Live by the Hatchet, Die by the Hatchet
In Harris-County-Prosecutor Land, there is a strong current of belief that Kelly Siegler a) should have won the 2008 Republican Primary instead of Pat Lykos; b) should be DA now; and c) should challenge Lykos for the position in 2012. Prosecutors who don’t find the Lykos DA’s Office as amiable a place to work as the Rosenthal DA’s Office was see Siegler as their white knight, poised to ride in and bring back those good old days.
But Pat Lykos is politically formidable. Siegler could no more beat her in a primary now than she did in 2008. Nor could Mike Anderson, whose name is also bandied about by the wistful Rosenthal-Office alumni as a potential DA. Unless, that is, Lykos’s office were rocked by a scandal that the public might care about.
A scandal like an indictment against the sitting DA.
A grand jury would be needed to hand down such an indictment, and in the ordinary course of things, with Harris County grand juries closely controlled by Harris County prosecutors, a grand jury would never do so.
Now, however, we have a breakaway grand jury, out of the 185th District Court. They kicked the prosecutors out of the room, then asked for and received a special prosecutor and a term extension. They have been talking to witnesses who know things about the Houston Police Department’s broken BAT (Breath Alcohol Testing vans).
We usually don’t know who is serving on a grand jury. Serendipitously, we know who the foreman of this particular grand jury is:
Trisha Pollard, a member of the Board of Regents for the Texas State University System who helped SHSU develop STAFS, was recently elected foreman of the 185th Grand Jury in Harris County. She arranged for a group to tour STAFS and the SHSU regional crime lab in The Woodlands last week to get an idea of how evidence is studied.
Here’s the grand-jury foreman being sworn in as an SHSU Regent (in the grand-jury office!) by Devon Anderson:
But wait: there’s plenty more to feed the conspiracy theorists. Pollard is connected to the SHSU regional crime lab, which could surely benefit from having a friend running the Harris County DA’s Office. Judge Susan Brown organized this grand jury; her husband, Marc Brown (who is now a District Court Judge as well—Pollard contributed a little to his campaign fund), had at first been demoted from division chief to chief by Lykos, and later been repromoted but stuck in the position of Grand Jury Chief. (Marc Brown, while he was a prosecutor, contributed $500 to Kelly Siegler’s campaign fund when she was running against Lykos. Wheels within wheels.)
Now two prosecutors—Carl Hobbs and Steve Morris—have been called in to the 185th District Court to show cause why they should not be held in contempt for possessing grand-jury transcripts. Carl and Steve may be the first DAs to be thrown under the Lykos bus in this episode. The first, but not—I suspect—the last. Why would Lykos need to throw prosecutors under the bus? Political expediency. Better for Lykos that Hobbs and Morris should go down for following orders than that the law governing grand-jury secrecy should be too-strictly adhered to.
And you can expect a good deal more digging to find out who knew what when. Here’s one of the special prosecutors whom Judge Susan Brown appointed to advise the grand jury on the matter:
St. Martin donated a healthy $3,000 to Siegler’s campaign when she was fighting Lykos for the Republican nomination. Also, Lykos kicked him out of the Special Crimes Division of the DA’s Office, and then publicly snubbed him when the FBI gave him an award.
I suspect that feelings between Lykos and St. Martin are mutual.
St. Martin should never have been appointed to investigate the Lykos DA’s Office. No matter how incorruptible he is, the appearance of impropriety is a problem. If the grand jury indicts Lykos or members of DA’s Office management, the public will wonder whether bad blood between St. Martin and Lykos contributed; if he does not, people will wonder whether St. Martin pulled his punches in an excess of caution. A local lawyer without the Lykos-related baggage that St. Martin has (Wendell Odom?) should have been appointed special prosecutor, or a hired gun from out of town (not this hired gun), or even the Attorney General.
Where does this put Pat Lykos? In an uncomfortable spot, I suspect, with no room to complain. She is, after all, no stranger to prosecutions with the appearance of impropriety. You might even say that, when it comes to Harris County hatchet jobs, she set the standard.
(Bonus reading: Butt-Head did not approve this hatchet job.)
About The Author
Sheesh, you Texans live novels, don’t you? And I thought all that Grisham stuff was phony.
NEVER Siegler. Sorry but she is B A D bad. People think she is great because she is so mean but that is because they have not been on the receiving end with one of their innocent loved ones. (And that capital murder dismissal — well, that guy got lucky is all I can say.)
Having Kelly would be like having John Bradley back here again … (and I’m glad he decided to go be the big fish in a small pond. He was a poo when he was here and has obviously gotten worse.)
Bad as Lykos is, at least she has run off most of the cheaters in the office. There are still a few, and there are still lots of problems, but she has gotten rid of a bunch of — junk.
A special prosecutor needs to be independent. I am no Lykos fan. Quite the opposite. Stephen St Martin is a good guy, but perhaps the wrong man for this job.
The right man for this job is former special crimes prosecutor, and great defense lawyer– The Real Bob Bennett. If The Real Bob Bennett could be talked out of retirement, no one would question the integrity of the process. There is not a soul alive with more integrity than the Real Bob Bennett. Both sides of the bar and the judiciary respect him. He is the man for this job, if people are smart enough to offer it to him and he is willing to do this. People who have been around might recall he was the lead prosecutor the last time a Criminal District Court Judge got indicted indicted for taking a $50,000 bribe.
Robb Fickman
Somehow I knew the populist runaway grand jury story was just too good to be true. It remains at the level of myth, urban legend. Like Bigfoot. Too bad.
So Cynthia, would those “cheaters” be people like me?
Mark,
That photo is actually of Kelly announcing that she was going to run for D.A. There wasn’t a press conference when she resigned.
Kelly apparently was not as open file minded when she was head of the misdemeanor division. Being primarily a Fort Bend County Defense attorney I was handling a case in Harris County and took my laptop to takes notes. This was when few people brought laptops to the courthouse. Some pipsqueak young misdemeanor prosecutor asked what I was doing. He said I could not take notes word for word. I said I was not. He thought I should stop looking at the file until he got a supervisor. I said who said I could not take notes word for word. He said my boss Kelly Siegler. If there was such a silly policy that compelled a prosecutor that wasn’t even handling my case to interrupt my note taking, it should have been in writing and said thinks like don’t take down ___ info. The investigator came and I explained the matter to him and he walked off. While I did not deal with Kelly directly, she had enough of an impact to cause a prosecutor not dealing with my case to shove his nose where it didn’t belong. Kelly obviously was not a proponent of scanning files at that time. She was certainly not as open file minded as she tried to portray herself in her campaign. So if we know the real Bob Bennett do we know the real Kelly Siegler? Did Pat Lykos quit smoking? She used to smoke on the bench after smoking was banned in the San Jacinto building.
Great post.. Hopefully the Chronicle reporter(s) assigned to the story read it and use it.
Please email it to them if you can. I think Harris county residents would love your research and the way you connected the dots. Very well done.
[…] the extent of their relationship. I also asked him, if that was the extent of their relationship, why did his wife perform the duty of swearing Ms. Pollard in as a regent of Sam Houston State Univer…? He told me he really didn’t know but in any case it had nothing to do with a grand […]
Always looking for a conspiracy where there is none. How about, (drum roll please) karma coming back to bite them in the arse. My mother told me that deeds done in the dark of night always come out in the bright daylight. It appears that the sun is now rising over the DA’s office.
[…] Remember, even the “head” of the movement to oust DA Lykos, challenger Mike Anderson, told me that he “completely understood my concerns about the appearance of impropriety with this Grand Jury”. So it is very easy to understand why ADA Palmer and her team would make the charge that the entire investigation is designed to embarrass the DA’s office in an effort to oust DA Lykos. I don’t agree with that and think it is far more complicated but I can’t argue that they do not have a compelling case. They laid out their case in two court documents this week, a Motion to Recuse Susan Brown and a Response to Motion to Compel. You will need to read them to understand their case but it is an expansion of what Mark Bennett outlined in part here: Live by the Hatchet, Die by the Hatchet. […]
[…] at the Harris County DA’s office, observers were able to draw important connections between the grand jury foreman and the political opponent of the incumbent. That cast light on potential motives of those driving that highly politicized […]