Texas DA Reported to Trade Cash for Freedom or Light Sentences. Lotsa Cash.

Texas District Attorney Lynda Kaye Russell, the head prosecutor for Shelby County, Texas, apparently is in big, big trouble if a news report from the Associated Press, which is being picked up all over the country, is accurate.

Where’s Shelby County?  It’s near the Texas – Louisiana border (you may recognize the area as Center, Texas), closer as the crow flies to Shreveport than Dallas, and as Shelby County District Attorney, Linda Kaye Russell is in charge of prosecuting all crimes within its jurisdictional limits.

Not exactly a place that you would think would be a hot bed of drug crimes, right?  Put the word “Texas” with money laundering and drug trafficking and most people think the border of Texas with Mexico, not Texas with the Bayou State.

Well, surprise.

According to this new, hot story from the AP, the Shelby County District Attorney was responsible for a jurisdiction with established drug running campaigns  — a veritable hot bed of drug-related crime.

Instead of fiercing fighting against all this criminal activity, according the Associated Press, Ms. Russell was allegedly making deals with the evildoers.  Money deals.

The story goes that the Texas DA was trading cash for letting them go or offering cushy sentences, profiting by close to a million bucks (reports are $800,000+) within a twelve month period.

August 2010: Russell Took the Fifth to Questions About Highway Piracy

Interestingly, search around for DA Russell and you’ll find that suspicions of her involvement with “highway piracy” have been around for awhile.  Over a year ago, there was a news story out of Beaumont’s local ABC affiliate that Shelby County DA Lynda K. Russell was deposed in a civil lawsuit back in August 2010 and DA Russell chose to assert the rights accorded her by the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution for many, many of the questions posed to her during the deposition.

That’s right:  DA Russell took the Fifth in the deposition.  In fact, she took the Fifth to 100s of questions asked of her.  Hundreds.  So many, that one attorney present during the questioning called the question-and-answer session “mind-numbing.”

So, looks like a civil lawsuit brought by some folk who got pulled over long ago in Shelby County, Texas, has turned into a big criminal investigation — and now, we’re all going to learn a lot more about the activities of Linda Kaye Russell and her Office of the District Attorney of Shelby County, Texas.  Stay tuned.