Harris County DA Devon Anderson suffers big loss in court
In what is being called “huge win” for the pro-life cause, a Texas judge has dropped one of the two criminal charges against David Daleiden, the man who videotaped and exposed Planned Parenthood’s trafficking in fetal body parts.
Breitbart is reporting on the news that a Harris County criminal court judge issued an order dropping the Class A misdemeanor charge against Daleiden for the purchase and sale of human organs that he supposedly engaged in while posing as the owner of a fetal tissue procurement firm named The Center for Medical Progress. Because the court failed to reference an exception in the Penal Code, the judge ruled that “the indictment’s failure to negate this exception renders it void.”
Daleiden lawyer Jared Woodfill told Breitbart Texas, “This is a huge win for the pro-life movement. The charges brought by Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson were spurious at best.”
Daleiden’s other lawyer, Terry Yates, told Breitbart Texas, “I think the judge’s ruling is very sound. She came to her conclusion before addressing the arguments in the motions to quash the indictment.”
The charges, which are widely believed to have been politically motivated, were levied against Daleiden by District Attorney Devon Anderson, who was caught sharing confidential information about the case with Planned Parenthood.
In a statement following yesterday’s dismissal of the charges, David Daleiden, founder of the Center for Medical Progress, called the move “the latest confirmation that the indictments from a runaway grand jury in Houston were a politically-motivated sham all along.”
David Daleiden
He continued: “In finding that the indictment was void on its face, Judge Bull’s ruling directly contradicts the District Attorney’s argument that the indictment was valid despite the DA’s collusion with Planned Parenthood. The dismissal of the first indictment today sends a strong message to Planned Parenthood and their political cronies that colluding to suppress the First Amendment rights of citizen journalists will never work.”
Daleiden is confident that as more details about the abortion giant’s involvement in the sale of aborted baby parts comes to light, it will become even more clear that Planned Parenthood and their partners such as StemExpress are the only ones guilty of trafficking human body parts.
“I am grateful that Judge Diane Bull was able to see through what appears to be a baseless charge that is politically-motivated,” applauded Family Research Council president Tony Perkins.
“There was no transaction or attempted transaction to suggest Daleiden was actually buying aborted baby body parts. Of course the charges against Daleiden screams the question: why didn’t the District Attorney charge Planned Parenthood for selling the body parts? You can’t have a buyer without a seller.”
Perkins went on to urge the Harris County judge who is overseeing the second charge against Daleiden, a felony false identification charge, to follow the example of Judge Bull in dismissing the indictment, and realize that these charges against Daleiden “are nothing but naked political intimidation and attempts to silence the truth of what the abortion industry is doing.”
A hearing related to the second charge against Daleiden is scheduled for July 26.
