Grand Jury Blocked From Reindicting Justice Medina

A Texas judge on Tuesday dismissed the grand jury whose indictment of a State Supreme Court justice and his wife here last week was thwarted by prosecutors.

The indictment of the justice, David M. Medina, and his wife, Francisca, involved a fire that destroyed their house and two others. But the charges were quashed in court the next day, with the Harris County district attorney’s office arguing that there was insufficient evidence to pursue them.

In an unusual public outcry, members of the grand jury on Friday called the dismissal an instance of political favoritism on the part of embattled District Attorney Charles A. Rosenthal Jr., like Justice Medina a Republican, and said they were prepared to reconvene this week to consider revoking the indictments before the panel’s term ran out.

That prospect became moot, however, when Judge Jim Wallace of State District Court agreed Tuesday with Justice Medina’s lawyer, Terry W. Yates, that procedural errors by the district attorney’s office in extending the grand jury’s term last November for three months invalidated the jury and all its 30 or so other indictments since then.

At a news conference later, 8 of the grand jury’s 12 members called the district attorney’s handling of the case arrogant and incompetent, The Associated Press reported. “We thought we were doing the right thing,” said one of them, Shannon Burns, “and someone puts a big wall up in front of you and doesn’t let you do what you feel is right.”

The grand jury, without elaborating, charged Justice Medina last Thursday with tampering with evidence: a threatening letter he said he had received. Mrs. Medina was charged with one count of arson.

The fire that destroyed the Medinas’ home occurred last June 28 in Spring, a Houston suburb. Investigators have said that the Medinas had financial problems.

As for Mr. Rosenthal, the district attorney since 2001, he has given up a bid for re-election and is under pressure to resign because of e-mail traffic at his office that included his love notes to a secretary as well as sexually explicit and racially charged messages.