Jason Hawkins was appointed to be the Federal Public Defender for the Northern District of Texas by the Hon. Carl Stewart, then Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, on August 26, 2013. He has been reappointed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit twice and is serving his third four-year term.
Mr. Hawkins is a career assistant federal public defender who worked in the Federal Public Defenders Office in the Northern District of Texas for over twelve years before being nominated to the top role.
Mr. Hawkins in a native of West Texas and graduated from then Robert E. Lee High School in Midland, Texas in 1987. He graduated from SMU in Dallas, Texas with a degree in Economics. He attended the St. Mary’s University School of Law where he elected as the Vice-President of the Student Bar Association and was an inaugural member of the St. Mary’s criminal justice clinic. While at the clinic he was part of a joint defense team that represented a man on death row in Texas.
Following a brief stint in private practice in Abilene, Texas, he went to work as the Pro Se Staff Attorney for the Hon. Royal Furgeson, then United States District Judge for the Western District of Texas, in Midland, Texas.
In 1999 he joined the Federal Public Defenders Office for the District of Arizona as an Assistant Federal Public Defender in their Capital Habeas Unit (CHU). He represented prisoners on Arizona’s death row in federal post-conviction proceedings. While there he secured a ruling from the federal district court that Arizona’s rules for restoring death row inmates to competency were unconstitutional. He also successfully argued before the United State Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
In 2001, Mr. Hawkins transferred to the Northern District of Texas as an Assistant Federal Public Defender and began practicing in the office’s trial division. As a trial attorney he obtained pretrial dismissal of twelve cases ranging from drug possession to bank fraud. He was also part of the team that obtained the dismissal of a death penalty certification from the United States Attorney General.
In 2007, he helped create and was named the Supervisor of the Appellate Section. As an appellate defender he has argued over 15 times before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and acted as the sole counsel in hundreds of criminal appeals. As supervisor of the appellate section, he and his fellow appellate AFPDs created a successful practice before the Supreme Court of the United States and attorneys within the appellate section have successfully appeared before the Supreme Court seven times. Mr. Hawkins argued before the Supreme Court in 2011.
In 2009, Mr. Hawkins was named the First Assistant and he helped manage the office of then 18 attorneys and 23 support staff. As First Assistant, he testified before the United States Sentencing Commission on “The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984: 25 Years Later” and was also made a member of the national Defender’s Supreme Court Resource and Assistance Panel to offer advice to Federal Defenders arguing before the Supreme Court.
After being named the Federal Public Defender, Mr. Hawkins expanded the office from 18 attorneys and 23 support personnel to 38 attorneys and 40 support staff to help better serve clients throughout the Northern District of Texas. Mr. Hawkins also focused on diversifying the attorneys and staff.
In 2017 he established one of two CHUs in Texas to represent people on Texas’s death row in federal post-conviction proceedings. Mr. Hawkins was initially authorized to hire three attorneys and has since expanded the CHU to 10 attorneys and 10 legal support personnel. In 2017, he was also selected to testify before the Cardone Commission’s Ad Hoc Committee to Review the Criminal Justice Act in Santa Fe, New Mexico regarding Federal Public Defender independence.
Mr. Hawkins and the IT team also created one of the first discovery servers in the Federal Defender system to serve both attorneys on the CJA panel and attorneys in the office in cases that involve multiple terabytes of e-discovery in the Northern District.
As the Federal Defender he has served as the Fifth Circuit representative to the Defender Services Advisory Group that advises the Administrative Office of the US Courts regarding policies that impact the Criminal Justice Act. Mr. Hawkins was also selected for the Federal Defender Budget Advisory Panel to advise the Defender Services Office during the budget crisis of 2023-2024. He is on the Board of the National Association of Federal Defenders and a member of the Court Advisory Committee for the Northern District of Texas.
As the Federal Public Defender, Mr. Hawkins continues to maintain an active trial and appellate caseload.