11.22.2021

Random Monday Morning Thoughts




"A fight at Bridgeport High School today sent one student to the hospital and at least one more to the police station for questioning. Two 16-year-old males got into a physical altercation in a campus bathroom shortly before 3 p.m. Medics arrived to find one of the boys unconscious and bleeding from the mouth."  

  • Horrible incident #1: 5 dead and 40 injured in Wisconsin as a car runs through a parade route.  If you haven't seen the video, here it is. (Disturbing warning.)

  • Horrible incident #2: An Andrew ISD school bus carrying band members to Friday's playoff came with Springtown was hit by a car going the wrong way. Three were killed -- the bus driver, the band director for Andrews, and the wrong way driver. The game was rescheduled for today. 

  • This happened yesterday but this is very little info about it other than the cops were chasing alleged car burglars. One report says the crash happened "between Austin Street and First Baptist Church . . . around 5:30 a.m. Sunday."

  • All of the above is a heck of way to start of Thanksgiving week, isn't it?
  • Kyle Rittenhouse:
    • I told you that a not guilty verdict was likely, and it happened.  If you haven't seen the footage of the verdict being read, which is pretty dramatic, here is it is.  

       
    • But in the aftermath I basically had to stop reading social media about it.  An acquittal in a criminal trial does not equate to vindication. Oh, and Greg Abbott continues to morph into Trump.

    • I'm not sure that going on Tucker Carlson's show, of all people, is the best way to sell this:

  • Ahmaud Arbery trial: The jury will get the case against three Georgia men today. (Live right now.) I wouldn't be surprised at all if there are three not guilty verdicts at the end of it as well (despite the ineptitude of the defense lawyers.) Heck, I'll bet it's almost a guarantee in the cases against the two non-shooters.  And if the defense lawyer for Travis McMichael, the actual shooter, would focus on closing arguments just on the seconds before the fatal shot was fired, he might just win it, too. 

  • The Dallas serial killer trial has kind of been flying under radar but it ended in a mistrial after a hung jury late Friday. There was one lone holdout who was never going to convict regardless of the evidence. It's time like that when prosecutors can't say in interviews what they are actually thinking. 

  • The Tiger King must not be doing well. 

  • Lookout! Crazy Louie has an announcement coming today.

  • Look what you see when you stack this year's Texas Monthly issues on top of one another.

  • 58 years ago right now:

  • And another case solved by genealogical DNA. "A small piece of one of her bones enabled investigators to identify her family tree, including her late grandparents and, eventually, her late parents." This is happening weekly now.

  • Everyone can now officially tap the brakes on the Cowboys waltzing into the playoffs with a bye week. (Side note: I absolutely thought Zeke snapped a bone when that play happened.)


  • Decatur winning the state championship in volleyball for the fifth time on Saturday (three out of the last four years) is pretty amazing. Once they make it to the Final Four, they've never lost going 10-0 in state tournaments. 

  • Baylor can get to ten wins on Saturday. It would be the sixth ten-win season in the last 11 years under three different head coaches. 


at 8:31 AM

11.19.2021

It's Friday -- Let's Get Out of Here

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts




That was me recounting what had just happened in one of my misdemeanor jury trials.  There had been a giant ball of electrical smoke just blast straight up from my laptop keyboard while I was mid-sentence. It stopped me completely in my tracks. The prosecutor, Robert Carper, was withholding laughter as he grinned at me. And the now late Judge Cude was smiling at me from the bench with a "Whatcha gonna do now?" look since at that moment I had been using the laptop to project on the big TV screens -- screens which had now gone dark. Good times. 
  •  The Sheriff of Clay County, who I just mentioned for being part of Oath Keepers a couple of days ago, was arrested yesterday on a charge of Official Oppression. I'll admit this one is a little confusing to me because the charge is holding an inmate after 48 hours when there had been no finding of probable cause. 

    • The way it is supposed to work is that a person who has been arrested is supposed to be taken by "the person making the arrest or the person having custody of the person arrested [i.e. the Sheriff]" in front of a magistrate (normally a JP) for a determination of probable cause. If probable cause is found (and it is found in 99.99% of all cases), the magistrate then sets a bond. If the person has money, he posts a bond. If he is poor, he stays in jail. 
    • The indictment wording is interesting, It accuses him of holding someone after 48 hours "without a finding of probable cause." I didn't accuse him his only real job in the process which would be "failing to have the person arrested taken before a magistrate" to make a determination about  probable cause. Pure speculation on my part: I'm wondering if we have a situation of some Clay County deputy arrested two people on a wonky case, they were taken before the magistrate, the magistrate surprised everyone with a finding of no probable cause, and then the Sheriff got pissy and still didn't release them. Now that would get you indicted. 

    • The Sheriff actually posted a Facebook video here right after he got out of jail. Man, he's got a lot of Trump in him. After blaming the media, he said that he wanted the people of Clay County "to know exactly what's going on" and then didn't tell them a thing. But he did managed to admit that "there are truth to the thing" at the 40 second mark.  I'm sure his lawyer appreciates the admission. 
    • One weird thing that he said: "I normally set the misdemeanor bonds. I didn't do that in [my] case. We called Judge Campbell" (at 2:53) who then gave him a personal recognizance bond? Huh? What did it mean that he normally sets the misdemeanor bonds? A Sheriff doesn't have the authority to set bonds. Maybe that's the source of the problem here. 

  • An assistant DA in the Georgia Ahmaud Arbery trial got in big trouble yesterday for asking one of the the defense witnesses --just a neighbor who was just testifying about thefts in general -- if he thought those who was stole "deserved the death penalty" for it.   All the defense lawyers went nuts and the judge agreed. Honestly, I don't think that question is out of line. She's just asking, "If you thought Arbery was stealing, do you think he needed to be executed by these guys over my shoulder because of it?" On second thought, maybe that did go too far. 

  • MSNBC got banned by the judge from the courthouse in the Rittenhouse trial after one of their freelancers allegedly followed the jury out of the courthouse and tried to take their picture.  Here's a hot opinion: I think there's a huge First Amendment question about the right to do that outside of the courthouse. I'm not saying it's a good thing, I'm saying it's a huge constitutional question. 


  • The Fort Worth Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that it can't stop a hospital from preventing a doctor from injecting a patient with a horse drug. Opinion here. (We live in strange days.)

  • Legal nerdy stuff: If you are confused by these headlines, you should be. The court had already affirmed they conviction in August, and Amber Guyger didn't even ask for a rehearing.  What happened was the State actually requested a rehearing (which was very weird because the won, but they wanted the law clarified), but on Wednesday the Court denied the State's request for a rehearing but then hauled off and withdrew their prior opinion and issued a new opinion which still affirmed the conviction. Got all that? 

  • You would think they would at least wait until the Christmas season rush was over.

  • Kickoff time at Duke last night.

  • I wonder if we know of any law enforcement officials who need to talk to her?

  • Time which has passed since the Wise County Sheriff's Office has failed to solve the murder of Lauren Whitener in her home at Lake Bridgeport: 868 days.
  • Messenger: Above the Fold

at 8:35 AM

11.18.2021

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts




   I'd still like to see that. 

  • Forty-one months in the hoosegow. He earned every day of it. 

  • One of the defendants in the Ahmaud Arbery trial in Georgia took the stand in his own defense yesterday.  (Cross-exam is live on YouTube right now  - the prosecutor is terrible.)  I've been an advocate of defendants testifying for years and, with Rittenhouse doing the same thing, I feel like defense lawyers are finally coming around. 

  • This will be Day Three of the Rittenhouse jury deliberations. If anyone tries to tell you what that means, they don't.  In the meantime, the judge is taking a page out of someone else's playbook as he blamed the media for televising how wheels off he can be. 

  • Judge Mollee Westfall has entered the race for District Attorney in Tarrant County. I suspect there will be more popular Republican candidates who will do the same. 
  • Sheesh: Trump's lawyer has sent a letter to the organization who awards Pulitzer Prizes threatening to sue it for awarding the prize in 2018 to The New York Times and The Washington Post.  But it starts off with the lawyer misspelling "spoliation."  No man has ever had so many attorneys which are human train wrecks. 

  • Rep. Paul Gosar was censored yesterday by the House for his video showing the murder of AOC and the slashing of President Biden. Less than 10 years ago that vote would have been 434-1.

  • The Texas Tech radio crew has been suspended by the Big 12 because of the crew's criticism of officials in last week's game against Iowa State. A collection of the audio can be found here.  When they started naming the officiating crew in a fit of McCarthyism is probably what put the Big 12 over the edge. 

  • Greg Abbott's campaign (or at least some PAC) has put up "morphing" billboards.  Let me tell you, as far as political advertising goes, that's pretty clever and eye-catching. 

  • A pretty dramatic fire in North Fort Worth on Monday evening was caught on video.  And I've noticed that a GoFundMe was organized by a family member who lives in Decatur. 

  • Every now and then I see yet another photo from the Trump Insurrection which stops me down. That's the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture in the background. 

  • That reminds me that I almost forgot to mention Southlake ISD. Let's check in on it . . . 
    • The feds are now after them:

    • I hope they take the time to notice that the feds are after them:

  • Random things I didn't know.


  • There's a new longform story from the great Skip Hollandsworth in this month's Texas Monthly.

  • And another. The police didn't have a direct DNA match in any criminal database so they enlisted the help of a "genealogist" to at least get them in the area of the extended family of the DNA owner. It worked. This was not happening as little as five years ago. 

  • NFL fun fact: On this day in 1984, neither team in the Seahawks/Bengals game threw a pass in the first quarter -- the very last time that any quarter has gone by without at least one pass being thrown in the NFL.  (They combined for 26 running plays.)

at 8:31 AM
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