AUSTIN — Consider the following scenario.

A local lawman has been accused of sexually abusing a girl in town. He's the police chief, so, naturally, he knows the county prosecutor, who steps aside from the investigation because of this conflict of interest. Someone needs to take over the case, but the town has a strict cap on how much it pays outside investigators. Who will want to accept the job of going after the town's top officer if the pay is minimum wage?

In a dramatic new court brief, the lawyers prosecuting Attorney General Ken Paxton say this is exactly the situation in which they now find themselves.

Last month, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals struck down the prosecutors' pay rate, saying it broke local rules and state laws. Now, the prosecutors are urging the court to reconsider that decision.

With nods to everything from To Kill a Mockingbird to Keeping up with the Kardashians, the prosecutors accuse local politicians of using the courts to derail the case by defunding it. They paint themselves as targets of a crusade perpetrated by Paxton and his allies. They plead with the court to give them one more chance to make the case that their pay rate is legal, arguing that anything less would be a miscarriage of justice and a breach of the separation of powers.

"Relators would never have accepted the formidable task of prosecuting the Texas Attorney General over the last three-plus years had they been able to look into the future and discern that their pay would come within a coat of paint of minimum wage," prosecutor Brian Wice writes in the brief, which was filed Dec. 21. "Because this matter should not now appear to the Court as it appeared to it when this matter was submitted almost a year ago, rehearing should be granted."

The 'color of money'

More than three years ago, a group of private criminal defense attorneys was asked to take over an investigation into whether Paxton, a Republican, committed multiple felonies during his time in the state Legislature. The local district attorney had recused himself because of his friendship with Paxton.

The attorneys — Wice, Kent Schaffer and Nicole DeBorde — accepted, and a local judge agreed to pay $300 an hour for their work as so-called special prosecutors. They took over the investigation and presented their case to a grand jury, which indicted Paxton in July 2015.

The case appeared headed for trial.

But the Collin County Commissioners Court disagreed with the prosecutors' agreed-upon rate and argued that it broke local rules that cap how much outside attorneys can be paid for their work. They signed the prosecutors' first, six-figure check but refused to pay the next invoice and took them to court instead.

The case ended up in front of the state's top judges, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which sided with the county commissioners last month and voided the prosecutors' last invoice. The local judge should never have guaranteed the prosecutors that amount, the court ruled, because state law says court-appointed attorneys have to be paid according to a strict fee schedule that includes either a fixed rate or a maximum and minimum rate.

1 / 6 2 / 6Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton talks with the crowd during the 2018 Texas GOP Convention held at the Henry B. Gonzâ¡lez Convention Center in downtown San Antonio. Texas on Friday, June 15, 2018. (Louis DeLuca/The Dallas Morning News)(Louis DeLuca / Staff Photographer) 3 / 6Texas Governor Greg Abbott greets Attorney General Ken Paxton and his wife Angela Paxton before speaking at a Collin County Republican Party event Monday, September, 3, 2018 in McKinney, Texas. (Ryan Michalesko/The Dallas Morning News)(Ryan Michalesko / Staff Photographer) 4 / 6Scott Becker, shown here block walking in Plano on January 16, 2018, was the district court judge who agreed to pay the prosecutors in the Ken Paxton case $300 an hour. He was ousted from his seat in the Republican primary earlier this year. (David Woo/The Dallas Morning News)(David Woo / Staff Photographer) 5 / 6Dan Cogdell (left) and Philip Hilder, attorneys for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, leave after a pretrial hearing at Collin County Courthouse in McKinney, Texas, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017. (Jae S. Lee/The Dallas Morning News)(Jae S. Lee / Staff Photographer) 6 / 6Special prosecutors Brian Wice (left) and Nicole DeBorde leave a courtroom after a Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's hearing at Collin County Courthouse in McKinney, Texas, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017. (Jae S. Lee/The Dallas Morning News)(Jae S. Lee / Staff Photographer)

The prosecutors have one final opportunity to change the court's mind and get paid according to the originally agreed-upon fee. In their motion for a rehearing, they accuse the Commissioners Court, Paxton's allies and even the attorney general himself of attacking the prosecutors' pay as a backdoor way to thwart their case.

"The real 'color of money' that forms the narrative of this case is the King's Ransom spent by Paxton, his millionaire buddy Jeff Blackard, and Commissioners Court, all of whom recognized that this prosecution could not survive for long if it lacked adequate funding," Wice wrote. "Make no mistake: while it was the Commissioners who prevailed in this Court, Paxton first recognized that the best, indeed, only way to derail his prosecution was to de-fund it.

"It is against the unique backdrop of this case where the 'x' axis of justice and the 'y' axis of politics intersect, that Relator seeks rehearing of a decision, that unless reversed, 'Twill be recorded for a precedent, and many an error by the same example will rush into the state: it cannot be,'" he said, quoting William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.

Paxton's criminal case has been on hold while the fees lawsuit winds its way through the legal system. The attorney general has pleaded not guilty to all the allegations, which stem from his investment in a McKinney technology firm called Servergy. The charges carry a sentence of up to 99 years in prison and tens of thousands in fines.

The federal government accused Paxton of similar offenses, but a judge twice threw out those charges.

'A loaded weapon'

Wice makes three arguments in his request for rehearing:

That the Court of Criminal Appeals never addressed his assertion that state law setting out attorneys fees violates the separation-of-powers doctrine.

That the law contradicts itself and "suffers from more undeniable, irreconcilable, and internal conflict than a dozen episodes of Keeping Up with the Kardashians .

And that the commissioners took too long to bring their case to the court.

Wice likens the appeals court decision to a "loaded weapon lying about," a method now open to any elected body "to derail what it sees as an unjust prosecution by de-funding it." No private attorney will want to take on high-profile cases like these, he argues, if they're paid a pittance.

If he worked 320 hours on the case in 2016, then he'd be paid either $9.93 or $18.18 an hour under the county's rules, Wice writes. Paxton has multiple lawyers on his payroll, and has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend himself. Wice argues that the prosecution should be on equal footing.

"In this country, our courts are the great levelers. The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom," he writes, quoting Harper Lee's classic novel at the outset of his filing. "If you're Ken Paxton, Atticus Finch's words most certainly ring true. ... Does Atticus Finch's promise of a square deal ring true for [the prosecutors]? Not so much."

Wice urged the court to reconsider its November ruling and allow him to state his case.

The prosecutors have threatened to step down if they lose this fight. The court can make a decision at any time. It took about one year to issue its first ruling in the case.

Paxton was narrowly re-elected in November.