DA Craig Watkins (center) confers with attorneys Heath Harris (left) and Scottie Allen before leaving the courtroom in Dallas this morning. (Vernon Bryant/Staff Photographer)
Update at 3 p.m.
The DA’s office is seeking to recuse Levario from the case.
The recusal motion is now before administrative judge John Ovard. He will not rule today.
The DA’s office, in seeking to remove State District Judge Lena Levario from the case, said Levario “made disparaging remarks about Watkins.”
In an affidavit attached to the motion, a county employee, Jill Reese, who was recently demoted wrote that Levario told her while having lunch May 20 at a Fort Worth Subway, “Levario stated to me that she was ‘going to serve Craig Watkins, Dallas County District Attorney, up on a silver platter to the FBI.”
Reese also said in the affidavit that “all you have to have is enough money to have the right attorneys with the right relationships to control the outcome of a court case in any courtroom, including mine.”
Reese, who could not be reached for comment, was demoted recently and said in the affidavit that “I know for certain that Judge Lena Levario is behind this. I have been told by more than one person that she is trying to get me fired from Dallas County.
Levario said that she could not comment on the accusations because the case is pending in her court.
But Bob Hinton, one of the special prosecutors on the contempt case, said he can’t see Levario make such comments.
“That doesn’t sound like the Judge Levario that I know,” Hinton said. “The Judge Levario I know is way too smart to do something like that.”
Update at 11:05 a.m
State District Judge Bob Brotherton ordered the contempt charge redone after Scottie Allen, Watkins’ personal attorney, pointed out that the order holding Watkins in contempt had a “defect.”
“The order did not state the punishment or an opportunity for him to purge himself” of the contempt order, Allen said outside the courtroom.
The contempt charge did not say whether Watkins was held in civil or criminal contempt, Allen said. Civil contempt is about fixing a violation, and criminal contempt is about punishment.
Allen, a defense attorney, and Heath Harris, Watkins’ top prosecutor, said the case should instead be dismissed.
“She didn’t do it right” and Levario shouldn’t be able to redo the order, Harris said.
But Ron Poole, the special prosecutor, disagreed, saying the process will just begin again.
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