Harris County
District Attorney Kim Ogg joined with law-enforcement officials and
families of murder victims Wednesday to acknowledge a new state law
taking effect Friday prioritizing murder trials in Texas.
Ogg said she hoped
the law, sponsored by state Sen. John Whitmire, would help reduce the
backlog of murder cases that has climbed to more than 1,800 in recent
years. But she warned that continued delays in
testing evidence at area crime labs – specifically at the Houston
Forensic Science Center – may counter that progress.
“We at the District
Attorney’s Office are ready. Our friends in law enforcement are ready,”
Ogg said. “Now we need the City of Houston to ensure that our evidence
is ready.”
Ogg was joined by
Doug Griffith, the president of the Houston Police Officers’ Union, and
by Leticia Ybarra and Alison Steele, whose young daughters were murdered
in 2020 and 2017, respectively. Families of
murder victims now must wait an average of 3.5 years for their cases to
reach trial.
More than 1,800
murder cases were pending in Harris County as of Aug. 22, 2023, with
nearly half of those suspects remaining at large, either as fugitives or
on bond.
“Murder trials are a
public safety necessity,” Ogg said. “Without significant progress on
these trials, we and our neighbors are at risk from extremely dangerous
suspects and our jail remains overcrowded with
those in custody awaiting trial.”
