Harris County’s top law enforcer, District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal, issued a public apology to his family late last month after intimate messages he sent to his secretary via e-mail were made public, in connection with a pending federal civil rights suit alleging misconduct by Harris Co. Sheriff’s employees, reports the Houston Chronicle.
In one message, dated Aug. 10, Rosenthal wrote to his secretary, Kerry Stevens (with whom he has acknowledged having an affair during his first marriage), that the “very next time I see you I want to kiss you behind your right ear.” In another message, he told Stevens, “You own my heart whether you want [it] or not,” the daily reported. In his apology, Rosenthal said he deeply regrets “having said those things.”
The 61-year-old Rosenthal, a Republican, is in charge of the DA’s office that is the nation’s leader in handing out death sentences. He’s running for a third term as Houston’s DA and is being challenged for the job by Democrat C.O. Bradford, the former chief of the Houston PD. Bradford told the daily that Rosenthal’s “personal use of government property” to send his messages of love to Stevens was “totally inappropriate.”
This article appears in 2007.