As I review the ongoing battle against grandparents that many fit parents across Texas are waging, fighting to keep their children and to make decisions for them, it is abundantly clear that many of the problems relate to the judges involved in these cases. This is why THSC PAC has become more and more involved in the judicial election process. Very often our parental rights depend on a fair and impartial judge, and as we have seen in recent cases, some judges are anything but fair and impartial.
In 2008 we endorsed a challenger to a sitting local judge in Collin County; in a historic election that shook the local courthouse, the incumbent was defeated. This was the first time an incumbent judge had been defeated in a Republican primary in Collin County Shortly after the election, the district attorney (DA) of Collin County launched an “investigation” against the new judge. Over the next two years, he impaneled six grand juries, trying to get one to return an indictment against the judge who defeated his friend.
In 2010 the Texas attorney general’s office became involved in what is widely believed in Collin County to be a vendetta against the judge who defeated the incumbent. Recently the newly elected district attorney moved to ask the attorney general (AG) to withdraw from the case and allow an impartial prosecutor to review it. In the public documents he filed regarding this issue, he says, “Criminal prosecutions should be about the facts and the law, not about the identities of the prosecutors, the defendant, and the witnesses. That ideal has broken down in these cases. . . . Criminal cases are not meant to be tried by accusatory press releases cloaked as legal proceedings and supported by selective excerpts of statements gathered in a confidential FBI report.” The DA goes on to outline facts that call into question the impartiality of the AG’s attorneys and the nature of their association with the previous DA.
We must continue to work diligently to elect fair and impartial judges and not be intimidated by those who seek to abuse the legal system for personal reasons, whoever they may be.
About Tim Lambert
