Longhorn County

About this Data

In 2022 and 2023, researchers at the Deason Center collected data from thousands of misdemeanor cases across four counties in Texas. These data allowed the research team to illustrate changes in the proportion of defendants represented by different types of counsel at different points in misdemeanor cases.

Green areas generally represent the subset of cases where defendants were either represented by counsel or were seeking an appointed lawyer. Red areas represent cases where the defendant was unrepresented. 

Moving from left to right, the diagrams trace the period between magistration and arraignment. The proportion of defendants in red and green areas changes depending on whether they request or apply for counsel, the outcome of any of those requests or applications, and whether they retain counsel privately.

County Findings

Defendants in Longhorn County were magistrated at the county jail by one of the county’s Justices of the Peace (JPs). The JP would ask whether the defendant wanted to request counsel and would record the defendant’s answer on magistration paperwork. JPs then gave paper applications to defendants who wished to apply for an attorney. Because the JP did not have appointing authority in Longhorn County, any completed applications had to be collected by the JP and sent to a county court judge for a final decision. Disruption by the pandemic meant that magistrations after March 2020 were conducted over video, with the defendant in the jail and the JP appearing from a remote location. The JP would mark down the defendant’s responses, but had to rely on jail staff to provide blank applications to defendants and to retrieve completed applications. Completed application forms were taken to the JP’s office by jail staff before being forwarded to the County Court judge.

Data Legend

1: Counsel requested. Cases were coded ‘yes’ if documents indicated the defendant expressed a desire to apply for a lawyer. Cases were coded ‘no’ if documents indicated the defendant did not wish to apply for a lawyer. 

2: Application present. Cases were coded ‘yes’ if researchers found an application in the file, and the date of the magistration matched the date on the application. They were coded ‘no’ either if no application was found, or if an application with a later date was found.

3: Application decision. Cases were coded as ‘approved’ if a signed order of appointment appeared in the case file indicating the person was approved for appointed counsel following their application for counsel at magistration. Cases were coded as ‘no decision’ when no signed order accompanied the application. Among the cases shown in the diagram, researchers found no applications with a signed order denying the application.

4: Arraignment counsel status. The identity of a defendant’s attorney at arraignment was inferred from documents from that arraignment. Cases were coded as ‘court-appointed’ if the attorney’s name matched that on an approved application from a date on or before the arraignment. Cases were coded as ‘Retained’ if the attorney’s name matched that on a ‘letter of representation’ dated on or before the date of the arraignment. Some other cases were coded as ‘Retained’ when researchers found other documents (such as a notice of hearing or motion) that incidentally indicated an attorney was retained on the case. Where no indication of an attorney’s presence at arraignment was found in arraignment documents, cases were coded as ‘unrepresented’.

Where the data came from

Center researchers collected files from 483 cases in the County Court Clerk’s office. The cases were disposed between January 1, 2016, and October 18, 2022.

County Clerk records did not consistently include magistration records. Center researchers also searched for and obtained magistration records in two other places. One was the files of the Justice of the Peace who magistrated the large majority of cases in the county. The other was the case files held in the County Attorney’s office. 

173 cases are shown in the diagram. The date of the earliest magistration record was January 8, 2018. Cases were excluded from the diagram as follows:

  • In 305 cases no magistration record was found. Notably, researchers found a record of arrest dating after January 8, 2018 in 123 of these cases. This suggests magistrations should have occurred in those cases, although the research team found no record of them.
  • Five cases were removed because they were they were magistrated under a substantially different process for defendant applications than described above.