Longhorn County
Applications for Appointed Counsel
Under the Longhorn County indigent defense plan, justices of the peace (JPs) were responsible for conducting magistrations at the county jail and asking arrested people if they wanted to request appointed counsel. JPs recorded their answers on a magistration form. and distributed paper applications to people who wanted to apply.
Longhorn County JPs did not have the authority to rule on applications for appointed counsel. Instead, each day the JPs were responsible for collecting any applications for counsel and sending them to a county court judge for a decision.
Decisions About Appointment of Counsel
Pursuant to the Longhorn County indigent defense plan, a county court judge reviewed all applications and had the authority to approve or deny them. However, records reviewed by researchers only showed judges approving appointments, or leaving paperwork blank. The researchers did not find paperwork denying an application for appointment.
When unrepresented people appeared for arraignment, a county court judge asked them if they wanted to apply for appointed counsel. If they did, the judge instructed them to complete an application in court or asked about their financial circumstances and completed the forms for them. The judge ruled immediately on those applications.
Key Finding
While accused people in 48 cases indicated that they wanted to apply for appointed counsel, researchers located day-of-magistration applications for counsel in only 35 of those cases. Court records clearly indicated that a county court judge granted 29 of those applications. Researchers were unable to determine whether a judge ever ruled on the six remaining applications. In five of those six cases defendants were unrepresented on the day of their arraignment.
Data Legend
1: Requested Cousel? The Deason Center reviewed each magistration form and recorded whether the form indicated that the arrested person wanted to apply for appointed counsel.
2: Application at Magistration? Researchers recorded whether each case file included an application for appointed counsel dated on the day of magistration. If there was no application, or if the application post-dated the magistration, researchers coded the case as ‘no’. (Researchers did not find any applications that pre-dated a person’s magistration.)
3: Request Granted? If a file included a day-of-magistration application for appointed counsel, researchers recorded whether officials granted or denied the request. Researchers coded cases as “undetermined” if there was no indication of whether or how a court had ruled. This column does not depict outcomes of applications that post-dated a person’s magistration.
4: Represented at Arraignment? Researchers documented whether court records indicated that, on or before the day of arraignment, the defendant had an attorney. Researchers further coded whether that lawyer was court-appointed or retained. (Court records only indicated whether a defendant had counsel, not whether that lawyer attended the arraignment.)
About the Longhorn Data
Center researchers collected files from 483 Longhorn County misdemeanor cases that closed between January 1, 2016, and October 18, 2022.
To construct the diagram above, researchers removed 305 cases in which they were unable to locate any magistration records. Researchers also removed 44 cases in which application and decision procedures substantively differed from those described above.
Magistrations for the 134 cases depicted in the diagram occurred between January 8, 2018, and July 1, 2020.