Legal Commentary

A Bad TX Prosecutor Fights For His Job

By TChris

There are many good reasons to believe that Chuck Rosenthal should not be the district attorney in Harris County, Texas ... or anywhere else. He leads the nation in his aggressive use of the death penalty and refused to change that stance in the face of evidence that the Houston crime lab was falsifying data. When a grand jury asked Rosenthal to recuse himself from the investigation of that scandal on the ground that he was up to his neck in it, he declined. He defended his office's reliance on false testimony to support a conviction although he had the good grace to apologize for one of the many wrongful convictions for which his office is responsible.

Voters like Rosenthal because of his image as a "tough prosecutor" -- they apparently think it's more important to look tough than to be right, or fair. It may not be Rosenthal's official actions, but his racist emails, that finally bring him down.

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One of the messages was a racial joke about President Bill Clinton, attributed to a Canadian TV show, forwarded by Chuck Rosenthal to his friend Dr. Sam Siegler.

"The closest thing we ever had to having a black man as president," the e-mail read. "Number 1 - He played the sax. Number 2 - He smoked weed. Number 3 - He had his way with ugly white women. Even now? Look at him… his wife works, and he doesn't! And, he gets a check from the government each month."

Here's another:

In addition to a racial joke about President Clinton that characterizes African-Americans as unemployed drug users, Rosenthal also e-mailed a picture showing a black man on the ground surrounded by fried chicken and watermelon. The caption read "fatal overdose."

There is also evidence that Rosenthal illegally used government computers to promote his election campaign. When asked why he won't resign:

"Well, 'cause I haven't done anything wrong," Rosenthal said.

It's good to know that the nation's leading prosecutorial proponent of the death penalty has such a keen sense of right and wrong. Rosenthal's latest defense is that he isn't a racist but thought that his friend might enjoy the humor.

"In retrospect, I wish I had not done it," Rosenthal said. "But he and I (the person the e-mail was sent to) are very close friends and I thought he would enjoy seeing it, actually."

So in Rosenthal's mind, it's fine to email racist humor to people who might enjoy it, but that doesn't make the emailer a racist. Not much of a defense. Will voters buy it? Community leaders in Houston are planning a protest rally on January 31 to raise awareness of Rosenthal's insensitivity.

The racial problems in Rosenthal's office go deeper than offensive email forwarding:

Brian Wice, Wooten's attorney, said the racial content in Rosenthal's e-mails highlights a systemwide problem. "Whether it means sending out racist e-mails or permitting your trial prosecutors to exclude blacks and Hispanics from trial juries merely because of their color -- it certainly underscores a systemic problem in this institution that nobody wanted to talk about," said Wice.

January 31 would be a good time to start talking about those problems, and for the media to start taking them seriously.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on January 15, 2008 (boomark / email).