Texas Court of Appeals Dismisses Obviously Politically-Motivated Indictment of Rick Perry

From The Texas Tribune via H/T at Ace of Spades HQ: Texas has to move the state DA out of this damn hyperliberal county.

Sure he was cleared. A year later. But this phonied up political sham indictment haunted him through his abortive presidential bid -- as it was designed to do.

People should be fired, departments should be defunded.

The state’s highest criminal court dismissed the remaining indictment against former Gov. Rick Perry on Wednesday morning, apparently ending the case that started with his threat to veto state funding for a local prosecutor if she refused to quit her office.

After Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg was arrested and pleaded guilty to driving while intoxicated, Perry threatened to veto state funding for her office unless she first resigned. The Travis County DA's office was home to the state's public integrity unit, which is charged with investigating and prosecuting state corruption.

Lehmberg, who served a short jail term, refused to quit. Perry followed through on his threat to veto state funding for her office.

And arrested for abuse of process.

The remaining count of the Rick Perry prosecution, and how it unconstitutionally intrudes on the Governor’s veto power

From Eugene Volokh of the Volokh Conspiracy:

As I mentioned, a Texas Court of Appeals panel has just held that Count II in the Rick Perry prosecution had to be dismissed: the “coercion” statute on which the count was based, the court held, is facially unconstitutional. But the court held that it lacked the authority to dismiss Count I, because that dealt not with a facial challenge (“the statute is facially invalid”) but with an as-applied challenge (“the statute may be just fine in many situations, but it can’t be constitutionally applied on these facts”).

Since the Court dismissed Count II, it essentially said, the prosecution was bogus, therefore, politically motivated.

First shoe dropped.