POSTED: Thursday, January 27, 2011 - 5:04am
UPDATED: Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - 6:17pm
AS REPORTED IN THE NACOGDOCHES DAILY SENTINEL:
In response to a heavy caseload, Nacogdoches County District Attorney Nicole LoStracco and her assistant district attorneys are switching up the way they operate on a day-to-day basis.
The way the 145th and 420th district courts work currently, if one judge is hearing criminal cases for two weeks, the other is hearing civil cases, and then they switch.
"We decided, since there were four of us, we'd switch to two weeks on, two weeks off in court by assigning attorneys to each court and following their two-week criminal, two-week civil schedule," LoStracco said.
Prior to Monday, the prosecutors were working basically five days a week, every week, in one court or the other, with very little time to prepare cases or speak with defense attorneys for negotiations, she said. Oftentimes, staying after work or working on the weekends was required just to get all the work done.
Now, LoStracco and Assistant District Attorney James Krug will prosecute cases in the 145th District Court and Assistant District Attorneys Lauren Gaston and Ryan Chambers will prosecute those in the 420th District Court.
For the next 30 to 60 days, cases each prosecutor had been working on already will be finished by them, LoStracco said.
FOR MORE ON THIS STORY, GO TO: http://dailysentinel.com/news/article_52f789c2-29cc-11e0-ab5b-001cc4c032... [1]