CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Nueces County leaders are making steady progress in clearing cases with the auxiliary court, which was created as a way to clear the backlog of criminal cases slowed down by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Spearheaded by presiding judge and 347th District Court Judge Missy Medary, auxiliary court opened 19 months ago and is currently run by former 117th District Court Judge Sandra Watts in 2022.
In a prior report from 3NEWS, when Watts and auxiliary court were able to take 197 cases off the dockets of other courts. As of April, Medary said that 1,193 cases have been cleared.
"Each of the district courts, each of us send six cases at a time down to auxiliary court," she said. "So they have six cases pending from each one of the district courts at all times."
Medary said that, while having the auxiliary court is an invaluable resource, it does come with certain limitations that can make clearing cases difficult.
"There's a finite amount of cases that I can try -- I'm only one person; I only have one court reporter," she said. "So if I'm in a two-week case, my cases still sit there. You've got to think of it this way: It's almost like running a relay race. I'm handing a baton to one of the other judges that can take my cases, and take all of the other judges' cases and try to get done with them so we can hit the backlog at every single level."
Medary said when it comes to analyzing numbers, the Nueces County Jail population is a direct reflection of the court's effectiveness.
"The fact that we went from 105 percent capacity at the jail to 74 percent capacity -- I mean, that tells you there are a lot of individuals that are on bond, but there are also individuals that there cases have been handled, and or dismissed, or they're taking a prison sentence," she said.
Nueces County Sheriff J.C. Hooper said in a previous report that for "most of 2022, we were at 95 and above, as high as 105."
Staffing at the Nueces County Courthouse
Nueces County District Attorney James "Jimmy" Granberry said that shortages in the courthouse are nothing new for his department.
"We are down, well -- a full complement now is about 38 prosecutors, and I think we're down about eight or nine prosecutors, and that's at the very lower level," he said.
Granberry said that staffing issues can impact systems such as auxiliary court. He said that, in order to get the job done, he often has to shuffle employees around to fill in the gaps.
"The way we have been trying to run auxiliary court is by grabbing lawyers who don't have anything in court right now and plugging them in upstairs in auxiliary court," he said.
The starting pay for a level-one misdemeanor prosecutor in Nueces County is approximately $64,540. Granberry said that one of the key factors that makes keeping employees in Nueces County difficult is the competitive pay being offered by neighboring counties.
A misdemeanor prosecutor in San Antonio makes $6,661.00 monthly, which is approximately $79,000 annually, according to a job posting from the Texas District & County Attorneys Association.
Granberry said that a strategy his department is utilizing to keep things running smoothly is bringing back experienced prosecutors who are already familiar with the market.
"I think right now we are probably as highly staffed as we have been," he said. "We have had a lot of people come back to work here. We had some lawyers that were retired and bored come back and wanted to work here. That's been a blessing, because they're wise, they've been doing it for years."
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