Ethics Training

In response to the tremendous Brady blunder committed the week before last by the Harris County District Attorney's Office, fearless leader and speed-spender Pat Lykos decided to jump into action. Rather than take any sort of definitive action such as publicly calling any prosecutors names or issuing any type of apology on behalf of the Office, Lykos decided just to throw some money at the problem.

She hired TDCAA representative Clay Abbott to come to Houston and give a lecture on Brady material.

Now, I like Clay Abbott and he is a very good speaker. He speaks every term at Baby Prosecutor's School in Austin about Ethics. In addition to being an incredible resource on DWI cases, he is also a great teacher. I've got no gripes about him.

That being said, the early reports that I've gotten about the training seem to indicate that the message was put forth that an open file policy was adequate to comply with Brady. I wasn't there, so if anybody wants to chime in on that, please do so.

I am kind of curious as to what old Roger Bridgwater is doing to earn his keep around 1201, though. Last I heard, he was the head of this fabled "Ethics Bureau" that Lykos promised during her campaign. I wonder why exactly he wasn't the one spearheading this project. You would think with as cash-strapped as they are, the D.A.'s Office wouldn't be doing so much out-sourcing.

Then again, I have heard that since the Donna Goode incident, Roger doesn't exactly have the street cred with his underlings like he once hoped.

The biggest question to me is whether or not the Lykos Administration thinks that this little training session will serve as the only type of answer to the Brady disaster. If so, I don't think any of us should be expecting this story to be ending any time soon.