Alan Bernstein's Article Today

Today, for our four week anniversary, Alan Bernstein wrote me a fair article on the candidates and their personnel files. Alan, I just feel terrible, because I didn't get you anything. Please forgive me. The article is on the front page of the Chronicle, but I had a little bit of a harder time finding it on the website, so above is the link.

Here's the summary, it's a look into the personnel files of Jim Leitner, Pat Lykos, Doug Perry and Kelly Siegler (in that order).

Jim's file is the shortest, but probably the most glowing. It describes him as "an excellent trial lawyer who works long, productive hours", and it was written in the 1970s. I think its probably fair to describe Jim in the same way today.

Next is Lykos, who Bernstein notes received "subpar ratings" in her judicial bar poll ratings.

Um, yeah, that's one way of describing them. She attempts to justify that because she "didn't let the lawyers run the courtroom". Yeah, no judge does. It should be noted that at the same time period where Lykos was getting low bar poll ratings for refusing to "let the lawyers run the courtroom", Judge Ted Poe was on the bench. Judge Poe never let any lawyer run his courtroom, and he always got excellent judicial bar poll ratings.

Bernstein then lists some snippets from Lykos' evaluation in 2005 from her supervisor:

"A wise choice of language will go a long way toward winning staff and directors to her projects".

A below standard rating on her ability relating to team members and other county staff.

(NOTE: the supervisor hopefully notes that Lykos was "improving her manner of showing professional courtesy, teamwork and respect of support staff and peers").

Are you kidding me? This evaluation was written in 2005, and Lykos still hasn't learned how to play nice with others?!?! A 60-something-year-old woman who is still having to be told the childhood rule of "being nice to others"?!?!?

That's pathetic.

Anyway, on to Doug Perry, who was described as a "bumbler" when he first joined the force in 1981, and ultimately resigned and had to re-apply with the force.

I don't really know what else to add to that.

And then you have Kelly's.

Excellent evaluations. Letters from victims, law enforcement officers, and jurors commending her. There's an evaluation from former judge Joan Huffman (who was at the time Kelly's supervisor) commending Kelly for researching a Defendant's story and ultimately establishing his innocence.

She gets a few dings for making quick "value judgments" on people and speaking about it in "strong terms".

And in 1989, her supervisor, then-Division Chief Chuck Rosenthal listed Kelly could "use some improvements" when it came to her "legal knowledge".

Wow. Talk about irony, Chuck.

Doug Perry

It's getting more and more difficult to write about Captain Perry without being mean.

The poor guy is just in waaaaaaaaaay over his head.

His catch phrase tonight was repeatedly referring to himself as having been "in the trenches". As a matter of fact, he referenced it so much, I was beginning to think he was a World War I veteran. Other than that, he had no substantive answers to real questions.

Captain Perry seems like a nice man, but he just doesn't seem to understand how the job of District Attorney works.

Still, when it came to just general charisma, he did beat Lykos.

So Now What?

A little over 24 hours have passed since Chuck Rosenthal's sudden resignation on Friday. I have to admit that last night, I was still trying to process the meaning of it all on the Big Picture of the State of the CJC.

This morning, I read the articles and the usual blather on the Chronicle blogs. I read all of the candidates reactions, and the reactions of County Officials.

And then I realized, that Rosenthal's resignation yesterday doesn't really change all that much.

So, for the record, the following 10 things remain unchanged by Chuck's departure:

1. Alan Bernstein still isn't running the yarmulke story in the Chronicle.

2. Lloyd Kelley is still a pompous jackass who is pretending to care about his clients when, in fact, he is just trying to usher Clarence Bradford into office. (NOTE: I really liked what attorney John O'Neill said in the Chronicle: "We believe Lloyd Kelley is simply trying to take over public offices that he and his party could never win in a free election." )

3. The usual batch of moronic posts on the Chronicle website will never stop.

4. Pat Lykos still thinks dropping meaningless phrases like "the rule of law" will somehow make her seem qualified to hold the job of DA.

5. Doug Perry is still wearing his trademark hat.

6. Clarence Bradford is still remaining quiet as the Republican candidates attack each other.

7. Jim Leitner still doesn't have the name familiarity that he needs to win the nomination.

8. Kelly Siegler's detractors will still try to link her to the mythical "inner-circle" of Chuck Rosenthal, even though his prescription pain killer revelation seems to indicate he was listening to no one.

9. Kelly Siegler still has the most skill and experience to run the Office (yeah yeah yeah, I'm biased).

10. Crimes are still being committed. Prosecutors are still prosecuting the Defendants. Defense attorneys still defend them. Life goes on.

Looks like the only real difference is that Chuck is now remaining silent on the issue from the comfort of his own home, rather than on the 6th Floor of the CJC.

WTF? - Part I

Damn, I hate the Houston Chronicle. I mean, I know they have always been as biased as my mother at my 5th grade spelling bee, but I mean - - well, damn.

Alan Bernstein wrote a puff piece for this morning's otherwise uneventful edition. Four separate articles on each of the four Republican candidates (I tried to find the link for y'all, but can't find it on the web for some reason. Mark, if you can find it for me, could you post it in the comments?)
At least, it starts off as a puff piece, but what it ends up being is three puff pieces on Lykos, Leitner, and Perry (the Chronicle may still acknowledge him as a candidate, but I don't) and a hatchet-job on Kelly Siegler.

I suppose that the Chronicle editors may have finally realized that stretching out the "nuts and screwballs" comment slowly over four weeks has gotten to be old news. (NOTE TO EDITORS: It was old news about three and a half weeks ago). And Lisa Falkenberg's article on Canadians had played out (which I guess happens when you do an article on something that Fox 26 broke two and a half weeks earlier). So they went looking more dirt on Kelly.

And they found it. But not until they 1) looked into her prosecutorial past for about twenty years, and 2) interviewed the president of her fan club: Dick DeGuerin.

Now let's look at this crap:

Apparently when Kelly was a misdemeanor prosecutor twenty years ago, she used the term "Jew" as a verb. The article points out that she didn't know what it meant, and went to the extra-ordinary step of actually going to the home of an offended juror and personally apologizing.

Now, everybody who is reading this board knows that the difference of knowledge and experience levels between a Baby Misdemeanor Prosecutor and a Bureau Chief could fill volumes. If I recall correctly from office folklore (and Kelly's inspirational talks at prosecutor training sessions), this is somebody who didn't win a lot of trials when she first started out. She worked her butt off to become the best prosecutor in the Office, the State, and the Country.

My point is that the Chronicle and Bernstein are absolutely ridiculous point shows that their zeal against the Office has hit new levels -- very low levels. To write such cheesy puff pieces about Lykos ("I was a charm school dropout" hee hee hee), Leitner ("I shaved my moustache") and Perry ("the tall candidate does often look the lawman part"), and then use Kelly's article to continue the smearing is just poor journalism.

Oh but wait, we aren't quite done yet. I haven't mentioned the Dick DeGuerin source. I can't link to the article, but here's what it says:

"After Siegler's recent prosecution of David Mark Temple in the 1999 killing of his pregnant wife, defense lawyer Dick DeDuerin's unsuccessful request for a new trial noted that she told law students that she regularly made remarks to juries that she knew judges would find out bounds."

So our in-depth background research was getting handed a copy of the Temple Motion for New Trial, Bernstein? Did you not do the follow up investigation into, oh, I don't know, common legal practices, which would have taught you that what is alleged in a Motion isn't evidence. I just point that out because you seem to site the Motion as some sort of proof.

And all it really is is DeGuerin stating: "It sucks that I lost my trial. I want a new one. Kelly must have cheated. I heard that she tells people she cheats."

Give me a break.

I know that there are plenty of people who read my posts on this website that don't support Kelly, and that's fine. But at least y'all will have rational discussions with me over the merits of her candidacy, as well as the candidacies of everyone else in the race (except Perry).

The Chronicle does it's readers a disservice by failing to analyze Kelly as a serious candidate when all they do is blast her with anecdotal stories.

But, then again, I've always kind of felt that the Chronicle did it's readers a disservice by existing.

NOTE: WTF? - Pt. II will be written after I eat breakfast.

The Unofficial Election Update

For those of you who are new to the blog, if you scroll all the way down, I have my unofficial poll on who should win the D.A. election in November. If you haven't voted yet, please do.

I'm very pleased to see that the two most qualified (in my opinion) candidates are the ones leading the pack. That means that the people who are reading and voting on this blog are people who know what they are talking about, and that's what I was hoping for. I'm very happy about the posts that we are getting on the website, and I hope they keep up. I'm trying to be as diligent as I can about responding to all posts, but if I inadvertently miss one, just let me know.

There was little news today on the election front, other than a fluff piece in the Chronicle about the candidate forum yesterday at the Spaghetti Warehouse. The article didn't have much substance to it, but some of the posts (which I'm morbidly addicted to reading) had some interesting stuff.

The most interesting post had to be by someone under the title of "Helpful", who wrote:

"Captain Perry's personal outreach program with the public is legendary among those who know him. I venture to say that he would bring a whole new definition to the term "public servant" as a result. If you're looking for a candidate willing to try new things, he should be at the top of your list. ;)"

I know what "Helpful" was writing about. Do you?