Spinning the wheel: Indigent defense in Tarrant County

What public defender offices do

Across most large Texas counties, public defender offices (PDOs) are the backbone of indigent defense. These offices employ full-time, salaried attorneys whose sole job is to represent clients who cannot afford a lawyer.

“If you wanted to hire attorneys at the actual rate to do a good job, it would cost a fortune,” Joel Lieurance, senior policy analyst at TIDC, said.

At the low rates counties pay, you can get private attorneys who will do this work, “but they usually won't put in much time,” Lieurance said. “So that's why you have public defender offices.”

Under Article 26.044 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, a PDO is a governmental or nonprofit entity that uses public funded representation for indigent defendants.

It centralizes responsibility, like a prosecutor’s office but for the defense.

“In Texas, historically … if you wanted an investigator on the case, a private attorney would have to go to the judge and ask for it.” Lieurance said. “In a public defender office, they would have an office investigator.”

PDOs are also structured to serve high need clients.

The PDO assigns the attorney; individual judges do not. Indigent defendants don’t get to choose their public defender, but neither do the judges who will later rule on their cases.

For former Bexar County district attorney and criminal defense attorney Nico LaHood, this independence is essential for the health of the justice system as a whole:

“You're always defending your client,” he said, “but many times you're defending the system against the government that can go awry or off the rails.”

How similar counties operate

Tarrant County’s structure stands out when compared with Dallas and Bexar counties, Texas’ other major jurisdictions with similar populations.

Dallas County has operated a public defender’s office since the 1980s. Bexar County created a managed assigned counsel (MAC) office in 2021, centralizing oversight, training and appointment distribution.

LaHood said Bexar’s MAC model has improved funding and structure, but he warned that the system still depends on how seriously attorneys take their obligations.

“Numbers-wise,” LaHood said, “I don't think it still changes the lack of trials and lack of due diligence in representing people. ”

Tarrant County continues to rely almost exclusively on what’s known locally as “the wheel,” which the Tarrant County Court Plan describes as a list consisting of “the names of qualified attorneys approved by a majority of the county criminal court judges.”

The wheel was created decades ago, when Tarrant County’s caseload was smaller and its courts were less complex. Today, that same structure is used to assign counsel to tens of thousands of indigent defendants each year.

Tarrant County appointed 19,625 cases in fiscal year 2025, compared to 7,236 cases with retained counsel.

Roughly 79% of felony defendants and 61% of misdemeanor defendants rely on appointed counsel in Tarrant County.

A county report lists 219 approved court appointed attorneys on the OAA’s rosters.

But the number of available lawyers is shrinking.

Oversight on paper, gaps in practice

Tarrant County’s District and County court indigent defense plans require judges to monitor appointed attorneys, “and to carefully consider the removal of attorneys from the wheel who provide substandard representation to their clients.”

But the same judges who appoint lawyers are also tasked with policing them. There is no independent office tracking how many active cases an attorney has, how often they visit clients in jail or whether they have reviewed discovery before advising a plea.

A 2023 Fort Worth Weekly report found that one-third of court-appointed attorneys have a high caseload.

LaHood said this matches what he has seen in practice.

“Not all court appointed lawyers — I want to be really careful — but a lot of them don’t [look at evidence],” he said. “They don't review it with the client; they don't explain to them what's going on and the clients want to get it ‘over with’ also.”

It becomes, “an imperfect marriage,” LaHood said.

For clients stuck in jail while awaiting trial, the pressure is increased.

Too many cases

Tarrant County’s data shows how overloaded attorneys really are:

103 (35%) of 292 attorneys “who were paid for felony, misdemeanor or appellate cases in Tarrant County had statewide indigent defense caseloads above the Texas caseload guidelines exceeded statewide caseload guidelines.”

98 exceeded guidelines in Tarrant County alone.

79 attorneys had total caseloads more than twice the recommended maximum when private cases were included.

57 attorneys filed no reports on practice time, leaving no record of their workload.

TIDC highlighted individual examples to illustrate the strain:

One attorney had 234 felonies, 84 misdemeanors, seven appeals and three capital murders.

Another had 152 felonies, 88 misdemeanors and 14 appeals, plus five capital murders, yet, “this was reportedly only 75% of the attorney's overall practice time,” according to TIDC.

In a county where nearly three quarters of felony defendants rely on appointed counsel, caseloads aren’t just numbers. They shape whether cases are investigated, negotiated or simply closed.

The jail population lens

Tarrant County Jail data provides another perspective on attorney capacity. The jail houses an average of 4,062 people per day. Most are awaiting trial.

For people who cannot post bond, attorney access is their only contact with the legal system. When their lawyer is overloaded, every delay or missed jail visit extends the amount of time a legally innocent person spends in a cell. 

“One problem that you sometimes get is private attorneys don't like to visit the jail," Lieurance said. "If you have to sit for four hours to visit your client, how many private attorneys are going to do it? One good thing about a public defender's office is they may have an investigator do it, and that investigator will sit there all day.”

How attorneys are paid

Attorney compensation also shapes how indigent defense works in practice.

Indigent Defense Attorney Compensation in Tarrant County

In misdemeanor cases, most of the work — jail visits, phone calls, discovery review, negotiation and court appearances — is covered by a single flat fee approved by a judge at the end of the case.

“Maybe one of the worst things you can do is have a contract system … or flat fee arrangements,” Lieurance said, because an attorney is simply “not going to put in a week’s worth of work for $400.”

When combined with high caseloads, flat fee structures can create pressure to resolve cases quickly, often through pleas deals.

Pleas, trials and dismissals

In Tarrant County, as in most jurisdictions, very few cases go to trial. According to the Texas Office of Court Administration, out of 10,508 felony convictions last year:

10,351 (98.5%) came from guilty pleas. Only 157 came from trials.

High plea rates are not unique to Tarrant County. But attorney availability, jail time and the level of investigation all influence how defendants interpret and accept plea deals. Lieurance said defendants can’t make informed decisions unless they understand the collateral consequences built into a guilty plea.

“In order to actually make or allow someone to plea voluntarily and knowingly and intelligently, it’ll take a lot of work," Lieurance said. "If you want to do a good job, it’s going to take some time."

LaHood said the financial structure of appointed work can encourage speed over scrutiny.

“Meet ’em and plead ’em? Oh, God, yeah, absolutely. It’s horrible,” LaHood said. “[The attorneys] don't get paid until it's resolved. So they don't do the extra. … They don't do anything more that they can't get paid for”

“If you’re going to act as a vending machine, then they don’t need a live person," he said. "Just say, ‘You can’t afford a lawyer? Here’s your offer.’ Now, no one’s looking at your evidence.”

Following the money

Tarrant’s reliance on the wheel does not mean it spends less on indigent defense than counties with public defender or MAC systems.

2023 Indigent Defense Comparison:

Tarrant’s indigent defense spending in 2023 is comparable to Dallas and Bexar. Unlike those counties, however, it received no improvement grants, which counties must apply for to expand or modernize their defense systems.

“Improvement Grants help counties develop new programs or processes to improve indigent defense,” according to the TIDC. “They are competitive, dependent on available funding, and usually require county matching funds.”