Some inmates in Hays County are waiting years to see their day in court.
The first time Hays County Jail officials rushed Melvin Nicholas to the hospital was Feb. 18, 2021. The 59-year-old had been ill for days but, he told the, the jail's medical team had provided no care. It wasn't until Nicholas' family came for a visit, saw his condition, and asked for help that jail administrators acted.
Hospital records show that Nicholas' blood glucose level was 1660 mg/dL, an astronomical number. It presages coma. And indeed Nicholas spent the next two-and-a-half days in a diabetic coma. He awoke frightened in a hospital room in the middle of the night, not knowing where he was. The next day he was back in jail.
County leaders had anticipated the problem, at least in part. They got approval from taxpayers in 2016 to greatly expand the jail. Nonetheless, Villalobos said that he and Becerra were warned by Sheriff Gary Cutler in early 2019 that when the expansion was complete, the county would still be paying other jails to hold inmates.
As Villalobos worked to get county officials to commit to cite and release, the social justice group Mano Amiga – along with MOVE Texas, students from Texas State, and others – were pressuring the San Marcos Police Department to do the same. After they got a commitment from the police, the activists then showed the department was not in fact using cite and release to the degree it had promised.
Mau did offer such a program, but he and Hays County's justice advocates have been unable to agree on the details. Mau said he's drafted a new version that he will present soon, but in his opinion cite and divert will not lower the jail population much. He thinks the solution is more law enforcement.
Among these is Cyrus Gray, who waited four years and four months for his July trial on capital murder. The case was declared a mistrial after three jurors came down with COVID-19 but before that, the proceedings had given Gray reason for hope. Over several days of deliberations, the jury had eight, then six, then seven jurors voting for acquittal. Nonetheless, the Hays County D.A.'s Office has decided to go forward with a retrial. It's scheduled to begin Oct. 31.
But Gray did complain."I got a letter that was dated three months before the date that they gave it to me and I asked to speak to somebody about it. And the guard got upset. And as a result he told them to move me out to another tank. He knew that in the other tank these guys were jumping Black people for whatever reason."
"I wrote the state bar to fire my attorney. So they had to bring me up [to court] to address the situation. I started talking to the judge about the stuff going on with my case, I was telling him my constitutional rights. I'm like, 'I'm being held without a bond. I been here this long, I don't have a bond.' And I was quoting from the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, Article 17.38, the rule applicable to the bond ... And the judge was like, 'Well, Mr.
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