WILCO
CRIME & COURTS
Shawn Dick, poised for a third term, says he is dedicated to ‘seeing that justice is done’
GEORGETOWN — Shawn Dick just knew by the time he was a teenager he did not want to be an attorney, especially not a politician-lawyer.
He watched his father, Sam W. Dick, work as the district attorney of Fort Bend County while he was in high school and wanted no part of the profession.
“I told my dad, ‘I don’t want to be an attorney, and certainly not a politician,’” the younger Dick said.
Now, 30 some years later, Dick is set to enter his third term as district attorney of Williamson County. He had a career as a prosecutor and a defense attorney before taking the leap into the Republican primary in 2016 to run against thenincumbent DA Jana Duty.
The years in-between the never-alawyer- or-politician stance and his 2016 foray into the world of politics had taught him something about justice and ignited a desire to improve the system to make justice more attainable across the board.
“I came to Williamson County from a DA’s office in Harris County (Houston) that worked well and was more open,” he said.
Dick attended Georgetown University for the first two years of college, but being “a Texas boy” missed home and went the last two years to the University of Texas in Austin. He met his future wife, Yvonne, there.
After graduating, both of them headed to law school in Houston. While at the University of Houston School of Law, Dick interned first for his father’s criminal defense law office and then for the Harris County District Attorney’s Office. He was hired by Harris County as a pre-commit and took a job there immediately after he graduated.
COUSIN’S SHOOTING SPURRED DICK
Part of what made him decide to pursue criminal law was a robbery at a restaurant owned by his uncle in San Antonio. While the evening crew was cleaning and closing up, an assailant shot his cousin.
His father’s family was part of the tight-knit community of Lebanese immigrants who had settled in San Antonio, and Dick spent summers working at his uncle’s restaurants there alongside his cousins.
“When she was shot, I knew I wanted to know more about the criminal justice system and how it works,” the undergraduate government major said.
He took the job as a Harris County prosecutor and found he liked both the work and the office.
“They start you in the grand-jury and check-fraud areas, where you really learn how to put cases together,” he said.
It was there he first heard of Williamson County, as his boss’s mom lived in Sun City.
“Even while I was at UT, I was unaware of Williamson County, really,” he said.
In Harris County, he worked his way up through a system he believes trains prosecutors well, including a yearlong stint with the multiagency Organized Crime Task Force. He worked on cartel and other complex cases, sometimes flying in surveillance planes and riding in undercover vans.
The experience helped him see and learn how cases come together from inception to finish, and Dick worked with about 70 law-enforcement officers he said he got to know very well.
“You didn’t just see them once every five years, where the general office in Houston is so large you might not run across the same officer again or for years,” he said. “In the task force you worked over and over again with (the same) people, which allowed you to gain a certain perspective and understanding of each other and your thoughts and methods.”
That deeper understanding of coworkers and the camaraderie that developed helped make better cases, Dick believes.
SETTING SIGHTS
ON CENTRAL TEXAS
After about 10 years, he and his wife, who was by then a labor lawyer, were talking about buying a home and starting a family. Having been a prosecutor for years, most places in Houston had associations with a crime scene for Dick.
As luck had it, he attended a Texas District & County Attorney’s Association conference and ran into a couple of prosecutors he had worked with who left for jobs with the Williamson County DA. At lunch, one of them told him Williamson County had openings for prosecutors.
Dick discussed the situation with his wife and they agreed Central Texas would be a great place to live and raise a family.
So, in 2001, they relocated to Williamson County and Dick took a job as a prosecutor in the District Attorney’s Office.
The DA at the time, Ken Anderson, sat with Dick and asked him if there was any kind of case Dick would feel uncomfortable prosecuting in his new job.
“I said, ‘Well, maybe a capital murder case, because I had never prosecuted one,” Dick recalled. “The DA started laughing and said, ‘Son, if we ever get even a murder case, you don’t get to try it, the DA does.’” At the time Williamson County maybe had a homicide every other year. Now there are usually around 40 cases involving the death of an individual, not all of which are homicides.
A PowerPoint presentation Dick makes to groups involves a page where people guess certain dates, like when the Berlin Wall came down. The year was 1989, which Dick points out was a year when Williamson County’s population was just 135,000. Today, in contrast, it is estimated at 730,000, though there has been no criminal court added since 1989.
Today, in fact, there are still only three state district courts that handle criminal cases, and those only do it part time.
“I say we have one-and-a-half criminal courts,” Dick said. “By contrast, Montgomery County, with just over 678,000 people, has four full-time criminal courts, Bell County at just over 388,000 has two full-time criminal courts.”
The DA has seen cases from both sides as he decided to leave the Williamson County prosecutor’s office in 2005 to practice criminal defense law. He liked that being a defense attorney offered the ability to help people, including families, and possibly make a difference in a young person’s path in life.
But a desire to help effect positive change in government drew him to run on the GOP ticket in 2016.
MAKING THE ‘TOUGH CALLS’
He believes in an open-case file policy, and in holding everyone accountable. That belief led to his office investigating and indicting former Sheriff Robert Chody and former Assistant County Attorney Jason Nassour in 2019.
The pair face charges in Travis County of tampering with evidence in the case of Javier Ambler II, who died in custody in 2019 after a high-speed chase through Williamson and Travis counties that started when Ambler failed to dim his headlights. At the time, a film crew from the reality television show “Live PD” was riding with the deputies and filming.
The former sheriff and county attorney were also indicted in Travis County, which ultimately is trying the cases. They are accused in the destruction of film from the “Live PD” television crew.
Ambler was tased several times during the arrest and told officers repeatedly he could not breathe. The deputies were recently acquitted in Travis County on manslaughter charges.
Williamson County commissioners in 2021 agreed to a $5 million settlement with the Ambler family.
“I ran for office to increase professionalism and integrity in the DA’s Office in Williamson County. That includes making tough calls,” Dick said. “We are charged with seeing that justice is done. Our job is to gather evidence, get to the truth and present that to a jury.”
When Travis County indicted Chody and Nassour, Dick dropped charges so that Travis Country could prosecute, but his office has two prosecutors assigned to help with various details of the case in Travis County.
INNOVATIONS AT DA’S OFFICE
Dick is running unopposed in the general election and said he wants to continue to professionalize the office and to make improvements – large and small – that make a difference.
Since he became DA he has instituted an intake division that streamlines and prioritizes cases for the office; set up diversion programs that have saved the county millions of dollars and given firsttime offenders in certain crimes a second chance to make good; cut back on the number of criminally charged individuals who need to remain in jail, saving the county $7 million a year; collected more in bond forfeitures to the tune of $949,770 over six years; and collected more than $4.5 million in drug asset forfeitures (an improvement over years past).
Dick has hired more experienced prosecutors and added to the level of knowledge and professionalism of the office, he said.
“We also have modernized and digitized the file system and that saves trips, time and money for the many lawenforcement agencies we work with,” Dick said. “Creating technological changes, even small efficiencies, they all work with other changes being made. I really think we have restored professionalism and integrity to the office.”
Challenges for the future are mainly due to the exploding population growth that, with Samsung Austin Semiconductor going operational in Taylor and other developments in the area, Dick sees as continuing.
“We are overcrowded and still have limited space, though county commissioners are trying to do something about that,” he said. “And we need more courts.”
Dick is optimistic about the future and the criminal justice system, though he knows it is not perfect. He believes in the roles played by judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys.
“I think when judges are at their best, prosecutors are at their best and defense attorneys are at their best, that’s when you get the best sense of justice,” he said.
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