I am humbled and honored to have been selected to work with all TCDLA members as your incoming TCDLA President for this upcoming year. With all of us working together, we can make this a great year for our outstanding organization. Thanks to Kerri Anderson Donica and Grant Scheiner for your hard work and dedication the last two years in guiding us through the pandemic challenges. What wonderful leadership and fortitude. We have an excellent and resilient organization with members from El Paso to Texarkana and from Booker to Brownsville who continue to amaze me with their dedication to TCDLA even during the pandemic. TCDLA is the largest state criminal defense organization in the nation and continues to lead the way. Our 3,200 members are among the best criminal defense attorneys in the nation. Melissa Schank has been superb as the TCDLA Executive Director, and Melissa and her staff continue to amaze me at how well they keep our more than 40 CLE seminars running smoothly throughout the year. I want to thank all the hard-working TCDLA members who have agreed to act as committee chairs this coming year. We could not continue to provide our members with helpful and useful assistance without our committee chairs and their committee members. Each of our committees works extremely hard and are superstars and deserve our admiration and respect. For instance, as the courts begin to further open up for criminal jury trials, TCDLA will be there for our members as new issues arise and must be addressed to protect the citizen accused. I am always in awe, for instance, at the tireless work from the COVID-19 Response Task Force Committee chairs – Allison Clayton and Nicole DeBorde Hochglaube (and Clay Steadman who paved the way forward as the first chair of this committee). It is amazing to see an email from Allison or Nicole that was sent at 4:00 a.m. for an important issue that arose and needed a quick resolution for our TCDLA members.
Our TCDLA committees will continue to be a vital life line for our members in the coming year. Just last week, I was in a federal criminal jury trial here in San Antonio which used three court rooms and had remote access in the courthouse basement for the public present in the courthouse to watch the proceedings. The public was not allowed in the courtroom where the trial was proceeding because the jury was scattered throughout the gallery during trial rather than in the jury box. Key issues will continue to arise in these jury trials such as the Sixth Amendment right to a public trial and right to a fair cross section representation of the community. While jury trials become more prevalent thereby raising important issues for our members, the Texas legislature continues to address issues that are also important for our members and the citizen accused. I personally witnessed last month the wonderful dedication of our TCDLA lobbyists – Allen Place, Shea Place, and David Gonzalez. These three outstanding individuals were at the State capitol until after 3:00 a.m. on a Tuesday night ensuring that TCDLA interests and the interests of the citizen accused were properly represented in testimony before the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee regarding stringent bail legislation that had been proposed. What an outstanding job.
With the assistance of our members and committees and staff, I am confident that TCDLA will continue to lead the way for our members to address any concerns that will develop in the coming year. All of this is possible because of how we work together for TCDLA. I thank all of you for this opportunity to work with you and to serve you this coming year as your TCDLA President.
