Lawyers of Justice demanded that Travis County appoint a Counsel at First Appearance (CAFA) – an integral part of the justice system that guarantees everyone access to a lawyer at their first bail hearing – for years. In the summer of 2022, the county introduced a pilot program that lasted only nine days due to staffing and space constraints at the jail. After increasing calls highlighting the importance of the right to counsel and a ACLU lawsuit Due to the lack of this possibility, the district finally CAFA test layers this spring. Now they plan to expand the program permanently by October 1st – to one shift per day, seven days a week.

At a county meeting on Aug. 27, commissioners approved the 39 new positions needed to make it happen. To keep the program running and offer a second shift per day, the county will ultimately need 72 full-time employees, but for now, those 39 should be enough to fully staff by the Oct. 1 start date — when county departments begin hiring immediately. Because of the rushed process, staff will submit an updated recommendation by Sept. 17 that addresses any outstanding questions or necessary corrections. In it, they will recommend that the court approve an earmark in the 2025 budget.

The new positions span the full spectrum of the county’s justice services, including criminal courts, the public defender’s office, the Capital Area Private Defenders Service (a private legal service that contracts with the county), community legal services, the district attorney’s office, the county prosecutor’s office, the sheriff’s office, the county clerk’s office and pretrial detention services.

The public defender’s office will take over 25 percent of the CAFA shifts, 25 percent will be taken over by CAPDS, and the other 50 percent will be taken over by a new division within Community Legal Services. Geoff Burkhart, district manager for CLS, emphasized that the division will “serve as an administrative hub for the defense function and make sure that we have basic coordination between the two sides – that no one falls through the cracks.”

One of the most important new positions at PDO, CAPDS and CLS is that of caseworker, who, according to Adeola Ogunkeyede, the chief public defender, “includes all the defense functions and really looks after people in crisis situations. Often times, courts and the state are interested in what the plan is before they decide to release a person. “This is where a caseworker comes in. Caseworkers are on the ground and can identify resources to help the person out of their crisis, and they give the court and the state the reassurance that releasing the person is the right decision for the process. This inevitably saves us days that people would otherwise have to spend in jail while we try to put plans in place.”

CAPDS, which will take over a quarter of the shifts, also received funding from the county to provide a stipend to Spanish-speaking and mental health professionals “to maintain motivation for compensation and to recognize the effort and skills they bring,” said Bradley Hargis, director of CAPDS. Those skills will be essential to providing fair justice for all, as 14 percent of those hearings currently require a Spanish interpreter.

Two Spanish interpreters were certified for the criminal courts before Oct. 1, but there are still open positions for interpreters and IT services that staff will present to commissioners for consideration in September. County staff cautioned that on-site interpreters require special court certification and can be difficult to find, and raised the possibility of video translation services such as LanguageLine, which are currently being used. However, PDO attorneys who have worked the CAFA’s test shifts told commissioners that on-site interpreters are among the most important positions to enable CAFA to operate equitably and provide clients with both the language diversity and privacy they need.

“While we can use LanguageLine for communication between the judge at the bench and the attorney, there are situations where an attorney needs to reach out and speak to their client at the bench, and LanguageLine doesn’t necessarily allow for that,” stressed public defender Janel Venzant. “If the judge asks your client a question that is unclear to them, I would have to come over and whisper it into the phone – that would not provide any privacy or confidentiality.” Venzant also shared a recent case where she took a Mandarin speaker, highlighting the need for interpreter options for multiple languages, not just Spanish. Kathy Mitchell, a longtime advocate for justice reform, added, “We know from practice that having translators in the room is the best way to give people the language skills they need to participate in the proceedings.”

In addition to the interpreters, public defense spokespeople also raised the question of whether two justices of the peace would be needed in the criminal courts where the hearings take place.

“All the work and money that the county puts into this could have ended up being for nothing if these individuals are people who don’t really support the values ​​and principles of the stakeholders here,” warned public defender Seth Manetta-Dillon. “There have been situations where prosecutors and defense attorneys have agreed that this person should be released on bail or with very minimal conditions, and this particular judge, for personal reasons, has not agreed with that. If we hire two new district judges, I think it’s important that this process is transparent and that the people hired for those roles are able to answer questions from the stakeholders, the citizens and the county. Because they are the ones who set the dollar amount at which someone is incarcerated or released, and if they don’t agree with what I think most of us are, that all stops immediately.”

Overall, Venzant said from her experience on the CAFA shifts, “it’s tremendously important to give attorneys the opportunity to get to know their clients early on so we can build a relationship. Even though this is a new expense, it’s what the justice system requires. I would say it’s a blot on Travis County that it took us so long to get here – we saved a lot of money over many years by failing in this regard. So I would just encourage the Commissioners Court not to get too caught up in the numbers and to remember that this allows the human element to enter the criminal justice system as early as possible, and that’s profoundly important.”

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