Outgoing DA endorses Lehmberg for Travis County DA

Thu, Mar 20th 2008, 13:34

From the Austin Statesman:  

Days before 20-month-old Christopher Wohlers was beaten to death in 1990, relatives of the boy had reported concerns about abuse to child welfare officials.

Child Protective Services workers sent a notice about the suspected abuse to Austin police.

It arrived the same day Christopher died.

"Everyone looked at that and went, 'Oh, no,' " said Rosemary Lehmberg, then the head of the Travis County district attorney's office family justice division and now a candidate for district attorney.

What followed was unprecedented coordination among different agencies to remake the way Austin deals with child abuse, a period that Lehmberg calls the proudest of her 31-year career in the district attorney's office.

Child abuse police detectives started working next to Child Protective Services workers, sharing reports as they came in. The Center for Child Protection opened, allowing child victims to be interviewed by a counselor in a comfortable setting. A team of community members began an annual review of all child deaths.

According to some involved in the process, Lehmberg was key to the effort's success, seeing it through with a steely will and her sober, consensus-building style.

"We had doctors and lawyers and cops and community members," said Karen Eells, then regional director of Child Protective Services. "What we had in common was we had confidence in Rose. Rose could bring us all together."

Lehmberg, 58, hopes her body of work earns her a victory in Tuesday's Democratic primary to replace retiring District Attorney Ronnie Earle. If no candidate receives a majority of the vote, a runoff will be held April 8.

Also running are Lehmberg's fellow assistants to Earle, Mindy Montford, 37, a trial court prosecutor, and Gary Cobb, 47, of the grand jury division. Rick Reed, 52, a public integrity unit prosecutor before he resigned last month, is running. There is no Republican candidate, so the primary winner will be the presumptive next district attorney, in charge of prosecuting serious felonies in Travis, such as murder, robbery and theft.

Because of its location at the seat of state government, the Travis district attorney investigates public officials who run afoul of the law with its public integrity unit.

Lehmberg has led that unit and every other major division in the district attorney's office. For the past decade, she has served as first assistant to Earle, working out the details of the office's budget, technology upgrades and hiring.

She also has worked with Earle on his broader goals of community justice, in which the district attorney attacks the roots of crime in the community and gives community members a role in punishing and rehabilitating some juvenile offenders.

"She has risen to the position of first assistant precisely because of her leadership qualities, her judgment and her ability to set that crucial tone of respectfulness that brings people together," Earle said in endorsing her in January.

Lehmberg has closely tied her campaign to Earle, who in a memo to the candidates demanded that none of them use his picture without his permission. Lehmberg's first television spot featured Earle talking as much as Lehmberg.

Her campaign is supported by many in the old guard of lawyers in town, among them defense lawyers Bill White, David Sheppard and Roy Minton, whose firm gave her campaign $5,000. Senior prosecutor Claire Dawson-Brown is among the supporters listed on Lehmberg's Web site.

"There is not anybody that has got the experience and the qualifications that she does," Minton said. "She ... has really been running the district attorney's office and works with Ronnie a great deal, and that ain't no easy deal."

Aided by $5,000 from Earle, Lehmberg was second in fundraising to Montford through Feb. 23, the most recent required reporting date. Since announcing their candidacies, Lehmberg has raised $196,925 to Montford's $364,716.

Lehmberg, the daughter of a doctor, was raised in Taylor, attended the University of Texas and earned her law degree from St. Mary's University in San Antonio. She joined the district attorney's office in 1976, shortly before Earle was elected to his first term.

Lehmberg's fingerprints are on many of the office's major cases in the past three decades.

She prosecuted two death penalty cases early in her career, including Charles Rector, who was executed in 1999.

She was head of the family justice division when Travis County drew national media attention by charging Lacresha Murray, then 11, for capital murder in the 1996 death of 2-year-old Jayla Belton. Two juries convicted Murray of lesser charges, but both convictions were overturned, the second after an appeals court ruled that a statement Murray gave police was illegally obtained.

Looking back, Lehmberg said capital murder was perhaps too severe a charge, given the emotional reaction to it in the community. Prosecutors didn't seek the death penalty, she noted, and a charge such as injury to a child carried the same potential sentence.

Her relationship with Earle has made her the closest thing to an incumbent in the race. Although her opponents rarely attack her by name while campaigning, they do so subtly.

Cobb, who is black, criticized his bosses for employing too many white prosecutors to deal with defendants who are mostly minority. Lehmberg said minority hiring has always been a goal of hers, and notes that the percentage of black and Hispanic lawyers in the office is higher than that of the general lawyer population in town.

If elected, Lehmberg promises to put her own stamp on the office, but has been short on specifics.

"At every juncture, I have looked at ways to improve the office, and I would continue to do that," she said