Texas may soon have a process to remove local prosecutors who won't pursue abortion, election cases
The Texas Senate passed a bill Friday that would allow locally elected prosecutors who choose not to enforce certain laws to be removed for misconduct.
The bill is part of a larger effort by Republicans to rein in “rogue” district attorneys in Texas’ large, left-leaning counties who have said they do not intend to prosecute abortion cases and, in some cases, have adopted policies about prosecuting low-level theft and drug offenses.
“There must be a mechanism in place in Texas to remove prosecutors who simply refuse to enforce Texas laws which have been made by this Legislature or any legislature,” bill sponsor state Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, said on the floor Friday.
The version of House Bill 17 that passed the House last month included caveats to explicitly protect prosecutors from removal for things like diversion programs, in which people accused of low-level crimes like drug possession can take classes instead of going to jail. The Senate removed most of those exceptions in the version of the bill that passed on second reading Friday, matching it to a similar measure senators had previously approved.
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/05/19/senate-prosecutors-abortion-voter-fraud/
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