This will happen some day. I hope.
Best mugshot ever
Attorney General Ken Paxton’s trial has been put off for a third time.
The judge in the securities fraud case against Paxton sided Wednesday with prosecutors who had been pushing for another trial delay because of a long-running dispute over their fees. The decision by Harris County District Court Judge Robert Johnson scrapped Paxton’s current Dec. 11 trial date and left the new one to be determined, possibly at a Nov. 2 conference.
Paxton had been set to go to trial on Dec. 11 on the least serious of three charges he faces. The date for that trial had already been pushed back twice because of pretrial disputes, first over the venue and then the judge.
[…]
In a feisty hourlong hearing Wednesday, the prosecutors and Paxton’s lawyers sparred over a familiar subject: whether they should hold off on a trial until the prosecutors could collect a paycheck — an issue currently tied up in a separate legal battle. Earlier this year, when the case was before a different judge, he denied the prosecutors’ first request to delay the trial until they could get paid.
Johnson had a different take Wednesday, granting the prosecutors’ latest motion for continuance. He asked both sides to come up with a new trial date, preferably in late February or early March. After some back and forth — a Paxton lawyer proposed a new trial date on March 6 — they all agreed to continue the discussion at the Nov. 2 pretrial conference.
The prosecutors had been seeking to put off the trial until the state’s highest criminal court, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, could sort out the payment issue. Last week, the Court of Criminal Appeals stepped into the dispute over the prosecutors’ pay, issuing a stay of a lower-court ruling last month that invalidated a six-figure paycheck for them. In its decision, the Court of Criminal Appeals gave all sides 30 days to respond to the prosecutors’ contention that the lower court, the Dallas-based 5th Court of Appeals, overstepped its authority when it voided the payment.
If the Court of Criminal Appeals ultimately rules against the prosecutors — effectively leaving them without pay for the foreseeable future — they will move to withdraw from the case, Wice said.
Paxton’s team had none of it. His lawyers contended the prosecutors were seeking to undermine Paxton’s right to a speedy trial and repeatedly pointed to the prosecutors’ previous failures to get the trial delayed due to the payment issue.
“It’s time,” Paxton lawyer Dan Cogdell said. “It’s time to try the case.”
See here for some background. The first I’d heard of this motion was Tuesday when the Trib and the Chron reported on it. You know where I stand on this, and while I agree with Team Paxton that I’d like to get on with this already, I would note that it is well within their power to ask Paxton’s buddies Jeff Blackard and the Collin County Commissioners Court to drop their vendetta against the prosecutors, since that is the main stumbling block at this time. I really don’t see how anyone can object to them wanting to get paid what they were told they would be paid, nor can I see how anyone would expect them to work for free. The solution is simple if they want it to happen. Until then, we await the November 2 hearing at which everyone argues over a new court date.