If Roe v. Wade is overturned, Texas district attorney offices would become a new battleground

by Eleanor Klibanoff, Texas Tribune


A few weeks ago, in the aging, sand-colored Starr County Courthouse, 12 average citizens gathered to decide whether there was reason to believe a murder may have been committed.

Grand jury proceedings are one-sided, with only the district attorney’s office permitted to offer evidence. They’re also kept secret, so it’s unknown who from the Starr County district attorney’s office handled the case and how it was presented to the jurors.

But from that hearing, the grand jury decided there was reason to charge 26-year-old Lizelle Herrera with murder for a “self-induced abortion.” Herrera was arrested on a $500,000 bond and booked into the Starr County Jail even though Texas’ murder statute explicitly prohibits bringing murder charges against a pregnant person in the “death of an unborn child.”

Three days after the initial arrest, Starr County District Attorney Gocha Ramirez said he would be exercising “prosecutorial discretion” by dropping the charges.

Read more: https://www.texastribune.org/2022/04/21/abortion-texas-lizelle-herrera-prosecutors/