The Top ‘O Texas Republican Women recently held their monthly meeting, with acting 31st District Attorney, Leslie Timmons as the guest speaker who provided insight on her background and what her role has been so far within our county. Introducing Leslie was TOTRW President, Kathryn Green.
“Leslie was appointed by Governor Abbot as District Attorney for the 31st Judicial District of Texas in May this year. Prior to that, she was the Wheeler County Attorney for 13 years and was Roberts County Attorney for 11 years. She is a proud graduate of Texas Tech University, where she earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Agricultural Economics in 1993. She continued her education at Texas Tech University School of Law, earning her law degree in 1996. With nearly 30 years of legal experience, she brings an extensive background in criminal law and courtroom litigation to her role as District Attorney. As the 31st District Attorney, she is responsible for prosecuting serious criminal offenses, working closely with law enforcement, and advocating for victims of crime. Her work involves navigating complex legal issues while balancing the rights of the accused with the responsibility to protect the public and seek justice. Please welcome 31st District Attorney, Leslie Timmons.”
Law Background and Appointment
“I started law school in August of ‘94, I had just turned 21, and I graduated in December of 1996. I took the bar exam in February of 1997, and I had my first job starting in March. I was the Assistant County Attorney in Hemphill County working for Charles Kessie, probably the only Democrat I ever worked with, at least to my knowledge,” Leslie laughed. “It was a great experience, and from there I opened my own practice, and then ran for County Attorney in Roberts County. I won that election and was sworn in January of 2001. I was there for about 11 years and I ended up moving back to Wheeler County to be closer to family. I wasn’t going to run for County Attorney in Wheeler County, I had no desire because I felt like I had done my time and I was just going to go into private practice. That was until I tried my first jury trial in Wheeler County and won, and I was talked into running. So I was elected and was the County Attorney for 13 years until Franklin McDonough resigned last December, and I looked at him and said, ‘who is going to take your place?’ He had no idea, and that was a little concerning considering how close my office worked with his. After praying about it for a month and talking to my kids about it to make sure they were okay with it, I submitted my application to the Governor’s office January 5. I finally received a phone call and I was to come in April 17. I did the interview, and it was rather intense which I’ll talk about later. But I completed that process and found out about a week later from Abbott’s Appointments Chairwoman that I had the appointment, but I had to wait for the Governor to announce it, and that took about four days. I was just on pins and needles waiting for it to come out, but it’s not official until he makes it official. That happened on May 7, and on May 13, Judge Emmert swore me in office in Wheeler County right before docket call and plea hearings. So we hit the ground running. Immediately after I was sworn into office, I hired Mr. McDonough back as special counsel so that I could use his knowledge on the cases they had indicted and we could continue forward without any problems whatsoever.”
“So that brings us to present day, we were actually scheduled to go to trial next week and the judge cancelled on us, but we have two more trials scheduled at the end of the year. One in November, which is unfortunately one of the types of cases that I tend to deal with a lot, which is a child sex case. Then we have an aggravated assault with a deadly weapon which is scheduled to kick off in December.
Family
“I have two kids; Austin has just turned 27 on Sunday, and he and his wife have twins, a boy and a girl. So I got to go down there on Sunday and see them. I have a daughter who is 24 and lives in Dallas. I married to Kelly Timmons. His dad actually grew up in Lefors and his mom grew up here in Pampa, and we live out between Shamrock and Wheeler close to our family.
Working in Gray County
“For the 13 years that I’ve been in Wheeler County, the first thing I did was I worked on having regularly scheduled dockets and moved cases, and I have tried to bring that over, because I swear for every 10 cases we move, we have 10 more that take their place. It’s very busy. Cameron Reynolds is my Assistant District Attorney, and between the two of us, we have about 500 cases. Gray County is obviously the bulk of those, with Wheeler County being second. Then Hemphill is probably third, and we don’t get a lot from Lipscomb and Roberts, but we do have a few. The 31st District is a circuit court. If any of you have served on a jury for Judge Emmert, then you’ve heard how it’s one of the original circuit courts that covers five counties. We cover Lipscomb, Hemphill, Roberts, Wheeler and Gray, and it is a court original jurisdiction. We try to hit most of those places at least once a month, but it’s kind of hit or miss. We have 223rd and 31st here every single month where we are running through our dockets and trying to get trials scheduled.
“On odd fact about me is that I am a paramedic. After my very first jury trial which was here in Gray County in May of 2000, it was an intoxicated manslaughter. Walking through with the paramedics, I realized that I had no clue about medical terminology, and I figured that would be the easiest way to learn medical terminology. I thought the course content could not hurt me as a prosecutor, never did I expect to work as a paramedic nor did I expect to love the job. I did 48 hours of clinical in an ambulance and in the emergency room, and the very first time I rode in an ambulance, I was hooked. During Covid when they shut the courthouses down and we couldn’t do anything, I came over here and worked as a paramedic in Gray County. I did that for about a year and a half. That education coupled with prosecution has benefitted me in more ways than I could count as far as being able to pick up medical records and knowing exactly what they’re saying, talking intelligently to my experts, my doctors-I had no idea what I was getting into when I got into it, but it has been an absolute God send. I am thankful every day even though I’m not doing that job anymore because it is physically taxing, and I would not trade any of my time at all. It was a wonderful experience.
Appointment Process
“I mentioned earlier about the appointments process, and when I first submitted my application, the District and County Attorneys in the state of Texas have an association called the Texas District and County Attorneys Association. I have served on the board there a total of four years, two years as a Region 1 Director and then two years as County Attorney At-Large for the state. I learned to rely on them pretty heavily if I have a question about something I’ve never dealt with before. So as I started going through the appointments process, the very first thing I did was pick up the phone and call Shannon Edmonds who was our Director, to which he said, ‘I have no idea, I’m of no help.’ I was able to contact a few people who have been through this, and they shared with me what to expect. I filled out not only an appointments application which is about six pages itself, but if you are applying as a judge or a district attorney, you have to fill out a judicial application, and I believe mine ended up being about 19 pages. It goes in depth with questions about the five most consequential cases that you ever tried to a jury and your favorite Supreme Court Justice. A lot of things that are great objectively, but actually have very little to do with my job. So I submitted the application in January, don’t receive a call until the first of April. It was just radio silence for about three months. Then they call on a Friday and want to know if I can be there the next Friday and I say absolutely. So I’m on a plane and on my way. I get there and on one side of the table, there is a member of Governor Abbott’s General Council who could probably be my son that I’m not sure has ever seen the inside of a courtroom, and the other was Miss Peggy who I’ve known for a long time. She was a Tea Party Activist who worked for Reagan and for Bush. So I have a pretty good feeling for her. Mr General Council proceeded to grill me not just for who my favorite Supreme Court Justice was and why, but who my least favorite was and what cases I thought they got wrong and what cases I thought they got right. At some point in time as we are arguing back and forth, I looked at him and said, ‘Could you at least ask me a question about my job?’ He finally did and asked me what I thought about the changes to our child sex laws, which our legislature has been gracious enough to continue to beef up those laws. We now have the ability to charge continuous sexual abuse, which is up to and including life in prison without the possibility of parole. That was a huge win for us. We now have the ability to do the same thing with continuous domestic abuse, which is a big change. I told him then, ‘more is always better.’ The more tools you give us in our toolkit, the better we’re going to be prosecuting these cases. That is one of the areas that I am really focused on because it seems like we have had such an increase in the number of those cases over the last decade and especially over the last four or five years. I don’t know if there’s one single factor that’s responsible for that, or if it’s a combination of the internet and the availability. I think some of it is that people are actually listening to children and them being more willing to outcry and trust the adults. Those trusted adults are willing to act on it and actually do something about it. I like to think that’s the reason why and not the fact that there are more really bad people in our society, but I think it’s a combination of both.
Political Affiliation and Beliefs
“Kendra, your prayer was so spot on about how we are so divided, and we so need God in this election. I’ve never seen it like this. I have been a life-long Republican and this is the first time I’m on the ballot as write-in. I had to declare Independent, and I’ve never been on anything but a Republican. Based on the way it happened, it had to happen that way. As far as being a life-long Republican, when I was an undergrad, I scheduled my afternoon classes around Rush Limbaugh. A&M was the only thing we could get out in the sticks, so by the time I got to Texas Tech, I continued following him. I’ve been 100% red my entire life When I went through the appointments process and once I got to Peggy’s side of the table and she was questioning me, she would say, ‘I would probably agree with you, but..’ and then ask the question. At some point in time, she picks up her file and it’s got my X account, which is the only social media I have that could possibly be scandalous. They had some of my posts pulled up, and one of them was when I called Democrats domestic terrorists. They told me that probably wasn’t smart unless I knew my voters, and I said I do know my voters. In the part of Texas that I’m in, the people who are not going to vote for me over me saying something like that and calling something what is are probably not going to vote for me anyway. I said what I said and I meant it.
“With that being said, this is absolutely critical. I still listen to Dan Bongio to this day. He has the 10-10-10 rule: take ten people to the polls with you, email ten people, and call ten people. I think that based on the number of people we have seen at the courthouse, we are having sectional, almost presidential turnout right now. I went into Wheeler County on Monday morning early to go vote and there were people in line behind me to vote on a Monday morning at 8 AM. I have not seen that in midterms before, and I think people understand that you have to vote in this election like your life depends on it because it does. I know I said that last election, but I feel like that every election here on out moving forward, we need to act like our lives and freedom depend on it. We are at such a critical level, if we were to lose this midterm, we’ve lost Trump’s agenda. If we lose this midterm, it makes it more possible that we lose the presidential election. We are looking at losing our country if that happens. Just get out there and encourage people to vote. I’m an American, I am a patriot, so therefore I’m going to be political because I care about this country and I want to save it.”
Question #1: Tell us about you being a write-in candidate.
“So there are 11 write-in candidates on this ballot. Once you get down the ballot and it says 31st District Attorney, it will pop up a keyboard where you type in my name. It’s fairly easy to spell, but you’ll have to type in Leslie Timmons. I do not have an opponent, so I’m on there by myself. I voted for myself, so I feel fairly confident that I won,’ she laughed. “But I would appreciate every vote if you don’t mind typing out Leslie Timmons. I will get to do this again in two years, but during that time, I’ll get to go through the primary process. This was created because Franklin was late in resigning, and he resigned at a time when it did not create a vacancy and the Republican primary stuff I could not file for that position. I had to learn how to file as an Independent and get on there as a write-in through the Secretary of State. I think it’s been an educational process for not only me, but for Randa and the Secretary of State’s office as well.”
Question #2: Can you tell us something about a difficult case that you had that greatly impacted you?
“I’ll tell you one we had July 6. It was the first jury trial we had scheduled since I took office, and this isn’t so much about the case matter itself, it ends up being Jesus justice and picking out a jury in a small town. I’ve been in a small town and that’s the only place I’ve ever picked juries, so one would think after 30 years I would know this. It was continuous sexual abuse of a child and two aggravated sexual assaults. We had an absolutely amazing, strong little victim who was so brave and so ready to go. We get our jury picked, and I know I heard Franklin ask not less than 10 times out of the couple of hundred people in the courtroom if anyone was related to the defendant. They said his name 40 times between prosecution and defense. We were ready to go on this, worked during lunch, and one of the jurors says, ‘I think he’s my second cousin.’ To Judge Emmert’s credit, he tried to rehabilitate him, he asked him if it was going to have him rejected from the family reunion next year because it’s obviously not a close family. But then the guy started talking about living in a specific area and knowing his cousin lived in that area and started getting into facts specific to the case. We had to declare a mistrial. That was on a Monday, and on Thursday the defendant went to the hospital with oral cancer, and never got out. There went our opportunity to try him and hold him accountable. Then we find out he passed away a week ago. I was pretty disappointed that we did not get our opportunity to give that little girl her justice. I know it would’ve been traumatic, and I think that might have been a blessing that she didn’t have to go through that. That’s just a recent one. The very first case I did is probably the case that has stuck with me and I think it’s kind of ordered my steps, but it was the intoxication manslaughter and two intoxication assaults case here in Gray County that happened in 1999. That’s where I saw that I needed medical knowledge that actually complimented my legal knowledge. We got guiltys for the intoxication manslaughter and two intoxication assaults. That defendant served every single day of his sentence, and that was the first big win I had. The decision to ultimately go into EMS and get my medic and how it lead my life and ordered my steps changed my direction, and that’s been 26 years ago.”
