The Federal Lawsuit

In case you missed it, former-HPD chemists Amanda Culbertson and Jorge Wong filed a Federal lawsuit this morning, targeting both Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos and Assistant District Attorney Rachel Palmer.

I've briefly scanned over the petition and it is basically the allegation that Wong and Culbertson were punished and retaliated against for their roles as whistleblowers with the HPD B.A.T. Van scandals.  The petition lists numerous dates and meetings that specifically involve Rachel Palmer and it covers the cancellation of the County's contract with Lone Star College.

I don't know much about Federal Civil Law, but I would imagine that things will move fairly slowly.  It will be interesting to watch it develop.

Breaking News: Grand Jury Subpoenas Go Out

Looks like the 185th Grand Jury is not letting go of their investigation any time soon.  Today, multiple subpoenas went out to both current and former-Harris County Assistant District Attorneys, ordering their appearance before the Grand Jury.

Yes, I do have the names of who got subpoenaed, but I'm not publishing them.  If you name them in the comments, I'm not publishing them, either.

It is worth pointing out that just because they were subpoenaed in no way means that they are targets of the investigation.  But the information they may or may not have could prove to be very interesting.

I do hope that those ADAs who are getting subpoenaed know better than to rely on HCDA General Counsel to represent them.  Lykos and her Gang don't exactly have the best track record of standing by their people if it conflicts with their own interests.

Pat Lykos' Star Chamber Rebels

On Wednesday, October 19th, the 14th Court of Appeals denied a Motion that Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos hopes to God that you don't pay attention to.  However, if you simply must look at it, I suppose you can get to the decision by clicking here.

The case is styled "In Re the State of Texas, Ex Rel. Patricia R. Lykos v. Hon. Susan Brown, Presiding Judge, 185th District Court of Texas" and is filed as "Request for Emergency Stay of Grand Jury Proceedings."

Sound interesting?  Well, it is.  Very interesting.

By reading the District Attorney's Office "request" and the supporting memorandums of HCDA General Counsel John Barnhill and Grand Jury Division Chief Carl Hobbs, a very clear picture of Lykos' attempt to extract vengeance against Amanda Culbertson emerges.

First, a little background.  As I talked about in this post earlier this month, the District Attorney's Office is very very upset with former-HPD technical supervisor, Amanda Culbertson. Ms. Culbertson used to be in charge of making sure that the Intoxilyzers over at HPD were all in credible, working order.

We don't want an Intoxilyzer showing your breath test results as a .14 when really you were a .07, do we?

Ms. Culbertson had some issues with the HPD Mobile "B.A.T." vans that had portable Intoxilyzers in them.  She thought the conditions the B.A.T. van Intoxilyzers were being stored in could affect their reliability.  She told her supervisors.  Her supervisors didn't care.  She quit HPD and went to work for Lone Star College, doing the same technical supervising, but now for County Law Enforcement Agencies.  Culbertson let people know that she left HPD because of her issues with the B.A.T. vans, and that put all of the District Attorney's DWI cases that involved those vans in serious jeopardy.

That made Pat Lykos angry.  She got the Commissioners Court to cancel the contract with Lone Star College so that the District Attorney's Office would never ever ever have to deal with that damn Amanda Culbertson again.

Did that satisfy Pat Lykos?  Nope.  She wants Amanda Culbertson indicted, too.  Amanda seems to have pissed off Lykos in a way that even I have failed to do in my three and a half years of blogging!

Which brings us to the 14th Court of Appeals filing.

Lykos is having her prosecutors present a case to the Grand Jury involving the B.A.T. vans and Amanda Culbertson.  That Grand Jury was created by the 185th District Court, Judge Susan Brown presiding.  Grand Jury proceedings are secret, so we don't know what exactly has been presented to the Grand Jury so far.

But on October 18th,  the Harris County District Attorney's Office vendetta against Amanda Culbertson blew up in their face.

On that day, prosecutors Carl Hobbs, Steve Morris (from Governmental Integrity), and John Barnhill all marched down to the 185th Grand Jury with the intent of calling defense attorney (and former-prosecutor) Brent Mayr as a witness before the grand jurors.  Brent Mayr, if you will recall from my earlier post, is the attorney who filed a Writ against the D.A.'s Office for withholding evidence of B.A.T. van reliability issues.

Upon arrival at the Grand Jury, however, Hobbs, Morris, and Barnhill were suddenly informed by the Grand Jury bailiffs that the Grand Jurors wanted them (the prosecutors) excluded from the room while Mayr was testifying.

In legal terms, the proper response to this is "Holy Catfish, Batman."

Prosecutors are always in the room with Grand Jurors when they are interviewing witnesses.  The only part they are excluded from in a Grand Jury is when the grand jurors deliberate.  The Grand Jurors excluding the prosecutors from the testimony is kind of the equivalent of the President being booted out of a Cabinet meeting.  It just doesn't happen.  I mean, ever.

Hobbs, Morris and Barnhill were incensed, obviously.  Hobbs and Barnhill quickly gathered up 1st Assistant Jim Leitner and stormed up to Judge Susan Brown's court to demand that she order the Grand Jury to let them back into the room while Mayr testified.

Judge Brown politely declined to order the Grand Jury to do anything.  Thus, the Motion (or Request) to the 14th Court of Appeals that would make the Court of Appeals order Judge Brown to order the Grand Jurors to let the prosecutors in the room.

To realize that significance of this, you have to read between the lines (but just a little bit).

The 185th Grand Jury has quite apparently decided that the Harris County District Attorney's Office's involvement into the crucifixion of Amanda Culbertson B.A.T. Van investigation is suspect, if not entirely improper.  They don't want them in the room while hearing from witnesses.

And that has got Hobbs, Barnhill, Leitner, and Pat Lykos scared.  Really scared.  So scared that they are scrambling very quickly to Judge Brown or the 14th Court of Appeals to demand that they get to jump in and stop whatever is going on.  Seriously.  Go read Barnhill and Hobbs' memorandums to the 14th Court of Appeals.

From Barnhill's:

Just prior to being escorted out of the grand jury room by the bailiff, I observed the bailiff in her office and overheard the bailiff speaking in a telephone conversation.  The bailiff said to the person on the phone, "They told me to arrest the DAs."  From that, I assumed that the grand jury had instructed the bailiffs to arrest Mr. Hobbs, Mr. Morris and me if we remained in the grand jury room while the grand jury was attempting to question the witness.

The implication being that the 185th Grand Jury may have started their own investigation, and it ain't into Amanda Culbertson.

It may just be into Pat Lykos and the Harris County District Attorney's Office.

Remember back in that last post when I said this may just be the tip of the iceberg?

I hate to say "I told you so," but . . .  Wait, no I don't.  I told you so.

Watch for this story to get a lot bigger in the days to come.

UPDATE:  Ted Oberg did a great piece on the Grand Jury Scandal.  Check it out by clicking here.

Lisa Falkenberg's Column on Transparency and Retaliation

There's a good article from Lisa Falkenberg in today's print edition of the Chronicle regarding the ongoing dispute between the Harris County District Attorney's Office and Amanda Culbertson, formerly of the HPD Crime Lab.  I will link to it when it comes online.

The long-story-short is that Harris County has apparently had a contract for twenty years with Lone Star College for the testing and maintenance of the instruments used to test breath test results.  Earlier this year, Amanda Culbertson told officials that the Mobile "B.A.T. vans" that have intoxilyzers in them were not reliable, thus jeopardizing numerous DWI cases where they were used.  Her findings were documented in e-mails within HPD, and defense counsel Brent Mayr had filed a Writ in March of this year alleging Brady violations for withholding that information.

Fast forward to July, when defense attorneys Dane Johnson and Jordan Lewis find themselves in trial on another B.A.T. van case, where a trial case had to be continued mid-trial when prosecutors claim that this is the first time they've heard of these allegations.  As noted in the article by the Chronicle's Brian Rogers and Anita Hassan, Amanda Culbertson stated she left the HPD Crime Lab over her reports of the B.A.T. van problems and moved to Lone Star College, where she continued in her duties for a different agency.  Rather than being the chemist for HPD, she is now doing it for Lone Star, which does the supervising of those intoxilyzers used by the Harris County Sheriff's Office and other county agencies.

Apparently incensed that Culbertson had called into question the H.P.D. cases, the County is now trying to suddenly cancel that contract with Lone Star.  You can draw your own conclusions as to whether or not that move was in response to their new employee -- Amanda Culbertson.

As Lisa points out in the article, Lykos and Crew over at the D.A.'s Office are attempting to play the "who me?" card on what has inspired the termination of the contract, acting as if this was a move made by County Commissioners without the Office's involvement.  However, this seems to fly in the face of logic under the circumstances.  At the last Commissioners' Court meeting on the subject, ADA Rachel Palmer, who is the Deputy Chief of the Misdemeanor Division (which handles the vast majority of DWI cases for the Office) was in attendance when the matter was addressed.

To top things off, there have been rumblings and threats from the D.A.'s Office about looking into whether or not they could indict Culbertson for perjury.

Lisa's column is a great one, but I think we are just hitting the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this story.

Sound a little retaliatory yet?

My friend and fellow blogger, Paul Kennedy, pointed out yesterday in his blog that he was somewhat perturbed at the rush to defend Amanda Culbertson and other members of Lone Star College by the defense bar, arguing that it gave them credibility on future cases in advance.  I understand his position, but I think at some point there may need to be a weighing of the evils involved here.

Defense attorneys standing up for a whistleblower witness that is risking her livelihood to testify about faulty evidence that affects hundreds of cases is the right thing to do, even if it means having to begrudgingly admit that you find her credible down the road.

The dangers of a District Attorney's Office that will literally go after that same whistleblowing witness like John Gotti after Sammy "the Bull" Gravano is a much more alarming proposition, in my opinion.

Of Raining, Pouring and Writer's Block

I've gotten a bunch of complaints lately that I haven't posted on anything in a while, either on this blog or the Chronicle blog.

Either there just hadn't been much happening of interest lately or I've just been experiencing a bout of writer's block.  Also, I've been very busy with my Little Man's summer activities and my Favorite Editor from New York being in town for an extended visit.

And then last week, several different things happened that were all worthy of writing a blog post (or two or three) on . . .

. . . and I'm at a place for the weekend that has no Internet connection.

Ah the irony.

One of the major things that happened last week was the stunning revelation by former Houston Police Department technical advisor Amanda Culbertson that HPD's mobile "BATmobiles" (used for the on-site testing of a DWI suspect's breath) had some major glitches in their reliability.  It was covered at length by Paul Kennedy with his post here.  (NOTE:  If you aren't reading Kennedy's blog, you should be.  Yes, you'll probably disagree with a lot of it, and he does wear that bola instead of a tie, but he is worth reading.)

Paul focuses in on the ramifications for HPD, but what I find interesting is the ramifications for the D.A.'s Office.  There are a ton of cases that Culbertson's testimony effects and it will be very interesting to see what the Office does with them.

I'm also quite skeptical of the idea that the D.A.'s Office was unaware of Ms. Culbertson's claims that the BATmobiles were faulty.  Why exactly did the prosecutors ask for a continuance on the case rather than dismiss it?  Look for there to be A LOT more to come from this revelation and the key question you'll need to be asking is "Who knew what?  And when?"

In addition to the BATmobile revelations, last week long-term prosecutor Bill Hawkins turned in his letter of resignation to the Lykos Administration.  I say that he turned his resignation into the Lykos Administration, because Bill Hawkins would have never resigned from a District Attorney's Office.  There is a distinction between the two.

Bill was the lead prosecutor on the upcoming retrial of cop killer Carl Buntion, which was set for trial in the next month or so.  His resignation is surprising in its timing, but there were early warnings that Bill was not going to mesh well with the Lykos Administration.

Integrity often causes conflict with those who have none.

Because Bill has integrity, he is not talking about his departure at the moment, but if I had to guess, I would bet it had something to do with the idiotic idea to have him supervised by a prosecutor junior to him as I detailed in this post.  Especially if that junior prosecutor is a darling of the Lykos Administration when Bill certainly was not.

I will be writing a much better post regarding my friend and mentor, Bill Hawkins when he has finished his last day at the Office.

In other news, I did finally get off my butt and write a new blog on the Chronicle.  You can check it out by clicking here.

And finally, on a sad note, my friend and former trial adversary, John Denninger, passed away yesterday after a battle with cancer.

But, I will be writing a separate post on him momentarily.