If you are going through the criminal justice system, you should learn some of the lingo. Some words and phrases for the day:

CATCH A CHAIN: Getting transported to prison.

PAPER READY: A defendant’s felony case is completed, and he is ready to be transported to prison.

GETTING PSYCHED: For most of the world, getting excited, enthused, or mentally prepared. In the criminal justice system, submitting to a psychological evaluation to
determine if you are mentally competent to stand trial.

TWO BRAIN CELLS SHY OF A COMPETENCY HEARING: Crazy. Okay, this one’s not common, but I heard it recently and liked it.

ROCKET DOCKET: In some counties, a regularly-scheduled court docket on which a court tries to cram an unusually large number of cases through the system in a
single day. In other counties, a case calendar that make cases go from zero to jury trial setting in under sixty seconds.

RESET: Normal people reschedule. Criminal lawyers reset.

WARRANT ROUND-UP. The Sheriff and County Attorney are up for reelection, so it’s time to arrest a few truckloads full of people on ten year old Class C misdemeanors.

Today marks the first day of the Comal County Courts-at-Law holding separate dockets.  For several years now, both Comal County Court-at-Law No. 1 & No. 2 have run all Class A and B misdemeanors in the county though the system on the same joint court docket.  The joint docket, which local lawyers referred to as the “Rocket Docket” or the “Monster Docket”, depending on your preference, featured a non-jury docket every other Wednesday in which the courts sometimes attempted the Herculean feat of processing 300-400 cases in a single day.  At one point, the Wednesday joint docket was so large that it was essentially parred down by order of the local fire marshall, based upon there being too many people crowded into the old courthouse at a single time.  This docket was supposed to promote efficiency and move cases, but was so large that it was almost impossible to get anything done, and actually bogged down the system.  In addition, you typically had two judges presiding over the same docket who, not only had once run against each other for elective office, but often did not see eye-to-eye on what was an appropriate punishment in some types of cases.  As a result, defendants charged with the same type of offense might get different punishments during the same docket, depending on which courtroom a clerk sent a case file.  Needless to say, this made it a little more difficult than usually for both defense lawyers and prosecutors to play the game of “What is Dummy Thinking” very effectively.

A couple of months ago, the judges presiding over the joint docket, Charles Stephens and Randy Gray, decided to split the sheets.  Cases with odd numbers will be assigned to Judge Gray, those with evens to Judge Stephens (evens, Stephens — get it?)  Hopefully, this will keep people from being tied up all day at huge dockets where very little gets accomplished and provide for some more consistency.  Whether the DA’s office starts gaming the system to make sure that certain types of cases get odd numbers and some get evens remains to be seen.