Eight years after the Legislature passed the Texas Fair Defense Act, some lawyers still are not happy with how judges carry out the law, which requires judges quickly to appoint qualified attorneys to represent indigent defendants.
Lawyers get frustrated when judges exclude them from a county’s rotating appointment system, and some even sue the county and the jurists. But on April 8, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that a lawyer couldn’t sue Tarrant County and the criminal district court judges hearing felony cases there because the judges denied his application to be put on a list to receive court-appointed cases.
