Top picks for district court benches
Murders and other violent crimes surged across the country amid the pandemic, but in Harris County the trend seemed all the more painful because we recognized some of the contributing factors but couldn’t seem to address them. Beyond the court backlog dating back to Harvey that delayed trials, there were some felony court judges and magistrates whose lenient bond decisions for repeat, violent offenders endangered our community.
While the Texas Constitution requires judges to set bond for nearly all criminal offenses, including murder, it’s the judges’ responsibility to determine the appropriate amount and to raise it or revoke it if defendants violate conditions or get charged with another crime. That didn’t always happen. And, before a recent change, even high bonds could be undermined by bondsmen charging only a fraction of what was set.
All this weighed heavily on our recommendations for Harris County criminal district courts. Democratic primary voters had already booted some incumbents whose bond decisions drew headlines. We were left to examine the remaining incumbents’ records, and whether their decisions truly prioritized public safety as much as the constitutional rights of the accused. If not, we had to decide whether the challenger was qualified enough to do any better.
Besides bond decisions, we assessed typical factors: experience, temperament, fairness, work ethic and strategies for clearing dockets.
Frankly, we were surprised by the quality and thoughtfulness of candidates this year. Below are our recommendations and our reasons. We hope they serve as a guide, and hopefully, a reminder that where judges are concerned, party is rarely an indicator of fairness and good discretion.
Tami Pierce for the 180th Criminal District Court
When Democrat DaSean Jones ran for judge four years ago, he campaigned on rectifying the disproportionate impact of the criminal justice system on persons of color. Jones, 44, an Army veteran and self-described socialist, seemed the right candidate for that moment — a time when voters were becoming more attuned to the disparities in Harris County’s cash bail system that left people charged with minor crimes in jail for lengthy periods simply because they couldn’t afford to post even small bond amounts.
Times have changed. As violent crime surged, judges’ bond decisions — particularly those involving violent offenders — warranted more scrutiny. While Jones maintains an efficient docket — his one-year and three-month clearance rates are well above average for the district courts — in several high-profile cases, he has exercised poor judgment in granting personal bonds, where defendants pay fees to be released, or lowering the bonds of defendants charged with murder.
Take Angel Cardenas, a 17-year-old charged with murder and tampering with evidence in April 2020. When Cardenas was originally booked, prosecutors asked for a $200,000 bond. Jones instead granted him a personal bond and required him to wear an ankle monitor. Jones also granted a personal bond to David Cruz, a 27year-old who was charged with murder in August 2019, after Cruz expressed concern he would get COVID-19 in jail.
Unfortunately, Jones was one of the few judges who didn’t meet with the editorial board, so we weren’t able to get his side on these decisions. We are left to judge him on his record, which we find too troubling to recommend him for another term.
Tami Pierce, 59, the Republican challenger, is running specifically to place an emphasis on community safety that she believes is lacking in Jones’ courtroom. She’s a former police officer who served in narcotics, and a longtime criminal defense attorney who’s spent the past five years as a felony prosecutor in Liberty and Polk counties. While her recent work experience is elsewhere, Pierce lives in Harris County and practiced criminal law here for 10 years.
Pierce will have her work cut out for her going from a smaller county to a high-volume criminal docket in the biggest county in Texas. She is confident she can handle it.
“We may have 200 cases on a docket in one day,” Pierce said of her current job. “And I don’t think there’s any court in Harris County, other than maybe misdemeanor court, that might have that many. We may be smaller in size, but the problems we have are the same problems in every county right now.”
We believe Pierce deserves a chance to show she can balance public safety priorities with respect for defendants’ rights.
Danilo Lacayo for the 182nd Criminal District Court
It’s not just his balanced experience as a prosecutor and a public defender that makes Danilo “Danny” Lacayo a respected criminal court judge.
It’s his experience growing up on Houston’s southwest side, trying to stay out of trouble as he attended a high school for law and justice, planning to join the Drug Enforcement Agency.
“I’ve seen a lot of things. I’ve been robbed, I’ve seen aggravated robberies, I’ve seen beatings. I’ve seen drug deals,” he told the editorial board. “I stayed away from it.”
Instead, he gravitated toward the idea his Nicaraguan-born parents had instilled in him, that he was their “voice,” when he interpreted for them in English, and he could be a voice for many more out in the world. He studied at the University of Houston Law Center and practiced civil law a few years before feeling called to public service.
On the bench, Lacayo, 45, says he understands the families on the defense side, and the prosecution side.
The Democrat wants voters to understand that he has taken the responsibility over bail decisions seriously, regardless of his party. His ability to balance due process and defendants’ rights with a no-nonsense approach to bond violations is part of the reason why we think Lacayo deserves a second term on the bench.
“My bond conditions are very standard on a lot of these cases: pick up no new law violations, no weapons, and depending on whether the crime is alcohol-related or not, I might do some alcohol-related conditions,” Lacayo told the editorial board.
Still, one of Lacayo’s decisions gave us serious pause: he granted a personal recognizance bond to a man with several previous felony convictions who was later accused of beating and raping a 16-year-old girl at gunpoint. Lacayo’s explanation: the man was arrested on a nonviolent offense — weapons and drug possession — and if it had been a violent offense, the judge wouldn’t have granted a no-bail PR bond.
These are the types of tough decisions that are easy to criticize with the benefit of hindsight. Lacayo’s other strengths give us confidence, including maintaining an efficient docket. His one-year clearance rate is 111 percent, the eighth-highest among the 23 district courts. He received solid marks from his colleagues in the Houston Bar Association poll, with most respondents rating him “excellent” or “very good” overall.
The Republican challenger, Robert Jackson, 59, is fair-minded and indicates his run against Lacayo is not an indictment of the judge’s performance but of the system overall. He’s an Army veteran and former military police officer who spent 25 years in the Houston Police Department, retiring as a lieutenant. Jackson has served as an associate judge in the city’s municipal court system, but he lacks the necessary criminal law experience.
Kristin Guiney for the 183rd Criminal District Court
Every so often, the political stars align in such a way that voters are actually given two stellar candidates to choose from in the general election. In a perfect world, both Kristin Guiney and Gemayel Haynes would end up on a criminal district court bench.
Guiney, a Republican, and Haynes, a Democrat, have such extensive knowledge of the specific challenges facing Harris County that it was at times difficult to discern a philosophical difference.
Both have experience as prosecutors and defense attorneys. Both emphasized maintaining efficient dockets to help alleviate the county’s enormous case backlog. Both believe that criminal defendants should be afforded basic due process steps such as hearings before bail is reconsidered.
Where they differ is on the topic of bail reform. Guiney, 47, believes that while misdemeanor bail reform has its merits, it is also contributing to a rise in crime in Harris County. Haynes, 39, believes that partisan commentators are largely pushing that narrative and noted that judges are required by law to grant bail in nearly all cases.
Guiney’s edge is her experience.
She’s a former district court judge who served a four-year term on the 179th District Court before losing in 2016. Gov. Greg Abbott reappointed her to the bench in 2018 and she earned our endorsement, but lost again in a Democratic sweep. She has since returned to private practice while also running a nonprofit, Angela House, that offers services to women re-entering society after incarceration.
Guiney’s veteran know-how and compassion was evident when describing a critical flaw in the court system: the lack of individualized screenings for risk assessments and pretrial conditions.
Haynes is a public defender with 14 years of experience as a prosecutor and defense attorney. Having represented clients waiting up to five years to receive a trial, Haynes has invaluable perspective on the crippling case backlog that he says would be his priority on the bench. One way he would address it: eliminate unnecessary procedural hearings.
We’d like to see both on the bench but Guiney is our pick. She’s got a negligible learning curve and could bring stability to the bench on Day One.
Lori DeAngelo for the 184th Criminal District Court
Harris County voters have a choice between two career prosecutors running for the 184th District Court bench.
Democrat Katherine Thomas and Republican Lori DeAngelo present an interesting generational contrast. Thomas, 30, is a native Houstonian and prosecutor for the Harris County DA’s homicide division who once interned for the Obama administration. DeAngelo, 49, began her career under DA Johnny Holmes and worked her way up the ranks before leaving in 2019 to practice criminal defense.
During the endorsement screening, Thomas compared herself to Democratic contemporaries in local government such as County Judge Lina Hidalgo and County Attorney Christian Menefee. Thomas told the board she became a prosecutor to bring an invaluable perspective as someone with family members who have been “disproportionately affected by the criminal justice system.”
She wants to create a youth court for defendants between 18 and 25 that would partner with community organizations to provide mentorship, job placements, and drug and alcohol rehabilitation. Our concern with Thomas is she lacks trial experience. She has prosecuted only a handful of murder cases and was expecting to try her first capital murder case in October.
Compare that to DeAngelo, who in her many years as prosecutor handled everything from capital murder trials to direct appeals to capital writs. Her recent experience representing indigent defendants has given her a more balanced perspective. She acknowledged that as a prosecutor she sometimes thought of defendants as a number, but that notion was upended when she crossed over to defense.
“Some of it is that there are just really bad people out there doing bad things, and then there’s some people, very good people, who have just made some very poor choices,” DeAngelo told the board.
With the county facing numerous challenges, DeAngelo’s temperament and well-rounded experience make her the better choice for this bench.
Andrea Beall for the 185th Criminal District Court
It takes a special kind of resolve to spend your professional life prosecuting child homicides, but Andrea Beall has willingly taken on that responsibility for the past eight years, fighting on behalf of murder victims who have experienced unspeakable tragedy.
Beall, 35, a Democrat, believes that more judges should have such experience handling the most serious cases.
In addition to serving as the Harris County DA’s felony chief in the child fatality division, Beall moonlights with the city of Houston training police officers in search and seizure law. In what little spare time she has left, she is an adjunct professor at South Texas College of Law in Houston.
While we endorsed incumbent Judge Jason Luong twice in the 185th District Court in both the primary and runoff elections — Beall bested him in both races — we agreed with Beall that not enough trials are happening in this courtroom. She believes trial is “what keeps the wheels on in the criminal justice system,” and she persuaded us she’d have the courage to hold prosecutors’ feet to the fire to ensure cases move quickly.
When it comes to bond decisions, Beall believes she can discern which defendants pose a community safety risk through the types of cases they’ve been charged with, their bond forfeiture history and the risk assessments from pretrial services. She would set strict bond conditions and wouldn’t hesitate to consider detaining a defendant who violated that contract.
Chris Carmona, the Republican candidate, did not meet with the editorial board to make a case for himself. He’s run for office several times before, most recently in a special election for state representative in 2019. He has a private law practice where he handles a wide range of legal matters from insurance claims to election contests, contract violations and family law.
Beall is a fair-minded, compassionate candidate. She’s our pick for the 185th.
Heather Hudson for the 208th Criminal District Court
Earlier this year, we recommended Democratic primary voters oust 208th District
Court Judge Greg Glass due to a record of disturbing bond decisions. The most egre
gious: lowering the bail of a man who served time for a violent felony who was later charged with shooting and killing a Houston police officer while out on bond.
Democrat Beverly Armstrong, 55, beat Glass in a three-way primary this past spring and prevailed again in a runoff months later. We declined to endorse Armstrong in either of those races because her opponents had more criminal law experience in Harris County. She’s been practicing law for 25 years, first in private practice in Harris County, and then as a prosecutor in Polk and Galveston counties for the past 16 years.
Republican candidate Heather Hudson, 41, has worked in the Harris County District Attorney’s Office for the past decade. In the appellate division, she reviews hundreds of trial court rulings and is intimately familiar with the mistakes of some of the judges, such as not revoking bail for defendants who violate conditions. What she brings to the table is a unique ability to borrow from the judges who are doing their jobs well, and also learn from those falling short.
“It’s my job to determine whether or not the judge screwed something up,” Hudson told the editorial board. “It’s a complete, you know, denial of justice when a trial has been reversed just because the judge didn’t really know something.”
We are confident both candidates would take a tougher approach to bond decisions.
While Hudson lacks Armstrong’s trial experience as a criminal prosecutor, she still has to direct and crossexamine witnesses and present evidence to a jury, and she regularly assists less-experienced prosecutors with certain legal arguments in pretrial hearings.
Both candidates would have a learning curve, but Hudson’s would be less steep, particularly in Harris County. Voters should give her a chance to prove herself on the bench.
Brian Warren for the 209th Criminal District Court
State District Judge Brian Warren is a poster child for why Democrats should linger in the voting booth long enough to venture down-ballot and Republicans should split their tickets.
After all, how many Democratic judicial candidates can say they’ve been endorsed by both left-wing organizations such as Our Revolution, as well as the Republican-friendly Houston Police Officers’ Union? Not many.
Warren is also an excellent example for other judges on how to clear Harris County’s daunting courthouse backlog without resorting to rash decisions and cutting corners.
Case in point: Among the myriad factors gumming up the gears of justice in the Harris County court system are the interminable delays judges face in ensuring that evidence is swiftly presented to determine the viability of a criminal case. Fed up with the time lags in presenting body camera footage — which can take months in some cases, depending on the law enforcement agency involved — Warren decided to push the boundaries a bit and force the issue. He implemented a body camera discovery order in his courtroom, holding prosecutors and defense attorneys accountable to a set timeline to deliver footage in a timely fashion. Suddenly, months-long delays shrank to weeks.
Warren, 47, believes his assertive judicial approach on the 209th is more than a personality quirk; it’s necessary to reduce the county’s massive case backlog. His court has a high clearance rate and a lower number of people detained per night based on their inability to pay bail.
Warren is well-liked among his colleagues, scoring highly on the Houston Bar Association’s judicial evaluation poll.
Republican Kevin Fulton, a Houston attorney, is challenging Warren. He would face a formidable learning curve as he does not even practice criminal law. Fulton primarily handles employment law, real estate and business litigation and public government law. Fulton also declined to meet with the editorial board to make a case for himself.
Voters shouldn’t sweat this one. Warren is clearly deserving of another term.
Frank Aguilar for the 228th Criminal District Court
Democrat Frank Aguilar has spent the past four years learning how to be a better judge. The results have been mixed, but his Republican challenger failed to make a compelling case for why voters should oust the incumbent.
Aguilar, 64, has done a solid job managing his docket. His one-year clearance rate of 104 percent is about average among the 23 district courts, as is his active caseload. His courtroom has the third-lowest daily average number of people who are detained pretrial merely due to their inability to afford bail.
He’s also handled one of the highestprofile cases in recent memory — the murder trial of Gerald Goines, the former Houston police officer who led the disastrous and deadly raid on Harding Street as officers attempted to serve a no-knock warrant that police say Goines lied to get approved. Aguilar has managed to keep that trial on track despite many delays, including the COVID-19 pandemic.
Aguilar’s shortcomings should not be overlooked. He’s one of several judges accused by the Texas Fair Defense Project and Texas Civil Rights Project of favoring certain private defense attorneys and overlooking the public defender’s office when appointing lawyers to indigent cases. One of his bond decisions — in which he granted seven felony bonds to a defendant who then allegedly beat a man to death — was featured in Fox 26’s “Breaking Bond” series, which highlights cases where suspects commit crimes while out on bond.
While Aguilar could not comment on the particulars of that case since it is still pending, he noted that he consistently weighs public safety in his bond decisions against a defendant’s constitutional right to bail.
“When people are violent, I am concerned for the safety of the community and I tried to set those bonds as sufficiently high, where those individuals are not going to continue to be a danger to the community or to the victims,” Aguilar said.
Yet, voters concerned with Aguilar’s bond decisions might not be pleased with Republican Andy Taylor’s nuanced view on the topic. Taylor, 39, a criminal defense attorney in Houston, believes that some defendants are not getting the proper due process and that judges — though not Aguilar, he said — are setting bonds arbitrarily high.
While we appreciate Taylor’s willingness to buck his party’s orthodoxy on bail, he didn’t offer any specifics on what Aguilar could be doing better beyond speaking generally about the enormous case backlog in felony courts.
Voters should stick with the incumbent who’s been ably managing his courtroom.
Chris Morton for the 230th Criminal District Court
Candidates such as Chris Morton and Brad Hart restore our faith that tribal politics haven’t completely taken over the judiciary.
Despite the inherent awkwardness of an election rematch — Morton, 49, the incumbent Democrat, ousted Hart, 51, a Republican, from this same bench in 2018 — it’s clear that both candidates for the 230th District Court have genuine mutual respect for each other. By the end of their endorsement interview they were asking each other about their kids.
This board endorsed Hart four years ago, but we thought Morton would make an excellent jurist. Hart’s experience made this a tough call, but Morton has mostly lived up to our expectations and deserves another term.
Morton keeps an efficient docket. Behind the scenes, he’s taken on a leadership role as chairman of the rules committee for the district courts.
Hart was a former felony district court chief in the Harris County DA’s Office before being appointed to this bench by then-Gov. Rick Perry in 2013. He won election in 2014, when we endorsed him. Since losing re-election in 2018, he moved over to Fort Bend County as the head of the DA’s felony trial division.
Hart didn’t pull any punches on what he called “the elephant in the room”: Morton’s bond decisions. One TV news report claimed that Morton gave multiple felony or bail-free PR bonds to at least six defendants who were later accused of killing someone. Hart believes these cases are examples of Morton leaning more toward the rights of the defendant than the safety of the public.
Morton doesn’t hide from the fact that he is a firm believer in bail reform and opposes poverty jailing. He was eager to be a defendant in Harris County’s pending felony bail lawsuit and has spoken out in the media for being targeted by partisan commentators. Morton also insists he follows the letter of the law, which requires judges to set bail in nearly all cases, but allows them to revoke it and jail a defendant if he or she violates bond conditions. Morton said he’s willing to consider denying bond if prosecutors can prove it’s necessary in a bail hearing, but he says there were times when Hart skirted the law by unilaterally denying bail without a hearing even being held, an accusation Hart denies.
“How much money does a person have to have before the public is safe? There is no answer to that, because money does not make people safe,” Morton said.
He’s right. Still, we can’t help but be skeptical of Morton’s unabashedly reformist mindset. In the end, though, we believe Morton has proved his independence in other ways, particularly while presiding over several highprofile cases. He ordered a man accused of murdering a Harris County sheriff ’s deputy to be held without bond, tapping a rare exception in the law for capital murder. On the other hand, when prosecutors charged a Cy-Fair ISD mother for child endangerment after she was seen letting her 13-year-old out of her locked trunk at school, he had the guts to tell prosecutors they hadn’t made their case.
Hart was a fine judge who would no doubt keep the 230th in good shape if elected. Voters can’t go wrong with either candidate, but Morton is our pick.
Josh Hill for the 232nd Criminal District Court
Any voter confused as to why felony judges in Harris County are granting any amount of bail to defendants accused of violent crimes should have the opportunity to listen to Josh Hill explain the ins and outs of the Texas Code of Criminal Conduct.
Hill, 42, a Democrat and the incumbent judge for the 232nd District Court, turned a critique from his opponent, Republican attorney Joshua Normand, into an impromptu lecture on the laws governing judges’ bail decisions.
Normand pointed out that eight defendants in Hill’s court were charged with murder after they were granted bonds. Hill countered that seven of those eight defendants had bonds set by magistrates before they appeared in his courtroom. Even if he wanted to revoke a defendant’s bail, Hill explained, prosecutors must request a bail hearing and present evidence to support their request to keep that person behind bars.
“Every single instance where I see somebody before me that could have been held without bail, or where I think the bail amount is insufficient and should be raised? I asked the state if they want to proceed to that hearing,” Hill told the editorial board.
It is clear that Hill enjoys the publicfacing aspect of his job and relishes these chances to educate people on the nuances of criminal law.
We wish he took as much pride in managing his docket. Hill’s one-year clearance rate is below-average among the 23 district courts, and he has the third-highest active caseload of any felony judge. Nearly half of his pending cases are more than a year old.
Hill noted that in 2019, he inherited a courtroom that had a revolving door of judges in the three years prior. He also blamed backlogs dating back to Hurricane Harvey and the fact that COVID delayed trials for months, but those were issues every judge faced and some faced them better.
Still, Hill is trying to improve and has picked up the pace recently. He’s done that by using the threat of trial as a stick. We wish he’d thought of that sooner.
Normand, 43, is a general practice attorney who primarily practices tax law. While he has criminal law experience in Harris County, having defended felony and misdemeanor clients, he lacks the necessary trial experience to jump to the bench.
Hill gets high marks from his colleagues in the legal community and we think he’ll continue to improve if given a second term.
Hilary Unger for the 248th Criminal District Court
Any Harris County voter with a mentally ill family member or friend facing a felony offense would do well to land in Hilary Unger’s courtroom.
Unger, 59, a Democrat, has worked tirelessly as a judge to make the system more accommodating for defendants who get caught up in the criminal justice system not because they are inveterate criminals, but because they require real help. She has expanded re-entry programs for defendants battling mental health and addiction problems to alleviate the burden on the Harris County Jail, a facility where more than one-third of detainees are taking psychotropic medication.
Unger boasts that the number of probationers successfully completing probation in the 248th has doubled in her first term.
Of course, a compassionate judge can sometimes have blind spots.
Unger has come under fire for a string of incidents in which defendants who appeared in her courtroom bonded out and went on to commit serious crimes. One such case involved a man accused of capital murder who made bail on a $150,000 bond Unger set. Two years later the man was charged with another capital murder after allegedly robbing and running over an elderly woman. While she couldn’t address specifics because many of those cases are still pending, she rejected the notion that she doesn’t emphasize community safety.
“There wasn’t a spotlight on the bonds the same way that there is now and I hate to say this, but the bonds that we’ve been setting now are significantly higher than they ever were,” Unger told the editorial board. She added that despite those higher bonds, until a recent rule change, bail bondsmen were regularly undermining her high bonds by allowing defendants to pay only a tiny percentage to bail out.
Unger would have fewer defendants in detention if she indiscriminately handed out low bonds or no-bail personal recognizance, but her courtroom’s pretrial detention number is the 10th highest of the felony courts, suggesting she weighs decisions carefully.
Republican Julian Ramirez would certainly bring a more hard-line philosophy to the bench. He worked in the Harris County DA’s office for 27 years, where he tried more than 150 cases as chief felony prosecutor. Ramirez accurately diagnosed the problem that, before the Legislature changed the law last year, some judges were loosely granting PR bonds to violent defendants. But given that the Texas Constitution requires bail initially in nearly all cases, Ramirez failed to make a persuasive case on how he’d approach tough decisions differently than Unger beyond weighing certain aspects of a defendant’s criminal record, such as gun offenses, more heavily.
Unger has areas where she can improve — particularly on managing her docket, which has a slightly belowaverage clearance rate — but voters should stick with her for another term.
Tonya Rolland McLaughlin for the 262nd Criminal District Court
After running unsuccessfully for three different Harris County courts, Democrat Lori Chambers Gray finally broke through in 2018, winning the election to preside over the 262nd District Court. While we admire her persistence, Gray’s first term has fallen short of the high standards the public expects for felony court judges.
Gray, one of few criminal court candidates who didn’t meet with the editorial board, is simply not moving cases off her docket at an acceptable pace.
She has the lowest one-year clearance rate of any district court in the county and the highest active caseload. Nearly half of her cases are more than a year old, and her courtroom has the secondhighest population of pretrial detainees.
Gray’s biggest blemish is her consistent failure to adequately weigh public safety. But time and time again, Gray has granted bonds to defendants who have gone on to commit violent crimes. One news report claimed that 10 defendants Gray granted bonds to went on to become murder suspects. In the case of one defendant, Raul Alexander Leon, Gray granted him multiple bonds even after he was charged with murder.
Fortunately, voters have a suitable alternative in this race. Tonya Rolland McLaughlin, a Republican criminal defense attorney and former Harris County prosecutor, seems to have the ideal balance of experience, compassion and temperament to thrive on the bench.
McLaughlin, 42, highlighted one of Gray’s weaknesses — she believes too many judges have adopted an imprudent bail reform philosophy in the felony courts.
McLaughlin told the editorial board that granting multiple bonds to felony defendants isn’t just impacting public safety but is actually harming many of the people she represents. She noted that when her clients pick up new felony cases while out on bond, they basically restart the clock in the process, getting caught in a vicious cycle that keeps them in the system and lessens the chances they’ll be able to reintegrate into society.
McLaughlin said pushing for trials and ensuring that procedural steps are carried out efficiently — such as decisions on a defendant’s probation status — will help resolve new cases sooner. It was clear in our screening that McLaughlin truly cares about the rights of defendants and believes a more efficient system of accountability can put some on a better path.
We like her mix of empathy and no-nonsense and believe she’d revoke bond when necessary and use the
threat of detainment to ward off recidivism.
Voters should feel confident that McLaughlin can get the 262nd District Court back on track.
Melissa Morris for the 263rd Criminal District Court
As a longtime criminal defense attorney in Harris County, Melissa Morris has had clients who have benefited from judges with a more liberal perspective on bail decisions.
Despite a judicial philosophy that skews more toward defendants, Morris, a Democrat, persuaded us that she would take a different approach as a judge, balancing her belief in due process with the understanding that the public’s faith in the judicial system has been shaken. That’s just one reason why we think Morris is well-suited to take over the 263rd District Court bench.
Morris, 41, is empathetic and driven. Her father’s legal struggles as a Vietnam veteran with substance abuse issues inspired her to become a lawyer. She does pro bono representation for clients who have dealt with mental illness and homelessness, such as Donald Neely, whose controversial arrest by Galveston police officers received national attention.
Her compassion, however, does not extend to the cases that have attracted the most concern and local media attention: those involving defendants accused of violent felonies who receive multiple bonds and go on to rack up more violent charges. Morris believes the solution is stricter bond conditions.
“If I let you out on a reasonable bond, it’s because I have taken into consideration everything: what you can afford, your children, the fact that you have a job you can’t miss, and I’ll run your attorney up here every month to check on your case,” Morris told the editorial board. “But if you violate that bond, you violated my trust, and you violated the public trust, and that would be expressed at the beginning and enforced at the end.”
Republican Amber Cox, a prosecutor in the Harris County District Attorney’s Office post-conviction writs division, also has a strict view on bond conditions, comparing defendants to “children” who “have to have boundaries” and be held accountable. Cox, 47, is running because she believes the current judges are giving too much consideration to defendants’ ability to afford bail rather than community safety.
While we share Cox’s concern, she lacks trial experience. In her current capacity, she doesn’t get to argue cases, though she says she has tried about 15 cases over the course of her career.
Morris has defended roughly 30 jury trials in court and has the balance of life and professional experience we’d like to see on the bench.
Martiza Antu for the 482nd Criminal District Court
Some Harris County voters might have some initial skepticism of Maritza Antu. After all, she’s the only Republican out of the county’s 23 felony district judges, and she wasn’t elected.
After the 482nd District Court was enshrined in June 2021 — the first new felony court established in the county in nearly 40 years — Gov. Greg Abbott swiftly appointed 42-year-old Antu to the bench.
Yet in less than a year, she has proven she’s no political crony. Antu doesn’t hide from her personal worldview — she’s a self-described “conservative, law and order” judge — but she’s also a jurist whose knowledge of the county judicial system as both a Harris County prosecutor and a criminal defense attorney has made her a quick study. Voters should give her a full term to build on the solid foundation she’s laid in this new courtroom.
Antu took the bench staring down a docket of more than 2,400 cases made up of cases reassigned randomly from each of the other 22 criminal district courts. While it might have taken some new judges several months to iron out a strategy, Antu has handled her backlog with cool, dogged efficiency, guided by a simple approach: set a firm deadline of 30 to 45 days for bringing cases to trial, and prioritize those older than a year.
It’s worked wonders. Her courtroom has the third-best, one-year clearance rate — 119 percent — of any district court bench. She also has the fifth-lowest active caseload and less than a quarter of her cases are more than a year old.
“I know what a case is worth, I have done it almost 20 years,” Antu told the editorial board. “And so I can evaluate a case just by hearing the probable cause or the criminal history.”
Despite Antu’s solid record, her formidable Democratic challenger, Veronica Nelson, made this a tougher choice.
Nelson, 41, is a former Harris County prosecutor who, over 10 years, gained valuable trial experience as chief prosecutor in the misdemeanor and felony divisions. She’s currently a staff attorney for the county criminal and civil courts, where she trains new judges on, among other things, how to abide by the new rules guiding misdemeanor bail reform.
Yet voters need not have any concern that Nelson would use the bench to enact a political agenda. We think she’d be a thoughtful, nuanced attorney, in part because she knows the court system inside and out. She said her prosecutorial experience would guide her approach to difficult bond decisions, namely by asking probing questions that go beyond a risk assessment score — such as whether a defendant has a history of mental illness — and digging into specific details of a criminal record.
The county would be well served by either candidate. Antu’s edge is her solid record on the bench. She’s given us every reason to believe she’ll continue as a model of efficiency and thoughtful discretion.