83rd DISTRICT –– Parents of former Marfa ISD teacher Sophia Sullivan — who was stabbed to death in Fort Davis in 2018 — are frustrated by a lack of communication from the district attorney, who they said has not contacted them about a retrial in the years after Sullivan’s husband was freed with a hung jury in 2019. Now with 83rd District Attorney Ori White running for another term, they worry the case will never be retried.
“We’re disappointed that there’s been no follow through at all from the district attorney,” said Chuck Sabey, Sophia Sullivan’s father. “This has certainly gone on for a long time, and it’s been hard for myself and my family, and we haven’t gotten the communications we hoped for.”
Sophia Sullivan, known as Sophi to friends and family, was found dead by her husband with more than 40 stab wounds in her Fort Davis home on March 16, 2018. Authorities quickly keyed in on her husband, Danny Sullivan, as a suspect and charged him with capital murder. Some jurors and family members later stated that a series of missteps by Jeff Davis County law enforcement may have led to no forensic evidence tied to Danny. Then DA and prosecutor Sandy Wilson relied on testimony from the Sullivans’ son, who witnessed the murder and pointed to his father as the killer, but he was only 7 years old at the time. While nine jurors voted to convict, three did not, resulting in a mistrial.
Following the mistrial, Danny was freed and has been living in Illinois ever since. However, an Odessa judge ruled in favor of Sophi’s mother, Theresa Blain, in a wrongful death suit naming Danny responsible for Sophi’s death and awarded her $7 million in damages last May. Danny continues to deny he had anything to do with the killing.
Sabey, Sophi’s father, said when White defeated Wilson in 2020, he promised Sophi’s family that a retrial for the case would be a priority. But the parents have said there has been no communication from White ever since, with more than four years passing since the first trial in November 2019. White told the Texas Observer a new trial was planned for the spring of 2023, then he moved that date to the summer of 2023, then to the fall of 2023.
“One of my highest priorities is to make sure that any victim of any type of crime is communicated with and knows what court dates are coming up,” White told The Sentinel after his election victory in 2020. Sabey said he has been contacting White’s office, with no reply the past two weeks. “The lines of communication have only been one-way,” Sabey said. “It’s been frustrating in my attempts to reach people.”
On Monday, White said he fully intends to retry the case. “We’re just waiting. All of our judges have just been inundated with cases that are on trial. We have to try cases where the people are in jail first. That’s the rule throughout the state of Texas. So, they don’t have a choice about that. I don’t have a choice about that either.”
However, no Texas law or rule requires judges to prioritize trying inmates awaiting a trial first. Texas laws on how long someone charged with a felony can be held in jail without an indictment can impact decisions by prosecutors and judges for setting trial dates. “If there’s a trial that’s ready whenever a defendant is in custody, they’ll get a priority setting, but that doesn’t mean another trial doesn’t get a setting,” said Jesse Gonzales, a former DA and current defense attorney running against White in the March 5 Republican Primary.
White’s office later clarified that it’s the judge’s discretion on who to schedule for trial and when, and that the DA can merely suggest that they are ready and request a date.
White said in the summer of 2022 that the defense and prosecution had agreed on a change of venue since it would be difficult to find jurors in the Jeff Davis County area without substantial knowledge of the case to retain impartiality. Months later, White said that the defense would be responsible for filing a motion to change venue. (Danny Sullivan no longer has defense counsel to file a motion.) Either party can file that motion, and White told The Sentinel that no motion had been filed by either side, so it’s unclear how a trial could even be considered anywhere in the near term if the venue hasn’t been decided.
“We just have this inundation of cases, particularly people illegally transporting individuals from Mexico,” White said of ongoing delays for setting trials. “I don’t know how many cases we have, what we have right now, but it’s quite a few, definitely in the hundreds.”
Presidio County Attorney Rod Ponton, who faces a primary challenge from Marfa attorney Blair Park, commented at the local candidate forum on February 10 that White had a backlog of 500 felony cases that had been filed but with no indictments.
White provided The Sentinel with statistics from his term beginning in 2020. His office has handled 2,800 cases in the district’s four counties — Pecos, Jeff Davis, Brewster, and Presidio. His office has prosecuted or disposed of 80% of those cases. The remaining 20% pending, about 560, include both indicted and un-indicted defendants. The pending cases, therefore, are “substantially small,” considering the total number of cases handled, he reported.
Gonzales, a Fort Stockton attorney who served as DA from 2009-2012, said Sophi’s murder case came up at two Fort Davis campaign events this month and that “it’s a pretty hot topic.” He said it would be impossible to comment on the possibility of a retrial if he was elected because he doesn’t have access to the case file, evidence and witnesses.
Gonzales also said he can’t verify a backlog at the 83rd DA’s office without access to files. “Court backlogs happen everywhere, some worse than others,” Gonzales said. If true, he said, “That’s a big number, a lot of cases to be filed but not disposed of, even if you go district-wide to all four counties.”
Gonzales said he wants to “make prosecutions more timely so people don’t get frustrated.”