AUTHOR'S / SPONSOR'S STATEMENT OF INTENT
Currently, many justice courts have unequal workloads. The busiest of these courts have such a backlog of their dockets that it can take many weeks for a case to come to trial.
This bill helps equalize justice courts' dockets by allowing some of their cases to be tried in an adjacent county. This will help to relieve the workload of the overburdened courts, while providing citizens with a speedier resolution of their cases.
Harris County presents a good example of this problem. The eight justice of the peace court precincts in Harris County have very different workloads. Precinct Five handles over 150,000 cases. Precinct Six, on the other hand, handles fewer than 15,000. This means that the busiest precinct handles 10 times more cases than the least busy. The busiest two precincts handle more cases than all of the other six precincts combined. The only way to ensure that every citizen is receiving their day in court within a reasonable time frame is to allow these disparate workloads to be reallocated to adjacent precincts when necessary.
C.S.S.B. 1200 amends current law relating to the venue for prosecution of misdemeanor cases in justice of the peace courts located in certain counties.
RULEMAKING AUTHORITY
SECTION BY SECTION ANALYSIS
SECTION 1. Amends Article 4.12(a), Code of Criminal Procedure, as follows:
(a) Requires that a misdemeanor case to be tried in justice court, except as otherwise provided by this article, be tried, in certain locations, including if the offense was committed in a county with a population of 3.3 million or more, in any precinct in the county that is adjacent to the precinct in which the offense was committed. Makes nonsubstantive changes.
SECTION 2. Makes application of Article 4.12(a), Code of Criminal Procedure, as amended by this Act, prospective.
SECTION 3. Effective date: September 1, 2011.