The wheels of justice turn slowly— but grind lucratively!
Texas jurors will get huge payouts of $27,000 each for only five days of work in court, a judge has ruled — after a bungled case against the county sheriff was delayed for nearly two years.
Twelve jurors and two alternates were ordered to receive a total of $375,000 in taxpayer dough after a case accusing former Williamson County Sheriff Robert Chody of hiding evidence of a black man who died in custody was dropped, KXAN reported Wednesday.
The jurors get $20 for their first “day of service” and $58 “for each day thereafter,” even while not there — because the court instructed them to “maintain impartiality” for 457 days as the trial was halted, Judge Karen Sage ordered July 13, according to the station.
Though the jurors weren’t in court, they were asked to behave as if they were on an overnight recess and avoid talking and reading about the case for the 457 days.
“This is one of the worst malicious prosecution cases that we’ve come across,” said defense attorney Ryan Johnson told FOX 7.
“They basically failed what a first-year law student would understand how to do. And so that’s embarrassing,” Johnson said of the Travis County District Attorney’s office.
“They tried to blame the county attorney, and they tried to blame the sheriff for doing their job, and ultimately it didn’t hold up, and their case fell apart as it should,” he said.
During the brief 2024 trial, Chody and county attorney Jason Nassour were accused of destroying or concealing recordings of the 2019 death of Javier Ambler, who suffered from heart failure after being tased in custody, prosecutors said.
Ambler’s arrest and death were recorded during a taping of the reality show “Live PD,” and the sheriff’s office argued they had an agreement with the show’s parent company to delete the footage after 30 days, FOX 7 reported.
Footage showed him being repeatedly tased as he begged, “I can’t breathe” — echoing the tragic statement uttered by Eric Garner in 2014 — and also “Save me!”
Prosecutors had argued that Nassour and Chody should have seized the footage of Ambler’s death before it was deleted but the defense insisted that doing so would have violated federal law.
The botched trial started on Aug. 15, 2024, and lasted just three days after the prosecutors moved to temporarily put the legal proceedings on hold, KXAN reported.
Sage did not grant the motion, which led attorneys to appeal her decision, pausing proceedings until the appellate court could issue a decision.
The case was finally dropped by the Travis County District Attorney’s Office on July 1 — after nearly two years, according to the report.
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