Photo: Moment RF
Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare recently held a press conference announcing what could be a defining victory for his career: finally defeating the massive Harris County criminal case backlog.
During the conference, he touted the fact that the total number of pending cases in Harris County is now below pre-pandemic levels. But many Houstonians are still wondering if the problem has really been solved for good.
Gary Polland, a Houston attorney and publisher of the Texas Conservative Review, says we aren’t quite out of the woods yet. “We had a backlog related to hurricanes and COVID, and they’ve made progress,” he explained. “But have they eliminated the backlog? No. You can only try one case at a time in a court.”
He says one of the biggest factors in the continuation of the backlog has been staffing at the DA’s office. According to Polland: “There’s a number of courts that only have two lawyers when typically they have three. What happens when you’re overloaded as a prosecutor is you don’t have time to think about a case.”
Polland went on to call for the DA’s office to request—and be given—more funding to hire more lawyers from the county commissioners so this backlog can truly be eliminated.
KTRH reached out to the District Attorney's office for comment, but they did not respond.