Life at the Harris County Criminal Justice Center

My friend (as well as the Great Grandfather of Criminal Blogging) Scott Greenfield interviewed me for the Fault Lines blog that we work on together.  You can read it by clicking here .

In the past I have linked campaign websites to each name of the candidates.  I didn't do that this year when I wrote the post on the election but only because it is a time consuming process. I am more than happy to link up the websites if you send me the links.  I have already been contacted by one candidate to do that, and I was glad to accommodate him. Just let me know.

The Harris County Commissioners appointed Assistant District Attorney Linda Garcia to be the Judge of the newly created County Court at Law # 16. Linda is a great choice.  She worked for a long time as an Assistant District Attorney before being appointed to the Parole Board.  After her term wrapped up there, she returned to the D.A.'s Office, where she has been ever since.  She has great experience and compassion and will do an awesome job. Congratulations Judge Garcia!

Polling for the 2016 Election closed yesterday at 6 p.m. and we now know the election field for the March 1st primary.  There were a couple of surprises and last minute filings.  Although I'm no Charles Kuffner , I'm thinking that 2016 is probably going to be a very good year for the Republican candidates locally.  I don't think either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders will bring people to the polls in Harris County like Barack Obama.  We shall see. The Democratic Party is going to be hurting in this department as well, because two out of the three incumbent Dems in CJC positions are not running for re-election. As for the primaries, here you go . . . Harris County District Attorney Republicans --  Unsurprisingly, District Attorney Devon Anderson drew no challengers in the Republican primary, which is hopefully a good indicator that some stability has returned to the Party.  Although I haven't always agreed with some of the personnel and policy decisions t

I received word today that former Harris County District Attorney's Office 1st Assistant Jim Leitner had signed up to run for Harris County Attorney. We haven't heard much from Big Jim since his testimony in the David Temple hearing, where he repeatedly claimed that I wrote untrue things about him, and then subsequently admitting that all the things I had written about him were, um, completely accurate .  When we last checked in with him, his employment had been terminated by Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman and he was working as a contract attorney in the 208th District Court. Jim's return to politics is interesting for a couple of reasons.  First and foremost, he never seems to win anything.  He's made a couple of tries to be District Attorney that haven't panned out too well for him.  More interestingly, however, is the fact that he seems to be having a bit of an identity crisis on what political party he belongs to.  Jim has been very public in his sup