Welcome to the Bell County Justice Center

The Bell County misdemeanor courts and associated departments are now fully moved into their new building at what the County is calling the Bell County Justice Center.  While it is too early to tell if adding the county departments to the building will mean that justice finally makes an appearance in the Justice Center, it will be welcome news for many now that both the felony and misdemeanor courts are in the same building for the first time in quite a few years.

Instead of the “temporary” courthouse annex on Second Avenue, all of the misdemeanor courts are now next to the district courts.  The physical address for all of the criminal courts is now 1201 Huey Road, Belton, Texas 76513. Here is a Google Map of the entrance from Loop 121 onto Huey Road.  You can click on the link labeled “Directions” to get detailed driving instructions from your location to the new complex:

Once you arrive at the intersection above, you can see the complex over to your left.  The turn onto Huey Road looks like this:

As you can see, the street sign indicates it is the 1200 block of Huey Road (even though Google thinks it is Huey Drive).  It intersects with the 2200 block of Loop 121.

Once you enter onto Huey Road, you’ll drive just a short bit to get to the entrance to the complex. 

The complex now consists of the county and district courts, the county and district prosecutors, the county and district clerks, the Indigent Defense department, the Pretrial Services department, the Bell County Jail, adult probation, and the Justice of the Peace for Precinct One.

There is only one public entrance for the entire building, and there are deputies on duty manning the metal detectors.  Therefore, please leave all of your guns, knives and bombs at home.

I cannot imagine what a nightmare the Justice Complex is going to be on Monday mornings when the parking lot is full of potential jurors, defendants, lawyers and the rest of the public trying to fit through the bottleneck that will undoubtedly occur.  I suppose the lesson is, “be early.”

If you are going to the Bell County Jail, you’ll turn to your right and just keep driving as far as you can.  Eventually you’ll run into the jail.  The entrance is in the corner, and you’ll have to walk a

bit across a little foot bridge to get there.  They have a beautiful round entrance area which you’ll see on your right as you walk by it with the summer sun beating down on you from above, but someone decided to put flag poles right in the middle of the driving surface and then on top of that someone roped off the entrance anyway.  A beautiful and convenient drop-off location blocked off with $3 worth of cheap rope.  That’s classy!

Regardless, the new courthouse complex is fantastic and it looks like a million dollars (though I suppose I should say it looks more like almost $100 million dollars)!  Even though the voters repeatedly voted it down, and even though the public may scream about the expense, I (for one) realize how badly the county needed this expansion.  Also, as a criminal defense attorney I previously spent a good chunk of my day driving back-and-forth between the district and county buildings.  At long last, I have one-stop shopping since the county’s “Justice Complex” is now open for business.  Let’s just hope that not all of that complex justice is out-of-stock.

See you at the new courthouse!