11.23.2021

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts




I first found that very simple page on the Internet about 20 years ago, and it is still up. Side note: One thing I've always thought was amazing was that WFAA had Abraham Zapruder on the air within two hours of the assassination. His film had not yet been developed, and the interview was very, very brief.

  • Ahmaud Arbery trial thoughts: 
    • The female prosecutor. Linda Dunikoski, isn't very good.  And she has an awful habit of, when reading a complicated definition from the court's charge, stopping and saying, "Don't you just love lawyers?" That inadvertent revealing of her belief of self-superiority (something she doesn't even realize she is doing) will not serve her well.  Don't call yourself a lawyer, call yourself a prosecutor! And in front of a jury she needs to distance herself from lawyers -- that she chose a different job: To represent the people.  

    • She also messed up an old idiom yesterday when she said to the jury, "Have you ever heard the old saying that you don't bring a gun to a knife fight?"  She didn't misspeak. She really thinks that's the way it is worded. It's actually "you don't bring a knife to a gunfight." 
    • And when the judge asked her late yesterday how much time she needed to finish her closing argument this morning, she told him, "I'll need two hours because I've got a lot to say." Trust me, you don't need two hours. Less is more. And you better strike gold in the first 20 minutes because after that the jury will tune you out. 
    • The female lawyer for Greg McMichael's  basically hasn't said anything all trial long but surprisingly delivered his closing argument. She did a fantastic job -- at least until she said, "Turning Ahmaud Arbery into a victim after the choices that he made does not reflect the reality of what brought Ahmaud Arbery to Satilla Shores in his khaki shorts with no socks to cover his long, dirty toenails." (Video.)  Say what? I've been trying to figure out if there could be some context that I'm missing, but there's not. I don't get it. 

    • This guy is only a tiny fraction as smart as he thinks he is. I think his client will walk despite of him.   

    • All the defense lawyers were smart enough to not call the defendants "my client" but instead referred to them by their first names. It humanizes the defendants. And you don't want to remind a jury that you are paid to stand in front of them. That's what you are doing when you say "my client."  
    • It's always a dicey proposition to predict a jury outcome, but I still think we've got lots of not guilty verdicts coming. 
  • Sherry Lemon announcing she is not running again for Wise County Clerk is a big deal. She's held it since 1991.
    • Does the Wise County Republican Party not keep active web site of those who have filed for election? That's badly needed. 
  • We've got another candidate for Tarrant County D.A. who will run as a Republican.  If I'm tracking this correctly, add him to the list that includes Phil Sorrells and Mollie Westfall. 

  • Yesterday evening, the dumbest man in East Texas announced that he is going after Ken Paxton's job. He decided to first reveal it on Newsmax which might be QAnon's favorite channel.  Edit: DA candidate Krause from the above bullet point has endorsed Gohmert for AG which tells you everything you need to know about Krause. 

  • Speaking of, they were out in force at Dealey Plaza for the anniversary of  11/22/63. There are eight Trump signs in this photo. 

  • I've always had lots of questions about the government's "strategic oil reserve."

  • Something happened west of Lake Bridgeport yesterday afternoon. (That's all I got on it.) 

  • Nerdy legal stuff outside of my area: I saw this story which made absolutely no sense to me. "In their lawsuit, the families accused the FBI of negligence. They say the bureau received tips about Cruz, including his amassing of weapons and his desire to shoot up a school, but agents failed to intervene and prevent the violence." 
    • So you can sue the federal government for failing to protect you from crime?
    • I found this thread on Twitter last night which was started by a legal scholar trying to understand it as well. Some people believe, and I'll buy into this conspiracy theory, that sometimes the government hands out free money in civil suits when they have no legal reason to depending on the politics of the subject. 

  • Here's the new marker in downtown Dallas which I referenced last week. That's a wild bit of history (which wasn't all that long ago in the grand scheme of things.) Click to enlarge. 

  • 48 Hours has a new show on DNA genealogy being used to solve crimes. It has a good title.  


  • A guy showed up at the Wise County Courthouse Annex* yesterday reeking of weed. But he was in a very good mood. (*not official name.)

at 8:34 AM

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
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