All but 1 Charge Against Sen. Hutchison Is Dropped

A Texas judge on Tuesday dismissed all but one of the ethics charges against Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.), but gave the prosecution a chance to resubmit them in more detail.

In the latest chapter of what has become a political as well as a legal saga, Judge John F. Onion Jr. said that four of the indictments accusing the senator of official misconduct and tampering with evidence were too vague. He let stand only one felony charge of misconduct.

The charges stem from Hutchison’s 2 1/2 years as Texas state treasurer, a job she gave up in June after winning a landslide victory over Democrat Robert Krueger in a special election to fill the Senate seat vacated by Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen.

Hutchison is accused of using state employees and equipment to conduct personal business, and with subsequently destroying government records that could have been evidence against her. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 51 years in prison.

She has insisted from the outset that the case is nothing more than a political vendetta by Travis County Dist. Atty. Ronnie Earle.

This is the second time that Hutchison has faced a set of virtually identical indictments. The earlier indictments, handed up by a grand jury September, were dismissed after it was learned that one of the grand jurors was ineligible to serve.

Onion gave prosecutors 10 days to amend the indictments he threw out Tuesday and to make them more specific. The prosecution played down the significance of the action, but some legal experts said it could provide some clues as to how Onion will approach the case.

Neil McCabe, a professor at South Texas College of Law in Houston, noted that Onion, though a prominent Democrat, is also a highly regarded and meticulous jurist.

“For him to say the prosecution is not providing Kay Bailey Hutchison with due process of law gives a window into what’s going on in the judge’s mind,” McCabe said. “This is a signal that he’s going to hold the prosecution closely to the law, and not give them the free play that the prosecution sometimes has in Texas.”