High Court Upholds Dismissal of Indictment Against DeLay

The state’s highest criminal court today affirmed the 2005 dismissal of a felony indictment against former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and two associates.

In the 5-4 decision the court affirmed Judge Pat Priest’s decision to throw out an indictment accusing DeLay and his associates Jim Ellis and John Colyandro of conspiring to violate state election laws. The Sugar Land Republican who retired from Congress in 2006 because of the indictments arising from the 2002 elections still faces a charge of conspiring to launder corporate money into campaign donations.

In 2005 just months after the indictments Priest ruled that the state’s conspiracy statute did not apply to the election code until Sept. 1 2003 long after the 2002 elections in which DeLay’s political committee Texans for a Republican Majority spent about $600000 of corporate money on consultants professional fundraisers and pollsters as part of an effort to elect a GOP majority to the Legislature. That Republican-dominated Legislature then approved DeLay’s plan to redraw the state’s congressional map to favor Republicans.

State election law generally forbids corporate and union money from being spent in connection with campaigns. Lawyers for DeLay and his associates have staved off criminal trials by challenging the state’s election laws on constitutional grounds. Prosecutors appealed Priest’s 2005 ruling.

A decision on the second indictment which Priest upheld but DeLay appealed is pending at the Third Court of Appeals.