Judicial candidate indicted in Brewster County

By ALBERTO TOMAS HALPERN

BREWSTER COUNTY – A Brewster County grand jury last week indicted area attorney and 394^th State Judicial District Judge candidate Anthony Foster on a felony theft charge.

Joe Anthony Foster Jr. is formally charged with Misapplication of Fiduciary Property. The indictment, issued Tuesday, October 9, and filed in the Brewster County District Clerk’s office, states that Foster allegedly misapplied U.S. currency or “its equivalent” belonging to Mary Fern Sandlin, “an elderly individual,” in the amount of $100,000 but less than $200,000 from January 2004 to December 2008.

Anthony Foster

The indictment indicates that Foster was a “fiduciary or a person acting in a fiduciary capacity, contrary to an agreement under which he held the property, and in a manner that involved substantial risk of loss of the property to Mary Fern Sandlin, the owner of said property . . . and the person for whose benefit the property was held by the defendant” for her benefit.

A check of the State Bar of Texas website shows Foster, who lives in Fort Davis and practices in the area from his Alpine office, received his Texas law license in 1974 shortly after receiving his Doctor of Jurisprudence from the University of Texas at Austin. The state bar website also indicates that he was publicly reprimanded in May 2003 but doesn’t note the circumstances for the reprimand.

Foster’s attorney, Mike Barclay of Alpine, said it was too premature to comment about the case when contacted this week.

Foster is free on a $2,500 bond.

He is seeking the office of state district judge for Brewster, Jeff Davis, Presidio, Culberson, and Hudspeth counties in the November 6 election as the Republican Party candidate.

The Texas Attorney General’s office is case prosecutor.