Most Viewed Stories
For court-appointed attorneys, work keeps coming
EDINBURG — It’s just before 8 a.m., and Robert Capello Jr. is already pacing the halls of the Hidalgo County Courthouse.
With a satchel slung over his shoulder, he darts from court to court checking which judges have arrived for the day, conferring with prosecutors and lining up a schedule for the various cases he has on dockets this morning.
This fast pace and early start are essential for the attorney, who has taken on more indigent cases in the past five years than any other lawyer in the county. In the first 11 months of 2009, judges assigned him to 361 matters involving low-income defendants, netting him more than $195,000 for his work.
Those payments are just one piece of Hidalgo County’s $8.6 million indigent defense costs this year. But his efforts — and those of some 200 other lawyers who took on court appointments this year — are essential to providing justice in one of the poorest counties in the nation.
“We’ve been blamed for the county being out of money — accused of raping the system,” said attorney Oscar Rene Flores, who took on more than 75 indigent cases this year. “But I think we’re starting to become victims of those jokes.”
Capello, like many of the highest-paid, court-appointed attorneys, refused multiple requests to be interviewed for this story over a period of months.
But during the past two years, he has handled the cases of some of Hidalgo County’s most high-profile criminal defendants — including a Monte Alto teen accused of killing his mother to buy video games, a Mercedes man who stabbed his cousin 35 times and a gang member who shot and killed an aspiring speech pathologist days after her graduation from college.
In those three cases alone, he billed the county $41,255 for more than 360 hours of work, according to checks issued to him by the auditor’s office.
They each required dozens of court appearances, more than two weeks total in trial and hours and hours of work outside the courtroom.
Attorneys who take on cases like these expect to be compensated for their work at a fair rate, said attorney Joel Madrigal, who made more than $51,000 off indigent cases this year.
“Sometimes I feel like a wildcatter,” he said. “But I have a lot of experience, and I know what I’m doing. What is my education for?”
The Board of Judges — a body made up of local state and county court magistrates — adopted that reasoning in late 2008 when it voted to raise the hourly rate paid to court-appointed attorneys from $70 to $100 per in-court hour for non-death penalty cases. Rates for out-of-court hours and lawyers working death penalty cases also received a bump.
The raise helped push total costs from $6.2 million to $8.6 million in just one year and sent budget writers scrambling, prompting The Monitor’s review of the county’s indigent defense system.
Many outside of the court system unfairly paint the lawyers as the root of the problem, said Flores, the attorney. Like any other business owner, they have bills to pay and payroll expenses to meet for support staff.
Before the fee increase, Flores complained, his mechanic was making more per hour for work on motorcycles than he was for representing indigent defendants in court.
Several attorneys interviewed for this series also reported that judges routinely slash the bills lawyers submitted at the end of the case.
Some even said that amid the county’s current funding crisis, they were told in mid-September that they might not receive payment for their work until the start of next year.
Those payments eventually resumed after county commissioners tapped an emergency fund to keep the checks coming.
“For those of us that put a lot of time, attention and effort into these cases, for them to say, ‘We don’t have the money to pay you,’ it’s a scary thought,” Flores said.
Still, the cases will keep coming in, the defendants aren’t getting any wealthier, and attorneys like Capello will continue to show up to defend them.
____
Jeremy Roebuck covers courts and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4437. Jared Janes covers Hidalgo County government, Edinburg and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4424.
