Texas’ highest criminal appellate court declined to hear a petition for discretionary review in the case of John Chambers, former chief of the Indian Lake Police Department, who sought to have 14 misdemeanor counts of tampering with governmental records reversed.
The petition was the second filed at the Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) by Chambers. It was published on Tuesday under a section listing petitions for review the court has chosen not to re-litigate.
In August 2017, Chambers appealed his convictions at CCA, which found that evidence was insufficient to show that Chambers ordered a subordinate officer to falsify firearms qualification records with intent to defraud or harm the state.
(That subordinate was Alfredo Avalos, his assistant chief. A Cameron County grand jury has since charged Avalos, now a lieutenant with the Bishop Police Department, with two counts of misuse of official information for accessing the Texas Law Enforcement Telecommunications System – TLETS – last October for nonofficial purposes to get information on two vehicles parked in a Brownsville driveway 2020-DCR-01558.)
Chambers' case was remanded to the 13th Court, which reversed the convictions, sending the case back to the trial court for a new punishment hearing. He faces up to one year in jail and a fine of up to $4,000 on each count.
Chambers again appealed to CCA in June, seeking to potentially have those misdemeanors reviewed and reversed.