ACLU Sues County Over Lack of Counsel at First Appearance

The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas has filed a class-action complaint in federal court against Travis County over alleged denial of counsel at first appearance (CAFA).¹

Together with the ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project and Weil, Gotshal & Manges, the complaint, filed with the Western District of Texas, alleges Travis County requires people who are arrested to attend their first criminal court appearance without providing a lawyer to those who cannot afford one.²

The lawsuit was filed in April 2024. In May, the ACLU released the findings of a project organized by the ACLU of Texas, which recruited volunteer law students to observe “hundreds of first appearances in the first quarter of 2024.”

The observations, “digested by the ACLU’s data and analytics team, support our most recent lawsuit on (CAFA).”³

That project’s findings boil down to three points:

Judges & Release

First appearances are generally conducted via video conference from the basement of the jail in downtown Austin. There, magistrate judges frequently require cash bail. When the bail can’t be paid, the magistrate orders detention, with the caveat that, down the line, a lawyer might make a persuasive argument for release.

Thus, while the detainee is waiting for a lawyer to be appointed, he or she is jailed.

The ACLU reports once detainees are appointed lawyers, the lawyers’ advocacy secures release without cash bail.

The time spent in jail is harmful to the detainee’s job and family. Without a lawyer, the damage can be compounded by the detainee pleading guilty and accepting a harsher sentence because he or she feels they are fighting a losing battle.

Detainees Self-Incriminate

The lack of CAFA forces detainees to advocate for themselves in “precarious and unfamiliar situations,” the ACLU report states.

Of the cases the volunteer law students observed, 29 percent of detainees made “potentially harmful statements about their cases.”

Detainees without legal training and without counsel at first appearance frequently make statements that limit strategies for their defense later on.