Bastrop, Texas Events, News & Stories

Bastrop, Tx–When Bastrop County gets a new sheriff on Jan. 1 , it will also lose a law enforcement veteran who has been a stabalizing, sustaining and inspiring influence in the county for more than 20 years.

Terry Pickering, who narrowly defeated Wayne Smith for the sheriff’s job in November, will take his oath of office at 10 a.m. Jan 2 in Bastrop. The ceremony will take place on the second floor of the Bastrop County Courthouse Annex at 804 Pecan St.

Current Chief Deputy Sheriff Ronnie Duncan, who has held the post now for 12 years, told me today he’s looking for a new job. Pickering has told Duncan and other county officials that he will name former jail administrator Charlie Littleton as his chief deputy, and Duncan said he will not take another post at the sheriff’s department because that would mean someone else in the agency would be out of a job. “I’m not going to do that,” he said.

Sgt. Skip Wobus is also leaving the department. Wobus was an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic Party’s nomination for sheriff this year.

Duncan came to Bastrop about 1984 as a criminal investigator for the late sheriff Tommy Moseley. By 1986 Duncan had been tapped as an aide and investigator for the Bastrop Police Department, and he was appointed as chief of the department following the accidental death of Police Cheif Adell Powell, for whom the current police and courts building in Bastrop is named.

When Richard Hernandez, a Bastrop police sergeant, was elected county sheriff in 1996, Duncan became his chief depury. But in 2007 Hernandez resigned after being indicted on corruption charges. Last year he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 90 days in jail. Duncan held the sheriff’s department together during this unsettled period, acting as sheriff until Rosanna Abreo was named acting sheriff at the end of June 2007 by county commissioners. Abreo kept Duncan as her chief deputy. To all appearances they worked well and closely together during the past two county budget cycles.

Duncan, a cop to the core and an able and diligent administrator, became highly regarded in the law enforcement and larger community for his integrity. One long-time colleague and friend told me this week, “You could shoot dice with Duncan over the phone,” meaning that he would not lie even when it would be to his advantage and no one could detect the cheat.

Littleton joined the Bastrop County Sheriff’s Department under former sheriff Fred Hoskins’ administration. He rose to be Jail Administrator and kept the post under Hernandez until he was abruptly fired in early 2007. Subsequently Littleton sued the count for wrongful termination and settled the case for a $140,00 payment. Littleton was an active campaign supporter of Pickering this year and is apparently headed back to the county’s payroll under Sheriff Pickering.

Both Pickering and Littleton were long-time, high ranking officers in the Travis County Sheriff’s Department in Austin and well qualified for the posts they’re about to assume. But losing Duncan as a local public servant is not good news for anyone in the area.

Texas’ highest court for criminal appeals released a decision Dec. 17 denying a petition for a new trial from death row inmate Rodney Reed of Bastrop. Reed, convicted in the 1996 rape and strangulation of 19-year-old Stacy Stites, has been under a death sentence since his trial in Bastrop in 1998.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had been considering this latest appeal since 2006 when 335th District Judge Reva Towslee Corbett held a hearing on what defense lawyers claimed was new evidence in the case which was not available at the original trial. Some of that evidence may have been deliberately withheld from the defense at that time, the appeals lawyers argued. But Judge Corbett was not impressed, finding testimony by two new witnesses unpersuasive, and the high criminal court appeared in no hurry to render a decision. Oral arguments in the case were not held until earlier this year.

There was earlier speculation in legal circles that the appeals court might be considering an order calling for a new trial. The justices asked the state and defense to brief them on what they should do if the hearing judge’s (Corbett) findings of fact and conclusions of law were inconsistent, in some cases, with the record of the evidentary proceedings.

In the end, however, the appeals court decided that such inconsistencies made little difference and that the trial jury likely would not have reached a different verdict if they had heard the new witnesses. Of course, this is the same court which once ruled that a defense lawyer who slept through some testimony during a capital murder trial did not provide ineffective counsel to his client.

The chief evidence against Reed was DNA recovered from the victim’s body, though he was not charged for almost a year after the killing. From the beginning, the defense has relied on two lines of argument:

1. Since Reed was having a clandestine affair with Stites, the DNA evidence does not really point to him as her killer. Apart from Reed’s claims about the alleged affair, independent evidence of such a romantic link has been difficult to produce, however.

2. Since Stites was living with and engaged to be married to (then) Giddings police officer Jimmy Fennell Jr. at the time of her death, defense lawyers argued he was far more likely a suspect in her murder than Reed. Indeed for almost a year Fennell was the chief suspect in the case, but he was never charged, largely because investigators could not find a plausible theory of how he could have strangled Stites, left her body on a rural road near FM 1441 east of Bastrop, left his truck in the Bastrop High School parking lot by 5:30 a.m. and returned to his apartment in Giddings before learning that Stites had failed to show up for her 3:30 a.m. shift at the Bastrop H-E-B food store. Fennell borrowed an auto from Stites’ mother, who lived in the same apartment complex in Giddings, to drive to Bastrop and help search for the missing Smithville High School graduate. Stites routinely drove Fennell’s pickup to work.

In arguing their case, defense lawyers have struggled with the same issue. Their best response so far has been to theorize that Fennell might have been helped by someone, though solid evidence for such speculation has so far remained out of reach.

It has also proved difficult for them to take advantage of legal troubles facing Fennell since he testified at the Reed trial about his activities the day his fiancee died. Most recently, Fennell was sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to sexual misconduct with a woman in custody while he was a police officer on duty in Georgetown.

At the current pace, Reed could remain on death row for another 10 years before his appeals are exhausted. Still ahead are appeals to US district and appeals courts, possibly including the US Supreme Court.

On Dec. 15 the board which governs the Bastrop Economic Development Corp. approved, with some controversy, $55,000 in new central business district building improvement grants. At the same time the board vowed to begin revising the grant program and its guidelines beginning in January.

Over the objections of BEDC board president Gary Guiterrez and board members Gary Schiff and Pat Crawford, the board approved $25,000 building grants to Scooters coffee shop and the former home of title company Bastrop Abstract, both on Chestnut Street, plus $5,000 to cover come costs of dividng the Main Street building which houses real estate broker Jimmie Ann Vaughan. Vaughan recently reduced the space she and her agents occupy in the 900 block of Main and sold the extra space to Bastrop lawyer Joe Grady Tuck. Vaughan had asked more $10.700 from BEDC.

Schiff said the grant program is now “out of control,” a sentiment echoed by Guiterrez. Crawford also voiced some criticism, saying the board needs to evaluate the impact of grants on the central city’s appearance and economic viability before putting tax money into projects.

For the fiscal year 2008-09, which began in October, the board budgeted $150,000 for building improvement grants. Prior to Monday’s meeting the board had approved grants which total just over $136,000. To pay for the grants supported by the board Monday, a public hearing will have to take place in January and the issue will have to gain the blessing of the city council to amend the BEDC annual budget.

The board set Jan. 19 to meet in an effort to focus on the grant program, what kinds of work to help pay for and set a firmer budget for annual project expenditures.

BEDC is financed by a half-cent sales tax on retail goods which pass through local retailers.

Bastrop–County commissioners met Dec. 15 to firm up a list of highway projects they’d like to see if President elect Barak Obama, as suggested, wins approval for a new US economic stimulus package early in 2009, including significant public works projects. Here’s their Christmas letter to Santa, even if if comes next year:

The top two or three projects involve moving traffic more quickly and safely into and through Bastrop along Texas 71, mostly on the to-do list of the Texas Department of Transportation which presently has no way to pay for them.

1. Overpasses on State Highway 71 at the intersections with FM 969 and FM 20 on the city’s western border.

2. A similar overpass project at Texas 71 and Tahitian Drive on Bastrop’s eastern border.

3. One million dollars for “cable barriers” in the median on Texas 71 in the stretch of highway between Bastrop and the Travis County line.

4. County commissioners would also like to see TxDOT complete replacement of a series of rural bridges on county roads which the state agency has slated for improvements but now says it has no money to pay for. The county has already spent its money making improvements for other bridges equal to 5 percent of the TxDOT expected costs.

5. Commissioner would also like to see the remaining stretch of US 290 between Elgin and Giddings turned into a divided highway with a grassy median between the lanes going in different directions between Houston and Austin. This may be the least likely project to win funding, according to Pct. 1 Commissioner Peter Hicks. One reason–for this effort to move forward, TxDOT needs to buy more right of way and more design work, meaning it’s not ready to release to contractors even if the money became available.

Stay tuned.