The Belated Firing of John Denholm

So, after eight days of looking desperately for excuses not to have to fire careful deliberation about John Denholm, Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg fired the former Intake Division Chief.  As I'm sure you know, Denholm was thrust into the spotlight earlier this week after rejecting charges on an attempted sexual assault case because the victim on the case might possibly be "an illegal."

Ogg had apparently hoped that the story of Denholm's absolutely inexcusable behavior would blow over with a little time.  Unfortunately for Ogg and Denholm, however, statements from the Houston Police Officer's Union (HPOU), the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), and Texas Congressman (and former Harris County Assistant District Attorney) Gene Wu have made it clear that the story was not going away.  The story broke on television a few nights ago and Keri Blakinger followed up with an article in the Houston Chronicle.  This morning, the Washington Post brought Denholm's stupidity to the level of national attention.

Why it took Ogg eight days to arrive at the seemingly obvious conclusion escapes me.

Ogg is far more well-known for her impetuous decision-making and general hotheaded responses when angered than she is for using cool rationale to respond to problems.  The fact that she waited eight days before firing Denholm is indicative that it was not a decision that she wanted to make.  That's not all that surprising, I suppose, given her history.  Let's not forget how long it took her to decide to recuse the Office from the David Temple case, despite extremely obvious conflicts of interests she had with the case.

But, alas, poor John Denholm's last day did come today.  It is my understanding that Denholm was given the option of resigning, but he refused.  Apparently, in his mind, he did nothing wrong.  He certainly wasn't willing to "take one for the team" and bow out gracefully.  So, Kim did what she had to do and finally sent a minion to take Fredo fishing.



Kim's belated firing of Denholm is not likely to placate anyone with any common sense, and the fact of the matter is that she wouldn't have found herself in this situation if she wasn't such a shameless politician.  Denholm was an unabashed political hire who was put in a position of leadership that he had neither the credentials nor the intellect to handle.

Before I go into Denholm's credentials (or lack thereof), I will, once again, point out that he and I have a personal grudge with each other that I will cover below.

I first met Denholm when he was a lieutenant with the Harris County Sheriff's Office Homicide Division.  He seemed alright to me back then, but I didn't know him particularly well.  His group of Homicide Investigators drank beer with the group of prosecutors that I hung out with back in the early 2000s.

Denholm went to law school and when Kelly Siegler was prepping for trial on David Temple, she asked Denholm to use his law school "expertise" to play defense attorney in a mock trial run-through.  John thought he did a wonderful job, but told Kelly that if he had been the lead homicide investigator on the case when it first happened, he'd have gotten a confession out of him.  Denholm was never short on confidence.

After Temple had been convicted and Denholm had gotten his law license, he started up with his talk about how David Temple was innocent.  One of the people he told about it was none other than Dick DeGuerin, Temple's trial lawyer.  It was a dramatic reversal of opinion coming from Denholm, and many of his former co-workers at HCSO looked at it as Denholm saying whatever he could to ingratiate himself with the famous defense attorney.  One HCSO Homicide Detective went so far as to tell me: "If Denholm dropped dead tomorrow, you couldn't find six guys around here who would carry his casket."

Although Lisa Falkenberg would later portray Denholm (and his cohort, Steve Clappart) as heroes who lost friends for making a stand for Justice in their defense of David Temple, that wasn't the reality.  The reality was that the two of them lost friends because none of those former friends believed that Denholm was doing anything other than trying to advance his defense attorney career with the help of Dick DeGuerin.  The fact that Denholm and Clappart were willing to file capital murder charges on a kid (that not even Temple's own defense team would accuse during the second trial) didn't go over very well with those former friends, either.

I can't help but wonder what Lisa thinks about Denholm in light of this week's events.

A few months after I had blogged about what Clappart and Denholm had tried to do with their secret warrant, I received notice from the State Bar of Texas that John Denholm had filed a grievance against me for trying to "subvert justice" by exposing their plan in my blog.  The State Bar dismissed Denholm's complaint as meritless, of course, but I won't lie -- it was infuriating to know that he had pulled such a pathetic ploy.

When Ogg took Office and hired Denholm as a Division Chief, I was shocked.  I knew that he was a campaign donor, but he had only been a lawyer for about eight years.  Eight pretty undistinguished years.   He had the credentials to maybe start as a junior Felony Two, at best.  The idea of making him a Division Chief was absurd.

Yet, thanks to political patronage, there he was.

Unsurprisingly, Denholm did about as well as one would expect in the Intake Division slot.  He considered himself to be an all-knowing combination of ex-cop and super prosecutor.  Multiple officers claimed he was condescending and rude when they called in for charges. He seemed to enjoy rejecting charges that didn't live up to his high standards.  Those charges that he did take were often baffling.  His reputation with the Defense Bar and his fellow prosecutors ultimately coined the term "Denholm Special" for describing charges that were inexplicable.

For those of us who know John Denholm, learning that he had refused charges on somebody because the victim "might be illegal" didn't really come as too much of a surprise.  Stupid is as stupid does, after all.  The only thing truly shocking about this was Kim Ogg's utter lack of appropriate reaction to Denholm's actions.

Upon learning of Denholm's actions, what Kim should have done was suspend him with pay pending an investigation. 

But, that's not what she did.  What she did was immediately announce that he had been promoted to a coveted spot in Special Crimes reassigned.  Make no mistake about this fact:  any attempts that Kim Ogg makes to pretend she was "investigating" Denholm for the past eight days are utter crap highly suspect.  They knew everything that had transpired immediately.  Another prosecutor had already filed the charges that Denholm had so flippantly rejected.  The decision to move him had already been made.

If it hadn't been for HPOU President Joe Gamaldi's press statement and demand that Denholm be fired, it is reasonable to believe that Kim thought the issue had been handled.  She had removed Denholm from Intake and she probably thought that would alleviate the problem.

The fact that she waited for eight days and a Washington Post article before firing him clearly illustrates that her decision was based more on politics than on outrage over what Denholm had done.  Kim has fired many other people for far less and she has done so far more quickly.  Hell, she's fired other people for less and more quickly today, according to some information I received this evening.

We'll talk more about that later.

The Flip Side of the David Temple Findings

While much has been said about the findings of fact in the David Temple hearing, there seems to be a couple of items that haven't been fully explained by mainstream media.  Contrary to some of the early headlines by the Houston Chronicle, the findings by Judge Gist don't automatically mean that David Temple is getting a new trial.  What Gist has basically written is his evaluation of the hearing and the earlier trial as a summary to the Court of Criminal Appeals.  The Court of Criminal Appeals does have the power to overturn the case, but they also have the power to disagree with Judge Gist's findings.

It could be several months before the Court of Criminal Appeals reaches that decision.

In the meantime, Temple's attorneys, Casie Gotro and Stanley Schneider, have approached District Attorney Devon Anderson and requested that she agree that Temple should be granted bond while awaiting the Court of Criminal Appeals' decision.  Although the law does provide that the D.A.'s Office could agree to a bond during this waiting period, there is nothing that demands they do so.   Anderson declined to agree to a bond, which sent Ms. Gotro and Mr. Schneider into a screaming tizzy.  They held a press conference at Stanley's office, demanding that the District Attorney's Office recuse itself from the Temple case.

Now, I'm a little bit curious.  Did they want the D.A.'s Office to recuse itself before or only after Anderson refused to agree to a bond on Temple?  I mean, if they thought Anderson was cool enough to approach about a bond, did they only change their opinion when they didn't get their way?

And who exactly do they think would be an acceptable Special Prosecutor if they don't want Harris County?  I'm just going to go out on a limb here and guess that Gotro and Schneider want it to be a defense attorney running that prosecution.  They objected to the first couple of judges to try their hearing, so it would probably be expected that they would be pretty choosy about who they got for a prosecutor.  I would imagine that if Anderson did decide to pass the case off to, say, the Montgomery County District Attorney's Office, that Gotro and Company would pitch a fit.

But, see, here's the deal -- Defense Attorneys don't get to pick and choose who prosecutes their cases.  Trust me, if they did, there would be many prosecutors dying of loneliness because nobody wanted them on their case.  As Gotro and Schneider have now taken their case to the media via press conferences and Gotro's highly bombastic Twitter account, I still haven't seen any compelling reason why the Harris County District Attorney's Office should just hand the keys to the courthouse over to the Temple defense team.

While everyone has focused on Gist's findings as they relate to Kelly Siegler, most have failed to notice a couple of other points from the findings.  Specifically, the fact that Gist found that Temple's "newly found" star witness, Daniel Glasscock, wasn't credible.

You remember Mr. Glasscock, don't you?  I wrote about him back in 2012 in a blog post entitled "David Temple and the Dereliction of Duty."  Now, the fact that I wrote that blog post along with this one and this one earned me a little time on the stand in the Temple hearing, too.  I testified for several hours about the blog posts, my education, my marriages, and my salary for working on Cold Justice.  In that blog post, I basically accused Jim Leitner of doing whatever he could to help Dick DeGuerin get the Temple verdict overturned.

I specifically accused him of allowing then-District Attorney Investigator Steve Clappart to run a covert investigation on some "exculpatory evidence" that Clappart's friend (former Harris County Sheriff's Office Homicide Lieutenant and current Defense Attorney) John Denholm had discovered.  That newly discovered evidence came from Daniel Glasscock.  This is what I wrote in 2012:

Clappart has been shopping around a warrant for the arrest of the (then) teen for the Capital Murder of Belinda Temple.  He cites the testimony of a new witness [Glasscock] who, per the warrant, had only learned of Belinda Temple's death (which happened in 1999) only "5 or 6 months ago."  Furthermore, that "Smoking Gun" evidence that this new witness has involves him overhearing one of the three (then) teens admitting to shooting a dog during a burglary and throwing it in the closet.

Yep, you read that right.

There isn't some new confession to the murder of Belinda Temple.  There's the confession of shooting a dog that Clappart and Denholm would like to extrapolate into a Capital Murder warrant.  There are no fingerprints.  No DNA.  No confession.  Yet a licensed peace office and a former licensed peace officer would like a judge to arrest someone for Capital Murder because he stated that he once shot a dog.

Now, apparently the fact that I wrote that blog post back in 2012 really offended Ms. Gotro.  She took to the Twitter airwaves with this:

The only problem with that was that what I wrote wasn't a lie.  How do we know that?  Well, ironically, we know that thanks to everybody's favorite lovable lunatic, Don Hooper.  Don decided it would really put me in my place if he ran a transcript of my testimony, as well as the testimony of Jim Leitner's during the hearing.  I'm actually thankful to him for doing so.  If you want to read them, here they are.  Mine is pretty much just me pontificating on why I thought the way Leitner was handling the investigation was wrong.

However, Leitner confirms pretty much everything I accused him of:

•     On pages 11 & 12, he confirms that early on in the Lykos Administration, he was approached by DeGuerin and Schneider about reviewing the Temple case.  He confirms that he had the Temple files brought to his office.

•    On page 15, he acknowledges that he didn't want Roe Wilson, the head of the Writs Division, to supervise the Temple investigation.

•    On page 16 & 17, he begins talking about how Steve Clappart came to him with the "newly discovered evidence" on the Temple case.  Here's where it gets kind of funny.  Leitner then says:

"So I didn't know if somebody set me up to put something in Murray's blog or something else again, so I said "Wait a minute, Steve," and I believe it was right then and there when he in the office, I called -- I believe I called DeGuerin or I called DeGuerin's office and said, "I have just been told that there's evidence that has to be Brady evidence that exists in the Temple case.  I want you and whomever you want to be with you to come to the DA's office so we can sit down and as they line it out to me, they're lining it out to you at the same time, so nobody can ever say that I've kept anything from you that's Brady."

Um, okay.  So apparently, my blogging skills back in the day were so powerful that whenever someone spoke to Jim Leitner, he assumed it was some kind of trick that I had initiated.  Setting aside how hysterical that is, am I the only person here who finds it a little unusual that the second Clappart says a word to Leitner about a case (that Leitner just so happens to coincidentally have in his office), that the 1st Assistant of the Harris County District Attorney's Office stops EVERYTHING to call Dick DeGuerin?

•    On page 18, he acknowledges that he wanted Clappart's investigation kept quiet, so he intentionally kept it away from the Conviction Integrity Unity, who should have had jurisdiction.

•    On page 105, Leitner begins talking about how Steve Clappart had written an affidavit for an arrest warrant for an individual named Cody Ray Ellis. [NOTE:  This is where the information from Glasscock comes in.  Glasscock said he remembered a conversation from 12 years earlier where Ellis and some others had talked about breaking into a house and shooting and killing a dog."  Not a woman.  Not Belinda Temple.  A freaking dog.]

Leitner's response to Clappart's ridiculous warrant is frightening:

"I have read it and you asked me to look at that, and in my own honest opinion, if I had been a judge, I would have probably signed the warrant."[p 110 & 111]

Just so we are clear here, Leitner has just now admitted that if Clappart had brought him a warrant saying that he heard from a dude who heard it from another dude that a dude shot a dog, he would sign a warrant for CAPITAL MURDER, despite the fact that somebody else was already sitting in prison for that very same murder.

Are you freaking kidding me?  Mental note:  don't vote for Leitner for judge!

I know the Defense Bar is celebrating Gist's Findings of Facts and his recommendation for a new trial right now, but is the Defense Bar really thinking that is sufficient for a Probable Cause for a Capital Murder warrant?  I mean, seriously.  Throwing out some good old fashioned reasonable doubt on a case is one thing, but Clappart and Denholm wanted to go arrest somebody for Capital Murder!

As noted above, Gist found that Glasscock was not credible and noted, "Glasscock substantially varied the facts originally given to Trial Counsel.  In substance, Glasscock repudiated the most important details to the extent that his future credibility as a witness is significantly impaired."

I guess it's a good thing Clappart couldn't find a judge who would sign an arrest warrant on Cody Ellis, isn't it?  Turns out their star witness in that super secret investigation was full of crap.

None of that slowed Clappart and Denholm down from showing up at Gotro and Schneider's press conference though.

So, despite the press conference and Ms. Gotro's warpath on Twitter, it shouldn't really be surprising that Devon Anderson won't agree to a bond on David Temple.  From the prosecutorial perspective, they don't believe that they have the wrong guy in prison. 

At the end of the day, they believe that the person who cornered a pregnant Belinda Temple in her own closet and shot her in the head with a shotgun was her husband, David Temple.  

As much as Ms. Gotro and Mr. Schneider would like for you to believe that David Temple is the next Anthony Graves or Michael Morton, the Harris County District Attorney's Office does not agree -- nor do they have to.

As I said before, whether or not David Temple gets a new trial remains to be seen.  The Court of Criminal Appeals does not have to accept Judge Gist's findings.  If they review the record and concur with Judge Gist's findings, then he most likely will receive a new trial.

If he does get a new trial, a prosecutor with the Harris County District Attorney's Office will most likely be trying it.  Although I'm sure Ms. Gotro and Mr. Schneider would like designate their own prosecutor, they know better than to think that would ever happen.  

That's just not how the System works.

Anthony Graves and Charles Sebesta

Most people who follow criminal law are familiar with the names Michael Morton and Anthony Graves.

Michael Morton was the man who was wrongfully convicted of Murder based on prosecutorial misconduct of then-prosecutor Ken Anderson.  He served 25 years in prison.

Anthony Graves was the man who was wrongfully convicted of Capital Murder based on prosecutorial misconduct by then-District Attorney Charles Sebesta.  He served almost 20 years in prison, awaiting his execution date.

In the wake of Michael Morton's exoneration, the Rules of Discovery in Criminal Law have been drastically changed and Prosecutor Anderson was (insufficiently) punished with (minimal) jail time and the loss of his law license.

Charles Sebesta, however, has remained unscathed.  

For reasons unbeknownst to the rest of us, Sebesta never had to face any consequences for his prosecutorial misconduct that almost resulted in the execution of an innocent man.  He has remained defiant over his behavior, attacking both Anthony Graves and Special Prosecutor Kelly Siegler (who ultimately dismissed the charges against Graves) in full page newspaper ads.

Hopefully, Mr. Sebesta's date with Justice is coming soon.

Today, January 20th, at 3 p.m. on the Texas Southern University campus, Anthony Graves will be holding a press conference, announcing the filing of a grievance against former Burleson County Prosecutor Charles Sebesta.  

Mr. Graves will be joined by Senators Rodney Ellis and John Whitmire, as well as State Representative Senfronia Thompson.  The event is also being supported by Kathryn Kase of the Texas Defender Services, as well as attorneys Bob Bennett and Neal Manne.

In my opinion, the actions of Charles Sebesta were even worse than those of Ken Anderson.  I'm hopeful that today is the first step in making him accountable for his actions.

Cold Justice Returns

Season Two of TNT's Cold Justice, starring Kelly Siegler and Yolanda McClary premieres this Friday night at 7 p.m. Central.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to participate in Season Two's filming because of being busy with chemo and babies and court and such things.  Eric Devlin and Alicia O'Neill split duties on legal consultant this time around.

The first episode is centered around a disappearance in Altus, Oklahoma and Eric tells me it is going to be an awesome kickstart to the Season.

Make sure not to miss it!

A Soft Landing for Leitner?

For several months now, those of us who participate in this blog have been speculating about the future of Harris County District Attorney's Office 1st Assistant Jim Leitner.  Every few weeks, there have been (what appeared to be) credible reports that he was turning in his two weeks notice.  The rumors started before the election in May, and have continued fairly regularly since then.  I hear new reports every week or so that he is finally leaving the Office.  I don't even bother to report them anymore.

The situation is interesting, however.

Since taking over the 1st Assistant position on January 1, 2009 in an unholy alliance with Pat Lykos, Jim has seemed to relish in the role of chief "bridge burner."  He started in 2008 by vowing to his friends in the D.A.'s Office that he would never support Pat Lykos if he failed to make the runoff and then contradicting himself the moment he lost.  His endorsement of Lykos coupled by his later appointment to 1st Assistant smacked of an illegal back room deal that didn't do his reputation any favors.

His blind bullying on behalf of Lykos has alienated the prosecutors that he has been supervising for the past three and a half years.  During his tenure he hasn't exactly earned too many new friends in the Judiciary or the Defense Bar, either.

Whether Leitner leaves on December 31st at 11:59 p.m. or tomorrow, the only certainty is that he will definitely not be the 1st Assistant come January 1st, 2013.  (NOTE:  Unless Lloyd Oliver wins, in which case, all bets are off.)  The big question now is, "What becomes of Jim Leitner once he no longer has that shiny badge that he likes to wear on his belt?"

The answer to that question may be in the works as we speak.

First, let's jump back in time to November 2007.

Kelly Siegler and her career arch-nemesis, Dick DeGuerin, have been embroiled in the hotly contested murder trial of David Temple.  The case is a whodunnit murder that dealt with a prominent Katy football coach charged in the murder of his 8-months-pregnant wife.  Much of the case is based largely on circumstantial evidence, with no confession from the defendant nor any forensic evidence that can definitively link him to the crime.

Unfortunately for David Temple and Mr. DeGuerin, circumstantial evidence is still evidence.  A jury convicted Temple of the murder of his wife and sentenced him to Life in prison.

DeGuerin complained loudly -- both publicly and privately -- that an innocent man had been convicted.  The appellate courts have disagreed and David Temple continues to serve his Life sentence as of this writing.

On January 1st, 2009, the Lykos Crew came to town.  According to reliable sources, soon after Lykos was elected, DeGuerin lobbied the Lykos Administration, specifically 1st Assistant Jim Leitner, to review the Temple case and agree to a reversal of the case.  My reports indicate that Kelly Siegler's trial file on David Temple has been sitting in Leitner's office since very early in 2009.  Why the First Assistant would take such an interest in a case is a mystery to me.  Perhaps it is because Mr. DeGuerin is such a high profile defense attorney.  Maybe Leitner was still angry after the bitter campaign between Kelly Siegler and Pat Lykos?

Whatever the motive was in 2009, nothing really became of the Temple case under the Lykos Administration -- at least nothing helpful to Mr. Temple or Mr. DeGuerin.

But in May of this year, Jim Leitner learned that his boss, Pat Lykos, was going to be out of a job at the end of the year.  He was savvy enough to know that when Lykos' job ended with the D.A.'s Office, his job would end as well.  Leitner knew that on January 1, 2013 he was going to be a defense attorney again, and the folks he would be dealing with would be a group of prosecutors that he had proudly treated like crap for the preceding four years.

Oops.

Where is that Temple file? Mr. Leitner must have wondered to himself.  Because if there was anything that might give him a little bit of goodwill in his job search beginning January 1st, surely the gratitude of Dick DeGuerin would count for something, right?

So, according to multiple credible sources, 1st Assistant Jim Leitner has picked up the David Temple file again.  DeGuerin is still claiming that his client is innocent.  DeGuerin has even hired former Harris County Sheriff's Office Lieutenant (and current defense attorney) John Denholm to work on the Temple case for him.  That's interesting, since Denholm was the Lieutenant in HCSO Homicide when the Temple murder occurred.

Leitner has the District Attorney's Office doing all they can to help DeGuerin, Denholm and David Temple, too.  He has an investigator assigned to do all he can to help them in their investigation.  That particular investigator has been given permission to log as many hours of overtime as he could possibly need with no questions asked -- all at taxpayer expense.

Leitner (who was rumored to have been leaving last Wednesday) has told others that he is staying on at the District Attorney's Office a little bit longer to take care of some projects.  It would appear that one of those "projects" is getting the murder conviction of David Temple overturned.  Although some of the details are not confirmed, apparently a jailhouse snitch heard somebody other than David Temple confess to the murder.  Supposedly the "confessor" is now in Mexico.  That would make this a third-hand confession that Leitner is desperately trying to prove to be true.

If Leitner finds the information he is so desperately seeking, a District Judge would have the power to let David Temple walk out the front door of TDCJ.

Mr. DeGuerin and Mr. Temple would doubtlessly be grateful.

And if Mr. Temple walks out the front door of TDCJ, we should all keep a careful eye on what door Mr. Leitner walks in through.

Having powerful friends can often soften the landing for you when you lose your job.

This Week's Reasonable Doubt's Special Guests (12/15/11)

Normally I don't write about Thursday's episode of Reasonable Doubt until the morning of the show.  That's because we don't know who our guest is going to be until a day or two before.

This week is different, because Todd Dupont and I are bringing you two very special guests that we have been trying to get on the show for quite some time.

With the help of Kelly Siegler, we are proud to announce that this week's Reasonable Doubt guests will be Anthony Graves and Nicole Casarez.  Mr. Graves, as you probably know, served 19 years on Death Row for a crime he did not commit.  Ms. Casarez is an attorney and professor at the University of St. Thomas who was instrumental in proving Mr. Graves' innocence.

It is going to be a great show, and as always, we will be taking your calls and questions.  You can watch it live on Thursday, December 15 at 8:00 p.m. on television or on the web by clicking here.

Black Ink's Open Letter to Kelly Siegler

Black Ink has a new post on his blog worth reading.  It is as sobering as it is accurate.

I have no idea whether or not Kelly will run again, but if she does, Black Ink has a pretty clear picture of what she'll have to go through.  That's Pat Lykos Politics and it is very disheartening to read.

If Kelly does run, she'll have my whole-hearted support.  If she doesn't . . . hell, who could blame her?

New Chronicle Blog Post

This is probably the most untechnological way of "linking a blog", but there is a new post on my Chronicle website about Charles Sebesta and the Anthony Graves case.  You can get there by clicking here.

An Aggressive Prosecutor

One of the things that I am not proud to admit about myself is that I do actually have a subscription to the Houston Chronicle. In my defense, it is only a weekend subscription and I have it because I do like to kick back on Sunday mornings and read the newspaper and drink coffee.

This morning's edition, however, has a column in it from Rick Casey that (as of this writing) still hasn't hit the on-line edition, so I guess for once, it at least helped me get a head start on writing a post. The title of Casey's column nearly made me laugh out loud. It read:

My Fantasy: Siegler puts DA on trial.

Now, nevermind the fact that Freud could have a Field Day with Mr. Casey based on the title alone, I was still shocked to see Casey write something that could even remotely be considered complimentary of Kelly Siegler. Let's face facts, the Houston Chronicle wouldn't say nice things about Kelly if she took a dinner spoon, dug a mile into the earth, and rescued 33 Chilean miners completely by herself.

Kelly Siegler represents to the Chronicle and its staff something that they disapprove of: an "aggressive" prosecutor. One who actually knows her job and the law, and enforces it to the best of her ability, regardless of public perception. For some reason, we live in a city where the local newspaper treats the profession of prosecution with same resentment of a high school senior who got caught spiking punch by his teacher.

And in the world of those kill-joy prosecutors, there was never anyone better at it than Kelly.

But damn, what to do when Kelly actually is pointing her accusations at the actions of another prosecutor?

One like Charles Sebesta who truly broke the law, pressured and manipulated witnesses, and sent a factually innocent man to Death Row. A guy who decided that the preliminary readings of a high-profile case were enough to demand prosecution in his small town county, and then bent the facts to meet his theory of guilt. Someone who clearly didn't know what he was doing, but wanted to look good while doing it in the public perception.

Well, then, Rick Casey guesses it would be okay if Kelly were to prosecute somebody like Sebesta. I guess, in Casey's mind, as long as she were feeding on one of her own profession, then it would be okay to let her do her job.

The reality of the situation, however, is that Casey is just finally acknowledging something that most prosecutors have always felt, and that is that bad prosecutors like Charles Sebesta are hated even more by other prosecutors than they are hated by the general public. Prosecutors like Sebesta (and Mike Nifong before him) give prosecutors ulcers because they rock the credibility of prosecutors everywhere.

And yes, before somebody else points it out, Chuck Rosenthal gave all prosecutors a pretty big kick in the crotch with his actions, too.

My point is that while Casey and the Chronicle staffers loved taking potshots at Kelly Siegler when she was running for D.A. because she was too "aggressive", they would suddenly love to have her back to prosecute somebody like Sebesta. It is almost like they are suddenly getting a perspective on what it is like to be a victim of crime and hoping you have a good prosecutor trying it.

And don't get me wrong, an "aggressive" prosecutor is not necessarily synonymous with a "good prosecutor".

But the biggest fallacy in logic that the Chronicle always seemed to make was that being a good prosecutor was mutually exclusive from being an aggressive one as well.

Kelly was always both, and I know that the actions of prosecutors like Sebesta, Nifong, and even Rosenthal made her sick to her stomach. In all the criminals she prosecuted over the years, I can guarantee you that she has much more contempt in her heart for Charles Sebesta than for, say, Susan Wright.

I'm sure that based on this post, I will get my usual taunts from folks like Rage and Grits, pointing out that a defense attorney such as myself shouldn't have any clients since I'm so pro-prosecution.

Whatever.

Yeah, you know what, I'll admit it. I'm very pro-good prosecution. Even when it is aggressive.

I will sing the praises of a good prosecutor who knows the law and knows the facts of his or her case. One who doesn't hide the truth or try to twist the law. One who will sign a dismissal when the facts or even compassion calls for it on one case, and then will turn around and seek the death penalty in the next one. One who, at the ends of the day, strives to do what is right, and isn't even afraid to do it aggressively.

I'm a defense attorney and the job of defending is on me. Dealing with a good prosecutor makes my life and my job easier, believe it or not. Even when that prosecutor is telling me things I don't want to hear. I can't change the facts of my cases, but I'll always respect a good fight with a good prosecutor who I trust.

And for the record, there are still many many good prosecutors left in the Harris County D.A.'s Office.

It strikes me as sad how much disdain the Chronicle had for Kelly Siegler during her 2008 campaign for District Attorney. I never quite understood why they thought Kelly's aggressiveness made her somehow less worthy of the job than a career-politician who was more adept at saying things the public wanted to hear. You would have thought that city newspaper folks would have dug a little deeper into what really makes a truly good District Attorney.

Who is truly the better candidate to be a District Attorney? A pandering politician or an "aggressive" prosecutor?

I'm sure that today Anthony Graves wishes he had an aggressive prosecutor like Kelly Siegler back in 1992.

What to Do With Susan Wright

Back in the Spring of 2004, I got the opportunity to sit second chair with Kelly Siegler on the State of Texas vs. Susan Wright -- a highly publicized murder case at the time which was made even more highly publicized during trial.

The short version of the case was that a young mother tied her husband, Jeff Wright, to their bed and stabbed him over 190 times before burying him in a flower bed right outside their bedroom door. She then reported him to the police as having beaten her and then left their home on foot. For a more detailed version of the case, here is an article I wrote for TDCAA several years ago.

The case got National attention when Kelly had us reconstruct the bed in the middle of Judge Jim Wallace's courtroom and did a re-enactment of the stabbing for the jury. (NOTE: No, I was not the dude in the bed. That was Paul Doyle.)

Ultimately, Susan Wright was convicted of the murder of her husband and was sentenced to 25 years in TDCJ. The jury had rejected a claim of "Sudden Passion" (which would have capped sentencing at 20 years) and had also rejected the State's request for 45 years.

Almost immediately, the verdict was attacked both in the Press and in the Appellate Courts by the shy and demure Brian Wice. He took on Susan Wright's case and for the past five years has fought like a mad man to get her a new trial. Brian is a good friend of mine, and although we were on opposite sides of this particular issue, I truly respect the work he did on this case.

Last year, he and Carmen Roe took the case to a hearing in front of Judge Wallace making the claim that Wright's defense counsel had been ineffective for failing to put forth an effective Battered Woman Defense. Specifically, Brian and Carmen were arguing that defense counsel had erred in not putting on witness Mistie McMichael (Jeff Wright's ex-girlfriend who alleged abuse by him) and an expert on Battered Woman's Syndrome.

Although Judge Wallace did not have the power to overturn the case, he did make findings agreeing with Brian's assertions that there was ineffective assistance, and the case was then taken to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. In a ruling that I will admit absolutely stunned me, the Court ruled 9-0 that Susan Wright deserved a new punishment hearing.

With that ruling, the ball is now thrown into the District Attorney's court to see what they want to do with Wright's case on punishment. Both Kelly Siegler and I are both gone from the D.A.'s Office now, obviously, so new prosecutors will be making the decisions.

The case goes back to the 263rd District Court with Judge Wallace. Mia Magness is the Chief in that court now and she is one of the best trial prosecutors that the D.A.'s Office still has left. You might remember her from that little Clara Harris trial awhile back.

But the chances of the Wright case actually going back to trial aren't in Mia's hands at the moment. The decision of whether or not to plea bargain the case away is in the hands of Pat Lykos and Jim Leitner.

What they will decide to do with the Wright case will be a pretty big statement on their feelings for victim's advocacy and how much they will bow down to the defense bar.

Obviously, Wice and Wright would love nothing more than to get a plea offer of time served. The Office could accomplish this by letting her to plead to 5 years TDCJ. In lieu of that, the Office could also plead her to 10 years TDCJ making Wright automatically eligible for parole.

I hope they don't. And here's why:

-Susan Wright was convicted of tying her husband to a bed and stabbing him over 193 times.

-the number 193 is an under-estimated count, because as Dr. Dwayne Wolfe testified, there were so many wounds that many of them ran in together and couldn't be counted individually.

-Wright testified that she went for her husband's eyes first when the stabbing began.

-Wright also testified that in the middle of the stabbing, she was interrupted by the couple's young son, who she had to put back to bed. (Can you imagine what she looked like walking down the hall with him?)

-Wright went to great efforts to disassemble her bedroom and clean it with paint and bleach.

-while Jeff Wright's body was being desecrated by the family dog in the back yard, Susan had the audacity to go file a police report that he had assaulted her.

I expect supporters of Susan Wright to claim she was a battered woman, but her claims weren't even close to credible. During trial, she testified to only three specific incidents of abuse (while saying that Jeff beat her continuously, she could only remember these three).

The three incidents were as follows:

1. An incident where Susan had a small bruise under her eye. She told neighbors that her son had accidentally popped her in the face with an action figure. The neighbor saw the action figure and saw it was consistent with the size of the bruise.

2. An incident where Jeff (who was a very large and strong man, especially when compared to Susan's small frame) had repeatedly slammed her hand in a heavy door. She admitted under Kelly's cross-examination that her hand was not broken and she never sought medical treatment for it. Her description was rejected by the jury.

3. An assault the night of the murder which had led to bruising on her arms and legs. All the bruising on the arms and legs were consistent with somebody banging themselves up while moving a body and disassembling a bed.

And let's not forget that Jeff Wright's body was found with ties around both wrists and both ankles, with corresponding ties found tied to the bed frame. There was also candle wax dripped on his genitalia.

The crime scene was much more indicative of kinky sex than an assault, folks.

So, Pat and Jim, you've got a decision to make.

Susan Wright tortured her husband and the father of her children and killed him about as brutally as one can imagine. Jeff Wright was far from the perfect husband, but he didn't do the things Susan claimed. Her claims of domestic abuse are an affront to all the real victims of domestic violence out there.

Quite frankly, 25 years TDCJ was a gift from the jury.

If you guys are interested in doing the job you were elected to do, it's time to make a statement.

One of your best prosecutors could retry this case in a heartbeat and leave Susan Wright wishing for that 25 years.

Or you can just surrender and plead her out to back time.

If I were you, I'd take this case back to trial.

Kelly Siegler Writes Again

Kelly Siegler authored another post on the Women In Crime blog website (which if you haven't read yet, you should. It is really really good.)

The topic, I'm sure will generate a lot of conversation, because it stands for the rarely asserted position that prosecutors aren't too aggressive, but, in fact, often not aggressive enough. Now, I'm sure that this proposition will have Mark Bennett, Grits for Breakfast, and PJ spitting coffee on their latest edition of the ACLU Newsletter.

Critics of prosecutors (especially those prosecutors in Harris County) are much more fond of pointing out how prosecutors will attempt any hurdle just to convict, but there is a flip side to that tired old argument.

Sometimes prosecutors are reluctant to take on cases where they are going to have difficulty proving that case. One of my friends who is a prosecutor seemed to take offense at that premise, but I think that everyone who has ever been a prosecutor would have to admit to pleading out a case for less than it was worth because it was going to be very difficult to prove on occasion.

Now before my more Liberal Friends start screaming: "Well you should be reluctant to try cases that you can't prove!", think about it for a second in terms of the truly serious cases. Not the misdemeanor thefts -- the sexual assaults, the murders, the injury to a child cases.

These are the cases that Kelly was talking about. The ones that prosecutors really should be bending over backwards to try to prove if they believe the Defendant is the person responsible for the crime. And, no, my Liberal Friends, there is nothing wrong with working hard to make those cases. There's nothing wrong with re-examining and re-investigating those minute details while trying to get a conviction. It's a lot of leg work, but it's that kind of leg work that was the motivation for a lot of us to become prosecutors in the first place.

And who knows? Sometimes that kind of leg work pays off. If you don't believe me, just ask David Temple.

I think an implied message also exists in Kelly's posting, and that is that sometimes victims' families, and even the detectives themselves will have to keep on kicking and screaming to get a case accepted and put before a jury.

That message may be even more relevant as we are about to have an elected District Attorney who has never tried a criminal case as a prosecutor. Sometimes the victims may need to keep kicking and screaming to get their day in court when a case seems, on first glance, to be impossible to prove.

But that's just my take on it.

Another Need for a Prosecutor for Hire?

KHOU.com is reporting that the entire Montgomery County District Attorney's Office is having to recuse itself from a murder case involving two year old Madisyn Farrington.

The article reports that District Attorney himself had interviewed Madisyn's eight-year-old sister, who was a fact witness on the case. According to the article, the sister had a "different story" from the one she originally told investigators, although it does not go into details. Whatever the details are, they must be substantial enough for the entire office to be forced to recuse itself from the case in it's entirety.

I find this to be completely bizarre.

I realize that Montgomery County's District Attorney's Office is substantially smaller than Harris County's, but it sounds like the proper procedures were followed by D.A. Mike McDougal in interviewing the child. The interview was not recorded, but in my experience, I never taped a meeting with a witness prior to trial.

Not once.

But I did normally have a witness to the interview (especially when dealing with a child witness). In fact, it is this exact type of scenarios that make the Harris County District Attorney's Office's Victim Witness Division such a God-send. They are the ones who typically will come sit with the child during the interview, and make the child feel at ease. If the child does something unexpected, they can become a witness.

I've even had a routine meeting with a child witness turn into an outcry of additional sexual abuse before, and thankfully, there was a person from Victim Witness there to be the official witness.

KHOU is making a big deal out of "the interview" not being recorded, but I don't see why the second prosecutor as a witness doesn't remedy that. Of course, if the changes in the story amount to Brady they must be disclosed, and the other prosecutor "witness" can't be sitting second chair with McDougal when the case goes to trial.

But what's causing the whole freaking recusal? Am I missing something?

Let's play out the scenario:

The child testifies. The defense attorney is well-informed of any inconsistent statements that she made. She either acknowledges the changes on the stand, or she doesn't. If she doesn't acknowledge them, then the defense attorney calls the "witness prosecutor". What's the big deal?

McDougal states that he doesn't want to be put in the position of cross-examining someone who works in his own Office? What the hell is that about? Is he going to attack his moral turpitude or something? If the child recanted or something along those lines, then so be it.

Investigators, victim witness personnel, and even prosecutors in Harris County take the stand all the time for various and sundry reasons. There's nothing tricky about it. Hell, it can actually be kind of fun sometimes.

I'm sure that there is more to the story than KHOU is reporting at the moment, so I'm not making any judgment calls, other than saying I don't understand it.

What is a tragedy is that it will delay the trial, apparently, which is causing a hardship for the victim's family.

Sounds like a job for Kelly Siegler, if you ask me.

Kelly Siegler Takes a Shot at Blogging

Check it out -- http://womenincrimeink.blogspot.com/2008/06/theres-no-such-thing-as-closure.html

Kelly Siegler's Resignation

I'm sure by now that all of you have heard that Kelly Siegler resigned, effective immediately from the Harris County District Attorney's Office.

I know that death penalty opponents nationwide are rejoicing that the most effective voice for victim's advocacy has retired, but I think that there are many more who fully realize the tremendous loss that Harris County has suffered today. There was probably no person who tried harder to assure that justice was done, regardless of where and when a crime was committed, or who the Defendant was (or who he hired to represent him).

The cynics may laugh and say that it's not like she could completely stop crime in Houston. Fair enough, I suppose, but if there were more hours in the day, she just damn well might have.

Without Kelly Siegler:
-A man who fired a shotgun into the head of his eight-month pregnant wife may still be going to work every day without ever feeling a single repercussion of his actions.
-a young man who killed a woman in a wig shop so he could experience "the thrill" of taking another human's life might be still partying it up in college.
-a man who paid another man to kill his wife, rather than divorce her, might be relaxing at home.
-the man that took that money to kill may have done other unspeakable acts to finance himself.
-the murderer of a Precinct One Deputy Constable may be sitting around, having a beer, bragging to his friends about "that cop he killed".
-one of the murders of Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena may have been the grand leader of the gang he was joining that night.

And that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of all she has done.

I'm proud to call Kelly Siegler a friend and a mentor to me. She was a prosecutor's prosecutor who could pick up a file and understand the pain that a victim or a victim's family had been through.

She never thought of doing anything other than being a prosecutor.

I mean, hell, look at it. Her first day as a private practitioner and she picks up a gig as a special prosecutor in Wharton County. It may not make good business sense, but it speaks volumes of who Kelly is, and who she always has been.

You can't be a prosecutor anywhere without picking up some enemies along the way, and I'm sure that the family members of murderers and criminals that she put in prison are having a cathartic release over on the Chronicle message boards. Members of the Defense Bar have recognized her talent as a formidable opponent, and only those with a bitterness that bred classlessness took joy in her departure.

But for those families whose lives she touched- the ones she drove out to talk to-the ones she met with for hours in her office-the ones that she would spend her time consoling during every break in a trial-they know that the job of being a prosecutor is one where you make a stand for what you believe in.

She was accused of being "win at all costs" - an easy phrase from ill-informed critics. I think she's more aptly described as a prosecutor who gave everything she had for a case she believed in.

Seriously, what did her critics expect?

"Hey Kelly, would you mind kind of half-assing it during the cross of the defendant? Thanks."

Kelly Siegler never did anything half-assed in her life, and the Harris County Criminal Justice System and the District Attorney's Office has never had another prosecutor with more dedication or talent.

In the history of the Office, there has probably never been a prosecutor more deserving of the name "Legend".

The Prosecutor Translation

Mark. Mark. Mark. Mark. Mark. You were so nice the day after the election, and now you've hauled off and written this crap.

Now, I've grown accustomed to your article comments when you, Steve Gustitis and that Scott Greenfield dude start applauding yourselves as Defense Attorneys like you were from the League of Extraordinary Gentleman, but come on, who appointed you the Gate Keeper to who and who is not going to translate well from the job of prosecutor?

Now, granted, you hedged your bets and said Kelly might end up being a good defense attorney, and then you added:but give ‘em all a few years of proving that their hearts are in the right place as defense lawyers before you even think about trusting them with your freedom.

Isn't that a bit of a Catch-22 for the poor ex-prosecutor?

Now, you clarify your position in your comments that you aren't threatened by the business competition because there are plenty of cases to go around. I agree with that. Most prosecutors (like allegedly myself) don't know doodly-squat about the Federal system, and are pretty much restricted to having a good base of knowledge in the State courts. You, on the other hand, have spent a significant amount of your career, um, fighting the Feds (and, on occasion, the Fashion Police).

But when you say that a criminal defendant can only be well-served by a "true believer", and thus a new former-prosecutor just won't be as good, I think you may be out of your mind.

I've always felt that extremism in any field is foolish and frightening. The Radical Right scares the pee-pee out of me every bit as much as the Radical Left.

The same applies to prosecutors and defense attorneys.

Any prosecutor that believes that "everybody charged is guilty" is as foolish as the defense attorney who believes that every client they have is factually innocent. If you ask me, neither is going to be that swell of an advocate when it comes to trial time.

That type of zeal leads to tunnel-vision, and tunnel-vision leads to mistakes. Sometimes enormous mistakes. For a prosecutor who makes the "facts fit his ideas", the potential for injustice is obvious.

But how about the "true believer" defense attorney who tells his client: "I don't care if you have three videotaped confessions, and the murder was caught on videotape, and the State is only offering you 10 years. If you tell me you didn't do it, then I say, let's tee it up!"

I would suggest to you that a person charged with a crime is best served by an intelligent, well-spoken, hard-working pragmatist. One who can go in and assess the case from both the defense side and the State's side, and offer good advice. If I got charged with a serious crime, I would want somebody that I knew wasn't going to bullshit me, even if I was bullshitting them!

True Believers start thinking of themselves as bulletproof, and that's not good for anybody.

If I ever find myself in trouble with the law, give me a good realist who knows how to fight over someone who thinks that their righteous indignation will carry the day.

(NOTE: As an aside, check out this post by Harry Lime for a great write up on Kelly Siegler. She's clearly the James Bond of prosecuting.)

Rick Casey's Article on Kelly Siegler

Rick Casey wrote an article on Kelly Siegler that has generated some conversation on the blogs. A defense attorney friend of mine pointed it out to me (since I've been trying to avoid reading the news for a week), and his opinion of it was that the article was designed to praise Kelly. One of the commenters on Casey's article thought the article was "kicking Kelly while she was down". And somebody in one of the comments on Bennett's article on the topic pointed out that we were all missing the boat, because the article was clearly satire.

Um, okay.

Me, I viewed the article from a more practical standpoint. It was a complimentary article that Rick Casey buried until after the election so as not to displease his boss, Jeff Cohen by saying something nice about Kelly Siegler. Casey was also writing the article in a weak attempt to make peace with Sam Siegler so that Sam doesn't sue Casey's rear-end.

Casey is the one who reported (without fact checking) that Dr. Siegler had been the sender of the racist e-mails on Chuck Rosenthal's computer, which was NOT true. Now, after Sam and Kelly had been called racists in public thanks to Casey's article, and he learned that it was untrue, he printed a tiny little retraction buried within another edition of the Chronicle, that I'm willing to bet that none of you ever saw.

Casey is trying to do a little bit of sucking up so that his own reputation doesn't get dragged through the mud like Sam Siegler's did.

The difference would be, however, that if Sam decides to file a lawsuit against Casey, it will actually be based on facts that he knows to be true.

If you go back and look at his columns during the election, Rick mysteriously didn't have a whole hell of a lot to say about the Republican race. That's a little out of character for him, wouldn't you agree?

The Reason? He screwed up so big time in his first column on Sam that he was a bit gun-shy for the rest of it.

Now, I know that libel and slander suits are about as popular with juries as trying a 88-year-old with cataracts for possession of marijuana. And yeah, there would be debates over whether or not Sam was a "public figure" and if that changed the standards.

But, by God, it would get some attention, wouldn't it?

An Open Letter to Kelly Siegler

Dear Kelly,

You have been my friend for a long time now.

You are one of those people in my life that I can truly and honestly say that I am proud to know.

After Chuck's debacle at the end of last year, you stepped up to the plate to fight for what all of the Assistant District Attorneys who needed something to believe in.

You aren't a politician, and you never were. You are too honest and true to yourself to be a politician. You offered yourself up for to so much scrutiny to protect what the Harris County District Attorney's Office has always stood for (no matter what the critics said). You let people like Pat Lykos and Terry Lowry and Jim Leitner attack your professional and personal life.

And you did it all for us.

You sacrificed yourself to make one last valiant stand to see that justice was done.

And we went out in a Blaze of Glory, didn't we?

I'm so proud of you, Kelly.

I'm proud of the fact that the most talented lawyer in the United States stayed in a government job to do what was right on behalf of so many people.

I'm proud of the advocacy you have done on the most downtrodden of all people.

I'm proud of the fact that when this Office, in an absolute state of despondency after Chuck destroyed it, turned to you.

And you answered them with your willingness to serve.

There are friends that you call "friends" and there are friends that you call "family".

You are family to me and my family. You, Sam, and the girls. You always will be.

I'm so proud of you that I can't see straight.

You are the greatest lawyer that I have ever known, and in time, Harris County will realize everything that they lost tonight.

Thank you for every last thing that you have done for the past 22 years, and especially for the last four months.

You remain, always, my hero.

So Now What?

Obviously tonight was a disappointment to me and a lot of people.

One of the mantras that you learn when you first become an Assistant District Attorney is that sometimes, the bad guy wins.

Tonight, the bad guy clearly won.

I offer this advice to the ADAs who supported Kelly Siegler because they knew she was the best candidate in this race.

Keep quiet. Don't be politically active. This too shall pass, and if you ride out the storm, you just may be okay.

To Pat Lykos, congratulations on defining everything ugly about politics. You weren't qualified, yet you won. Your behavior disgusts me no less than it did this morning. For a person interested in law and order, you have done more to set it back by your actions than anything I could possibly imagine.

I'm a life-long Republican, but you can guarantee that I will be voting for Clarence Bradford in November. He's kept quiet during this election and watched you damage your own party. And yet, through it all, he has yet to call the Assistant District Attorneys racist, drunks, or corrupt. Something that you have done gladly. I will take his behavior over your classless evil any day of the week.

To Jim Leitner, I hope you will take time to apologize to the ADAs tomorrow for the wound in their backs caused by your stab wound. Never in my life has someone plummeted more in my personal opinion of them.

To Kelly, for the job you've done, I will make a post on it in about five minutes.

But to paraphrase what I'm about to write, you remain, always, my hero.

Go Kelly! Go!

It's finally here, folks! Call all your friends and family and tell them to call their friends and family and co-workers.

Tell them to go vote!

And tell them to remember that there is only One Qualified Candidate in this Race!

Heroes - It's Worth Repeating

Growing up, I never wanted to be a lawyer.I actually wanted to be a cop (or an FBI agent to be more precise).

As I got older, I realized that getting shot at and risking getting killed on a daily basis was probably not the most stable way to raise a family. So that fell by the wayside, although most cops remain my heroes to this day.

Ultimately, I decided I wanted to be a prosecutor by the time I reached high school. I went to law school, not to become a lawyer, but a prosecutor. I had no interest in civil law, trusts and wills, torts, contracts, or any of that. I suffered through three years of dry material so that I could be a prosecutor.

I wanted to do what the police did, but I wanted to do it in a courtroom. I wanted to stop bad people from doing bad things. I wanted to help people who had been hurt by crime.

I was an intern when I first met Kelly Siegler.

Ironically, she and Vic Wisner were trying the one death penalty case that she didn't get the death penalty on.

The defendant's name was Brian Gonzales. He had shot and killed a young man named Omar Aycox while robbing an AMC movie theater. Mr. Aycox was a young African-American man who was home for the summer from college, and helping his family out by working through his summer vacation. If I recall correctly, Mr. Aycox had a mentally handicapped older brother that he had a special bond with. Mr. Aycox's brother thought that the sun and moon set by his baby brother.

Omar Aycox was shot four times in the back as he fled from Mr. Gonzales during a robbery.

I watched Kelly Siegler try that case through the guilt/innocence phase as if Omar Aycox was her own child. After a quick guilty, she proceeded into the punishment phase with the same passion. (NOTE: The only thing that saved Brian Gonzales from death row was a pregnant juror that went into early labor during punishment deliberations, thus resulting in a mistrial.)

But as a first year law student, watching Kelly Siegler try that case, she became my hero.

I watched Kelly Siegler prosecute him, and I wanted to be just like her. I wasn't a five-year-old kid who thought being a fireman would be cool. I was a 25-year-old law student who was in awe that a lawyer could be that passionate about her case.

That good at what she did.

I doubt Kelly remembers me back from those days, or knows what the effect of watching her in trial had on a young law student.

It made me want to be the best prosecutor in the world, and I knew that where I wanted to be was in Harris County. I wanted to walk amongst the Giants of the Criminal Justice World. I wanted to work for Johnny Holmes. I wanted to try cases against lawyers like Racehorse Haynes and Dick DeGuerin.

What can I say? I was a starry-eyed kid.

And ultimately, I did become a Harris County prosecutor, and other than my family, there's nothing I'm more proud of in my life.

I don't consider myself a "hero", but I don't see anything wrong in being proud of the job I've done. I'm proud of the people that I've done the job with. And I'm equally proud of the people I've done the job against. Whether you are a prosecutor or a defense attorney, if you have practiced in Harris County, you have truly walked amongst Giants.

Tomorrow, one of my heroes is on the ballot to become the District Attorney of Harris County, Texas. In a less controversial time and place, the decision would be one that there could be no question about.

A true leader. A prosecutor's prosecutor. A true hero would be the unarguable choice.

But instead, we have whispers and gossip. Stones overturned by a newspaper that is more willing to embrace a person convicted than a person victimized.

Innuendos by a practiced and polished politico who's "passion" for justice is no more than a cloak disguising political ambition. That same politico will most certainly begin to unceremoniously fire people who dare to cross her, regardless of their skill, talent, or passion for the job.

Has Kelly said or done things in her life that she wishes she could take back? Of course.

But, Dear Reader, so have you. So have I. So have we all.

Tomorrow Kelly Siegler will be on the ballot to become the leader of the job that she was born to do. For 22 years, Harris County has had the benefit of having a Legend of the Game walking amongst the Giants on the State of Texas' behalf.

The thought of this job that I have loved in the hands of anyone else is physically sickening.

Whatever happens tomorrow, Kelly Siegler will always be one of my heroes.