Posted September 13, 2021

JusticeText is proud to announce our latest partnership with the Federal Public Defender for the Northern District of Texas.

As one of the largest federal defender organizations in the country, the agency represents hundreds of individuals every year charged with a crime in federal court and also people on death row in Texas. Their team of attorneys, paralegals, investigators, legal assistants and IT support staff work collaboratively across Dallas, Fort Worth, Lubbock, and Amarillo.

"We have a passion for defending our clients and upholding the highest principle of the Sixth Amendment that an accused person has the right to the effective assistance of counsel,” said Jason Hawkins, Federal Public Defender for the Northern District of Texas.

As part of the case review process Charnese Toro, the Chief Paralegal for the North Texas Federal Defenders, and her team of paralegals spend significant time analyzing audiovisual evidence for their clients. “The discovery that we receive from the government is the lifeblood of what we do,” says Toro. “It touches every aspect of the attorney’s and the investigator’s job.” Hawkins adds, “Far too often what we are seeing is the Government dumping multiple terabytes of this type of evidence on us and it can be nearly impossible to get through all of it.”

Prior to using JusticeText, Toro would manually listen to hours of footage or outsource transcription to a third-party service, a process she described as being time-intensive and cost-prohibitive. Since utilizing the JusticeText platform, she has been able to spend more time providing strategic case support to attorneys and directly interacting with her clients. "To be able to send that up to your platform and then [...] be able to get a transcript back that we can then make searchable has honestly been revolutionary and it has really changed the way we're able to get through the discovery," Toro said.

She has found the software to be especially useful in establishing a strong rapport with her clients. By quickly synthesizing the facts the discovery has borne out, Toro is able to ensure that the defendants’ thoughts and opinions are represented in the decision-making process.

Our team is looking forward to continuing to support the agency’s work in the coming months as their team scales their impact across northern Texas.