Here is a letter I have written to the head of the screening division at the District Attorney’s office. His name is John Davis. Mr. Davis is named in the Brandon Moon lawsuit for various alleged ethical violations that resulted in Mr. Moon spending years of his life in prison for a rape he did not commit. (See blogs on Moon) While I know that the import of my letter and the ethical problems laid out in the letter will mean nothing to Mr. Davis (he is Jaime Esparza’s right hand man) maybe a grand jury will feel differently.
What you should also keep in mind as you read this letter is that the prosecutor in question, Allic Sahualla, has a few months on the job and look how he is already viciously and vindictively wielding his power, power that you the public have given to him. Can you imagine this guy unchecked in two/three years. Jaime Esparza is growing an army of more Jaime Esparza’s. I have decided to publish this letter to my readers so that they can see what we put up with from Esparza’s DA’s office every day of the week and so that people like Mr. Sahualla, who make the decisions that they do, get the full public credit for those decisions.–For my client’s privacy, I have referred to her as Jane Doe.

November 21, 2008

Mr. John Davis
Head of the Screening Unit
District Attorney’s Office
500 E. San Antonio, TX 79901

Re: Jane Doe

Dear Mr. Davis:

I represent Ms. Jane Doe. Ms. Doe was set for trial on XXX, 2008 in County Criminal Court at Law No. One, on all three of her cases. One of those cases involves an allegation regarding my client’s 15 year old daughter. When I arrived for jury docket call on jury trial day, assistant district attorney Allic Sahualla told me that he wanted to dismiss the cases but that he wanted to make sure that that was ok with the daughter/victim. He said he had not been able to get a hold of her. He said that the cases should be dismissed. He also had not subpoenaed the daughter/victim and trial was that day. He told me that if I brought the victim/daughter in and he could confirm that a dismissal was ok with her, he would dismiss the cases.

I then sent my client to go get her daughter out of school and to bring her to court to talk to Mr. Sahualla. Mother and daughter returned about an hour later. I was present for the interview. Mr. Sahualla started grilling the daughter on details in the police report. The daughter told him three times that everyone was in bed when the police arrived and not as recounted by the police in their report. (You should know that what the police did to that family that night was a travesty. The grandmother called me at home, late and hysterical over the police abuse of her daughter and granddaughter. And keep in mind that the police arrested this very same daughter/victim that night and hauled both her and her mother off.)–After listening to Mr. Sahualla interrogate the daughter on the police report, I took over the questioning and asked the daughter if her mother had assaulted her in any way and she said, “No.” I asked her if she wanted to press charges against her mother and she said, “No.” I asked her if she wanted the cases against her mother to be dismissed and she said, “yes.” She and I then left the room.

Mr. Sahualla followed me into the court room and told me, “Now, I am not going to dismiss the cases.” I then overheard him telling the judge in her chambers in a conversation I was not invited to, that he was going to send the cases back to screening to be felonized. These were the same cases that one hour before this same prosecutor, Mr. Sahualla, was going to dismiss because he thought they were stupid and he even said so. Now he wants to felonize them. This is the very definition of vindictive prosecution. Why? The answer is because Mr. Sahualla was angry with me. And a prosecutor’s anger does not probable cause make, especially when the complainant has just told you three different times that no crime had occurred and especially when this same prosecutor had not subpoenaed this essential witness for trial that day. He didn’t care about the cases and as a result was not prepared to try them. He never intended to try them.

Mr. Sahualla advised the court yesterday that all three cases had been sent to screening to be felonized but that two had been sent back and would stay misdemeanors and the third is sitting in your screening unit. I guess even your unit could see there were no felonies on at least two. Why couldn’t Mr. Sahualla see that? He is a lawyer. Or is he blinded and struck dumb by dishonesty and rage?

Should my client’s case(s) be taken before a grand jury, please give them this letter. The grand jury needs to know that the case(s) was going to be dismissed outright at the misdemeanor level but that an immature, and possibly unethical prosecutor is letting his anger and ego and personal animosity toward me get the better of him and that that is why the case(s) is before them as a grand jury. It is a fact that Mr. Sahualla was going to dismiss the cases before he lost his temper with me. It is a fact that he had not subpoenaed the victim for trial, and trial was that morning and he had no intentions of trying the case. Mr. Sahualla even had the dismissals filled out and ready to go before he spoke to my client’s daughter. I saw the dismissal forms sitting in the files, and they better still be there as they are evidence. The grand jury may want to call Mr. Sahualla as a witness to ask him for the dismissals and why he now thinks that they should consider charging a citizen with a felony when he thought the cases were unworthy of prosecution at even a misdemeanor level. I certainly intend to call Mr. Sahualla as a witness for trial before a petit jury. The jury needs to hear about this.

Please put this letter in the file and show it to any reviewing authority.

Sincerely,

Theresa Caballero