MARFA — The Presidio County Criminal Court convened last Thursday at the courthouse to hear arraignments and decided on various misdemeanor criminal cases. No court had been held since February 2024, after former County Attorney Rod Ponton opted not to move cases forward and let incoming County Attorney Blair Park handle them instead.
Presidio County Judge Joe Portillo presided over the court, with Park serving as prosecutor and Paul Chambers of Far West Texas Regional Public Defender serving in defense of some of those called to court.
Since most cases are relatively old, and since a Zoom link wasn’t functioning properly for remote attendance, Portillo decided not to issue warrants of arrest for defendants who did not show up — a vast majority of individuals on the docket for the day.
About 24 cases were on the docket for arraignments and pretrial hearings. Several cases were continued after uncertainty over whether the defendants had gotten notice of court, with Park and Chambers saying they would make further attempts to locate them. Other cases were dismissed, including one from 2006 and 2011 that had never received final sign-off from the judge to close the cases.
“This is the first time the three of us have done this,” Portillo told the court. “But I like the way we worked our way through this. Everyone was agreeable, and that’s when you have success. We all have very important jobs to do and the decisions we make will affect somebody’s career, family, work opportunities.”
Portillo said he was agreeable to holding court twice a month to start working to address a backlog of cases. Portillo, Park and Chambers agreed to look into a procedure of allowing a first chance for defendants to appear remotely, then be required to attend in person if they did not show up for that appearance — possibly holding one docket day by Zoom and one in person.
