© 2013 The Texas Lawbook.
By Jeff Bounds
Staff Writer for The Texas Lawbook
(October 14) – At the end of this week, jurors serving on federal trials will get IOUs instead of checks. All civil trials are being put hold. Payments to court-appointed lawyers will be halted.
The federal government shutdown combined with the devastating impact of “sequestration” funding cuts have judges and other officials in the federal judicial system in Texas nervously watching Congressional leaders and praying for solutions.
“Senators Cornyn and Cruz and a few members of the Texas House delegation are allegedly lawyers who supposedly care about people being able to access our justice,” says a Republican-appointed federal judge who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.
“This is wholly and entirely unacceptable – complete incompetence,” the judge says. “Congress is playing politics when it should just pass a damn budget.”
The federal judges say they have funding for trials through Friday. After that, the courts will only handle criminal cases.
Even if Congress passes a funding bill that reopens the government and the courts, judges and court officials are still dealing with the impact that so-called “sequestration” funding cuts have had this year and they are worried that more spending reductions may be on the way.
Under the Budget Control Act of 2011, also known as the “sequester,” the federal court system earlier this year saw its $6.97 billion budget slashed by $350 million, or roughly 5 percent, to $6.6 billion. That came after years of roughly flat budgets, which court officials say are the equivalent of cuts because expenses like rent keep rising, as does the casework and other matters that the court system must handle.
In the federal Northern District of Texas, the 100-county area that includes the Dallas-Fort Worth area, officials of the court system caution that public safety could become an issue, as could problems like delays for civil trials and providing representation for indigent defendants.
A figure for the Northern District’s annual budget wasn’t available, though a spokesman for the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts says Texas courts absorbed roughly the same 5 percent cut as the rest of the system.
“Down the road, I anticipate problems with having enough money to pay our jurors, which would curtail jury trials,” said U.S. District Judge Barbara Lynn of Dallas.
Under the law, civil cases take a back seat to criminal cases on the docket. “There will be further expensive delays on the civil side,” said Karen Mitchell, the Dallas-based Clerk of Court for the Northern District.
In addition, the court system is delaying needed technology upgrades, Lynn said. “If you need a new computer, you can just forget it,” she said. “Morale is sinking like a rock.”
And Judge Lynn says that because of staff and budget cuts at the Federal Public Defender’s office in the Northern District, giving everybody their day in court is getting more difficult. “The public defender is so short of staffing that we have to coordinate criminal dockets in a way that gets in the way of the rest of our schedule.”
Judge Lynn, like other federal judges in Texas, praises the work done by U.S. public defenders on shoestring budgets, and emphasizes that officials of the defender’s office are simply making do as best they can with limited funds. “Congress refuses to treat us like a separate branch of government,” Lynn says. “We can’t fund ourselves. That’s the problem.”
As it stands, the Northern District’s defender’s office, which provides legal counsel for defendants who can’t afford attorneys, has been forced to furlough its entire staff for 34 working days during the government’s 2013 fiscal year because of sequestration cuts. “What happened was that we contacted all our federal district judges and informed them that we’d have to shut our office every single Friday for the remainder of the fiscal year,” said Jason Hawkins, the Federal Public Defender in the Northern District.
At the beginning of the current fiscal year, the public defender’s operation had 18 full-time attorneys, one part-time attorney, and 22 support staffers, Hawkins said. “I’ve lost three attorneys and two investigators” since then, Hawkins said. That included the former head of the Northern District’s defender office, Richard Anderson, who took a voluntary retirement, according to Hawkins.
“Two of the younger attorneys I lost were very bright,” Hawkins said. “They couldn’t absorb the cost of the furloughs that they suffered. I’ve been told I can’t replace them.”
Another problem lies in the Northern District’s pre-trial and probation arm.
“My concern is the safety risk,” said Jolene Whitten, Chief U.S. Probation Officer for the Northern District.
Whitten’s office, which has seen its staff shrink from 168 to 139 since February of 2011, handles pre-sentencing reports and monitoring individuals who have been paroled. Rising workloads mean the Northern District’s office should have closer to 180 people, meaning it is 77 percent staffed for the amount of work it has to do, Whitten said.
“If (probation and pre-trial workers) make a mistake, there can be serious consequences,” she said. “They’re over-worked and stressed.”
Mitchell, the Dallas-based Clerk of Court for the Northern District, is in a similar boat. Her staff has shrunk to 99 people from closer to 121 in the fiscal 2012 year.
“I’ve got a seasoned team,” she said. “A lot of employees have been here a long time. They know a lot. As these folks leave, I worry about our ability to sustain our level of service. There’s a lot of institutional knowledge that leaves as we have people take early retirements. That’s a big concern. I don’t know what the future holds for this place.”
The squeeze that the Northern District of Texas is feeling is similar to what’s happening in other federal judicial districts around the state.
“You can only squeeze so much blood out of the turnip,” said U.S. District Chief Judge Leonard Davis of the Eastern District of Texas. “At some point, the turnip will start withering. I think we’re to that point … If we get caught up in sequestration or get cut again, it will be very difficult to continue with the judiciary as our district has known it in the past.”
In an Aug. 15 letter to Sen. John Cornyn (Rep. – Texas,) Davis warned that “flat funding and now sequestration have brought Eastern District Court operations to the edge of the cliff … We have reduced our staff by 20 percent despite an increase in case filings and workload of 12 percent.”
Davis, who was nominated to the Eastern District bench in 2002 by President George W. Bush, said he has remained silent in recent years.
“We’ve done our very best not to complain,” he said. “This is the first time I’ve raised my voice.”
Davis isn’t the only Texas federal judge to do so.
“We are pedaling as fast as we can on an increasingly rickety bike,” Fred Biery, the San Antonio-based Chief U.S. District Judge for the Western District of Texas, said in a July 8 letter to Cornyn and Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Midland/Odessa.)
“Speaking of rickety,” Biery’s letter added, “of the 16 senior and active Article III judges, nine of us are 65 or older. Court orders requiring time and physiology to stand still have thus far been ineffective.”
Spokespeople for Sen. Cornyn and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas,) who are both members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, did not respond to repeated inquiries seeking comment.
© 2013 The Texas Lawbook. Content of The Texas Lawbook is controlled and protected by specific licensing agreements with our subscribers and under federal copyright laws. Any distribution of this content without the consent of The Texas Lawbook is prohibited.
If you see any inaccuracy in any article in The Texas Lawbook, please contact us. Our goal is content that is 100% true and accurate. Thank you.