Rick Perry Avoids Justice For His Criminal Behavior

(Caricature of Rick Perry is by DonkeyHotey.)

This comes as no surprise to those of us living in Texas. Former Governor Rick Perry, who was charged with two felonies (abuse of official capacity and coercion of a public servant) will not have to stand trial for his criminal behavior.

The Republican-dominated Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has chosen to protect one of it's own -- and in a 6 to 2 decision, decided the charges violated the Texas Constitution. Perry can now ride off into the sunset -- assured he will not have to face a jury on those charges.

Here is how texaslawyer.com describes the ridiculous decision:

A divided Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has dismissed the criminal case against former Gov. Rick Perry.

The 6-2 majority opinion—accompanied by two concurrences and two dissents—dismissed Perry's charge of abuse of official capacity, and upheld the Third Court of Appeal's decision to dismiss his coercion of a public servant charge.

The high court found that Perry's case arose from a governor's threat to exercise a veto and his ultimate exercise of the veto.

The court ruled that it violated the Texas Constitution's separation of powers provision to prosecute the exercise of a veto under the abuse of official capacity statute. It determined there was a facial violation of the First Amendment to prosecute the threat of a veto under the coercion of a public servant statute. The court also decided—in an expansion of Texas habeas law—that Perry could raise his separation-of-powers argument as an as-applied challenge in a pretrial habeas application, followed by an interlocutory appeal.

"The nature of the constitutional right at issue entitles him to raise these claims by pretrial habeas corpus," said the majority opinion by Presiding Judge Sharon Keller.

Previously, courts would only grant a defendant pretrial habeas relief if he successfully argued that a law was unconstitutional on its face, not as applied to his situation.