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Mullen: 'Strong women are threatening to those good old boys down there.'

"That is just ludicrous," said Mike Ware, the attorney who represented the Houstons in a civil suit against the three alleged assailants. Prosecutors, Ware said, have an affidavit from the doctor who treated Chad in the hospital, stating that the assailant's blow to his head shared equally with the fall, in bringing about his death. "I've seen this D.A.'s office get indictments on much weaker evidence than they had in the Chad Houston case."

"It speaks volumes that the civil case was prosecuted successfully with the same evidence the D.A.'s office had." Ware said. The families of the three men paid the Houstons an undisclosed amount of damages. Civil suits, of course, carry a lighter burden of proof than criminal cases.

"I understand where they're coming from," Curry said of the Houstons. "They have lost a son. I might be doing the same thing." But then he added, "They have to let go of this. [Their son's death] came out of a drunken brawl by a bunch of college kids. We couldn't prove who did it. But they're not going to be satisfied 'til someone's hanging from the highest tree. I think Terri's taking advantage of those people, using them politically."

Moore is tossing back at Curry a slightly different version of his complaint 30 years ago of Crouch's selective prosecution. She alleges that Curry presides over a tightly knit "good old boy system" that too often leaves minorities and women out in the cold, both professionally and in terms of prosecution decisions.

Two other former top-notch prosecutors are raising uncomfortable questions about Curry's management, charging that the office is insensitive to minority victims, suffers from a "white male-dominated" management team that keeps strong female prosecutors penned under a glass ceiling, tolerates excessive drinking, and is slow to hire and promote minorities.

"Strong women are threatening to those good old boys down there who don't want to let go," said Lisa Mullen, a criminal defense attorney who worked 10 years for Curry. She was ousted four years ago after a shouting match broke out between prosecutors and other county workers over an incident at an after-hours baseball game. "I was forced to resign," she said, "not because I took part in the name-calling, but because I was a supervisor and I didn't stop it."

Mullen, an Anglo, said she believes the real reason for her ouster was her fiancé Kyle Whitaker, an African-American who also worked in the D.A.'s office. "The word was out that a lot of people didn't approve," she said. Mullen's firing backfired on Curry, she said, because it resulted in several resignations, including those of Whitaker and Rosanna Salinas, two of the few minority prosecutors in the department, losses the department could ill afford.

The D.A.'s office doesn't reflect the makeup of this community, she said, which inhibits justice "for both minority victims and the accused." According to statistics provided by Levy, deputy chief of the felony/criminal division, 18 of 103 felony and misdemeanor prosecutors are minorities. And among the 22 division chiefs, only five are women; four are minorities.

Curry dismisses all of the charges out of hand. "My office has a good record," he said, pointing to the "thousands of successful prosecutions this office is known for. We've always been tough on crime. I'm running on that record." And his office is color-blind, he said. "We hire the best people for the job."

Levy said the charge that strong women are kept down is simply outrageous. "Terri was a deputy chief over here," he said. "No one can accuse Terri Moore of not being a 'strong woman.' " He added that she was the driving force behind the gang unit: "She built it, with Curry's full support."

But Lee Wyatt, a prosecutor in the office from 1993 to 1998, who now lives in Portland, Ore., and describes herself as "not a cream-puff woman," said that not only are strong women prosecutors seen as threats to be gotten rid of, but women were also expected to "go out and drink and participate in the party scene that was dominated by the movers and shakers in the misdemeanor and felony sections" during the years she was there. "This was heavy drinking I witnessed -- dangerously heavy drinking," she said. When she quit going to the parties, she was ostracized at the office, she said, and eventually quit after being passed over for several promotions.

Levy scoffed at the charge that heavy drinking was encouraged -- or that Wyatt was singled out for retaliation. Young lawyers are certainly known to drink, he said, but drunken behavior isn't tolerated -- mostly due to MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Drivers). The office responded, he said, when that group criticized the D.A.'s office for being too light on some of its own prosecutors who had been arrested for DWI but had drawn little more than a slap on the wrist. "Now, it's a firing offense," Levy said.

Coffey, who knew Wyatt as "a fine, compassionate" prosecutor in his court, thinks that if she was passed over for a promotion, it was more likely that she had simply burned out. "Lee bled to death for her victims," he said.

If Moore is seeking support from minorities and women, she may be losing votes among senior citizens. It is curious to hear her refer to Curry as an "old geezer" when she's married to a man more than 30 year her senior.

Curry "said that he's running because his wife died and now he has nothing better to do," she said. "Well, I would think that you wouldn't be the district attorney and expect taxpayers to pay your salary just because you've got nothing better to do. Maybe that should be his slogan: 'Elect me because I have nothing better to do.'

"But see, I have other things I could be doing," she continued. "I left a great job as a federal prosecutor to run for this office. I could make a lot of money in the private sector if I wanted. But this is a job I want and not because I have nothing better to do. I want this job because we need to have an active and engaged prosecutor who has been in the courtroom in the past 25 years. We need a prosecutor who understands the needs of all our communities. And we need a prosecutor who understands the current crisis we are facing in law enforcement.

"If he has nothing better to do, I suggest he stay home and watch tv all day," Moore said. "The voters in Tarrant County don't need to elect someone so he has a place to go every day. Public safety is more important than that. The voters deserve better." If elected, she said, she would streamline the office, get into the courtroom and try cases, and put a public face on the office.

Judge Coffey comes back with another succinct reason to keep Curry in office. "You don't fix a car if it's not leaking oil," he said. "Tim's got good years ahead."

For those who work in the county courthouse, much is on the line in this race. Observers point to an incident, which Moore doesn't deny, that may illustrate the size of the stakes. According to several sources, Moore got on a courthouse elevator earlier this year and was soon joined by Mike Parrish, one of Curry's top managers. Moore was pissed that he seemed to be ignoring her. The elevator filled with more people, and still Parrish ignored Moore. As he left the elevator, Moore left Parrish with one message: "Pack your shit, Mike. You better pack up your shit."

Back in the office, Tim Curry seemed unaffected by it all. He keeps the same sad poker face when he's fielding a tough political question or one about his antler collection. Even though Moore has been campaigning for months, he said his effort won't get under way until after Labor Day, and then only to the extent of mailings and yard signs. What will happen, he was asked, if Terri Moore wins this race?

"Tim Curry's career will be over. I've been on this side of the law too long now to be a defense attorney."

And if he wins, will this be his last race? "I'll be 68 four years from now," he said. "Who knows?"

He didn't smile.

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