Pandemonium

I have to admit that when the judges said in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey that they would have the courts up and running by September 11th, I was skeptical.  With the CJC wiped out (yet again) by Mother Nature, confusion reigned.  Prosecutors had no idea where their offices were going to be, nor did the Public Defenders.  Additionally, thirty-eight different courts, a Grand Jury meeting place, Pre-Trial services, and a portion of the District Clerk's Office needed to be relocated as well.  My skepticism at getting everything up and going in under two weeks wasn't an insult towards the Powers That Be -- it was just an honest assessment of the task ahead of them.

Lo and behold, I was wrong and the Courts did actually start back up again by September 11th. 

Sort of.

Although dockets are running, things are far from normal.  Instead of all the courts being held in one central location, dockets are spread across five different buildings.  The sixteen County (misdemeanor) Courts are now at the old Family Law Center.  There are two courts assigned to each available courtroom -- one runs a morning docket starting at 8:30 and the other begins an afternoon docket at 12:30.  

I had my first post-Harvey misdemeanor case scheduled this afternoon, only to find that my client's case had been reset until late October unbeknownst to me.  The coordinator (who is awesome and I am by no means complaining about) said that they had strict numbers that they were allowed to have on each docket and they were doing the best they could.  They were having to reset so many cases that they weren't able to notify everyone involved.  We discussed the difficulty of notifying Defendants out on the unsecured bonds.

Fortunately, the prosecutor assigned to the court was still willing to talk to me about the case (even though it wasn't on the docket) and we worked out a tentative agreement.  It actually ended up being a pretty productive non-setting.

Other than the reset mix-up, the visit to Misdemeanor Land was pretty pleasant, all things considered.  The building wasn't terribly congested and several people utilized the stairs rather than wait on elevators.  The courtrooms weren't crowded, and everybody seemed to be in fairly good spirits.

The felony side of things wasn't quite as cheery.

The twenty-two Felony District Courts are spread across four buildings.  Twenty of the District Courts are housed in the Civil Court Building at 201 Caroline, where they are assigned two courts to a courtroom.  The two remaining District Courts (the 182nd and the 351st) are going to be housed in the Juvenile Justice Center beginning next week.  It seems there is a little bit of a mold issue to be cleaned up before they can begin.

The situation at the Civil Courts building is, um, not ideal.  My friend and fellow defense attorney, Brian Roberts, wrote his observations on it yesterday.  Coincidentally, Brian and I arrived for court this morning at the same time.  Taking the elevator in the county garage to the basement, we ran into a group of people waiting to go inside.  It seems that somebody had pulled the fire alarm and the Constables weren't allowing anyone into the building until everything was clear.

It was just like being back in the CJC!

In front of the Civil Building, several of the Civil Judges were handing out guides to which courtrooms were on certain floors.  It was a nice gesture, not to mention a decent way to get out and meet some future voters!

Inside the Civil Building, there are two sets of elevators.  One runs to the 8th Floor from the Basement and 1st Floor.  The other set runs to the 9th floor and above.  Apparently, the latter set only has two functioning elevators, which has led to a tremendous amount of congestion.

The felony dockets at the Civil Building are only for Defendants who are out on bond, because those courtrooms don't have jail holdovers for inmates.  With each courtroom housing two courts, the rooms are crowded and the hallways are packed with people who couldn't find seating inside.  Tension are high.   Places to sit down and talk with your client are hard to find.  Lengthy resets are being made to alleviate congestion, which can royally tick off some clients.  Yesterday, even two judges reportedly got into a confrontation with each other over the limited space available.

The vast majority of cases are just being reset down the road to hopefully calmer times.

If things at the Civil Building weren't bad enough for Defendants on bond, the situation for incarcerated Defendants is much worse.  Inmates in the Harris County Jail are having their court appearances in jail facilities -- one for female prisoners and a separate one for males.   The dockets are overcrowded. The chance of having a private conversation between attorney and client is non-existent.

Under normal circumstances, a Criminal District Court has somewhere around twenty to thirty inmates per docket, five days a week.  Now, due to the overcrowding, each of the 22 District Courts has been allotted one day of the week to hold a "jail docket."  Attorneys are being strongly encouraged to meet with their clients outside of court proceedings and to move the cases off the docket unless the case is likely to be resolved in court.  Given the overcrowding situation, that's a more than reasonable request.  Bringing a Defendant to court just to have him or her sign a reset and leave isn't going to help anything.

Today, the City of Houston shut off water to the jail, which, in return, caused the jail to cancel morning dockets for two of the courts.  I suppose they will just have to wait until next week.

So, at the moment, life at the Harris County Criminal Justice Center is pandemonium.  We've all been cast into multiple other buildings in the surrounding area and there is confusion and chaos across the board.  Prosecutors are commuting in from all over the county.  Defense attorneys are running from building to building, waiting on elevator after elevator, trying to make sure all of their clients are taken care of.

Despite all of this, the general attitude of regulars at the courthouse seems to be frustrated bemusement.  I think everyone involved has some level of understanding of the problems we are all facing.  Judge, Prosecutor, Defense Attorney, Coordinator or otherwise, people are doing their best to be patient with each other.   As we see people that we haven't seen since before Harvey made landfall, our first question to each other is to ask how one another fared in the flood.

All in all, I would describe the State of the Harris County Criminal Justice System like an emergency room.  Everyone is working to triage the cases.  Defendants out on bond are important, but they currently have their freedom.  Those in custody are taking the highest priority at the moment.  As Mark Bennett pointed out in this post, not even a natural disaster gets to infringe upon the Rights of the Accused.

That's the view as of Day Two.  Right now, things are disorganized, aggravating and sloppy.

But the Justice System is up and running.  It will get better in the days and weeks to come.

Justice Displaced

As most of the regulars strongly suspected, we are getting word that the Harris County Criminal Justice Building may be shut down for up to a year due to damage sustained from Hurricane Harvey.  As I wrote in my last post, this was almost exactly what happened in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Allison in 2001.

As this is being written, prosecutors are packing up their personal effects from their offices, as we did during Allison.  This will likely be followed with trustees from the Harris County Jail and D.A. personnel boxing up and moving the files, computers, and other government property from the Office.  The same will have to be done for the PD's Office, the Courts and the Clerk's offices.  In 2001, I found myself loading and unloading boxes out of big panel vans, side by side with inmates.  In all actuality, it was kind of fun.

But things are much different than sixteen years ago. In May of 2001, the D.A.'s Office moved back to 201 Fannin (where we had all moved from in November of 1999).   I'm not sure what the status of that building is, so I don't know if it is a possible temporary shelter for the displaced prosecutors or not.  It is my understanding that the District Attorney's Office is currently operating out of the Harris County Law Library on the upper floors of the old jury assembly building.

In 2001, the Courts all relocated back to 301 San Jacinto.  All things considered, it was a fairly smooth move.  Some courts were doubled up into the same room, but it wasn't bad.  The atmosphere was relaxed and there was a camaraderie between prosecutors, judges, defense attorneys, and sometimes, even the Defendants.

But now, 301 San Jacinto holds the Juvenile Justice Center -- the heavily damaged Juvenile Justice Center.  As of this writing, it doesn't look like that particular structure provides a feasible solution for housing 22 District Courts and 16 County Courts.  There have been rumblings of potentially having some trials in the nice and shiny Civil Courts building, but that is said to be meeting heavy resistance from the Civil Court Judges.  If true, I can't say that I blame them.

Holding criminal dockets (and trials) in buildings not designed for criminal cases causes problems with security.  There are no jail holdovers for in-custody Defendants, which creates issues of how to keep everyone safe and secure.  Problems abound.  Despite that, there is an urgent need to get the Courts back to some semblance of normal as soon as possible -- especially for cases where there are people incarcerated and awaiting trial.  Many have already been in custody for months (if not over a year), awaiting their trials.  Last Monday (during the storm), I had originally been scheduled for trial on a case from April of 2016.  That case (and many more like it) isn't getting any younger.

As of this writing, we have been told that dockets are tentatively scheduled to resume on Monday, September 11th.  I'll believe that when I see it.

As I see it, there are two potential positives that can come out of the days to come.

The first is an opportunity to make some meaningful improvements to the structure of the CJC.  We bypassed this opportunity in the aftermath of Allison, and I hope we don't do so again.  There are things that can be done that are short of a full-blown do-over.  Courts can be moved to lower floors.  Accessible stairwells can be made between floors.  I don't know that anything could have been done to stop the damage to the CJC done by Hurricane Harvey, but I do think things can be done to help the day-to-day disasters that we deal with in that building under even the best of circumstances.

The second positive is the bonding experience that we are all about to have (whether we like it or not).  Things are about to get more casual, and thus more real around whatever place ends up holding our courts.  That's a good thing.  I can promise that every prosecutor, judge, defense attorney, clerk, coordinator, court reporter, and bailiff who was around during Allison can tell a host of stories of the year during "flood conditions."  They weren't always pleasant experiences, but they created the memories that each of us will have when we finally wrap up our careers.

Now those stories that began with "During Allison . . ." are going to start with "During Harvey . . ."  The days, weeks, and months ahead are not going to always be pleasant.  We'll get through them, because (as my Dad always told me) "you've just got to."

When it is all said and done (and you're back in your regular office and court), you'll be proud to be a survivor of the experience.

Shades of Disasters Past

If you are reading this, I'm hoping that means that you rode out Hurricane Harvey okay.  I've lived in Houston since 1996 and I'm speechless at the sadness, devastation, heroism, and sense of community that I've seen unfolding over the past several days.  This city and county never cease to amaze me.

My family and I made it through (thus far) with no flooding and minimal damage.  I hope the same is true for you and your families.  My heart and prayers go out to those who have lost so much.

Having gone through both Tropical Storm Allison and Hurricane Ike during my years as a prosecutor, I've been seeing very similar reports coming out of the CJC over the past several days.  As many of you may remember, during Allison, the brand new CJC proved to be absolutely useless during a flood.  Water filled the basement and elevator shafts, rendering the building unusable for almost a year.   Some modifications were made, and the building did substantially better during Ike.  There was an issue of sewage backup that shut it down for a week or so, but nothing like during Allison.  Flood gates had been installed, and they did their job.

But neither Allison nor Ike brought the water that Hurricane Harvey has.

Chief prosecutors Pat Stayton and Hans "Seersucker" Nielsen have been two of the staff manning Intake for the Harris County District Attorney's Office since Friday morning and both have been posting updates about the condition of the building.  They've been there for going on well past 72 hours, as of this writing.  They've given me permission to use their photos in this post.

The front doors of the CJC.

According to reports from the CJC, the floodgates at the doorways worked at first, but then the sewage started coming up from toilets, just like they did during Ike.  Once that happened, the building had to be evacuated across the street to the Juvenile Justice Center.  They did this by creating a rope line that everyone had to use to guide them and hold onto.

Intake staff evacuating the building.

Back during Allison, the Juvenile Justice Center was the (more or less abandoned) old Criminal Courthouse.  During the yearlong displacement, the Courts moved back there, while the D.A.'s Office moved into its old building at 201 Fannin.  Things have changed since then.  Now, the building is completely occupied by the Juvenile Justice System and courts.  There is no room to move over 22 District Courts and 16 County Courts.  

To make matters worse, the roof apparently just collapsed at the Juvenile Justice Building, flooding courtrooms and making them unusable.

A Juvenile Justice Courtroom

District Clerk Chris Daniel has announced that there will be no jury panels or court settings this week, which is a good thing.  As it currently stands, there does not appear to be any courtrooms to hold court in.  

The cleanup at both buildings will most likely take months.  I've heard that power is still on at the CJC and that may be the only positive news I've heard.  If the electricity is still running, perhaps that will make cleanup faster. But I've also heard that the elevator shafts are filled with water on the lower floors, and there is no telling what the tunnel system and jury assembly looks like.  

I have a strong feeling that it is going to take quite some time to get the Criminal Justice System back to normal in Harris County.   New court dates will have to be figured out for clients on bond.  If you are a person currently out on bond, call your lawyer for information about when you need to come to court again.  For the time being, everything is up in the air.

Stay safe, everyone.

August 16, 1999

L-R:  John Jordan, Peter DeLeef, Adam Brown, Earl Musick, Brad Hart, 

Bill Exley, Robert Summerlin, & Me

It's hard to fathom that 18 years ago today I first entered the Harris County Criminal Justice arena.  I remember it like it was yesterday.

I was 26 years old.  Engaged to a girl named Lisa who, two months later, would become the first in a series of wives.

Although I had attended law school in Houston, I had moved back to Bryan/College Station after taking the February Bar Exam because I didn't have a job lined up.  I worked as a paid intern (for $6 an hour!) at the Brazos CountyAttorney's Office while I waited on the Bar results.  When I passed, I got invited to apply with Harris County, and I moved back to Houston the week before I started.

Chance Bolton, a childhood friend of mine, had recently gotten out of the Navy and was going to school in Houston.  He and Lisa and I moved into an old house I was renting in Timbergrove.  None of us had any money.  At the time, I was the only one who had a job lined up.

I was incredibly nervous getting ready for work that first morning.  I didn't really know anyone that worked there. I don't think I even knew where I was supposed to park.  The D.A.'s Office was still in the old building at 201 Fannin.  As I headed out the front door of the house towards my car, I heard the door open behind me.  It was Chance.

"Hey Newman," he said, strolling out into the front yard.  He extended his hand.  "I just wanted to wish you good luck on your first day as a prosecutor."

It was both an awkward and sweet moment between good friends.  Mainly it was awkward because he was only wearing his boxer shorts.  I thanked him and then implored him to go back inside before any neighbors got the wrong idea about our relationship.

I got to the D.A.'s Office and met with Renee Magee, who was the Deputy Dawg of Misdemeanor at the time.  I had done an academic internship with her after my second year of law school in Judge McSpadden's court and she had put me in touch with the Office once I passed the Bar.  Although I was starting out working in the Justice of the Peace Division, Renee took me over to see how the county courts worked.

I remember an attorney coming up to me in court and asking me, "Are you the attorney of the day?" Not familiar with the local terminology, I thought he was making some sort of crack about the longevity of young prosecutors.  I gave him a dirty look and he walked away, confused.

That afternoon, I had my first exciting JP docket in front of Judge David Patronella.  I got lost getting there, and when I first arrived, Adam Brown was already talking to people on the docket.  I introduced myself to him and then I sat down.  I looked at the huge bucket of speeding tickets and other traffic violations and I realized I had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do.

"Um, hey," I said to Adam.  "What am I supposed to be doing?"

"You'll have to figure it out," he said.  "That's why they pay you the big bucks."

I thought Adam was maybe the biggest asshole I'd ever met in my life.  Luckily, the clerks helped me, because I had no clue.  I was miserable.

It was a terrible first day.  I remember going home, consoling myself with the plan that I was going to honor my 3-year commitment to the Office and then go back home to Brazos County and hopefully run for District Attorney there someday.

My, how plans change.

Over the next few days, I'd meet the other guys in JP.  I met Bill Exley, who sternly warned me to never jaywalk, because Mr. Holmes would fire you if he ever caught you doing that.  I met Robert Summerlin, who would become my practical joking arch-nemesis for years to come.  Peter Deleef was the congenial and very odd guy from South Africa.  John Jordan, who bore a striking resemblance to NASCAR racer Jeff Gordon, yet was the slowest driver I had ever seen in my life.  Earl Musick, the retired HPD cop, who entertained us with stories of the old days.  And my first chief, now-Judge Brad Hart.

Over the next months, the seven of us and our chief became an extremely tight-knit group (even Adam).  Earl came up with the nickname of The Magnificent Seven, which ultimately got shortened to The Seven.  We all thought we were awesome.  I'm pretty sure the rest of the Office thought we were arrogant jackasses.  I feel that way because a lot of other prosecutors told us we were a bunch of arrogant jackasses.

But man, we loved being prosecutors.

L-R:  Me, Adam, Bill, Peter, John & Brad at one of my 

many bachelor parties.

It's funny how quickly time goes by.  It doesn't seem like it was 18 years ago when I first started, but so much has changed. I never talk to my friend Chance anymore. I got divorced from that first wife.  Remarried.  Had a kid.  Divorced again.  Remarried again. (Hopefully, I'm holding steady on that front.) Had another kid. (Hopefully holding steady on that front, too.)

Eventually, the majority of "the Seven" left the D.A.'s Office.  The only one of us still working there is John.  Brad is Judge Hart now, and the rest of us all went on to private practice.  I saw Exley yesterday in court, and I told him he looks a year older every time I see him -- although I knew I wasn't really one to talk about aging poorly.

Every once in awhile I'll get asked if I would ever go back to prosecuting.  I say I don't really miss the job itself, but I miss the camaraderie.  I'm always glad when I see younger prosecutors hanging out with each other these days because it reminds me that no matter how many times the regime changes, that camaraderie is still there.  

There have been a lot of ups and downs over the last 18 years, but, man, I wouldn't have missed it for the world.  Those early years were some of the best.

Hell, I even enjoyed hanging out with that asshole Adam Brown.

Me and Adam in New Orleans - October 2002