During the past 10 years, the number of pending felony cases in McLennan County has doubled, the county jail remains overcrowded, and the county is straining to pay for its increasingly expensive criminal justice system.

Starting next week, taxes for McLennan County residents will go up 5 cents per $100 valuation, blamed by county leaders, in large part, on expenses related to crime and punishment.

Of the 1,180 inmates housed Tuesday in McLennan County, about 90 have been locked up longer than a year.

“This all is still very much a work in progress,” said 54th State District Judge Matt Johnson, who proposed the initiative. “There are a lot of logistical issues that need to be worked out with all these trial courts potentially going at once. I am told this worked in Midland County, and I think it would be a benefit to McLennan County if it were implemented.”

Johnson sent out a memo proposing the rocket docket last week to the county’s other state district judges — Ralph Strother, Gary Coley, Jim Meyer and Vicki Menard — and to county Court-at-Law Judges Mike Freeman and Brad Cates.

Johnson and Strother handle the county’s felony criminal dockets, with Menard and Meyer handling civil cases and family law matters. Coley is the county’s juvenile court judge and handles Child Protective Services cases and civil cases.

Freeman and Cates have a full docket handling misdemeanors, condemnations and contested probate matters. For them to participate in the rocket docket, the regional administrative judge would have to appoint them to sit in either the 19th or 54th state district court.

The judges will meet at noon Wednesday to discuss the rocket docket proposal.

If implemented, six or seven trial courts could schedule felony trials every four to six weeks or how often the judges decide, Johnson said.

“Our goal would be to give priority to cases where a defendant has been in jail for over a year,” Johnson wrote in the letter to the county’s other judges proposing the plan. “If we institute such a plan, it could potentially save McLennan County thousands of dollars each month in jail expenses.”

Under the new plan, if approved, defendants jailed the longest would be pulled from the docket and added to the rocket docket, Johnson said.

They would be given a final pretrial date, where they will decide if they will reject or accept plea offers from the district attorney’s office. Those who reject offers will go to trial on the designated dates.

The new plan also will discourage defendants, especially those who are no strangers to the criminal justice system, from “riding the docket,” or delaying their cases with a variety of legal tactics, Johnson and McLennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna said.

Reyna said he supports the proposal despite knowing it will put additional pressure on his staff.

Defendants know under the current system that there are only two district courts — Johnson’s and Strother’s — that handle almost all of the felony cases. They also know that only two, possibly three cases actually will go to trial in any given week.

So even though their case is numbered for trial, the likelihood of their case reaching trial is diminished depending on how many are numbered ahead of it.

With more courts handling cases, the defendants know their chances for a quicker trial also increase. That should lead to more trials, but also to more defendants accepting plea bargains, Johnson said.

Reyna said inmates “ride the docket” for a number of reasons, not just that they don’t like the plea offer or claim innocence. Some, he said, want to stay in the county jail simply because it is close to their families or because it is air-conditioned and prison is not.

“It goes along exactly with what I was saying when I was running for office,” Reyna said. “If elected, we won’t be looking for cases to try, we will be looking for courtrooms to be trying cases. . . . I am in favor of it. If it means that we all have to work harder, I have no doubt that this office will live up to that challenge.”

Strother said he is willing to give the proposal a go, but added there are a number of logistical issues to be resolved.

The judges know how closely areas of the criminal justice system are linked. Like throwing a pebble in a pond, there are ripple effects with each change to the system.

“If we implement this, we want to make it clear to everyone that the courts are doing all we can to resolve cases and reduce the jail population,” Strother said. “To make this work, everyone involved is going to have to cooperate. Otherwise, we won’t accomplish anything.”

If seven defendants are going to trial during the designated rocket docket weeks, it will put a strain on courthouse security deputies, who must stay with them during trial and transport them to and from the county jail on State Highway 6.

District Clerk Karen Matkin estimates her office will have to start sending out 800 to 850 jury summons a week instead of the 600 it normally sends out on a weekly basis.

That will increase her jury costs, but county officials think the decrease in jail population will more than offset the increases.

With a group that size, Matkin said she might have to divide the numbers, telling one group to report at 9 a.m. and the second group at 1:30 p.m.

Meyer, who has tried about 15 criminal cases in his 11 years on the 170th State District Court bench, said he wants to learn more about the proposal and discuss it with the judges before publicly commenting on it at length.

Menard declined comment Tuesday, saying she would defer until after the judges meet.

Announcement dockets

In another recent move designed to increase efficiency at the courthouse, the judges, district attorney’s office and the local defense bar has eliminated the Friday announcement dockets for the 19th and 54th district courts.

This will keep the staff at the county jail from having to move inmates from the jail to the courthouse each Friday.

Reyna said the announcement dockets were implemented so a defense attorney and a prosecutor could meet and plan the course of a case, whether setting a trial date or offering a plea deal.

But there were enough concerns about the movement of inmates from the jail that both sides were willing to reorganize the process for efficiency and safety, Reyna said.

The lawyers now will meet throughout the week and turn in a form to the presiding judge indicating the offers that were made, Reyna said.

If the lawyers fail to meet or turn in their forms, the case is automatically put on the pretrial docket.

If defense attorneys fail to turn in the forms more than three times, they are taken off of the court-appointed attorney list, Reyna said.

Sheriff’s Capt. John Kolinek, who oversees the county jail, said about 35 inmates were brought from the county jail to the courthouse each week for the announcement docket.

“It’s definitely a benefit for the jail and for the courthouse,” Kolinek said. “When you’re bringing those numbers over at any one time, you increase your security risk.”