Friday, February 1, 2008

Chuck Rosenthal


Harris County DA Chuck Rosenthal will be back in court today for a hearing to decide if he should be held in contempt of court for deleting more than 2,500 e-mails that he had been ordered to produce. Attorney Scott Durfee testified that as an attorney Rosenthal should have known the emails were evidence and shouldn't be deleted (DUH). The 1500 emails that were recovered contained pornographic and racist messages. Also included were love notes between Rosenthal who is married and his secretary. He also used Harris County computers for election campaigning, a big no-no.

Harris County sends more people to death row than any other prosecutor's office in the United States and it has been clear to the African American community in Harris County for a long time that they receive different treatment than white people. The racist emails along with the problems in the crime lab should convince the rest of this problem.

It was good to see all the protesters at the courthouse. There were more than 150 religious, community, and political leaders and I was happy to see that not all of the protesters were African American. This is an issue that we should all be concerned about, regardless of race. Everyone benefits if the right person is prosecuted and incarcerated for a crime. I was glad to see Councilman Peter Brown, a man for whom I have a lot of respect, outside the courthouse with the other protesters calling for the resignation of Rosenthal. Rosenthal refuses to step down but is not running for re-election. It's time for him to go. Several assistant DA's including Kelly Siegler should go as well.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What figure in public office would you write to, to demand Rosenthal's ousting?