Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yeah, real good one. All right, Tom Harris County District
Attorney Seawan Tier joins us, thank you for coming on
the show this morning. Sir. We do appreciate it, my pleasure.
How are you terrific? Thank you. Have a couple of
couple of things we kind of wanted to bring up
to date. One of one of the things that has,
I guess gotten the attention of some of the more
conservative members of our audience is how many cases have
(00:23):
charges been dismissed because of a lack of evidence? And
I'm curious because I know it's it's it's a it's
a thing with every district attorney trying to make a determination.
Do we have sufficient evidence to cry to to go
ahead and do this trial? Are we going to be
wasting taxpayers money? What are the likelihood that we're going
to win? Tell me about your criteria, what goes into
(00:44):
your decision making process.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
It really is based on our oath. Do we think
that there is a likelihood of securing a condition? And
if so, we're going to go forward. What you're seeing
right now is a direct result of at least eighteen
months of just stagnation in the office. Look, I was
(01:12):
there I know how this occurred, but the prior administration
was not going to allow prosecutors, either overtly or covertly,
to dismiss cases because they believed it was going to
look negatively on them, which is the complete antithesis of
what you have to do as a prosecutor, even if
(01:35):
it's not the popular thing. If you don't believe you
can make the case, you've got to dismiss it. And
so in following ros you're going to see dismissals of
some relatively high profile cases early on because they should
have been dismissed years ago.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Okay, in total honesty, here are some of these cases
maybe being dismissed through a lack of evidence as far
as your concern, But maybe it's the fault of the
DA's department that enough evidence wasn't secured, or do you
really believe that enough evidence did not exist in order
to be successful.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
So when you say insufficient evidence, it does not necessarily
mean that there is a lack of evidence. In a
lot of cases, it's because we've secured additional evidence that
points toward either a defendant innocence or an inability for
us to prosecute because of mitigation, so insufficient evidence to
(02:32):
prove guilt does not in most cases actually result from
not having any evidence. It's just not the evidence we
need to get it guilty. But in a department that
has one hundred thousand cases a year, it's going to
run the gamut of reasons that we dismiss cases, from
(02:55):
us not doing our jobs correctly, to not having enough
evidence it's collected at the scene, from agencies to some
combination of all of those, and the scariest and worst
is we got the wrong person. But it runs the
gamut every year.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
I think everybody has seen enough Kelly Sigler to think
that every case is going to go like Kelly Siegler does.
Why aren't you as mean as Kelly Sigler?
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Right? Having worked with her for a number of years, uh,
and and her really being someone that I've looked up
to my entire career, I can promise you I'm not
Kelly Siegler, And every day I ask her why I'm not.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Yeah, And if you've never if you don't know who
we're talking about, watch Cold Justice one time and you'll
you'll see what we're talking about. Let me let me
ask you as well. Here I think a couple of
things that have also been from a public safety standpoint,
have been concerning people. We had a capital murder suspect
accidentally released, and then recently we had this UH rape
suspect also accidentally released because evidently there was We're told
(03:55):
there was some sort of miscommunication between the UH Police
Department then the the DA's office. Can you tell us
exactly what happened there?
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Yeah, so those are two separate things entirely. The capital
murder suspect, my understanding, was released because of some issue
inside the jail. The charges were never changed that that
had nothing to do with our office at all. Now,
it did cause all of our parts to skip apy,
(04:26):
but we got him back in custody. The the u
of H rape suspect, Eric Brown is it's a perfect
example of what I've been talking about for years about
how important our intake division is. When we when you
(04:46):
have experienced competent career prosecutors down there as the liaison
to law enforcement, these kind of miscommunications really get decreased.
But the what happened was that they didn't have enough
to file the sexual assault charges, so they called the
(05:07):
main intake line as opposed to the twenty four hour
a day sexual assault intake line that all the agencies have,
and we were trying to get effectively what they call
a place called a placeholder charge, meaning we had we
thought enough probable cause for a more minor offense, but
(05:29):
something to get this individual off the streets. That that
wasn't communicated to the second prosecutor who reviewed it hours later,
and then that prosecutor wasn't able to get a hold
of the filing officer because that officer was off shift
by then.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
So basically everything could go wrong. Yeah, everything that could
go wrong did go wrong.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Okay, and we need internal.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
I assume there are steps being taken to correct this,
because if you have prosecute who are green and don't
quite understand their job yet, then that's not going to fly,
is it.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
That's exactly right. That is that is what this highlighted,
and thank god it happened in a case we're able
to reapprehend him without any other people being injured. And
it highlighted deficiencies in our department. It highlighted deficiencies in
the process all the way through but inside our department,
(06:26):
and we're working to fix them as we speak.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
All right, sir, listen, I wish I had more time.
I could probably talk to you for an hour easy,
but we'll get you back one of these days. Thanks
for your time, anytime.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Shaun Tier, Parris County District Attorney. It is seven twenty
nine
Yeah, real good one. All right, Tom Harris County District
Attorney Seawan Tier joins us, thank you for coming on
the show this morning. Sir. We do appreciate it, my pleasure.
How are you terrific? Thank you. Have a couple of
couple of things we kind of wanted to bring up
to date. One of one of the things that has,
I guess gotten the attention of some of the more
conservative members of our audience is how many cases have
(00:23):
charges been dismissed because of a lack of evidence? And
I'm curious because I know it's it's it's a it's
a thing with every district attorney trying to make a determination.
Do we have sufficient evidence to cry to to go
ahead and do this trial? Are we going to be
wasting taxpayers money? What are the likelihood that we're going
to win? Tell me about your criteria, what goes into
(00:44):
your decision making process.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
It really is based on our oath. Do we think
that there is a likelihood of securing a condition? And
if so, we're going to go forward. What you're seeing
right now is a direct result of at least eighteen
months of just stagnation in the office. Look, I was
(01:12):
there I know how this occurred, but the prior administration
was not going to allow prosecutors, either overtly or covertly,
to dismiss cases because they believed it was going to
look negatively on them, which is the complete antithesis of
what you have to do as a prosecutor, even if
(01:35):
it's not the popular thing. If you don't believe you
can make the case, you've got to dismiss it. And
so in following ros you're going to see dismissals of
some relatively high profile cases early on because they should
have been dismissed years ago.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Okay, in total honesty, here are some of these cases
maybe being dismissed through a lack of evidence as far
as your concern, But maybe it's the fault of the
DA's department that enough evidence wasn't secured, or do you
really believe that enough evidence did not exist in order
to be successful.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
So when you say insufficient evidence, it does not necessarily
mean that there is a lack of evidence. In a
lot of cases, it's because we've secured additional evidence that
points toward either a defendant innocence or an inability for
us to prosecute because of mitigation, so insufficient evidence to
(02:32):
prove guilt does not in most cases actually result from
not having any evidence. It's just not the evidence we
need to get it guilty. But in a department that
has one hundred thousand cases a year, it's going to
run the gamut of reasons that we dismiss cases, from
(02:55):
us not doing our jobs correctly, to not having enough
evidence it's collected at the scene, from agencies to some
combination of all of those, and the scariest and worst
is we got the wrong person. But it runs the
gamut every year.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
I think everybody has seen enough Kelly Sigler to think
that every case is going to go like Kelly Siegler does.
Why aren't you as mean as Kelly Sigler?
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Right? Having worked with her for a number of years, uh,
and and her really being someone that I've looked up
to my entire career, I can promise you I'm not
Kelly Siegler, And every day I ask her why I'm not.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Yeah, And if you've never if you don't know who
we're talking about, watch Cold Justice one time and you'll
you'll see what we're talking about. Let me let me
ask you as well. Here I think a couple of
things that have also been from a public safety standpoint,
have been concerning people. We had a capital murder suspect
accidentally released, and then recently we had this UH rape
suspect also accidentally released because evidently there was We're told
(03:55):
there was some sort of miscommunication between the UH Police
Department then the the DA's office. Can you tell us
exactly what happened there?
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Yeah, so those are two separate things entirely. The capital
murder suspect, my understanding, was released because of some issue
inside the jail. The charges were never changed that that
had nothing to do with our office at all. Now,
it did cause all of our parts to skip apy,
(04:26):
but we got him back in custody. The the u
of H rape suspect, Eric Brown is it's a perfect
example of what I've been talking about for years about
how important our intake division is. When we when you
(04:46):
have experienced competent career prosecutors down there as the liaison
to law enforcement, these kind of miscommunications really get decreased.
But the what happened was that they didn't have enough
to file the sexual assault charges, so they called the
(05:07):
main intake line as opposed to the twenty four hour
a day sexual assault intake line that all the agencies have,
and we were trying to get effectively what they call
a place called a placeholder charge, meaning we had we
thought enough probable cause for a more minor offense, but
(05:29):
something to get this individual off the streets. That that
wasn't communicated to the second prosecutor who reviewed it hours later,
and then that prosecutor wasn't able to get a hold
of the filing officer because that officer was off shift
by then.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
So basically everything could go wrong. Yeah, everything that could
go wrong did go wrong.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Okay, and we need internal.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
I assume there are steps being taken to correct this,
because if you have prosecute who are green and don't
quite understand their job yet, then that's not going to fly,
is it.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
That's exactly right. That is that is what this highlighted,
and thank god it happened in a case we're able
to reapprehend him without any other people being injured. And
it highlighted deficiencies in our department. It highlighted deficiencies in
the process all the way through but inside our department,
(06:26):
and we're working to fix them as we speak.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
All right, sir, listen, I wish I had more time.
I could probably talk to you for an hour easy,
but we'll get you back one of these days. Thanks
for your time, anytime.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Shaun Tier, Parris County District Attorney. It is seven twenty
nine
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