04/30/2026
Continuing the Texas Office of Court Administration data series. The question: Which Texas counties are the slowest to resolve felony cases?
A few methodological notes upfront: the analysis focused on 26 counties with populations over 200,000 for comparability. Smaller counties create noisy rankings due to rare events like capital cases. Dallas was excluded because it did not report FY24 criminal court data, making FY25 numbers unreliable.
The index uses total pending cases (active and inactive) at year-end, divides by annual dispositions, and multiplies by 12 to estimate the number of months needed to clear the backlog.
Inactive cases, as defined by OCA, include defendants with warrants or pending charges who are not actively in court but still have ongoing cases. These cases are not closed; the charges remain valid, affecting defendants' ability to work, travel, or find housing.
Although OCA treats inactive cases as removed, they are still unresolved. For example, Comal County has many inactive felony cases, which extend the real duration of cases, making it the slowest large Texas county despite appearing average on official metrics.
The official 'Age of Cases Disposed' excludes inactive periods, misrepresenting how long cases truly take, as dormant periods are not reflected in reported times.
