Longtime prosecutor served as county DA for 8 years
Chuck Rosenthal, a career Harris County prosecutor whose tenure as district attorney ended in scandal, died recently after spending weeks in hospice care. He was 77.
Voters elected the prosecutor in 2000 to lead the Harris County District Attorney’s Office following the retirement of Johnny Holmes, who stepped aside after a crime-fighting legacy that spanned two decades. Rosenthal served in that role until 2008, when he resigned over the public disclosure of inappropriate emails.
At the time of his death, Rosenthal was not actively practicing law but retained his license, Texas Bar records show. Fellow attorneys said Rosenthal continued infrequent legal work ranging from research to juvenile law in the years after his resignation. Rosenthal’s family could not be reached for comment.
Rosenthal, an Alice native, joined the district attorney’s office in 1977 after earning a law degree from the South Texas College of Law. He planned to switch to criminal defense work within a few years to make more money, according to news accounts. He tried a few trials and changed his mind.
Hal Kennedy, a retired Houston police detective, trusted Rosenthal to prosecute several of his homicide cases.
“He could have been another DeGeurin,” said Kennedy, referring to attorney brothers Dick and Mike DeGeurin. “He could have been anyone. He chose not to.”
It was not unusual for Rosenthal to take 2 a.m. calls from Kennedy or other law enforcement officials with questions about search warrants and other advice that could shape the future of a case.
As a prosecutor, Rosenthal went on to try more than a dozen death penalty cases — a punishment that he deemed sanctioned by biblical law.
As district attorney, his office sent 36 convicted killers to death row. Rosenthal made the decision to pursue the death penalty on cases and famously exercised that discretion with Andrea Yates, the mother who drowned her five children. Jurors ultimately opted for a life sentence before her verdict was overturned. In a later trial, jurors found her not guilty by reason of insanity and sent her to a mental hospital.
A committee of senior prosecutors now decide whether to seek the ultimate punishment on a capital murder defendant.
Former prosecutors lauded Rosenthal’s stretch of leadership for being free of politics.
“People never knew whether someone was a Democrat or Republican,” said Bert Graham, who worked as a first assistant district attorney under Rosenthal and Holmes. “It was just harped upon to do justice.”
Rosenthal had no qualm about dismissing criminal cases in instances in which he thought the defendant was innocent, Graham said.
He avoided small talk or conventional conversation norms, former colleagues said. Some considered him “an odd duck.”
“I was always aware that Chuck’s brain worked a little differently than everybody else,” former prosecutor Shirley Cornelius said. “But that made him a good trial lawyer. He had an encyclopedia knowledge of cases.”
When the courts closed, Rosenthal often hosted informal office parties that attracted a who’s who of guests — sometimes the occasional HPD officer or FBI agent, Cornelius said.
“You never knew who was floating in,” she said. “There was wild music going and alcohol flowing, and Chuck Rosenthal would be reciting an affidavit for a search warrant for capital murder. He’d be reciting it off the top of his head.”
Defense attorney Murray Newman perceived little change as a fledgling prosecutor when Rosenthal took over as district attorney. He ran the office like “a well-oiled machine,” he said.
“He trusted his people to do their jobs and he left us alone to do them,” Newman wrote in a “Life at the Harris County Criminal Justice Center” blog post paying tribute to Rosenthal’s legacy.
Rosenthal’s departure in 2008 signified the end of “old-school prosecuting” in Harris County, Newman continued.
The status quo at the office was upended when a federal suit alleging a wrongful arrest exposed love notes that Rosenthal sent an employee. Other emails that Rosenthal sent and received on his county account surfaced. Some were sexually explicit, racist and campaign-related.
Political opponents, Democrats and Republicans, seized the moment to scrutinize Rosenthal’s career as the emails jeopardized his bid for a third term. GOP leaders pressured him to stop his campaign, which he did, and immediately threw their support behind former prosecutor Kelly Siegler.
As calls for his resignation increased, several lawyers, including renowned Houston attorney Richard “Racehorse” Haynes, encouraged him to not give in to mounting pressure. Cornelius encountered Haynes, whose work inspired the 1976 true crime novel “Blood and Money,” in a waiting room outside Rosenthal’s office and recalled his mission as his resignation neared.
Haynes had words for Rosenthal: “I don’t want him to resign. I don’t want him to lose his dreams.”
Weeks into the snowballing scandal, Rosenthal resigned and blamed prescription medication for his poor judgment. His resignation ended 31 years of service to the district attorney’s office.
Graham expressed disappointment in Rosenthal’s decision to step down — which followed threats by state leaders to investigate him. He remains proud of having worked for Rosenthal before and during the downfall of his tenure.
“I’d hate for people to think that what happened in federal court was indicative of the life he had,” Graham said. “He made some mistakes toward the end. Overall, I think he did a good service to the county.”