- For 76 years lawyers who are members of the Texas Legislature have enjoyed a special perk called a “legislative continuance.” Lawmakers who are attorneys in cases in state courts can delay proceedings in those cases whenever the legislature is in session.
- Facing complaints that some defendants abused this perk by hiring lawmakers to stall unwanted legal proceedings, the Texas Legislature passed a 2003 reform that has required lawmakers to publicly disclose their continuances since September 2003.
- The timing of this reform was fortuitous, coming amidst the seven special legislative sessions that Governor Rick Perry has convened in the past three years. By greatly expanding the normal legislative-continuance season, these special sessions helped to create more than two years worth of court black-out days during the two-and-a-half-year period starting in January 2003.
- Research on this report began before Governor Perry launched the latest continuance season by convening the April 17, 2006 special session. This report analyzes the 431 legislative continuances that 32 Texas lawmakers filed between September 2003 and September 2005.
- Rep. Roberto Alonzo filed an extraordinary 241 legislative continuances in this two-year period, accounting for 56 percent of all continuances filed. Rep. Phil King came next, filing 53 continuances (12 percent).
- Largely due to Rep. Alonzo’s filings, lawmakers filed 63 percent of all continuances on behalf of criminal defendants. Family-law cases accounted for 8 percent of all continuances; other civil cases accounted for 29 percent of the total. Even when limited to just civil cases, defendants accounted for 70 percent of all continuance filings.
- Thanks in part to special-session extensions of the legislative-continuance season, some lawmakers repeatedly filed one continuance after another in the same case. Rep. Alonzo claimed the record for serial continuances, filing five of them in one six-month period in the State of Texas v. Omar Hernandez. Rep. King filed 11 continuances in five related cases that all involved a group of pawn-shop executives fighting over stock options.
- At least six lawmakers claimed continuances in cases that named themselves or apparent family members as defendants. Reps. Craig Eiland and Robert Puente claimed continuances in lawsuits that named them personally. Reps. Harold Dutton, Trey Martinez Fischer, Roberto Alonzo and Carlos Uresti claimed continuances in cases naming apparent family members as defendants (the latter two did not return calls about these cases).
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