Travis DA sets sights on domestic violence cases
Margaret Moore aims to speed prosecutions, intensify investigations.
In domestic abuse cases, investigators are up against the clock from the start.
Drag your feet, experts say, and the victim is more likely to reconcile with her abuser, making it difficult to bring charges that result in criminal convictions.
For that reason, Travis County District Attorney Margaret Moore instituted a policy to contact victims within 48 hours of an arrest — a change that is part of the firstyear DA’s new family violence unit, which aims to improve prosecutions of the county’s second-most-common felony (drug possession is No. 1).
Numbers from the first half of 2017 show grand juries are hearing family violence cases, on aver- age, 47 days after an arrest. That’s down from 77 days in 2016, when Moore was campaigning in the Democratic primary to replace Rosemary Lehmberg.
“We have accomplished many of the goals we set in forming this unit,” Moore said.
In 2016, six family violence cases went to trial from January through June. This year, it was 10.
And, Moore says, the trial cases are resulting in stiffer punishments, including a three-year prison sentence handed down last week for a man who was probation-eligible. In another trial in July, the victim refused to testify, but the jury still found the
man guilty. With no previous criminal history, a judge sentenced him to five years of probation, which the DA’s office found to be satisfactory.
Another man got 50 years in prison in February for beating a woman who was hospitalized for more than two weeks. The victim, Stacy Smith, said the DA’s office “had my back.”
“Once you’ve been victimized, your self-esteem is low, and you feel like the odds are against you,” she said. “But since you have this team working for you, it makes you feel a lot better. I know it made me feel a lot better.”
Moore said she restructured the family violence team after more than one grand juror approached her with concerns about the vast number of cases and the light sentences defendants were receiving through plea deals.
Last year, the AmericanStatesman researched more than 900 felony domestic violence cases filed from October 2013 to October 2014 and found that nearly half of the defendants had prior felony family violence offenses. In 65 percent of the cases analyzed, the new felony charges were either dropped or pleaded down.
In rebranding Lehmberg’s Family Justice Division as the Family Violence Unit, Moore turned two part-time positions into a full-time intake attorney — yet another way to speed up prosecutions, Moore said. That person works closely with a counterpart from the county attorney’s office to vet cases for proper designation. Felonies go to the DA, misdemeanors to the county attorney.
Moore’s 48-hour contact policy replaces a grinding outreach done by mailing letters — many of which went to old addresses, DA office staff members said.
“I think it’s showing defense attorneys we’re serious about these cases, and it shows victims we’re here for them whether or not they agree with the process,” said Christy May, who is among eight prosecutors with the DA’s office who tries family violence cases.
To relieve an overflowing docket, Travis County’s district judges in June 2016 agreed to ease the burden on County Court-at-Law Judge Mike Denton and take on some of his domestic violence cases. Moore responded to that change with one of her own, appointing a family violence prosecutor to each of the district judges’ courts.
“I went from super overwhelmed to being part of a team of seven others,” said Brandy Gann, an assistant district attorney.
Gann’s caseload has tightened from 400 to about 125.
“I actually have pretty good personal knowledge of every single case I have,” she said. “That was kind of impossible before.”
The pace is still brisk. Through June of this year, Travis County authorities had filed 824 family violence cases, with more than half — 455 — involving intimate partners. Roommates and relatives made up the other 369 cases.
The full impact of Moore’s changes will be clearer once cases filed in 2017 — those that will have been handled exclusively by the new team — go to trial or end in plea deals and sentences. That hasn’t happened yet, due in part to a backlog of old cases, including one from 2011 that went to trial recently.
Moore said she wants “to have the best family violence program in the state of Texas,” but concedes “we’ve got some work to do.”
Starting this week, her team will gather weekly to scrutinize cases and develop a prosecution road map. Representatives from law enforcement agencies and the county attorney’s office will be in the room as well.
Moore adopted this method after researching domestic violence prosecutions in El Paso County.
A review of affidavits, 911 calls and photos of injuries tell prosecutors if they need to gather additional information. Previously, according to Moore, cases often sat in limbo before they got a thorough review.
“That used to take weeks, even months,” said Beverly Mathews, who heads the Family Violence Unit.
Ideally, Moore said, “you can try that case now.”
The final piece to the revamped unit involves video. If Moore gets her way, law enforcement will be furnished with cameras to document evidence pertinent to the case, such as injuries and statements that a victim might later try to recant. The videos would be reviewed at the weekly staffing meetings.
Moore, who got the idea from El Paso, is seeking funding for cameras.
“Those videos are dynamite,” she said.