We have a couple of cases which have been pending on a Court's docket for over a year (at least). Our office has filed several setting requests, and has received no response from the Court.

I've been told that there is caselaw that basically forbids the Court from refusing to set a case. Anyone familiar with this caselaw? We haven't been able to find anything on point yet.

A writ of mandamus is available to order a trial court "to set certain criminal cases for trial and to seasonably proceed to trial thereof." Anderson, 26 S.W.2d 174. There is a burden on the court "to insure that defendants are speedily brought to trial". Chapman v. Evans, 744 S.W.2d at 136. Further, a failure to so control one's docket to avoid unnecessary delay in the disposition of cases seems to me to be "incompetence in performing the duties of the office" under art. 5 sec. 1-a of the Constitution. I am sure, however, you would have to show the court truly is abusing its discretion in controlling its own docket. E.g., Bates, 65 S.W.3d at 135.

Canon 3 B (9) "A judge should dispose of all judicial matters promptly, efficiently and fairly"

The Commission on Judicial Conduct can be reached at 512 463-5533.

A Rule of Law requires even judges to follow the law. Harsh I know, but sometimes the duty to see that justice is done can be damn heavy. Best of luck.

Clay, et al: The new legislation concerning visiting judges totally frustrates our judge's ability to comply with Canon 3 B (9) ("A judge should dispose of all judicial matters promptly, efficiently and fairly").

We have only the ONE judge for five counties in a district that quite large geographically (it is over 140 miles between the eastern-most and western-most counties). We relied heavily upon visiting judges to keep our dockets moving and to allow us to have a jury trial in one county even though pretrials might be scheduled in another.

For example: pretrials (civil AND criminal) had to be canceled for three of our counties this month because a civil jury trial is in progress. That trial is scheduled to last 2-3 weeks and has experienced some delays. It is likely the delays will cause the cancellation of pretrials in the fourth county.

I had to postpone a sexual assault trial because the judge is tied up and our 15 days for a visiting judge will be utilized in another county at the end of this month.

Is anyone else being affected this severely? If so, what are you doing to minimize the effects?

Clay, et al: The new legislation concerning visiting judges totally frustrates our judge's ability to comply with Canon 3 B (9) ("A judge should dispose of all judicial matters promptly, efficiently and fairly").

We have only ONE judge for five counties in a district that is quite large geographically (it is over 140 miles between the eastern-most and western-most counties). We relied heavily upon visiting judges to keep our dockets moving and to allow us to have a jury trial in one county even though pretrials might be scheduled in another.

We are already experiencing problems: Pretrials (civil AND criminal) had to be canceled for three of our counties this month because a civil jury trial is in progress. That trial is scheduled to last 2-3 weeks and has experienced some delays. It is likely the delays will cause the cancellation of pretrials in the fourth county.

I had to postpone a sexual assault trial because the judge is tied up and our 15 days for a visiting judge will be utilized in another county at the end of this month.

Is anyone else being affected this severely? If so, what are you doing to minimize the effects?

We are soon to be suffering from similar problems. We have two Judges covering four counties. We have several Capital Murder Trials to try in the next six months and wonder if a visiting Judge will be available to pick up the slack. In addition, the District includes a majority of the TDCJ units in Texas. These generate significant criminal and civil litigation beyond what one would expect for a similar "freeworld" population. In the past, these dockets were handled almost exclusively by visiting judges. The loss of visiting judges will certainly cause chaos here. I do not, however mourn their loss. I hope the ensuing problems will cause the legislature to wake up (in the next couple of sessions) and quit treating the creation of new benches as political plumbs to be doled out to those with the most clout. They must create new courts in sufficient quantity to do justice in an efficient manner and still remain within the framework of our constitution with accountability to the voters (if we insist on continuing to vote for judges in this State). The last I saw, the judicial branch of our government received less than 1% of the State budget. That seems somewhat ludicrous to me.

Hey, I am curious as to why,if you know, the Judge is not setting these cases? Is it just some particular cases? There may be a way to get them set without having to resort to mandamus or Judicial Canons etc., but it depends on why. And since I know that you do not have a lot of choice of Judges in your county to hear things, it might not do to pull out the big guns yet.

Our Judges are going to do alot of switching with Judges in other counties. We have a trial set later this month and we will have a Judge from another county because they have a conflict on a civil setting over there and need our Judge to sit. We have two Judges and four counties and we are going to really miss visiting judges - we had a recently retired Judge to fill in whenever needed before, but now we are just praying that we do not get any Capital cases etc. to totally clog up the works.

I hate to think we have to go at least two more years before this problem can be revisited.

The types of cases are DWI and domestic violence cases. Our judge wants us to do pretrial diversions on DWI and I have refused. So on certain DWI cases where some guy may lose his job, etc. the case disappears into an abyss. The domestic violence cases are those where the victim has filed a non pros affidavit and the judge does not think we should continue the prosecution. It is probably a handful of cases that we cannot get set but eveyone should be treated the same. The guy with the dwi and a good job and the guy with the dwi and no job. He is the only judge for misdemeanors and a constitutional county judge at that (not an attorney). Causes lots of problems.

Sounds like a grievance against the judge. When I was a prosecutor in Houston, I was in a court that had a judge that didn't believe in the Intoxilyzer. Wouldn't consider the evidence. Would watch the video informally and just tell the defense attorney his opinion. Also would take a vote of anyone standing around at the time.

I filed a motion to recuse the judge, alleging that he had already formed an opinion before hearing the evidence. Big fight. Lots of publicity.

The judge didn't get recused, but he magically took a vacation when those cases came up for trial. We followed up by filing a grievance. Nothing ever happened. But, I felt better, and the judge is no longer on the bench.

His name is Billy Ragan. If you see him, ask him how the horses are running.

Sometimes you just have to fight the judge publicly. Choose your fights carefully.