An Office In Disarray: Four Failed Murder Prosecutions In One Week

That’s 10 lost murder cases in 30 days.

“You're going to see what’s going to happen to this motherfucker.” According to the state’s star witness at trial, that’s what a man driving a Toyota Tundra said after a guy driving a Chevy Impala cut him off while driving on a Houston Freeway. The witness, who was the front seat passenger in the Tundra, told detectives that the driver then pulled out a tan pistol, sped up furiously to catch up to the Impala, and “pointed the pistol outside of the drivers side of the window and fired two shots.”

The bullets shattered the vehicle’s window before “striking [the driver] on the right side of his face, just below his right eye,” killing him. Police later found two guns in the defendant’s truck— “a Glock 19 9mm semi automatic-pistol and a Ruger AR 556 pistol.” 

A Harris County grand jury indicted the defendant. In pleadings filed with the trial court, prosecutors made clear their theory of the case: “defendant shot and killed the [victim] because he was angry because of a traffic incident.” In other words, another slam dunk case for Kim Ogg’s Harris County District Attorney’s Office. 

And yet, once again, prosecutors could not secure a guilty verdict.

That was the second murder case Ogg’s office lost last week. Even more embarrassing, if such a thing could be imagined, is that the twice-convicted drug dealer who shot the victim in the first case was captured on video. 

But that’s not the only recent murder case with video evidence that Ogg’s prosecutors couldn’t win. The prosecution dismissed another seemingly slam dunk case at trial last week. In addition to the surveillance video, police officers interviewed the man’s co-defendant who admitted that to “teach [the victim] a lesson,” he—the co-defendant—“pepper sprayed [the victim] in the face, punched him,” and told him “this is what you get for stealing.” At that point, according to the co-defendant, the defendant—who, incidentally, was convicted (twice) of unlawful carrying of a weapon, indecent exposure, burglary, robbery, retaliation against a juror, and evading arrest—“pulled out a black and silver handgun and shot [two people] killing [the deceased victim].”

Only a week earlier, prosecutors dismissed another murder case at trial. Back in 2018—five years ago—prosecutors filed murder charges against a man for opening fire into a vehicle, while infuriated at a man sitting in the back seat. The bullets struck the man, who managed to crawl to the front seat and drive away before passing out and dying. A witness who had known the defendant for four years prior to the murder told police officers that she saw him shoot the victim. The state asked for high bail in the case because the defendant was “under the supervision of a criminal justice agency” in relation to a deferred felony prosecution of forcible prostitution of someone under the age of 18. 

Five years after the original charges were filed, Ogg’s prosecutors asked the trial court to delay the trial for a ***third*** time citing, among other reasons, their inability to get any of the multiple eyewitnesses into court. Tellingly, the filing doesn’t detail any due diligence that the prosecutors engaged in to secure the presence of the witnesses in court. Prosecutors filed a motion to dismiss later that same day.

That’s four failed murder prosecutions in one week—and ten total murder prosecutions where Ogg’s office has failed to secure convictions in the last month.