Motion filed to speed up removal process of Hays County District Clerk

Hays Co. District Clerk removal process

A motion was filed to speed up the process of removing the Hays County District Clerk.

HAYS COUNTY, Texas - A motion was filed Wednesday to speed up the process of removing Avrey Anderson from office. Requesting the suspension of the Hays County District Clerk pending trial, according to attorney Thomas Just.

"My hope is, going forward, that we can have a new appointment placed in there who actually is competent, who knows the job and can fix the mess that he has created," says Gunter Bennett and Anthes Associate Attorney Thomas Just.

The attorney says he filed the lawsuit in September 2023 representing attorney Chloe Love.

The court documents state the district clerk should be removed due to incompetency and official misconduct.

Hays County district clerk incompetent: judge

A Hays County district judge has found the county's district clerk incompetent, this as a petition has already been filed to remove the 20-year-old from office.

"He has not run that office with any kind of competency whatsoever. There have been a number of issues, primarily the biggest one is that he, on three different occasions, failed to ensure jury summons were delivered to actual jurors, potential jurors," says Just.

In January, there were nearly 6,000 jury notices hand-delivered by constables after the district clerk said technology did not mail out the documents, resulting in jurors not appearing in court.

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According to the court documents, there was a contempt of court hearing held for Anderson following the failed jury summons deliveries.

"At the first hearing, Mr. Anderson claimed that he had no way of knowing or verifying whether or not the summons had been issued, and that came to light in a second hearing that there was a way for him to verify to do that he had slept through the training on how to do it. The judge ruled in that second hearing that he was incompetent and unable to fulfill his job as district clerk," says Just.

The attorney says the district clerk also failed to issue court subpoenas for criminal cases and temporary protective orders.

Hays Co. jury summons error days before trial

The capital murder trial for the deadly shooting of San Marcos police officer Kenneth Copeland is set to start Monday. This comes just days after thousands of jury summons had to be hand-delivered because of an error by a vendor.

"There has been a number of instances when someone was granted a protective order because they were in danger and the district clerk was given that order, and he failed to turn it over to law enforcement so that they could enforce it and protect the individual," said Just.

Just said on Wednesday, the Guadalupe County Attorney's Office filed a motion for a new hearing.

"The next step is to have the hearing to have him suspended without pay pending trial and then the court will appoint a temporary replacement, and then we would gear up from trial," says Just.

FOX 7 Austin reached out to the Hays County District Clerk about the petition and lawsuit. His response was "he is not able to talk until it is resolved".

"He needs to be removed from office, and we allow the office to move forward and be rebuilt," says Just.