Do Texas counties violate drug offenders right to a speedy trial?

I'm no lawyer, so maybe some commenter can help me understand these things. If one category of offender spends, on average, 102 days in jail awaiting trial, and all other types of defendants receive trials in just 42 days, are they receiving "equal protection" regarding their right to a "speedy trial"?

That's what's happening to drug offenders in the Collin County jail, and apparently in other local jails around the state, contributing significantly to Texas' ongoing overincarceration crisis. The Collin County Sheriff and the District Attorney want to fix the problem by paying for a quicker, private lab -- not because they're worried about the constitutional rights of defendants, mind you, but because they need the jail space. Reported Krystal de los Santos of the McKinney Courier-Gazette:

Sheriff Terry Box said that the county is wasting money housing the drug offenders while they await trial, which cannot start until the District Attorney's office has proof that the substance they are charged with possessing or distributing is actually a drug.

"That's been one of our biggest problems," Box said "The drug tests are taking too long, while the inmate sits in jail taking up space."

Housing an inmate costs the count $69 a day when including indirect costs like salaries, or just more than $40 a day directly.

District Attorney John Roach said that city law enforcement officials are using the Texas Department of Public Safety laboratory, which takes weeks or in some cases months to return results for their drug analysis.

The Texas DPS provides the service free of charge, but is much slower than a local laboratory.

Roach said the average amount of time it takes for the county to start a case against an offender in possession of a substance is 102 days, while the average for other offenders is 42 days.

"That shows you how big that gap is," Roach said.

The 49 offenders awaiting lab results who are currently housed in the Collin County Detention Center have been in jail for 3,273 days total. At $40 a day, those inmates have cost the county $130,920. At $69 a day, they've cost taxpayers $225,837.

Those costs all come before the defendant is even found guilty, folks, much less sentenced. What's more, if DPS waiting times are the problem, that means the same time lag in drug defendants getting to trial must be occurring everywhere in the state. This is madness! Constitutional questions aside, how much savings could be had just by releasing most non-violent defendants on personal bond? It'd be cheaper even if you applied special conditions to their release like regular drug testing. Once again, one wonders where are the judges in this, and how are they allowing this mess?

I'm a proud Texan, but some mornings I look around at the criminal justice system in this state, in this country, and wonder if all the much-ballyhooed constitutional rights I was raised to cherish have become just hollow idols to which our government pays lip service, but no longer any real heed.