This wasn’t as straightforward as one might have expected.
Carla Wyatt
A judge on Friday deemed allegations against Harris County Treasurer Carla Wyatt following her Washington Avenue arrest ambiguous enough to merit a deeper look.
Wyatt, a Democrat elected in 2022, was charged with misdemeanor burglary of a vehicle following her Dec. 27 arrest in the Forget Me Not restaurant parking lot, where employees noticed a woman in a colleague’s vehicle. The vehicle’s owner, who had her keys, did not know Wyatt, a prosecutor, Carina Batista, said.
Restaurant workers saw Wyatt rifling through the vehicle, taking things out and looking for something to steal, Batista said. A security guard confronted Wyatt just before noon as police were called.
The treasurer’s hired attorney, Christopher Downey, countered Wyatt was still in the vehicle, which had been unlocked, when confronted and did not appear poised to steal the car or its contents. Downey and Batista debated the allegations as Wyatt sat in the County Criminal Court at Law No. 4’s gallery, wearing a black suit.
“I guess it’s left to interpretation,” Judge Shannon Baldwin said of the dueling accounts.
The judge ordered both sides to return Jan. 26 for a probable cause hearing to determine whether enough evidence exists for the case to proceed.
Downey conceded that Wyatt showed “some unusual behavior” amid the incident but nothing criminal happened. He declined to elaborate on what was unusual about Wyatt’s behavior as he left the courtroom with the treasurer.
See here for the background. If I’m interpreting this correctly, attorney Downey asserts that Wyatt may have mistaken the car in question for her own and entered it accidentally, with no bad intent. That’s at least a plausible hypothesis, I’m sure many people have tried to get into the wrong car in a parking lot at least once in their lives. I did that myself once, opening the door to a car I thought was mine only to find that there were people I didn’t know already in it. So sure, something like that could have happened, and if she wasn’t rifling through the glove box or trying to hot-wire the car, maybe there’s insufficient evidence to suggest she was anything other than confused. Maybe. Obviously the prosecution sees it differently. Either they’ll produce enough evidence on the 26th to move the case forward, or perhaps there will be a plea or dismissal before then. I’ll keep an eye on it.
The behavior is troublesome – was she going through the car’s contents or not? I’ve opened the wrong car door and immediately realized it wasn’t mine. (probably too clean -haha). She has a bit of baggage already…
Sec. 30.04. BURGLARY OF VEHICLES. (a) A person commits an offense if, without the effective consent of the owner, he breaks into or enters a vehicle or any part of a vehicle with intent to commit any felony or theft.
Intent is a lawyer’s specialty.