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Harris County Grand Jury News Parts One and Two
One:
Murray Newman reports that Pat Lykos has been subpoenaed to testify before the 185th Grand Jury.
My guess is that it's unprecedented for a Texas grand jury to subpoena a sitting District Attorney.
Getting subpoenaed is bad. Taking the Fifth would be political suicide. Others might take the Fifth as an obstruction or delay tactic, but if Pat Lykos takes the FIfth, it's because she really means it.
Two:
Newman also brings us this email from Jim Leitner to the rest of the DA's Office:
-–Original Message--From: Leitner, JimTo: All DA EmployeesSubject: Grand Juries for the November Term 2011Sent: Jan 5, 2012 9:43 AMI have just been notified that the Judges have terminated all Grand Juries that were empanelled for the November Term 2011. That termination, from what I understand, has been backdated to December 31st. Therefore, do not take any cases in to any Grand Jury until the Judges have created and sworn in Grand Juries for the January Term 2012. Also, don't issue any Grand Jury subpoenas until we have new Grand Juries empanelled. I am meeting with Judge Hill today to make sure that we have the right information on this, but until you hear otherwise proceed as if there are no Grand Juries available until the new term Grand Juries are sworn in. This does not affect the 185th or 232nd Grand Jury which have been extended for pending investigations. Jim
A Brief Political Thought
Once I decide who the best candidate for Harris County District Attorney is, I'm not going to endorse him or her publicly, because I think my endorsement might have a negative effect.
By the same token, the best endorsement Mike Anderson has received so far, to me, is Harris County Republican Party Chairman Jared Woodfill's public support for Pat Lykos.
Dave Boyle, 1948-2011
"Fearless, relentless, and righteous." That's how the Chicago Sun-Times described my friend Dave Boyle in his obituary.
Dave got to Vietnam just in time for the Tet Offensive in 1968. He didn't talk much about his time in Vietnam, but he always planned to go back some day and tour the country in peacetime by motorcycle.
Dave was what a Republican presidential candidate would sneeringly call a community organizer. He fought the system and he organized his neighbors to clean up Cicero, Illinois. For his trouble he got his garage firebombed. He got arrested eleven times.
Dave left Cicero and went to law school. He graduated from South Texas College of Law in 1996, and started practicing criminal-defense law in Houston. That's when I met him and his wife, Nadine, who had worked at STCL while Dave was in law school.
Dave didn't go to law school to make lots of money. He went to law school to help other people, and to save on his own legal fees. My ambition bemused Dave. We worked on cases together and bounced ideas off of each other from then until he returned to Cicero in 2000.
Rakofsky or Roberts? Help Me Decide
In the voting on Popehat for Censorious Asshat Of The Year, I am torn between Thedala Magee and her lawyer Vicki Roberts, and Joseph Rakofsky.
In any other year, Marc Stephens would be a contender, but what he did was, basically, pretend to be a lawyer like Vicki Roberts or Joseph Rakofsky. It wouldn't be fair to Roberts or Rakofsky to give the award to wannabe Stephens when they, Stephens's models (not to mention lawyers Joel Hirschhorn, Maeghan Maloney, Martin Leaf, and Albin H. Gess) are nominees. Call me an exceptionalist, but I think this award should go to someone who, having graduated law school and passed a bar exam, ought to know better.
Best Criminal-Law Blog Post of the Year
Scott Greenfield is taking nominations for the best criminal-law blog post of the year.
Please think about what you've enjoyed or learned the most from this year, and go nominate it in the comments to Greenfield's post.
(Do me a favor, though, and don't nominate any of my posts. I'm not writing this to promote myself.)
Could it Be?
I've been wondering why Special Prosecutor Stephen St. Martin sought to compel Rachel Palmer to testify without giving her use immunity. I mentioned the question to a colleague, a former Assistant DA, and he said, "well, she wouldn't testify."
What do you mean, I asked. If she's given immunity, she either testifies or goes to jail for contempt.
"Can't she choose not to accept immunity?"
Aha!
There is apparently the misconception (fostered by the use of "immunity agreements") that immunity requires the agreement of the witness to be effective.
To the contrary.
Use immunity is nothing more than the promise of the state not to use particular testimony against the witness. Such immunity is granted by the prosecutor. Some authorities suggest that it should be approved by the court...
On November 25, 1981, the State filed a written motion to grant ‘use' immunity to the relator with regard to any grand jury testimony given by him. On November 25, 1981, at which relator was not represented by counsel, the court granted the State's motion and the relator was ordered to testify before the grand jury.
Tannebaum Takes One for the Team
Brian Tannebaum proves himself once again to be a real mensch, listening in on a Rachel Kugel "teleseminar" promised to "enable you to design and implement a strategy to boost your practice revenues and boost them quickly!"
Tannebaum doesn't need to boost his practice revenues. If he did, he sure wouldn't go to a six-year lawyer with no visible success. But he listened in on the advertisement because he knew it was bullshit, and he loves to make the world a better place by unmasking charlatans.
My analysis, from August, of what participants in the conference call would get:
Kugel's "free call" will...not provide lawyers with her system; it will be designed to convince them that there is something to the system worth paying to learn about. There doesn't have to be anything to the system because the money is not in selling the model, but in selling the event, and in selling them the selling of the event and the selling of the selling of the event...it's turtles all the way down.
Your Fifth Amendment at Work
Murray Newman (why did his faithful commenters not nominate Life at the Harris County Justice Center, which has been doing sterling work all year, for the ABA Blawg 100...other than because they're pendejos?) brings interesting news from the third floor of 1201 Franklin, where dwell grand juries:
Item the first: "Today, Special Prosecutor Chris Downey was appointed to investigate yet another allegation of wrong-doing by the Harris County District Attorney's Office in the 232nd District Court's Grand Jury." Unlike Stephen St. Martin, who might have an axe to grind against Pat Lykos, Downey is an unimpeachable choice as a special prosecutor. Untouchable.
Item the second: Harris County Assistant District Attorney Rachel Palmer was summoned to appear for a second time before the 185th Grand Jury (with St. Martin as special prosecutor). She took the fifth.
Right Now
Anthony Graves and Nicole Casarez on Reasonable Doubt on HMS. Streaming here.
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