Luggage By Kroger: A True Crime Memoir by Gary Taylor Page A

minimal amount of actual trial time, but each
one lasted for weeks because jury selection took so long. The
attorneys interrogated potential jurors individually at great
length to determine if they actually would have the courage to send
anyone to Death Row.

    Another important issue concerned
the county's system for providing defense lawyers to impoverished
defendants, a category that covered about 90 percent of the
courthouse accused. While many jurisdictions created public
defender bureaucracies to handle that role, Harris County had its
own unique and controversial system of appointment by judges from
the ranks of the county's criminal defense bar. Often I saw judges
simply shout in a crowded courtroom for an attorney to step forward
and take a case. Another judge occasionally collected business
cards from all lawyers hanging around the courtroom, shuffled them,
and then dealt from the top of the deck to his clerk, matching an
attorney with a defendant as each case was called.

    And there always were plenty of
lawyers hungry for the assignments that generated fees based on a
schedule established by the county: $250 for an appearance in
court, five hundred dollars per day for trials, and so on. Although
they belittled the fees and compared them derisively with grander
sums they bragged they could have been making on car wrecks or
divorces, they always lined up there like dock workers at the union
hall waiting for a job. Many built a substantial portion of their
practices on the foundation of daily appointments. Often they could
grab an assignment, negotiate a plea, and collect $250 before noon,
leaving the rest of the day free for those car wrecks anyhow. While
the drama of trials captures our imagination, the overwhelming
majority of criminal cases are resolved without them, often quickly
with a deal. If this plea-bargaining system did not exist, the
courts would grind to a smashing halt on the burden of the
caseload. To begin each auction, prosecutors review the quality of
evidence brought by police against an accused and weigh that
against his likely defense and other mitigating factors like his
looks or lack of a criminal background. Charged with burglary, a
defendant might be facing a maximum sentence of ten years in
prison. But the case can be disposed that morning if he agrees to
plead guilty to trespassing and takes a year in jail. Often that's
exactly what happens.

    I wrote some memorable stories on
this appointment system by annually scrutinizing the total bills
paid out by the county for the past year and identifying the
lawyers milking it dry. Their services definitely were needed, but,
my stories in April 1978 and June of 1979, showed that some of them
were earning more as appointed defense attorneys than the judges
and other high ranking county officials actually on the public
payroll. The highest earners rarely handled cases that went to
trial. Moreover, my stories exposed a system in which many judges
routinely assigned cases to the same small club of private
attorneys working only in their courts, creating a de-facto public
defender system at their personal disposal. Some judges explained
their motives by touting the diligence of the lawyers working
exclusively for them and bragging about the painstaking research on
background checks before completing the rosters. Fair enough, I
said, and included that defense in my stories. But I also knew that
the most effective defense lawyers likely won that reputation by
moving cases through the courts as quickly as possible, leaving the
system open to charges it served the interest of the judges rather
than indigent defendants. I also imagined that most of their
painstaking background research likely had occurred in saloons
rather than libraries. Since I watched the system work on a daily
basis, I was confident that most of the time it accomplished its
goal of providing justice for indigents and the public, too, at a
reasonable taxpayer cost.

    But anyone could