The unusual spate of capital murder cases in McLennan County in the past few weeks has a judge and his staff scrambling to find enough qualified lawyers to represent all the defendants.

Through the luck of the draw or, more specifically, because of state identification numbers given to jail inmates, five capital murder defendants arrested in March and April were assigned to 54th State District Court and Judge Matt Johnson.

Those cases combine with four older cases to give Johnson an unusually high number of pending capital murder cases.

Felony defendants typically are split evenly between Johnson’s court and Judge Ralph Strother’s 19th State District Court.

But nine capital murder cases are pending in 54th Court, while two are pending in Strother’s court.

“Nine capital murder defendants on the docket at one time are unprecedented in the history of this court,” Johnson said. “It undoubtedly will have a significant impact on the docket and will affect the prosecutors, the defense attorneys and other courthouse personnel.”

As the cases have piled up, Johnson’s staff has labored to comply with the Indigent Defense Act to timely appoint attorneys on the Third Judicial District court-appointment list who are qualified to handle death penalty cases.

The district stretches through the Central Texas area from Hillsboro to Houston.

With so many cases pending, court administrators have had to look for lawyers in Bell, Coryell, Williamson and Travis counties.

Public defenders

Indigent capital murder defendants are appointed two lawyers under the Indigent Defense Act, and they remain on the case until the district attorney’s office determines if it will seek the death penalty.

If prosecutors waive the death penalty, the defendant, who then faces an automatic sentence of life in prison without parole if convicted, is entitled to only one court- appointed lawyer.

The decision to seek the death penalty is not arrived at without considering a host of variables, including the nature of the killing and the defendant’s criminal history, McLennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna said.

While money is not necessarily one of those factors, the sooner a decision is made, the less the case continues to be a drain on county coffers.

Obviously, it costs more to pay two lawyers in the early stages of a case than one.

Lawyers appointed to capital murder cases are paid $50 to $100 a hour for out-of-court preparation time and $150 a hour while they are in court. When lawyers have to drive from outside Waco, they are paid $50 an hour travel time plus mileage.

Potential jurors are questioned individually during jury selection in death penalty cases, a process that can take up to three weeks. Testimony typically takes from two to three weeks in death penalty cases.

Waco defense attorney Russ Hunt Sr. has represented defendants in about a dozen death penalty cases and in about 10 capital murder cases in which the death penalty was waived.

His son, Russ Hunt Jr., whose office is in Williamson County, is also on the Third Judicial District list of lead trial counsels approved to handle death penalty cases.

“Death penalty cases really can affect your practice,” Hunt Sr. said. “It’s hard to take on any new business during that time, and it means instead of me working my usual 10-hour day, I will have to work a 14-hour day and meet with people on weekends instead of during the week. But the courts want people who are eminently qualified to represent these people, and they try hard to find lawyers who are. We don’t want people to be accused of being a sleeping lawyer.”

While Reyna was reluctant to acknowledge that prosecutors often use the death penalty as leverage in potential plea agreements, he said prosecutors can’t be too eager to waive the death penalty until all avenues of the case are explored.

“I hate that it stresses the court and its staff, but at the same time, if people choose to commit heinous crimes, then I am pushing forward as aggressively as justice requires,” Reyna said. “It is a very unusual situation with a lot of those cases ending up in one court.”

Strother said Tuesday he was not aware of the discrepancy in the number of capital murder cases between his court and Johnson’s.

But he said he would be willing to discuss changes that might rectify the situation, such as transferring some cases to his court, or possibly alternating incoming capital murder cases between the two courts in the future.

twitherspoon@wacotrib.com

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