[STATESMAN] The special prosecutor who secured two felony abuse of power indictments against Gov. Rick Perry is facing his own legal problems after a decision by Texas' highest criminal court to renew a contempt of court case against him.Prosecutors filed a contempt of court motion against San Antonio-based attorney Michael McCrum in January, after a separate case the previous fall. In it, one of McCrum's clients was convicted of manslaughter for driving his car the wrong-way down an interstate with a blood-alcohol level three times the legal limit, and sparking a head-on crash that killed two men.
McCrum was accused of telling his client's former addiction counselor to "get lost for a while" and not be available to testify at the trial's punishment phase.
That case and the subsequent contempt complaint came months after April 2013, when McCrum was first named special prosecutor in the case against Perry.
A contempt hearing began, but McCrum's attorneys challenged it, arguing that prosecutors in Bexar County, which includes San Antonio, missed the deadline to bring a complaint against him. That sent the matter to Texas' 4th Court of Appeals, which in March sided with McCrum and found the deadline had in fact expired.
But a two-page ruling Wednesday from the 9-judge, Republican-controlled Court of Criminal Appeals directed the appellate court to vacate its order.
That order gives the lower court 30 days to vacate its ruling, but it wasn't immediately clear when the contempt proceedings against McCrum would resume. Messages for Bexar County district attorneys were not returned Thursday.