The Houston grand jury and District Attorney’s office investigating Planned Parenthood indicted the Center for Medical Progress’ (CMP) David Daleiden instead of Planned Parenthood.
We saw in Part Two how this situation is a violation of the freedom of the press; now this court is threatening the integrity of our legal system. These are two great institutional pillars in a democratic nation — the law and the press — and the court indictment misunderstands them both.
Getting in the weeds reveals layers of disturbing evidence against trusting this particular court. In 2013, the court let abortionist Douglas Karpen get off scot-free, though there were three former clinic workers who were testifying that he killed born-alive babies. Any court that dismisses that case is subject to great suspicion. This very same district attorney, Devon Anderson, was then shielded by the public relations help of Douglas Karpen’s very own attorney, Chip Lewis, who later contributed $25,000 to her next election campaign.
Sadly, this district attorney, who claimed she was a pro-life Republican, has now dropped the ball on not one, but two abortion cases against abortion extremism in Texas, both involving the work of Troy Newman (instrumental in that earlier case against abortionist Douglas Karpen, he went on to be one of the founding members of the Center for Medical Progress). This massive drama seems like it belongs more on TV then in real life. Clearly this DA’s office is not taking pro-life cases seriously and has even worked with the pro-choice side for both PR and political advantage.
As if that was not enough, there are even more reasons not to trust this jury and DA. The District Attorney has under her several prosecutors in the same office. One of these is a board member or uncompensated director of the very Planned Parenthood affiliate who CMP is working to expose in this case — the one they were originally investigating before the tables turned and they indicted David instead. It’s true that we don’t know how many prosecutors are under the DA, and that this director didn’t work directly on this case. Still, the presence in the same office under the same DA makes the potential for conflict of interest too eerie to ignore.
Troy Newman is rightly alarmed on account of both the past case and the current ethical violations:
“There are too many questions about the independence of the Harris County District Attorney’s office with a Planned Parenthood board member on hand and given the failure of a previous grand jury under Anderson to indict a Houston abortion provider despite ample photographic evidence and eye-witness testimony of late-term babies being born alive and intentionally killed. The public needs to be assured that an impartial investigation will be conducted on the facts and not on a personal political agenda.”
Apparently this is a repeated request for a new investigator, as the District Attorney was asked months ago to recuse herself from the case.
Conflict of interest and impartiality are both concerns here. One pro-life group is asking for a new jury, for the District Attorney to resign and the indictments to be dropped. That sounds reasonable at this point. Otherwise, we are left only with a corrupt court and the fear that exposing injustice will be punished in our nation.