Legal Newswire Blog

Reported by By Aman Batheja http://www.star-telegram.com/

Tim Curry, Tarrant County’s top prosecutor and the longest-serving criminal district attorney in Texas, died shortly after midnight Friday at his home. He was 70.

Diagnosed with lung cancer in the summer of 2008, Mr. Curry underwent aggressive chemotherapy treatments. He was hospitalized at least once for complications stemming from his treatments and has been at home for the past few months.

Flags flew at half staff Friday morning at the Tarrant County Courthouse.

Mr. Curry took over the reins of Tarrant County’s prosecutors and legal staff in 1972 promising to clean up corruption. While attracting his fair share of controversy and political spats, Mr. Curry’s 36 years in the post were largely marked by widespread praise for his skillful competence and his lack of ego.

“He should be remembered as a person of complete and absolute integrity,” said Assistant District Attorney Joe Shannon, Curry’s longtime friend. “Whenever an issue came up or we had a case where there was an ethical question, he would look you in the eye and say, ‘Do what you think is right.’

“That is the way he lived life. Ethics was a big time thing, being straight and honest and keeping your word. Your word was your bond. That was his credo.”

Mr. Curry’s legendary career seemed to be marked by contradictions.

He was the top attorney in Tarrant County, though he famously lost the last case he ever tried in court, the high-profile Cullen Davis murder trial back in 1977.

His quiet, often gentle demeanor belied his role as leader of an army of aggressive lawyers tasked with bringing the worst criminal elements to justice.

And his undeniable political acumen — never losing an election in nearly 40 years — was seen by many at odds with his long-standing reputation for keeping politics out of the district attorney’s office.

“I’m a lawyer who happens to be elected,” Mr. Curry told the Star-Telegram in 1984. “If it wasn’t for the news media and the politics, this would be the best job in the world. As it is, I have to practice law in a goldfish bowl.”

Mr. Curry is likely among the longest serving criminal district attorneys in Texas history, according to incomplete records from the Texas District & County Attorneys Association, spokesperson Sarah Wolf said.

Shannon said that, several months ago, Curry signed a document designating Criminal Division Chief Alan Levy as his first assistant to conduct the affairs of the office until a successor qualifies.

According to the Texas constitution, Mr. Curry’s replacement will be appointed by the governor to serve until the next election.

Running for reform

Born in the tiny Texas town of Tulia, Mr. Curry was the latest in his family to become a lawyer. After graduating from Texas Christian University and Baylor Law School, he joined his father and his older brother at their Fort Worth law firm of Curry and Curry and quickly grew unsettled by a district attorney’s office rife with corruption.

“It was a good ol’ boy system, and I wasn’t one of the good ol’ boys,” Curry told the Star-Telegram in 2007.

Mr. Curry and like-minded colleagues decided to recruit someone to run for district attorney as a reformer. Their first choice backed out at the last minute, compelling Mr. Curry to hastily take the plunge into politics.

“It was my feeling that something needed to be done and it looked like no one was going to do it, so I did it myself,” Mr. Curry said in 2007.

Only 33 years old when he was sworn in on Nov. 27, 1972, over the next 36 years, he would face case after case that captured the attention of the county, and occasionally the country, along with a host of competitors hoping to take over his job.

In his early years, Mr. Curry highlighted his policy of hiring lawyers regardless of political affiliation and his efforts pushing the pornography business out of the downtown Fort Worth area.

“We started prosecuting them under the obscenity laws. We put so much heat on them that it wasn’t profitable for them to operate, so they left,” Mr. Curry said in 2007.

Curry’s Vietnam

But the public also watched, some cringing, as Mr. Curry became mired in trying the Davis case, which at the time was the longest, costliest murder trial in Texas history. At one point, some started to refer to Davis as “Curry’s Vietnam” because the prosecutor was putting so much money and resources into unsuccessfully trying the local multimillionaire for capital murder and later for being involved in a murder-for-hire scheme against a judge.

In the 1980s, he was accused of being soft on drunken drivers. In the 1990s, charges that his office bungled prosecuting a skinhead who was sentenced to probation for gunning down a black man sparked a protest of thousands through downtown Fort Worth. At a later trial, on different charges, the defendant got 40 years in prison.

Switching parties

Mr. Curry was first elected as a Democrat but switched to the Republican Party in 1990, around the time many other Tarrant County elected officials did as the region’s political leanings veered toward the GOP. The party switch didn’t matter much to Mr. Curry’s strongest admirers, who saw one of his greatest assets to be his ability to appear apolitical.

Over the years, Mr. Curry was criticized for being glued to his office chair and not engaged enough with the community or parts of his staff. Though political opponents periodically lobbed the charge as part of a call for him to step down, Curry refused to change his ways.

“I’m not prepared to agree that a low profile is a bad profile,” Mr. Curry once told the Star-Telegram Editorial Board.

In 2007, Mr. Curry was awarded the Blackstone Award, the highest honor given by the Tarrant County Bar Association.

In 2008 doctors discovered two small spots on Mr. Curry’s lungs. He soon began showing up at the courthouse wearing an olive-green baseball cap to cover up his hair loss from chemotherapy.

In recent years, Mr. Curry had flirted with retirement, but he seemed to know long ago that he would stay Tarrant DA for as long as voters would allow him.

Back in 1984, he told the Star-Telegram, “The longer you stay, the more enemies you make. This county’s not geared for a lifetime DA. I may try because I love it so much.”

Still at the job 23 years later, Mr. Curry told the paper in 2007, “Cleary, I’m getting of the age I have to quit sometime. But to be frank, I don’t know. I’m just a wagon-yard lawyer who enjoys what I do very much.”

Curry is survived by his wife, Jan, his daughter, Beth, his son, Cullen, and his mother, Rae.

A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Wednesday at the First United Methodist Church in downtown Fort Worth.

Staff writer Melody McDonald contributed to this report.

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