UPDATED at 3:25 p.m.

Eric Nichols, a lawyer for Anderson, called today’s proceedings “a completely one-sided view and discussion of Michael Morton’s prosecution and trial. This one-sided view is inconsistent with the facts and the law as it existed in 1986 and ’87,” when Morton was investigated and tried, he said.

Anderson complied with the trial judge’s order to produce one report by Sgt. Don Wood, a sheriff’s investigator, and Anderson complied with that order, Nichols said.

Nichols added that it was too early to determine if Anderson would oppose the request for a Court of Inquiry or would file a brief on the matter.

UPDATED at 3:15 p.m.

Judge Harle formally declared Morton an innocent man to a standing ovation from a standing-room only audience in the courtroom.

If you will now do me the honor of approaching the bench, please sir,” Harle said, leaving his seat to meet Morton in front of the bench. “I think you have probably had enough of judges looking down on you,” he added.

Harle approved a motion to dismiss Morton’s charges and presented him with a copy, saying, “It is an honor and privilege to sign and hand it to you. God bless you, Merry Christmas and enjoy your life.”

Morton shook Harle’s hand and kissed the paper, holding it aloft for the audience to see.

After the hearing, Morton told a crowd of reporters and cameras that he was not out for a pound of flesh.

“Revenge is a natural instinct, but it’s not my goal here. Just accountability,” Morton said. “I hope through all this we get a little something, We get some reform, some change. Just balance the books … level the playing field. We don’t want the prosecutors to to do anything special, but just to obey the law.”

”This is a happy day for me, obviously,” he said. “But let’s not forget that this was a horrible crime. My wife’s brains were splattered all over the bedroom ceiling. I lost all of my son’s youth; he’s 28 now.”

Adding that he lost his relationship with his in-laws and a quarter-century of his life, Morton concluded: “And yet this is a good day.”

UPDATED at 1:57 p.m. from the hearing in Georgetown.

Judge Sid Harle said today he will take Morton’s request for a Court of Inquiry under advisement, noting that he has read only half of the 144-page report and not all of the accompanying exhibits.

Harle also invited Ken Anderson’s lawyers to file a response to the request for a Court of Inquiry.

Lawyers for Michael Morton, recently released from prison after serving almost 25 years for a murder he did not commit, have filed a court report detailing the results of their investigation into allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.

The report (plus exhibits) attempts to make the case that former Williamson County District Attorney Ken Anderson acted improperly while prosecuting Morton for the 1986 murder of his wife, Christine.

Morton’s lawyers will discuss the report at today’s 1:30 p.m. hearing before District Judge Sid Harle in Georgetown.

Morton’s lawyers also will ask Harle to seek a Court of Inquiry to examine allegations that Anderson violated state law by suppressing evidence favorable to Morton and by failing to provide all documents requested by Morton’s trial judge. (Read today’s story about the Court of Inquiry here.)

If Harle agrees, another district would be appointed to lead the fact-finding court.

Anderson, now a district judge in Georgetown, has said he does not recall many of the details of the Morton prosecution but insisted that he did no wrong, instead blaming Morton’s conviction on a failing of the criminal justice system.

Today’s filing assailed Anderson for refusing “to taken any personal responsibility” for Morton’s wrongful conviction. “The problem in the Morton case is not that the system failed, but that Judge Anderson did not play by the rules,” the report said.

One of Anderson’s lawyers, Eric Nichols, said he will attend today’s hearing to determine how to respond to the report.

More to come from this afternoon’s hearing and in tomorrow’s print editions.

Travis County officials have been working today to clean up flooding at the downtown Blackwell-Criminal Justice Center after a water pipe burst on the fifth floor, drenching parts of that floor and floors below.

“It is a mess,” said County Court-at-Law Judge Nancy Hohengarten, who had assessed the damage to her fourth-floor courtroom and chambers. “My bench was all wet, my computer was fried. Parts of my courtroom were dry and parts of it were a mess.”

Hohengarten said other courtrooms and the district attorney’s office were damaged but that the water was coming down on the northwest corner of the building, away from the District Clerk’s office, which holds critical records.

The flood was discovered by sheriff’s officers this morning, said Capt. Wes Priddy of the Travis County sheriff’s office.

The courthouse and other county offices were closed for the Christmas holiday today but the building was still open for bonding services.

Priddy said he did not know the extent of the damage but said the cleanup is ongoing.

Defense lawyer Benjamin Blackburn said he was at the building at about 7 a.m. trying to get a client released from jail and observed a mess.

“It was raining on the inside lobby on the first floor,” Blackburn said.

The building has had its share of problems since opening in December 2000, including past problems with leaking pipes and malfunctioning elevators. The building ended up costing the county $45 million, more than twice the original estimate.

UPDATED at 4:30 p.m.

Julie Oliver, executive director of the coalition, said she will appeal the dismissal with the state bar’s Board of Disciplinary Appeals in the “next day or two.”

“We’ll be asking them to revisit the question, and hopefully they will make a better decision on appeal,” Oliver said.

The coalition also filed complaints alleging that former district attorney Ken Anderson, now a Georgetown district judge, and former assistant district attorney Mike Davis, now a Round Rock lawyer, violated their duty as prosecutors by failing to provide Morton’s trial lawyers with evidence that pointed to his innocence.

The state bar has directed Anderson and Davis to respond to the allegations, after which the disciplinary office will investigate whether misconduct occurred, according to a Dec. 27 letter from the bar to Oliver.

Anderson and Davis have said they do not remember many details from Morton’s 1987 trial but adamantly denied wrongdoing in the case.

Separately, the state bar announced in October that it had begun its own investigation into the actions of Morton’s trial prosecutors. Bar officials, however, declined to further discuss that investigation.

The State Bar of Texas has dismissed a complaint alleging that Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley engaged in misconduct and violated ethics rules in his handling of the Michael Morton case.

Morton was freed in October after serving almost 25 years in prison when DNA tests implicated another man in the 1986 murder of his wife, Christine Morton, in their southwest Williamson County home.

According to the grievance filed by the Texas Coalition on Lawyer Accountability, which focuses on attorney responsibility, Bradley improperly fought to prevent the DNA testing that led to Morton’s exoneration, extending his prison stay by six years until an appeals court ordered the testing to take place.

But in a Dec. 28 letter, released today by Bradley, the state bar’s Office of the Chief Disciplinary Counsel said an examination determined that “the information alleged does not demonstrate professional misconduct.”

The grievance has been dismissed, the letter added, though the coalition could file an appeal with the Board of Disciplinary Appeals.

“As the report from (Morton’s lawyers with) the Innocence Project indicated,” Bradley said via email, “the DA’s office acted professionally and ethically in handling the Morton claim of innocence, arising from a 25-year-old conviction through a different prosecutor.”

Lawyers for former Williamson County District Attorney Ken Anderson late this afternoon filed briefs opposing calls for a special court to review allegations that Anderson improperly withheld favorable evidence to secure the 1987 murder conviction of Michael Morton.

The “unjustified and insupportable” allegations are based on an incorrect reading of the Morton trial records and a misunderstanding of Texas law, the Anderson brief said.

Anderson asked District Judge Sid Harle to deny a request from Morton’s lawyers — Houston attorney John Raley and Innocence Project lawyers Barry Scheck and Nina Morrison — to form a court of inquiry to examine allegations that Anderson improperly withheld evidence favorable to Morton.

‘It is unfortunate that the Innocence Project has attempted to leverage good work done by it and others on Mr. Morton’s behalf - to secure his exoneration - into unjustified and insupportable allegations of criminal conduct by Ken Anderson,” the brief said.

Morton was freed in October after serving almost 25 years for a murder he did not commit.

The brief, the most detailed defense offered by Anderson to date, also said that a court of inquiry would be inappropriate because applicable statutes of limitations ran out long ago.

More to come.

Read Anderson’s brief here, and accompanying exhibits here.

The brief is in response to a report Morton’s lawyers presented in December.

Former Austin stripper Jessica Krause-Patterson pleaded guilty today to aggravated robbery and was sentenced to five years in prison in the April 2010 robbery of her customer Elmore Allen, who died in the incident.

Krause-Patterson, 21, (at right) danced under the stage name “Sin” at the all-nude Hot Bodies on Burleson Road in Southeast Austin. Her sentence came as part of a plea bargain with prosecutors. As part of the deal, a murder charge was dismissed.

Krause-Patterson had declared her innocence in the robbery and attack on Allen, 49, at her June trial for murder and aggravated robbery, which ended in a mistrial when jurors could not reach a verdict.

Her boyfriend, Jon Tyrell Banks, was tried with her at the June trial. He was tried again last month by himself, was found guilty of murder and sentenced to 23 years in prison.

At the June trial, prosecutors argued that after the club closed on April 12, 2010, Krause-Patterson lured patron Elmore Allen to a nearby apartment complex where Banks had been waiting.

Banks hit Allen in the head, knocking him to the ground where he hit his head and died, prosecutors said. His wallet, rings and cell phone were missing, prosecutors said.

Krause-Patterson had told jurors during the June trial that Banks had come to her aid after Allen, a furniture store delivery man, began to grope her during what she had thought was a ride home.

Defense lawyers had argued that Banks punched Allen to protect Krause-Patterson from what she believed was an impending sexual assault.

Krause-Patterson’s lawyer Russell Hunt, Jr. said today that the case involved “a terrible tragedy.”

“She never intended for anybody to get hurt, much less die,” Hunt said. “ It’s a terrible thing when things go awry like that.”

The state’s highest criminal court today rejected Laura Ashley Hall’s latest challenge to her conviction and 10-year sentence for evidence tampering in the mutilation of a West Campus murder victim.

Without comment, the Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed a lower-court ruling that denied Hall’s request for a new trial based on allegations that the Austin Police Department forensics laboratory had performed shoddy DNA analyses and had lax training and quality controls.

In its August ruling, the 3rd Court of Appeals in Austin noted that internal and external audits cleared the crime lab of the allegations, which were made by a former employee. The court added that Hall’s DNA expert testified that he reviewed the lab’s results and agreed with the findings.

What’s more, the lower court said, raising questions about the lab’s analysis would probably have hurt Hall’s case. Hall’s defense team emphasized the results because tests found none of Hall’s DNA on key items from the crime scene.

Hall originally received a five-year sentence for evidence tampering in the 2005 death of Jennifer Cave. Prosecutors said Hall helped her friend Colton Pitonyak dismember Cave’s body in his West Campus apartment before driving him to Mexico. Pitonyak is serving a 55-year sentence for murder.

In 2009, the 3rd Court of Appeals affirmed Hall’s conviction but threw out her sentence. That appeal backfired, however, when a new jury doubled her prison time, sentencing her to 10 years for the same crime — the maximum allowable sentence.

An Austin girl who prosecutors say attempted suicide in September after reporting that she had been repeatedly sexually assaulted has made significant strides in her recovery and has returned home.

The girl’s family said in September that her prognosis was dim as she fought for her life, but she was released recently from a rehabilitation hospital, said Travis County Assistant District Attorney Allison Benesch.

Benesch is prosecuting the case against Bobby Rodriguez, 39, who is accused of sexually assaulting the girl at her family’s apartment when she was younger.

Rodriguez, who has denied the accusations, faces multiple counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child, indecency with a child by contact and indecency with a child by exposure.

The girl, who is not being identified because of the nature of her allegations, was 12 in September.

Her family members feared that her health could mean that the case against Rodriguez would be dismissed. Benesch said the case remains pending and in the pretrial discovery stage.

The girl’s uncle said in September that she had very little brain activity but Benesch said her speech and memory are improving and that she is undergoing extensive therapy.

To read an October Statesman story on the girl’s suicide attempt and how it shows the fragility of sexual assault victims, click here.

After convicting him in a June attack on a Capital Metro bus driver, a Travis County jury late Thursday sentenced a man accused in a string of violent Austin robberies to 50 years in prison.

Rickey Desean Walls, 32, (at right) must serve at least half of that sentence before he is eligible for parole.

In today’s American-Statesman, I reported that incumbent Rosemary Lehmberg has an early fundraising advantage in her matchup against former judge Charlie Baird for Travis County District Attorney.

Voters will choose between the pair in the Democratic primary, which is currently set for April 3 but could change. (Check out Baird’s recent report here and an amendment here; Lehmberg’s most recent report is here.

That’s not the only contested election affecting the local courthouse that will be on the Democratic primary ballot. There’s also a three-way race to succeed state District Judge Mike Lynch in the 167th District Court, which hears criminal felony cases.

The candidates are defense lawyer David Wahlberg and prosecutors Efrain De La Fuente and Bryan Case. (Click on their names in the preceding sentence for links to their campaign Websites.)

Each also filed a campaign finance report by yesterday’s deadline.

During the most recent reporting period - July 1 to Dec. 31 - Wahlberg raised $58,331 in contributions, the most of the three candidates. De La Fuente was second with $30,250 raised and Case raised $17,975.

Since Jan. 1, 2011, Wahlberg has raised $80,431 for the race while De La Fuente has taken in $55,750 and Case has drawn $38,375.

Finally, Wahlberg was also tops in cash on hand as of Dec. 31 with $37,210. De La Fuente is right behind him with $37,014 in the bank while Case has $32,975.

(For each candidates most recent report, click on his name: Wahlberg, De La Fuente, and Case.)

No Republican has filed to run for Travis County District Attorney or the 167th District Court.

GEORGETOWN — Mark Norwood, the man accused of killing Christine Morton, appeared today at a pre-trial hearing in a Williamson County courtroom, his first public appearance since his arrest.

Norwood, 57, had a long gray beard and long hair and stood quietly and briefly with his lawyer before the judge.

Norwood is charged with the 1986 death of the Morton, whose husband was wrongfully convicted of the crime. Norwood’s case has not yet been presented to the grand jury.

The hearing was reset to Feb. 22 to give investigators more time to put together their case, said Russell Hunt Jr., Norwood’s attorney.

Hunt said the evidence against Norwood — a blood-stained bandanna — was “thin.” The bandanna had DNA on it that matched Norwood’s and had a hair on it belonging to Morton, according to an arrest warrant for Norwood.

It was found about 100 yards away from Morton’s house in southwestern Williamson County.

Hunt said he had questions about how the bandanna was preserved as forensic evidence in the crime. He said the bandanna could have gotten bloody if it was stored with other items that had Morton’s blood on them.

Hunt also questioned the evidence in another case that Norwood has been linked to — the beating death of Debra Masters Baker in her North Austin home in Travis County in 1988. Norwood has not been charged in Baker’s death, but police have said that pubic hair from Norwood was found at the crime scene.

Hunt said Norwood was a handyman and a homebuilder who worked in dozens of houses in the area where Baker lived. Hunt said his client could have shed hair naturally while he was working.

Relatives of Baker were at the pre-trial hearing today but declined to comment.

Norwood has said that he’s not guilty in the deaths of Morton and Baker, Hunt said. Michael Morton, Christine Morton’s husband, spent almost 25 years in prison after his wife’s death.

He was released in October after DNA evidence on the bandanna was tested and linked to Norwood.

Norwood, a dishwasher in Bastrop, was arrested in October.

BURNET — Burnet County resident Travis Marburger will pay a $1,500 fine and serve 100 days in county jail and 10 years probation after pleading guilty today in a 2002 boating accident on Lake Buchanan that took the life of a Lampasas teenager.

Justin Roberts died in the accident, which also injured his friends Kelly Corbin and Jim Daniels.

Investigators had been unable to solve the case until late in 2010, when officers were told that Marburger once owned a boat that matched the description of the boat thought to have struck the teenagers’ craft.

During a subsequent search of property that Marburger owned near Bertram, Texas game wardens found the boat buried. Marburger admitted burying the craft and having been at the helm in the early morning hours of May 3 when the boat struck Roberts’ boat head on.

Roberts died in the crash and was thrown from the boat. Daniels was thrown from the boat and drifted on the lake for more than eight hours before he was rescued.

In a statement he read in district court in Burnet, Marburger said he saw two people in the water in the moments after the crash but that he abandoned them and left the lake.

Prosecutors said they felt that the plea bargain to an official charge of failure to render assistance after a collision involving serious injury or death was the best resolution to the case because of the amount of time that had elapsed since the accident occurred.

An Austin man has been arrested and accused of watching and recording streaming Internet video of a 5-year-old girl being sexually assaulted by a New Jersey woman, according to an arrest affidavit.

Robert J. Ramos Jr., 32, is also accused of creating a fictitious Facebook account where he pretended to be a teenage girl and used it to coerce a 14-year-old girl into sending him nude, sexually explicit pictures of herself, according to the affidavit, filed in U.S. District Court in Austin.

In November, Ramos told an FBI agent that he used the following criteria to pick his Facebook friends: “Did I want to see them naked, might they be bisexual, and might they take pictures of themselves,” according to the affidavit.

Ramos was arrested Thursday and is being held without bail pending a hearing on bond next week.

He is charged with sexual exploitation of minors/production of child pornography, and distribution, transmission, receipt and possession of child pornography.

Court documents filed in Ramos’ case do not name the woman accused of assault but prosecutors in New Jersey on Thursday announced federal child exploitation charges against 32-year-old Jennifer Mahoney of Manalapan, N.J., about 30 miles south of New York City.

An affidavit charging Mahoney said that during a December interview she told an FBI agent that she sexually assaulted a 5-year-old girl two times in August or September. Mahoney said that she had streamed live video of one of the acts to a co-conspirator whom she believed was in Arizona and another person. She also said that she recorded other sexual acts with the girl on her IPhone and emailed the videos to the same two people.

Law enforcement determined that the co-conspirator was in Texas and not Arizona, the affidavit said.

While authorities in Austin had interviewed Ramos and searched his home in November, it was not until Dec. 21 - eight days after FBI agents interviewed Mahoney - that they discovered video clips of the sexual assaults of the 5-year-old girl on his computer, according to court documents.

The videos depict a woman identified as Mahoney sexually assaulting the girl on a bed - while the girl appears to be asleep - and in a bathtub, according to court documents.

That video has no audio but shows the woman laughing and talking with someone over the internet via a webcam, the documents say.

In a statement, U.S. Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer called the allegations against Mahoney: “Shocking in their depravity.”

A lawyer for the family of a 21-year-old mentally ill woman who died in a Travis County jail in 2008 told a federal jury today that a jail psychiatrist had prescribed her a potentially dangerous antipsychotic drug without heeding the manufacturer’s warnings.

Rachel Jackson was found dead in her bed at the Travis County Correctional Complex in Del Valle on July 21, 2008 - five days after she was arrested during what lawyers described as a psychotic breakdown.

Dr. John S. Ford, a jail psychiatrist, had prescribed Jackson thioridazine, or Mellaril, several days after she was jailed, said lawyer Sean M. Lyons, who represents her mother, Regina Jackson, and father, Rudolf Williamson, in the negligence lawsuit against Ford and Travis County.

In 2000, the manufacturer of Mellaril wrote to doctors warning of potentially dangerous adverse affects. The warning advises that the drug can cause a patient’s heart to beat out of rhythm, which could cause sudden death.

Patients being considered for the drug should undergo an electrocardiogram and have their potassium levels checked to determine whether they are fit to receive the drug, according to the warning.

Lyons told jurors that Ford knew about those warnings and did not order the tests.

“Dr. Ford essentially broke all those rules,” he said.

Lawyers for Ford and Travis County suggested that it is unclear how Jackson died and it may have come from abusing illegal drugs. The trial is expected to last several days.

A former contract psychiatrist for Travis County who is being sued by the family of a woman who died in the county jail in 2008 told a jury today that he regularly prescribed the antipsychotic drug Mellaril to patients without first ordering electrocardiograms and potassium level tests, as suggested by the manufacturer.

The drug, also known as thioridazine, can cause a patient’s heart to beat out of rhythm, and the tests are important to determine whether a patient is fit to receive it, according to warnings packaged with the drug.

Dr. John S. Ford did not order the tests when he prescribed the drugs to Rachel Jackson, 21, a mentally ill woman he treated at the jail. Jackson died three days later.

Jackson’s family sued Ford and Travis County in 2010 and their lawsuit is being heard by a federal jury in U.S. District Court Judge Sam Sparks’ courtroom this week. While some of the family’s claims — including federal civil rights claims — were dismissed by Sparks prior to trial, the jury will determine whether Ford and Travis County were negligent.

Ford said that like other doctors, he keeps up with the warnings associated with drugs he prescribes.

“All of us look at the significance of this and decide whether this should or should not affect the way we practice medicine,” he told Jackson family lawyer Sean Lyons.

Lyons asked Ford if he had more experience than the people at drug manufacturer Novartis who first disclosed the warning to doctors and pharmacists in a 2000 letter.

“I think I definitely had more experience prescribing it,” he said.

Jackson was arrested on July 15, 2008, after experiencing a “psychotic break” — police found her jumping on someone’s car and urinating on herself, according to lawyers. Ford initially prescribed her two antipsychotic medications — Risperdal and Abilfy — when she arrived at the jail, continuing the prescriptions she had before her arrest, according to testimony.

Though Jackson reported improvement, Ford added the prescription for Mellaril three days after her arrest, according to testimony.

Asked why by Lyons this morning, Ford explained: “It seemed unlikely that doing the same thing would produce any different result. I was hoping to find a medication that … might be a little more sedating and … would not produce any side effects.”

Travis County Chief Medical Examiner David Dolinak testified that given the combination of drugs that Jackson was taking, he determined that she died from complications of her treatment for schizoaffective disorder.

On cross examination from lawyers for the county and for Ford, Dolinak said that he is not certain of that conclusion.

Dolinak agreed with the lawyers that Jackson’s use of drugs, a cyst on her brain or another factor could have caused her death.

To read a Statesman story about the first day of the trial involving Rachel Jackson’s death click here.

District Judge Sid Harle has scheduled a Feb. 10 hearing on Michael Morton’s request for a special court to review allegations that former Williamson County district attorney Ken Anderson hid evidence to ensure Morton’s guilty verdict for murder.

Morton was declared innocent of the crime last fall, and freed after serving almost 25 years in prison,after DNA tests pointed to another man for the 1987 murder of his wife, Christine, in their Williamson County home.

Mark Norwood, a dishwasher in Bastrop, has been charged with capital murder in Christine Morton’s death. Norwood, through his lawyer, has denied the charge.

Saying recently discovered evidence indicates that Anderson intentionally hid information that could have spared Morton from prison, Morton’s lawyers have asked Harle to seek a court of inquiry to examine the allegations.

Courts of inquiry, often used to examine allegations of official misconduct, are led by an appointed district judge who can subpoena and question witnesses to determine if state laws were broken.

Anderson has denied wrongdoing in the Morton case and has opposed the creation of a court of inquiry.

Mark Dietz, Anderson’s lawyer, said today that he did not believe Harle had the authority to hold a hearing in the case. “You need a cause number in existence to hold a hearing, but that case and that cause number were extinguished by the order dismissing the charges,” he said.

In addition, the Texas Supreme Court order appointing Harle “made it clear it was only for the (Morton) case,” Dietz said. Harle replaced District Judge Billy Ray Stubblefield of Georgetown in August after Stubblefield recused himself from the Morton case without explanation.

Anderson may challenge Harle’s authority to continue the case before or during the hearing, Dietz said. “We are still pondering.”

Harle signed the order dismissing all charges against Morton on Dec. 19.

Nina Morrison, one of Morton’s lawyers, said Harle’s authority to act does not depend on the continuation of Morton’s case.

“The court of inquiry statute gives every single district judge in the state the authority to (act), if the court finds probable cause to believe that one or more state laws have been violated,” said Morrison, senior staff attorney for the Innocence Project of New York.

If Harle agrees to seek a court if inquiry, his request would be reviewed by the Texas Supreme Court, Morrison said. If the court agrees, it would name a district judge - state law exempts Harle from the appointment - to lead the special court.

Morton’s request for a court of inquiry.

Anderson’s reply.

Morton’s answer to Anderson’s reply.

This story has been updated since it was originally published with details provided by prosecutor Laurie Drymalla.

A Travis County grand jury has declined to indict an Austin police officer who struck a female suspect after that woman spit in her face, according to court records and a prosecutor.

The officer, Michelle Gish, 47, remains employed as an officer by the Austin Police Department, according to a spokesman.

Assistant Travis County District Attorney Laurie Drymalla said that the incident occurred Aug. 31 on Rexford Drive, which is off Manor Road in East Austin.

Gish had responded as backup in the arrest of a suspect who was being charged with several crimes, including evading arrest and leaving the scene of a collision, Drymalla said.

The female suspect, who Drymalla did not identify, was intoxicated, had been injured and “had been acting erratically,” Drymalla said.

Paramedics had been called to take the woman to the hospital and Gish had been helping them get the woman on a gurney, Drymalla said.

While Gish was strapping the woman down the suspect spit in the officer’s face, Drymalla said.

“Gish responded with a strike … with her hand to the head of the suspect,” Drymalla said.

Drymalla declined to be more specific about the nature of the strike.

The grand jury heard testimony from Gish and a detective who investigated the case, Drymalla said. The suspect who Gish struck did not testify, Drymalla said.

“The suspect was in such a state that she didn’t even remember what happened,” Drymalla said.

The grand jury investigated whether Gish committed official oppression, a Class A misdemeanor. On Monday the panel issued a “no bill,” indicating it did not find probable cause that a crime was committed.

Gish has been working as a police officer since October 2007 and earns a salary of $64,869, according to an online database created by the Texas Tribune.

A police spokesman said today that he did not know whether Gish has ever been disciplined and advised a reporter to file a request for that information under the Texas Public Information Act. A request under the act was not immediately answered.

Official oppression is a Class A misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail. According to the Texas penal code, it occurs when a public servant acting under color of her employment commits one of the following acts:

(1) intentionally subjects another to mistreatment or to arrest, detention, search, seizure, dispossession, assessment, or lien that he knows is unlawful;

(2) intentionally denies or impedes another in the exercise or enjoyment of any right, privilege, power, or immunity, knowing his conduct is unlawful;

(3) intentionally subjects another to sexual harassment.

It is unclear under which portion of that offense Gish was investigated.

Update 4:27 p.m.: A Travis County jury has found former dance instructor Stacey Aldridge guilty of two out of the three counts of sexual assault, according to prosecutor Mark Pryor. The sentencing portion of the trial was scheduled to begin this afternoon.

Earlier: A Travis County jury this morning began deliberating allegations that former Austin hip hop dance instructor Stacey Aldridge sexually assaulted two teenagers, including one former student, in 2010.

Aldridge, 44, is charged with three counts of sexual assault related to allegations he inappropriately touched the girls, both 17, after taking them out to a downtown club on April 4, 2010. Each count is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

“The defendant befriended, he manipulated, he groomed and then he incapacitated these teenagers, and then he assaulted them,” prosecutor Mark Pryor said during closing arguments in state District Judge Mike Lynch’s court.

“You may not like their actions, you may not approve of how they comported themselves that night,” Pryor said, “But you know what? They were just playing grownup. The problem is they didn’t know who they were playing with.”

Defense lawyer David Frank argued to the jury that the testimony of the two teenagers - and a third woman who also testified she was sexually assaulted by Aldridge - are unreliable and fraught with lies. He also noted that the women did not disclose the alleged assaults to authorities for months.

Aldridge is not on trial for any charges related to the allegations by the third woman but Lynch allowed the testimony for limited purposes, including to rebut a defense of fabrication.

Frank said Aldridge is innocent of the charges.

“An older man going out with women who were his students, that’s not a crime,” he said. “If you don’t like the fact that the women are 17, that’s still not a crime. Not under the law.”

Aldridge, who has been jailed since his November 2010 arrest, had worked as a dance instructor for years at several locations around Austin, including at the Dance Zone, a school near the University of Texas. He has also been an instructor for UT’s informal classes.

A separate Travis County jury in October found Aldridge not guilty of sexual assault related to accusations by one of his former students, who testified that he sexually assaulted her at his Northwest Austin apartment after a night out in 2006.

Prosecutor Mark Pryor said after court adjourned today that the two alleged victims in the current case came forward after hearing about Aldridge’s 2010 arrest through news accounts. Pryor said that Aldridge had taught dance to one of the girls years earlier before re-initiating a relationship with her on Facebook when she was 16.

On April 4, 2010, Aldridge got the teens into a downtown nightclub because he knew the bouncers and then provided them drinks before taking them back to his apartment, Pryor said.

One of them was drunk and throwing up on the sofa in his living room when Aldridge sexually assaulted her twice, Pryor said. Then he went into the bedroom and assaulted the other girl, he said.

Prosecutor Andrea Austin told jurors that Aldridge, who she said looks young, lied to the teens about his age, saying he was 25.

“This is a whole system,” she said, “a system of control, a system of manipulation.”

A man accused of recording the live Internet video feed of a 5-year-old girl being sexually assaulted must remain in jail pending trial, a U.S. magistrate judge ruled today.

Judge Dennis Green wrote in an order that there is a serious risk if released on bond that Robert J. Ramos, Jr., 32, would not appear for court settings and that Ramos would endanger the safety of the community.

Green held a hearing Wednesday on Ramos’ request for release. Green delayed his ruling until today.

In his order, Green noted that Ramos is separated from his wife, unemployed and has asked to reside with his parents in Weslaco, “near the border with the Republic of Mexico.” He also noted testimony during a Wednesday hearing that Ramos, who faces a long prison sentence if convicted, told an FBI agent, “I cannot go to jail.”

Ramos is a former assistant band director at Dessau Middle School in the Pflugerville district. In addition to watching and recording the sexual assault, he is accused of creating fictitious Facebook profiles where he posed as a minor teenage girl and asked other girls to send him naked pictures of themselves. At least one girl sent pictures to someone she thought was a young girl but was in fact Ramos, according to an arrest affidavit.

Read an American-Statesman story here about how Ramos came to the attention of authorities in a 2004 and 2005 child pornography investigation. Court documents and interviews with lawyers in that case raise questions about how aggressively Ramos was pursued.

A federal jury in Austin ruled today that neither the actions of Travis County officials nor of a former jail psychiatrist caused the death of a mentally ill woman found dead in her cell in 2008. But in an extraordinary move, the jury issued a statement calling on the county to improve the operations of its jails.

Following the jury’s decision in the lawsuit brought by the family of 21-year-old Rachel Jackson, who died while in “psych lockdown” in the Del Valle jail, U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks agreed that the panel could read a statement into the record.

“While we cannot find that Travis County proximately caused the death of Rachel Jackson,” the foreman said while standing in the jury box, “we do see significant opportunity for improvement in the processes, documentation and communication within the Travis County Correctional center.”

Outside the courthouse, jurors declined to elaborate on the statement to a reporter.

Jackson’s estate and her mother, Regina Jackson, and father, Rudolf Williamson, claimed that the negligence of former jail psychiatrist Dr. John S. Ford and Travis County led to her death.

Their lawyer Sean Lyons said during closing arguments that Ford was negligent in part by prescribing Jackson the antipsychotic drug Mellaril, or thioridazine, without first checking her potassium level and the electrical activity of her heart, as suggested by warnings packaged with the drugs.

The warnings state that the drug could cause an arrhythmia — when someone’s heart beats out of rhythm — which could lead to sudden death.

Lyons also argued that a Travis County pharmacist should have passed along warnings when dispensing the drugs that the danger of sudden death would be exacerbated by other medication Jackson had been taking.

Testimony revealed other problems within the jail, including that when Jackson complained of a racing heart three days into her incarceration, a jail guard failed to call for medical help and that when a jail nurse responded to Jackson’s complaint of chest pains one day later, he failed to document the results of a check of her vital signs.

Neither of those complaints made it to Ford for him to consider in administering the medication.

Outside court, Assistant Travis County Attorney Elaine Casas said that the county has computerized its system so when a doctor enters prescriptions, he or she automatically learns about any warnings or dangerous drug combinations associated with the order. She said she would meet with the sheriff’s office to discuss further issues raised during the trial and referred further questions to Chief Deputy Jim Sylvester, who could not be immediately reached.

Jackson was arrested on July 15, 2008, on a previous drug possession warrant after an Austin police officer found her having what Lyons has described a psychotic breakdown on a street near LBJ High School in East Austin. She died six days later — three days after being prescribed Mellaril.

Dr. David Dolinak, chief medical examiner for Travis County, ruled that Jackson died from a fatal arrhythmia brought on by the combination of drugs she had taken.

An expert testifying for Ford, Dallas County Chief Medical Examiner Jeffrey Barnard, testified that it is impossible to determine how Jackson died.

Ford’s lawyer, Paul Starr, told the jury that Ford was aware of the warnings on Mellaril but believed the drug was safe because he had been prescribing it for about 40 years.

Starr argued that Jackson’s death could have been caused by her use of illicit drugs, a seizure or a number of other factors.

During a deposition prior to trial, Ford stated that he continued to prescribe Mellaril without ordering tests of his patients’ hearts and potassium levels. During the trial, he testified that being sued has made him more careful.

Asked to clarify that statement in an interview after court adjourned, Starr said that Ford said that “while he still does not believe it is medically necessary, he will probably do so (order the tests) in the future.”

Starr said Ford currently works as a contract psychiatrist at the Waco Center for Youth, a psychiatric residential treatment facility for teenagers run by the Texas Department of State Health Services.

A Travis County jury today sentenced former Austin hip-hop dance instructor Stacey Aldridge to two years in prison and six years of probation for sexually assaulting two teenagers after a night out in 2010.

State District Judge Mike Lynch reset the case until Monday, when he will announce whether Aldridge, at right, must serve the sentences concurrently or consecutively, and when Lynch will set the terms of that probation.

Aldridge has been in jail since his November 2010 arrest. He remains charged with one count of sexual assault in a separate case.

Aldridge has taught dance for years at several places in the Austin area, including at the Dance Zone, a school near the University of Texas.

He was convicted Thursday of two counts of sexual assault, a second-degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

Aldridge’s defense lawyers argued that the testimony of the two girls, who were 17 at the time, was unreliable and fraught with lies.

“An older man going out with women who were his students, that’s not a crime,” defense lawyer David Frank said during closing arguments of the guilt/innocence phase of the trial.

Prosecutors said that Aldridge had taught one of the girls years earlier before reconnecting with her on Facebook when she was 16. On April 4, 2010, Aldridge got the teens into a downtown nightclub and then provided them drinks before taking them back to his apartment, said prosecutor Mark Pryor.

One of them was drunk and throwing up on the sofa in his living room when Aldridge sexually assaulted her twice, Pryor said. Then he went into the bedroom and assaulted the other girl, Pryor said.

A separate Travis County jury in October found Aldridge not guilty of sexual assault in a different incident. In that case, one of his former students testified that he sexually assaulted her at his Northwest Austin apartment after a night out in 2006.

The remaining count accuses Aldridge of sexually assaulting a woman in his dance studio. That woman testified at this week’s trial but the jury was instructed only to consider the testimony for a limited purpose, including to rebut Aldridge’s claims that the girls had made the accusations up.