County working to fix ‘inadvertent’ switching of DA’s names on cases

By Larry Tucker
editor@wood.cm
Posted 4/14/22

Wood County information technology director John Bell responded to questions concerning the altered district court records which show District Attorney Angela Albers working over 10,000 cases including 1,000 as a defense attorney.

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County working to fix ‘inadvertent’ switching of DA’s names on cases

Posted

Wood County information technology director John Bell responded to questions concerning the altered district court records which show District Attorney Angela Albers working over 10,000 cases including 1,000 as a defense attorney.

Some of those cases included those from prior to Albers coming to Wood County. 

“In the courts and justice software an attorney is identified by their unique Party ID which is generated when they first entered into the software,” Bell said. “This party identifies the attorney on each case they work, whether for the defense or prosecution.”

In 2018 Jim Wheeler resigned as district attorney. On March 19, 2019, Albers was sworn in as district attorney after being appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott.

A request was made March 21, 2019 by Albers’ office to change the attorney for the state on all future criminal dockets in the courts and justice software to reflect that appointment.

“The proper procedure would have been to replace Jim Wheeler’s Party ID with Albers ID on those cases. We were not aware that all previous cases (before April 23, 2019) were changed until Feb. 19, 2022,” Bell noted. “The courts and justice application keeps record of the latest change to each party. It does not keep a historical log of all changes. Therefore, there is no record of who inadvertently made the changes three years ago in 2019. We are currently in the process of correcting this in our courts and justice software.”

According to Bell, the proper procedure would have been to replace Wheeler’s Party ID with Alber’s ID on those cases. The information on Wheeler’s Party ID was erroneously edited and replaced with Alber’s ID on the cases.

Albers claims her office took the appropriate action. “I know this office did the right thing. I sent an email to the district clerk’s office to make the change from the day I took office and not before,” Albers said. “It was going forward, not retroactive.”