had spent 90 days in jail.
But then there are other people who have remained in jail often well past that 90-day time frame, and many of them were charged with drug offenses and sort of less serious felonies, nonviolent felonies.
And in the minds of many criminal justice reformers, they say it’s really those cases that are of utmost concern to them, because it raises questions about people staying in jail for lower-level felonies.
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You talk about one instance of a 19-year-old college student who spent more than 90 days in jail before ultimately being released and having the case dropped. Tell us more.
This was a really compelling example that we found – and again, analyzing 263 cases. He had an altercation with his father – this happened in April 2024 – and according to Austin police, assaulted his father, which led to his arrest on a burglary of a habitation charge. There was an assertion, an allegation, that he actually broke back into his father’s house.
So he was arrested. He spent 112 days in the Travis County Jail. During that time, actually was involved in a fight in the jail that led to him losing a tooth, according to his attorney.
But prosecutors ultimately did not make a charging decision until after the 112 days that he spent in jail. And when they did make a decision, it was their decision to drop the case against him, saying that the father no longer wanted to participate in the prosecution.
Have there been any consequences for prosecutors or public defenders failing to meet their deadlines?
Not that we know of across the state. What we have determined through previous reporting is that this is not an issue that has really been a problem across the state of Texas, with some exceptions.
There are some border counties where this has been a problem, and practitioners across the state will point to isolated other counties where this is been an issue in those counties as well.
But broadly speaking, and generally speaking, what we found is that particularly urban district attorney’s offices have entire infrastructures that are set up to make sure that this 90-day deadline is met – that a charging decision, either a thumbs up or a thumbs down on a case, happens within that 90-day period.
But as you’re saying, Travis County no longer has that.
That’s right, that is what our reporting found, is that the district attorney, when he took office, opted to redeploy a number of prosecutors and reassign that duty to trial-court prosecutors, who, it is our understanding, are often already busy with very aggressive schedules in terms of going to court settings, in terms of trying cases themselves.
And what many people told us is that they have, at times, difficulty working up cases to take them to a grand jury in a timely manner.
