Abel Reyna has recused his office from prosecuting 164 criminal cases involving clients Reyna represented before he was elected McLennan County district attorney.

The recusals by Reyna in cases involving 86 of his former clients and six of their co-defendants are a normal part of the transition process as Reyna continues to settle into the office that former District Attorney John Segrest held for 20 years.

Reyna’s office is disqualified by law from prosecuting his former clients or their co-defendants.

New McLennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna has asked to recuse his office from handling numerous cases he was involved with as a defense attorney.

Segrest and his staff started preparing a list of Reyna’s cases from which the office would be recused before Segrest left office at the end of December.

Reyna and his staff completed the list last week.

The Texas attorney general has a special prosecutors’ assistance unit that steps in to handle criminal cases from all over the state at no charge to county taxpayers in instances such as this, Reyna said. The AG has agreed to handle the felony cases, Reyna said, while local attorneys most likely will be appointed as special prosecutors to handle the misdemeanors.

The list of recused cases from Reyna’s days as a criminal defense lawyer features several high-profile defendants, including convicted murderer Darlene Gentry; former teachers and sexual assault defendants Fernando Campos and Kyle Raymond Salisbury; murder defendant Joe Angel Felan; and Horreese Bailey, a former nurse charged with sexually assaulting a patient at Providence Health Center.

Of the 164 cases, 97 are felonies and 67 are misdemeanors, Reyna said.

Of the 97 felonies, 54 are unfiled and unindicted, including two that date back to 2004. One case is from 17 years ago and involves a former client of Reyna’s father, Felipe Reyna, who was named in a sealed indictment in 1994 but absconded and has never been arrested again, Reyna said.

Reyna said it is unclear now what will become of the 54 unfiled felony cases or the 21 unfiled misdemeanor cases that were under review by Segrest’s office. The AG’s office could “just close them out,” or decline to prosecute them, Reyna said of the unfiled felony cases.

Other recusals include seven cases from 2007, six from 2008 and 12 from 2009, Reyna said. He optimistically stopped accepting clients charged in felony cases in September 2010 in anticipation of winning the November election.

Matt Johnson, judge of Waco’s 54th State District Court, is Reyna’s former law partner. The judge said there were about 40 felony cases he was recused from hearing when he took the bench because either he or Reyna had handled them. Those are part of normal transitions, Johnson said.

“(Reyna) had a chunk of the criminal clients here in McLennan County,” Johnson said. “It was a healthy practice. But I don’t think those numbers (of recusals) are anything unusual or out of the ordinary.”

Judge Ralph Strother agreed.

“Abel was an active practitioner,” Strother said. “He was almost a sole criminal practitioner. I suspect that if you look at other top criminal law practitioners, those numbers would be right in line with quite a few of them.”

Reyna said he and Segrest’s staff tried to work out as many of his pending cases as possible in the weeks before Segrest left office.

That included a post-conviction writ application filed by Gentry, which Segrest was handling until Gentry successfully filed a motion to recuse Strother from hearing her writ. That postponed proceedings, which the new judge, special prosecutor Melanie Walker and Gentry’s attorneys have not resolved.

Gentry, who initially hired Reyna before picking other attorneys, is serving a 60-year prison term in the November 2005 murder of her husband, Waymon Keith Gentry. She was convicted of shooting him while he slept in their Robinson home and then staging the scene to look like a home invasion robbery.

Campos, a former teacher at Alta Vista Montessori Magnet School, is charged with molesting three students in his classroom during the 2009-10 school year. A fourth child has made similar allegations.

Salisbury, a former Lorena teacher and coach, is charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in May 2009.

Felan and Quinton Deondrae Henry both are charged with murder in the Sept. 12, 2009, shooting death of Carnelyuis Fields near North Ninth Street and Tennessee Avenue. Reyna, who represented Felan, also recused himself in Henry’s case, he said.

Bailey, a former nurse, is charged with sexual assault in an alleged July 2007 incident involving a 49-year-old hospital patient.

twitherspoon@wacotrib.com

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