Articles about Law
New License Plate Law Kind of Screwed Up
So you know what happens when you wait until the last day of the legislative session to pass a whole flurry of bills? Some of them end up missing things, things that change the entire purpose of the law. Like in Arkansas a couple years ago, when they unintentionally made it OK to marry a baby, or something, by accident. Or this past legislative session in Texas, when they accidentally gave a law designed to make it a bigger deal to not have or obscure a license plate, but instead kind of gave it no teeth by forgetting the fine, apparently.
I’m no lawyer, or I’d be off lawyering and making big bank and scaring people. And man, I’d have this giant house with a maid that would just do floors, all day long. And two dogs – Herve Villechaize and Nipsey Russell. What was I saying? Right. I’m no lawyer, but if I got a ticket for missing a license plate after this law goes into effect, since the AG’s office will take six months to rule on the legalities, I might just fight it. I think.
Leading Off (9/19/11)
What a 1976 Trial Tells Us About John Wiley Price: The latest investigative brouhaha surrounding County Commissioner John Wiley Price isn’t the first time the politician has been backed into a legal corner. But what does an acquittal in 1976 tell us about how Price will handle the latest trouble? In short, don’t expect him to be eager to cooperate with the prosecution.
North Texas Economy Strengthens Guanajuato Ties: Most urban areas in the United States tend to draw migrants from specific regions of Mexico, and in the case of Dallas, it is the mountainous Guanajuato (which is one reason why someone needs to launch a new MLS team, Club León USA, and stick them in the Cotton Bowl, but that’s besides the point). In the current economy, in which the North Texas economy is outpacing other parts of the country, the labor-pool network remains entrenched and stronger than ever (sub req).
Bush Raises More Than $300 Million for Library: George W. Bush still has some serious fundraising swagger.
Leading Off (8/29/11)
Parents’ Bedwetting Punishment Kills Child: Because bedwetting isn’t enough of a humiliating ordeal, the parents of a 10-year-old Dallas boy decided to withhold water from their child for five days as punishment, and the boy eventually died when he collapsed and hit his head. That’s why Michael Ray James and Tina Alberson, both now in Dallas County jail, are this week’s winners of the most despicable and sickening parents in the world award.
Later This Week, The Sun Devil May Finally Show His Mercy: Forecasters are calling (sub. req.) for highs in the low 90s later in the week with a chance of rain. Couldn’t come sooner, as Sunday really strained the power grid. But the DMN article seems to lament that a break in the temperature later this week will mean we will come up short on breaking the record for most 100-degree days. I don’t really understand the desire. Seriously, just make it stop.
Jonathan Hudson Wins Dumbest Juror Ever Award: Why? Because he tried to “friend” the defendant in the case on Facebook. Nice.
Dallas Police Lineup Unit Stands Out From the Crowd: In this Boston Globe article (via the NYT, it would seem) Dallas’ special lineup unit gets a close look ahead of New Jersey’s efforts to overhaul their lineup program. Dallas assigns specially trained officers to lineups who have no relationship with individual cases to avoid witness coercion.
Perry Became a Millionaire While In Office: My favorite bit about this story is that when it comes down to hard cash, the anti-government poster boy, much like Michele Bachmann, has no problem pocketing government agricultural subsidies. Notice how both major Republican candidates have made their living/fortunes off the government or by leveraging their governmental positions.
Dirk Receives Germany’s Top Sports Honor: It’s called the Silver Laurel Leaf, and who else was going to win it this year, Andreas Klöden?
Beltre, Cruz Swap Spots on DL: The good news: Adrian Beltre starts a rehabilitation assignment in Triple-A Round Rock today and should return to the Rangers in a few days. The bad news? Friday night’s hero, Nelson Cruz, left last night’s game with a strained hamstring.
Yet Another Fan Seriously Injured At Ranger Game An unidentified 24-year-old man fell from a stairwell after the game Saturday night, proving once and for all that the Ballpark was constructed over an Native American burial ground and it is haunted by spiteful spirits, meaning the Rangers will need to move to a new stadium downtown preferably with a retractable roof so their starters won’t run out of gas mid-August.
Appeals Court Affirms First Amendment, Slaps Down Hiram Walker Royall
Hiram Walker Royall is a Highland Park developer who doesn’t much like it when journalists write about his business dealings. So when a woman named Carla Main wrote a book called Bulldozed: “Kelo,” Eminent Domain, and the American Lust for Land, about one of Royall’s development deals in Freeport, Texas, Royall sued her (and a whole bunch of other folks) for defamation. Late yesterday, the Texas Fifth Court of Appeals reversed an earlier court’s decision that the book wasn’t protected by the First Amendment. The full release from Main’s camp is after the jump.
This is good news for truth, justice, and the American way.
WFAA Weekend Morning Anchor Shon Gables Really, Really Wanted in Detroit
As we mentioned in March, a Detroit judge issued a bench warrant for the arrest of WFAA weekend morning anchor Shon Gables, who allegedly failed to appear in court to testify regarding her assets in connection to a $35,000 slander judgment against her.
Ed Bark, who has been on top of the story on his website unclebarky.com, caught everyone up before he headed out for his Independence Day weekend off. (more…)
Maurine Dickey Writes to AG to Review County Redistricting
Just a few minutes ago, I got a passel of documents from Dallas County Commissioner Maurine Dickey, who has already expressed her extreme displeasure regarding the redistricting maps the commissioner’s court voted on a few weeks ago. Seems Dickey will now seek a review of the map by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and the U.S. Justice Department.
“The new map was approved by the Dallas County Commissioners without the benefit of public review or comment as required. I ask that the Attorney General’s office and the Department of Justice rule the new district map invalid and restore the original redrawn district map that was presented to the public for comment,” Dickey says in a press release. “The court failed to give the public proper notice which has resulted in what is, at a minimum, a disenfranchisement of thousands of voters.”
You can read the full press release here, read the letter here, and see the old map and the new map here and here, respectively.
NYTimes on Clarence Thomas and Harlan Crow
When NYTimes reporter Mike McIntire emailed me a couple of weeks ago saying that he wanted to get my thoughts on the friendship between Harlan Crow and Clarence Thomas, I told him I didn’t know anything about it — and I don’t, except for what McIntire wrote yesterday. McIntire contacted me because of a post I put up during the convention hotel fight entitled “Who is Harlan Crow and Why Are People Saying All Those Mean Things About Him?”
McIntire did a good job, I think, and it was worth reporting on, because the friendship is unusual. He may have stretched his case a little in trying to find an ethical lapse by noting that Crow entities have had four cases before an appellate court and that AEI, of which Crow is a board member, gave Thomas an award worth $15,000. I call those a stretch because there’s not a business in America, including this one, that hasn’t been before one of the lower appellate courts, and because board members have as little to do with making awards at think tanks like AEI as summer interns. Still, it was a piece that needed to be written, and McIntire seems to have covered all the bases.
It’s the reaction that interests me.
The Courts Can’t Convict, or Exonerate, Nader Akhavan. So Where Can He Get Justice?
Nader Akhavan of Frisco was charged with one of the most heinous crimes imaginable, and has been unable to clear his name for more than four years.
Though he has never been found guilty, he is shackled with a record even after a jury acquitted him on one charge and was hung on the other. The DA won’t re-try him, nor clear him. The former DA has told a court that it is uninterested in trying a defendant who a jury will be found “not guilty.”
The Texas 5th Appeals Court wrote that it was uninterested in constitutional or equity arguments. They refused to allow the indictment to be expunged from his record. That record has made it impossible for Akhavan to return to the highly paid career he once had.
Now, a state bill waiting for the governer’s signature may give him a chance. More details at the Collin County Observer.
DMN: Death Good for bin Laden, Bad for Texas Murderers
Because of the newspaper’s high-profile stance against capital punishment, it was a little surprising to read today’s DMN editorial cheering on the swift dispatch of Osama bin Laden with almost-giddy praise. I mean, according to news reports, the president OK’d an operation to kill the terrorist leader without even giving the poor guy a fair trial! Some say the Al-Qaeda mastermind was the recipient of a Navy SEAL “double cap tap,” meaning two bullets in the head to ensure a rapid demise.
To be clear: President Obama (and his predecessors) and those brave SEALs deserve credit and kudos for hunting bin Laden down and delivering some old-fashioned, eye-for-an-eye justice. But it’s also instructive to learn that according to the Morning News standard, the “death penalty” (without a trial, yet) is good for certain people–namely, really evil tall bearded guys who are alleged to have offed lots of people–but bad for convicted murderers who’ve gone through multiple trials in the state of Texas. This will be interesting to recall the next time the paper starts haranguing supporters of capital punishment.
Conspiracy to Commit Legal Acts in Collin County
Former Collin County DA John Roach and prez of his posse, former Judge Charles Sandoval, have stirred up so much drama that I’m pretty sure they’re responsible for the cancellation of All My Children.
Dedicated to scoop in the Park Cities, I’ve had my eye on the chapter involving University Park resident David Cary and his wife, Stacy Stine Cary. David’s child custody case was in Sandoval’s court, and when Sandoval lost the seat to Suzanne Wooten in 2008, the Carys found themselves in the crossfire of McKinney’s version of The Sopranos.
Along with Wooten and her campaign manager, the Carys were indicted last year (after the case was presented to at least 3 and possibly 6 grand juries) for, according to Brian Chandler, an assistant state attorney general, bribery by donating funds, “to have Suzanne Wooten run for the position, to be elected, and when she was elected, rule in favor of the Carys.” Quite an elaborate plot. Especially confusing since, after winning the seat, Suzanne Wooten recused herself from the case.
So what’s the crime if it’s perfectly legal to donate money to a campaign? That’s what the defendant’s attorney, Keith Gore, is trying to figure out as the saga continues. According to the Motion to Quash Indictment filed on April 14, Gore says, “…the State has presented an indictment that alleges a conspiracy to commit legal acts and, therefore, has not alleged a violation of the law.” That just sounds so totally cool. I bet Gore doesn’t look at explosions.
Bret Michaels: Trump Urged My Suit Over Tonys
Billionaire businessman Donald Trump counseled rocker Bret Michaels to file suit against CBS 
Entertainment and others over injuries Michaels suffered at the 2009 Tony Awards, the Poison lead singer said in Dallas Saturday.
Talks to resolve the matter earlier broke down because, “let’s just say, they were pretty cold,” Michaels said, referring to the defendants in the lawsuit, which was filed in L.A. by his lawyers Friday. While Trump offered to intercede and advised him to sue aggressively, Michaels said, he decided mainly to ask to be compensated for work-time lost due to his injuries, which included stitches with a cut lip and a broken nose.
The singer, who starred on VH1’s stop-rated Rock of Love show and won Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice TV competition on NBC, had just finished performing Poison’s hit, “Nothin’ But a Good Time,” on the Tonys broadcast when a giant scenery piece was lowered and whacked him in the face. There were no safety warnings or precautions in place, Michaels said, and the broadcast could have been ”delayed” to avoid embarrassing him. “They never needed to show me getting hurt,” he added. “They didn’t offer to pay my medical costs or anything. … I’m sorry it came to this.”
Michaels, 48, discussed the legal dispute after being honored Saturday at a juvenile-diabetes fundraiser–he’s suffered from type 1 diabetes for 42 years–sponsored by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. The singer (pictured in photo by Jeanne Prejean) was also scheduled to perform at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon in Dallas today.
Shon Gables is in High Demand in Detroit
Uncle Barky is reporting that a Detroit judge has issued a bench warrant for the arrest of WFAA-ABC reporter/anchor Shon Gables. She evidently was scheduled to “testify under oath regarding her assets” in connection with a successful $35,000 slander judgment against her. But something must have come up a couple of times because Shon failed to appear in court twice.
When They Decide to Wage the “War on Drugs”
Amid the Dallas raids, stunning arrests, and major seizures, a FrontBurnervian raises an impassioned — and pertinent — point:
I’m no fan of the “war on drugs” mainly because I am a Conservative, have studied economics 101, and have read something about another failed prohibition from oh, 1919 to 1932.
But here is a question: With all the loss of civil rights and privacy that has been inflicted upon the American people in the name of “the war on drugs”, the huge huge fiscal costs, the expansion of government , the creation of cadres of -literally- jack-booted thugs (think Waco, no-knock raids, etc.) WHY IS IT that only after an agent is killed IN MEXICO this arm of our government takes action to arrest 57 drug cartel members in Dallas, seizing heaps of cash and mounds of dope? I mean, do they expect us to believe that they uncovered these 57 people only after the agent was killed in Mexico? Why weren’t these people already in custody? The chief enforcement officer says that “it’s personal now.” What the eff was it before?
I take it to mean “we aren’t going to do our job, we are going to ignore these 57 people with heaps of cash and mounds of dope until WE decide we are pissed off enough to do the job the taxpayer is paying us to do.” If this isn’t an indictment of this whole fraud called “the war on drugs,” I can’t think of what would be.
Louise Raggio, R.I.P.
Louise Raggio was many things. In addition to being one of Dallas’ true female pioneers in law and a champion for women’s rights, she was also an author and the mother of three attorneys (Grier, Tom and Ken). She died this morning at the age of 91 after living a simply remarkable life helping others.
Our condolences to the Raggio family and the many people whose lives benefited from her efforts.
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