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Rules of Administration adopted under Tex. Gov't Code § 74.093 by the Criminal District Courts and the District Courts giving preference to criminal cases of Dallas County (adopted January 2012; Rule 2.2(13) amended by majority vote June 7, 2018, effective June 14, 2018, signed March 11, 2020), as registered in the statewide TOPICs local-rules registry (posted 06/22/2023): rotating criminal filings, the thirteen transfer rules, State Jail Felony jury-week transfers, hours and the Frank Crowley venue, judicial absences, monthly meetings, the Presiding Criminal District Judge's election, and each court's authority to adopt supplemental rules.
Texas > Dallas County > Criminal District Courts Nos. 1–7 and the district courts giving preference to criminal cases (194th, 195th, 203rd, 204th, 265th, 282nd, 283rd, 291st, 292nd, 363rd — the amendment's rotation across '17 courts')
1.1 FILING: "Criminal cases invoking district court jurisdiction shall be filed on a rotating basis among the district courts." 1.32: "Preference shall be given to jail cases, with the oldest pending jail case being given priority whenever practical." 2.2 TRANSFERS (the mandatory ladder): probation in another court pulls the case there (Rule 1); an earlier-filed pending case pulls (Rule 2; same dates — lowest case number); companion cases go to the earliest-filed court (Rule 3); pending appeal (4), work release (5), jail on a disposed case not yet transferred to TDC (6), and PRE-INDICTMENT assignment (7) each pull; for multiple un-filed cases the earliest magistration date controls, but an un-filed case whose magistration date is over 30 days old yields — the receiving court keeps a new unrelated case (8); alias-name probations go to the first probation court (9); co-defendant probations to the first co-defendant's probation court (10). 2.2(12) STATE JAIL FELONIES: "On the Monday of each jury week all the district courts trying criminal cases and the criminal district courts, upon an announcement of ready by the parties, shall call to trial State Jail Felony cases from their designated State Jail Felony docket"; if the calling judge cannot proceed, the Court Manager "shall then TRANSFER the State Jail Felony cases to an open court for trial to begin the next day," ordering the defendant onto that court's jail chain. 2.2(13) CAPITAL MURDER AND MURDER (as amended June 7, 2018, effective June 14, 2018): "All capital murder and murder cases shall be transferred by the Local Administrative Judge or his designee to the criminal district courts in a random order to ensure an equal distribution of cases. All companion cases involving co-defendants shall be assigned to the same court. … The determination as to which court is to be assigned the case shall be by the drawing of lottery type balls. The selection mechanism containing the lottery balls shall rotate among the criminal district courts and district courts giving preference to criminal cases in a sequential order beginning with Criminal District Court No. 1. Each court shall possess the selection mechanism until all 17 courts have received an assignment … This transfer policy shall overrule all other transfer policies." 2.3: all other transfers "shall be made only by the Presiding Judge and/or the Local Administrative Judge for the fair and equitable division of case loads," and only within the transferee court's jurisdiction. 3.2 VENUE: "Court shall be held at the Frank Crowley Courts Building in Dallas County, Texas and at such other places in Dallas County as ordered by the District Judges." 4.2 ABSENCES: vacations scheduled "so that there will be at least one Criminal District Judge available at all times"; visiting-judge requests go to the Regional Presiding Judge. 5.1 MEETINGS: "The criminal district court judges shall meet the first Thursday of every month at noon." 6.0 PRESIDING JUDGE: elected by majority in December of even-numbered years; two-year terms beginning January 1; "No Presiding Criminal District Judge shall serve for more than three (3) consecutive terms"; paper ballots counted by the Chief Staff Attorney. 7.1: "Each Court may adopt such other rules not in conflict with these rules as may be deemed necessary by the Judge of the Court for the efficient administration of justice."
Reviewer note: Operative mandatory-language provisions quoted verbatim from the registered document (heavy OCR normalized on unambiguous letterforms only: cowt/comi→court, transfetTed→transferred, mmder→murder, spacing rejoined); adoption day in January 2012 unreadable in the scan (blank in OCR); custody sha256 in the registry ledger (doc 1454).
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