By The Vanguard Staff
AUSTIN, TX – It looks like plans to remove Travis County District Attorney José Garza from office – using a state law similar to other Republican-led states that targets progressive prosecutors, charge critics, is going to fail, according to a Austin American-Statesman story Monday.
New court filings indicate, the Austin American-Statesman added, Bell County Attorney Jim Nichols, “a Republican prosecutor appointed by a Republican judge to review evidence in the case, filed a three-page motion late Friday to dismiss the case ‘with prejudice,’” meaning its dead.
“Nichols wrote that he investigated whether Garza’s office had a policy of not prosecuting certain crimes — a key basis for the suit — and found no such policies in place. He found that previous policies about not prosecuting drug crimes, for example, were rescinded and new directives adopted after the new ‘rogue prosecutor’ law” passed last year, reported the Austin American-Statesman.
Travis County resident Mary Elizabeth Dupuis two months ago sued under Texas House Bill 17, claiming Garza’s did not prosecute certain crimes, charging it was “incompetency and official misconduct.”
Dupuis said in a social media post she went after Garza’s office because she did not think the office “properly handled her sexual assault case,” the Austin American-Statesman stated.
Bell County Attorney Nichols also said how Garza’s office handles cases against police officers is not “a valid grounds for removal.”
The Austin American-Statesman remarked the case “marked the first time since the law went into effect in September that a judge accepted a lawsuit for consideration and appointed a special prosecutor to review the matter.”
The filing against Garza claimed the district attorney’s office had a “blanket non-prosecution policy” for drug possession, enforcement of police abuse cases, and Garza’s promise not to prosecute abortion crimes, noted the Austin American-Statesman.
Garza won the Democratic primary in March and expected, said the Austin American-Statesman, to win the general election in November in Travis County.
