Marketing the Hired-Gun Prosecutor

I wrote back in May about Kelly Siegler's future as a Hired-Gun Prosecutor (motto: "I get paid to make people afraid!"). "How to get the business?" I asked, "Word of mouth and the internet, of course."

Then in June she posted to the Women in Crime Ink blog with the tagline "Prosecutor for Hire." The businesspeople among us recognized this as a first step toward creating a brand.

Now it's July, and Kelly has another post up at Women in Crime Ink. This one, "Win at All Costs? Not Really" is a none-too subtle slam of Texas prosecutors:

The real problem is that far too many prosecutors are worried about taking on a difficult case, a case that is not a slam-dunk or a whale ("as easy as harpooning a whale in a barrel," as we say in Harris County, Texas). Too many prosecutors demand that the cases presented to them for the filing of charges come to them with all the questions answered and wrapped in a pretty, little bow. What prosecutors seem to forget is that the question they need to be asking is whether a jury of twelve, ordinary, normal, non-lawyer citizens would convict on the evidence presented to them or evidence easily developed by the prosecutor after the filing of charges.

(If you read Kelly's article, by the way, know that her lede is a
straw man. The public's complaint about prosecutors is not that they
fight to convict people whom they know to be innocent, nor that they
fight aggressively and fairly to convict people whom they believe to be guilty.
The complaint is that the Rosenthal-Siegler "win at all costs" culture
leads some prosecutors -- even [especially?] those whom Kelly describes as "chicken", to break the rules to win. Most prosecutors don't cheat, just as most prosecutors aren't chicken, but the office that tolerates one prosecutor breaking the rules deserves the loss of public trust that will inevitably follow.)

There's more -- much more -- of this scathing critique of the prosecutors whom Kelly lauded when it suited her political interests. So what's going on here?

It looks to me like marketing. The legal market is tough, especially when you're trying to create a niche for yourself that the justice system had so far been able to do without. Kelly recognizes that her erstwhile colleagues are now her competition, because as long as the people of Texas (her potential customers) have faith in their elected DAs and their hired minions to do a good job, there'll never be much of a market for the hired gun.

Kelly is, of course, using fear -- the fear that the prosecutor prosecuting your loved one's murderer won't do a good job -- to market herself. Fear notwithstanding, there's fair marketing and unfair marketing. It's fair to the customers and the competition to fairly depict the competition's failings (to warn the customers). It's unfair to paint the competition with such a broad brush that the customers get the wrong impression of the competition (to make the customers afraid).

Is Kelly's marketing fair? AHCL, to whom goes the hat tip, is filled with fawning admiration still for every pronouncement that Kelly "authors". An anonymous commenter on his blog (9:17 a.m.), however is "inflamed" by Kelly's "tear[ing] down others in a desperate attempt to advance her relevance."

What do you think?

Marketing the Hired-Gun Prosecutor

I wrote back in May about Kelly Siegler's future as a Hired-Gun Prosecutor (motto: "I get paid to make people afraid!"). "How to get the business?" I asked, "Word of mouth and the internet, of course."

Then in June she posted to the Women in Crime Ink blog with the tagline "Prosecutor for Hire." The businesspeople among us recognized this as a first step toward creating a brand.

Now it's July, and Kelly has another post up at Women in Crime Ink. This one, "Win at All Costs? Not Really" is a none-too subtle slam of Texas prosecutors:

The real problem is that far too many prosecutors are worried about taking on a difficult case, a case that is not a slam-dunk or a whale ("as easy as harpooning a whale in a barrel," as we say in Harris County, Texas). Too many prosecutors demand that the cases presented to them for the filing of charges come to them with all the questions answered and wrapped in a pretty, little bow. What prosecutors seem to forget is that the question they need to be asking is whether a jury of twelve, ordinary, normal, non-lawyer citizens would convict on the evidence presented to them or evidence easily developed by the prosecutor after the filing of charges.

(If you read Kelly's article, by the way, know that her lede is a straw man. The public's complaint about prosecutors is not that they fight to convict people whom they know to be innocent, nor that they fight aggressively and fairly to convict people whom they believe to be guilty. The complaint is that the Rosenthal-Siegler "win at all costs" culture leads some prosecutors -- even [especially?] those whom Kelly describes as "chicken", to break the rules to win. Most prosecutors don't cheat, just as most prosecutors aren't chicken, but the office that tolerates one prosecutor breaking the rules deserves the loss of public trust that will inevitably follow.)

There's more -- much more -- of this scathing critique of the prosecutors whom Kelly lauded when it suited her political interests. So what's going on here?

It looks to me like marketing. The legal market is tough, especially when you're trying to create a niche for yourself that the justice system had so far been able to do without. Kelly recognizes that her erstwhile colleagues are now her competition, because as long as the people of Texas (her potential customers) have faith in their elected DAs and their hired minions to do a good job, there'll never be much of a market for the hired gun.

Kelly is, of course, using fear -- the fear that the prosecutor prosecuting your loved one's murderer won't do a good job -- to market herself. Fear notwithstanding, there's fair marketing and unfair marketing. It's fair to the customers and the competition to fairly depict the competition's failings (to warn the customers). It's unfair to paint the competition with such a broad brush that the customers get the wrong impression of the competition (to make the customers afraid).

Is Kelly's marketing fair? AHCL, to whom goes the hat tip, is filled with fawning admiration still for every pronouncement that Kelly "authors". An anonymous commenter on his blog (9:17 a.m.), however is "inflamed" by Kelly's "tear[ing] down others in a desperate attempt to advance her relevance."

What do you think?

Three Republican DA Candidates

Here are the Reasonable Doubt episodes featuring three of the four Republican DA candidates:

Kelly Siegler

Pat Lykos

Jim Leitner

Siegler Video is Up

I finally got the video of Kelly Siegler and Murray Newman's appearance on Reasonable Doubt up and running. It's not as high-res as I would like, but it's watchable.

Now stop bugging me.

Siegler Reasonable Doubt Video

I keep trying to upload the video of the February 21st Reasonable Doubt with Kelly Siegler and Murray Newman to Google Videos using the Google Video Uploader. The upload seems to go smoothly (I've tried several times with different video formats), but the video never appears in my list of uploaded videos.

I can't figure out what the problem is; I welcome input or assistance from anyone with a fast connection and Google Video experience.

Reasonable Doubt Tonight

Todd Dupont, Kelly Siegler, [edit: Harris County prosecutor Murray Newman, ] and I will be on Reasonable Doubt live tonight at 8:00 p.m. Comcast channel 17.

A Little Respect . . .

All five candidates for Harris County District Attorney were invited to speak today with the board of directors of HCCLA, the Harris County Criminal Lawyers' Association, after a board meeting.

Only one of them bothered to show up: Kelly Siegler. (C.O. Bradford had spoken to the board before Chuck Rosenthal's meltdown.)

[Edit: Jim Leitner and Pat Lykos say that they were not aware of the invitation. It appears that Kelly and Pat both sought to speak to the HCCLA Board and were both emailed invitations, but Pat's did not reach her. My initial statement that all five were invited was based on a miscommunication. Pat had also wanted to speak to the HCCLA Board, and Jim is an HCCLA member.]

Kelly knew darn well that nobody in that room was likely to vote for her in the Republican primary -- we're all either Democrats or Jim Leitner supporters or both. Even if we voted for her, she knows that we don't have enough political stick to make a difference in the Republican primary. [Edit: She also knew that HCCLA is not endorsing any candidate in this race.] But she came to talk to us anyway, because she wants to do a good job as DA and she recognizes that HCCLA represents an important group of stakeholders in the criminal justice system.

Kelly fielded some tough questions about her conduct in the Temple case, in which she applied for a bench warrant in one case to bring an imprisoned witness to Harris County so that she could interview him about another case in a different court. Kelly saw nothing wrong with this conduct, and seemed not to have considered the possible application of Texas Penal Code Section 37.10 to her behavior. "That's the way we always do it."

Aside from the interesting little question of whether "the way we always do it" is a crime under the Texas Penal Code, Kelly had some things to say that reduced my concerns that a Siegler administration would be four more years of the same.

"We might," Kelly conceded, "not be complying with Brady as well as we should." This was one of her reasons for promising to allow defense lawyers to copy offense reports.

Regarding pretrial diversion, Kelly said that she would work with the defense bar to agree on a general set of guidelines for people who might be eligible for pretrial diversion. These guidelines would be disseminated to the defense bar so that defense counsel would have a general idea of when their clients might successfully seek pretrial diversion. Then instead of having one person (currently the misdemeanor division chief [edit: for misdemeanor pretrial diversions, and the felony division chief for felony pretrial diversions]) decide who gets pretrial diversion, Kelly suggested that there should be 5-10 people on a committee making the decision. This would create consistency in the decision-making process [edit: over time].

When asked about unprofessional conduct among assistant DAs, Kelly seemed somewhat surprised to learn that such conduct was commonplace. She had no specific solutions, but promised an open door for defense lawyers to air their complaints.

Kelly also agreed to improve communication between the prosecutorial and defense bars by attending, with her upper management, regular meetings with the defense bar's leadership.

"We need to do a better job of explaining to new prosecutors that Brady includes inconsistent witness statements," she said, and offered to send prosecutors to Brady training sessions conducted by the defense bar, even though "we might not agree with you."

Kelly described the current Office policy of not agreeing to less than 10 days on first-time prostitution cases as "outdated and stupid." (I assume that she didn't think that the minimum should be more than 10 days, but we didn't discuss that.)

When discussing 12.44(a) time (the section of the Penal Code that allows the State to agree to county jail time for some felonies), Kelly said, "It's not our job to worry if the jail is overcrowded. If we want to 12.44(a) someone that's our business."

Kelly was able to give the first coherent explanation I've heard of the Harris County DA's refusal of summonses for class B marijuana cases: "It'd screw up the whole intake system."

Kelly promised a larger major fraud division, which would be better at investigating and working up the white-collar crime cases. This brought a smattering of applause from the defense lawyers.

One of her first priorities if elected would be to "take care of the groups that got their feelings hurt" by Chuck Rosenthal.

Kelly came out strongly against DAs lobbying against life without parole. That lobbying was because LWOP would result in juries assessing death less often; Kelly called it "wrong." (I'd've called it "heinous", but "wrong" will do in a pinch.)

Speaking of the death penalty, Kelly proposes changing the way the DA's Office decides whether to seek death. Instead of depending on a memo written by the chief prosecutor in whatever court the case happens to land in (a prosecutor who may not have tried a death penalty case), Kelly suggested that she would require the division chief to be familiar with the entire file, including mitigation evidence.

As I understood it, Kelly favored letting outsiders clean up the HPD crime lab mess.

Finally, Kelly said that Dallas DA Craig Watkins "has got some good ideas."

We didn't talk about racism in the DA's Office. Or about Mensa. This is by no means an endorsement. I still doubt that Kelly will bring as much needed change to the Harris County DA's Office as Jim Leitner. But I'm convinced that she'd be a good start.

If I had to choose today between Kelly Siegler and Pat Lykos, or Kelly and whatsisname Perry, I would choose Kelly. Today she showed the defense bar some respect, and a little respect, when you're a criminal defense lawyer, goes a long way.

It's Tuesday, and Pat Lykos is Still Lame

On the heels of Kelly Siegler's realization that it was time for Chuck Rosenthal to resign (which itself followed only a month after Jim Leitner's call for Chuck to resign), DA candidate Pat Lykos has discovered that it's time for a change at the DA's office.

Now, if you're running on Kelly's "let the entrenched leadership of the Office correct its own problems" platform, and your goal is to convince the voters ultimately that Chuck Rosenthal was the whole problem all along, then it might make sense for you to take some time to make the momentous discovery that Chuck Rosenthal isn't the best guy to be running the Office right now.

But if you're running as an outsider, claiming to be the right one to fix a government agency that everyone outside the office can see is broken, should you really (never mind the ludicrous self-righteous posing) be the last serious candidate to realize that, whoever should be running the Office right now, it's not Chuck?

Chuck is Going . . . Going . . .

I asked here, "Is the fix in? Did Kelly get word that Chuck's resignation is in the cards?"

It appears that, indeed, the fix is in. Reports indicate that Chuck Rosenthal's chief investigator (and right-hand man) John Ray Harrison was packing up Chuck's office on Friday.

Business as usual, then, at the Harris County DA's Office: Chuck, after getting his ass kicked on the stand in federal court, decides on Friday to resign, and tells Kelly so that on Monday she can call for his resignation and appear to have influenced his decision.

I surmise, for reasons I discussed here, that a deal has been cut for Governor Perry to appoint a non-candidate caretaker DA for the interim.

The prosecutors' desired endgame: Kelly gets elected, claims that there was nothing wrong with the Office that Chuck's resignation didn't fix, and everybody but Mr. Harrison and Ms. Stevens gets to keep his or her job.

(News like this takes time to percolate down to me. AHCL and her prosecutorial readers could undoubtedly have reported that fact on Friday, but that wouldn't help create the illusion that Kelly Siegler, by calling for Chuck's resignation, acted as an agent of change.)

Morons.

Kelly Siegler, playing catch-up to Jim Leitner, has called for her boss's, Chuck Rosenthal's resignation.

Better a month late than never, I always say. But Jim and Kelly are not the subjects of this post.

The subjects of this post, referenced in the title, are DA candidates Doug Perry and Pat Lykos, who "said they were neutral on whether Rosenthal should remain in office."

How can a candidate for DA, aware of the situation in the DA's office and the CJC, be "neutral" on whether Rosenthal should resign? Suddenly both Lykos and Perry seem irredeemably unqualified for the post they seek.

Is the fix in? Did Kelly get word that Chuck's resignation is in the cards? Has a back-room deal been cut for Governor Perry to place Kelly at the helm of the Office before the primary (one of the few things that might secure her the nomination)? All questions above my pay grade. Safe to say, though, that this will be an interesting week.

Unleash the Spin Hounds!

News from an anonymous source who has provided reliable information in the past:

Last night [1/31/08] at Live Sports Bar at Main and Preston, a pep rally-type meeting was held for the Siegler campagn. Apparently the subject and purpose of the meeting was to brainstorm and get motivated on how to counteract the stream of negative press surrounding Kelly. This indicates that the Siegler camp is reasonably self-conscious of the problem, and fears it will continue. I would have to agree with them.

Consider that when you read AHCL's Blog or a letter to the Chronicle (by Cindy Rosenthal, Vic Wisner, Chris Miller, whoever) defending the Office: they're trying to wash the stench of the Office's decay under Chuck Rosenthal off Kelly Siegler.

Here, on the other hand, I'll print the negative about any of the candidates, provided that I think it bears indicia of reliability. If you have a legitimate criticism of Jim Leitner, bring it to me. If it's credible I'll publish it.

Does Mensa Matter?

Mensa is an organization for people with IQs above the 98th percentile. That translates to IQs above 132 on the Stanford-Binet IQ test (wikipedia). (It is, to borrow from John Bender, sorta social -- demented and sad, but social.)

Lawyer is a typical occupation for people with an IQ in the 130s. According to the Michigan Bar Journal, "the mean, that is the mathematical average, IQ of attorneys hovers around 127." I would bet that more than a fourth of the lawyers (and one of the judges . . . maybe) down at the criminal courthouse have IQs of 132 or above. Most of them don't belong to Mensa.

Yet every positive article about Kelly Siegler and her bid for DA seems to mention her Mensa membership. Why is that?

Meet Pat Lykos

I'm not the biggest fan (y'all might have detected this) of the idea of Kelly Siegler as Harris County D.A. It's time for a change at the DA's office, and unless Kelly starts telling us how she would institute real change at the Office, I'll be dubious about whether she will bring real change.

But they tell me that change is not always good; they say that things could always get worse.

If the prosecutorial and defense bars were to get together and choose the next DA by consensus, it would be Jim Leitner. If they were to get together and eliminate a candidate by consensus, I suspect that it would be Pat Lykos. I never got to practice before Judge Lykos, but I've heard some of the stories.

So, it turns out, has the New York Times. Twelve years ago the Times printed an account of then-Judge Lykos refusing to let a witness testify while wearing his yarmulke. AHCL makes a big deal about this today, challenging Chronicle reporter Alan Bernstein to write something about this incident, as he wrote about Kelly's use of the verb "to jew down" in a trial 20 years ago.

Lykos claimed that she required the witness to remove his yarmulke because of "a Supreme Court decision that no lawyer or expert witness could have that additional authority of religion"; Mensan (why is Kelly's Mensa membership mentioned in every story about her?) Kelly Siegler claimed that "It never even dawned on me [that 'to jew down' is antisemitic]. I probably would have even spelled it 'j-u-e,' that's how stupid I was."

When Kelly realized that she had offended a juror, she went to that juror's house and apologized in person; Judge Lykos apparently never apologized, but the witness who was ordered to remove his yarmulke to testify filed a complaint against her and "said he sought nothing more than a clarification of this issue, and he noted in his complaint that Judge Lykos appeared to be ''a nice person'' and that he did not think she was anti-Semitic".

Best-case scenarios:

Kelly, ignorant of the offensive meaning of "to jew down", uses it. She learns that she offended a juror, and goes out of her way to apologize to the person she offended.

Lykos, ignorant of the scope of a Supreme Court opinion, orders a witness to remove his yarmulke. She learns that she offended the witness, and doesn't apologize.

Worse-case scenarios:

Kelly uses "to jew down", meaning (for some inscrutable reason -- this is the worst-case scenario) to offend. She then goes out of her way to apologize the person she offended.

Lykos orders the witness to remove his yarmulke because she just doesn't like Jews (again, worst-case). She then claims that she vas chust following orders.

With apologies to my readers who come here for the Kelly-bashing, I think Ms. Siegler has the better of this little argument whether you are a prosecutor (and assume the worst of everyone) or a defender (and assume the best).

A good apology makes all the difference in the world. I'd much rather put my confidence in someone who apologizes when she screws up than in someone who, shrublike, denies ever screwing up.

Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc?

We lawyers are supposed to be reasonable, logical folk. We're supposed to resist logical fallacies like post hoc ergo propter hoc. But sometimes it's just too hard.

For example:

• 1987 - 2007 Prosecutor Kelly Siegler spends 21 years in Harris County DA's office;
• December 27, 2007 Harris County DA Chuck Rosenthal is brought down by disclosure of emails;
• January 2, 2008 Siegler decides to run for Harris County DA;
• January 17, 2008 Siegler announces that changes need to be made in Harris County DA's office.

It's hard to resist concluding that the announcement that changes need to be made was a result of the decision to run for DA.

Here's another one:

• December 27, 2007 Harris County DA Chuck Rosenthal is brought down by disclosure of emails;
  
• January 8, 2008 the emails are widely disseminated.
• January 9, 2008 Harris County Sheriff Tommy Thomas changes email retention policy so that all emails are deleted within two weeks;
• January 10, 2008 Channel 13 News reporter Wayne Dolcefino reports his investigation into the fact that Leroy Hermes the architect with the contract to build a new jail (which Thomas signed off on) also helped with the design of Thomas's million-dolllar (being a cop is good business!) ranch house.

It's hard not to conclude that the change in Harris County's top cop's email policy was a result of the wide dissemination of Harris County's top prosecutor's politically-devastating emails, possibly combined with the then-pending news investigation of the interesting relationship between Leroy Hermes and Tommy Thomas (and, incidentally, other county officials with input into the jail contract).

This one mystifies me, though:

• December 27, 2007 Harris County Republican DA Chuck Rosenthal is brought down by disclosure of emails;
• January 10, 2008 Republican Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott announces a criminal investigation of Rosenthal;
• January 17, 2008 Republican Texas Supreme Court Justice David Medina is indicted, despite the best efforts of Assistant DA Vic Wisner, for tampering with evidence by a Harris County grand jury; his wife is indicted for arson;
• January 18, 2008 Rosenthal dismisses all charges against Medina and his wife.

This from the office that blames the grand jury for no-bills in killer-cop cases, and hides behind the jury in other indicted cases. Don't get me wrong: I think the DA's office should absolutely dismiss cases in which further investigation reveals that the grand jury likely got it wrong, or that there may be probable cause (the grand jury's standard) but not proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

But here the dismissal was immediate -- it was announced the day the indictment was handed down. If Rosenthal hadn't been disowned by the Republican leadership, the political motivation for the dismissal would be more clear. On the other hand, if Rosenthal hadn't been disowned by the Republican leadership, the dismissal would have been a politically-dangerous move in an election year. Maybe someone else can shed some light on how Rosenthal might benefit from dismissing Medina's case. Or maybe he doesn't, and he dismissed it because it was just the right thing to do -- part of "literally and figuratively" getting his house in order?

Four out of Four Candidates Agree: Change is Needed

Per the Chronicle:

In Wednesday's downtown forum [of Republican candidates for Harris County District Attorney], sponsored by the Houston Professional Republican Women, [Kelly] Siegler said she would make the district attorney's office more transparent to defense lawyers and the public.

"It will not be an office with prosecutors that win at all cost," said the chief of Rosenthal's special crimes bureau.

Kelly recognizes that change is needed, and says she will change things. That's good, right? Well, yeah, but . . .

Siegler also said she would first solicit reform ideas from fellow prosecutors. "We know what's wrong. We know what's broken. ... I am the only one who has worked there the last 21 years. I know how it it operates."

So she'll ask her fellow prosecutors for reform ideas. Great, except that these are the people who made the Office what it is, and who . That's like asking the fox for ideas on improving henhouse security.

If Kelly Siegler doesn't already know what needs to be done to fix the Office, she never will. Kelly has already had 21 years to "solicit reform ideas" from fellow prosecutors (not that she would need to solicit them -- those folks talk!) and to try to implement reform.

If Kelly believes that changes need to be made to the office, she will be able to tell the voters now what needs to be changed. She won't need to solicit reform ideas from political advisors or fellow prosecutors.

If Kelly Siegler truly has an interest in reforming the Office, it'll show in her actions before she was a candidate. She'll be able to point to the specific things that she's done over the past 21 years to reform the office. People will remember, and there'll be a paper trail of changes that she suggested that weren't made. Kelly was, for a time, in charge of "Professional Development" at the Office -- a perfect position from which to fix what is broken.

If Kelly's just saying what she thinks is expedient to get elected ("screwballs and nuts"), she won't be able to point to things she's already done to reform the office. People won't have any memory of her doing so, and there won't be a paper trail.

The other three candidates might have no idea what needs to be changed, but at least they're not acting under the illusion that they will get good ideas from the very prosecutors whose jobs are at stake. (Remember: the theme of Kelly Siegler's campaign announcement was that talented prosecutors could be swept out if a candidate from outside the DA's office wins.)

(Incidentally, if any of you hear of other events at which the candidates are speaking, please drop me a line. I'd like to hear their ideas straight from the horses' mouths, rather than from the press.)

What Tangled Webs . . .

The Houston Chronicle has an interesting column today by Lisa Falkenberg, in which she suggests that when Kelly Siegler described the 45,000 members of Houston's Lakewood Church as "screwballs and nuts" she might not have been being entirely candid with the court.

The context: Kelly was trying a capital murder case. The defense made a Batson challenge, alleging that it appeared that Kelly had used a peremptory challenge to remove Matthew Washington from a pool of prospective jurors because of his race (Black).

When the defense makes a Batson challenge, the prosecutor must provide a race-neutral reason for striking that person. If the real reason for the strike is the person's race, the prosecutor might well be tempted to provide whatever race-neutral rationalization jumps into her mind, whether it is entirely true or not.

Courts will accept just about anything as race-neutral justification for a prosecutor's peremptory challenge of a minority juror. It doesn't have to make a whole lot of sense. And, since nobody can read the prosecutor's mind, the prospective juror (who has a right to serve regardless of his race) and the defendant are at the mercy of the prosecutor.

Was Kelly Siegler inventing a race-neutral reason to strike Mr. Washington (who, by Lisa Falkenberg's account, viewed the death penalty favorably)? Or did she really think that all of the members of one of Houston's largest congregations are screwballs and nuts, regardless of their race? (Incidentally, striking a juror because of his religion is unconstitutional too, but most lawyers aren't aware of this.)

When I first read of the incident, I thought that Kelly in all likelihood didn't really think of all Lakewood members as screwballs and nuts; I suspect that was probably the reaction of most criminal trial lawyers. But who knew that the public would care? The public seems to expect some rule-bending from their prosecutors in the name of obtaining convictions. Which would be worse in the eyes of the public: that Kelly was telling the truth about her opinion of Lakewood Church, or that she was lying to try to ensure the death penalty for an evildoer?

If the answer is that it would be worse if Kelly was lying to the court about her opinion of Lakewood Church -- if the public is going to hold professional ethical breaches against the candidates for D.A. -- then this becomes a different campaign.

I have faced Kelly Siegler in the courtroom only once and had no complaints about her conduct (she was sitting second with a young prosecutor on a kilo case; she tried the usual older-female-prosecutor head games on me; I am immune, and I won), but if professional ethics are important to this election, I expect some of my colleagues who have dealt with her directly more than I may weigh in.

The Rosenthal-Siegler DA's Office (?)

I've referred here a time or two (okay, at every opportunity) to the Chuck Rosenthal-Kelly Siegler DA's Office. An anonymous commenter on Defending People (a prosecutor whose identity is known only to her and me) says that's not fair -- that Kelly doesn't share responsibility for the missteps of the Chuck Rosenthal administration. I told her that I was willing to be convinced, but that it sure appears that Kelly has been a member of Chuck's inner circle, and in a managerial position in the office (including a stint in charge of "professional development" -- training younger prosecutors), for seven years. Everyone in that office in a managerial position shares responsibility for the wrongs perpetrated by the office and by its prosecutors unless proven otherwise The presumption of innocence has nothing to do with it: when the captain runs the ship aground, the other officers had better be able to explain where they were and what they did to prevent the allision, if they want to keep their jobs. It appears that in recent days Harris County prosecutors have become a large part of my readership. This morning in the courthouse no fewer than four prosecutors commented on it (nice blog, or I read your blog, to which I cannot but reply, "well, thank you!"). On her campaign website (look! a judge!) Kelly doesn't mention Chuck Rosenthal once. I'm not sure that will be enough to dissociate her, in the voters' minds, from Chuck.

So, to my new prosecutorial fan base, here's the question: is it fair for voters to hold Kelly Siegler's close professional relationship with Chuck Rosenthal, as well as her positions of rank, respect, and power in the Office, against her when considering her qualifications as a candidate for District Attorney? Or does the buck somehow bypass Kelly on its way to stopping at Chuck? Why or why not? Prosecutors? Kelly? Anyone?