More than three years after Collin County grand jury indicted Attorney General Ken Paxton on fraud charges, the state’s highest criminal court issued a ruling today invalidating the legal tab of three special prosecutors assigned to the case.
The court ruled the special prosecutors – Kent Schaffer, Brian Wice and Nicole Deborde – should be paid on a fixed rate rather than an hourly rate, finding that the trial court “exceeded its authority” by ordered that fees be paid not in accordance with the county’s approved fee schedule.
The court also agreed that Collin County does not have to pay an outstanding $199,575 legal tab submitted by the special prosecutors. The appeals court ordered the trial court issue a “new order for payment of fees” in compliance with the county’s fee schedule.
The special prosecutors fight over compensation has already delayed Paxton’s fraud charges from going to trial for more than a year. Now, a trial could be further delayed.
The Houston-based special prosecutors have previously threatened to resign over the payment issue. Collin County Commissioners have not paid the special prosecutors in nearly 3 years.
Paxton, a McKinney Republican, was indicted in July 2015 on two first-degree felonies of securities fraud and one third-degree of failing to register with the state as an investment advisor.
In a dissenting opinion, Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Elsa Alcala raised the possibility that there would be unintended consequences on criminal cases.
“The court’s ruling today .. will possibly result in even more claims of ineffective assistance of counsel for indigent defendants,” Alcala wrote.
Alcala’s dissent noted that the Collin County’s rules allowed “payments for amounts that varied from fixed amounts … in unusual circumstances….”
In Paxton’s case, the trial judge has twice ordered payment for the special prosecutor’s legal work.
The commissioner’s court voted to pay $242,025 based upon the hourly $300 rate in January 2016. When the trial judge ordered to pay an additional $199,575 in legal fees in January 2017, county commissioners voted not to pay and asked a higher court to vacate the trial judge’s payment order.
County Judge Keith Self has previously said that he was furious once he found out that a Collin County district judge set a $300-an-hour rate when he appointed Schaffer and Wice in the spring of 2015.
The rate set by the judge far exceeded the normal fee schedule for that type of court case.
By state law, the special prosecutors would normally be paid at the same rate paid to defense attorneys in indigent cases involving first-degree felonies. The standard fee is $1,000 per case for pretrial work and $1,000 a day during the trial.
Wice and Schaffer have previously defended the legal bills, saying that concerns that special prosecutors were “fleecing” Collin County taxpayers “absurd” and “demonstrably false.”
Paxton is accused of asking others to invest in the McKinney-based tech startup Servergy, Inc. without disclosing that he was receiving a commission to do so. He is also accused of steering people to his investment adviser without registering as an investment advisor.
Paxton has called the charges against him “politically motivated.”
