By Suzanne Sprague, KERA 90.1 reporter.
Dallas, TX – Deandra Grant, Candidate for Dallas District Attorney: Oh, it's David and Goliath but David ended up pretty good in that fight (laughs) so I'm not letting that scare me off.
Sprague: Attorney Deandra Grant launched her campaign for district attorney almost a year ago. The one-time assistant district attorney now has her own criminal defense practice. And in May of 2001, she mailed a letter to potential supporters with something of a top ten list of things wrong at the DA's office. Number eight was the handling of drug cases.
Grant: If you were arrested on a drug case in Dallas and you could not post a bond, you could go to jail and it could take up to eight weeks before the grand jury would indict you. At that point, there would be no formal lab testing done on whatever substance you had. After you were indicted, if you wanted a lab test, your lawyer would go ask for one and that would take an additional eight weeks. So you could sit in jail for four to five months for Sweet 'n Low.
Sprague: That happened to some of Grant's clients?and dozens of other Dallas County defendants, as the public learned just a few months ago. In January, after months of criticism, District Attorney Bill Hill did change the drug testing policy so evidence would be examined before an indictment, as it is in most Texas counties. But Grant says Hill ignored the issue for months.
Grant: We've only had, what three DA's in 50 years? It's definitely time for a change. Somebody young with new ideas, not tied to the past in any way. I didn't work for Henry Wade. I think that's actually a plus. Probably was a great guy. But that was a different world.
Sprague: In the early years of his three decade-long legal career, Hill was a prosecutor for Henry Wade, perhaps Dallas's most famed district attorney. And, Hill defends his policy of not conducting lab tests on suspected drugs, saying it dates back to the days of Wade' tenure.
Dallas District Attorney Bill Hill: I think what' being left out here is that the defendants and their lawyers are coming in here and they want to plead guilty to these charges. We'in the prosecution business and what are we supposed to do when they come in and say you got me, I' guilty, I want to plead guilty. Do we say no, you can't plead guilty? That wouldn't be right.
Sprague: But some of the candidates trying to unseat Hill say that position indicates the district attorney is too arrogant.
Brian O'Shea, Candidate for Dallas District Attorney: I'm the most Irish and the most Catholic in this race, so vote for me, Brian O'Shea (crowd laughs).
Sprague: Generally, not the words one hears from a Republican primary candidate - at least not in Texas - but criminal defense attorney Brian O'Shea calls himself a plain-spoken advocate for justice. The former Dallas County prosecutor has also complained about Hill missing a handful of recent candidate debates.
O'Shea: Is this the man you want to elect as your prosecutor, who's supposedly the man who's going to fight for every citizen in Dallas County? He won't even come out and fight for his job.
Sprague: At a recent candidates' forum in Farmers Branch, one of Hill's prosecutors appeared on his behalf and said the DA couldn't attend because he was doing the job taxpayers elected him to do. But O'Shea also went after Hill for not aggressively investigating voter fraud in the county.
O'Shea: Bill Hill's not going to go after it. He's too tied to the system?I'm not going to go after the guy picking up the votes in South Dallas. I'm going to go after the people who are buyin' the votes, so Carroll Reed, look out, I'm comin' after you.
Sprague: Carrol Reed is Bill Hill's political consultant and a fixture in Dallas politics. O'Shea accuses Hill of working only on behalf of the county's establishment. And in fact, new allegations this week suggest Hill may have given preferential treatment to a Highland Park multi-millionaire in a domestic violence case. Hill's campaign denies the charges and says the district attorney cannot discuss the case because it has been expunged, or legally erased from all records. But some police reports and court documents survived and have been anonymously distributed to Hill's opponents and members of the media. They show well-known beer distributor Bill Barrett called Highland Park police in April 2000 and accused his wife Angela of assaulting him. The Barretts are local philanthropists and had contributed $2,000 to Hill's 1998 campaign. An assistant district attorney accepted Barrett's story as a legitimate domestic violence case. But less than a week later, prosecutors Cindy Dyer and Bill Hill asked for a dismissal citing a lack of evidence. Local attorneys say this rapid dismissal and expunction are highly unusual in a domestic violence case. Former Judge David Finn, who is also running against hill, has posted the documents in the case on his Web site. Although the case was filed his court, Finn says it never appeared on his docket, which he claims is almost unheard of in a domestic violence case. Finn has mounted the most expensive challenge to Hill, alleging prosecutors fumbled too many cases in his domestic violence court.
David Finn, Candidate for Dallas District Attorney: Right now, this last year, the DA lost 55% of the jury trials in Court 10 and when you're losing more jury trials than you're winning, something's not right and I would immediately try to get to the bottom of that and improve the prosecution performance in those particular courts.
Sprague: Hill defends his win-loss record, saying that his attorneys get guilty verdicts in 90 % of their felony jury trials. In misdemeanor court, the rate is lower, but Hill says that's because there's no grand jury to weed out the weak cases.
Hill: That's been traditional for 50 years. You can look at the charts and see that the misdemeanor jury trial conviction rate has always hovered right around 50%.
Sprague: David Finn claims he can do better by demanding that prosecutors be more diligent during trials.
Finn: For example, if the officers see a visible injury, there had better be a photograph admitted into evidence. If there's an allegation that the victim went to the hospital, there had better be medical reports. If the victim made a 911 call, the state should get that 911 evidence admitted into evidence, and in Dallas County that is not happening.
Sprague: If elected, the former federal and state prosecutor says he wants to increase the number of investigators and prosecutors assigned to the family violence courts. However, Finn has been routinely criticized by the mother of Faith and Liberty Battaglia, who were allegedly murdered by their father John last year at his Deep Ellum loft. John Battaglia's parole violation was being handled in Finn's court at the time of murders. But Finn says prosecutors bungled the case.
Finn: And it wasn't until the morning after the two Battaglia girls were murdered that the district attorney's office came to me and said, now judge, we want you to revoke his probation and frankly it was too little, too late and for the district attorney to be blaming anyone but himself for his own incompetence in handling the case is absolutely unbelievable to me.
Sprague: There's controversy in this story, too. And both sides accuse the other of politicizing two terrible, violent murders. But Hill defends his office's handling of the case saying Judge Finn pressured his prosecutors into dismissing earlier charges against Battaglia. And Hill says that as the oldest and most tenured attorney in the race, he deserves to be re-elected.
Hill: I think it's just a matter of maturity, experience, leadership and character that provide the difference in my qualifications and those of my opponents.
Sprague: The winner of the Republican primary will face either Peter Lesser or Craig Watkins in the November general election. For KERA 90.1, I'm Suzanne Sprague.