Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s day by day e-newsletter that helps to keep readers on top of things at the maximum very important Texas news.
A Harris County district judge has sided with the particular prosecutors dealing with Ken Paxton’s securities fraud case in their years-long effort to receives a commission.
The judge, Andrea Beall, dominated Tuesday that the prosecutors, Brian Wice and Kent Schaffer, are owed the $300-an-hour fee by means of the county that they had been promised after they began at the case in 2015. They have no longer gotten paid since January 2016 after Collin County, the unique venue for the case, balked on the fee agenda, prompting years of criminal wrangling over it.
The prosecutors integrated Beall’s ruling — made beneath seal — in a brand new submitting with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. The prosecutors are asking the court docket to pressure Collin County to pay them.
The pay dispute was once one of the crucial final final problems to settle ahead of Paxton is going to trial in the case. The trial is about to start out April 15, 2024.
“Judge Beall’s well reasoned decision clearly falls within the zone of her inherent and virtually unlimited judicial discretion,” Wice and Schaffer mentioned in a observation. “We’re confident that the Court of Criminal Appeals will enforce her lawful order with all deliberate speed and finally put an end to Collin County’s incessant, transparent, and purely political ploy to derail Ken Paxton’s prosecution by defunding it.”
Paxton’s legal professionals argued Thursday that the prosecutors are seeking to additional lengthen the trial.
“Once again, the Special Prosecutors are making clear that their prosecution of Ken Paxton is all about money and not justice,” Paxton’s lead legal professionals, Philip Hilder and Dan Cogdell, mentioned in a observation. They added Paxton “just wants his day in court” and, “Yet, the Special Prosecutors seem content pushing that day further back with its dilatory sideshow of an appeal.”
The case is now over 8 years previous, behind schedule by means of pretrial disputes together with the pay factor and the venue.
Paxton was once indicted at the fees months into his first time period in 2015. They middle on allegations that he attempted to solicit traders in a McKinney era corporate with out disclosing that it was once paying him to advertise its inventory.
Paxton has pleaded no longer to blame to 2 counts of securities fraud, a first-degree prison, and one rely of failing to check in with state securities regulators, a third-degree prison. He faces as much as 99 years in jail if convicted.
]