Morales said during an interview with Texas Monthly in 1996, that while toiling as a Bexar County prosecutor, "the exposure to the system and seeing victims get the shaft impressed upon me that changes needed to be made."
The young candidate excoriated Hernandez for, as Morales put it, "abusing the legislative continuance statute to delay the trials of rapists, murderers, and drug dealers he was representing.
In 2002, Morales had been expected to run for the vacant U.S. Senate seat held by the retiring three-term Republican Phil Gramm, however, he entered the Democratic gubernatorial primary for Governor of Texas but lost the nomination to Tony Sanchez by a landslide on March 12, 2002.
In October 2003, Morales reached a plea deal and admitted to having falsified documents in an attempt to give another lawyer a chunk of the state's tobacco settlement.
Morales and a onetime law associate were indicted on federal charges of trying to fraudulently obtain hundreds of millions of dollars in attorney fees from a state settlement with tobacco companies.