The Shadwick Leave Of Absence

As we grow closer to the beginning of early voting, someone posted on the blog last week that Grand Jury prosecutor and aspiring judge Lana Shadwick has taken a leave of absence from the District Attorney's Office.  The "official" word is that the leave was done for Lana to spend the last few weeks before May 29th campaigning.

Other sources have indicated that the leave of absence may not have been for such simple reasons.

Apparently, a case was recently dismissed in one of the felony courts due to the Defendant having an alibi.  The co-defendant on the case was not so fortunate as to get a dismissal from the State.  After a court setting, that co-defendant's file was sent down to the Grand Jury Division to prepare for presentation to the Grand Jury.

As is the practice with co-defendant files, the dismissed Defendant's case file was rubber-banded to the pending active co-defendant's case.  My understanding is that the dismissal was properly marked and documented on the front of the Defendant's file.  Unfortunately, both files landed on the desk of Grand Jury prosecutor Lana Shadwick.

Who promptly got both cases indicted.  That includes the one that was dismissed and the client was released from jail.

Luckily, this extremely enormous error was caught by someone (not Lana) before the Defendant was wrongfully arrested.

Folks, the job of being a Grand Jury prosecutor in the Harris County District Attorney's Office is one of the easiest (if not THE easiest) jobs in the Office.  It is not tricky.  Lana Shadwick has bounced through three different divisions before landing in this massively low-pressure job.

And yet, she still screwed it up.  She managed to find a way in her short time in Grand Jury to screw up something in the worst way possible for a Grand Jury prosecutor.

My understanding from several reliable sources is that her Leave of Absence may not have entirely been her choice.  It seems that even Pat Lykos realizes how bad it would be if someone got wrongfully arrested right before Election Day.  Political hire or not, Shadwick will be spending the rest of the campaign season on the sidelines of the D.A.'s Office.

Even though she can't manage being a Grand Jury prosecutor, Lana Shadwick hopes you will vote for her for judge.

Hopefully you are starting to see why that would be a really terrible idea.

Vote for Kristin Guiney, folks.  It is really a no-brainer.