Williamson County Out Thousands Of Dollars In Seized Assets After Administrative Error

WILLIAMSON COUNTY, TX — The district attorney's office stands to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash seized from asset forfeitures, a shortfall officials blame on administrative mistakes by the previous administration, officials said Monday.

DA Shawn Dick on Monday told the Austin American-Statesman the money will be lost as a result of a failure by an assistant district attorney under former DA Jana Duty in serving citations in more than 60 cases—a key step in seizing money. Normally, some 80 percent of seized assets would go to the law enforcement agency effecting the arrests with the remaining 20 percent going to the DA's office.

The former assistant DA, Brent Webster, filed the cases bud didn't serve the necessary citations to set up the seizures, Dick told the newspaper. Such property seizures typically occur in cases involving illicit drugs.

In an email to the newspaper, Webster attributed the lapse fin filing citations on a short-handed staff at the time of Duty's tenure. Among the vacant positions at the time were general counsel, office manager, a legal secretary who assisted with asset forfeiture and another handful of legal secretary positions, Webster told the newspaper.

“The political atmosphere in Williamson County around the DA’s office made it difficult for me to replace employees that had left, so we were short staffed,” he told the Statesman via email. “When you don’t have resources, the right thing to do is to prioritize prosecuting criminals over taking the property of those charged with crimes," he added, noting Duty delegated much of her day-to-day activities to him.

>>> Read the full story at Austin American-Statesman

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