Attorney General Ken Paxton has scored another victory, but it’s a defeat for all Texans.
With every triumph, Paxton seems more determined to exact his revenge, more emboldened to attack the people and issues he finds personally threatening or repugnant. He does so not in the name of justice, but for payback and, worse, plaudits from the far right he courts. We brace for what will come next.
But perhaps even more disturbing is what Paxton’s latest win says about our justice system: There’s clearly one for the everyday Texan, and another for the rich and powerful.
But perhaps even more disturbing is what Paxton’s latest win says about our justice system: There’s clearly one for the everyday Texan, and another for the rich and powerful.
Paxton struck an agreement with prosecutors to drop the cases against him in exchange for paying restitution to two men he was accused of defrauding, performing 100 hours of community service and taking classes on legal ethics. He’s been given 18 months to do so.
But far from being the fair resolution that both sides are saying it is, the deal raises more questions than it answers. Most glaringly, how is it that someone can be indicted by a grand jury on such serious felony charges, escape going to trial for the better part of a decade, then have those charges just go away with what amounts to a slap on the wrist?
And what of the timing? Why now and not last year or five years ago? Special prosecutor Brian Wice said after a hearing just last month that he was not willing to strike a pre-trial agreement with Paxton that had been proposed by another special prosecutor, Kent Schaffer.
“That was, ‘gee, let’s get you a cocktail, a hot meal and a breath mint.’ And that wasn’t going to happen on my watch,” Wice said, according to the Texas Tribune.
He also said after that hearing, in which Harris County state District Judge Andrea Beall denied Paxton’s motion to dismiss the charges, that the attorney general wasn’t above the law and that he should go to trial.
But last week he told us he changed his tune after interviewing and reinterviewing witnesses in advance of the April 15 trial date. Though Wice felt confident a jury would convict on the two first-degree felonies against Paxton, he said he “was unwilling to roll the dice with the distinct possibility that the jury would either hang or acquit with the result being the victims would be denied full and total restitution.” Wice also defended the deal as being much stronger than the one considered in February.
Whatever the reasons, here’s the upshot: Paxton again gets to sidestep a reckoning after a series of lucky breaks that typically don’t happen to ordinary Texans in courtrooms across the state. And rather than act with humility in the wake of this victory, we expect Paxton to act only more empowered.
The Dallas Morning News
