Am I reading this right? This happened around a month ago and we let this bitch fly back to Nigeria? Our justice department is not winning.
HUGE controversy in Houston over this. The Fire Marshall had an airtight case against her - tons of witnesses that saw her drive up to the house after it was on fire, surveillance tape from Target, etc. The Harris County DA is a career politician WHO HAS NEVER ONCE PROSECUTED A CASE ON HER OWN and is a huge bag of shit. She gives more of a damn about the PR and less about the actual circumstances, and she dithered around, refusing to allow her staff to sign off on the arrest warrant until there was "more information", even tho the Marshalls told her the woman was a flight risk, thereby allowing the baby killer time to fly to Africa.
This is an editorial, but it pretty much sums up the situation and for once, I actually agree with this columnist, whom I normally despise. It is well known in Houston Legal Circles that the Prosecutor referenced in the article is taking the fall for this because his boss the DA from Hell, is up for re-election, and he is one of her toadies.
Plenty of blame to go around
By LISA FALKENBERG
Copyright 2011, HOUSTON CHRONICLE
March 7, 2011, 10:58PM
It's a strange thing, criticizing a prosecutor for being too careful.
But if we're going to understand how Jessica Rene Tata was able to flee Houston before being charged in the deaths of four babies, and the injuries of three more, we need to consider the role the Harris County District Attorney's Office played.
Sure, Houston Fire Department investigators made crucial missteps, some of which they've acknowledged. They were gullible in trusting Tata, the home day care operator who authorities now say had left seven children alone to go shopping when a deadly fire erupted in her kitchen.
Meanwhile, District Attorney Pat Lykos has refused to share the blame. At a news conference, she called accusations that her office was unreasonably slow in accepting charges against Tata "outrageous." She kept pointing out that "we are not investigators" even though she employs investigators in nearly every division.
Lykos implied the delay was caused by HFD: "You have to have objective facts to justify holding that person in custody," she said.
I'm no lawyer, but it looks to me like they had those facts the first day, and certainly a day later, when they learned that Tata might flee.
Nearly everyone I've talked to in recent days, including several former Special Crimes prosecutors, a retired DA investigator and a couple of retired homicide cops agrees: the DA's office had enough evidence to issue a warrant and probably enough to file charges.
"I think they both dropped the ball," Alan Brown, a recently retired HPD detective who spent 16 years in homicide, said about HFD and the DA's office. "There was plenty of probable cause to arrest that woman."
This is what arson investigators knew at the end of that first day:
They knew they had two witnesses who saw Tata pull up to the day care as the fire raged. They knew Tata had lied to them: she said she was in the bathroom when the fire started, but a store receipt and surveillance video showed she was shopping.
And investigators had Tata herself saying she was the only adult at the facility.
Yet, according to HFD's time line, when arson investigators approached the DA's office at 2 in the morning the following day, Friday, about filing charges, veteran Assistant District Attorney Steve Baldassano, told them he wouldn't accept them. Interview Tata again, he told the officers, to confirm she didn't leave any employees with the children.
Baldassano didn't budge even when investigators called him back at noon to relay a Crime Stoppers tip that Tata might flee to Nigeria. Tata was born in the U.S., Baldassano reportedly told investigators, and had been in Harris County a long time, so he didn't consider the tip valid.
Instead, Baldassano told them to interview all of the children's parents.
The sixth time contacting the DA's office appeared to be the charm for investigators, who finally convinced prosecutors to accept charges early afternoon on Sunday, three days after the fire. But by then, Tata was already gone.
It's true that arson investigators could have arrested Tata without the DA's OK, arguably another misstep. But in Harris County, officers need DA approval to file charges.
Baldassano, the Major Offenders bureau chief, has a reputation among colleagues as a good trial attorney and arson expert. He's also considered more cautious than many. And even colleagues who think highly of him say he seems to want charges to come trial-ready. But that wasn't a luxury he had here.
"His decision-making process is a lot more deliberate than most who have that amount of experience," said Luci Davidson, who used to be Baldassano's division chief.
Baldassano responded to a long list of questions, though he stopped short of explaining why he didn't consider the evidence gathered at the scene enough to charge Tata.
He said his hesitation had to do with the concern he always has about arresting or convicting an innocent person.
"As everyone knows, the hardest part has always been to separate the truly guilty from those that everybody's mad at but who are actually innocent," he wrote me in an e-mail.
I don't envy the prosecutor's job. They make tough decisions daily that affect people's lives and freedoms. One day, we're criticizing them for being too aggressive, for sending an innocent man to prison. The next, they're in the hot seat for being too cautious, for letting a deceitful accused criminal get away.
The thing is, I know there are cases where the evidence is murky and the right move isn't clear.
This wasn't one of those cases.
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