So,
what do we know about Mike Anderson, the new District Attorney of Harris County?
Well,
per his campaign website bio, he served as a prosecutor for seventeen years,
then as a judge for twelve.
From
what I gather, people who know the culture of the DA’s office tend to associate
Anderson with Chuck Rosenthal, whose administration has been talked about at
length here on the blog. A lot of the pre-election blogging chatter revolved
around the hope or, alternatively, the fear, that he would return the DA’s
office to the state it was in before Lykos took over.
He’s
doing away with a program that Lykos started where, if there was not enough
drug residue to test twice, no case would be brought. I’m guessing that was
prompted by the mis-testing, dry-labbing, general fuck-wittery of the Crime
Lab. People accused Lykos of being soft on drug use, but really, she was just
being harder on her own office; holding them to the very high standard of being
able to prove that, even if an
independent party tested the evidence, their cases would be solid. Oh, the
horror.
Anyway,
Anderson tanked that program because…something. In the words of Big JollyPolitics:
So, if po-po on the scene says, “looks like crack to me”,
then, hell yeah, accept the charge! Enough to retest? Who cares? It’s just
someone’s life at stake! And we all know that the awesome Houston Police
Department Crime Lab never makes mistakes, so retest, schmetest, arrest that
thug!
If HPD comes back and says “Yeah, that miniscule amount
of substance you sent us was actually drugs… but no, it can’t be retested
because it was entirely destroyed in the course of our conducting our
highly-reliable test,” the DAO will prosecute you for a state jail felony!
I
believe that Pat Lykos was a good District Attorney, and that she worked hard
to root out corruption and bad prosecutors. Taking the office backwards in time
to the place it was before Rosenthal resigned for sending racist emails, then
deleting those emails to keep them hidden, and finding that his judgment was
impaired because of the prescription medication he was taking, well…It’s a
little horrifying, and I don’t even live in Harris County.
I’m looking
at all these descriptions of Mike Anderson online, and using that to build a
picture of who he is, and I will admit, it worries me. Whether those describing
him are for him or against him, he does not immediately come across as someone
who would be sympathetic to our cause.
Letting
that get me down is not an option, though. Instead, I’m going to use it to
motivate me to make sure that my letters are professional, convincing, and
based in fact. I’m going to make the assumption that he is every bit as
interested in justice as I am, and give him the chance to exceed my
expectations.
These
letters have to go out. Our voices must be heard.
4 comments:
Thats one reason im re-writting mine a few times. I tried to copy paste and print but the printer failed me booo printer.Im on it Ms. Icandesio I will not let u figjt this battle by yourself any longer!
Whe re is spm letter for this month
Marisol:
I appreciate your support so much, thank you!!
Anon 12:08:
Still waiting for it, unfortunately.
Incandesio I got to Händel it to u going the xtra mile on every aspect you can and us doing what we can but dam every thing you do is damm amazing, thanks keep up the good work !!! Free los
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