COLDSPRING – San Jacinto County Criminal District Attorney Bill Burnett took office in January, 2007 facing a number of old felony cases that needed to go before a grand jury on top of new cases. “It’s been a busy but productive year,” he said recently while looking back and at the same time going forward.

“We averaged sending over one person per week to prison in 2007 for a total of 57. We had six felony trials with four convictions. Of those convictions, the total time assessed was 101 years for an average of more than 25 years per conviction,” Burnett said.

Since the inception of the San Jacinto County Criminal District Attorney’s office in 1990, Burnett and his team returned more indictments in one year (243) than all the years prior. Along with those figures, Burnett and his team took on 1,034 new Class B and Class A misdemeanors and felony criminal cases in 2007.

He attributes much of the success of his office with a cooperative and close working relationship with all law enforcement agencies in the county and surrounding areas.

“It takes everyone working together to make things happen,” he said.

He personally has responded to numerous major crime scenes and incidents during the year to assist law enforcement, including two murders, two officer involved shooting incidents, recovery of skeletal remains in Coldspring, several suicides and a major fatality accident involving alcohol on Hwy. 59 in Shepherd.

His department recently received a two year grant totaling $38,000 per year for a crime victim coordinator.

Burnett has responded to seven appeals by defendants with four convictions affirmed and three appeals pending. On Dec. 6, 2007, he argued before the 13th Court of Appeals and during the past year sponsored and provided a four-hour legal update class for law enforcement and criminal justice providers.

“My department budget was the only one in the county that decreased for the new budget year beginning October 1, 2007. Due to the grant for the crime victim coordinator, the 2007/2008 county budget for the department decreased by over $17, 000,” Burnett said.

Even with the budget decrease, his office was able to replace his investigator’s vehicle, which had over 180,000 miles, with a new 2008 Ford Expedition SSV. The SSV is a special service vehicle designed specifically for use by law enforcement.

New technology was added and access to secure criminal justice websites in 2007 was added to his department at no cost to the county.

Included in the additions is TDEX, a criminal justice website that locates criminal offenders in custody, either in Texas Department of Corrections or county jails; Department of Public Safety (DPS) Secure Criminal History Website, which allows the district attorney’s office to get complete criminal histories on offenders on site; DLIR, a DPS drivers’ license image retrieval system, which allows the district attorney’s office to get current drivers’ license pictures of offenders; ABLE-TERM, which ties the district attorney’s office to the district and county clerk in order to view clerk’s files from the district attorney’s office; CASEMAIL, which allows tracking of all appellate cases the district attorney’s office has in any appellate court and sends an email anytime an event happens in one of the cases; and AG OPIOION EMAIL, which sends an email to the district attorney’s office any attorney general’s opinion is requested in the state or whenever an opinion is issued in the state.

During the month of January, 2008, nine have already been sent to prison.

Earlier this month, when it looked as though a jury hearing the Joe Michael Garcia case was having trouble, the district attorney’s office and Garcia’s lawyer reached a plea agreement, whereby Garcia, 48, pled guilty to aggravated sexual assault of a child in return for 10 years deferred adjudication.

“Juries won’t convict without hard scientific evidence and in a majority of cases we don’t recover hard evidence,” Burnett said.

Hard evidence wasn’t recovered in the Garcia case because the victim waited three days before telling anyone of the assault and during that time he hand bathed, washing away DNA evidence. Garcia was charged in July 2006 with aggravated sexual assault of a 10-year-old male. According to Burnett, Garcia had been molesting the child for more than two years in both San Jacinto and Montgomery counties.

Burnett and his team are currently working two murder cases that are scheduled for trial this spring.