RETIRING DA ENGAGED COMMUNITY IN HIS JOB

Adam Reavis says that if he had stayed in his native Houston, he would be
dead now or locked up for life.

Instead, after two trips to prison — for theft and burglary— Reavis came
to Austin in the early 1990s and into the jurisdiction of Travis County
District Attorney Ronnie Earle.

Earle, who is retiring at the end of the month after 31 years in office,
had just begun his latest in a series of programs designed to attack the
causes of crime. When Reavis was arrested for attempting to steal speakers
from a car near the City of Bee Cave in 1992, a panel of law enforcement
officials convened under the program took a long look at his life. They
recommended that instead of another prison term, he get probation and
intensive treatment for his drug and alcohol addictions.

Reavis said he sobered up and learned for the first time "that there was
something else out there" besides stealing and using.

Reavis' case illustrates the type of criminal justice system Earle has
molded in Travis County since taking office in 1977: heavy on attempts at
rehabilitation for nonviolent offenders, in part through new programs to
combat the roots of crime. He has launched a host of programs over the
years aimed at bringing regular people, police and others with a stake in
criminal justice to the table to formulate new ways of meting out justice
— and built a national profile as a justice reformer in the process.

Earle is perhaps best known as the prosecutor who pursued, often
unsuccessfully, some of Texas' top politicians through his office's Public
Integrity Unit. He has secured indictments against a Texas attorney
general (Jim Mattox, in 1985), a U.S. senator (Kay Bailey Hutchison in
1993) and a U.S. House majority leader (Tom DeLay in 2005). A jury
acquitted Mattox, and the case against Hutchison became a high-profile
failure when charges were dismissed. A money laundering charge against
DeLay remains pending.

But closest to Earle's heart are his efforts at the forefront of community
justice, a catchall name for programs that have caught on in prosecutors'
offices nationwide in recent decades and aim to attack crime by, in
Earle's words, "engaging the community in its own protection."

Today, Earle's philosophy permeates the district attorney's office, which
includes 80 lawyers. Veteran prosecutors say they are now trained to look
for ways to make Austin safer outside the courthouse and to bring the
community, especially victims of crime, into the legal process. Community
leaders who for decades have been recruited by Earle's office to serve on
crime prevention boards, to meet with offenders and for other programs say
they see the district attorney as not only a prosecutor but also as a
problem-solver.

"What am I proudest of as I leave office?" Earle said. "I am proudest of
making the community stronger."

Although Earle and his assistants could not produce statistics to prove
that his brand of justice has been a success, Earle pointed to Austin's
crime rate as proof that it works.

FBI statistics released earlier this year show that in 2007, Austin had
the lowest violent crime rate among the state's five biggest cities, with
0.54 crimes per 100 people. Austin's property crime rate — 6.34 crimes per
100 people — was higher than Fort Worth's and Houston's but lower than
Dallas' and San Antonio's.

Earle also said that anecdotal stories of success show that what he does
is working.

Reavis has one of those stories, although whether he's a success or
failure depends on who's judging. Reavis didn't stay out of trouble after
getting probation and drug treatment 16 years ago — he has been in and out
of jail several times since. But today, Reavis, 41, is living free and
working as a mechanic. He said he is sober and trying to be a good husband
and supportive father to his 3-year-old and 18-year-old daughters. Every
Wednesday, he reports on his sobriety at the county's drug court, another
program started on Earle's watch.

"I can guarantee you I wouldn't be where I am today if I hadn't moved to
Austin," he said. "They are a little more lenient towards addiction u2026
and they do want to help."

Lawyers and judges call Earle an innovator and say he was the perfect
match for Austin, a place where juries have shown little appetite for
sentencing low-level offenders to prison.

Terry Keel, a prosecutor under Earle in the 1980s and 1990s who went on to
become county sheriff, a state legislator and Texas House parliamentarian,
said Earle struck a balance between innovative programs and being tough on
crime. Keel said, for example, that Earle was one of the first in Texas to
create a special unit for prosecuting child abuse crimes.

"What he's most known for, and rightfully so, is he was willing to think
outside the box," said Keel, a Republican. "Ronnie sees the role as more
of a social worker than as a law enforcer."

In the past decade and a half, Wilson Andrews, a bailiff in Travis County
courts, has volunteered on a variety of Earle initiatives, including
community crime prevention committees and at the Travis County state jail,
helping reintegrate former offenders into the community. Andrews, 75, said
Earle is "straight up." "In other words, he cares," he said. "That's the
bottom line."

Earle, 66, is married to Twila Hugley Earle, with whom he once taught a
class on "community building" at the University of Texas. They have three
grown children, including Travis County Court-at-Law Judge Elisabeth
Earle.

He grew up northeast of Fort Worth on a ranch near Birdville, now called
Haltom City. He came to Austin when he was 19 and earned government and
law degrees from the University of Texas. At 26, he became Texas' youngest
judge when he was appointed associate judge in Austin's Municipal Court,

In 1973, Earle won his first of two terms in the Texas House of
Representatives, and three years later, he ran for district attorney and
defeated then-County Attorney Ned Granger.

Earle recalls that he started out as a tough-on-crime prosecutor but
within a few years realized that, standing alone, that approach was
flawed. Criminals would go off to prison and return to Austin as better
criminals, he said.

"To do the same thing over and over and wait for the same result is
insanity," he said.

In the 1980s, Earle was a leader of the emerging community justice
movement, pushing alternative sentencing programs like jail boot camp and
making restitution for victims a priority.

"He was always out mixing with people," said Walter Timberlake, 78, a
former politically active electrician union representative who served on a
crime prevention board in his South Austin neighborhood that was put
together by Earle. "Way back in the '50s and early '60s, a lot of times
DAs didn't get out of the courthouse. Now ... you see all of them out
mixing."

Earle also has brought outside voices into perhaps the most important job
of a prosecutor — striking plea bargains. The program that considered
Reavis' case, created in 1992, asked police, probation officers and jailer
counselors to lend their expertise to help decide what defendants needed
to get straight.

Another program empaneled groups of community leaders, including parents
and teachers, to punish nonviolent juvenile offenders.

T.A. Vasquez, 56, has served on one of those committees, near Zavala
Elementary in East Austin, for the past decade and said she uses the
setting as a way to share with struggling families her experience in
raising a sometimes troubled son.

"I wished I had somebody or some thing that I could turn to for more
support," Vasquez said. "There really isn't a book out there."

Earle's experimentation has made him a big name in the justice reform
world. Harvard University researchers have come to Austin to document his
methods. He has spoken at seminars across the country on his efforts at
"reweaving the fabric of community."

When Jeremy Travis became director of the National Institute of Justice,
the research arm of the U.S. Department of Justice, in the 1990s, he "came
to learn that Ronnie Earle was one of the most thoughtful and creative
people in the criminal justice arena in the entire nation."

Earle has been criticized by some as being disengaged from what's
happening in the trial courts where his prosecutors work because of his
focus on community programs. Some trial court prosecutors say they rarely
see him. But the most vehement criticism comes from political opponents
who have called him an attack dog for the Democratic Party.

In 1993, Earle secured an indictment of Hutchison on accusations that she
used state resources in her previous office as state treasurer to run her
senatorial campaign. Earle famously abandoned the charges on the eve of
trial — Hutchison was acquitted.

Earle said he was forced to dismiss the charges because of the trial
judge, who Earle believed had signaled that key evidence would not be
admitted at trial. Without that evidence, Earle said, he would lose.

Earle was ridiculed by many pundits and editorial writers.

"There is now in legal circles a presumption he's incompetent, a political
animal who really doesn't know the law," David Beckwith, a Hutchison
adviser, told the American-Statesman in 2005 after the DeLay indictment.

DeLay and his lawyers have made partisan claims against Earle part of
their public defense. When Texas' highest criminal court upheld the
dismissal of charges that DeLay and his associates conspired to violate
election law, DeLay called Earle "the Mike Nifong of Texas," referring to
the disbarred prosecutor who pursued rape charges against three Duke
University lacrosse players. On a separate appeal, another appeals court
earlier this year indicated that the remaining money laundering charge
against DeLay may not survive a legal challenge.

Earle has noted that in his career he has prosecuted cases against 15
elected officials — 12 Democrats and three Republicans.

The Democrats include Mattox, a Democrat whom Earle accused of threatening
the bond business of a Houston law firm if it did not stop trying to
interview Mattox's sister in connection with a lawsuit. In 1985 a Travis
County jury acquitted Mattox, who died earlier this year.

Earle said most of the politicians he targeted have accused him of
political motives. "What else are they going to say?" he said.

As he prepares to leave office Thursday, Earle, who has been mentioned as
a possible candidate for governor in 2010, is coy about his future plans.
"I am going to be doing some life preaching, but it ain't going to be the
gospel," he said.

Earle's decade-long top deputy, Rosemary Lehmberg, will replace him and
vows to continue his work.

"Community justice and Austin are kind of meant for each other," Earle
said. "People here like each other. There's more of a spirit of
community."

He said that spirit has helped people like Reavis; Earle considers him a
success story.

Reavis said his life was up and down after he was first convicted in
Austin in 1993 and put on probation and in drug treatment. New convictions
for possessing drugs and driving drunk landed him in jail for stints as
long as a year. But he said he also had streaks of sobriety, and started
his own auto repair shop during an eight-year sober period. Earlier this
year he was convicted of drug possession. He again was sentenced to
treatment and probation.

"He didn't hurt anybody, and ultimately you are talking about public
safety," Earle said. "The bottom line is, how safe are we?

"There was a time when everybody in the community was responsible for
maintaining the peace," Earle said. "That's the role for the community;
it's not the role for the cops or the DA. It's mobilizing the resources of
the community."