SCENE:  The Death Star orbits over Downtown Houston. [INTERIOR] The Imperial Council Chambers. EMPRESS OGG sits at the head of a long table with her council advisors lined down each side. It is STARDATE MARCH 5 - T-MINUS 20 seconds EMPRESS OGG:  Beloved minions, we stand on the precipice of what will be a great and lengthy battle -- THE SPACE DOOR OPENS AND VICE-ADMIRAL MITCHAM HURRIES IN. VICE-ADMIRAL MITCHAM:  Okay, we lost. (STUNNED SILENCE) EMPRESS OGG:  What do you mean "we lost," Vice-Admiral?  The battle literally began two seconds ago. VICE-ADMIRAL MITCHAM:&nb ..read more

In addition to the extremely heated battle for Harris County District Attorney, there are only a handful of other races within the Criminal Justice Center.  Just because the District Attorney's Race is getting all of the attention these days doesn't mean that those races aren't extremely important.   Republican Primary With the exception of former Assistant District Attorney and current Defense Attorney Tonya Rolland McLaughlin running for place 4 on the 14th Court of Appeals, there aren't any contested races on the Republican side that have a direct impact on CJC.  If you ..read more

I always get somewhat amused when I see my name attached to the label of "Frequent Ogg Critic" in articles where I comment on Kim Ogg's job performance as Harris County District Attorney.  I am quick to point out that I didn't start out as a critic of hers -- quite the opposite, actually.  I voted for her in 2016 and I was public about my support for her, much to the disapproval of a lot of my friends. My criticisms of Kim have been earned over the years and they've all been based on what I've seen her do in her professional capacity.  It isn't personal.  It's not like she ..read more

I heard this morning that former District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal passed away overnight.  He had been in ill health for quite some time and I heard he had taken a turn for the worse over the past few weeks.  The news of his passing was not unexpected. To say that Chuck left behind a complicated legacy would be an extreme understatement, especially for those of us who worked as Assistant District Attorneys under his administration.  Although I started my prosecutorial career under Johnny Holmes, he retired a little over a year after I started and the vast majority of my tenure ..read more

 It's good to see that Sean Teare is capturing the attention of the audience on the campaign trail ..read more

 I had jury duty for the first time in a couple of years today.  In the 33 years since I've been eligible to be a juror, I had only sat through three voir dires before today.  I never made the jury on any of them.  The first was a criminal case in Brazos County when I was at A&M.  The second was a criminal case in Harris County shortly after I left the D.A.'s Office where my friend and former co-worker Wendy Baker utilized a State Strike on me because she thought I was too good of friends with Defense Counsel Mark Bennett -- as I pointed out to her later, I never d ..read more

 After an absence of several years due to the Pandemic, Pat Kelley and Julie Jones' Feast of Fashion is returning this year. It's been a minute since the last, but they are always a ton of fun and raise money for several great causes.  For ticket information, contact Julie at 713-248-6864 ..read more

Legendary Defense Attorney and former Prosecutor Skip Cornelius passed away yesterday.  To say that his passing has resonated across the entirety of the Harris County Criminal Justice Center Family is an understatement.  From his fellow members of the Defense Bar to the Prosecutors who handled cases against him to pretty much all of the Judges he practiced before, Skip was the Gold Standard of what it meant to be a lawyer practicing indigent defense.   If you've been a reader of this blog over the years, you'll have seen his name brought up many times as I cited him as the ..read more

The Houston Chronicle ran an article this week about local criminal defense attorney Jerome Godnich and the fact that he made over half a million dollars last year in court-appointed fees.  In my current role as president of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers' Association, I was interviewed at length by Neena Satija, the reporter who wrote the article, although a lot of what we talked about didn't end up in the story. The quote of mine that she did use pointed out the fact that I thought Jerome (as well as other lawyers who have recently come under the microscope for taking on too many ca ..read more

Man, Kim Ogg had to be missing her some Dudegoggles today.   Ever since former Harris County District Attorney's Office spokesperson Dane Schiller left the Office (and the country!) following his disastrous appearance as a witness in the Guajuardo hearing last year, it looks like Boss Ogg has been managing her own Twitter account. And if today's events are any indicator, suffice it to say that things are not going well. It started off with a seemingly non-Ogg-related tweet from June 6th by a Twitter account called "Urban Reform" that had made note of a recent heated exchange between ..read more