SANTA FE, Texas — Lawyers for the accused Santa Fe High School shooter are trying to get the judge taken off the case.
They believe Judge Jeth Jones showed bias when he ordered a new mental evaluation in March, just over a month after Dimitrios Pagourtzis was recommitted to a state-run psychiatric hospital.
Pagourtzis has been repeatedly deemed incompetent to stand trial since 2019.
On Thursday, inside a Galveston courtroom, Judge Susan Brown heard two motions filed by the defense. The first was for Judge Jones to recuse himself over his March order.
Lawyers accused him of “expert shopping”, while prosecutors claim the defense “laid out a lot of grounds to complain but not to recuse”.
The second motion heard Thursday in court was a motion to disqualify.
Defense lawyers say current Judge Jared Robinson, the then-law partner of Judge Jones, a former defense attorney, met with Dimitrios Pagourtzis at the Galveston County Jail on May 18, 2018, the day of the shooting, to consider taking on the case.
Robinson later chose not to, but Pagourtzis’ lawyers argue the conversation is still considered confidential and therefore disqualifies Jones under state law from presiding over the case.
Prosecutors deny an attorney-client relationship existed.
“Judge Jones told us that he told Judge Robinson that if Judge Robinson took the case, they would have to dissolve their partnership,” defense lawyer Nick Poehl told reporters after the hearing.
District Attorney Jack Roady and other prosecutors declined to comment after the hearing.
Some shooting survivors and family members of victims who attended the hearing chose to speak afterward with reporters.
“I’m happy that Judge Jones has at least tried to get someone else to look at the mental competency of this,” said John Barnes, who was shot while serving as a police officer at Santa Fe High School.
“There is no reason why we should be sitting here right now going through all of this over again,” said Rosie Stone, whose 17-year-old son, Chris, was one of eight students killed, alongside two teachers.
“They argued the same thing over and over and over again, and it just got redundant at some point,” said Scot Rice, whose wife, Flo, was shot while serving as a substitute teacher. “It was really hard to listen to. It’s just like a precursor to what we’re going to be going through when the actual trial gets here.”
Judge Brown did not rule on either motion Thursday. A ruling is not expected until after May 8.