Accidental Victors

Calling the job a "figurehead position," Grant says that Dallas should give Watkins the benefit of the doubt.

"I think we need to take a wait-and-see attitude on Craig," she says. "He may do a great job, but he's going to have to hire good people in the management positions."

During the campaign and immediately after, Watkins talked about the series of inmates released recently after they were wrongly convicted by the District Attorney's Office, indicating that he may be more reform-minded than his Republican opponent. Of chief concern to local lawyers is whether Watkins will follow up on his promise to institute a true open-file policy, which allows defense attorneys to have access to parts of the prosecution's criminal case, including police reports and witness statements. Tarrant County, which isn't exactly known as a liberal's vision of Xanadu, has such a policy, which both sides say speeds up the prosecution of cases. It's also a key safeguard in preventing the conviction of innocent people by allowing the defense counsel to—here's a revelation—mount an adequate defense.

"There is a hope now that Craig is going to establish a true open-file policy and that we will be able to get copies of police reports and all the things we should get anyway without there being roadblocks," Grant says.

The new Democratic judges are also hoping that Watkins can change the culture of the District Attorney's Office.

"Right now the D.A.'s Office gives the impression that they want convictions at all costs," says new criminal court Judge Lena Levario. "With Craig having been a defense attorney, that won't be the case."

Much like they did with Foster and Watkins, straight-ticket voters swept local Democrats into the judiciary. In essence, the candidates won a political lottery, not a contest of merit. Some Democrats such as Robert Burns, Ernie White and Levario come to the bench with no community complaints about their qualifications. (Burns is a respected defense lawyer. White is a visiting law professor at SMU. Levario is a former judge.) But others, including beleaguered county court at law incumbent Sally Montgomery, won election by nearly identical percentages despite grave concerns about their competency.

Judging by the voting percentages in judicial races, the voters didn't differentiate between the good and bad Democrats, nor the good and bad Republicans, opting for a wholesale party swap without regard to each candidate's particular qualifications. Naturally, last Tuesday's elections will renew questions about whether partisan voters should be trusted with choosing the local judiciary.

"If I'm having heart surgery, I don't want an intern cutting me," says outgoing criminal District Judge Manny Alvarez, who claims his replacement, Carter Thompson, isn't up to the job because he hasn't handled many felony cases. "I don't care if you're a Democrat or a Republican, I want to know if you have the experience when my life is at stake." (Thompson says he has represented felony defendants, though not as many as misdemeanor cases. Misdemeanors are more profitable, and besides, he's been busy lately running for judge.)

The Republican Party of Texas tried to make the qualifications of the Democratic judicial candidates an issue in an aggressive and misleading mailer it sent out during the campaign's homestretch. Referring to the Democratic candidate for the 282nd District Court, Andy Chatham, the mailer made light of the fact that he was suspended from practicing law this year, making it seem as if it were for incompetence or unethical behavior. Texas Lawyer later reported that Chatham's suspension only lasted for 12 days and stemmed from the candidate's failure to pay his Bar dues.

As you might have guessed, the Republican mailer didn't exactly address the more serious shortcomings of the candidate Chatham ultimately defeated, Karen Greene, who sent an innocent man to prison years earlier. Three years ago DNA evidence exonerated Entre Karage of the 1994 murder of his girlfriend. In a non-jury trial that lasted only one day, Greene convicted Karage and sentenced him to life in prison even though the prosecution had no eyewitness or forensic evidence tying him to the crime. (See "Undue Process," by Glenna Whitley, October 5.) Greene would later tell the Dallas Observer, "luckily the system did work," since DNA testing liberated Karage after seven years in prison.

It seems like Greene's lapse is just a tad more consequential than Chatham's failure to keep up with his Bar tab. And while election data shows that Greene wasn't singled out more than any other Republican judge, her loss won't exactly signal the end of jurisprudence in Dallas County.