Big Jolly Politics

politics in Harris County and Texas

179th District Criminal Court: Kristin Guiney is the only choice

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Kristin Guiney

Here I go again, stepping into a race down at the Harris County Courthouse. But when you block out all the noise in the race for Judge of the 179th District Criminal Court, Kristin Guiney stands head and shoulders above her opponent.

This is a nasty race for two reasons. One is the passion that comes from the people that work at the Harris County Courthouse and can’t imagine that anyone would disagree with them on anything. The second is that Kristin’s opponent in this race, Lana Shadwick, is a long time participant in Republican Party circles. And the people in those circles are just as passionate as those that work in the courthouse in that if you haven’t been working side by side with them to get Republicans elected, you shouldn’t be running for office.

The combination of these two passionate camps leads to one of those races that you really want to steer clear of if you aren’t in either camp. But, as luck would have it, we do have a vote and we must make a choice because there are only two people in the race, one from each camp. And as I said above, if you can block out the noise coming from the two camps and just review their qualifications, it is clear that Kristin Guiney is the right choice.

So then, what are their qualifications? Here is a table of their education and work history:

But, many say, Kristin Guiney has spent most of her career with one employer, the Harris County District Attorney’s office, while Lana Shadwick has had a variety of jobs. Shouldn’t a judge have a broad range of experience?

Well, only if all things were equal. This is a criminal court and Lana Shadwick simply doesn’t have the experience necessary to judge criminal cases. She has never prosecuted a criminal case and has only has a handful of criminal cases in which she was the defense attorney. That is a far cry from Kristin Guiney’s experience in the criminal justice system. Let’s look at Kristin Guiney’s career at the HCDAO:

  • Supervise and train prosecutors assigned to court
  • Responsible for the handling of all capital cases
  • Appointed by First Assistant to Committee on Discovery Procedures
  • Prepare arrest and search warrants
  • Prepare and present cases to be taken directly to Grand Jury
  • Present probable cause to magistrate on felony and misdemeanor cases
  • Prosecuted cases involving physical and sexual abuse of children.
  • Worked closely with the law enforcement personnel and therapists from the Children’s Assessment Center
  • Tried over 80 jury trial cases including four non death capital cases
  • Spearheaded committee and prepared presentations for Proposals to Commissioners Court requesting additional personnel and salary increases

Her opponent simply cannot match that in her career. Those first two are especially important because it shows that Kristin Guiney was well respected by her peers and her supervisors.

For this voter, it is important that a criminal court judge understand capital murder and the death penalty. Although I wish that Kristen hadn’t given Terry Lowry $11,075 this cycle, the least I can do is point you to her interviews with Terry on capital punishment. I don’t like a lot of what Terry does (okay, most) but the truth is that he is a pretty decent interviewer of candidates for judicial positions. He asks the right questions and gets out of the way so that the candidate has free rein to answer them So I urge you to listen to Kristin Guiney talk about capital punishment.

Her opponent lists a capital murder appeal on her website that she claims to have handled, but I cannot find any supporting documents for that claim. Criminal District Court judges exercise daily discretion in serious cases that directly impact public safety. The discretion extends from setting bonds to approving plea bargains, supervising probationers, conducting jury trials, and assessing punishment. Because she has never handled a criminal case in a trial court, she has no experience with bail, reviewing search warrants or any knowldege of probation programs.  How can she possibly be expected to handle hundreds of cases a month? The position of judge should not be a learning on the job experience.

Look, I like Lana, I really do. She is funny, smart, and has a smile bigger than Texas. If she were running for a family court judge position, I’d support her in a heartbeat. But she isn’t running for a family court bench.

For this criminal district court bench, it is clear to me that Kristin Guiney is the clear choice. I hope you take the time to study the two candidates in this race because if you do, and can block out the noise, I think you’ll agree with me.

Harris County DA Race: Republicans should re-elect Pat Lykos

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Pat Lykos

It is time to make a choice. Early voting starts Monday, here are the locations and times.  If you have not made up your mind about the Harris County District Attorney, perhaps I can help. I’m voting for Judge Pat Lykos and here is why.

Justice. First and foremost, that is the word that pushed, pulled, and shoved me from my position as an observer of the race to a fierce supporter of Judge Pat Lykos. Justice is more than allowing our law enforcement officers to arrest anyone at any time for any reason and locking them up and throwing away the key. I’m convinced, and the record supports me, that Judge Lykos understands what justice is and how, as the chief policy maker on justice in Harris County, she can affect how justice is achieved.

Her opponents disagree with me. Notice I said opponents because although only one person is on the ballot, former Judge Mike Anderson, most of her opponents are not supporters of Judge Anderson – they are haters of Judge Lykos. This second group is loud and vicious and they do not accept facts. They never gave her a chance in her first term, even as she made positive change after positive change. They would much rather throw back a six pack on duty, then head downstairs to fire off a few rounds at the gun range than they would acknowledge that the courthouse should not be a frathouse.

Judge Lykos has made many, many positive changes to make certain that a citizen in Harris County has a chance at justice. Her policy of not prosecuting “trace” evidence cases means that a defendant has an opportunity to have the evidence against her tested, while at the same time lowering the cost to taxpayers of incarcerating non-violent offenders. Judge Lykos’ innovative DIVERT program holds promise at reducing recidivism in DWI cases and lowering the death rate. Against much criticism from the crowd that wants to be back in control of the DA’s office, she is finding criminals that other administrations gave up on and bringing them to justice. She is partnering with other agencies around the county, establishing databases that reduce gang activity. She cleaned up a known gang infested, crime infested apartment complex that her predecessors allowed to run wild.

In short, she is keeping her campaign promises. When was the last time you saw an elected politician do that?

Her ballot opponent, Judge Mike Anderson, has not run an honorable race. I don’t know why that is because, as I said earlier, he seems to be a stand up guy. He has a good track record and was by all accounts a good prosecutor. The only reason that I can think of for his dishonorable campaign is his choice of campaign consultant but even then, he must accept responsibility for that low-life because he chose him. Even today, I heard radio ads designed to make it look like the DA’s office is currently a cesspool of corruption – a smear job not supported by ANY facts. Judge Anderson takes shots at the DIVERT program even as his friend, Judge Bill Harmon, allows his own friends to enter it but not ordinary citizens. In fact, rather than forcing people to take responsibility for their actions, Judge Harmon DISMISSES DWI cases and puts people back on the street because of his dislike for Judge Pat Lykos. And Judge Anderson publicly supports this.  I wonder what he will say when the word starts making the rounds about his role in the Hugh Foreman case?

And that dishonorable campaign goes to the heart of the matter. I truly believe that Judge Anderson believes that if you are investigated, you are guilty – how could I not believe that given his record in this race? That mentality is not what I want anywhere close to the courthouse. We are innocent until proven guilty – I truly do not think that Judge Anderson believes that, given his record.

The biggest charge against Judge Lykos is that the morale at the office is low. This circles right back to the fact that she broke the grip of the frathouse on the courthouse. Hey, you’d be mad too if you were used to three hour, three martini lunches and all of a sudden the new boss says no mas. Sucks to be you, I guess. But great to be a taxpayer, knowing that someone is watching out for your interests.

Here is what I have to say about the morale of these coddled juveniles we call ADAs (and ex-ADAs). Grow up. Take charge of your life. Stop acting like you are in seventh grade and stop following the crowd. It can only help you. As a taxpayer, I don’t give a rat’s rear end that you are sad because Judge Lykos took your beer bong away.

I hope you will join me in voting to re-elect Judge Pat Lykos as the Harris County District Attorney. Your life and the lives of your children may, quite literally, depend upon it.

Texas US Senate race: UT/TT poll, charitable contributions

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There sure was a lot of noise about an unorthodox poll put out by UT and the Texas Tribune yesterday that claimed Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst had a decent lead over Ted Cruz, with the rest of the pack well back. The Cruz campaign is promoting it heavily, claiming that it shows him firmly in second place and positioned for a runoff. Let me just say this: if they truly believed that this poll was relevant, they’d all be crying in their beers this morning hoping that no one noticed it.

For once, Paul Burka gets something right in this race:

Maybe I’m reading this wrong, but it seems to me that if Dewhurst is “roughly splitting” the extremely conservative vote with Cruz, that’s good for Dewhurst, not problematical. It means Dewhurst gets half of the extremely conservative voters and, presumably, all of the moderates. In this scenario, he wins.

Exactly. Remember how the Cruz campaign promoted the January Public Policy Polling poll:

 

Notice what that red banner says: AMONG INFORMED VOTERS. Well, if you look at Question 2 of the poll, it claims that 89{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of the respondents are either extremely interested or somewhat interested. And note further that Question 3 claims that 68{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} vote in almost every election and further, Question 13 claims that 79{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of the respondents vote in primaries. If that is the case (and I’m not saying it is) then Cruz is toast because he must have this entire block of voters to get into a runoff. I’m skeptical that this opt-in type of polling could find so many informed people that vote in over 2/3 of elections and 4/5 of primaries, especially since the turnout for primaries in Texas is extremely low historically:

Note that the HIGH mark for primary voting was in 2008 at 33{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} combined, most times it is less than half that. Like I said, if this poll is legit, and the Cruz campaign is depending upon informed voters, then Cruz is toast. But I don’t believe it is close to legit, nor do I believe that Cruz believes it is legit, even if he is trying to raise money from it. His campaign knows, as do the other campaigns, that Dewhurst remains about 50{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986}, with Cruz and Leppert fighting for number two, with Leppert leading but within the margin of error.

And if you still don’t believe me, then ask yourself this if you are a Cruz supporter: why didn’t I receive an email in mid-December touting the results of the internal polling done for the Cruz campaign by Wilson Perkins Allen Opinion Research?  According to the Q4 campaign finance report, the Cruz campaign paid them $31,875 on 12/1/2011. Why not release the top lines like the Dewhurst campaign did? It would surely help if the results were positive.

Remember when Craig James released his tax returns and made a big deal out of it? I don’t know if that was such a smart move or not because it brought to light a stark difference between the campaigns when it comes to charitable giving. Normally, I wouldn’t bother to go through their tax returns because it doesn’t matter to me. But since candidate James made such a big issue of it, here you go. Seems like two of the candidates believe in giving back from the wealth they’ve created and two of them don’t (data from Texas Tribune’s interactive site):

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I left Lt. Gov. Dewhurst off the second chart for the obvious reason that he reported a loss and still gave a ton of money to charity – it is hard to compute a simple percentage for him. And $15,000 of Craig James’ 2010 “charity” was giving to the Texas Public Policy Foundation. I’ll leave it to you to decide which two candidates meet the conservative principle of charity.

Harris County DA race, runaway grand jury, pioneer woman

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A few links for the weekend about the Harris County DA race.

Mike Anderson

First, Charles Kuffner did post his interview with Republican primary challenger, Mike Anderson. Mike continued to make the charge that the DIVERT program and the DA’s “crack pipe trace evidence” policy are illegal. He even stated that the DIVERT program has been ruled illegal. He talked about his time as a drug court judge and how he had seen lives changed. Overall I thought he did a good job of promoting his campaign.

One of the things that I didn’t like about his interview, and of some of the comments that he has made elsewhere, is that the DA’s office is forcing investigators to put “laydown” cases against prominent people aside and not prosecute them. He stated that he had just today talked to several investigators about this and they were frustrated. If this is true, then he has an obligation to bring them to the public’s attention. I’m tired of all of the charges and innuendo in this race that are not backed up by evidence. It is easy to say that the DA’s office is corrupt – prove it. If the DA is protecting prominent individuals and Mike knows about it, he needs to put it forward with real names, not just innuendo. It reminds me of the anonymous blog comments saying that public safety is suffering but that the commenter can’t say anything because he or she will lose their job or be denied a promotion. Sad to think that people with such weak spines are “protecting” us.

The second link is from PBS’s Red, White, and Blue program last night. In it, ADA Rachel Palmer’s defense attorney David Mitcham destroys the runaway grand jury and criminal defense attorney/blogger Mark Bennett agrees that the grand jury was motivated by something other than the truth. Just watch (start at the 7m 24s mark for the fun):

Pat Lykos

The last link is a look at DA Pat Lykos as a “pioneer” woman. I’ve been meaning to do something similar and might still but for now, this piece in “Women & Guns” has a lot of the information about her that I’ve found out since I’ve tried to get a better perspective of who she is and why so many people do not like her.  The vast majority of the “charges” are coming from people that do not like Lykos personally. It is a shame when these types of attacks are used to oust someone from office.

Her actual record is very good and she has done a lot to reform that office. This makes for bitter employees. And the “law and order” types are not happy when someone seeks justice because they want revenge, as in shoot now, ask questions later.

I saw one local activist criticize her because he didn’t think she would look good on a swimsuit calendar. Another criticized her because she smokes. Another because she is “old”. Yet another because she prefers whiskey over wine and ladies do not do that. It is hard for women to make it to the top in any field but law enforcement is even harder. I can tell you that before I started deep research, I was not a fan. I now have a lot of respect for her and the journey her life has taken.

Anyway, back to the article. This is one of my favorite parts:

While holding her job as a Houston Police Officer, Pat worked her way through college at the University of Houston and law school at the South Texas College of Law. When she was assigned to night shifts, she took classes during the day; when she had day shifts, she went to night classes.

When she became eligible, she took the exam for sergeant, finishing No. 1 at a time when few women were even allowed to take the promotional test. But the (male) Chief of Police told her that he would not have a woman as a sergeant because a woman couldn’t do the physical things on the streets that a man could. He told Pat that if he was forced to promote her to sergeant, she would be working a different shift every month so that she would be 80 years old before she got out of law school. He told her to take the exam for detective. Pat took the detective exam and she was promoted to detective. The following day, she turned in her resignation. “It was my way of sending a message to them.”

She’s still that same feisty person today. As a father of two young women, I appreciate the path that she has blazed. That doesn’t mean that she should get a free pass as DA but it does let you know why so many people hate her for no good reason.