Assistant DA: Case backlog will be resolved by year's end, 'if not sooner'

Adam Powell

"We're focused on working through this as rapidly as we can," said Assistant El Paso District Attorney Doug Tiemann, who also serves as chief of the office's Intake Unit. "I anticipate it will be done before the end of the year, if not sooner."

Over the past several weeks, hundreds of cases have been tossed over the state's decades-old Code of Criminal Procedure 32.01, which allows for a defense attorney to petition for dismissal of a case if prosecution has not been filed within 180 days.

While the assistant district attorney said he does not know the exact number of cases that have been dismissed, despite the fact that the Intake Unit receives every case local law enforcement hopes to prosecute and prepares those cases to go before an attorney for possible prosecution, he said the series of dismissals kicked off in early August and has only grown  in the ensuing weeks.

However, the stage was set for the slowdown during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw in-person hearings grind to a halt and allowed for cases to pile up in the District Attorney's Office. Add to that issues with the District Attorney Information Management System (DIMS) ‒ a 24-hour intake system that allows for rapid filing and speeds up the indictment process ‒ and the pile of cases to be tackled grew day after day.

"Crime didn't stop just because this is going on," Tiemann said. "We're doing our best."

With the DIMS system down during 2021, the District Attorney's Office was able to process around 500 cases per month ‒ now that the system is operational, that number is closer to 900 per month.

"So, the DIMS process helps," Tiemann said.

And while hundreds of cases have been dismissed, Tiemann said the District Attorney's Office already has refiled just over 80 of those cases and plans to tackle the rest over the next few months.

"Our deadline is truly the statute of limitations," Tiemann said, noting that misdemeanors have a two-year window for prosecution and felonies have three years or more.

Tiemann said none of the cases recently dismissed were ineligible to be refiled, though the District Attorney's Office may choose not to pursue refiling in lesser cases, but there is no way to know how many more will be tossed as the District Attorney's Office works through the current backlog.

In an effort to attack that problem head on, Tiemann said employees across the department have stepped up to assist in working through the pileup and efforts have been made to streamline the process.

"The staff ... have quite frankly rolled up their sleeves and gone to work," Tiemann said. "El Pasoans themselves have been great in this process."

The El Paso Public Defender's Office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.