Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

Nothing is more important in the courthouse than your credibility. That goes for everyone.

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• Your reminder that the record is 14,218. We may have broken it yesterday -- the numbers will be released this afternoon. 
  
  
  
• I told you it would take 7 to 10 days to determine if we'll have a problem. We have a problem. 
  
  
  
• I'm not exactly sure what Bridgeport's "Decals with Dads" is, but it looks fun. 
  
  
  
• A federal judge has sanctioned nine Kracken lawyers, including Sydney Powell and Lin Wood, in their "Big Lie" post-election litigation including referring them to the appropriate body for consideration of disbarment. They should be disbarred.  And the judge went scorched Earth on them. 
  

  

  
  
  
  
• From those conned by Trump to those willing to take a horse dewormer instead of the safest vaccine America has ever seen, I've learned more about my fellow man in the last four years than I have in my entire life.  And I've been giving them way too much credit. 
  
  
  
• The Tarrant County DA's Office is going Hollywood with self-promoting tweets like this. And this one is deceiving and bordering on being an outright lie. It says he was sentenced to the "maximum" but that is misleading. The State actually failed to prove a first degree felony charge (maximum sentence is "life or 99 years") against the man and the jury found the guy guilty of a lesser second degree felony -- and that's what he got the maximum of 20 years for.  (Nerd stuff: They charged him under 30.02(d) but he was found guilty under 30.02(a)(3).)
  
  
  
• This is getting a really weird. He tried to ban masks and now he's trying to ban private entities from requiring vaccine proof if the private business "receives public funds by any means."
  
  
  
• But his bar for success is really low. It's currently defined as keeping the lights on during a summer day.
  
  
  
• Afghanistan evacuations since August 15th: 95,700. What more could you ask for? 
  
  
  
• That officer who is coming forward is seriously underestimating the number of far right wing nutcases out there.
  
  
   
  
  
  
• I pointed out the other day that a person sitting on the far right of the counsel table can't see the witness in the new courtroom in Wise County. It dawned on me that this isn't just an inconvenience but is actually a constitutional issue. A Defendant has the right to confront his witnesses under the Sixth Amendment. If he or his lawyer can't see the witness's face while they testify, that's a problem. 
  
  
  
• What is wrong with some prosecutors and law enforcement? Just admit when there has been a royal screw up. It's not hard. 

  

  Story from 2017

  
   

  

  Story from yesterday.

  
  
• Note to defense lawyer in the story below: If the prosecutor offers you a plea deal where the victims are going to be upset and run to the press about it, don't embarrass the prosecutor further by telling the paper you were "surprised" by the offer. 

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

Just a reference to two movies about a virus sweeping across the nation. 

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• At this rate, we break the last peak's high on Friday or Saturday.
  
  
  
• If you are an unvaccinated teacher or coach or student, I don't understand you at all. 

  

  Sure, you might get sick . . . 

  
   

  

  . . . but you probably won't die.

  
  
• It's cool how the Aggies round up the freshman for a class photo, but if you wanted to create a super-spreader event this sure looks like a way to do it. 
  
  
  
• A car full of juveniles chased by police crashed into another car last night and killed its driver. There's footage of the car flying by a Fox 4 reporter.
  

  

  
  
  
  
• This is wild. She's on the run. 
  
  
  
• If you haven't seen the wild drone footage of The Star at Frisco at the beginning of last night's Hard Knocks, here you go.  (I couldn't help but have a Black Mirror kind of thought of, "What if one of those things was programmed to go after and harm a person?")
  
  
  
• The guy is free to make to any decision he wants, but it seemed weird to plead guilty yesterday in the middle of trial with the only possible result being the triggering the automatic maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
  
  
  
• Hate Nancy Pelosi all you want, but she is a master at what she does. In the midst of chaos yesterday, she rounded up every single Democrat to pass the $3.5 trillion portion of President Biden's $5 trillion infrastructure plan.
  
  
  
• Open carry in Texas begins in a week. If you are a business owner and want to give a proper trespass notice to keep guns out of your store, you'll now have to post three signs. One for a person with a license who is concealed carrying, another for a licensed person who is open carrying and now one for open carry by a person without a license. 
  
  
  
• The U.S. evacuated 7,000 people from Saigon. The U.S. has now evacuated 70,000 from Afghanistan and that number will soar before August 31st. 
• Ken Paxton had his own office investigate his own conduct and found himself incredibly innocent. What an embarrassment to Texas. 
  
  
  
• Very nerdy legal stuff which even I don't completely understand: A Republican judge on the Dallas Court of Appeals released a very unusual 80 page concurring opinion on Friday attacking his colleagues (all Democrats) for manipulating the internal procedures and screwing him out of being part of 2-1 decision. As I understand it, that judge was part of a three judge panel that was set to issue a 2-1 opinion in which he was one of the two deciding votes. But the other judge that made up the two judge majority had already lost his re-election bid and was leaving the court on December 31st so they had a deadline to get the opinion released. However, the other judges on the court, mostly Democrats, invoked/manipulated/broke some internal rules causing the opinion not to be released before December 31st causing the 2-1 pending opinion to become a 1-1 in limbo opinion. That judge ain't happy and, breaking protocol, revealed how it all went down. 
  
  
  
• Messenger: Above the Fold

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

It wasn't her fault, and I worded the headline that way as a joke. I don't recall her laughing.    

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• No slowing down.
  
  
  
• Plano ISD instituted a mask mandate. This is probably why. If we are going to have an insane outbreak in schools, we should know it within the next seven to ten days. 
  
  
  
• With the full approval by the FDA of the vaccine by Pfizer, local Texas governmental entities (cities, schools, counties, state agencies) are no longer prevented from mandating that its employees get that vaccine. The wording of Gov Abbott's order, which had hamstrung those entities previously, had this limiting language:
  
  
  
• The new re-constructed Bridgeport City Council voted last night to "have a full time paid fire chief [noting that] the city manager is committed to bringing a professional selection process back to the city council" to fill the position. (Emphasis added.) There is a lot going on behind the scenes, but this Messenger article seems to be what the vote was in response to.

  

  Credit Messenger report Austin Jackson for the thankless task of covering
  local government which has a value we don't appreciate. 

  
  
• I've watched most of the video of the field sobriety tests and arrest of Allen West's wife. Hot legal opinions: 
  
  
  
•  If I had to guess, the blood test may very well come back clean. And that would explain Allen West going so far out on a limb and going scorched earth on the the cops.  He knows it'll be clean. 
• The Chief of Dallas PD came out yesterday and defended the arresting officer. But this line stuck out to me: "Regardless what the lab results show, I believe that she believed there was probable cause officer to think there was something impacting her driving."  Translated: The blood results my clear Mrs. West and I'm not saying I would have personally arrested her, but the officer honestly believed there was probable cause to do what she did so everyone get off her back. 
• Mrs. West didn't sound drunk. She sounded scared.
• The video is a perfect example of "failing the field sobriety tests."  According to the manual all cops use, she did fail the Walk and Turn and One Leg Stand tests. But from a practical standpoint and from a jury's perspective, she didn't.  However, the officer was forced to follow that nationally mandated manual which has its own scoring system -- a scoring system which is, and always has been, worthless and ridiculous. 
• If this had been a simply refusal case without a blood test, I could win it every time. 
• Very legal nerd stuff: There was only one clue in the HGN test. That's enough to seriously question everything the officer did. That can't happen. 
• The scary part of the whole case is that the government can stick a needle in your arm based upon those facts.
• I warned about these being in place for years, but at least they aren't hiding it any longer. 
  
  
  
• The jury in the Familial DNA Cold Case saw a video of the defendant's "confession" yesterday (he said "I guess" when asked if he raped and murdered the victim, but other parts were more incriminating), but I noted how both detectives, once the defendant was on the verge of a tearful confession, patted him on the knee as a fake act of compassion to encourage him to keep going. 
  
  
  
  
• I got to tour the new Wise County courthouse annex yesterday. It's very nice and very functional. The one problem I saw was that a person in the witness chair in the County Court at Law #1 can't see the person in the far right chair. That chair is normally occupied by a defendant who must be identified by a witness. (You really can't tell it from the photo, but the judge's bench obstructs the view based upon my own very scientific experiment of sitting in the chairs.)
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Missed this from the weekend. 
  
  
  
• People tell me all the time that they are glad I turned the comments off on Liberally Lean. Eliminating them has literally changed my life. I was absorbing other people's anger. That's not healthy for anyone. 

Random Monday Morning Thoughts

(1) I  used to run all the time and at strange times. I was lucky I wasn't mugged. (2) There really was an assistant DA in Tarrant County who told me that. He was briefly with that office and was in the juvenile section in 1991-1992. That conversation stuck with me because the victim had never been identified publicly, and she wouldn't come forward until 2003. (3) Little did I know that The Central Park Five would be a hit in 2019.

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• The record set last winter was 14,218.
  
  
  
• I'll sometimes roam around the social media for Wise County to see what the masses are thinking. I don't want to alarm you, but I've found out there's a lot of people that are willing to ingest a horse dewormer because they fear the COVID vaccine. I guess they want to see a hospital one way or another. I stole this photo from someone's Facebook page who was encouraging people to take it:
  
  
  
• If you haven't seen the video, it's wild. 
  
  
  
• An Azle senior high school student was killed in a plane crash on Saturday morning. This was the type of plane:
  
  
  
• "Henri" for the name of a hurricane is very pretentious.
• Republican governor candidate Allen West has attacked the police for arresting his wife for DWI claiming that the "breathalyzer" read zero and posted receipts where she had just been at P.F. Chang's where no alcohol was purchased. There was a blood test but obviously we don't know the results. Quick thoughts:
  
  
  
• It's possible a portable breath test (a little handheld device) was used at the scene, but cops normally don't tell the driver what the results were. But one problem with Allen West's statement is that his wife previously said the officer told her that  "I was doing [the breathalyzer test] wrong." She probably wasn't blowing hard enough in the officer's opinion to get an appropriate reading.  I'm guessing it didn't just read "zero."
• It sounds like there was not an official breath test on the Intoxilyzer 9000 done at the jail.
• Since there was a blood test, she either agreed to it or the cops got a search warrant. Late yesterday, West told the Texas Tribune a warrant was issued so we know she initially refused to give a sample. We'll know the results normally in a month or two but this one might get expedited. 
• It's possible that the case only involves prescription medication.  Or it's possible she got liquored up before going to P.F. Changs. Or it's possible she is completely innocent. I really have no idea. The case is admittedly off to a strange start. 
• Here are the receipts. The stop was 8:44 p.m.  
  
  
  
• I also think it's weird that we didn't hear anything about any poor driving. She claims she was stopped for failing to signal a turn. It helps a DWI case to have some really bad driving facts. 
• Allen West says he Backs the Blue. But in a video posted yesterday he demanded that DPD Chief Edgardo “Eddie” Garcia, Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson, and Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot visit his home and apologize. He's probably got one of those special blue American flags on his porch. Oh, he also wants the arresting officer fired. 
• Where was Allen West? He wants you to know “I was down in Waco, Texas, having dinner with Ted Nugent and some other people." If you are impressed with that, he's your guy.
• I'll say it again. No one is ever arrested on "suspicion of [insert crime]." The phrase "suspicion of" is incorrect and sloppy reporting. 
• The case is actually a State Jail Felony because there was a child under 15 years of age in the car at the time of the alleged offense 
• This tweet by the Tarrant County DA's office is unusual because it was fired off during the ongoing trial on Friday. I've never seen them do that before. And they didn't do any follow-ups.
  
  
  
• The flooding in Tennessee is horrible as is this photo from Loretta Lynn's ranch. That guy didn't make it. 
  
  
  
• I missed a wild string of arrests of probation officers out of Wichita County. Good lord: 
  
  
  
• One officer was arrested for requesting sexual favors from a man in exchange for destroying a urine sample.
• Another was arrested for threatening a pregnant probationer in order to coerce her into letting her adopt the probationer's child.
• A supervisor is under indictment for aggravated perjury.
• "Another pending case involves former officer David Jetton who is charged with three counts of official oppression and one count of sexual assault involving a 26-year-old woman who said she was behind on her probation payments."
• For the first time in my life, I drove down to Nacogdoches this weekend.  Let me tell you something, there's nothing wrong with the scenery in that part of the state. Big thumbs up.
• Did you know the NFL has added an extra dead week between the last preseason game and the first season weekend?