She was extremely proud of her team’s accomplishments in her first term. She talked about the vast, varied experience of the leadership team that she brought in with her, saying that their experience as judges and lawyers brought a fresh perspective to the office. She described her team as a group of people that had been saying “someone’s got to do something” to address chronic criminal justice problems and now they were doing it. She mentioned her time with the National District Attorney’s Association and sharing the successes that she has had in Harris County. She discussed her time as the Administrative Judge of the county courts and how that helped her in her efforts to bring higher efficiency to the DA’s office. It is obvious when speaking to her that she thinks that she has fulfilled her campaign promise to be a reformer.
The first story she told me was about two women that had been sexually assaulted early in her term. The assailant turned out to be a convicted sex offender but when the DA’s office started investigating, they found out that there was not a centralized database of sex offenders in the county, a county in which there are 34 different municipalities. After working through the legislature to pass a bill allowing shared information, they partnered with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office and the Houston Police Department and now there is a shared database located at the Mykawa Southeast Substation, making it easier to track registered sex offenders.
They have also put together a shared “alias” database. ADA Russell Turberville is in charge of this program, which attempts to thwart efforts by criminals to use various names in their attempts to escape justice. They find name variations, birth dates, physical identifiers, relatives, and known associates; then they input this data into a shared database and try to increase the number of convictions. They were successful early on in the capture of a fugitive murder suspect, Hilario Martinez-Zuniga.
She is also very proud of the Cold Case Fugitive Apprehension Section, which was responsible for the actual arrest of Mr. Martinez-Zuniga above. One of the criticisms of DA Lykos is that this program isn’t new and has been around for years, so I asked her about that. She stated that parts of the programs were around but no one was actually pursuing the criminals, unless they had a high profile or were “sensational”. Her program is focused and prioritized on bringing justice to all crimes.
We also talked about the success of her juvenile risk assessment program, or Juvenile Diversion Program. She was very proud of this program, stating that the participants had only a 9{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} recidivism rate and she credited that to the forced involvement of parents. Each parent has to sign a contract stating that they will attend counseling and training sessions. I asked her if the parents were really involved or if they considered it just another hassle in having a wayward teen and she was emphatic in her answer that the parents wanted the help and were actively involved in the program.
She also mentioned the Haverstock Hills “experiment” in pushing gangs out of a high-crime apartment complex and returning law and order for the remaining families. By all accounts, that has been a successful project and she is looking forward to using that experience to broaden the program into other high-crime complexes.
But..but..but….okay, I know, there are some controversial issues out there.
First off, the runaway grand jury. She stuck with the timeline that is listed on the Harris County District Attorney’s website. As most of you know, criminal defense lawyer Mark Bennett has a few additions to that timeline. She was emphatic in stating that the March report by ABC 13’s Wayne Dolcefino was about mechanical issues with the vans and did not question the test results. And while that is for the most part true, the report did include this:
In May, an email detailed electrical problems in most of the BAT van fleet, quoting, “This is having a very negative effect on the four $6,000 Intox instruments … and the overall effectiveness of the BAT vans.”
The lieutenant was worried about having to, quote, “explain what these problems can do to pending court cases.”
“The lieutenant may think there’s a problem, but I don’t see that there’s a problem,” Driskell said.
And the DA’s office has never been told of any of the maintenance problems we’ve uncovered.
So you will have to decide that one based on that very limited information. She also notes that before former HPD technician/scientist Amanda Culbertson testified that there were “problems” with the vans, she testified under oath many, many times that the results were dependable and reliable. That in and of itself would seem to undermine Ms. Culbertson’s credibility but once again, you’ll have to decide for yourself. She also points to the test results from the Department of Public Safety that state the machines worked properly in the conditions under which they tested them. If you read Mr. Bennett’s post, you’ll note that he disagrees with the conclusions in the report, stating that the DPS didn’t test for the electrical problems that Ms. Culbertson brought up.
She did not want to comment specifically on ADA Rachel Palmer taking the Fifth Amendment in front of the grand jury, stating only that each ADA has to do what they think is in their best interest. She noted that First Assistant Jim Leitner and Professional Development, Community Protection & Ethics Bureau Chief Roger Bridgewater had testified in front of the grand jury and answered all of their questions.
She asked: if this isn’t a politically motivated grand jury, why did they wait so long to take up the investigation? She told me that at orientation for the grand jury, one of the grand jurors asked HPD Chief McClelland, “How about those BAT vans?” Good question, but not one that I can answer any more than I already have by stating that I think they are politically motivated.
We then talked about the DIVERT program, which I wrote about here and will write about again shortly. She is ecstatic about the success of the program, which to date has a recidivism rate of 0.8{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986}, remarkably low. She stated that her goal was to remove Harris County as the DWI fatality rate capital of the nation. But like I said, I’ll have some more specific information on that program in the next few days.
Oh, about that charge from Mike Anderson that “she yells and curses at them in meetings and that she has surrounded herself with top staff that cower and say “Yes” instead of telling her what they really think about this initiative or that one.” She told me that she has never cursed at any of her staff. Mr. Bridgewater went further, stating “I challenge anyone to point to a single meeting where Judge Lykos has “yelled & cussed” at anyone.” That should be easy enough for the detractors to refute – but not anonymously, where most of them stay. Give me your name and I’ll publish your remarks. Mr. Bridgewater also took exception to Mr. Anderson’s comment that DA Lykos surrounded herself with “yes” men, stating “She is the 1st boss I have had in 26 years. I am not a yes man.”
I then asked her about the hiring of David Benzion to her communications staff and learned something I didn’t know. I asked “how can you justify hiring a communications person when you aren’t hiring prosecutors?” What I learned was that the HCDAO is hiring prosecutors and have been since August. DA Lykos credited the efficiencies created by many of her initiatives with getting the budget under control, allowing the county budget officer to “unfreeze” the hiring. For some reason I neglected to write the number down, but they are taking either 22 or 25 new prosecutors to orientation in January. That was good to hear, as well as the quality of the applicants – she mentioned Notre Dame and Stanford, along with several Ivy League law schools from which they had recruited candidates. She also noted that Mr. Benzion’s position is not new; he is replacing a person that left the office, George Flynn. In addition to helping Donna Hawkins with the communications duties, he will be writing grant proposals.
We talked for an hour and a half and there is a lot more that she wanted to stress but this is already too long. Stuff like the way subpoenas are handled, access to 911 tapes, that she didn’t think government should be making money off of people (in reference to uncollected DWI surcharges), or the Animal Cruelty Unit that was created because it leads to a vicious cycle of parents taking kids to dogfights, kids becoming hardened, then becoming criminals. Perhaps we can talk more about those programs or the programs of her challenger as this race moves forward.
As always, I would like to think DA Lykos for taking the time to meet with this voter from Shoreacres. It is always enlightening to hear directly from our elected officials versus hearing anonymous commenters to blogs or from challengers for the position. And for the record, she drove up to the café in her own car, by herself, not driven by a bodyguard in a black Escalade. You know who I’m talking to about that.