This is handle on the law.

This is Handel on the Law, marginal legal advice.

The following is a pre-recorded program.

Okay, this is Texas. I love Texas.

So there is a judge, Glenn Devlin, who ran for, re-ran for his office, re-election, and he lost.

And he was the juvenile court judge. And so what he did is that was a

Tuesday he lost to a Democrat. He was a Republican. On Wednesday, he shows up for work and begins

releasing virtually all of the juvenile defenders who had detention hearings before him.

What Devlin did was ask the defendants, the juveniles, do you plan to kill anyone?

And if they said no, he released them from detention.

Under state law, juveniles who are locked up while their cases are pending are required to have a hearing every 10 business days so a judge can decide whether or not they should stay in detention.

Devlin decided nobody stay in detention, basically a screw you, if nothing else.

And the judge reset all of their cases for the day after his opponent takes office.

But it gets even worse than that.

Last week, the Tribune wrote about Devlin and two fellow family law judges or family juvenile judges who preside over virtually all the juvenile cases in Harris County.

The investigation they reported found that these three judges have assigned an extraordinary

number of juvenile cases to a small handful of private lawyers, often the same ones who

give the judges big campaign contributions, although it didn't help in this case.

Some of those attorneys took on 300 plus court appointments a year, earn more than half a million dollars from the

juvenile court system. Meanwhile, the public defender's office, which is paid for by the county,

says it hasn't even received enough juvenile cases from those same judges to keep their

own lawyers busy.

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