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Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Hearing Date Set in Stalled Texas Youth Commission Cases
Associated Press
MONAHANS, Texas — After months of delays, two former Texas Youth Commission administrators have been ordered to appear in court, Ward County records show.
Judge Jay Gibson, a state district judge from Odessa appointed to the cases last week, has ordered John Paul Hernandez and Ray Brookins to appear in court in Ward County on July 23 for a pretrial hearing.
Gibson's order received by the court clerk Wednesday indicates he plans to address all outstanding motions.
Brookins and Hernandez, both former administrators at TYC's West Texas State School in Pyote, were indicted in 2007 on charges alleging they sexually abused teenage inmates. The case has since been stalled in the court.
Court records show that several motions, including requests to move the trial out of rural Ward County, were not ruled on by District Judge Bob Parks, whose jurisdiction includes Ward, Reeves and Loving counties.
The cases were transferred to Gibson after complaints from a civil rights group about delays in the criminal cases that upended the state agency responsible for jailing and rehabilitating the state's juvenile offenders. Court records do not show what prompted Parks to hand off the cases, or at whose request the change was made.
The allegations against Brookins, a former assistant superintendent at the remote jail, and Hernandez, a former principal at the jail, were detailed in a lengthy and graphic report by a Texas Rangers investigator that was given to the local district attorney in 2005.
But it wasn't until 2007 that the allegations were made public. After that, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott's office took over the case and secured an indictment within weeks.
Brookins and Hernandez have both denied wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty.
The scandal led to widespread changes in TYC, including the firing or resignation of numerous agency officials.
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