“It’s not ethical, high profile has nothing to do with it”: Harris County DA makes a shocking revelation about maintaining constant communication with Deshaun Watson’s attorney
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Deshaun Watson
Deshaun Watson‘s case does not fail to amaze us as each day we find out something new. If you have been living under a rock, the quarterback faces nearly 24 allegations (and counting) of sexual misconduct and assault from female massage therapists. The number is likely to increase and there were reportedly 66 instances of Watson getting a massage. He faces no criminal charges as he was acquitted by two grand juries in Texas but the civil lawsuits remain intact.
Watson has the access to the best legal resources which comes as no surprise and he chose Rusty Hardin, a high-profile attorney with a history of representing the best of athletes and people of influence. Hardin reportedly ‘pulled some strings’ while the criminal trial was going on and maintained an open line of communication with the Harris County District Attorney’s office over the latest findings and developments in this case.
“Totally normal”: District Attorney attempts to justify the conduct of her office in Deshaun Watson’s case by brushing it off as a regular occurrence
Recently, the New York Times broke out a blockbuster story regarding Watson, the article was written by Jenny Vrentas who conducted a detailed investigation into the case and found out how the NFL and the Houston Texans all enabled the quarterback’s behavior. It further goes on to find that this was a pattern of disturbing behavior and not an accident or a rare occurrence as claimed by the athlete’s camp.
The article also highlights the role of Rusty Hardin and how he used his friends at the prosecutor’s office to find out all the details at every step of the case. There was a lot of communication that took place between the attorney and DA Jona Stallings.
Kim Ogg, who runs the prosecutor’s office justifies the conduct of the DA and called it ‘Totally normal,’ she went on to add, “We contact defense lawyers. They contact us. Communication is far different than collaborating or working together to achieve an outcome. That just didn’t happen. It’s not ethical. And it’s not what we do. And it’s not what happened in this case.” She dubs the representation made by the NY Times to be overly exaggerated.
“I think there was a lot of artistic liberty taken by the writer in that case, who made a presumption that anytime someone shares a text of a phone call, that they’re colluding. We don’t work with the plaintiffs’ lawyers, for the reason I said. We don’t want the cross-contamination, if you will, of a bias or motive being alleged against us in terms of trying to put our fingers on the scale in our system to help the other side. So it’s different when you’re dealing with a criminal defense lawyer, they’re representing a person we can’t talk to without them, who we need to notify about where to be or what to do,” Ogg claims that the truth is far from what is being represented out there.
There are a lot of discrepancies in her claims, as in one of the texts, the prosecutor tells Hardin “about where to be or what to do,” which makes no sense as there was no need for that, that is not something that the DA’s office is required by law to share and it is not something they should share. Kim Ogg also addressed the fact that the Cleveland Browns QB’s attorney was allowed to provide a ‘packet; for presentation in the grand jury. A packet is information that a criminal defense attorney that is provided to the Grand Jury in a felony case to convince the jury to dismiss the allegations or indict the case in question to be filed as a felony as a misdemeanor.
“When they have a packet as was talked about in this case, it’s funny, that’s just a local custom, allowing defense lawyers to put together a packet. You won’t find any support for it in the law, you won’t find any protocol for it because it’s something that’s just been crafted through literal practice between our criminal defense bar and our prosecutors. And what we do is they put together that they want the grand jury to see or hear, and we’ll present it. We present it because we want to know, too. What’s their side? What are they presenting? And remember, we cannot compel their client, or target, to testify,” Ogg states.
Kim Ogg seems to be indulging in damage control considering the reasoning behind her justifications:
This explanation confuses one more, the prosecutor allows the defense lawyer to put together anything they want to and submit it to the jury without any knowledge of it? So this means that one could essentially represent the facts as per their whims and fancies and push the narrative that will be beneficial to their clients. In this case, that means Rusty Hardin could proclaim without facing any repercussions that the women accusing Deshaun are all lying and that this is a ploy to extort him.
No matter how well-versed one is with legal procedure and custom, this does not sit well or even sound sensible to any rational person. Kim Ogg is pushing a narrative that it is business as usual for a defense lawyer to engage in the exercise of not presenting the suspect for the testimony of the grand jury while also tendering a self-serving representation of his viewpoint.
She claims that the NY Times made a big deal out of the packet situation. “Numbers-wise, because many people are caught at the scene in the middle of the crime, defense lawyers strategically- or simply because they don’t do the work- will not submit packets in violent crimes or instant crimes. High profile has nothing to do with it. Packets are common. Although in terms of numbers, many people are arrested for what I’m calling instant crime or something that happens where the action’s taken immediately, many times they are not submitted. In cases like this, or cases where a crime is reported later, lawyers do it a lot,” Ogg adds but it is hard to believe the DA’s office would do the exact same for a case where both the parties involved are common people without the involvement of the media or a prominent lawyer.
There has to be something we do not know or are missing as Rusty Hardin managed to make his case without subjecting Watson to too much questioning and led the prosecutor to defer the case to the civil justice system while going on its merits, the case has everything to be classified as a criminal one.
Despite the entire grand-jury proceedings being secretive, it is a possibility that the jury was made aware that these complainants had another remedy in place in the form of civil proceedings and that due to this the jurors felt that it was better to defer this case to the civil system. This one decision has saved Deshaun Watson’s entire NFL career for the better.
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Sumedh Joshi
(2235 Articles Published)