District attorney’s office independent, effective

There has been a lot of media coverage recently on the Wren Collective, an Austin-based criminal justice reform group, and its founder, Jessica Brand (“Emails reveal effort for reforms,” Front Page, Feb. 25).

The Express-News Editorial Board has expressed concern about whether this individual has had any influence over my policy or case decisions (“Keep outside influence from DA’s office,” Editorial, March 3).

Given the optics created by some in the media, the concern is fair. However, perception is not always reality.

No one outside my office has ever had any influence on any decisions I have made.

When I ran for Bexar County district attorney in 2018 and again in 2022, I ran on criminal justice reform.

During my first term, we implemented programs such as cite-and-release, minor drug declination and the civil rights division. Programs such as these were already established in other district attorney’s offices throughout the country.

Because reform was new to Bexar County, we sought guidance from experts in this area. One of those was Brand. She has assisted us from time to time on how to publicize these programs to Bexar County. She has also offered to provide policy recommendations, which I never adopted.

Each policy that I created was my own after consultation with my team of administrators.

Much has been reported about the amount of communication between Brand, First Assistant District Attorney Christian Henricksen and myself. However, help from Brand is not illegal, improper or unethical. I am proud of the work we have accomplished with her aid.

A report from another media outlet about Brand dealt with the case of Eric Cantu and former San Antonio police officer James Brennand.

Cantu was charged with evading detention with a vehicle. Because this case is pending, the only comment I can make is the decision to dismiss his case was because he was in critical condition in a hospital and not expected to live. His family was unable to be by his side because he was in custody.

We made the decision to dismiss his case because it was the decent thing to do. I would make that same decision today. Brand never recommended that we dismiss this case.

Additionally, Brand had absolutely no influence in deciding how to indict this former officer.

The amount of communication with Brand has been overplayed. It was reported there were hundreds of pages of communication. Most of the communication was between Brand and Henricksen in emails. There was nothing improper or nefarious about them.

For example, in the five-year period covering my administration, there were 36 emails amounting to about 400 pages when printed out. Of that amount, one email had an attachment of 172 pages on a suggested court brief. That amounts to about seven emails per year. Hardly enough to constitute an “influence” on any office.

Considering that this topic has garnered so much media attention, it is understandable that it has caused people to question whether I am making the decisions in this office.

Let me be clear: I run this office independent of any outside influence. My priority is public safety.

Under my administration, the murder conviction rate is 82% this year, higher than in the previous 13 years. Likewise, we have a conviction rate of more than 90% for felony DWI cases. We also recently established a high-risk intake team that works on weekends and evenings, which has reduced the felony intake backlog by 17% in just three months.

According to the latest San Antonio Police Department crime statistics, murders are down by 40% and overall crime is down by about 6% compared to this time last year.

Bexar County voters entrusted me twice to run this office. Considering our results, I would ask the community to judge my leadership by the hard work of our district attorney’s office staff.