Whipped Cream Difficulties

Today’s HouChron has an interesting article about prosecutor Kelly Siegler, investigator Otto Hanak, and how the case against Anthony Graves fell apart.

Siegler, who had tried many capital murder cases as a Harris County assistant district attorney, and Hanak, a state trooper and Texas Ranger for 28 years, were deeply embedded in the criminal justice establishment. But each new development in their investigation pointed to the conclusion that they reached independently: Graves was innocent, the victim of a prosecutor who had manufactured evidence, misled jurors and elicited false testimony.

For those unfamiliar with the case, Graves was convicted of murdering six people (a grandmother and five children) in Somerville, Texas in 1992. The major evidence against Graves was the testimony of Robert Carter, who was also convicted of the crime and executed in 2000. There is a great deal of circumstantial evidence against Carter, as well as Carter’s own confession; Carter had motive and opportunity, while Graves had neither. Only Carter’s testimony, which he recanted before being executed, ties Graves to the crime, and there appears to be evidence that the local prosecutors made a deal with Carter; if he implicated Graves, they would not pursue Carter’s wife, who was believed to be involved in the crime as well.

(I’m glossing over a lot of detail here. The best account I’ve seen, albeit one that’s been overtaken by events, is Pamela Colloff’s “Innocence Lost”, in the October 2010 Texas Monthly.)

This is a disturbing case, and I find it even more disturbing that the original prosecutor is making threats against Siegler. Not that Ms. Siegler is a shirking violet: you may remember her from the Susan Wright case, where she tied up one of her fellow prosecutors in the courtroom and re-enacted Ms. Wright’s stabbing of her husband 193 times.

Bravo to her and to Mr. Hanak for acting out what should be the prosecutor’s motto: “Fiat justitia ruat caelum.“

I previously noted the case of the Austin Police Department SWAT officer who rolled his car and was arrested for DWI.

Over the weekend, the Statesman ran an article about some changes APD is making in the way the SWAT team is run; officers will no longer be on call 24-7, but will have a week of downtime every third week, among other things.

I don’t know if these changes are good or bad, but I did want to highlight one thing from the article:

Court documents have said that he refused all field sobriety tests, and investigators then sought a court order for blood samples. Results of the blood tests are not yet available.

I object to forced blood draws and to compelled field sobriety tests (and breath tests) as a 5th Amendment violation. However, given that the courts seem to disagree with me (stupid horse-brained Supreme Court), it does make me somewhat happy to see that, in this case, an APD officer got treated the same way as a regular Joe who refused the tests would have been.

This good feeling should last until Balko posts his next round-up.

Henry W. Segar filed a racial discrimination suit against the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs in 1977.

The BNDD is now the DEA. And the Segar case is still being litigated.