9.24.2020

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

 


  • Texas hospitalizations: 3,195 (-12)  I think we now have leveled off.  But if it has, will we see the crazy rise again? And, man, that late June to July rise was incredibly steep. 

  • There have quietly been some small school districts in Texas which have announced they will completely end remote learning. I saw a notice from Edna ISD and Roosevelt ISD as a couple of examples. 
  • Democracy doesn't die in darkness after all. It's in the process of being be murdered right on Fifth Avenue.  This is chilling. But it also is an admission of how terrified he is about election day. 

  • From absentee voting to extended early voting, why are they so scared of making voting more convenient?

  • I'm fascinated with the ransomware attack. Fort Worth ISD just paid $337,000 to hackers in order to get them to release their servers. I guess before you would pay it you would check with other governmental entities/previous victims who paid the ransom who could confirm the hackers kept their word. And, as odd at is sounds, the more "credibility" the hackers get with keeping a track record of keeping their word, the greater the ransom they can demand from the next victim.

  • The lack of indictments in the Breonna Taylor case are not surprising. In America, we have a system in place where cops can do half-assed search warrants, complete with lies and omissions, which are then often half-assed reviewed by rubber-stamping judges who are supposed to be  "detached and neutal magistrates". And then armed with that warrant, the cops can explode into your home in the middle of the night and, while confused with fear, you're suppose to cower down and take no action in the midst of mass confusion.  And if you don't, you die. And it's all legal. 

  • My favorite photos as Justice Ginsburg's casket arrived at the Supreme Court.




  • This made me laugh when the news came out that the Los Angeles Chargers team doctor had accidentally punctured the lung of the starting quarterback.

  • Around Lake Bridgeport in the Twin Hills area, I saw an ADT Security Services van yesterday. I'd bet big money that is 100% related to the realization that the killer of Lauren Whitener has not been caught. 
  • Speaking of Lauren Whitener murder and the Aric Maxwell fiasco, the Wise County Messenger was gracious enough to invite me onto their podcast to talk about the case. The audio is here. The video isn't up yet which is sad because I'm pretty good-looking. 



at 8:32 AM

9.23.2020

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

 
  • Wise County active (as of yesterday): 17.  All school districts across the state should have their COVID data published here sometime today. 
  • Texas hospitalizations: 3,207 (+75).  Have I mentioned I've got my eye on this? 

  • I've got some pretty wild Wise County real estate news fed to me by a faithful reader. In June, 7-Eleven became the proud owner of tract of land in Chico, Texas. I've got the receipts. 

  • Just saw that Gayle Sayers has died. It's been 50 years since Brian Piccolo died. (I wonder how many readers have no idea who I'm talking about.)
  • In Senate District 30 race (the one that Empower Texans is trying to buy for Shelley Luther), Wise County's share of registered voters is only a measly 3%. But so far we have 9% of the total of early votes cast. (Source.)

  • You know what's really wild about that chart? Look at the two columns for the total number of voters registered now vs. the total number of votes cast in 2018. Wise County is 51% (44,341/22,718) as are almost all the counties. But look at those percentages for the two big counties: Collin is only 9%. Denton is only 8.5%.  That seems so out of whack that is seems wrong. 
  • Trump, over the last year, has finally overtly revealed himself to be an all-out racist because he simply quit hiding it. What turns my stomach is this all-white crowd cheering to stuff like this that happened last night. Rep. Ilhan Omar is a United States citizen.  Over the next decade and beyond the Republicans are going to pay dearly for letting Trump get away with moments like this.

  • Whenever Trump tells a "Sir story" at one of his rallies (as in "And the general turned to me and said, 'Sir, I've never heard . . . . '") he's lying. Everyone knows that.  Whenever he makes up a story with Melania, he always uses the term "Darling" (as in, "And she turned to me and said, 'Darling, why don't . . . . '" Last night, he mixed them together. 

  • The 46 year old "cold case" out of Tarrant County is pretty wild (assuming everything the cops are saying is legit.) They solved it by DNA but by using "familial DNA" tracing. As I understand it, you can have a complete DNA profile extracted from the evidence but you might hit a dead end when it doesn't match anyone in the CODIS criminal database. (i.e. the Wise County Lauren Whitener murder case.) You can still send that profile through an expensive (?) genealogical database known as GEDmatch -- the same tool California police used to identify the Golden State Killer -- which might get you in the area of a particular family. It's all based on looking at the male Y chromosome. From there it takes footwork to track down the one individual who will then match the DNA definitively. 

  • Extra thought: CODIS is the national criminal database. I had always thought that it only contained samples of the DNA of convicted felons. But I was shocked to learn from representing Rodney "Aric" Maxwell that if you voluntarily provide your DNA via a cheek swab to police because you wanted to be excluded as a suspect, the lab will test your DNA and then upload it to CODIS even if you didn't match who they were looking for! So, even though you are completely innocent, your DNA is now in CODIS. Here's proof where the lab said they'd do it with Aric's DNA and three other poor saps:

  • Mitt Romney has decided to turn on Trump and will vote on his Supreme Court nominee before the election. You could see that coming. Mormon. Abortion. No brainer. (Or is he just tricking Trump and will actually vote "no" on the actual nominee to really screw him over?)

  • The Wise County District Attorney's office is now sending out a "Brady notice" -- notice of evidence which might benefit a defendant -- about a particular former officer if he was involved in the case. I've never seen them do that before. But I applaud it. 
  • I'm late to the party on this one, but I'm not going to let Williamson County criminal justice news get by without pointing it out. 



  • Messenger: Above the Fold


at 8:32 AM

9.22.2020

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

 

  • Texas hospitalizations: 3,132 (+51). I've still got my eye on this.

  • Look at this spreadsheet showing how PAC Empower Texans (Wilks and Dunn) is trying to buy Shelley Luther a seat in our State Senate District 30. It's amazing. (Source: Texas Tribune.)

  • Speaking of Senate District 30, one of the candidates brought the COVID to Decatur. That ain't no way to campaign! "According to Springer, he and his wife Lydia went to a campaign event in Decatur on Sept.14. Lydia was taken to the hospital later that night for unrelated symptoms and was eventually tested and diagnosed with COVID-19." 
  • Did you guys see Dak's get-up on Sunday? Serious question: Is it now fashionable to have jeans that come to above the ankle when wearing cowboy boots? I've seen this on the TV box a couple of times in the last week. 

  • I keep hearing anecdotal evidence that young males really don't watch sports on TV and can't imagine, even when adults, of ever paying to watch them. (And to think I watched the network broadcast of Super Bowl XIII on Youtube over the weekend between the Cowboys and Steelers and was overcome with teenage nostalgia. I remember the friend's house I was in when I watched it, who all was there, and where I sat on the couch.)
  • Supreme Court thoughts:
    • Will the Senate never again approve a justice appointed by a President from a different party? That used to be routine. Thanks have changed so dramatically that I'm not sure it will happen now. 
    • Supreme Constitutional Amendment Proposal: Have Supreme Court justices limited to 20 year terms and have it so that every two years a judge's 20 year term expires. If a judge dies before his 20 years, the appointment would be only for the unexpired term.  I just don't know how to get it started from scratch. 
  • What would you have thought if you had seen this photo one year ago?: The Raiders celebrate a touchdown by mimicking using hand sanitizer all while in an empty NFL stadium during a real game.

  • I don't follow video game news but yesterday Microsoft paid $8.5 billion to buy a company which is in that business. This sentence got my attention about the purchase: "To put that in perspective, that’s almost as much as Disney paid for both Marvel and LucasFilm combined."
  • "I'd like to use this forum to spread the Gospel, but first I'd like to promote my lord and savior as well as the only personality left in the Fox family who will have me on TV." Man, I despise Jeffress so much. 

  • I can't tell you how many kind emails and messages I've received from both friends and complete strangers in response to my posts about the Aric Maxwell case. Many have made me tear up a little. Of special note was a fancy handwritten thank you card from a lawyer in little Hamilton, Texas who I have never met. And then yesterday I got this. No return address. Not signed. (Please don't do this. But I'm keeping all it and and framing it.) 

  • It's Tony Basil's birthday. Fun fact: She was 37 when she recorded the video to Mickey.

  • Fox, by itself, currently pay $1.08 billion a year for it's Sunday NFL package. The contract expires next year. Bloomberg reported last night that the new number will be around $2 billion a year.  It seems like a good time to remind you that the 32 team owners' cartel have for years agreed to a salary cap on players. 


at 8:33 AM

9.21.2020

Random Monday Morning Thoughts

 




  • Texas hospitalizations: 3,081 (-165 since Friday)
  • Trump will now try to fill the Supreme Court seat of Ruth Bader Ginsberg. 
    • To ram it through before the election, he can't afford four Republican defections in the Senate. Two (Collins and Murkowski) have already done so and have said the next President should make the pick. Mitt Romney is a definite wild card. 
    • Lindsey Graham had previously committed that he would be one of the four, but we already knew he is a liar and hypocrite. He had said: "If an opening comes in the last year of President Trump's term we'll wait to the next election . . .  Hold the tape." And that was even after the Kavanaugh confirmation. He said he was just kidding about that over the weekend. 

    • Trump will want it done right away and won't gamble with a post-election confirmation because (1) If he's a lame duck, he won't care one iota, (2) We know that he'll lose at least one senator when one of Arizona's seat switches from McSally to Kelly and he'll be seated by Arizona law before November 30th. He can't risk that. 
    • This just hit me.  Why doesn't Trump refuse to nominate anyone and instead use it as election bait? "If I win, I will immediately give you another Supreme Court justice. But if I lose, you also lose that seat." Of course, no other president would ever do that because it would be an obvious and a blatant effort to put self over the importance of the court. But this is Trump. His base wouldn't care if he used that trick.
    • But, in the end, I bet he nominates someone right now and gets it confirmed before the election.
  • He keeps saying the quiet stuff out loud: 

  • Uh . . . 

  • Look out. Big West Texas oil money from Empower Texans is bankrolling Shelly Luther. They say it is, uh, a "loan." You know, I bet she makes the run-off and might win the dang thing. North Texans are suckers for people like her. 

  • Legal stuff. One technically boring but eye-opening. One about political incorrectness:
    • Hey, criminal law practitioners, look at this under-the-radar opinion out of Amarillo which came out last week where the court held that the lack of a trial due to COVID-19 entitles and incarcerated defendant to a PR bond. It's seems pretty broad and all-encompassing. (In-the-weeds stuff: (1) It is somehow designated "Do Not Publish", (2) The court didn't find a 17.151 violation but a constitutional speedy trial violation. If that's true, isn't the remedy dismissal instead of a PR bond?))
    • From the "Oh-My!" Department: Want to hear a lawyer last week during oral arguments before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals utter the words "technological retard" as he was referring to himself. Here you go. It sure be cued up at the right place at the 14:40 mark. 
  • Cowboys:
    • In trying to figure out what the special teams coach told the Atlanta players before the onside kick. I'm guessing it was something like, "They can't touch it before 10 yards and if they do, it is our ball. So don't worry about anything before 10 yards." That's all true but you might want to add a couple of things. 
    • Everyone was dogging Mike McCarthy for deciding to go for two when down nine points. I absolutely would go for it there. You're going to have to get it then or after the next touchdown. If you miss it now, at least you know what you have to do -- which is exactly what happened. 
    • Fun fact:

  • I watched Richard Jewell over the weekend. It is, of course, the story of the security guard who was wrongfully accused of planting the bomb at the Olympics in Atlanta. 

    • Its theme sounded very familiar to me. A solo-lawyer who some thought was in over his head representing an innocent and downtrodden guy against the government who jumped the gun by accusing him of a capital crime.
    • I thought it was a little over-the-top and had to be loose with facts (especially since it is a Clint Eastwood film), but once you read the fantastic Vanity Fair article upon which the movie is based, it's pretty spot on. 
    • The biggest cheap shot that Eastwood took was accusing an Atlanta Journal Constitution reporter of blatantly exchanging sex for an FBI tip. She's died a few years back. That was indeed a cheap shot.
    • Richard Jewell is also dead. (Side note: We are all here for just a blink of an eye, aren't we?) 
    • After I watched the movie, I was very confused why the Atlanta Journal ended up paying Jewel in his libel suit. What they wrote was technically true. He was the target of the FBI. When I looked it up I learned  refused to settle and the case against them was ultimately dismissed.
    • I would have named the film "The Profile of Richard Jewell."
  • Yes, I'm still all torqued up about you know what, but I thought I'd give it a rest today.



at 8:34 AM

9.18.2020

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

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts




  • Wise County active cases: 26 (+1) And it was announced yesterday that the county will only get numbers every Tuesday from now on. I guess I'll kill this daily bullet point and make it a weekly one.
  • Texas hospitalizations: 3,246 (-3) The flattening might be happening. But I've been wrong about that before.

  • Texas school numbers: This will be good stuff over the coming weeks. It's brand new and is only updated weekly for now. But on 9/23 they'll start releasing district level numbers in spreadsheet formatting. (I've got The Liberally Lean Number and Statistics Department on standby.)

  • So yesterday the governor opened up businesses from 50% to 75%? Did anyone truly think there was a limit of 50% or that it was being honored? 
  • If you want to see real Texas courts in action, go here and look at a ton of live feeds from Houston's county and justice courts.  Most of the judges are just conducting quick hearings and regular docket calls but they leave the feed open in between them. They are incredibly loose and relaxed. I watched for only about 30 minutes the other day and heard a judge say, "I need to make everyone dress up for holidays. On Columbus Day I could make everyone come dressed as a racist." It is truly like they sometimes forgot the cameras are rolling. It's incredible. (But as far as dockets are concerned, it is very, very efficient.)
  • The Aric Maxwell/Lauren Whitener Murder Case Fiasco -- Yep, I'm Still Ranting. 
    • So I've now been asked, "Why was he arrested in the first place?"  That's a great question. Sure, we now have the DNA evidence which completely exonerates him, but why was he arrested even before the results were known? I outlined yesterday what they didn't have and all the evidence that showed Aric didn't do it. So let's talk about what they did have and what was the tipping point. 
    • Here is a quote from Sheriff Lane Akin about the case in the Wise County Messenger which was published six days before Aric's arrest. At that point the case is unsolved. Akin, after saying he thinks about the case every day, tells us his investigators wake up at night trying to figure it out. 

    • So what happened to get Aric arrested six days later? What's the big break in the case? Here's what: A lab report from Pure Gold Forensics in California came in. That's the only development, and the development Akin said he was waiting for. That report said that Lauren's DNA had been found on a single blade of grass. Ok, that seems kind of important. Where was it found, you ask? I'll show you.
    • Here's the location described in the arrest warrant affidavit: It's at a "halfway point from the victim's back yard gate to the defendant's back yard gate."

    • Here's a map showing where Aric and his family lived and where Lauren Whitener lived. (There's an unlabeled duplex unit adjacent to Whitener's, too.) The back yards are fenced with gates. The white X is the half way point where the blade of grass was found.

    • That will qualify as at least "interesting", right? But the smoking gun? And what if I told you (1) the killer had to leave through Lauren's back gate (her front door was deadbolted and her back door was wide open when first responders arrived) and so he had to flee somewhere -- either left, right or straight,  (2) that crime scene investigators walked inside and through the gruesome crime scene without protective booties on the morning of murder/fire and then went outside and walked on that very spot (I've got a photo they took proving it), and (3) the "blade of grass" was found two weeks after the murder -- something that should cause all sorts of alarms to go off. There was an absolute gully washer of rain storm one day after the murder. 
    • So that single blade of grass somehow magically caused the case to go from "we can't solve it" to "let's arrest a man for capital murder." Incredible. 
    • Did I yell about all of this when I figured it out? You bet. You probably don't remember it but I got the Star-Telegram's attention about this very thing in February. (See below). Heck, even before the sperm cell DNA exonerated Aric, I was screaming about how this case was a big bag of nothing. I wasn't doing some lawyer shtick. I was trying to alert people to a travesty of justice that was unfolding right in front of my eyes. And I was right. The DNA from the sperm cells proved me right.:

    • But let's not lose sight of that DNA report on the sperm cells which exonerated Aric which directly led to the dismissal of the indictments. And no matter how the Sheriff tries to spin it -- and he still is -- this is not "new evidence." The WCSO was in possession of that lab report last September which told them there was a killer out there who was not Aric. And don't forget that their own private expert (that Pure Gold outfit who also analysed the blade of grass) told them in an email on December 20, 2019 exactly the same thing. Nor lose sight of my March 10, 2020 court pleading begging everyone to look at the DNA report and the email which was telling them they had the wrong guy.  
    • And I want to give the Messenger credit for a pseudo-editorial from their crime scene reporter about the case in today's paper. My only complaint is that this isn't on the front page and above the fold. It ended as follows. (Go buy a paper. Be a subscriber. Give them your money.) 

    • I'll end on a much lighter note.  Some wise guy posted on the Internet a screenshot from my CBS11 interview and did the following to it. In the words of the great lawyer, Jackie Chiles, "This is outrageous and preposterous!!"
  • The Johnny Armstrong murder case out of Wise County was affirmed yesterday on appeal. 
  • Messenger: Above the Fold
  • Anyone else notice the sign language guy behind Abbott? He seemed pretty wheels off. And I've got some serious questions about those guys . . . . 



at 8:35 AM
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