State appeals panel voices skepticism of case against DeLay
AUSTIN — Oral arguments in Tom DeLay’s decade-long legal fight with the Travis County District Attorney’s Office heated up Wednesday as Republican judges on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals questioned whether prosecutors could prove the former House majority leader illegally funneled corporate money to state candidates.
In September, the 3rd Court of Appeals overturned DeLay’s 2010 conviction for money laundering and criminal conspiracy. The Court of Criminal Appeals could clear DeLay of all wrongdoing if it upholds the lower court’s opinion after an appeal filed by the DA’s office.
DeLay, called “the Hammer” for his domineering style of leadership during his time in the U.S. House, sat calmly with his family in the courtroom’s front row Wednesday while members of the nine-judge panel grilled Travis County Assistant District Attorney Holly Taylor and DeLay attorney Brian Wice over the intricacies of the case.
Taylor argued the lower appeals court did not consider some of the most important evidence from the 2010 jury trial, while Wice repeated earlier arguments that the case had less to do with illegal electioneering than with an attempt to personally persecute DeLay.
Moving the money
Presiding Judge Sharon Keller, one of the panel’s eight Republicans, was outspokenly doubtful about prosecutors’ ability to prove DeLay and his associates illegally funneled $190,000 in corporate donations to seven GOP candidates for the state Legislature in 2002.
The money was donated to DeLay’s state political action committee, Texans for a Republican Majority, and made its way into a Republican National Committee corporate donations account. Checks totaling the same amount then were distributed from a different RNC account to the state candidates.
Taylor said the scheme is illegal under state law, which bans corporate contributions to campaigns, but Keller and her colleagues were less sure.
“It seems like your theory of prosecution has some internal inconsistencies,” Keller said, referring to the money laundering argument. Judge Elsa Alcala also asked about the unprecedented nature of the state’s case, saying the original intent of the money laundering law was to target drug trafficking: “When I see this case, my first reaction is, ‘What are you talking about?’ ”
Partisanship issue
“The first time something happens, it’s still a crime,” Taylor responded.
Judge Lawrence Meyers clashed repeatedly with Wice, at one point suggesting he was lecturing. Meyers is the panel’s only Democrat, after switching parties last year ahead of a run for the state Supreme Court this fall.
When Meyers reiterated Taylor’s concerns about missing evidence in the lower court’s opinion, Wice said, “I don’t think this court needs to parse the appeals court opinion (like) a fifth-grade grammar teacher.”
Both Wice and Taylor said they were not concerned about partisanship affecting the court’s decision.
Asked whether he attributed Meyers’ pointed questioning Wednesday to his newfound political affiliations, Wice said “Not at all.”
Texans for Public Justice Director Craig McDonald, who filed the original complaint against DeLay more than a decade ago, was less convinced.
“I’m not so sure it went well today. Tom DeLay sure had supporters on the bench,” McDonald said. “This has been a political process, partisan all along. … Keller seemed to be leading the DeLay team all along with her questions. But we don’t know what the court will do.”