Bexar County’s No. 2 prosecutor signs on with Travis County DA
Christian Henricksen, a top aide to Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales for the last five years, is heading to Austin to work for the Travis County DA’S office.
His old boss, Gonzales, and his new one, Travis County DA José Garza, are both reformminded Democrats whose view are in sync with Henricksen’s.
Garza announced Thursday that Henricksen will join his office with the title of director and will oversee trial court matters, a pre-indictment unit and violence-prevention programs. Henricksen’s arrival is part of a package of leadership changes in the office “as we begin to prepare for our second term,” said Garza, who was first elected in 2020.
Henricksen has played a key role in Gonzales’ administration since Gonzales took office in 2019. He served as the DA’S chief of litigation and then as first assistant district attorney. Before that, he was Gonzales’ law partner in private practice and spent eight years as a prosecutor.
As first assistant DA, Henricksen was responsible for the office’s day-to-day operations. He also put in place some of Gonzales’ signature policies, including a cite-and-release program that allows police to ticket rather than arrest people accused of low-level crimes, such as possession of small quantities of marijuana.
His last day in the Bexar County DA’S office will be April 26.
Henricksen took heat earlier this year for his dealings with the Wren Collective, an Austinbased nonprofit that aims to overhaul the justice system, reduce the prison population and resolve many nonviolent criminal cases without formal prosecution.
Email and text messages obtained under the Texas Public Information Act show the group’s founder, Jessica Brand, had extensive communications with Gonzales and Henricksen about general policies and particular cases.
The disclosures prompted questions from the legal community about whether it was appropriate for the DA to receive behind-the-scenes policy and messaging advice from an advocacy organization. Gonzales and Henricksen made no apologies and said it’s common for public officials to receive advice from outside groups with policy expertise.
Henricksen told the San Antonio Express-news earlier this year that he was proud of what the DA’S office had accomplished with the Wren Collective’s assistance in de-emphasizing prosecution of low-level, nonviolent offenses.
“They helped us a lot,” he said. “They helped us get the information that we needed to make good decisions.”
Garza is a former federal public defender, immigrant rights activist and executive director of the Workers Defense Project, which advocates for higher wages and safe working conditions for immigrants. He is seeking reelection to a second four-year term.
He views the justice system as “broken” and has touted his efforts as DA to hold police accountable for unwarranted use of force and to offer treatment to nonviolent drug offenders rather than try to imprison them. Critics have accused him of excessive leniency and blamed him for outbreaks of street crime in Austin.
As a public defender, Garza “saw first-hand how our system weighs most heavily on people of color, working people and poor people, and immigrant families,” according to a biography on the Travis County DA’S website.
Garza worked in Washington, D.C., as deputy general counsel for the U.S. House Committee on Education and Labor, as special counsel to the National Labor Relations Board and as an adviser to Tom Perez, secretary of labor in the Obama administration.