Update: This article has been amended to correct errors regarding the Bexar County managed assigned counsel system.
In 2010, Laquita Garcia was wrongfully arrested on a theft charge. Unable to pay the $30,000 bond, she ended up sitting in jail for over a year—longer than the crime’s maximum penalty. Garcia could not afford a private attorney to represent her and was appointed a lawyer by a judge. But Garcia’s lawyer never came to see her while she was in custody. He never called. He never investigated. The first time Garcia saw the attorney, she says, was minutes before she entered a plea deal. She was finally found not guilty of the theft charge by a judge and was released in 2011. After her release, Garcia set about helping those failed by the Bexar County criminal justice system. She’s now the policy coordinator of the Texas Organizing Project (TOP), a nonprofit with bases in San Antonio, Dallas and Houston.
Late last year, Garcia’s group won one of its biggest victories yet—a new system of criminal defense for Bexar County. The managed assigned counsel system, or MAC, will reduce jail time for people who have not been convicted of crimes and secure better representation for indigent defendants, Garcia says. MAC systems have been tried elsewhere in the state—with varying degrees of success—but advocates generally consider them to be an upgrade from the court appointment system used in most Texas cities.
