By Sarah Moore
Assistant District Attorney in Williamson County
Code of Criminal Procedure Art. 2A.101 tells us, “It shall be the primary duty of all prosecuting attorneys, including any special prosecutors, not to convict, but to see that justice is done.” The perpetual inquiry is: What is justice?
Antione De Riveral is credited with saying, “The sword of justice has no scabbard.” There is no need to tell prosecutors to imagine the weight of a sword that never gets put away—this is our daily reality.
In this year’s episode of serving as a trial division prosecutor, this concept has been in the forefront for me, maybe more than usual. A series of emotionally charged cases in a row left me feeling a bit lost, really. Do we make a positive difference in anyone’s lives? Are victims’ lives actually made better from our involvement?
Two deeply emotional cases
On the eve of a defendant’s plea to indecency by contact with both of his biological daughters and sexual assault with a stepdaughter, the defendant committed suicide. I had been alerted to alarming emails he had sent the mother of the victims in the wee hours of morning, and I spent hours that day on the phone with law enforcement, working from out of town to help them enter the house where we thought he was. While we suspected we would not find him alive, there was a lingering hope officers could get there in time to stop him from self-harm.
In the end, the defendant was found deceased in his home from self-inflicted wounds to his forearms.
The aftermath of this man’s tragic ending was meeting with the three child victims to allow them to ask questions, explain what this meant for the case, and outline what services would remain available to them as they navigated the situation together. Understandably, one child, a middle schooler, asked, “What was the point of all of this?” (Unsaid was, “If it would just end like this?”) The question sparked an endless spiral of rumination for my trial partner and me. It brought back every case where we felt empty at the end, and it forced us to question every decision we had made. Did we make these girls’ lives better by being involved? Did we truly help them in any way? Was this “justice?”
While this wasn’t the first time a case has ended in this way and I’m certain it won’t be the last, there was something particularly poignant about this one. Maybe it was the fact that there were three victims and over the year and a half this case was pending on my docket, I got to know them all and their vibrant but distinct personalities. Maybe it was their honesty in how they struggled with loving their father: mourning the loss of relationship but also wanting him to be responsible for what he’d done. Maybe it was the way the older sister shared her experiences over time as she worked with a therapist while navigating her first year of college. Whatever the reason, this one hit differently.
The night before the defendant took his life, he wrote an email intended for the girls. In it, he apologized to each of them individually and confessed to everything he’d done, including sexual assaults that started when the older child was 5 years old. Things we didn’t even know about.
But did we see that justice was done? Did we appropriately toe the line in plea negotiations? Could we have done something differently to avoid a tragedy that will forever impact these girls’ lives?
This experience forced me to critically consider my job as a whole. Am I making a positive difference? It can certainly feel some days that I don’t. Maybe you feel the same way?
In contrast to the indecency case, there was another pivotal case for me in the last year. The case was charged as a first-degree manufacture and delivery with a notable aggravating factor: While out on bond for the drug charge, the defendant arranged for the person he thought was the “snitch” to be brought to his house at knifepoint, where he then assaulted her, kept her locked in a dark closet, and had her taken and released out in the county when he was done. After all, he couldn’t leave his house with an ankle monitor.
The kidnapping victim had an extensive rap sheet comprised mostly of drug charges. At the time of our trial, she had a pending aggravated kidnapping charge with dubious facts in a neighboring county and a felony for possessing a number of credit cards. Because she kept going in and out of jail and remained transient, we were not able to meet with her before the jury trial began. However, in a huge boon to our case, she was picked up shortly before trial on a warrant for the credit card case and wound up in our jail.
When it came time to call her as a witness, I sat with her in the holding cell in the back. I had never met her. In fact, I had told the jury in my opening exactly that: I have no idea what she will say. When I walked in, I saw a woman with multi-colored hair, a naivete that is hard to describe in words, and a truly guileless demeanor. I showed her one picture of the closet where the defendant had held her, just to make sure she would recognize it and to confirm I had properly identified it. When she saw it, her face immediately crumpled, she dropped to her knees, and she started crying. “That’s where [he] made me stay.” After that, I didn’t ask her any more questions.
When we put her on the stand, I just started asking about her drug history: When was the first time she had used? Why that particular drug? The story that unfolded was riddled with personal challenges and life setbacks. She was in a major car accident when she was in her first year of higher education and had to learn to walk again. Her mother, her best friend, took care of her when she moved back home during that season. Soon after, the painkillers turned into drugs, which turned into cheaper drugs that would impart a longer-lasting high, until she at last found herself in the state jail where she was forced into sobriety. Upon release, she was happy to be sober and looking to stay that way. A few weeks later, her mother died, sending her into another spiral of drug use and transience.
The jury absolutely felt sympathy for her. I got to give the closing we all want to present at the end of a trial like that: “Today is the day that this woman—whom the defendant has tried to portray as an unbelievable meth addict—gets justice, the day that the law protects her.” The defendant had no prior felony history and the jury returned a 40-year verdict. We were thankful jurors were as offended by the kidnapping as we were.
While we awaited the co-defendant’s trial date, the victim asked to go from the jail to inpatient treatment. She did. Upon completion, she asked to live with her father. She did. After nine months of sobriety, she delivered a powerful victim impact statement when the co-defendant elected to enter into a plea agreement. She is protective of her sobriety, she has a job, she is enrolled in college classes, and she recently told me, “I wish I had known how good sobriety would feel a long time ago. I wouldn’t have wasted so much time.” She celebrates every win: Getting an A in her class was something she never thought she was capable of, and yet she continues to excel. In another recent conversation, she said with a smile, “It’s nice to see a good part of the system for once.”
We can’t heal everyone in a day, but we can begin with a listening ear and a voice of compassion, with our armor at the ready, prepared to go into battle for those our society might deem “less than.”
So why do we do this job? As I’ve contemplated this question for the last year, I have arrived at an answer that works for me: The cost of being a bystander to injustice far outweighs the risks of taking a stand for it.
Be encouraged. There will be days when this job is deflating, discouraging, disheartening, and at times, absolutely heartbreaking. But they will be followed by days that are exhilarating, encouraging, and completely empowering—on those days, we feel like we truly change lives and right wrongs.
As I’ve ruminated in the last year, I was reminded of Elie Wiesel, a survivor of Nazi concentration camps, who said, “What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor, but the silence of the bystander.” Are we to speak when victims cannot? Are we to speak when they don’t want to? Are we to intervene when our action could cause further pain or harm, simply because to say nothing would be to side (in our silence) with the offender?
Would we hold a good Samaritan accountable for performing CPR to save someone and in the process cause harm to the dying person’s ribcage? Similarly, would we hold someone accountable for removing a tree limb that fell on a stranger, only to realize that the pressure of the limb was keeping the person from bleeding out? Assuming these two persons survived, would they be angry? Or would they be thankful a stranger cared enough to intervene? I suppose we could argue that both are possible, but is one more likely? More importantly, could the good Samaritan have slept at night knowing he passed by the stranger as he lay dying in the road and did nothing at all?
Prosecutors make these decisions every day. From one to another, I want to encourage you! Your job matters. What we do impacts our communities. What you champion matters, so make it count. Do the right thing for the right reasons, and while the road doesn’t get easier, at least it stays even.
The great science fiction writer Ursula K. LeGuin once said, “Justice is in the hands of the gods, an old poet wrote. Mortal hands hold only mercy and the sword.” We carry so much power to impact the lives of many that we must wield that power wisely and with integrity. In so doing, we can, as Justice Berger advised, “strike hard blows,” but not “foul ones.” We will serve our communities and each individual in the criminal justice system fairly, remembering that no one is above or beneath the law. The laws that punish can also protect; the prosecutor who shows severity can also show mercy.
I would submit that where all these things converge is where we find justice.