By Rob Kepple
TDCAA Executive Director in Austin
In January, TDCAA held our first of two Prosecutor Trial Skills Courses of the year. This is one of our favorite conferences because we get to welcome so many new attorneys to the profession. And January’s conference was the biggest ever at nearly 200 attendees. Almost 80 percent of them have been prosecutors less than six months, so there was a lot of work to do. In our initial polling of the group, I was gratified to see that the vast majority of attendees were there for one reason: to get better at trial. That is our job, to help you with what you need, which is how to best represent your community in court.
I want to thank our 32 faculty advisors. They are a dedicated group of experienced prosecutors who take time to give back. We couldn’t do it without you, so thanks for your dedication.
Congratulations to Texas’s new U.S. Attorneys
In December, the United States Senate confirmed the White House’s choices for Texas’s four United States Attorney positions. The hallmark of this group is experience as line prosecutors, and I’m sure they will serve the country and Texas well.
First, the White House stood pat on the Eastern District of Texas, with Britt Featherston being sworn in back in November 2021. Featherston started as an AUSA in 1996, and has served in the capacity of First Assistant U.S. Attorney, Executive Assistant U.S. Attorney, and supervisory U.S. Attorney. He was also appointed Acting United States Attorney in September 2016 and served in that capacity for 17 months. In January 2018, Featherston became the Justice Attaché for the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. In addition to prosecuting high-profile cases, such as the dragging death of James Byrd, Jr., in Jasper County, Featherston has been active with TDCAA in addressing the concerns of prosecutors with the State Bar Committee on Disciplinary Rules and Referenda and the efforts to amend Rule 3.09.
The Southern District of Texas is now served by Alamdar Hamdani. Hamdani joined the Southern District as an assistant in 2014 but has been with the Department of Justice since 2008. As an assistant, he was primarily responsible for the investigation and prosecution of national security and official corruption crimes. From 2010 to 2014, Hamdani served in the Counterterrorism Section of the Department of Justice’s National Security Division, holding the position of deputy chief from 2012 to 2014. Prior to that, he was an AUSA in the Eastern District of Kentucky.
The Northern District of Texas is now served by Leigha Simonton. Simonton is a career federal prosecutor who worked in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for almost 18 years before taking on the top role. In 2005, she began her career as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas, practicing in the office’s Appellate Division. As an appellate prosecutor, she primarily defended convictions and sentences against defendants’ appeals in the Fifth Circuit, arguing more than 20 times before that court and acting as sole counsel in almost 400 criminal appeals. She also prosecuted cases at the trial-court level and provided extensive appellate advisory support to numerous trial teams throughout the district.
Finally, congratulations to one of the legends of state prosecution in Texas, Jaime Esparza, who is now the United States Attorney for the Western District of Texas. I first met Jaime at the Harris County DA’s Office in the 1980s. Jaime eventually moved home to El Paso and was First Assistant Public Defender in the El Paso County Public Defender’s Office; he later joined the County Attorney’s Office as an assistant and later worked in the District Attorney’s Office for the 34th Judicial District. Jaime took office as the elected DA in 1991. He is credited with creating the award-winning Domestic Violence 24-Hour Project, bringing more focus and support to victims of domestic abuse. In 2005, Esparza was named Prosecutor of the Year by the State Bar of Texas, and in 2015 he received the National Mothers Against Drunk Driving President’s Award for Outstanding Criminal Justice Prosecutor.
We are very excited about this new crew, and we can’t wait to get to know them better.
Prosecutors and the victims of domestic violence
We recently received a letter at TDCAA World Headquarters regarding an article in the September-October edition of this journal written by Philip McLemore, an ADA in Brazos County. The article, “Lessons on family violence from working intake,” caught the eye of a former ACA in Travis County, Bill Swaim. I will let you read Bill’s email for yourself:
“‘Lessons on family violence from working intake’” in the recent Texas Prosecutor journal is an excellent article. When I first saw the article, my thoughts on this subject were not on the technical aspects of family violence prosecution but instead about the career impact resulting from my own intake experience reviewing family violence cases. …
When I started as an ACA with Travis County in 1992, intake attorneys spoke to protective order applicants about the legal process ahead of them and were responsible for reviewing and signing their applications as the office representative. Reading the applications with the applicant sitting at your desk was a very personal experience. The applications, of course, recounted the past and ongoing abuse, threats, and terror that brought the applicant to our office. It was an eye-opening experience.
Since then, I’ve advocated for much more education in law school for future lawyers about domestic violence in our society. The principal takeaway from that experience for me as a prosecutor was a deeper concern for crime victims. I was certainly a better prosecutor from then on and not just on family violence cases.
Our office some years later stopped the practice of intake attorneys working with protective order applicants. Instead, we created a separate protective order division. This change resulted in a noticeable drop in concern among prosecutors hired from that point forward about victim concerns. Instead, the focus became the courthouse club of colleagues, defense counsel, and judges. After all, the victims of crime only interact with prosecutors mostly before trial—if there is a trial. This same effect resulted from creating a distinct family violence division.
Now retired, I can reflect on how my early sensitization to crime victim concerns, particularly in the domestic violence area, greatly influenced and enhanced my service to my community.
In conclusion, I would hope prosecutor offices are organized to inculcate and emphasize crime victim sensitivity early and often in the careers of prosecutors.
Thanks for the brief soap box.”
Bill makes an excellent point about his days working the intake desk in Travis County, and as a prosecutor spending time with crime victims writing their protective orders. Bill’s experience writing POs for domestic violence victims clearly impacted his approach to these important cases. This is exactly the kind of thoughtful approach to our domestic violence work that we hope we can energize with the creation of a Domestic Violence Resource Prosecutor position here at TDCAA. Stay tuned as we begin work on that initiative.
Rule 3.09 update
As you have read in past editions of this journal, the State Bar Committee on Disciplinary Rules and Referenda (CDRR) has been discussing amendments to Rule 3.09, Special Duties of Prosecutors. The question has been whether the rule should be amended to reflect recommendations by the American Bar Association to extend a prosecutor’s ethical obligations to disclose exculpatory evidence and information to past cases, and if so, what those specific ethical obligations would be. The latest proposal of the CDRR was printed in the Texas Bar Journal. You can read the proposal here, starting on page 70: www.texasbar.com/Content/NavigationMenu/CDRR/Agendas_Minutes/MeetingMaterialsJanuary42023.pdf.
The bar will hold a remote public meeting on the rule on April 12 at 10:00 a.m. The comment period on the rule ends April 13. The proposed amendment is one of disclosure, and we get the sense that most prosecutors are comfortable with that. The issue many have raised is how to comply with the proposed subsection (f)(1)(iii) regarding cooperation with the defense: “[The prosecutor shall] cooperate with the defendant’s counsel by promptly providing all information known to the prosecutor regarding the underlying matter and the new information.” Given Texas already has robust discovery provisions in the Code of Criminal Procedure via the Michael Morton Act, one is left to wonder what this proposed amendment means. In any event, if you have concerns about any of this, don’t miss your chance to weigh in. If you have questions, contact me at [email protected].
Finally, I want to thank two people who worked very hard in this process. First, thanks to Rick Hagen, a criminal defense attorney in Denton who just completed his two-year stint on the CDRR. Rick was an honest broker on this issue and brought a lot of thoughtful insights into how this change would work in practice. Second, thanks to Scott Brumley, who until the end of 2022 chaired the TDCAA Rule 3.09 Committee. Scott resigned because he is on the State Bar committee now, taking Rick Hagen’s place. This is a real plus for the State Bar! Congratulations, Scott. Kriste Burnett, the DA in Palo Pinto County, has graciously agreed to carry on as the new chair, so thanks, Kriste.
Parker County DA reunifies victims with memories
When Jeff Swain took over as the DA in Parker County, I am sure he had visions of fighting for the rights of crime victims in court. Little did he know some important work would be done … in the property room.
Faced with the potential destruction of evidence from 1986, one would not expect much effort to go into the destruction order. But Jeff stopped when he found a class ring among the jewelry to be deep-sixed. Jeff’s investigator, Wendy Bravo, went to work to find the ring’s owner, and using good old-fashioned detective work, followed the leads until the jewelry—and its memories—were reunited with the rightful owner. (Read the whole story at www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/parker-county-das-office-reunites-keller-woman-with-jewelry-stolen-long-ago/3167209.)
Just a nice reminder of how important the little things are as we serve our constituents. Well done, Jeff and Wendy!