The GOP's Criminal Defenders

[splat@14]

Article dated 9/9/2005 but I haven't seen it posted. It isn't Katrina related but is very relevant. Its amazing to see the cost covering and names associated with crimes among those in the GOP. A national shame.


BY ANDREW WHEAT
With GOP bosses around the country racking up rap sheets, the political party synonymous with anti-crime rhetoric and constitutional gun rights has become distracted by—of all things—the constitutional right to a criminal defense.

In the latest sign of this obsession, Republican leaders organized a benefit at a Virginia golf course last month to pay the legal bills of Tom DeLay cronies John Colyandro and Jim Ellis. A grand jury in Austin has charged the duo with helping DeLay’s Texans for a Republican Majority PAC (TRMPAC) make illegal corporate contributions to Texas state candidates in 2002. The defendants counter that their Democratic prosecutor, Ronnie Earle, trumped up the charges for partisan purposes.

San Antonio’s Roy Barrera, Jr., who set up the so-called Texas Justice Legal Defense Fund for Colyandro and Ellis, is a good choice to help transition the Grand Old Party from anti-crime crusader to a champion of the rights of criminal defendants. Barrera formerly headed the Bexar County Republican Party and was at one time Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen’s campaign treasurer. His son Roy Barrera III clerked for Owen before joining Loeffler Tuggey Pauerstein Rosenthal—the law firm representing TRMPAC defendant Jim Ellis. More to the point, Roy Barrera, Jr. practices at Nicholas & Barrera, one of San Antonio’s top criminal defense firms.

Defense attorney Roy Barrera, Jr. needed a defense attorney himself three years ago when a lawsuit accused the then-chair of the Bexar County Republican Party of disenfranchising voters by closing down dozens of San Antonio polling places on the day of the 2002 primary. To defend himself from these charges Barrera hired attorney J.D. Pauerstein—who now is defending TRMPAC’s Jim Ellis. GOP attorney Andy Taylor—who is defending the Texas Association of Business from allegations that it also made illegal political expenditures of corporate funds—filed the 2002 lawsuit against Barrera on behalf of six San Antonio voters. Finding that a poor turnout of election judges forced the poll closures, a federal court dismissed Taylor’s complaint in late 2002.http://www.texasobserver.org/showArticle.asp?ArticleID=2026