Indigent defense is broken in Texas-and throughout the United States-and it has been broken for decades. Excessive caseloads and conflicts of interest are two of the most significant problems behind the notoriously poor quality of indigent defense services. Texas can address these problems through at least five changes to the state criminal justice system: reclassifying several offenses so that they do not trigger the right to counsel, increasing diversion to problem-solving courts, expanding the use of victim-offender conferencing, encouraging “open file” discovery systems, and providing vouchers to indigents for the selection of counsel.”
Testimony in Support of SB 36, with Ammon Blair in House Committee on Homeland Security, Public Safety & Veterans’ Affairs
Chairman Hefner, Vice Chairman Lopez and honorable members of the committee, My name is Ammon Blair, I am a Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and I am testifying in support of Senate Bill 36. My background includes being a former U.S. Border Patrol Agent who served in the Rio Grande Valley Sector....