Corruption hunter seeks last political scalp of his career
By Sheila McNulty in Tucson
Published: September 29 2005 22:27 | Last updated: September 29 2005 22:27
Ronnie Earle, a Texas district attorney, has spent 25 years pursuing corrupt politicians of both US parties. His career is mixed, with high-profile wins and losses. But how he is remembered will be decided by his final case against Tom DeLay.
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For the past 2½ years, Mr Earle has been quietly building a case against Mr DeLay, the US House majority leader. On Wednesday, Mr Earle laid his cards on the table, filing an indictment that charged Mr DeLay with conspiring to violate state election laws. Mr DeLay denies the charges, calling Mr Earle “an unabashed partisan zealot”.
But Mr DeLay has been forced to resign from his post as leader. And Mr Earle says he will not run for the post of district attorney again, so this will be the last hand of his career.
“He is putting all his chips into the pot on this one,” says Richard Murray, director of the University of Houston's Center for Pubic Policy. “This is the cap stone for his career.” Some say he was “shopping” the case, trying to find a grand jury to indict the controversial Texas politician. But Mr Earle is a proud man, and those who know him say that is why he has taken so long to build this case: he intends to win.
“Ronnie would not have sought this indictment if he were not sure he had the evidence,” said David Anderson, a University of Texas law professor, who has known Mr Earle for 35 years. Mr Earle's website boasts that his Travis County district attorney's office is “A Model for the Nation”. It cites pioneering child abuse initiatives, the fact it was the state's first prosecutor's office to have a victim assistance division and that it led Texas in forming a public integrity unit to prosecute corruption in government.
It says Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government professors recently used his initiatives to model how to put the theory of community justice into practice, and that the US Department of Justice and the Center for Court Innovation in New York profiled the Travis County DA's office as one of the top four district attorney's offices in the country.
“He is notorious for going after power,” says Bob Stein, Rice University political science professor. “I read this indictment. This is not a frivolous lawsuit.”
Mr Earle was born on a Texas cattle ranch, built his morality as an Eagle Scout, and demonstrated leadership as president of the Student Council. After graduating from the University of Texas law school, he became a municipal court judge, served in the House of Representatives and then became district attorney.
He is the most powerful of Texas's 254 district attorneys, because, unlike in most states, the state's attorney-general cannot prosecute criminals at the state level.
That responsibility falls to Mr Earle, whose county encompasses the state capital. He has used his position to indict 15 elected officials over the years, 12 Democrats and three Republicans.
“He is the watchdog over state government,” Dr Murray says. “He has, over a quarter of a century, effectively used that power.”
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