Where McLennan County appears to excel is in how many cases prosecutors refuse at the beginning rather than dismiss later. Refusal refers to prosecutors discarding cases before formal charges are filed. Dismissal occurs where charges are filed in court but later dropped.
Another way to judge whether prosecutors are properly screening cases is to look at plea bargains, Wright and Miller said. If a prosecutor’s office is doing a good job of screening cases at the start, then it should be able to get convictions without having to give away too much in plea negotiations, they said.
The district attorney’s office has a crushing case load, Segrest said, that has steadily increased since he became the county’s chief prosecutor 19 years ago. Last year it handled more than 3,600 felony cases and nearly 8,000 misdemeanors.
As part of the bigger picture, prosecutors also have to be concerned with resource expenditures, the experts said. Courts and prisons are already overcrowded and could not handle the load if all cases were prosecuted.
Segrest said he knows there is a feeling among some in the law enforcement community that his office is not aggressive enough. The buzz in some police circles is that prosecutors look for reasons to drop charges rather than press them.
Robertson, who was featured prominently in Reyna's campaign television ads, was paid $85,902, the budgeted salary for a court chief, according to the most recent salary scale posted on the county's website.
Reyna's office enjoyed what by any standard would be considered a successful year in 2017, having sent a total of 1,108 people to Huntsville for processing into the state prison system, almost 100-a-month.
Robertson remains merely the most recent to fall by the Reyna roadside, illuminated in past months through a series of court hearings and other issues that now see former employees accusing Reyna of inappropriate or unethical conduct.