Rick Roach #5

Ex-DA Roach wants his guilty plea voided

Original Story: http://www.lubbockonline.com/stories/092508/loc_336631528.shtml

Thursday, September 25, 2008
Story last updated at 9/25/2008 - 1:39 am

Rick Roach: Ex- 31st district attorney.

Disgraced former 31st District Attorney Rick Roach is asking a federal judge to void his 2006 guilty plea to state drug charges, arguing his attorney gave him bad legal advice.

Roach made the assertion in an April application for a writ of habeas corpus filed in Fort Worth, where the case was transferred last month.

Roach said in the application his attorney, Bill Kelly, fed him "erroneous legal advice" that convinced him to plead guilty. A woman answering the phone at Kelly's law firm in Canyon on Tuesday said he was out of the office for most of the week and could not be reached.

Roach, 59, of Pampa made a living putting away gun runners, drug dealers and other criminals as the chief prosecutor for Texas' 31st Judicial District, which encompasses Gray, Hemphill, Lipscomb, Roberts and Wheeler counties.

He was elected to the office in a close 2000 race, then ran unopposed in 2004.

Roach has been in federal custody since June 2005, when U.S. District Judge Mary Lou Robinson sentenced him to five years in prison for possessing a firearm while using or being addicted to narcotics. In June 2006, Roach also pleaded guilty to a state drug possession charge and was given an 18-year sentence.

Police and court records leading up to his plea in the drug case painted Roach as a chronic drug user, who on at least one occasion was spotted in his office injecting himself with methamphetamine.

His sentences are running concurrently.

Roach also wrote in his application he has not been given enough access to the prison's law library to mount his appeal.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected an earlier appeal by Roach on March 24.

Roach is in custody at the federal correctional institution in Fort Worth. He names the institution's warden, Rebecca Tamez, and the state attorney general as respondents.

Get More: Rick Roach | drug charges | Bill Kelly | Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

Reader Comments

Posted by: kkgirl at Sep. 25, 2008 at 6:48:51 am

what a big baby!!!! you did the crime now shut up and do the time!!!!

Posted by: bubbaa75 at Sep. 25, 2008 at 7:09:34 am

I agree with kkgirl. If you can't do the time, don't do the crime. I wonder how many times Roach said that about the people he put away?

Posted by: srf53005 at Sep. 25, 2008 at 7:45:36 am

pitiful

Posted by: jshancock at Sep. 25, 2008 at 8:39:19 am

so his attorney gave him, an attorney, bad advice? Didn't he have to pass the same bar exam to practice law in this state. Heck he even passed it possibly while high, i would figure he could detect bad legal advised when it was given. Sounds like he doesn't want to do the time for the crime.

Posted by: martinm62 at Sep. 25, 2008 at 12:40:44 pm

That was my first thought...an attorney giving another attorney bad advice. Boohoo!

Posted by: bjdiaz at Sep. 25, 2008 at 4:39:17 pm

He probably knows Texas crimminal law better than his attorney did. They just file these things hopeing something sticks. This is probably his last try at the appeal.

Posted by: bbrgirl at Sep. 27, 2008 at 1:10:43 pm

Poor little whiney rick. It's all about himself. Maybe his former victims assistant/girlfriend/mistress Melanie Carter of Pampa can help him out and lie for him some more.