The Nexus of 2024

DA who sent ‘amorous’ and racially charged messages to drop arson charges against Texas Supreme Court Judge

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by

jon
in ,

Now that’s a story you don’t see every day!

A Texas Supreme Court justice and his wife were charged on Thursday in an arson fire that destroyed their suburban Houston home last June, the judge’s lawyer said.

But in a bizarre reversal, prosecutors plan on Friday to seek dismissal of the indictments against the justice…

It appeared, the lawyer said, that a grand jury had voted the indictments precipitously over the objection of prosecutors.

District Attorney Charles A. Rosenthal Jr., who has been fending off calls for his resignation over amorous e-mail messages to his executive secretary and other sexually explicit and racially charged messages, issued no statement.

Good thinking on the ‘no statement’ part.

Update on January 18: it’s not just any DA, it’s the guy who defended the Texas law that criminalized homosexuality in Lawrence v. Texas at the US Supreme Court!

Comments

One response to “DA who sent ‘amorous’ and racially charged messages to drop arson charges against Texas Supreme Court Judge”

  1. jon Avatar
    jon

    From the Houston Chronicle story:

    Grand jurors anticipated that Rosenthal would seek to have their indictments dismissed. Foreman Robert Ryan and assistant foreman Jeffrey Dorrell said that the district attorney’s office made it clear, even before the grand jury started considering the case, that it was vigorously opposed to Medina being indicted….

    “This is ludicrous. This is not right. This is a miscarriage of justice,” said Ryan, 63, a Republican who has been foreman on at least four grand juries. “If this was David Medina, comma, truck driver, comma, Baytown, Texas, he would have been indicted three months ago.”

    Medina, a former state district judge in Houston, was Gov. Rick Perry’s general counsel from January to November 2004, when Perry appointed him to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court, which hears only civil cases. He was elected in 2006 and is not up for re-election until 2012.

    Reply

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