Records Reveal Alarming Rate of Sex Case Dismissal
Last month, Houston Watch reported on the case of “Grandpa Jack” who spent five years in prison in the early 2000s for sexually assaulting two young children. Then, in 2018, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office secured a new indictment of Grandpa Jack, this time on charges of “super-aggravated sexual assault of a child under six years of age.” Ogg’s office took five years to take the case to trial, which finally started in March 2023. But days after jury selection began, Ogg’s office dismissed the case.
Unfortunately, this isn’t an aberration. To get a better grasp on how often Ogg decides to drop serious sex cases—which can be a sign of an ill-prepared prosecution case—Houston Watch filed a public records request with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office for the disposition in every sex assault case that the office handled over the one year period between 1/1/22 and 1/1/23.
Here’s what we found: Ogg’s office dismissed at least two dozen sexual assault prosecutions in just one year. These are all cases that prosecutors screened and formally filed as felony sexual assault cases. That does not include the cases where a jury returned a not-guilty verdict at trial. We don’t know if the office dismissed more cases because the records request “screened for expunged and non-disclosed cases.”
And here’s worse news—it keeps happening. Harris County District Court dockets reveal that Ogg’s office was forced to dismiss two serious sex cases this month alone—one involving continuous sexual abuse of a child and another involving the sexual assault of a child. And that’s not including the trial loss—a not guilty verdict-–in an indecency with a child case.