1st remote hearing for person held in a Texas prison held in Dallas Thursday
DALLAS - The Texas Department of Criminal Justice is rolling out a new way to hold hearings on undisposed cases for people already in prison, and the first virtual hearing in the state was held in Dallas Thursday.
This is a move that will save counties money.
What happened in the 283rd District Court will soon happen across the state. Rather than bring inmates back from prison to hearings, the hearings are virtually going to the inmates.
"So much time and money is spent with the sheriff's departments across the state that are having to go get inmates, bring them back, and it may be for a ten-minute hearing," Judge Lela Lawrence Mays said.
Former judge Molly Francis is on the board of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
"Texas Department of Criminal Justice is committed to cut down on the number of inmate transfers," she said.
Last year, there were 5,000 inmate transfers for hearings statewide, with 250 of those in Dallas County.
The virtual hearings would eliminate or reduce the trips to pick up an inmate, bring them back, and house them, then return them to their prison unit.
"There are 100 units in Texas that these individuals are incarcerated in, and the counties have to foot the bill," Francis explained.
There were technical ties up at times Thursday that delayed proceedings, but defense lawyer Tony Martin said he likes it.
"I was able to talk to him privately, and we were able to do the plea without him having to come back," he said.
"We're going to work on getting some of the kinks out of it, and once we do that, we can get - even for the documents fingerprints and all those things - once we get those established, we can spread this out to the rest of the state," Judge Mays said.
While this is starting in the criminal district courts, the hope is it will soon expand to include civil and family courts, or any court where an inmate needs to come back from a prison to a local county for a hearing, or even perhaps as a witness in another trial.