33rd / 424th District Courts

This article is no longer correct. The procedure has been superceded. See article effective 1/1/07 .

Attached as an Adobe PDF file is a colored matrix, complete with notes and footnotes, about the intended MASTER plan for scheduling between the 33rd and the 424th across the four counties encompassing the two district courts. There are numerous commentaries embedded in the worksheet that will be repeated here in part for those who like to read and comment on the plan. Registered users can post comments to this article and your constructive feedback and questions are encouraged.

There is a separate article on this site about which court in which you will file various types of cases.

Overview

It's a plan. It's subject to change. I've consulted with the clerks, the DA and Judge Mills and this appears to be an excellent place to start. There are some definite goals addressed by this plan:

• Minimize travel by the judges and lawyers to the greatest extent possible.
• For the family and civil dockets, have the same judge hear a case all the way through, subject to minimal deviations and then only for very good reasons.
• Have the greatest possible flexibility on the criminal docket to place judicial resources where and when needed in order to satisfy the requirement to give precedence to trying criminal cases.
• Have predictable placement of a judge in a county to the greatest extent possible. It is impossible to have something like a judge in, for example, Llano County every Tuesday for family law cases when you don't have a judge who can be dedicated to a single docket type without trying jury trials (as was the case with Judge Hammond in the past).
• Overall, have the greatest ability to place judicial resources in any county on any docket as needed. This is satisfied by the basic arrangement of having both courts with identical geographic and subject matter jurisdiction.

With that being said, here is the basic division of cases filings:

OVERALL METHOD OF CASE DIVISION & FILING

See the legend at top of the matrix. It is repeated here with additional comments for clarity.

The list below shows for each court, the types of cases that will be filed in that court. One overall goal for these methods was to avoid the necessity of the district clerks having to wrestle with the alternating court assignments. Additionally, it is important on the civil and family cases that the same judge preside over all hearing in the case, thus the division of the counties between the two courts on those dockets.

• 33rd - All juvenile. All counties. The 33rd will actually hear all juvenile cases. This is essential for consistency in the program in working with the juvenile department and county attorneys.
• 33rd - CPS in all counties. Associate Judge Hofmann will continue to hear these cases. The 33rd is in the cluster court order whereas the 424th is not, and there is no sense in making a change or even an addition there. However, appeals to the district judge from the associate judge although coming to the 33rd can actually be heard by the 424th.
• 33rd - Civil / Family in Burnet and San Saba Counties. Filed as indicated and actually heard by the 33rd.
• 424th - Civil / Family in Llano and Blanco Counties. Filed as indicated and actually heard by the 424th.
• CAVEAT: while every attempt will be made to have consistency in the judge hearing family and civil cases in the respective division of counties, the judges have (by law) automatic bench exchange and will do so when necessary.
• Both - All criminal trials, pretrials and revocations/adjudications. All counties (but filed as 33rd). Filing is in the one court merely for convenience of the clerks and grand juries but both courts will share the criminal docket in all respects, in all counties. Thus you see rotating criminal weeks in yellow on the matrix.
• 33rd - Local administrative district judge duties as provided by statute (Gov't Code 74.091 et seq).
• Both courts sit on juvenile board.

Effective date of filing changes

The district clerks will begin immediately to file the cases as indicated, provided that their software is ready in Blanco and Llano counties to file in the 424th.

Effective date of scheduling changes

There are dockets already set many months in advance. It will be the spring of 2006 before we can fully implement the scheduling methods portrayed here. The filings will begin immediately and the settings will be on the days indicated whenever possible, but especially the jury settings and all criminal settings --- jury and non-jury --- will not correlate to this plan for some time.

The webcalendar

The webcalendar is alive and well, and both courts will be displayed thereon. The initials ".glj" and ".dm" will denote the judge sitting.

Online setting requests

Online settings will be available for both courts. The form has been modified to prompt for the court. Also, major changes have been made to the documentation and access methods. Some notable changes:

• In the left column you will see a new menu entitled "Online Setting Request" and under that menu you have choices to
• check the calendar
• open the setting request form
• jump directly to the documentation on how to do those requests.

The intent for this online setting request form is that its use will be expanded to allow obtaining any type of setting by this method.

The future of online settings

I have been investigating the possibility of creating (or using a commercial version of) a reservation system whereby you would look for blocks of setting times in the county and for the docket type in interest and, upon finding a block, to request your setting. It would be subject to approval by the court administrator and upon approval would notify all counsel. There is a commercial system that is actually intended for this purpose, that that means $$$. Investigation continues.