In a Williamson County capital murder case, defense attorney Ryan Deck
has moved to request a hearing on potential misconduct committed by the
county District Attorney, Jana Duty.
The attorney for the defendant is alleging that the DA had access to timestamps
on a video which the defense was barred from seeing until about halfway
through the trial. Round Rock criminal defense lawyer Ryan Deck maintains
that the evidence was detrimental to his case and suspects that Duty acted
inappropriately in doing so.
Deck believes Duty intentionally withheld the time stamped evidence from
the defense and has filed a motion asking for a hearing to find out if
this happened. If the judge agrees, the state may be thereafter kept from
retrying Deck’s client for murder.
Adding to Deck’s case is a sworn affidavit from the former county
DA investigator Royger Harris attesting to his witnessing Duty view the
video before the trial, which Deck insists shows that the DA had access
to the time-stamps.
While First Assistant DA Mark Brunner contests these allegations, saying
the information was beneficial to the prosecution and thus would not have
been withheld, Deck maintains there was no chance at a fair trial when
the evidence was entered with the defense not having access to it. “Our
defense was based on a timeline defense,” Deck argued, “a
timeline of events, and I am not convinced those timestamps do benefit
the state.”
The timestamps have a bearing on the case since police investigators cited
the stamps in the written reports often. Although Harris left the DA office
in December 2013, his affidavit is dated to March of the same year.
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