Overview
- The Travis County District Attorney's Office dropped evidence-tampering charges against former Williamson County Sheriff Robert Chody and county attorney Jason Nassour on July 1 after appellate rulings limited the evidence prosecutors could use.
- A court order signed July 13 directs that each of the 12 jurors and two alternates receive about $26,700, leaving Travis County responsible for roughly $375,000 in payments.
- Judge Karen Sage applied the statutory formula of $20 for the first day and $58 for each subsequent day across a 457-day standby period during which jurors were told to remain impartial, producing the unusually large per-juror award.
- The underlying prosecution centered on whether raw 'Live PD' footage of Javier Ambler II’s 2019 in-custody death was preserved or properly subpoenaed, and the defendants say the footage could only have been obtained by a correctly filed subpoena.
- Chody and Nassour have filed a civil suit naming Williamson and Travis counties and prosecutors Jose Garza and Shawn Dick, and an editorial urged the Travis district clerk to legally challenge the payout, a dispute that could reshape who pays and how courts treat long paused trials.