Former Tarrant justice of the peace found guilty of fraud, ordered to write 50-page essay
A jury on Wednesday found a former longtime Tarrant County justice of the peace guilty of a felony crime in a case in which she was accused of improperly receiving tax benefits and lying about the location of her principal residence and in which the defendant alleged there was significant personal involvement of the county district attorney.
Jacquelyn Wright was convicted of three counts of falsifying homestead exemptions.
Wright was from 1991 to 2018 justice of the peace in Precinct 4, which covers most of northwest Tarrant County.
In Criminal District Court 3, visiting Judge Daryl Coffey sentenced Wright to four years of probation, 10 days in jail and a $2,500 fine, according to the Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office. Coffey also ordered that she write in the next 90 days a 50-page essay apologizing for her behavior.
Wright, 74, falsely applied for and received a residential homestead exemption between 2015 and 2018 for a home where she did not live, the jury found.
Wright was not living in Precinct 4, as required, when she ran for re-election between 2012 and 2018, the jury found.
The day after Wright filed for re-election in 2018, using the address of a home in Precinct 4 that she leased to a renter, Wright changed a water bill into her name to make it appear she lived in that home, according to the district attorney’s office.
An attorney representing Wright sought via a subpoena the trial testimony of Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney Sharen Wilson and alleged in a motion that the investigation was launched at a time that for Wright was politically inopportune. The subpoena was quashed, and Wilson did not testify.
The basis for the initiation in April 2018 of the Wright fraud investigation was a 2014 conversation between Wilson and Vickie Phillips, Wright attorney Michael P. Kelly wrote in the motion on the prosecutor’s subpoena.
Phillips had previously opposed Wright in a Republican primary election.
“According to Wilson, Phillips verbally told Wilson that she believed [Wright] did not live within Precinct 4 at that time, and personally ordered that [Wright] be investigated,” Kelly wrote in the motion.
Wilson sat on the information, Kelly wrote. “Four years later she personally asked her White Collar Division to initiate an investigation in the middle a runoff election which involved” Wright.
Wilson’s office said it began investigating the case after receiving a complaint that Wright did not live in the district in which she sought re-election and later discovered fraudulent homestead exemptions.
Wright did not respond on Wednesday to a message seeking to interview her. She previously referred to the matter in a message to a reporter as “a twisted political vendetta.”
This story was originally published February 2, 2022 at 5:51 PM.
