Posted on 02/16/2019 6:46:23 PM PST by Elderberry
In the 47 days since Barry Johnson became McLennan County district attorney, he and his staff have tried to reverse the ravages that the Twin Peaks shootout cases and the stagnant final nine months of Abel Reyna's administration took on the county's criminal justice system.
After Johnson beat Reyna in the March primary, a frequent mantra around the courthouse was, "Let's wait to see what Barry wants to do about that."
That wait-and-see philosophy and the unprecedented overall slowdown created by 151 felony Twin Peaks cases being dumped into the system all at once ballooned the dockets in Waco's two felony state district courts and kept people in jail waiting for trial for unusually long periods of time.
Johnson hit the ground running, hiring veteran prosecutor Nelson Barnes away from Bell County as his first assistant and convincing his former longtime law associate in Dallas, Tom Needham, to move to Waco as his executive assistant district attorney.
The job quickly became more challenging than Johnson had imagined. The office computer system crashed Jan. 11, in large part under the weight of new video being added from police body cameras. And Johnson, who thought there might be 4,000 misdemeanor cases pending, learned to his surprise that there are more than 9,000, with some dating back to 2002. And as promised, Johnson and staff members started reviewing the 24 remaining Twin Peaks cases to determine how to proceed with the almost 4-year-old cases.
So as he doused one grass fire after another, Johnson and his team have freed the hands of assistant prosecutors, who once had to seek permission from Reyna or his top assistant before extending plea offers and were prevented from speaking to the media. They also are trying to heal existing rifts among the DA's office
(Excerpt) Read more at wacotrib.com ...
IBTG
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