By Bernadette Haby
Misdemeanor Chief in the DA’s Office in Harris County
Greetings from Misdemeanor in Harris County, Texas!
The Misdemeanor Division is the first assignment a new prosecutor will have in Harris County. It is where new attorneys learn the job and make their first friendships. They are young, excited, and ready to put in the work. They spend long hours in their offices and in our division’s areas.
To improve morale and give our area some personality, the bureau chief at the time, Caroline Dozier, and I talked about adding artwork or inspiring sayings down the hallways in Misdemeanor. We had a variety of thoughts, including my idea of a large mural on the main hallway. I thought it would be fun to have a postcard-style mural, the kind that everyone takes a picture with to show that you’ve been to a new town. I wasn’t really optimistic that this could ever happen, because these are the same gray walls I started with 21 years ago. To my surprise, our new administration approved the idea of a mural very quickly. Now I needed to actually make this thing happen.
I’ve always been interested in art. I enjoy drawing, painting, and all things crafty. My dad was a self-trained artist as a kid, and though he never finished, he had been an art major in college. He had painted commissioned artwork, and at home he would paint in our rooms (I had a large Smurfette on my wall), and we had a huge ’70s-style rainbow mural in our living room. He regularly encouraged drawing, painting, and being creative. He would teach me things to improve, but he was always the toughest critic. Other than Dad and a couple of high school classes, I have no formal art training, and I’ve certainly never painted a mural on a wall!
Because I wasn’t on a time crunch for this project, I took my time with the design and creating a sketch. I started sometime in January 2025 and worked on it slowly. The sketch was on 11×15-inch watercolor paper, and I used watercolors, pencil, and alcohol markers.
I immediately knew I wanted the postcard-style mural to say “Greetings from Misdemeanor” with the background a merge of two colors, blue representing law enforcement and purple representing justice. In each of the letters of Misdemeanor, I wanted to include things that reflect our profession and that would specifically be relevant for new prosecutors. I included two of the most common TDCAA books for new trial lawyers (the Penal Code and Predicates); the Texas flag; law books, because we always have legal references to rely on; a trial lawyer at a podium because that’s what we’re learning to do in Misdemeanor; a jury performing its civic duty with the American flag; a gavel representing the judiciary and the courts we’re in every day; a subpoena representing the power of the State and our contact with witnesses; handcuffs, a radio, and police badges for two of the largest law enforcement agencies in Harris County; and standing above all of these is, of course, Lady Justice.
On the left of the mural design, surrounding the title word “Misdemeanor,” I added the Harris County Criminal Justice Center and the Harris County Criminal Courts seal. On the bottom of the mural is the city of Houston skyline and the local popular graffiti “Be Someone.” This local graffiti has become a highly recognizable sentiment for Houstonians and it seemed appropriate for our new prosecutors: They are about to learn to “be someone” as a prosecutor, to their victims, and to the citizens of Harris County. Finishing off the mural is our bureau name, the Professional Development Bureau, and our Harris County District Attorney’s Office seal.
When I completed the drawing design in February, I submitted it to the First Assistant and Chief of Staff for review, changes, and approval. With no changes, the approval came quickly, and it was time to transfer the image to the wall.
At the end of March, I started the project by cleaning the wall, filling holes and wall seams, measuring out the mural size, taping off the wall, painting a primer coat, and then painting the background colors. I recruited my 16-year-old daughter to help with this project as much as I could. Her art skills exceed mine, so this was a fun project to do together. I thought I could just project the image from the paper onto the wall with a large projector, where I could then transfer the sketch to the wall and begin painting. It was not until I had painted the entire background that I realized there was not enough room for the projector to fit in the hallway and illuminate the drawing large enough for the mural. In picking the location, I hadn’t thought to make sure I wasn’t in an enclosed hallway. I moved on to Plan B and tried to transfer the mural using the “grid method.” I’ve never been a fan of this method, but I needed to get this image on the wall somehow. I traced a copy of the mural onto tracing paper and laid out a grid on the drawing to determine sizing. I used a chalk reel to lay the grid out onto the wall in the size that corresponded with the grid on the drawing. Both my daughter and I tried for hours to draw some of the mural on the wall with the grid method, but we could not get the placement down properly. I became so frustrated that I abandoned the entire grid method and moved to freehand drawing the mural onto the wall. Once the drawing was complete, I began the fun part of painting.
I painted the details in slowly, and because the drawing was freehanded, I was constantly making corrections or tweaks to it. Most of the mural was fun to paint, but there were definitely parts I was avoiding: the building, the court seal, and our office seal, specifically. The windows on the building just seemed like a nightmare, because the building is at an angle and I was painting it while on a ladder holding a level and a pencil. I came in committed to it one day and was embarrassed at how easy it was to just get it done. Same with the court seal. It was hard to see pencil lines on the black paint, but once I got it up there, it was fine.
The office seal was a different story. The details are too specific and precise. I tried the projector idea again but could not get a clear enough image. I decided to use the projector in my office where I had more room and I enlarged the image onto a large piece of white paper. I then taped carbon paper to the enlarged logo and traced it onto the mural. I was shocked and so relieved at how well it showed up on the purple background. I used the carbon paper again to paint out Professional Development Bureau in the font our office uses for any materials.
After about five months of painting, I finally finished and signed the mural at the beginning of September. I signed the mural in a few different ways. My obvious name signature is in the bottom right corner, but I also included a couple of artist Easter eggs. The badge number #1120 on the Harris County Sheriff’s Office Badge represents my birthday of November 20. The Cause Number #80904 on the case paperwork represents the date I started as a Harris County prosecutor, August 9, 2004.
The completed mural is 11×7 feet, and the materials I used were primer, interior acrylic paint, craft acrylic paint, and Posca paint markers. I worked on it every weekend that I was available, but I didn’t keep a detailed log of my hours. There were days I would work a few hours, and there were days I would put in eight hours. I was mostly having a great time with the project, so the time would usually fly by. If I had to guess, I would say the prepping and painting took around 150 hours. I was very thankful that this was an indoor project! The project cost about $250 in supplies and paint. I kept the cost relatively low because I already owned many of the materials I needed.
The response to the mural in our division and across the office has been overwhelmingly positive. For months, many misdemeanor people didn’t realize I was painting the mural. They would come in on the weekends and find me on a ladder or laying on the floor painting and then confess they thought someone had been hired to come in and paint it. I think knowing that one of their supervisors painted it for them and for the division adds to the morale and fun of the mural. I see the imperfections of my work, but I am proud to have tackled this and actually finished it. I showed my dad, the toughest critic, a picture of the final product and he said it was perfect and that he couldn’t have done better. I don’t believe that, but it was the highest compliment.
I have some more ideas for our hallways and hope to tackle some of them soon. I would love the chance to design and paint another office mural as well. I’ve learned so much from this process and would really enjoy bringing some color, and I hope some smiles, to different areas of our office.