I was in trial today when I heard the very sad news that former-HCCLA President and former-HCDA President Earl Musick passed away earlier this morning.
Earl had been in my starting class at when I joined the Office in 1999. He and I, along with John Jordan, Bill Exley, Peter DeLeef, Adam Brown, and Robert Summerlin, were all assigned to the Justice of the Peace Division under Brad Hart. Back then, we weren't in the main office at 201 Fannin because there wasn't room for us. It didn't really matter because the seven of us were dispatched to the 16 different JP courts across the county on a daily basis. We didn't spend a lot of time in the actual office.
We all got to be extremely close friends during the Fall of 1999, largely because we were a group of newly minted lawyers that had very little idea of what we were doing. The Justice of the Peace Division was the perfect place for us.
But unlike everyone else in the group, being a prosecutor was a second career for Earl. He had been a career Houston Police Officer who had retired as (if I recall correctly) a lieutenant. Earl had also been a liason to the District Attorney's Office in 1980s and he knew all of the senior prosecutors. He and his daughter JoAnne had gone to law school together and in 1999, both worked for HCDA.
Earl was significantly older than everyone else in our starting group, but he was probably younger at heart than any of us. Okay, well maybe DeLeef might have given a run for his money, but for a guy who was retirement age, Earl was a lot of fun to work with. He was very big into promoting the camaraderie amongst the seven of us, often organizing happy hours after JP dockets and trips to the Astros games. We were isolated out there in Justice of the Peace world, so we didn't really know many of our fellow prosecutors quite yet.
Earl loved being a prosecutor and he loved hanging out with us guys. He called our group the Magnificent Seven. After we left the JP Bureau and all got a couple of losses under our belts in the County Courts, we modified the nickname just The Seven. We weren't exactly fan favorites with the rest of our prosecutorial peers, but we got a kick out of the bond we had with each other.
Earl would leave the D.A.'s Office before I did, and we butted heads a few times when I was still a prosecutor and he was a defense attorney. But he never seemed to take it personally. I served on the Board of HCCLA when he was President, and he couldn't have been kinder or more welcoming.
One of the things I miss most about my days as a prosecutor was the camaraderie that I felt with my fellow prosecutors. That was something that I have to give all the credit to Big Earl for establishing and maintaining back when we were Baby Prosecutors. He made being a prosecutor fun and for that I am forever grateful.
He was a good man and definitely someone who made being a part of the D.A.'s Office feel like being a part of a family.
