By Dawson Townsend
Assistant County & District Attorney in Colorado County
It’s March 27, 2025, and I just left my interview with the County Attorney’s Office in Colorado County. This was my second interview of the day and my third with a District or County Attorney’s Office. I walked out and immediately got my girlfriend and mom on the phone. I remember telling them, “I really hope I get this one.” I enjoyed my conversations with the elected and first assistant, and out of all my interviews, I resonated most with their plans for me and how they ran the office. I was looking for somewhere to help me grow in my career, and as a young attorney, I was eager to get into the courtroom. The elected, Jay Johannes, made it very clear that if trial was what I wanted, trial was what I would get, and that was what they needed from me.
Up to this point, I was working as a family law lawyer in Colleyville while living in Fort Worth. My girlfriend (now wife) was a nurse in Denton. My family lives in Bellville. We really wanted to be closer to family, and criminal law was my passion—I’m grateful I had a boss at the family law firm who supported me moving on to chase that passion.
During law school at Texas A&M University, I interned with the District Attorney’s Office in Dallas County, in Dallas County Criminal Court No. 7, and at a defense firm. With that experience, I could genuinely say I saw every side of the criminal justice system. But what I garnered from those internships was that being a prosecutor was the only job where I could “wear the white hat.” In my time in private practice, I worked for whoever came to our office with money, and oftentimes I found myself with a client I really wished I could trade for a new one. I wanted to make a difference for the right reasons, and I knew prosecution was the job to do that.
On April 3, Jay sent me an email to formally offer me the job of Assistant County Attorney. I remember talking to my mom and girlfriend about how excited I was. I packed all my things, passed off my cases to my colleagues at the firm, and moved three and a half hours south. My start date was April 28.
When that day finally came around, I walked into one of the most beautiful courthouses in Texas, which I say with some bias. The stained glass dome above the district court wows anyone who sees it. The bar and jury box reminded me of something straight out of the history books. It was truly mesmerizing, and I was so glad I got to call this my workplace.
The learning curve
My first month as a prosecutor was definitely a rollercoaster of learning. Coming from a family law firm in a big county, I was used to pretty busy dockets. But this was my first time participating in a large felony non-trial docket. I learned quickly that getting a plea deal done requires a ton of paperwork. Lucky for me, First Assistant Carolyn Olson, with her decades of experience, was extremely helpful in showing me the ropes for filling out a plea memorandum.
I learned that listening is more important than speaking. As young lawyers, I think it’s easy for us to get excited, and we want to share what we know. For me, I had already tried a family law modification on my own and done a few temporary orders hearings. In my mind, I knew how this court thing works. Newsflash: Let the ink on your license dry a bit first! Oftentimes, it’s the simplest things that reminded me just how much I had to learn. I’ll never forget that I was filling out a plea memorandum on a felony case. I noticed the defendant’s punishment was enhanced from a third-degree to a second-degree felony in a drug case. So I marked that he was being convicted of a second-degree felony. Well, as all my seasoned prosecutors know, that’s not usually the case. I was shocked when Carolyn told me the conviction was still for a third-degree felony. “How can that be?” I thought. “The punishment here is two to 20 years.” She kindly informed me that the punishment was enhanced, not the offense level. That whole concept hurts my head a little to this day!
The takeaway? Listen more than you speak.
Practice
Colorado County is a small office; we have four lawyers, including the elected, to handle all the misdemeanor, felony, and civil work that comes in the door. In a small office, you can be working on one thing and then completely pivot to another. I remember Carolyn, who also serves as the Misdemeanor Chief, coming into my office and reminding me that we had a misdemeanor jury trial the next month. She asked me, “What part of it do you want to do?” In my mind, that’s a loaded question. Should I take a witness? Should I do voir dire? She then told me, “You don’t have to answer right now, but think about it.” I mulled over it and decided I wanted to take voir dire. I felt like that was a good way to get my feet wet by talking to potential jurors and working on my presentation skills. The No. 1 case on this docket was an assault family violence, with a self-defense claim from the defendant and very little physical injury to the victim. A tough case, to say the least.
Remember when I said prosecutors in small offices frequently have to pivot? Well, that’s what happened here. Carolyn came to me about a week later and asked, “Do you want to take this whole case? I don’t want to put too much on you too soon, but it would be helpful.” I went from being the voir dire man to first-chairing my first-ever jury trial. I was excited and nervous, but I felt ready to do it.
I interviewed the victim, prepared the police officer, and even drafted questions in case the defendant took the stand. I must have run through my opening at least 50 times. My poor family had to be fake panelists so I could practice my voir dire on them.
Game day
It’s trial day. I walked into the county courtroom, ready to rock, after spending hours preparing how I wanted my voir dire to look and sound. Trial started, I put my victim on the witness stand, and she recited the facts better than I expected. She was sweet, kind, and believable. I felt good. But as soon as I passed her to defense counsel, it was like a light switch. Her answers were short and somewhat argumentative, and they came with a slight attitude. I had talked to her about this exact situation—I had told her to remain calm with defense counsel. But I learned one thing: All bets are off once a witness is on that stand. You truly cannot know how they will handle being questioned, and there is nothing you can do about it. What if the jurors judge her by her reaction? What if they see that attitude and think, well, maybe she is aggressive?
Ultimately, my police officer testified well, and defense counsel didn’t get anything out of the officer that helped his case. Then the defendant took the stand. As I later learned, that is not an everyday occurrence. I questioned him like a surgeon with a scalpel because I had watched his statement to police dozens of times. I remembered everything he said that night, and there was no way he knew it better than me. I eventually caught him in a lie to the jury, and I played the bodycam footage for jurors to see. I called him a liar, and over many objections for badgering and being argumentative, I was having the time of my life.
The jury deliberated for an hour and returned a guilty verdict. Hearing the word “guilty” was the biggest relief for me. My victim cried, asked if she could hug me, and told me, “Thank you for everything.” That was the moment I knew I was in the right career, when I could help a victim show the world what happened to her, and get her the justice she deserved.
Second inning
There is never time to waste in a prosecutor’s office. We had another trial scheduled in misdemeanor court, and this time I was doing something I never thought I would in this job: I was going to prosecute a local police officer for theft. The idea of facing an officer as the defendant was strange to me. I just helped a victim of domestic violence, and now I was looking to prosecute a cop and potentially take away his career. I had no trouble believing that what he did violated the law, but prosecuting an officer was still a tough concept to wrap my head around.
I prepared for the case just as I would for any other. I contacted my witnesses, including a man the defendant arrested on the date of the crime, and prepared them for trial. Again, even more with this case, I really needed my family as my fake jury panelists. Carolyn sat second chair with me, and we really fine-tuned my voir dire because trying a police officer was not just weird to me; we knew the jury would probably scrutinize us a bit harder, too. This was no ordinary theft. We were alleging that the defendant stole drugs from the police department when he took them to his house and never returned them, rather than storing them in the evidence locker where they belonged. Ultimately, the jury found him guilty, I was relieved, and I felt pretty good about trial.
The major leagues
After successfully prosecuting this pair of tougher misdemeanors and defending a motion to suppress in felony court, Carolyn told me she thought I was ready for felonies. As a baseball fan, it felt like being called up to the majors from Triple-A. I was excited and nervous—but I also felt ready. Jay wanted me to get my feet wet in felony court with something relatively small, like a state-jail drug possession case. Except, as most prosecutors know, those almost never go to trial. That’s the kind of case that pleads.
So, instead, why not try an indecency with a child enhanced to a first-degree felony? That’s close enough, right? Indeed, some prosecutors in large offices will feel tense reading that this was my first felony trial, but it was. Not only that, I first-chaired the case. (Welcome to small county prosecution!) When Carolyn and I met with the victim, she felt that the complainant resonated more with me, so she wanted me to do the direct examination. This case was a delayed outcry where the date of the offense wasn’t exactly clear, and I needed to get some extraneous offenses into evidence under Code of Criminal Procedure Art. 38.37. I studied 38.37 up and down so I would be ready to make my case for why these extraneous offenses should come in for the jury to consider. I prepped the victim twice, and I felt ready.
Trial came just seven months after my first day on the job, and I stepped back into that beautiful courtroom I saw on my first day as lead counsel on a first-degree felony. I was nervous, as I think anyone would be on his first felony trial, but I felt ready. My victim testified well, and she held up well on cross-examination. She was emotional, and I think she really placed the jurors in the shoes of the 14-year-old girl she was at the time of the offense.
Did I mention the defendant fled the jurisdiction before the second day of trial? (How’s that for a first felony?) Defense counsel and I went round and round as I tried to get the defendant’s flight into evidence. Ultimately, the judge let me mention his absence, but not that he was gone because of this trial. Good enough, I say! After he was found guilty and given his prior history, I asked the jury for life in prison, and he was sentenced to 60 years in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. (He was ultimately captured about a month later.) Giving the victim her day in court and making sure a predator could never harm another child is a feeling I don’t think any other career could match. This is why I prosecute.
The strikeout
Up to this point, trials are going well for me, but I would be lying if I said every case led to the outcome I hoped for. Soon after that first felony trial, I was assigned a misdemeanor trial, and the offense was texting while driving,[1] a Class A misdemeanor that carries a sentence of up to one year if the defendant causes death or serious bodily injury to the victim.
I prepared for this case for a long time. This offense is not one that is regularly prosecuted, so there wasn’t much guidance from court opinions. The victim was hurt pretty badly, and I felt for her situation. Ultimately, the jury found the defendant not guilty. That was the first time I heard those words uttered in a case I was tasked with handling, and I was filled with disbelief. I couldn’t understand how the jury didn’t see the facts the way I did. I replayed every step of that trial in my head, wondering where I’d gone wrong and what I should’ve done differently. Those thoughts played out in my head continuously across the next few days.
After the trial, my elected told me, “Learn what you can from the losses, and move on.” I like that advice, as hard as it may have been to swallow, and I took it to heart. In this job, if you’re trying cases that should be tried, losses will happen—it is the inevitable reality of prosecution. But we see justice done, not convictions. Justice means ensuring victims have their day in court and advocating for it every day, no matter the result.
World Series Game 7
One thing is for certain: In prosecution, you need to have short-term memory because the job must go on. In the year before I arrived in Colorado County, a man was convicted of capital murder. I’ll never forget the day Jay told us oral argument was granted in the case. That always makes you pucker.
The next question he posed to the office was, “Who is going to do the oral argument?” I definitely said, “I don’t care,” but the truth is, I absolutely cared—I wanted to do it. I loved oral argument from moot court in law school (just not the brief writing). But I also understood the importance of a capital murder case, and I did not want to overstep. But my wish was granted, and Jay decided to let me do the argument.
The issue was clear: Did the officer have a material omission in his search warrant affidavit such that it misled the court, and the court should have granted a motion to suppress? The law says that if no material omission exists, then analysis stops, and the court of appeals upholds the trial court’s ruling. However, if an omission exists, the court must add the omitted statement to the search warrant and conduct a de novo review of probable cause.
This was my Game 7. I read the facts of this case, I basically memorized the family tree of the victim and the defendant to be able to explain the facts, and I rehearsed my points numerous times. I think I was more familiar with the families than the families themselves!
I remember walking into the 14th Court of Appeals with all our prosecutors and our investigator, as we discussed additional issues and strategized about opposing counsel’s argument. Once it was my turn to speak, a calm washed over me, my preparation kicked in, and the good old glory days of moot court made me feel right at home. I was ready. There was nothing the court could ask that I could not answer. And with that, just a few weeks later, the judgment of the trial court was affirmed! I can confidently say reading that opinion was the highlight of my first year in prosecution.
Next season
As I’ve ventured into my second year of prosecution, I can say this is, without a doubt, the greatest job in the world. What we get to do as prosecutors is unlike anything else, and I am so glad this is my career. To all the veteran prosecutors reading this, I hope this retrospective of my rookie season is a reminder of why you joined the fight. And to all my fellow young prosecutors, enjoy the ride because it doesn’t get any better than this!
[1] Tex. Transp. Code §545.4251(f).