WEBVTT
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My name is Yanam Garcia.
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I'm here with one of the top attorneys in all of Texas, the one and only Domingo Garcia.
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And we got Holly Taylor here as well, Democratic candidate for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
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Is that correct?
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That's right.
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Awesome.
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How are you how are you doing today?
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I'm doing great.
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Super excited.
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It's really thrilling to be here with so many amazing candidates.
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So many people out here.
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A lot of people don't know what the, you know, the average voter is not going to know what the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals does.
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Tell us a little bit about the court and tell us a little bit of your background.
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Sure.
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So the Court of Criminal Appeals is actually our Supreme Court in Texas for criminal cases.
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Lots of folks don't know that Texas is one of only two states in the nation that has two Supreme Courts at the top of our judicial system.
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It's us and Oklahoma.
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So what we call the Texas Supreme Court only handles civil cases.
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The Court of Criminal Appeals is the top court in Texas for all criminal cases.
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And they set precedent on really important constitutional issues that impact all of us.
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All the other Texas courts have to follow that precedent.
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Yeah, so if you got a death penalty case, it's going to go up to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
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And if there's an issue, let's just say on a search warrant, whether that's valid or not, reasonable cause, you're the ones that decide that, correct?
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That's right.
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That's right.
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You mentioned two of the important kinds of issues that come before the court, a few others.
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First amendment right to free speech, fourth amendment right, digital privacy, who can look into what's inside your phone, who can track you based on the location of your phone, some critical issues that all of us care about, I think.
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Tell us a little bit about your background.
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Why do you want to run for the Court of Creative Appeals?
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Oh, that's a good question, right?
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Well, and you know, our campaign is going to all 254 counties in the state.
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All 254.
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All 254.
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We've put over 54,000 miles on our car.
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And when I tell people that, they often look at me like, I think she may be a little crazy.
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That's a lot of miles in a car.
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Like, how do you keep your own?
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Yeah, right.
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Right.
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But, you know, and and so I try to tell people why I'm so passionate about this, why I care so much about a court no one else has ever heard of.
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And I've been a criminal attorney for over 25 years.
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I spent most of that time, over 17 years, as a prosecutor in Travis County, Texas.
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Now I prosecuted government corruption.
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I was actually on the trial team that tried former Congressman Tom DeLay for money laundering to a guilty verdict.
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But most of what I've done is prosecuting violent crime, trying to keep my community safe, things like murder, sexual assault, and child abuse.
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Felt really good about that work, felt like I was standing up for victims and survivors.
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Then about five years ago, in December of 2020, I started working additionally with the Conviction Integrity Unit in Travis County.
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And that unit investigates claims of wrongful conviction.
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So they're gonna like the Innocence Project at national level, right?
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Well, actually, uh the Innocence Project brings the cases to the Conviction Integrity Unit when they're Austin area cases.
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And then they kind of work alongside each other to investigate.
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So you were working with uh Jose Garza at the DA there?
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Yes, he was my boss.
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Okay.
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He was my boss.
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Absolutely.
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And so we would do things like, you know, dig up these old dusty boxes of evidence and dig through them, find those witnesses who testified at trial, talk to them, sometimes find those witnesses who were never called to testify at trial.
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Wow.
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And we also did things like DNA testing and you know, getting the top scientists to look at the case.
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Because in these older cases, you know, sometimes the science has changed.
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And you want to know, you know, was it accurate at the time?
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So Is there one case that stands out of those that you did research?
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There's a couple of cases that stand out of the way.
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Right.
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People don't realize there's a lot of I was also a prosecutor back in the day at a defense lawyer.
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Yeah.
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And I would say that probably one every ten people are wrongfully convicted.
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They're innocent.
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Nine out of ten are guilty.
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I would have told you when I went into this work, and at the end of 2020, I would have told you you were crazy.
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And I now a hundred percent agree with you.
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And the Innocence Project estimates that between three and nine thousand people in Texas prisons and jails are wrongfully convicted.
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That they should not be there.
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And I believe it's probably closer to 9,000 than 3,000 eight.
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Put a face on one.
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Put a face on one.
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So that people realize.
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Yeah, I will put a put a f put a face on one.
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And it's difficult for me to talk about it because this particular case isn't just a case I worked on as a conviction integrity unit attorney.
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It's a case that I had originally worked on as a prosecutor.
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So I actually had worked to put this person behind bars only to find out later that she was completely innocent and to fight for her freedom.
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I'm I'm happy to say now she's freed.
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Uh the woman's name was Carmen Mehia, and she was a mom, and she was charged with child abuse.
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Uh shaken child thing.
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It wasn't a shaken baby case.
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The charge had to do with scalding.
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Okay.
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Uh but at the time, uh the prosecution team relied on expert opinions, which stated that the the burns that the child received uh had to be from somebody holding that child down.
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Yeah.
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Which no juror, no person can hear that and not think, that's terrible, you know.
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Uh it turns out we learned through our scientific investigation that that testimony was just wrong.
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And in fact, we consulted with an internationally known burn expert to find that the scalding pattern actually indicated uh it was likely an accident.
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And then it came out that one of this uh woman's children, now an adult, uh, actually said, actually, I put the baby in the bath.
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I was trying to give the baby a bath.
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She was only three and a half years old at the time.
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It wasn't mama, it was me.
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Um because and at the time, the water in the house was set way too hot.
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Oh, something that wasn't really hot.
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Right.
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It could have caused these burns in two seconds.
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Um and that's not something that's allowed today.
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So this poor woman spent over 20 years in prison and her kids grew up without her.
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Yeah.
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Right.
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Without her.
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It was so tragic.
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I I actually, um, in my closing arguments in this case, uh, could not maintain my composure because I also have four children about the same age as as her children.
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And it just was devastating to talk about.
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For over 40 years, Domingo Garcia has fought for Texans.
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Those big settlements and verdicts allow us to give back to the communities here in HTOP.
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Making a difference.
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Fighting the corporate bullies.
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That's why I became a lawyer.
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Domingo Garcia, Tehano Tough.
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Are you still working with the uh I I call it the Innocence Project, but the you had another term for it.
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The conviction integrity unit.
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Are you still there?
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So actually, I'm a criminal defense attorney now.
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So I have my own practice.
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Um and so I am defending the rights of citizens accused here at people accused of crimes here in Texas.
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And I do believe that uh, you know, I felt good.
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I felt really like my work as a prosecutor was so important because your job is not to convict, but in to ensure that justice is done.
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But I feel that criminal defense attorneys also serve an important purpose here in our state because by defending each person's rights, they stand up for all of our rights.
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So if somebody wants to get involved in your campaign, how would they do it?
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How would they contact you?
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They can contact me through my website, hollyteforjudge.com.
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HollyTforJudge.com.
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And we welcome that involvement.
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Yes.
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Which ex county are you going?
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So we are next going to East Texas.
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We're gonna do a big East Texas tour.
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We're gonna be going through the Golden Triangle and a lot of other uh parts of Southeast Texas.
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Yes.
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Don't miss Jefferson, Texas.
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It's really pretty.
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Oh, I will not miss Jefferson, Texas.
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I will not link.
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Yeah, and I will say this about this work.
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Uh, I am finding, first of all, no county is too red, no community is too rural, and no Texan is too conservative for me to talk to them about these important issues.
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And I have found that people really agree on these critical issues about justice.
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No one wants people to be wrongfully convicted.
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And they do want to get rid of the predators and the ones that are really dangerous.
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Absolutely.
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And I will say, in some of the cases that I've worked on, because we went the wrong direction, someone that was a predator walked free because we pursued somebody.
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Oh man, yeah.
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About three days sentence.
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Right.
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So the this this issue, not only is it important because it is an unspeakable injustice for an innocent person to sit behind bars for a crime they didn't commit, but it also creates a second injustice in a lot of these cases because someone who's truly dangerous, who is a predator, walks free.
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We do not hold them accountable.
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So we have to solve these problems for all of us, for all of our safety, for the safety of our communities.
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And that's why I'm so passionate about it.
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Thank you for joining us.
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Yeah.
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Sure.
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No, thank you for joining us.
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And and I just one last thing.
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I I know that a lot of Texans, you know, they have this whole mantra of tough on crime, right?
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Um what's your mantra going into, you know, this position and running?
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So my mantra is that we need to be smart on crime.
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Smart on crime.
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I like that.
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Yeah.
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You know, tough on crime doesn't mean we throw everybody in jail and throw away the key.
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That will not keep us safer.
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We need to be smart on crime.
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We need to hold dangerous people accountable.
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We need to ensure that our communities are safe, but at the same time, we need to ensure that our courts are fair and that they're standing up for all of us and treating us all with justice.
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We also need to ensure that our courts are independent.
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Because right now, we have some folks who are supported by some very powerful people.
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We have a lot of judges who were personally appointed by Governor Abbott that are serving on our courts.
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We have other judges who were backed by Ken Paxton.
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We have a lot of politics playing a role in our courts.
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Actually, Ken Paxton replaced a lot of Republican judges because they were trying to convict him or whatever, and uh he just replaced them.
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Well, you know, took them out in the next round.
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There's been a 400 percent increase in recent years on threats of violence against judges when they stand up for the rule of law.
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Right.
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We need judges who are gonna be independent despite those threats, who are gonna stand up for the rule of law and the constant appeal.
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The law fairly you don't you don't get a pass because you're a billionaire of politicians.
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Absolutely.
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You should not.
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You know, no one is above the law.
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Okay, I totally agree.
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All right.
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Uh make sure you go out and vote November 3rd.
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Court of criminal appeals is an important position.
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Make sure you go down that ballot all the way and vote.
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Absolutely.
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Thank you so much.
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Thank you, Holly, for being here on the Hunl Talks.
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You know, we hope to see you out on the road.
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254 counties is a lot to visit.
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So good luck with the rest that you have left.
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We'll see you next time on Tejano Talks.
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Make sure to subscribe on YouTube, Facebook, and it's our favorite platforms.
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We're here for all Tejano's.
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Adios.
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Adios.
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My name is Yanam Garcia.
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I'm here with one of the top attorneys in all of Texas, the one and only Domingo Garcia.
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And we got Holly Taylor here as well, Democratic candidate for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
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Is that correct?
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That's right.
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Awesome.
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How are you how are you doing today?
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I'm doing great.
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Super excited.
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It's really thrilling to be here with so many amazing candidates.
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So many people out here.
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A lot of people don't know what the, you know, the average voter is not going to know what the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals does.
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Tell us a little bit about the court and tell us a little bit of your background.
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Sure.
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So the Court of Criminal Appeals is actually our Supreme Court in Texas for criminal cases.
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Lots of folks don't know that Texas is one of only two states in the nation that has two Supreme Courts at the top of our judicial system.
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It's us and Oklahoma.
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So what we call the Texas Supreme Court only handles civil cases.
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The Court of Criminal Appeals is the top court in Texas for all criminal cases.
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And they set precedent on really important constitutional issues that impact all of us.
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All the other Texas courts have to follow that precedent.
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Yeah, so if you got a death penalty case, it's going to go up to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
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And if there's an issue, let's just say on a search warrant, whether that's valid or not, reasonable cause, you're the ones that decide that, correct?
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That's right.
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That's right.
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You mentioned two of the important kinds of issues that come before the court, a few others.
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First amendment right to free speech, fourth amendment right, digital privacy, who can look into what's inside your phone, who can track you based on the location of your phone, some critical issues that all of us care about, I think.
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Tell us a little bit about your background.
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Why do you want to run for the Court of Creative Appeals?
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Oh, that's a good question, right?
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Well, and you know, our campaign is going to all 254 counties in the state.
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All 254.
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All 254.
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We've put over 54,000 miles on our car.
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And when I tell people that, they often look at me like, I think she may be a little crazy.
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That's a lot of miles in a car.
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Like, how do you keep your own?
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Yeah, right.
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Right.
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But, you know, and and so I try to tell people why I'm so passionate about this, why I care so much about a court no one else has ever heard of.
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And I've been a criminal attorney for over 25 years.
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I spent most of that time, over 17 years, as a prosecutor in Travis County, Texas.
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Now I prosecuted government corruption.
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I was actually on the trial team that tried former Congressman Tom DeLay for money laundering to a guilty verdict.
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But most of what I've done is prosecuting violent crime, trying to keep my community safe, things like murder, sexual assault, and child abuse.
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Felt really good about that work, felt like I was standing up for victims and survivors.
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Then about five years ago, in December of 2020, I started working additionally with the Conviction Integrity Unit in Travis County.
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And that unit investigates claims of wrongful conviction.
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So they're gonna like the Innocence Project at national level, right?
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Well, actually, uh the Innocence Project brings the cases to the Conviction Integrity Unit when they're Austin area cases.
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And then they kind of work alongside each other to investigate.
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So you were working with uh Jose Garza at the DA there?
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Yes, he was my boss.
00:03:42.159 --> 00:03:42.319
Okay.
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He was my boss.
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Absolutely.
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And so we would do things like, you know, dig up these old dusty boxes of evidence and dig through them, find those witnesses who testified at trial, talk to them, sometimes find those witnesses who were never called to testify at trial.
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Wow.
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And we also did things like DNA testing and you know, getting the top scientists to look at the case.
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Because in these older cases, you know, sometimes the science has changed.
00:04:09.759 --> 00:04:12.319
And you want to know, you know, was it accurate at the time?
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So Is there one case that stands out of those that you did research?
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There's a couple of cases that stand out of the way.
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Right.
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People don't realize there's a lot of I was also a prosecutor back in the day at a defense lawyer.
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Yeah.
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And I would say that probably one every ten people are wrongfully convicted.
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They're innocent.
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Nine out of ten are guilty.
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I would have told you when I went into this work, and at the end of 2020, I would have told you you were crazy.
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And I now a hundred percent agree with you.
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And the Innocence Project estimates that between three and nine thousand people in Texas prisons and jails are wrongfully convicted.
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That they should not be there.
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And I believe it's probably closer to 9,000 than 3,000 eight.
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Put a face on one.
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Put a face on one.
00:05:04.399 --> 00:05:05.040
So that people realize.
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Yeah, I will put a put a f put a face on one.
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And it's difficult for me to talk about it because this particular case isn't just a case I worked on as a conviction integrity unit attorney.
00:05:16.720 --> 00:05:20.319
It's a case that I had originally worked on as a prosecutor.
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So I actually had worked to put this person behind bars only to find out later that she was completely innocent and to fight for her freedom.
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I'm I'm happy to say now she's freed.
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Uh the woman's name was Carmen Mehia, and she was a mom, and she was charged with child abuse.
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Uh shaken child thing.
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It wasn't a shaken baby case.
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The charge had to do with scalding.
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Okay.
00:05:48.399 --> 00:06:02.079
Uh but at the time, uh the prosecution team relied on expert opinions, which stated that the the burns that the child received uh had to be from somebody holding that child down.
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Yeah.
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Which no juror, no person can hear that and not think, that's terrible, you know.
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Uh it turns out we learned through our scientific investigation that that testimony was just wrong.
00:06:16.480 --> 00:06:27.279
And in fact, we consulted with an internationally known burn expert to find that the scalding pattern actually indicated uh it was likely an accident.
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And then it came out that one of this uh woman's children, now an adult, uh, actually said, actually, I put the baby in the bath.
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I was trying to give the baby a bath.
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She was only three and a half years old at the time.
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It wasn't mama, it was me.
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Um because and at the time, the water in the house was set way too hot.
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Oh, something that wasn't really hot.
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Right.
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It could have caused these burns in two seconds.
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Um and that's not something that's allowed today.
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So this poor woman spent over 20 years in prison and her kids grew up without her.
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Yeah.
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Right.
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Without her.
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It was so tragic.
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I I actually, um, in my closing arguments in this case, uh, could not maintain my composure because I also have four children about the same age as as her children.
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And it just was devastating to talk about.
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For over 40 years, Domingo Garcia has fought for Texans.
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Those big settlements and verdicts allow us to give back to the communities here in HTOP.
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Making a difference.
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Fighting the corporate bullies.
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That's why I became a lawyer.
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Domingo Garcia, Tehano Tough.
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Are you still working with the uh I I call it the Innocence Project, but the you had another term for it.
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The conviction integrity unit.
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Are you still there?
00:07:46.399 --> 00:07:48.319
So actually, I'm a criminal defense attorney now.
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So I have my own practice.
00:07:50.639 --> 00:07:57.360
Um and so I am defending the rights of citizens accused here at people accused of crimes here in Texas.
00:07:57.439 --> 00:08:00.879
And I do believe that uh, you know, I felt good.
00:08:01.040 --> 00:08:08.720
I felt really like my work as a prosecutor was so important because your job is not to convict, but in to ensure that justice is done.
00:08:08.959 --> 00:08:18.560
But I feel that criminal defense attorneys also serve an important purpose here in our state because by defending each person's rights, they stand up for all of our rights.
00:08:19.040 --> 00:08:22.319
So if somebody wants to get involved in your campaign, how would they do it?
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How would they contact you?
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They can contact me through my website, hollyteforjudge.com.
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HollyTforJudge.com.
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And we welcome that involvement.
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Yes.
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Which ex county are you going?
00:08:34.960 --> 00:08:37.840
So we are next going to East Texas.
00:08:37.919 --> 00:08:40.080
We're gonna do a big East Texas tour.
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We're gonna be going through the Golden Triangle and a lot of other uh parts of Southeast Texas.
00:08:46.080 --> 00:08:46.240
Yes.
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Don't miss Jefferson, Texas.
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It's really pretty.
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Oh, I will not miss Jefferson, Texas.
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I will not link.
00:08:52.799 --> 00:08:55.279
Yeah, and I will say this about this work.
00:08:55.600 --> 00:09:07.759
Uh, I am finding, first of all, no county is too red, no community is too rural, and no Texan is too conservative for me to talk to them about these important issues.
00:09:08.159 --> 00:09:16.480
And I have found that people really agree on these critical issues about justice.
00:09:17.039 --> 00:09:19.519
No one wants people to be wrongfully convicted.
00:09:19.840 --> 00:09:22.799
And they do want to get rid of the predators and the ones that are really dangerous.
00:09:23.039 --> 00:09:23.519
Absolutely.
00:09:23.679 --> 00:09:32.399
And I will say, in some of the cases that I've worked on, because we went the wrong direction, someone that was a predator walked free because we pursued somebody.
00:09:35.360 --> 00:09:36.159
Oh man, yeah.
00:09:36.320 --> 00:09:37.120
About three days sentence.
00:09:38.399 --> 00:09:38.639
Right.
00:09:38.879 --> 00:09:56.159
So the this this issue, not only is it important because it is an unspeakable injustice for an innocent person to sit behind bars for a crime they didn't commit, but it also creates a second injustice in a lot of these cases because someone who's truly dangerous, who is a predator, walks free.
00:09:56.320 --> 00:09:57.679
We do not hold them accountable.
00:09:58.080 --> 00:10:04.480
So we have to solve these problems for all of us, for all of our safety, for the safety of our communities.
00:10:04.639 --> 00:10:06.399
And that's why I'm so passionate about it.
00:10:07.440 --> 00:10:08.080
Thank you for joining us.
00:10:08.159 --> 00:10:08.320
Yeah.
00:10:08.559 --> 00:10:08.720
Sure.
00:10:09.120 --> 00:10:10.000
No, thank you for joining us.
00:10:10.080 --> 00:10:11.679
And and I just one last thing.
00:10:11.759 --> 00:10:17.919
I I know that a lot of Texans, you know, they have this whole mantra of tough on crime, right?
00:10:18.159 --> 00:10:22.799
Um what's your mantra going into, you know, this position and running?
00:10:24.240 --> 00:10:28.879
So my mantra is that we need to be smart on crime.
00:10:29.200 --> 00:10:29.679
Smart on crime.
00:10:30.480 --> 00:10:30.879
I like that.
00:10:30.960 --> 00:10:31.120
Yeah.
00:10:31.360 --> 00:10:36.480
You know, tough on crime doesn't mean we throw everybody in jail and throw away the key.
00:10:36.960 --> 00:10:38.879
That will not keep us safer.
00:10:39.120 --> 00:10:40.559
We need to be smart on crime.
00:10:40.799 --> 00:10:43.279
We need to hold dangerous people accountable.
00:10:43.519 --> 00:10:55.679
We need to ensure that our communities are safe, but at the same time, we need to ensure that our courts are fair and that they're standing up for all of us and treating us all with justice.
00:10:56.720 --> 00:11:00.240
We also need to ensure that our courts are independent.
00:11:00.720 --> 00:11:07.120
Because right now, we have some folks who are supported by some very powerful people.
00:11:07.440 --> 00:11:12.480
We have a lot of judges who were personally appointed by Governor Abbott that are serving on our courts.
00:11:12.639 --> 00:11:15.440
We have other judges who were backed by Ken Paxton.
00:11:15.759 --> 00:11:18.240
We have a lot of politics playing a role in our courts.
00:11:18.639 --> 00:11:25.200
Actually, Ken Paxton replaced a lot of Republican judges because they were trying to convict him or whatever, and uh he just replaced them.
00:11:25.440 --> 00:11:27.200
Well, you know, took them out in the next round.
00:11:27.519 --> 00:11:34.799
There's been a 400 percent increase in recent years on threats of violence against judges when they stand up for the rule of law.
00:11:35.039 --> 00:11:35.200
Right.
00:11:35.440 --> 00:11:40.639
We need judges who are gonna be independent despite those threats, who are gonna stand up for the rule of law and the constant appeal.
00:11:41.440 --> 00:11:44.399
The law fairly you don't you don't get a pass because you're a billionaire of politicians.
00:11:44.799 --> 00:11:45.279
Absolutely.
00:11:45.519 --> 00:11:46.320
You should not.
00:11:46.559 --> 00:11:48.159
You know, no one is above the law.
00:11:48.480 --> 00:11:49.360
Okay, I totally agree.
00:11:49.919 --> 00:11:50.159
All right.
00:11:50.480 --> 00:11:52.799
Uh make sure you go out and vote November 3rd.
00:11:52.960 --> 00:11:55.360
Court of criminal appeals is an important position.
00:11:55.440 --> 00:11:58.159
Make sure you go down that ballot all the way and vote.
00:11:58.480 --> 00:11:58.960
Absolutely.
00:11:59.279 --> 00:11:59.919
Thank you so much.
00:12:00.159 --> 00:12:02.240
Thank you, Holly, for being here on the Hunl Talks.
00:12:02.399 --> 00:12:04.000
You know, we hope to see you out on the road.
00:12:04.159 --> 00:12:07.279
254 counties is a lot to visit.
00:12:07.360 --> 00:12:09.679
So good luck with the rest that you have left.
00:12:09.840 --> 00:12:11.679
We'll see you next time on Tejano Talks.
00:12:11.759 --> 00:12:15.519
Make sure to subscribe on YouTube, Facebook, and it's our favorite platforms.
00:12:15.600 --> 00:12:17.279
We're here for all Tejano's.
00:12:17.840 --> 00:12:18.559
Adios.
00:12:18.879 --> 00:12:19.600
Adios.
