Maybe now we’ll get some answers.
A special court will examine whether Georgetown District Judge Ken Anderson acted improperly when, as Williamson County’s district attorney in 1987, he prosecuted Michael Morton for a murder the authorities now acknowledge he did not commit.
Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson convened a court of inquiry Thursday to examine allegations, leveled by Morton and his lawyers, that Anderson hid evidence that could have spared Morton from the murder conviction and almost 25 years in prison.
Jefferson also appointed District Judge Louis Sturns of Fort Worth to conduct the court of inquiry, a rarely used feature of the Texas criminal code designed to determine whether state laws have been broken.
“This is a historic moment for Texas justice,” said John Raley, a Houston lawyer who has represented Morton for free for the past eight years.
[…]
A court of inquiry is a fact-finding exercise that cannot result in a criminal conviction or punishment against Anderson, but a finding of misconduct could lead to criminal charges or disciplinary proceedings before the State Bar of Texas, according to Morton’s lawyers.
I have no idea how long this may take, but we may finally get some closure on this.
In the meantime, this made me angry.
[Last] week, the State Bar of Texas opened testimony in its lawsuit against a Lubbock attorney who faces possible disbarment for taking millions of dollars in compensation from 12 men cleared after DNA evidence showed they were innocent of charges. Attorney Kevin Glasheen acknowledges he collected $5 million in fees, a 25 percentage contingency fee taken from the payments the state of Texas pays to wrongfully convicted prisoners who prove their innocence.
Glasheen claims the fees are fair, saying his clients received more money from the state because he successfully lobbied for legislation increasing state payments to exonerees, from $50,000 to $80,000 for every year served in prison. He also says he kept only $3.5 million, sharing the rest with Amarillo attorney Jeff Blackburn, chief counsel for the Innocence Project of Texas, who assisted with the cases because of his expertise.
The Lubbock attorney entered into contracts with the wrongfully convicted men because he intended to file federal civil rights lawsuits on their behalf. But he changed his strategy, and chose to lobby for passage of legislation awarding more state compensation, rather than pursue the federal lawsuits.
Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, who has made helping wrongfully convicted people his signature legislative issue, was appalled at Glasheen’s enormous fee – and his reasons for collecting it. “It’s amazing, when a bill passes the Legislature, how everybody other than the people in the Legislature are responsible for it,” said Ellis, a co-sponsor of the legislation. “My staff and I did a heck of a lot of work.”
Ellis is board chairman of the Innocence Project of New York, an entity separately run from the Innocence Project of Texas, where Blackburn works. Ellis said he knows nothing about the inner-workings of the Texas-based group.
“I did not know they had this arrangement,” referring to Blackburn and Glasheen’s fees from the exonerated men, Ellis said. When they appeared at the Capital favoring his bill, “I thought they were there because they cared about the issue. I’m very disappointed.”
The State Bar ultimately lost their lawsuit, so Glasheen and Blackburn stand to collect their lobbying fees. Good luck sleeping at night, fellas.
Re your second item…yes, it’s tawdry and distasteful, but so is pretty much all paid lobbying. From a dollars and cents standpoint, these guys did get a good result for their clients; thus, they earned their money just as much as if they’d gotten the same dollar amount from a lawsuit. One can also make a very good argument that in achieving that result, they also benefitted others by effecting a change in the statute.