We really need to get this case to trial already.
A former Houston police captain accused of attacking an AC repairman he thought was participating in an election conspiracy lost his latest bid to have assault charges against him thrown out.
Private investigator Mark Aguirre, 68, in 2020 was accused of crashing an SUV into the repairman’s van in southwest Houston and holding the man at gunpoint. Aguirre wrongly believed the repairman, David Lopez, was surreptitiously transporting illegal ballots that would be used to vote for then-President Joe Biden in the election.
On Wednesday, Harris County District Judge Emily Detoto rejected Aguirre’s arguments that the charges against him should be dismissed because of alleged misconduct by the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.
During a two-hour hearing on Tuesday, Aguirre’s attorney, Terry Yates, argued that prosecutors violated a 2020 agreement protecting privileged phone data and lost or destroyed documents related to contacts between the DA’s office and Lopez’s civil lawyers.
“They didn’t produce documents they were required to produce,” Yates said after the hearing. “They breached an agreement they had not to look at the defendant’s cell phone until a taint team could be set up.”
A taint team is an independent group that reviews discovery material for privileged information. Yates said that Aguirre’s cell phone contained private messages between him and attorneys he worked for.
During the hearing, Warren Diepraam, a prosecutor who led the Aguirre case under former District Attorney Kim Ogg, said he had reviewed information from a cell phone and admitted he wasn’t aware of the privacy agreement.
Prosecutors denied there had been any intentional misconduct, but also offered a solution to Yates’ complaints: Prosecutors said they wouldn’t use evidence from the cell phone. The DA’s office said it had provided Yates with as much material as it had access to.
Just a reminder, Aguirre was indicted in December of 2021, and as yet there’s still no court date for his trial. The since-dismissed charges against Aguirre’s boss Steven Hotze, who was indicted in April 2022 and which included a conspiracy charge against Aguirre that was also later dropped, was likely a complicating factor in all this. But now we have a Republican judge saying the charges should stand. Let’s get on with this!