New York Times
September 29, 2005
Prosecutor Takes Attacks in Stride, Mostly
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
HOUSTON, Sept. 28 - Being vilified as a "rogue district attorney," a
"fanatic" and "an unabashed partisan zealot," among other epithets, was
not the worst part of his day, said Ronnie Earle, hours after
announcing the indictment of Representative Tom DeLay and two
associates.
"Mostly, I haven't had any lunch," said Mr. Earle, the Travis County
prosecutor, speaking from his office in Austin. "I ate an energy bar.
It helped a little. That stopped me from gnawing on people's heads."
Mr. Earle, 63, an institution and endangered species - a Texas Democrat
- now in his eighth elected four-year term, said he was ignoring the
attacks by Mr. DeLay and his supporters after Mr. DeLay, the powerful
Texas Republican and House majority leader, was charged with conspiring
to violate Texas election law by contributing corporate money to
candidates for the Texas Legislature in 2002.
But Mr. Earle would not let it pass, it turned out. "I find they often
accuse others of doing what they themselves do," he said. "And what
else are they going to say?"
"This is about protecting the integrity of our electoral system and I
couldn't just ignore it," he said.
Mr. Earle, a former state representative who won his first election for
district attorney in 1976 and has run away with every race since, is
famously unbridled, responding last year to an earlier attack by the
majority leader by saying, "Being called vindictive and partisan by Tom
DeLay is like being called ugly by a frog."
When Congressional Republicans sought last year to protect Mr. DeLay by
changing the rules requiring an indicted leader to step down, Mr. Earle
condemned the action as "open contempt for moral values" in an Op-Ed
article in The New York Times. The move was later rescinded.
Yet on Wednesday at a news conference in a law library near the Travis
County Courthouse, Mr. Earle, in announcing the indictment, was
uncharacteristically close-mouthed and stern as he turned away
questions about the evidence and other aspects of the investigation.
But he denied that politics had played any role, as Mr. DeLay and his
lawyers claimed.
"I would expect that that would be their response," Mr. Earle said.
"This is what they believe of themselves."
"We have, over the years, prosecuted a number of elected officials," he
said. "At last count that stood at 15, 12 of whom were Democrats and 3
of whom were Republicans."
That the defense will seek to make Mr. Earle and his record an issue
quickly became clear in comments by Mr. DeLay's lead lawyer, *****
DeGuerin of Houston. "Tom DeLay changed the state of Texas," the lawyer
said in a separate news conference in Austin. "Nobody can deny that,
and Ronnie Earle wants to destroy him because of that."
Mr. DeGuerin had represented the most prominent target of Mr. Earle
until now in a case that represented perhaps the lowest point of the
district attorney's career: the prosecution of Senator Kay Bailey
Hutchison in 1994.
Mr. Earle, who himself had toyed with seeking the Senate seat in 1993
that had been vacated by Lloyd Bentsen, won an indictment against Ms.
Hutchison on charges of having used her office as Texas treasurer for
political ends. But as her trial was about to start, the judge declined
to assure that documents obtained from her office by subpoena, without
a search warrant, would be admissible. Facing the loss of crucial
evidence and, Mr. Earle said, unwilling to risk a precedent that could
erase the wall between politics and state business, he withdrew the
case.
The judge, angry at the tactic, refused to allow the case merely to be
dropped and ordered a verdict of acquittal. Mr. Earle was branded a
coward or bungler. It also gave rise to a joke that the bad news for
Mr. DeLay was that he might get indicted; the good news was that he
would be prosecuted by Mr. Earle.
Mr. Earle gave his critics new fodder on May 12 when he was the
featured speaker in Dallas for the Texas Values in Action Coalition, a
Democratic political action committee. The prosecutor talked about his
investigation into Republican corporate contributions and mentioned Mr.
DeLay. "This case is not just about Tom DeLay," he told the audience.
"If it isn't this Tom DeLay, it'll be another one, just like one bully
replaces the one before."
Mr. Earle seemed surprised at the uproar that ensued. "I'll make that
same speech to any group that was interested in open and honest
government," he said.
But the chairwoman of the Texas Republican Party, Tina Benkiser, called
for his resignation. "This proves once and for all that Ronnie Earle is
a hypocrite on a political witch hunt," she said.
Mr. Earle has long shrugged off his critics, saying his record of
putting crooked officials and violent criminals in jail speaks for
itself. But he once told Texas Monthly that he did not want to be
buried in the State Cemetery in Austin, but instead wished to be
cremated. He had made so many people angry, he said, that they would be
lining up to desecrate his grave.
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