“How can I get my son to go to school?”

“Are Chinese throwing stars illegal weapons? What about butterfly knives and switchblades?”

“What can I do to discourage my child from befriending bad kids? He won’t listen when I tell him.”

On April 28, 2005, Maria Corral was out at a nightclub with a female friend. She was 20 years old at the time and the mother of three children, all under age 5. Sometime around 12:30 a.m., she asked her friend to take her to Richard Flores’s house. Flores was the father of her three children, but they did not live together—he lived with his mother, and Maria lived with her mother. They had started dating when she was 16, and it had been a difficult relationship; Richard had already been arrested for assaulting her.

My life is a devilish dichotomy. At night I join millions of Americans in the delicious pursuit of crime-solving with “CSI” and its successful siblings in Miami and New York. But by day, I am a Texas prosecutor who doesn’t have Horatio Caine or Gil Grissom to woo a jury. Oh, to make a case in 45 minutes, without commercial break, with such a stunning array of technology and science as to leave the jury with no doubt of a defendant’s guilt!

Once the initial charging decision is reached in a case, a prosecutor is concerned with the appropriate resolution. Experience tells us that cases can be broken down into four simple categories:
• good people doing something stupid;
• bad people doing something stupid;
• good people doing something bad; and
• bad people doing something bad.

When children move in with their mother’s boyfriend, life for them changes drastically. In the case of Nicholas Plaza, such a move ended his life. He died at age 5, and to date his body has never been recovered. But this past July, Ruben Zavala, Jr., “the boyfriend,” was tried and held responsible for hurting Nicholas.

Just like so many cities in Texas, Wichita Falls has a gang problem. One of the most well known gangs is the Varrio Carnales (VC), Spanish for “neighborhood brothers.” This group is primarily made up of young Hispanic men between 18 and 25. The senseless crimes they commit include theft, criminal mischief, aggravated assault, and drive-by-shootings. Much of the shooting violence is aimed at the VC’s rival gang, the Puro Li’l Mafia (PLM). The Wichita Falls Police Department reports that these two groups have been shooting at each other for nearly 20 violent years.

In December of 2005, I picked up the case file against Willie Atkins and read something about a pinhole camera hidden behind a world map. Eighteen months later, we tried and convicted him for attempted sexual performance of a child1 named John. (All juveniles’ names in this article have been changed.)

On April 27, 2005, David Holland, a Kerrville resident, reported to the Kerr County Sheriff’s Department that several of his checks had been forged. The case was forwarded to the Criminal Investigation Division, and Captain Carol Twiss began her investigation. Little did she know that this investigation would result in an engaging in organized criminal activity indictment with 35 named defendants and 36 overt acts.