District attorney races are going off script,” Stanford Law School professor David Alan Sklansky wrote in a recent law journal article. For years, DAs who took a tough-on-crime stance by racking up convictions could usually count on being reelected. But something seems to be changing, and evidence of it could be found, Sklansky wrote, this past March in the Democratic primary for Nueces County district attorney. On one side, there was incumbent Mark Skurka, a 29-year veteran prosecutor best known for his conviction of Selena’s murderer, Yolanda Saldivar. “Mark Skurka is tough on criminals because they are tough on us,” a voice intoned in his reelection campaign’s TV ad. “When Mark Skurka goes to court, criminals go to prison.”

On the other side, there was Mark Gonzalez, a heavily tattooed Corpus Christi defense attorney whose ink includes a stylized “Not Guilty” on his chest, a reminder, he said, of the importance of the presumption of innocence. The Nueces County DA’s office has had serious problems lately, such as well-publicized allegations of failing to hand over exculpatory evidence to defense counsels and high turnover rates among prosecutors. Gonzalez’s campaign highlighted those issues, and Skurka’s campaign highlighted Gonzalez’s lack of prosecutorial experience and his tattoos. To the surprise of many, Gonzalez won by 12 points.