SPEEDY TRIALS: DEFENDANTS SHOULDN'T HAVE TO LANGUISH IN JAIL

These are hard times for Texas prosecutors, whose competence and ethics are
being challenged both in courts of law and in the court of public opinion.

In Swisher County, home of the infamous 1999 Tulia drug busts, District
Attorney Terry McEachern is under fire for concealing from the defense and
the judge his own doubts about the credibility of an undercover police
officer who was found to be not credible.

In Dallas County, which produced the fake drug scandal, District Attorney
Bill Hill has acknowledged that his prosecutors might have caught some of
the glaring flaws in cases served up by the Dallas Police Department had
they not been overworked and cursed with "tunnel vision." And in Harris
County, where the now-closed police crime laboratory is itself under a
microscope after a state audit found flaws in its work, two grand juries
want to know if the district attorney's office racked up convictions with
tainted evidence, and neither wants the help of the district attorney's
office to find out. There obviously is a lack of trust here.

One can't blame jurors for being leery of those who fill their canteens
from a poisoned well. When prosecutors win cases by relying on faulty
evidence, it is fair to ask if they were blinded by the desire to win.

Scandals, Texas has plenty of. What the state needs are bold reforms that
restore public confidence in the justice system.

The Legislature needs to pass a law that ensures that those charged with
crimes in Texas get a speedy trial.

At the federal level, a defendant is all but guaranteed to get to trial
between 60 and 80 days after indictment. Not so in Texas. The right to a
speedy trial, while in the state constitution, isn't spelled out in
statute. It was once, but that law was struck down. There needs to be a new
law that survives judicial scrutiny.

Without it, folks can easily languish in jail for eight or nine months
before getting their day in court. The longer the wait, the greater the
chance becomes for mistakes, mischief or malfeasance - and the more
leverage prosecutors have to induce guilty pleas by threatening to leave
defendants rotting in jail.

As the people's lawyers, prosecutors have weightier responsibilities than
just winning. They must play fair. They must seek truth. And they must make
sure justice is served.