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Texas Lawyer's TexParte Blog provided a link to 10 resolutions (pdf) to the Legislature from the Texas Judicial Council, several of which merit highlighting. (See below the jump.)
On juvenile justice, the council recommended reducing reliance on Class C tickets to make criminal courts the last and not the first resort in school discipline. A lot of heavy hitters are interested in that topic headed into session.
The council wants defendants to be obligated for fines and court costs if their period of community supervision ends without their having fully paid it. I suppose those cases will eventually end up with some collections vendor.
The council called for legislation to have court costs assessed at the time of conviction instead of based on when the offense is committed. This is pitched as based on ease of calculation, and I'm sure that's true, but it's also true that since fees operate on a one-way upward ratchet, the later in time they're calculated the higher they will be.
The council wants a single effective date for new court costs and fees to avoid confusion during implementation every two years. That's reasonable.
The council wants a standardized fee set for "compliance dismissals" in traffic court; e.g., when a person charged with driving with an expired license gets their license renewed and has the case dismissed. Presently the fee ranges from $0 to $20, depending on the court, and the council suggested a $20 minimum fee. In practice that amounts to a fee increase in many cases.
They requested an interim study in between the 83rd and 84th sessions on consolidating criminal court fees. Hear, hear!
They endorsed Jim Bethke's request from the Texas Indigent Defense Commission to a) authorize spending an unexpended balance in their account that the Lege is using for budget balancing trickery, and b) pay up to $70 million more to counties to "Close the 'unfunded' gap that is being borne by counties for the additional indigent defense costs that they have incurred due to the mandates of the Fair Defense Act of 2001." With Justice Wallace Jefferson's endorsement along with Judge Sharon Keller's (she chairs the Indigent Defense Commission), the Presiding Judges of Texas two highest courts have now endorsed Bethke's bold funding request. Well done.
The council wants the state to create a new fee and use it to fund creation of an e-filing system for the appellate courts. I agree the state should fund e-filing. I'm sick of the cowardly way we critique overuse of fees that now, says the Council, we need to study "consolidating" while simultaneously creating more new, atomic fees to fund narrow infrastructure needs. That's an unsustainable model that's reached the limits in a large number of cases of defendants' ability to pay. I'd rather the state just pony up and pay what it cost to run the courts.
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