11 News reporter Brad Woodard on the protest | Raw video of the protest

Activist Quanell X and dozens of protesters have gathered outside of the hearing into the district attorney's vanishing e-mails.

Some of them have made it inside the courtroom, and six federal marshals are there as well.

“It’s not that Chuck just is stubborn and won’t leave office,” said Robert Muhammad with the Nation of Islam. “Right now, he and his staff are covering up every dirty deed they’ve done.”

A sentiment spilling from the steps of the courthouse down into the crowd.

“And now everybody can see what we’ve long known,” said Hester King. He’s a Houston resident. “You don’t get justice down here.  You can’t find justice down here, which means we have to demand a complete housecleaning. Everybody’s got to go not just Rosenthal.”

“These are people who are victims of a criminal justice system that’s not fair to all people in this city. Everybody, including myself, needs to stand up and saw we need to get it right,” said Houston City Councilmember Peter Brown.

Among the group of spectators is Houston City Councilwoman Jolanda Jones, who has publicly called for Chuck Rosenthal's immediate resignation.

Thursday afternoon, Judge Kenneth Hoyt questioned Scott Durfee, Rosenthal's attorney in the DA's office. Judge Hoyt asked when Durfee first informed Rosenthal that the e-mails, which had been supoenaed, were missing. Durfee said he told Rosenthal on Nov. 26. Hoyt asked what Rosenthal's reaction was.

"He assumed that I had saved them, and they had been backed up," Durfee said. "When I told him they had not been, he seemed crestfallen and suprised."

Earlier in the day, the director of information technology for Harris County was on the stand, facing detailed questions about the disappearance and reappearance of roughly 3,500 e-mails.

Gary Zallar said he first discovered Nov. 21, 2007, that those e-mails were no longer in Rosenthal’s e-mail account.

A federal judge had ordered Rosenthal’s office to allow examination of those e-mails the day before. An Oct. 31, 2007, supoena in a civil rights lawsuit had called for Rosenthal’s emails, sent from his county account, between July 1 and Oct. 15, 2007.

Zallar testified that when he accessed Rosenthal’s account Nov. 21, 2007, only 1,585 of the 4,000 to 5,000 e-mails he expected from that period were still present. Nor were they present on a backup tape, taken Nov. 17.

Zallar said the county did have a backup tape from Aug. 23, which only existed because it had been earlier removed from circulation, which overwrites the backups every 10 days.

That tape contained 3,537 “responsive” e-mails from Rosenthal’s account, Zallar testified.

Zallar has not said when the missing e-mails may have been deleted. There is evidence that Rosenthal deleted a batch of e-mails sent to him by Zallar on Nov. 5, he said.

The question of when and why the e-mails were deleted is crucial to a contempt hearing being held right now. Attorney Lloyd Kelley believes Rosenthal deliberately deleted thousands of e-mails after a judge signaled he would have to hand them over.

“So what I’m looking for here is a process,” said 11 News Legal Analyst Gerald Treece. “What happened on November 5? What is the reason on that day the e-mails were there then they weren’t. Maybe it’s negligence.”

Many of the recovered e-mails contained romantic banter with his executive secretary, as well as videos and images described as racist and potentially pornographic. Other e-mails sent from Rosenthal’s public account indicated he was campaigning for re-election from his county computer.

Roughly 2,000 e-mails are still missing and are not likely to ever be recovered, Zeller said.

Rosenthal was in the courtroom but did not testify.

Court will resume at 9 a.m. Friday.