Whipped Cream Difficulties

Order now! Only $19.95!

Lehmberg had been placed in an isolation cell for protective custody but she refused several orders to stop kicking the cell door and was put in “the emergency restraint chair,” the records say.

More:

According to an inmate incident report, Lehmberg also resisted a pat-down, refused to comply with officers, tried to scratch and grab an officer’s hand and yelled.
She was handcuffed and “leg-ironed,” according to the report.

And updating: in addition to the 45 days in jail, she was fined $4,000 and her license has been suspended for 180 days.

I know what you’re wondering: who will run the show while she’s doing hard time? Answer: “operational aspects of the office will be handled by senior staff“.

But DA Lehmberg isn’t the only local DA who has run aground on the shoals of the law. And at least she didn’t hurt anybody.

Former Williamson County District Attorney Ken Anderson was ordered arrested and booked into jail for the “intentionally harmful act” of hiding favorable evidence to secure Michael Morton’s 1987 conviction for murder, the court of inquiry found.
“This court cannot think of a more intentionally harmful act than a prosecutor’s conscious choice to hide mitigating evidence so as to create an uneven playing field for a defendant facing a murder charge and a life sentence,” District Judge Louis Sturns ruled.

I did not write a lot about the Michael Morton case and the court of inquiry into Anderson’s conduct because…well, I was a little distracted at the time, the case is complex, and it was being well covered by other people. Texas Monthly did a two-part series on the case itself, and covered the court of inquiry as well.

The short version of the story: Morton came home from work one day in 1986 and found his wife had been murdered. Morton was charged with and convicted of her murder, and served 25 years in prison. In 2011, DNA testing established another man committed the crime: Morton was released from prison, exonerated, and the other man was convicted of the murder in late March of this year. During the proceedings leading to Morton’s release, there were accusations that Anderson and the Williamson County DA’s office had intentionally withheld evidence from Morton and his defense during the original murder trial: these accusations resulted in the court of inquiry and the charges against Anderson.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 19th, 2013 at 4:40 pm and is filed under Clippings, Law, TCDA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.