By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
Commissioners court members heard an update Wednesday on the county’s ongoing initiative to transition to a public defenders office to represent persons charged with crimes who can’t afford to hire their own attorneys.
During the update, County Judge Lewis G. Owens Jr. and other members of the court closely questioned the public defenders office’s lead attorney here about his hiring of some local staff members who are related to two county elected officials, County Sheriff Joe Frank Martinez and County Attorney David Martinez, who are brothers.
The county in 2025 began a contract with the Far West Texas Regional Public Defenders Office in Alpine to open an office in Val Verde County. Commissioners court enacted the contract in response to the rising cost of paying local attorneys who are appointed by the district and county courts to represent indigent criminal defendants.
During Wednesday’s meeting, Owens read the heading of the agenda item and recognized attorney Paul Chambers, the first assistant public defender for the Far West Texas Regional Public Defenders Office and the head of the Val Verde County office.
Val Verde County Commissioners Court last year contracted with the Far West Texas Regional Public Defenders Office to take over indigent defense in criminal cases in Val Verde County.
Chambers told the court, “As you know, we opened our office on Oct. 1, 2025. Right now, 80 percent of our budget is covered by the state of Texas. We took our first case in Val Verde County in October (2025), started taking all the cases in Val Verde County on Dec. 1 (2025).”
He said in other counties that have started public defenders offices, the transition from assigning most criminal cases to the office has taken as long as 21 months. Here, he said, the process took only 60 days.
He said, “As of yesterday (June 2), we’ve opened around 525 cases. I’m being told by the county attorney’s office that’s about 90 to 95 percent of the entire caseload for the county for this year so far. We take everything that comes into the criminal courts that’s not a Class C misdemeanor, an OLS (Operation Lone Star) case or a conflict.”
Commissioner Pct. 4 Gustavo “Gus” Flores asked how many cases the office here could handle.
Chambers responded, “We’re averaging about 100 to 115 cases a month, and . . . except for the county court, I believe personally, we’re moving cases at about a 90-day period. I don’t control when somebody gets arrested. I also don’t control when someone gets indicted or charged formally. But once they’re charged, my goal, and the goal definitely in district courts, which are having courts every month, is to dispose of the case in 90 days.”
Chambers said one of the reasons for the timely movement of cases is that the county is required to report certain numbers regarding those cases to the Texas Criminal Justice Information System (TxCJIS), and some county grants from the state are tied to those numbers.
Chambers said he has filled four attorney positions in his office to handle the caseload. He said one of the new attorneys will be moving here from Georgia, but he has also hired long-time local attorney David Ortiz and Jacqueline Gurley, a former school librarian who passed the bar exam in April.
He also has two investigators, an administrative assistant and two social work positions, adding that he can tap into the resources of Far West’s main office in Alpine if additional help is needed.
Owens then commented no member of the court or any county elected official has the right to tell Chambers whom to hire, and Chambers agreed.
The county judge added, “So when I’m being questioned about how come family members of elected officials work there – I’m just going to throw this out there because I think people need to understand this – . . . you’ve not had a conversation with any member of the court on who to hire.”
Chambers replied, “I’ve not had a conversation with any member (of the court) or any elected official on who to hire, that’s correct. I hire the best people that I can.”
When Owens observed that hiring staff for the public defenders office is not the county judge’s job, Chambers responded, “That’s correct,” adding, “So that the court knows and the public knows, nobody has approached me about that. . . I just hire the best person that applies.”
Owens said he appreciated Chambers hiring people who “already know the community.”
Chambers said except for the Georgia attorney, all of his staff are local residents.
Chambers told the court, “Right now, our estimated caseload over the next three years will be about 3,600 cases in total. If you do the math on that, the cost to the county is going to be around $500 per case. That includes from DWI (driving while intoxicated) . . . all the way up to very serious cases that aren’t capital cases. It’s a flat fee, no matter what you’re charged with.”
Chambers spoke about the time he has spent at the county jail and assured the commissioners court he and his staff work diligently to get defendants released on bond, which saves the county money on beds at the jail.
Chambers also spoke about the work his office is doing in the courts.
He noted, “We’ve missed no dockets. We’ve had two trials. . . In January, we were about two or three cases per docket, and this last docket that I had with the 83rd Judicial District Court, I was about 60 percent of their docket overall. We expect that number to grow so that we’re hopefully representing about 90 percent of the dockets. . . and the people that are on the dockets that aren’t our (clients) have hired (their own attorneys) hopefully.”
Chambers announced on Thursday, July 2, at noon, the Val Verde County office will host a ribbon-cutting and an open house, and he invited the court to attend.
Chambers said, “I didn’t get the opportunity to say this when the office first started, but I was very excited to come here and start this office. I moved here. I brought my family here. I’m excited to be in Val Verde County. I’m excited to build this and hopefully represent the indigent people of the county for a long time.
“I appreciate the hard work of Judge Owens, of David Martinez, Commissioner Vazquez and Commissioner Wardlaw for us getting those grants last summer in order to make this happen,” Chambers added, thanking the court for its time and saying he would be happy to answer any further questions.
Owens asked the commissioners if they had any questions, and Commissioner Pct. 3 Fernando Garcia said, “So we hired you with the hopes that you would save us money, so do you have any plans on doing that?”
Chambers replied, “I do. The first thing we have to do is get all the cases. Once we do that, and the local bar stops getting appointed cases that aren’t conflicts, that will start to save you some of that money. The other big thing that I can do when I get the time to do it, and we’re working on a grant to hire someone and it’s something I did in the other counties that we’re in. There is always delay when you have people working with paperwork, and in the five counties that we came from, I had developed a system, an automated system, that actually evaluates whether someone would qualify for counsel and took that delay, that there was seven days, down from seven days to about 45 minutes.
“The cost that I was saving Brewster County with that system, which I hope to implement here, was about $450,000 a year on costs to the county, so we’re working on trying to do that. I’ve spoken to the JPs directly on doing something like this. I’ve spoken to all three of the judges that have criminal appointments. They’re on board to do this, and now it’s just a matter of getting the actual coding worked on to make it happen,” Chambers added.
Flores asked if Chambers could provide him with the names of the local employees in the Val Verde office.
Chambers said the persons currently in his office include Laura Hernandez, who he said he believed grew up in the area; Adrian Martinez, a former Border Patrol and FBI agent who is related to the sheriff and the county attorney; Jacqueline Gurley, who served as the librarian at Del Rio High School; David Ortiz, a long-time Del Rio attorney; Lupita Mann, who serves as Chambers’ administrative assistant and who was in the military as a recruiter; Amy Carrizales, who is one of Chambers’ investigators and is a graduate of DRHS; and Julia Martinez, who is currently studying for the bar and who is one of David Martinez’s daughters.
The court took no action following Chambers’ presentation.
The writer can be reached at delriomagnoliafan@gmail.com.
