Defense attorney alleges evidence is missing in case of Corpus Christi OBGYN accused of sexual assault<\/a><\/p>\nDistrict Attorney James Granberry said the office \u201chad no choice\u201d but to drop the case after discovering that evidence tied to the years-long investigation was missing. Villarreal, who was first arrested in late 2018, had been indicted on multiple felony sexual-assault counts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Granberry said the dismissal became unavoidable when neither his office nor the Corpus Christi Police Department could legally certify compliance with the Michael Morton Act and the Richard Miles Act — state laws requiring both agencies to swear, under oath, that all evidence has been collected and disclosed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe case was dismissed — The DA\u2019s office had no choice,\u201d Granberry said. \u201cIt had suffered from lost evidence during the previous administration. We could not sign the required affidavits that the Michael Morton Act and the Richard Miles case require us to sign.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the police department also lacked anyone who could ethically certify that all materials had been turned over. \u201cBecause of the police not having anyone, we could not either,\u201d Granberry said. \u201cUnfortunately, that left us with no resort but to dismiss all counts.\u201d<\/p>\n
Granberry said his team searched extensively before making the determination.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have turned the office upside down looking for it,\u201d he said. \u201cUpstairs where we have storage\u2026 we have looked everywhere and could not find it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He called the outcome \u201ca huge disappointment,\u201d noting the families of 14 alleged victims were in court Friday when the dismissal was announced.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got 14 victims and their families who came forward and gave their testimony and talked about intimate things, and now they are left without criminal recourse,\u201d Granberry said. \u201cIt\u2019s frustrating, but it\u2019s the law, and it\u2019s the ethical thing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Villarreal, who had been free on bond throughout the case, walked out of the courthouse a free man. Granberry declined to comment on whether the doctor could resume medical practice, saying, \u201cI have no idea and I\u2019m not going to speculate on that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Granberry also did not speculate on how the evidence disappeared, only saying it occurred before he took office. \u201cYou\u2019re asking me to speculate,\u201d he said. \u201cThe answer is, it\u2019s not anywhere in this office and it\u2019s not anywhere this office has control of.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the case could only be revisited if the missing materials were somehow recovered and if the statute of limitations allows it. But even that scenario is uncertain.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you don\u2019t know what you lost, how do you know when you found it?\u201d Granberry said.<\/p>\n
The district attorney apologized and said his administration is working to restore public confidence.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re working hard every day to correct these kinds of problems and regain the trust of the citizens of Nueces County,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Granberry said he is not aware of any other pending cases affected by missing evidence but pledged transparency if new issues arise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"D.A. Jimmy Granberry says missing evidence from a previous administration forced the dismissal of all charges against Dr.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52467,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156],"class_list":{"0":"post-52466","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-corpus-christi","8":"tag-corpus-christi","9":"tag-corpus-christi-headlines","10":"tag-corpus-christi-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}