Prosecutors want judge to decide on pay
The special prosecutors in the state’s case against Attorney General Ken Paxton on securities fraud charges are asking a Harris County judge to set their pay.
The request, made in a motion filed last week in state District Court in Harris County, comes after the lawyers were dealt a blow last month by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals when it declined to reconsider an earlier ruling that allowed a $2,000 limit on pretrial work.
A District Court judge in Collin County in 2015 had approved a rate of $300 an hour, but the top court ruled that rate could not be paid because state and local rules required appointed lawyers to be held to preestablished fee schedules.
This is the latest in a long-running legal battle with several hiccups that has delayed Paxton’s trial for four years. The issue over pay has held up the case since 2017. Meanwhile, Paxton, a Republican, was re-elected to a second term last year.
Pay debate
In the motion filed Wednesday, a lawyer for the prosecutors in the case, Brian Wice and Kent Schaffer, argued that Judge Robert Johnson in Harris County should decide how much they ought to be paid. The Paxton case was moved to Houston in 2017.
“The Court of Criminal Appeals’ decision provides the court with the parameters necessary for the court to use its discretion in discharging its administrative duties,” Anthony Drumheller wrote.
Drumheller did not return a request for comment Thursday.
Paxton was indicted in 2015 by a grand jury in Collin County, his home county north of Dallas. The charges stem from claims, made before he was elected attorney general in 2014, that he persuaded friends and colleagues to invest in a North Texas tech company without disclosing that he would make a commission.
He’s charged with two counts of first-degree felony securities fraud and a third-degree felony for failing to register with the state as an investment adviser.
Paxton has denied the charges. His spokesman, Jordan Berry, did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.
While normally a district attorney would handle such a case, special prosecutors had to be brought in for this case after the Collin County district attorney recused himself because of his personal relationship with Paxton.
After the trial judge approved the $300-an-hour rate, which prosecutors said was reasonable considering the complexity of the case, and Collin County made its first payment, commissioners there fought back. They stopped paying prosecutors and sued over the fees, saying the court-ordered rate was outside the bounds of their fee schedule.
‘Cavalier approach’
Collin County Judge Chris Hill said in a statement Thursday that he was “disappointed at the persistence of the attorneys pro tem in their never-ending pursuit to extract more fees from the taxpayers of Collin County than they are entitled to under the law.”
“Truly though, they’re simply applying the same cavalier approach to the law as they have from the beginning,” Hill said.
Prosecutors, who have not been paid since 2016, had implied that they would step down from the case if they continue to go without pay. One of the original three special prosecutors, Nicole DeBorde, asked to do so earlier this month.