Harris County District Attorney Patricia Lykos on Thursday announced detailed plans to significantly expand the DA’s staffing, services and assistance for citizens who have been victimized by crime.
That will nearly double the office’s current resources for victims, and elevate the visibility and awareness about victims’ rights in the community. To reflect an emphasis on serving all victims, the Victim Witness Division has been renamed the Victims’ Rights Division.
New staffing will include four additional Victim Assistance Coordinators, two support personnel and the use of a DA’s Investigator to improve services and response to victim needs.
Technological advances such as upgraded databases will help coordinate assistance with other agencies. They will also improve the process of obtaining restitution from convicted criminals, or compensation from the state in applicable cases.
Victims’ rights have been a priority for Lykos. In her campaign for District Attorney last year, Lykos pledged that the office "will be champions for the victims."
"We will work directly to address victims’ concerns, keep them better informed and provide them with better assistance and support," she said.
Heading the division is Director Michelle Permenter, who has more than 11 years service as a Victim Assistance Coordinator with the DA’s Office.
She said the improvements will enable the division to assist victims more effectively and enhance their understanding of the legal process. That will benefit prosecutors and the justice system, as well as the families who suffer from crime, Permenter said.
The District Attorney’s Office began offering victim services in 1977. Last year, it offered services for about 26,500 crime victims and handled $430,000 in restitution payments. That work included more than 24,000 letters and 14,000 phone calls.
Assistance by division workers include guiding victims through the legal process, arranging interviews with prosecutors, translating when needed, helping with transportation and family needs, making referrals for medical or mental health care, and more.
The assistance extends through the process and may include court proceedings, Victim Impact Statements, appeals and parole protest letters.
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A high-ranking prison gang member whose violent history included an attack on an inmate with a homemade spear was headed to the Texas death chamber Thursday night for fatally injecting a fellow prisoner with an overdose of heroin.
Ricardo Ortiz would be the second condemned killer executed in Texas in as many nights and the fifth this year in the nation’s most active death penalty state.
Ortiz, 46, was sentenced to die for the slaying of Gerardo Garcia, 22, who authorities said was killed at the El Paso County jail more than 11 years ago. The slaying was in retaliation for snitching on Ortiz and so he couldn’t testify against Ortiz about bank robberies the pair were suspected of carrying out, authorities said.
Ortiz sought to put off the execution so he could get federal money to pay for legal representation to file a state clemency request.
The issue is under review by the U.S. Supreme Court, which heard arguments in January in the case of Tennessee death row inmate John Harbison. Similar appeals from other condemned inmates hoping delay their punishments until the justices resolved the case so far have failed.
"The hope we have is that because they just argued it, they maybe have tentatively voted on it and they’re going to rule for Harbison and maybe we get a stay," said David Dow, with the Texas Defender Service, a legal group that represents death row inmates.
State attorneys opposed the request to the courts, contending even if Ortiz presented a clemency petition to the governor, it likely would fail.
"The facts of his capital crime ... make Ortiz the ‘poster child’ for future dangerousness: his victim was a fellow inmate," the Texas Attorney General’s Office said in a court filing.
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A prosecutor in the trial of a mother accused of beating her 2-year-old daughter to death read jurors a note Thursday in which the mother said she couldn’t live with herself after her child died.
Galveston County Sheriff’s Department Sgt. Elias Cazares testified that investigators searching the suburban Houston home of Riley Ann Sawyers’ mother, Kimberly Dawn Trenor, and stepfather Royce Clyde Zeigler II, found the note expressing remorse.
The couple are both charged with capital murder, accused of torturing Riley to death in a daylong discipline session designed to teach her proper manners. Prosecutors say Trenor and Zeigler beat Riley, pushed her head in a bathtub filled with cold water and ultimately threw her across a room, fracturing her skull.
Trenor, 20, is being tried this week. Zeigler will be tried later.
"My heart is black, dead. I can’t live with myself without Riley," the note said in part.