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January 28th, 2022:

Judicial Q&A: Alycia Harvey

Jan 28th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

(Note: As I have done in past elections, I am running a series of Q&As for judicial candidates in contested Democratic primaries. This is intended to help introduce the candidates and their experiences to those who plan to vote in March. I am running these responses in the order that I receive them from the candidates. Much more information about Democratic primary candidates, including links to the interviews and judicial Q&As, can be found on Erik Manning’s spreadsheet.

Alycia Harvey

1. Who are you and what are you running for?

My name is Alycia Harvey and I am running for the 482nd Criminal District Court.

2. What kind of cases does this court hear?

The 482nd is a new court as of 9/1/2021 that hears felony criminal cases.

3. Why are you running for this particular bench?

The first elected judge of this new court should be someone that has significant experience, someone who knows the law, someone who has long-standing ties to Harris county, and someone who has demonstrated a commitment to the people of Harris County as a public servant and is ready to roll up her sleeves and get to work.

After finishing a multi-victim Capital Murder trial at the beginning October, I didn’t see anyone stepping forward to take on the task that the 482 nd was presenting. At nearly the same time, I spoke with the father of a murder victim on another of my cases who inspired me to take stock of my skills and abilities, and determine what more I had to offer the people of Harris County.

I have been extraordinarily privileged to be able to represent the people of Harris County over the last 20 years as an Assistant District Attorney. I’ve worked exceedingly hard at becoming a person who is well-versed in every area of criminal law. I’d be honored to use the knowledge and courtroom training I’ve amassed to serve the people of Harris County as the 482nd District Court Judge.

4. What are your qualifications for this job?

I have 20 years’ experience in criminal law. I’ve been Board Certified in Criminal Law since 2018. I’ve handled every single stage of a criminal proceeding, beginning with being physically present at crime scenes. I’ve helped investigate cases, including writing all kinds of warrants; I have significant expertise in those involving electronic communications. I’ve made charging decisions, prepared cases for trial, tried them and even done post-conviction work. I’ve investigated civil rights claims and those involving actual innocence. The depth and breadth of knowledge I have in criminal law is not something that is easy to amass or that very many people possess.

5. Why is this race important?

The criminal justice system in Harris County is under water. The 482 nd criminal district court and the litigants who have cases pending in that court do not have time to wait while a judge gets up to speed on the best way to handle the docket. As a felony district court chief with many years of experience, I am ready to handle the court and the docket from day 1.

6. Why should people vote for you in March?

I am the most experienced person in this race; I am the only one who is board certified. You may not recognize my name, but you know my cases: they’re the high-profile ones you see on the news. My experience in putting cases together for trial and in tearing them apart post-trial gives me an exceptionally wide frame of reference to know both what the law allows and what the people of Harris County expect and deserve. I’m ready to rededicate myself to a new role in Harris County public service and would be humbled to continue to serve you in a new capacity.

The SD10 redistricting lawsuit gets off to a rousing start

Jan 28th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
4 comments

I did not see this coming.

Sen. Beverly Powell

In a sworn declaration submitted as part of an ongoing federal court challenge, a senior Republican state senator with redistricting experience said he believes his party violated federal voting laws when it drew new boundaries for state Senate District 10 in the Fort Worth area.

“Having participated in the 2011 and 2013 Senate Select Redistricting Committee proceedings, and having read the prior federal court decision regarding SD10, it was obvious to me that the renewed effort to dismantle SD 10 violated the Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution,” state Sen. Kel Seliger said in a declaration signed in November.

The statement from the Amarillo Republican emerged this week as part of a dayslong hearing before a three-judge panel considering a lawsuit that claims the district was intentionally reconfigured to discriminate against voters of color in Tarrant County.

[…]

Seliger chaired the Senate’s redistricting committee last decade, redrawing the state’s maps following the 2010 census when a similar attempt to reshape the district was found to be discriminatory. A federal court in Washington, D.C., ruled in 2012 that lawmakers had discriminated against voters of color in dismantling the district and cracking apart their communities. As a result, the Legislature went back to restore the district’s configuration.

Seliger affirmed his declaration in a video deposition taken earlier this month — portions of which were played in open court in El Paso this week — during which he also said that “pretextual reasons” were given for how political boundaries were decided during the 2021 redistricting process.

Seliger pointed to the redrawing of his own district in the Texas Panhandle as an example. The district was reconfigured so that it lost several counties from the region while picking up about a dozen on the southern end of the district, closer to Midland, from where Seliger had picked up a primary challenger. He ultimately decided against seeking reelection.

[…]

On Wednesday, Seliger told The Texas Tribune that his statement about the illegality of SD-10 was “more of a concern than it was an assertion” of whether there was a violation.

“When you draw a map that essentially takes out minorities or, in what was more the point, take out the chance that there would ever be a Democrat elected there, was there a violation?” Seliger said. “It’s not an assertion on my part because I’m not a constitutional lawyer, but that was my concern about Sen. Powell’s district — to take that district and completely change it and it still marginalized minorities in that district.”

He added that there was a “context” surrounding the drawing of SD-10 — even as Huffman asserted she had not paid any attention to racial data in drawing its boundaries — that requires lawmakers to consider race.

“The Voting Rights Act says if you can create a district in which a historically marginalized minority can elect a candidate of their choice, you must draw that district,” Seliger said. “You start with that principle in every single district.”

See here for the background. Basically, he’s saying that the Republicans did the same things that they did ten years ago that were cited as illegal under the Voting Rights Act by a federal court in 2012. That’s a strong argument that the district as drawn now is also illegal, though it’s hardly conclusive. The previous lawsuit was settled rather than taken to a verdict, so the state will probably just argue now that they shouldn’t have settled then. It’s a good and unexpected (for me, anyway) start for the plaintiffs, who for now are just trying to get something like the old district restored for the 2022 election, but we haven’t heard from the state yet.

More from the hearing:

Two of Tarrant County’s local elected officials testified Tuesday that new political maps passed by Republicans in the Texas Legislature will dilute the voting power of minority voters in a Fort Worth state senate district.

The testimony from Tarrant County Justice of the Peace Sergio Leon and County Commissioner Charles Brooks came during a hearing in El Paso in one of several challenges against the state of Texas and Gov. Greg Abbott after the Republican-led Texas Legislature redrew political maps following the 2020 U.S. Census.

And although this week’s hearing is limited in scope — it pertains to one state senate district in North Texas — attorneys said testimony could foretell what is to come later this year when a slew of other redistricting challenges are heard in a consolidated redistricting lawsuit.

[…]

During testimony Tuesday in El Paso, De Leon said much of his Precinct 5 was originally in Senate District 10 before redistricting. But now, the Senate District has been split in two. This has shifted some Black and Hispanic voters — formerly in the northern part of his precinct — into a Senate District with more Anglo voters. Meanwhile, Black and Hispanic voters in the southern part of his precinct are grouped with rural white voters.

“They’ll have zero impact” on upcoming races, DeLeon said.

Brooks, who was first elected as a county commissioner in 2004, said redistricting has grouped Black and Hispanic voters with Anglo residents who do not share the same values.

“Their voices will be greatly diminished to the point of not being heard and effective in getting their points of view across,” he said, adding that his precinct is about 60% Democrats and 40% Republicans. But Tarrant County generally tends to vote Republican, he said.

Not quite as much any more. If these plaintiffs can get a favorable ruling, then that is probably a good sign for the others, though of course there are no guarantees and SCOTUS remains hostile to voting rights. If these plaintiffs can’t get anywhere, it’s hard to see how any of the others will fare better. If nothing else, we should have an answer quickly. Spectrum News has more.

Can the CCA withstand political pressure?

Jan 28th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

Sure hope so.

Best mugshot ever

Texas Court of Criminal Appeals judges’ phone lines and email inboxes have been flooded for more than a week by callers angry about a ruling last month that stripped Attorney General Ken Paxton of the authority to prosecute election fraud cases without cooperation of the local district attorney or county attorney.

At least some of the calls were spurred by an automated phone message from Houston activist Dr. Steven Hotze that were sent to tens of thousands of Republicans statewide by his political action committee, Conservative Republicans of Texas. The pre-recorded message, a copy of which was obtained by Hearst Newspapers, included the phone number to the all-Republican court and urged them to call the judges.

“Leave a message that you want the court to restore Paxton’s right to prosecute voter fraud in Texas,” Hotze said. “If this decision isn’t reversed, then the Democrats will steal the elections in November and turn Texas blue.”

The group is also funding radio and TV ads on the subject, said Jared Woodfill, a spokesman and attorney for Hotze.

“It’s Dr. Hotze’s position that the electorate should be able to reach out to the officials they elect,” Woodfill said.

The court’s general counsel Sian Schilhab on Monday said the unusual flood of communications included one email was referred to the Texas Department of Public Safety, which investigates threats against state employees.

Paxton has requested a rehearing of the case, and Hotze and more than two dozen Texas Republican Congressmen, state senators and representatives are supporting him in friend-of-the-court briefs.

[…]

Paxton has publicly blasted the court’s Republican judges for the decision. He and other Republicans have also suggested Democratic district attorneys will not be vigilant against election fraud.

“Now, thanks to the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals, Soros-funded district attorneys will have sole power to decide whether election fraud has occurred in Texas,” Paxton wrote on Twitter at the time of the decision, referring to the Democratic mega-donor. “This ruling could be devastating for future elections in Texas.”

Other Republicans statewide have made similar comments in pushing for reconsideration.

“The Attorney General’s Office must be able to defend election integrity in our great state,” wrote Sen. Paul Bettencourt, one of 14 state senators who signed onto a friend-of-the-court brief, in a statement last week. “We cannot allow our elections to be manipulated.”

See here and here for the background. The Statesman story about this has the most precious sentence I think I’ve ever read, which is that Paxton’s urging people to call the justices’ office and demand that they change their ruling puts him “in an ethical gray area, if not in outright violation of the state’s rules of conduct for lawyers.” Oh heavens to Betsy, not an “ethical gray area”! Not our dear, super-upright Ken Paxton!

I guess I appreciate the fact that no one here is trying to hide their motives, that this is all very clearly about politics and giving Ken Paxton the unfettered power to attack political opponents (primarily Democrats, though you never-Trump Republicans better not sleep too easily either) in whatever fashion he sees fit. They do this by attacking the political motives of district attorneys, because accusing enemies of doing the things you want to do is how it’s done. There’s no way to remove the politics from the process of investigating and prosecuting politicians for alleged crimes, but one can at least be as professional and dispassionate about it as possible. If we had an Attorney General who could be trusted to act in such a fashion, then the likes of Sen. Bettencourt might be able to shepherd a constitutional amendment through the Lege to clarify that point of law that the CCA cited. He’d need to get some Democrats on board to clear the 2/3 majority requirement in each chamber for this, which will never and could never happen as long as the AG is Ken Paxton, or anyone who wants to emulate Ken Paxton. There is a way forward if we really want the AG to have this power, but you sure can’t get there from here.

As for the big question I asked in the title of this post, there’s this.

Randall Kelso, a professor at South Texas College of Law, said courts like the Court of Criminal Appeals tend to be reluctant to reverse to their decisions unless at least one of three conditions are met: There is a change in the facts at the core of the case, the ruling proves to be “unworkable in practice” or judges are persuaded that the decision was “substantially wrong.” Kelso said he did not see how the first two conditions apply to the current situation, and as for proving that the ruling was “substantially wrong,” he added, there is usually a “pretty high burden.”

“Just because the various Texas lawmakers are petitioning, I wouldn’t predict they’d just cave to them and say, ‘We’ve gotta change our minds,'” Kelso said. “It’d be unusual to do it unless” any of those conditions are met.

I sure hope so. If nothing else, I hope their ego kicks in to the point of them muttering “Those idiots don’t get to tell me how to do my job” for however long it takes. It may be our best hope.

Spare a thought for the nurses

Jan 28th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

And do everything you can to avoid getting COVID.

[Kristen McLaury, a nurse and unit manager at Methodist Hospital The Woodlands] treated one of the hospital’s first COVID patients and hasn’t stopped since. She now runs the respiratory unit, where she and her nurses have watched otherwise healthy young people gasping for breath. They’ve put countless people on oxygen, or taken them off life-support. They’ve had to comfort grieving families, and facilitate video calls so no one had to die alone.

She’s risked her own life on the frontlines for nearly two years, and now, watching these hospital beds fill up again, she just feels defeated. In Montgomery County, a conservative, wealthy suburban county northwest of Houston, only 53 percent of its more than 600,000 residents are vaccinated, which is among the lowest rates for Texas counties with populations exceeding 500,000. Less than 16 percent of residents have received a booster shot.

“I work 60 hours a week and I don’t see my child, I don’t see my husband, so that I can come and care for you while you yell at me because you’re upset that you have a disease that I told you how to prevent in the first place,” McLaury said.

As the unit manager, it’s McLaury’s job to keep morale up among the other nurses, a herculean task right now. Like every hospital across the country, they’re facing a nursing shortage, an increase in employee infections and a potentially terminal case of staff burnout.

As the omicron variant surges, Texas is on track to soon surpass its previous COVID hospitalization record, set in January 2021. Then, at least, there was the hope of vaccines on the horizon. Now, nurses like McLaury don’t see much hope at all.

From behind her Houston Astros mask and face shield, she begins to cry.

“It’s real, and maybe it might not be you [in the hospital], but it might be somebody else,” she said. “That compassion, I think, is just gone. The world has become so selfish.”

[…]

“Patients stay in the lobby for my entire shift,” said Meredith Moore, an emergency room nurse. “12 hours. It’s frustrating. It’s hard for them…and they get angry. It’s justified. But who receives that anger? Me.”

Moore has been a nurse for nine years and joined the emergency department here since soon after the hospital opened in 2017. She’s young and energetic, with expressive eyes that communicate exactly what she’s thinking — even behind a mask.

Before the pandemic, Moore loved the fast-paced environment and the feeling of helping people who really needed it. She was especially good at controlling her emotions, a requisite for this job.

“In the ER, you have a patient die on you and you have to go into your next room, and you have to act like nothing is wrong,” she said. “That has gotten more difficult as this has gone on.”

Last week, for the first time, she broke down and cried in the emergency room.

“I had five ambulances that had to have a bed…I had a patient that was circling the drain…I don’t have a nurse to take care of that patient,” she said. “That was the first time in two years I really felt helpless, because if one thing falls, if one person starts coding, it’s all over. It all goes up in flames.”

“I don’t think that people [know] unless you’re on this side,” she said. “I tell my family all the time. I’m glad you don’t know. But that’s a heavy burden to carry.”

The article started with a focus on one of the patients at Methodist Hospital The Woodlands, some unvaccinated dude who didn’t believe in the science of vaccines but was more than happy to trust the science of hospitals. I think we’ve heard enough from people like that. The rest is about the nurses and their experiences, and we need to be more aware of what they’re going through. Go read it.