Texas Governor Rick Perry has been booked at the Blackwell-Thurman Criminal Justice Center in Austin, for two felony indictments of abuse of power on August 19.
Rick Perry told dozens of cheering supporters outside the Texas courthouse that he would “fight this injustice with every fiber of my being”.
Showing no hint of worry on his face, Rick Perry flashed a thin, confident grin beneath perfect hair in his mug shot. He then headed to a nearby Austin eatery for ice cream, even gleefully documenting his excursion via Twitter.
The Republican, who is mulling a second presidential run in 2016, was indicted after carrying out a threat to veto funding for state public corruption prosecutors. He has dismissed the case a political ploy, and supporters chanting his last name and holding signs greeted him upon arriving at a Travis County Courthouse in Austin.
“I’m going to fight this injustice with every fiber of my being. And we will prevail,” Rick Perry said before walking inside the building, where he set off a metal detector but didn’t break stride, heading straight to a first-floor office to have his fingerprints taken and stand for the mug shot. In it he’s wearing a blue tie but shed the glasses that have become something of his trademark in recent months.
The longest-serving governor in Texas history was indicted last week for coercion and official oppression for publicly promising to veto $7.5 million for the state public integrity unit, which investigates wrongdoing by elected officials and is run by the Travis County district attorney’s office. Rick Perry threatened the veto if the county’s Democratic district attorney, Rosemary Lehmberg, stayed in office after a drunken driving conviction.
Showing no hint of worry on his face, Rick Perry flashed a thin, confident grin beneath perfect hair in his mug shot (photo Austin Police Department)
Rosemary Lehmberg refused to resign and Rick Perry carried out the veto, drawing an ethics complaint from a left-leaning government watchdog group.
Rick Perry was indicted by a grand jury in Austin, a liberal bastion in otherwise mostly fiercely conservative Texas.
“I’m going to enter this courthouse with my head held high knowing the actions I took were not only lawful and legal, but right,” Rick Perry told supporters before heading inside the building located just steps from the governor’s mansion.
In less than 10 minutes, Rick Perry was outside again, telling those assembled that he was confident in the rule of law.
“We don’t resolve political disputes or policy differences by indictments,” he said.
“We don’t criminalize policy disagreements. We will prevail. We will prevail.”
If convicted on both counts, Rick Perry could face a maximum 109 years in prison – though legal experts across the political spectrum have said the case against him may be a tough sell to a jury. No one disputes that Rick Perry has the right to veto any measures passed by the state Legislature, including any parts of the state budget.
However, the complaint against Rick Perry alleges that by publicly threatening a veto and trying to force Rosemary Lehmberg to resign, he coerced her. The Republican judge assigned to the case has assigned a San Antonio-based special prosecutor who insists the case is stronger than it may outwardly appear.
Rick Perry has hired a team of high-powered attorneys, who are being paid with state funds to defend him.
Top Republicans have been especially quick to defend the governor, though, since a jail video following Rosemary Lehmberg’s April 2013 arrest showed the district attorney badly slurring her words, shouting at staffers to call the sheriff, kicking the door of her cell, and sticking her tongue out. Rosemary Lehmberg’s blood alcohol level was also three times the legal limit for driving.
Rick Perry is the first Texas governor to be indicted since 1917.
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Rick Perry plans to turn himself in to authorities for fingerprinting and a mug shot on Tuesday, Reuters reported.
The Texas governor he was indicted by a jury in the state last week on two felony charges of abusing power, local news reports said.
Rick Perry, 64, is due to be arraigned on Friday.
The indictment has cast a shadow over Rick Perry’s possible bid for the Republican presidential nomination, with experts predicting that legal wrangling in the case is likely to stretch into the 2016 election cycle.
Rick Perry plans to turn himself in to authorities for fingerprinting and a mug shot (photo Getty Images)
Rick Perry was indicted on August 15 by a grand jury in Travis County, a Democratic stronghold in the heavily Republican state, over his veto of funding for a state ethics watchdog that has investigated prominent Texas Republicans.
The governor has called the indictment politically motivated and pledged to fight the charges.
Rick Perry became the target of an ethics probe last year after he vetoed $7.5 million in funding for the state public integrity unit run from the Travis County district attorney’s office.
The veto was widely viewed as intended to force the resignation of county District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg, a Democrat, after she had pleaded guilty to drunken driving but remained in office.
Democrats have said Rick Perry may have been looking to put an ally in charge of the unit, extending what they say is cronyism in his administration.
Rick Perry faces a prison sentence of five to 99 years.
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A new anti-drug advertisement shows the devastating physical transformation addicts experience after years of meth use.
The photos, that show a shocking deterioration, were compiled from mug shots of drug users that were arrested repeatedly over the years.
The continued drug use caused horrific damage to the drug users’ skin with sores and scarring – that can be caused by uncontrollable scratching during a hallucination when the addict imagines bugs are crawling under their skin.
Additional changes seen in the ad, produced by Rehabs.com, include the so-called “meth mouth” caused by decay and grinding.
Users also progressively began to look gaunt, brought on by malnutrition as the drug suppresses a person’s appetite and the body can begin to consume muscle tissue due to the lack of proper nutrition.
The concept for this kind of ad was actually conceived in 2004, by Deputy Bret King from the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office in Oregon.
The officer began tracking mugshots of people who were brought in to police custody more than once.
Over the years he began to witness the physical transformation that occurred in methamphetamine addicts.
He decided to compile the photos for an anti-drug campaign in December 2004 – to educate children on the realities of the drug.
“I’ve made it my business to go through the mug shot system every day. I’ll admit it: I’m looking for the most extreme faces,” he told The Oregonian in 2004 about the project.
From Drugs to Mugs anti-drug advertisement shows the devastating physical transformation addicts experience after years of meth use
The recent video and pictorial from Rehabs.com comes after a 2011 photo spread from the Oregon police, From Drugs to Mugs, that shows the impact of all hard drugs including cocaine, heroin and meth.
“Everyone experiments at college or school and I want From Drugs to Mugs to show kids that everyone in those pictures started on cannabis, they didn’t just dive head first into heroin.”
“So I ask the students at schools to look at these people and think about their actions, otherwise that could end up being you,” Deputy Bret King said in 2011.
The Multnomah Sheriff’s Office has also produced a heart-wrenching educational documentary to aid in its fight against young people turning to drugs.
“I want to be able to illustrate the connection between that first decision to use drugs and then down the road when it’s a horrible mess,” Bret King said.
Expanding their presentation, which is to be aired in high schools across America, the law enforcement officer and his team interviewed 300 adult inmates at Multnomah County’s Inverness Jail.
In the 48-minute video, Drug Enforcement Administration officers are interviewed about how they find and arrest drug abusers.
Deputy Bret King added testimony from Multnomah County jail inmates who had been arrested in burglaries and other crimes that have been linked to drug use.
It is Deputy Bret King’s hope that the video will show teens how easy it is to fall into drug habits.
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