Once again, an off-year election is sneaking up on us on tomorrow.
There are a number of Texas constitutional amendments on the ballot. Here’s my quick “one-eyed man in the land of the blind” summary:
Travis County also has some bond issues.
Also, Williamson County voters will get a chance to eliminate the position of County Surveyor, and pretty much any time you can eliminate a government position, you should go for it…
All three Round Rock ISD bond issues were defeated last night.
That’s a big change from previous years, when such bonds generally passed without any organized opposition, but, as previously noted, that wasn’t the case this year.
Interestingly enough, the first two bonds passed in Williamson but were defeated in Travis, while the third (“for arts and athletic programs, including an indoor aquatic center, the District’s outdoor athletic facility #3, upgrades to Dragon Stadium and design of auditoriums at Round Rock and Westwood high schools”) was defeated in both Travis and Williamson.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say this is one of those rare instances where campaign yard signs did make a difference. Here’s the official statement from the Round Rock Parents and Taxpayers group that opposed the bonds:
At last count over 8,900 voters from Round Rock ISD voted against the bond propositions,more than the total number of votes cast in the 2014 election. This represents a stunning rejection of these heavily-promoted bond propositions from the Round Rock ISD community.
We were up against a nearly $100,000 pro-bond campaign, that sent more than half a dozen mailers to thousands of voters. The bond propositions enjoyed favorable press and official endorsements, as well as a district administration that in our view crossed the line in their own efforts to promote passage of this bond package.
In comparison, our grassroots coalition came together spontaneously from different members of the community with independent negative reactions to the flawed bond package. Many of us first met each other through this. In this David versus Goliath battle, we had much less money and less than 5 weeks to organize.
So what really doomed the bond, if we were so outmatched?
These bonds failed because they deserved to fail.
Patrick McGuinness, Round Rock Parents and Taxpayers Association
One of the cases outgoing Williamson County District Attorney Jana Duty bragged about was the cold case conviction of Rex Allen Nisbett for the murder of his estranged wife. Indeed, the arrest of Nisbett is one of only three instances for which Duty’s office bothered to post a press release.
That conviction fell apart this week:
The state 3rd Court of Appeals has reversed the murder conviction of a man found guilty of killing his wife in 1991 in her Williamson County apartment.
Rex Nisbett was sentenced to 42 years in prison in 2014 after a jury found him guilty of the murder of 29-year-old Vicki Lynn Nisbett. Her body hasn’t been found.
The court’s ruling Thursday said prosecutors failed to provide sufficient evidence that Rex Nisbett killed his wife. They were in the process of getting a divorce.
The 3rd Court of Appeals didn’t make any ruling concerning Nisbett’s innocence, said his lawyer, Keith Lauerman. He said the court simply reversed the murder conviction based on insufficient evidence.
Lauerman said he believes Rex Nisbett is innocent and was “relieved” by the court’s ruling. He said the jury disregarded the testimony of a witness who said he had seen Vicki Lynn Nisbett alive a few days after she was “allegedly killed.”
Rex Nisbett could be released from prison if the Williamson County district attorney’s office decides not to appeal the ruling to the Court of Criminal Appeals. The district attorney’s office has 30 days to appeal. In case of appeal, the district attorney’s office can ask a district judge to issue a warrant and have Nisbett sent back to the Williamson County Jail.
District Attorney Jana Duty said she hadn’t decided Thursday on whether to appeal and was consulting with other district attorneys, county attorneys and the Texas District and County Attorneys Association.
University of Texas law professor George Dix, a criminal law expert, said it was “quite rare for convictions to be reversed for insufficiency of the evidence given that we trust juries to decide whether the state has met its burden of proof.”
Duty is out of office come January 1st, so this might be yet another mess she’ll leave to incoming Williamson County District Attorney Shawn Dick…
I was awoken this morning by police banging on my door.
I looked out the window to see who it was and determined it probably had something to do with the car that was now parked mostly on my lawn, with the front still hanging off the edge into the street.
Evidently someone had tried to steal my across-the-street neighbor’s car, had put it in neutral, where it had promptly rolled down the driveway, across the street, then up over the curb into my lawn. The perp was then unable to figure out how to get it started and in gear, so he just left it there.
Two lessons:
And keep in mind that I live in a pretty low-crime area of Williamson County.
Via Dwight comes news that things are moving swiftly on removing Williamson County DA Jana Duty from office:
Two Williamson County residents sued District Attorney Jana Duty on Monday, seeking to force her out of office.
The Texas Constitution, according to the lawsuit, provides that county officials may be removed for incompetency and official misconduct.
“Duty’s serial violations of court orders and the laws of the State of Texas, her history and pattern of dishonesty and untrustworthiness, and her dereliction and abandonment of her responsibilities of the office of the District Attorney have compromised the integrity and the effectiveness of the office of the District Attorney and the Williamson County criminal justice system,” the lawsuit said.
The two Williamson County residents in question are Elizabeth Latham Schleder and Thomas Joseph Madden.
The lawsuit itself offers an extensive list of Duty’s legal transgressions. Rather than listing all six pages from the PDF, here’s the Statesman summary:
The lawsuit filed Monday says Duty broke the law when she made untrue statements to defense lawyers that time stamps were not available showing the sequence of events on a video in the Crispin Harmel capital murder case.
“The District Court found the Duty’s representations regarding the video were untrue and that Duty knew they were untrue when she made the representations,” the lawsuit said.
It accuses Duty of official oppression, aggravated perjury and tampering with physical evidence by not telling the truth about the time stamps.
The lawsuit says Duty’s other acts of incompetence and official misconduct include being found guilty of contempt of court on Aug. 10, 2015, and being sentenced to 10 days in jail.
Duty also broke a gag order in the Harmel case by speaking to a television station and a Georgetown newspaper, and then lied on May 29, 2015, saying she had not spoken to them, the lawsuit said.
It said Duty has also abandoned her responsibilities as district attorney since she lost her re- election in November 2015 but continues to collect her $152,000 per year salary, the lawsuit said.
“On information and belief, since November 2015, Duty has been unavailable and inaccessible to law enforcement, judges, court staff, county officials, and District Attorney office staff,” the lawsuit said.
The only thing I don’t understand is the November 2015 date, since Duty lost to Shawn Dick in the Republican primary in March of this year.
As for Duty neglecting her duties, her sister admitted there are days when she doesn’t go into the office. Certainly there are jobs where you can do most or all of your work remotely, but I don’t think that District Attorney is one of them.
Regarding the other charges against Duty, I suspect that this particular case may be the straw that broke the camel’s back for some of those calling for her removal:
On or about May 23, 2016, the State Bar of Texas suspended Mark Brunner – First Assistant to District Attorney Duty – from the practice of law (suspension probated for one year subject to compliance with the terms of probation) for professional misconduct, to-wit: untruthful communications to the District Court in his capacity as First Assistant District Attorney for Williamson County, Texas in conjunction with the prosecution of State of Texas v. Jessee Celedon Gamboa for aggravated robbery of the Schwertner State Bank in October 2013. Specifically, the State Bar found that Brunner lied to Williamson County District Judge Donna King in February 2015 about having contacted the victims in the State of Texas v. Gamboa aggravated robbery prosecution and having secured the victims’ approval of the plea bargain agreement between the District Attorney’s office and Gamboa’s criminal defense attorney when the victims in this case had not, in fact, approved the plea bargain and Brunner had not, in fact, contacted the victims or obtained their approval of the plea bargain.
Yeah, when your DA lies about having obtained your consent to a plea bargain with the thug who robbed your bank, I can see someone taking that personally.
Here’s a piece on the arrest of the Schwertner State Bank robber. And still more here. Though several news stories mention Gamboa as possibly being the “ZZ Top Bandit,” prison records show that he’s only serving time for the Schwertner heist.
Duty supporters have said that all this is a big waste of time and that Duty will be out of office before the case ever comes to trial. However, I’m guessing that Duty is so unpopular around the Williamson County courthouse that they’ll manage to get the case fast-tracked…
Dwight offers an update to my update of his original update on Jana Duty.
Williamson County business leaders stood outside the county courthouse Wednesday morning to deliver an ultimatum to District Attorney Jana Duty: resign or be forced out.
“I, along with other community leaders, demand that Jana Duty step down and resign her position as district attorney of Williamson County by sunset this Friday,” said Jim Schwertner, owner of Schwertner Farms, a cattle trading enterprise.
“If she does not, we will petition the court to have her removed as district attorney of Williamson County,” he said.
If Schwertner’s name sounds familiar, it may be because he’s a distant cousin to state senator Dr. Charles Schwertner of Georgetown.
Another official who has called for her to resign is Georgetown Mayor Dale Ross. “We still have seven months to go and we need the judiciary to be operating at 100 percent capacity, and from what we understand that’s not the case these days.”
Duty is also accused of frequently failing to show up for work.
Another officer calling for Duty to resign: County Judge Dan Gattis.
Duty continues to insist she’ll serve out her term.
The mechanisms by which a county official (including a district attorney) may be removed from office are outlined here, which defines “official misconduct” as “intentional, unlawful behavior relating to official duties by an officer entrusted with the administration of justice or the execution of the law. The term includes an intentional or corrupt failure, refusal, or neglect of an officer to perform a duty imposed on the officer by law.”
Dwight beat me to this story on Williamson County District Attorney Jana Duty being placed on probation for 18 months by the Texas bar, but I have a few additional bits of context for those coming in late on the Jana Duty Saga.
First, let’s remember how widely unpopular Duty was (and is) with fellow Williamson County Republicans. Holly Hansen had this to say back in 2011:
Republican Jana Duty was first elected to the office in 2004 and re-elected in 2008, but has developed increasingly antagonistic interactions with the County Judge, all four members of the Commissioners Court, all of the County Court at Law Judges, the Williamson County District Attorney, and pretty much any other judge handing an down unfavorable ruling.
Since then, if anything she’s managed to become even less popular.
Second, the fact that Duty was sanctioned for “withholding evidence in a murder case” provides a delicious bit of irony for those who have been following her career. For it was charges of “prosecutorial misconduct” in the Michael Morton case that allowed her to defeat incumbent John Bradley in the 2012 Republican primary, even though Bradley was only involved in Morton’s appeal process, not the original prosecution. The Morton case was a real miscarriage of justice, but Duty and several other dubiously-conservative challengers in 2012 seemed to view the case as a “get into office free” card.
Finally, one tiny tidbit missing from the Statesman article Dwight linked to: Shawn Dick beat Duty in this year’s Republican Primary, so that probation is going to extend through the end of her term as DA, and beyond…
More post-Super Tuesday results and election tidbits.
Not quite as down as I was last night. There’s lots of the commentary this morning on how Donald Trump under-performed vs. expectations.
Here are some random primary results and links:
The chairman of the Licensing Committee, Wayne Smith, and the chairman of Special Purpose Districts, Doug Miller, are now facing tough run-offs against conservative challengers Briscoe Cain and Kyle Biedermann.
State Rep. Debbie Riddle, a Straus loyalist on the powerful Calendars Committee, was defeated outright by Valoree Swanson in a four-way race.
Meanwhile, decorated veteran Terry Wilson defeated liberal State Rep. Marsha Farney, who was rumored to have been tapped by Straus to helm the Public Education Committee in 2017.
On the other hand, conservative fighters Jonathan Stickland, Tony Tinderholt, and Matt Rinaldi won big re-election fights. Stickland, Tinderholt, and Rinaldi were top targets of the establishment, with the opponents slinging copious amounts of mud to no avail.
(Hat tip: Push Junction.)
Probably more later…
I’m running out of election season! So here are some quick and dirty Republican Primary recommendations (beyond the very obvious one of Ted Cruz for President) on the last day of early voting:
*Corrected. I had originally reversed his names, inadvertently making him into the star of Springtime for Hitler in The Producers…
There’s a couple of Williamson judicial races where I’m still seeking additional information, but I don’t want to delay putting this up any longer.
Remember to vote either today or Tuesday!
Addition Resources: