Appeals court will review allegations that Texas Gov. Rick Perry tried to coerce Travis County DA
Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Christopher Halloran / Shutterstock.com
The highest criminal appeals court in Texas will review two cases alleging Gov. Rick Perry improperly cut the funding of the Austin-area prosecutor’s office, according to the Austin American-Statesman.
In 2013, Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg, the head of the office’s Public Integrity Unit, was arrested on charges of driving while intoxicated. Lehmberg was pulled over after police said she was driving dangerously and found with an open bottle of vodka in the car. The Statesman reported that she was uncooperative and aggressive after the arrest; video posted by the Statesman in 2013 shows her repeatedly asking for Sheriff Greg Hamilton by his first name.
Lehmberg pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 45 days in jail and a $4,000 fine. Her driver’s license was suspended for six months. But she refused calls to step down from her office. Lehmberg was concerned not only with her career but also with politics: Perry, a Republican, would have had the right to appoint a replacement to the historically Democratic post.
Perry threatened to veto the funding for the public integrity unit of Lehmberg’s office if she didn’t step down. When she didn’t, he made good on the threat. That led to a prosecution for misuse of power, a first-degree felony in Texas, and coercion of a public official.
The coercion charge was dismissed in July by a Texas appeals court, which said it unconstitutionally limited free speech. But the abuse of power charge remains, and it is the basis for Perry’s appeal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest criminal appeals court. Perry’s attorneys argue that the veto threat was also protected by his right to free speech. Prosecutor Lisa McMinn filed a separate appeal of the dismissal of the coercion charge.
The Court of Criminal Appeals took up both cases yesterday and ordered unusual expedited proceedings. Oral arguments will be heard Nov. 4. All briefs must be submitted by Oct. 21, two weeks from the day the court took up the case. Perry had requested the speedy schedule earlier this year, when he was running for president.
The politics of the situation were not ignored. The Statesman reported that Perry blames the prosecution for impeding his presidential bid, which he ended in September. And retired Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz has criticized the Perry prosecution as “criminalization of party differences.”
