Hays County Commissioners Court received a presentation regarding a study referencing the impacts of the presence of defendant counsel at magistration, during their regularly scheduled meeting Tuesday.
According to information presented to commissioners, the study—undertaken from July 6, 2020 to July 11, 2021—found that when defense attorneys at on site during the first appearance of defendants, the results included lowered bond amounts, increased number and severity of bond conditions, increased requests for indigency applications but had no impact on bond type, mental health evaluation orders, days in custody, time to final decision, failure to appear and recidivism.
Texas A&M Associate Research Scientist Dr. George Naufal said one of the challenges with the study was that the presence of counsel caused the process to take longer, and some of the successes were that attorneys perceived the defendant to be grateful for their presence– particularly for first time offenders and judges felt attorneys provided them with important information.
