Be careful what you ask for:
"Judicial selection spinning in DeLay case
Appearance of conflicts follows judges up the political ladder.
By Laylan Copelin
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, November 03, 2005
Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace B. Jefferson late Thursday afternoon named a senior Democratic judge from San Antonio to hear the conspiracy case against U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, despite concerns that Jefferson had too many ties to DeLay's political committee to be impartial.
The trial judge will be former state District Judge Pat Priest, a former adjunct professor at St. Mary's School of Law.
Before Jefferson named Priest, the judicial carousel in DeLay's case almost spun out of control as the search for a judge beyond the hint of any political taint reached Jefferson.
But even he has deep partisan ties: He shared the same campaign treasurer and consultant as DeLay's Texans for a Republican Majority. One of his largest campaign donations — $25,000 — was from the arm of the Republican National Committee that's at the center of the allegation that DeLay and his co-defendants laundered corporate money into political donations in 2002. He also was endorsed by DeLay's committee, Texans for a Republican Majority, and made campaign appearances with DeLay's co-defendant, John Colyandro, and attended a Houston fund-raiser with the chairman of the Republican National Committee.
Just minutes before Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle filed a motion challenging Jefferson's ties of the DeLay committee, Jefferson tapped Priest from his hometown of San Antonio.
The carousel began spinning Tuesday when DeLay's lawyers successfully got State District Judge Bob Perkins, D-Austin, taken off the case because of political donations he had made to Democratic candidates and causes, including the Internet-based organization MoveOn.org.
Taking a page from that playbook, Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, a Democrat, on Thursday filed a motion that forced presiding Judge B.B. Schraub, who was supposed to name Perkins' replacement, to withdraw because of his political donations to Republicans.
Schraub asked Jefferson to name a trial judge for the former U.S. House majority leader.
That's when Texans for Public Justice, a group tracking campaign donations, disclosed that public campaign records show Jefferson has paid Austin consultant Susan Lilly $115,779 since 2001. He also had Bill Ceverha, the treasurer for DeLay's Texans for a Republican Majority, as his campaign treasurer. A judge already has ruled in a separate civil lawsuit that Ceverha broke the law by not reporting the corporate donations that DeLay's committee spent during the 2002 elections.
"Where does it stop?" said DeLay's lawyer Dick DeGuerin when told the news.
Yet he insisted Jefferson could appoint a fair judge despite the apparent conflicts — and, by law, he is the last one who can.
"This is just an administrative task, not a judicial one," DeGuerin said. "Like it not, Ronnie (Earle) is stuck with it."
That remained unclear Thursday afternoon.
Jefferson's office has not responded for comment. And Earle has not commented since filing his motion to remove Schraub.
In an unprecedented move, Earle argued that Schraub should step aside because of campaign donations he made to Republican candidates, including Gov. Rick Perry, who was a central player in DeLay's 2003 attempt to redraw Texas congressional districts. Within three hours, Schraub stepped aside, asking Jefferson, a Republican, to name a trial judge for the DeLay case. Perry appointed Jefferson to the court in 2001, and he was promoted to chief justice last year.
The escalating war over which judge should preside over the state's biggest political investigation of this generation could have a bearing on an array of pre-trial issues, particularly whether DeLay could get a fair trial in heavily Democratic Travis County, which DeLay lobbied to have split into three congressional districts in an unsuccessful attempt to defeat U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin.
DeLay, along with two co-defendants, is accused of conspiring to violate a law barring corporate money being spent on campaigns and laundering $190,000 of corporate money into political donations to Texas candidates during the 2002 elections. Specifically, the indictment accuses DeLay and co-defendants John Colyandro of Austin and Jim Ellis of Washington, D.C., of exchanging $190,000 of corporate money for the same amount in noncorporate money from an arm of the Republican National Committee.
The defendants have denied wrongdoing. Their lawyers have argued that the corporate money ban is vague, that the law doesn't prohibit sending corporate money out of Texas and that the RNC donations were legally raised in other states. They also claim Earle's investigation is a political vendetta for DeLay's role in congressional redistricting.
In Thursday's motion, Earle argued that Schraub should step aside for the same reasons that Perkins was removed from the case.
Saying he was using the same rationale employed by DeLay's lawyers, he wrote that Schraub, like Perkins, is a fair and impartial judge with a "sterling reputation" of honesty and integrity. But Earle wrote that's "unfortunately no longer the standard in our state for the judiciary." He argued that Schraub could be personally biased for DeLay and against Earle because of his political donations.
According to Earle's motion, Schraub has given $5,600 — roughly the same amount as Perkins — to Republican candidates, including President Bush, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, Gov. Rick Perry, state Sen. Jeff Wentworth and state Rep. Ed Kuempel.
Earle wrote that the $1,500 to Perry was particularly troubling because Perry was a central player in DeLay's successful attempt in 2003 to have Texas congressional districts drawn to his liking. As governor, Perry called the special legislative sessions where the districts were redrawn to shift the balance of power in the congressional delegation from Democrats to Republicans.
The prosecutor also noted that Perry appointed Schraub as presiding judge and that Schraub is up for re-appointment in January.
"It was a stupid motion," DeGuerin said. "This is an admission by Ronnie Earle that this is a political case. It's almost like he said, 'OK, you got me.' "
As is the practice in Travis County, Perkins was assigned the case randomly. But in a county where only one criminal district judge is a Republican, the odds were high that a Democratic judge would be assigned.
In court Tuesday, Earle argued that taking the unprecedented step of reassigning judges because of political donations in a state where judges are elected as partisans would be as divisive as "Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds."
On Thursday, DeGuerin said, "Relax, Chicken Little. The sky is not falling."
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