Kim Ogg’s Office Loses Unprecedented Three Homicides and Two Sex Trials in Eight Days
“I was a DA for almost six years in the 90s. As I think back on it, I don’t remember working in a court where we ever lost a murder,” Chris Downey, former Harris County prosecutor.
Toplines:
Between December 2 and December 9, 2021, Kim Ogg’s prosecutors lost five serious cases at trial, including three fatal shootings, an Indecency with a Child with Sexual Contact case and an Aggravated Sexual Assault case. Houston juries returned acquittals in all but one of these cases; the prosecution was forced to dismiss the remaining murder case mid-trial citing “identification issues.”
Veteran former prosecutors say that factors within Ogg’s office created the conditions for these disastrous trial outcomes, including a lack of experience, training, and prosecutorial discretion.
Despite severely-limited courtroom access and exploding dockets of 94,000 pending cases, Ogg’s office continues to prosecute low-level offenses including cannabis possession and trespass, while serious cases fall apart at trial.
This catastrophic week comes just weeks after Harris County voters found that Ogg is responsible for rising crime and murders.
Full Report:
Veteran former prosecutors remember a time when the Harris County District Attorney’s office rarely, if ever, lost a murder case at trial. Ogg’s office is now losing serious, high-stakes cases back-to-back. Last month, Kim Ogg’s office tried and lost three murder cases and two serious cases of sexual assault in an eight-day period.
Chris Downey, a former Harris County prosecutor prevailed on one of those murder cases against Ogg’s office. The jury deliberated for just one hour before acquitting Downey’s client. “I was a DA for almost six years in the 90s,” said Downey. “As I think back on it, I don’t remember working in a court where we ever lost a murder.”
At trial last month, Houston prosecutors could not prove their charges in cases involving a mother of five shot to death in the parking lot of a Houston convenience store, a homeless man shot and killed in an encampment, and a father gunned down in front of his two children. In the same eight-day period, a child and an adult alleging separate, serious sex crimes endured the trial process but did not find closure.
Acquittals at trial are and should be rare. Prosecutors may only ethically bring charges that they believe, in good faith, they can prove. Further, cases involving allegations of violence or sexual assault matter the most to public safety. An acquittal at trial could mean that an innocent person wrongfully faced charges, or that a guilty person evaded accountability. In 2020, 80% of Texas jury trials resulted in a conviction (and that’s all cases, it’s much much harder to lose serious sex and murder cases). What explains Kim Ogg’s failure to secure convictions on three murders and two serious sex cases in the span of eight days?
Houston Watch spoke with several attorneys who prevailed in trials against Ogg’s office during its string of defeats. It is worth noting that three of the attorneys were among the dozens of prosecutors fired by Ogg in her first days, a move that cost the Harris County District Attorney’s Office 687 years of attorney experience.
Former prosecutor Beth Exley successfully defended her client, Alfred Washington, against murder charges in a trial that was dismissed due to “identification issues.” “In my 19 years with the DAs office, I never had to dismiss a murder during trial,” said Beth Exley. “People are getting arrested and held in jail because of ‘tunnel vision’ investigations: police get one suspect, get charges filed and then no one follows up on other leads. Then the in-the-trenches prosecutors get left with junk cases they don’t know how to fix, or don’t have the power to dismiss.“
Police never investigated Mr. Washington’s alibi. And even though they developed an alternate suspect, who bore a shocking resemblance to Mr. Washington, neither police nor prosecutors presented the sole eyewitness with a photograph of the alternate suspect. Over the prosecution’s strenuous objection, Beth Exley showed the eyewitness a photo of the alternate suspect. Having never seen this photo previously, the eyewitness identified the alternate suspect as Alfred Washington. After requesting a break to speak with supervisors, the prosecution dismissed the case before it ever went to the jury. Mr. Washington had spent more than two years in jail awaiting trial on these charges, while the likely murderer remained free.
Former prosecutor and Beth Exley’s husband, Bill Exley, expressed respect and concern for the prosecutors in Ogg’s office tasked with trying serious cases. “The young front line prosecutors who are being sent to court to try very complicated cases are smart, honest, ethical people, who I cannot say enough good things about,” said Exley. “But they just don’t have the experience or authority to properly evaluate and resolve the cases. That is not their fault. Kim Ogg has fired or run off most of the seasoned and experienced lawyers who could handle serious, complicated cases and who could teach and train the new prosecutors.”
Bill Exley defeated Ogg’s prosecutors in a homicide trial just days before Alfred Washington’s case was dismissed.
Courtrooms across the country, including in Harris County, significantly limited their operations in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Given this scarcity of resources, prosecutors must concentrate on the cases that matter most to public safety. Sexual assault and homicide prosecutions should always be at the top of that list. To explain how Kim Ogg’s office dropped the ball on five of the most serious types of cases back-to-back, it’s worth looking at how she uses her office’s capacity.
Kim Ogg routinely prosecutes and seeks jail time on low-level, nonviolent offenses. Houston Watch previously reported that Ogg’s inability to prioritize her office resources is actually counterproductive to public safety. When prosecutors misappropriate their limited resources, victims, their families, and the community as a whole, pays the price. These findings arrive following polling that found that Harris County voters say that Ogg’s approach is “likely creating more crime” and that Ogg is “responsible” for rising murders in Harris County.
Houston Watch asked District Attorney Ogg to explain how her office lost three murders and two serious sex cases in the span of eight days. She did not respond to our request for comment.