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U.S.|Forgotten in Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor
Defendants
  
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/25/us/
maverick-county-texas-court-system.html

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A bird's-eye view of a suburban community.
Eagle Pass, Texas, borders the Mexican city of Piedras Negras. Many
people who live in Piedras Negras cross daily to work, shop or visit
relatives.

Forgotten in Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor
Defendants

People in Maverick County spend months in jail waiting to be charged
with minor crimes. Some are simply lost in the system.

Eagle Pass, Texas, borders the Mexican city of Piedras Negras. Many
people who live in Piedras Negras cross daily to work, shop or visit
relatives.Credit...

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By Jolie McCullough

Photographs by Ilana Panich-Linsman

Jolie McCullough reported for The Times's Local Investigations
Fellowship, which helps address the decline in local journalism, from
Eagle Pass, Texas, a community with few reporters.

  * March 25, 2025

Leer en espanol

Fernando Padron was stuck in a South Texas jail cell. Accused of
stealing credit cards that he used to buy diapers, a bike and other
goods for his family, he had not been brought into court or spoken to
a lawyer.

He did not hear anything about his case for nine months. Finally, in
March 2023, prosecutors charged him with a misdemeanor, and he was
released. But his ordeal had just begun.

Over the next two years, he would be arrested repeatedly in
connection with the theft. He was pressured into a seemingly improper
plea deal in one court, only to be charged again in another. At one
point, he was in jail for six months before officials involved in his
case realized he was there.

Mr. Padron, 27, is a U.S. citizen with no prior convictions, and his
offense was minor enough that elsewhere in Texas, he might not have
been jailed at all. But he was in the dysfunctional Maverick County
court system, where basic tenets of American justice often do not
apply.

Officials here openly acknowledge that poor defendants accused of
minor crimes are rarely provided lawyers. And people regularly spend
months behind bars without charges filed against them, much longer
than state law allows. Last year alone, at least a dozen people were
held too long uncharged after arrests for minor nonviolent crimes,
interviews and records reviewed by The New York Times show.

Some defendants seem to have been forgotten in jail. Two men were
released after The Times asked about them, half a year after their
sentences had been completed.

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