It was an odd mix of feelings around the tables at Char Bar last night, as the prosecutors who had just been given their pink slips from incoming DA Pat Lykos gathered to meet with sympathizers.No one wants to lose a job in this economy, of course; on the other hand, some had been vocal supporters of Lykos's opponents and, as one attendee told Hair Balls, "they know elections have consequences."Not in the Harris County DAs office, though, for at least 40-odd years. The DAs office has been the ho
Murray Newman has been anonymously writing an entertaining blog about being a prosecutor in Harris County; now that he's been canned (he supported incoming DA Pat Lykos' primary opponent), it's clear that a) the blogging will continue, and b) it will still be entertaining.Witness his latest scoop: Lykos has ruled that pants suits are fine for female prosecutors, but "She is concerned with some of the short skirts she's seen."Now that's something you'd never hear Chuck Rosenthal say.-- Richard Co
Carrie Ruiz of Humble is praying that President Obama and his promised commitment to foreign diplomacy will help bring her daughter's killer to justice.Nine years ago, Ruiz's teenaged daughter, Felicia, was stabbed to death 26 times in an open field. Two of the three attackers are now behind bars, but the mastermind, Jesus Salazar, fled to his home country of Venezuela, where he has taken refuge. For the past eight years, Ruiz had been fighting former Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosent
You're young, you do stupid things. That's pretty much a given.If you're a girl, the classic thing is shoplifting. If you're a boy, I don't know, criminal mischief, graffitti, something like that.The problem is if you're caught, there's a chance it stays on your record forever. And these days, when any swinging dick with a computer can look up criminal histories, you can find yourself at middle age trying to deal with the consequences of a decades-old momentary lapse of reason.In Harris County,
Photo courtesy Marshall Wice​You know, when the Houston Press names someone the Best Criminal Defense Attorney, we expect that the high honor will result in further good works -- it's the whole Obama-Nobel Prize train of thought.So it should come as no surprise this morning that recent winner Brian Wice won a slam-dunk victory in a high-profile case, getting the Court of Criminal Appeals -- of Texas, no less -- to vote 9-0 that his client deserved a new hearing on the punishment given her.The
