Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog

I’ll take “things that never used to happen for $800,” Alex.

A capital murder suspect charged in the killing of a Harris County sheriff’s deputy was released on bond Tuesday even though prosecutors had requested that he be held without bond last year.

According to records from the Harris County District Clerk’s Office, Judge Hilary Unger of the 248th District Criminal Court set bonds for Dremone Eugene Francis, age 27, at $500,000 for Capital Murder and $500,000 for Tampering with Evidence.

I know you’ll be shocked to learn that Unger is a Democrat.

Francis is one of two suspects in the murder of Harris County Sheriff’s Deputy Fernando Esqueda that took place in July 2024. Esqueda and several other officers responded to an incident at a pizzeria where suspect Ronnie Palmer was reportedly angered that his food did not look like its advertisement and had allegedly pistol-whipped an employee before fleeing.

Police tracked Palmer using Flock cameras, but as Esqueda sat in an unmarked vehicle observing Palmer and another suspect, he was ambushed and killed. Investigators found 41 spent casings at the scene. Both Palmer and Frances were charged with Capital Murder.

Palmer is being held without bond.

Records indicate Francis had been given “unsatisfactory termination of probation” in 2022 for charges related to the manufacture and delivery of a controlled substance. Unsatisfactory terminations have at times been awarded to suspects in Harris County even if they have not complied with the terms of their probation.

So not only was the accused cop-killer walking around as free as a bird, he had done so despite not meeting the terms of his parole. He was out there drinking or drugging or whatever, the Harris County criminal system just went “Nah, it’ll be fine.”

The Harris County Deputies Organization lambasted Unger in a social media statement and said, “We are outraged that Dremone Francis, a man charged with Capital Murder in the death of Deputy Fernando Esqueda, has been given bond.”

“He has a criminal history of breaking parole conditions and is free.”

Rafael LeMaitre, a spokesperson for new Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare and formerly employed by Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, blamed former District Attorney Kim Ogg. He said that prosecutors had failed to follow through on a request for no bond with a hearing, “so the court could not lawfully hold him at no bond.”

Teare, of course, is a full-blown Soros-backed radical leftist DA.

Ogg told The Texan that her office always filed motions asking for a hearing but that it was up to the judge to set the hearing and a trial.

Harris County’s bail bond practices were featured in a recent Texas Senate committee hearing on bail reform measures introduced by Sen. Joan Huffman (R-Houston).

Huffman cited research indicating that since 2021 there had been 162 homicide cases filed in the county for which the defendant was out on bond at the time of the murder.

So 162 people are dead because Harris County’s SJW-infected court system feels more sympathy for criminals that check the right “diversity” boxes than it does law-abiding citizens or policemen.

Back in The Bad Old Times, accused cop killers rarely even made it to court to get bonded out, just about all coming down with terminal cases of He Reached For A Gun. (In Homicide, David Simon talks about a police officer being ostracized by fellow cops for letting a cop-killer surrender.) In the Not Quite So Bad Times before social justice, a normal judge would never even think about bonding out an accused cop killer absent some pretty extreme circumstances.

Then again, up until the last decade or so, “Defund the Police” would have been as an insane idea outside the fever marches of the far left. But the social justice fever marches now control the Democratic Party (thanks to George Soros and Barack Obama), so a Harris County judge feels no compunction about letting an accused cop killer bond out.