Bluebonnet County

 

Applications for Appointed Counsel

In Bluebonnet County, special magistrate judges took turns presiding over magistration, which took place at the county jail. During magistration, they asked arrested people whether they wanted to apply for appointed counsel and documented their answers on the county’s magistration form. Magistrate judges and court staff provided paper applications to people who wanted them. All people who completed their applications during magistration submitted them to court staff. 

People also could apply for counsel after magistration by going to the Bluebonnet Indigent Defense Coordinator (IDC) office, which was located in the county courthouse. When unrepresented people appeared for arraignment, the county court judge asked them if wanted to apply for appointed counsel. If they did, the judge instructed them to visit the IDC office.

 

Decisions about Appointment of Counsel

Bluebonnet magistration staff were responsible for scanning applications and emailing them to the IDC. The IDC reviewed these applications and appointed counsel for people whose financial circumstances clearly satisfied the county’s eligibility standards. Sometimes, the IDC concluded that a person who did not meet the county’s financial criteria still may need appointed counsel representation. The IDC forwarded those applications to one of the Bluebonnet County Court judges. These judges had power to appoint counsel “in the interests of justice,” notwithstanding a person’s financial circumstances. When unrepresented people appeared for arraignment, presiding county court judges often asked them if wanted to apply for appointed counsel. If they did, judges sent them to the IDC’s office to complete an application.

Data Legend

Column 1: Requested Counsel? The Deason Center reviewed each magistration form and recorded whether the form said that the defendant wanted to apply for appointed counsel. 

Column 2: Application at Magistration? Researchers recorded whether each case file included an application-for-counsel form 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.) 

Column 3: Request Granted? For cases in which there was a day-of-magistration application for appointed counsel, researchers recorded whether officials granted or denied the request. This column does not depict outcomes of applications that post-dated a person’s magistration.

Column 4: Represented at Arraignment? Regardless of when a person applied for appointed counsel, researchers documented whether, on the day of arraignment, court records indicated that the defendant was represented by a lawyer.  Researchers further coded whether that lawyer was court-appointed or retained. (Records did not reliably indicate whether the lawyer attended a person’s arraignment, but only whether a lawyer was “enrolled” on the case.) 

 

About the Bluebonnet Data

Deason Center researchers downloaded and reviewed files for 938 Bluebonnet County misdemeanor cases that closed between April 1, 2023, and June 20, 2023. 

To construct the diagram above, researchers excluded 290 cases in which the Bluebonnet application and decision procedures substantively differed from those described above. (To protect the county’s anonymity, the Deason Center cannot disclose the nature of those differences.) Researchers also excluded 143 of the remaining cases because they were missing magistration records, and a further 42 cases in which the magistration forms lacked critical data needed for analysis, such as the date of magistration. 

The remaining 463 cases depicted in the diagram had magistration proceedings on dates between February 4, 2020, and April 21, 2023.