Life at the Harris County Criminal Justice Center

My first "official" foray into the world of Criminal Justice was my Junior year at Texas A&M when I got an academic internship at the Brazos County District Attorney's Office in April of 1994.  I started working there after my dad had happened to bump into Bill Turner, the elected D.A. back then, and told him that I was really interested in becoming a prosecutor.  Bill offered me an internship with the office and put me under the supervision of his one and only D.A. Investigator,  retired HPD Homicide investigator Gil Schultz. For the next two and a half years (right up until I left to go to law school in Houston), I worked for Bill and Gil.  Gil became like a second dad to me and he took me to crime scenes, autopsies, witness interviews, and trials.  He told me war stories about his days with HPD -- a career where he served ten years in patrol before serving sixteen in homicide. Whenever Gil talked about his days in Homicide, he would talk about his old partner,

I'm happy to announce that my friend, Sgt. Bobby Roberts of Houston Police Department, is taking a well deserved retirement this week after 30 years as a police officer. I first met Bobby when I was at the District Attorney's Office.  He was the lead Homicide detective on the one and only Death Penalty Capital that I ever went to trial on (okay, I was just second chair with Lance Long, but it still counts).  As we prepared for trial, I got to be good friends with both Bobby and some other dude named Roger Something or Other , and we've stayed friends ever since. Bobby went on to work in the Narcotics Division and I went on to work at the, um, well not at the D.A.'s Office anymore.  I got to deal with him on the Defense side of things it was always great to get to work with him on this side of things. There will be a retirement party for Bobby on Friday, February 26th at 11 a.m. at the Houston Police Officer's Union (1600 State Street, Houston, TX 77007).

Election season seems to be moving quickly this year -- probably because of the entertaining (and frightening) sideshow in the Presidential race -- and early voting for the primaries snuck up on me.  It begins today and I hope everyone will get out and vote.  Those folks working Downtown can quickly and easily vote over at the Harris County Administration Building. Remember, you can vote at any polling location during Early Voting, but on Election Day (Tuesday, March 1st), you can only  vote at your designated polling spot. There aren't too many contested primaries in the Criminal Justice elections this year.  I'm going to break them down by Party, although I covered all of the races earlier in this post.  I won't be mentioning the non-contested races. REPUBLICANS County Attorney -- yeah, I know that the County Attorney isn't really part of CJC life, but since Jim Leitner is running, I've got to talk about it.  Leitner is facing off against Chris Carmona.  

As most of the CJC Community knows, Kirby Taylor, a friend and defense attorney, was the victim of a brutal attack that badly injured him, and killed his son. HCCLA's Rand Mintzer, Andrew Wright and JoAnne Musick are running in the Woodlands Marathon on March 5th to raise money to help Kirby with his medical bills.  You can help by donating by going to this website and donating through Paypal. I've known Kirby since I've been a lawyer.  He is one of the kindest souls down at the courthouse.  He has a great sense of humor and an infectious laugh.  The idea of someone want to cause him harm defies reason.  All of our thoughts and prayers are with him during this tragic time in his life. Please donate if you can.

I just learned yesterday that Lenny Villavicencio, the Spanish translator in the 209th District Court and a fixture at the CJC for as long as I can remember, suffered a sudden and unexplained medical incident last week.  From the information that I have, it seems that the doctors don't know exactly what happened, but he seems to be having great difficulty breathing and his liver is in distress. He is currently in a coma. Lenny is married with two young children.  Any help that can be provided to his family would be greatly needed and appreciated.  Below is a GoFundMe website that has been established to help in this time of need. https://www.gofundme.com/zbmkr9yk Please give if you can.