Whipped Cream Difficulties

Two Harris County prosecutors are facing contempt charges after a judge learned members of the DA’s office were given information that may contain official transcripts from secret proceedings of a grand jury that is investigating the district attorney’s office, court records show.

Sounds like folks are sweating. And that’s leading them to make dumb decisions. The question is, how far up the chain of command does the dumbth go?

By the way, the two prosecutors in question are the same ones who got thrown out of the grand jury hearing.

(Subject line hattip.)

Here’s the longer HouChron story I expected about yesterday’s decision to bar the Harris County DA from participation in a grand jury investigation that may implicate the DA’s office.

I also wanted to note another story out of Houston: Roderick Fountain was convicted of murdering his 3-year old son. What makes this story noteworthy (in my opinion) is that he was convicted even though nobody has ever found the son’s body, and mostly based on the word of jailhouse informants.

Murder convictions without a body are not unheard of, but they are certainly rare and unusual enough to be noteworthy. (As a side note, the phrase “corpus delicti” does not mean the body of the victim, but the “body of the crime”; that is, all the evidence that indicates a crime has been committed. It is entirely possible to have a “corpus delicti” without a murder.)

It does seem, though, that the murder conviction without a body is becoming more common. This is the second case I can think of in Texas in the past year or so. (Here’s a link to some press coverage of the other case.) Does this point to improvements in forensic science? Or is there something more sinister going on?

Short piece in the HouChron: I expect a longer one in tomorrow’s paper.

State District Judge Susan Brown on Wednesday named attorneys Stephen C. St. Martin and James Mount as temporary prosecutors to assist a grand jury apparently investigating the Houston Police Department’s troubled mobile alcohol testing program.

The article goes on to quote the judge’s order as stating “that grand jurors are investigating ‘possible criminal conduct by members of the Harris County district attorney’s office.'”

“After considering the grand jury’s request and the applicable law, the court finds the Harris County District Attorney and her office are disqualified from participating in the grand jury’s investigation,” Brown wrote.

We have previously covered Harris County’s problems with their Blood Alcohol Testing (BAT) vans. Those problems can perhaps best be summed up as: they weren’t reliable.

Now comes word from the HouChron that:

1. A grand jury is apparently investigating the situation, and
2. The grand jury is taking testimony without prosecutors present. As a matter of fact, they’ve actually expelled the prosecutors from the grand jury proceedings.

The DA’s office is…not pleased. As Murray Newman, a former DA, puts it: “The Grand Jurors excluding the prosecutors from the testimony is kind of the equivalent of the President being booted out of a Cabinet meeting.”

The HouChron piece is short. The Hon. Mr. Newman’s piece over at his site provides more background: he has his own spin on things, but he’s also more familiar with the background and the people involved than I am. Summarizing his position, it seems like the DA was trying to get revenge on the BATVan whistle blowers by pushing for a grand jury indictment, but it looks like the grand jury is digging into the conduct of the DA’s office instead.

This could turn interesting real quick.