The Insider

A staffer with the D.A.'s office said the probe has uncovered nothing to indicate the councilman or his wife knew the contributions were being used for anything illegal.

"Do I think Shaun Kelley calls up his dad and says, 'Dad, I need to pay a guy back for dope I got in here?' " said our source. "No, I'd be surprised if dad knew exactly why he was paying these inmates. But with Shaun's background, you'd think dad would be a little more conscious of the fact that his little angel might not be up to any good."

Shaun Kelley's recent police record hardly qualifies him as an angel. In addition to having his cocaine sentence dismissal overruled and being jailed and flunking a urine test, he faces a misdemeanor charge for assaulting his estranged wife at her house on Milton Street in West University on April 24.

According to a police report, Shaun and Laura Ingle Kelley were riding in a car when a pedestrian yelled for him to slow down. Kelley stopped the vehicle and got out to confront the pedestrian. His wife was apparently embarrassed by the action, got behind the wheel, and then drove the vehicle alone back to her house several blocks away. Kelley pursued her on foot, confronted her at the house and punched her in the eye, the report states. Mrs. Kelley filed the complaint May 12 after allegedly receiving threatening phone calls from Kelley, including a warning that he would plant drugs in her yard. She has since filed for divorce.

That's not all: Shaun Kelley is also charged with three misdemeanors in Fort Bend County -- failure to stop and render aid, marijuana possession and fleeing the scene of an accident -- stemming from an auto mishap last summer.

Despite all that, having a public official for a father can apparently win even a prodigal son unusually sympathetic treatment from Sheriff Tommy Thomas's minions. "We're being told that [the councilman] calls down [to the jail] to complain about conditions and requests things for his son," said our source in the investigation. "Somebody's willing to take his calls. Councilman Kelley apparently knows people in the department, and it appears he's pulled some strings."

The councilman said he's only tried to make sure his son is treated fairly. "I support my son 100 percent and will at all times make sure my son is not treated any worse than any other inmate," he said. "But I have done nothing that any citizen would not do. Zero. No pressure on anybody politically regarding this case, other than what any other person would have done."

Of course, a city councilman is not just any other person, and the younger Kelley has received more favorable treatment at the jail than the relative of a police officer would receive in similar circumstances, according to our sources.

Shaun Kelley was initially placed in a cellblock at the jail, 7D3, containing 30 prisoners, an assignment that denied him privacy or even a quiet night's sleep, since prisoners sometimes chat loudly all night long. On the evening of March 28, according to prosecutorial sources, Kelley began screaming at fellow prisoners who were talking after the lights had gone out at 10:30 p.m. He singled out one prisoner, a Kenyan named David Lihalakha, cursed him, called him "nigger" and slammed him against the jail bars.

Other prisoners separated the two, and when disciplinary action was meted out, Lihalakha, who had done little more than play punching bag for Kelley, was put in administrative lockdown with his privileges to watch TV or receive visitors rescinded for a ten-day period that ended this week.

Kelley, according to investigators, was put on probationary status but received no punishment or withdrawal of privileges. In fact, the following week he was assigned to a plum work detail cellblock, 7D5, where each prisoner in a group of seven or eight has his own cell off a main room, with more privacy and quiet. On top of that, when other prisoners in the unit were rousted to go to work, Kelley was allowed to remain in the cell and watch TV during the day. A notation on the glass window of a deputy's post near the cellblock read: "Don't send Shaun Kelley out on a special detail work crew."

Captain Jerry Moore, who's in charge of prisoner classification at the jail, said Kelley was moved from the cellblock where the incident with Lihalakha occurred to another block containing some work prisoners, but that conditions are substantially the same in both and he was transferred for security reasons. Moore said he knows of no attempt by Councilman Kelley to influence treatment of his son.

"The reason people are in those special cells is because they're assigned to details as trusties," explained one source with a different account of Kelley's handling. "Not Shaun. He's a couch potato, he does what he wants to do, but he's not enjoying or handling the process very well."

It's certainly not for lack of effort by his dad.