4.19.2022

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts




And two months later he would be found not guilty on all six counts.



  • I have no idea what is going on in Slidell, but there must be something when the varsity girls basketball coach, who went 194-38 record in seven season, quit last night.
  • This is a weird standard for fitness: DPS requires its troopers to have a waistline of no greater than 40 inches for men and 35 inches for women. And their new "get in shape or not be promoted" rule seems to be unnecessary. From the story: "As of April, 213 officers – out of about 4,000 total – had failed the waistline requirement, according to the department. Only two of the 213 also failed the physical fitness test . . . ."  I've know lots of troopers in my life. Obesity never seems to be a problem with that agency. 

  • The CDC's mask requirement for airlines was struck down yesterday by a 35 year old judge appointed by Trump who was rushed through the confirmation process by the Senate after the 2020 election. Oh, and she was deemed “not qualified” by the ABA and once clerked for Clarence Thomas. (The ruling is wrong but the Biden Administration will let it go. They realize they should have let it expire on its own terms anyway. At this point, it's a political loser to appeal the decision -- which is a lousy way to make legal decisions but they should have got out in front of this thing.)

    • Can we stop taking our shoes off at airports now, too?
  • The Supreme Court refused to hear a death penalty case out of Texas yesterday. The three judge dissent tried to say, "Are you kidding me that they let that person be on the jury?" but explained it this way:

    • The case was actually the wild one out of Dallas where a dentist was killed in a parking garage. Texas Monthly had a great long article about it here. 


  • Highway 380 in Wise County in nirvana compared to how it is east of Denton. Video.

  • Wise County's rep Ronny Jackson is in the news again. The Oath Keepers, the group leading the storming of the Capitol to overthrow the government  -- so much so that they had a stash of weapons in a hotel room ready to be put on a boat to cross the Potomac which gave rise to a indictment on seditious conspiracy charges -- were on alert to protect our Congressman that day.  

  • I failed to note Decatur's Bryce Elder second major league start on Sunday night.  It was OK. Nothing wrong with that. 

  • Anyone remember that Brittney Griner is still in a Russian jail?
  • I just finished this book. It's fantastic. Even if you think you have a good grasp of what happened over the last six months of Trump's presidency, to hear it all laid out again, with some new great details, is really mind-blowing.  (Probably the biggest moment of Trump's coup plan came in a crazy impromptu meeting on December 18, 2020 when somehow crazy Sidney Powell, crazy Michael Flynn and crazy former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne managed to get in the White House and catch Trump's eye. That meeting has been explored at length elsewhere as well.)

  • Legal nerdy stuff: There's a "murder" case going on in Wichita Falls which by all accounts should be an Intoxication Manslaughter case. The facts are bad (there's a dead child), but I can't figure out from any of the news articles why it's charged as murder. Some of you folks up in Big Sky Country get me an answer on that. 


at 8:31 AM

4.18.2022

Random Monday Morning Thoughts



Here is someone else's blog post about the incident. One of the prosecutors was disciplined by the State Bar for withholding evidence in the case. 

  • The missing pharmacist, Robert Moulds, is quite the mystery. Both he and his vehicle have vanished with his last known location being in Wise County.  Lots and lots of people are looking for him in the county. (Facebook group.)

  • On the Friday afternoon news dump, Gov. Abbott finally officially abandoned his border search policy.  And the $300,000 man also finally spoke. 


  • South Carolina gives a death row inmate the right to chose firing squad as his method of execution if he so wishes. A guy just made that choice. Happy Easter.

  • Mass shooting weekend update. A club, and Air BNB, and a mall.



  • First they came for science, then history, and now they are coming for math? 

  • This 49 second promotional video of Tucker Carlson's new special would be banned from schools in Florida. I have no idea what he is trying to pull off here. And this lady wasn't lying -- it's one of the weirdest things I've seen from him. 

  • The mental health of the leader of the Republican Party is not improving. 


    • Compare and contrast:

  • I listen to a lot of talk radio, and I went insane over the last three days because of radio hosts completely screwing up the Law of Parties in light of the news that the Dallas Cowboy Kelvin Johnson was in the same car where bullets were fired out of, killing a man. 

    • Let's get it straight. 
    • The Law of Parties says this: If you intend for a crime to be committed, and you then, in any way, assist someone else in committing that crime, you can be charged with that crime just as equally as the person who actually committed it. Here's the subsection prosecutor's always rely upon: 

    • But here is where they have all been wrong: Merely being with someone who commits a crime does not make you guilty of anything.  The law is clear: "Mere presence" won't get you in trouble.
    • I'll go even further, if you had no idea the other person was going to commit a crime, you could even give that person a ride home after the fact and not be committing a crime.  (It's not smart, and prosecutors will probably try to wrongfully convict you by saying your actions after the fact are proof of your intentions before the fact.)
    • In the case of the Cowboys player, almost every radio host has said that the fact that he was "in the car" from which the shots were fired is enough to make him criminally responsible for the murder. That's flat out wrong. Ticket radio hosts George Dunham, Craig Miller, Jake Kemp, Mark Elfenbaum all said it as did the Dallas Morning News' David Moore. 
    • There is one limited circumstance where the Law of Parties does extend to unintentional acts that your buddy commits:  
      • Say you are in a convenience store, intend for your buddy is going to rob the clerk, and are serving as a lookout. In that situation you will are certainly guilty of robbery under the Law of Parties because you are assisting him with the intent that the robbery be committed.  
      • But here is how you can become responsible for unintended conduct:  If your buddy goes one step further and kills the clerk during the course of the robbery, you've bought the crime of murder even though you didn't have any intention of the clerk dying. That one felony morphing into another felony rule is specifically covered in the statute. 

      • But the key in that hypothetical there is that there was some underlying felony (robbery) that you intended to assist in which gave rise to your unintended felony (murder.) 
  • Here's the indictment in the intentional miscarriage/murder case out of Starr County.  I'm still not pleased that we haven't heard more about how all this went down or how one of the assistant DA's was privately representing the husband of the defendant in a divorce. 

  • I know! I know! I know!
  • Why Fox Sports is investing in and backing the USFL is beyond me. 



at 8:31 AM

4.15.2022

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

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts






Thirty-one dead cows, and I still don't have an answer 10 years later. 
  • Dallas Cowboys cornerback Kelvin Joseph was a rookie last year but actually started at the end of the season.  

    • The incident the cops are interested in was actually part of Fox 4 News' "Trackdown" series which is normally some pretty good stuff. 
    • "Cowboys officials have encouraged Joseph to speak with police about what he knows, according to a team source who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. Cowboys officials do not believe Joseph is the shooter." Here's a tip: If I'm him, I'm not taking criminal legal advice from the Cowboys. 
    • Did you know the player also goes by the rapper pseudonym 'YKDV Bossman Fat'?  And the moment I thought, "I wonder if he has any rap lyrics that cops could try to use?", I also thought of this story:
  • This Russian warship is now at the bottom of the Black Sea. Ukraine says it sunk because of a missile strike. The Russians say it was due to an accidental explosion. But if Ukraine is right, hold you breath that the was doesn't escalate via some drastic and demonstrative retaliation by the Russians. Wars can get really out of hand in a hurry.

  • Gov. Abbott continued to tacitly concede his truck inspection plan was a disaster as he abandoned the idea at yet two more border points. Oh, and look who was there at his press conference yesterday as a prop! The $300,000 man!

  • If you have followed this story, this new development is, well, uncomfortable. In 2020, the "hospital’s ethics committee had ruled that it would be inappropriate to continue treating Tinslee, citing the Texas Advanced Directives Act, a 1999 law that allows the committee to make decisions when doctors and patients disagree on end-of-life care." A court battle ensued as the child was in hospital. Now she's home.

  • This didn't receive much press, but it was 107 degrees in McAllen two days ago -- shattering the old record.

  • I saw this photo yesterday as part of an anti-Biden meme, recognized current White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki in the middle of it, and wondered when it was from. It's really a great photo. I finally found it, and it had this caption: "Staff members listen to President Barack Obama speak about Donald Trump's victory in the Rose Garden." Psaki was Obama's Communications Director back then. 

  • Nerdy legal stuff #1: In an interview posted on Facebook, Tarrant County DA candidate Matt "Book Banning" Krause, who has never tried a criminal case, also demonstrated that he knows nothing about criminal law. He was asked about the Accomplice Witness Rule and instead tried to B.S. his way through by trying to explain the Law of Parties (which he also royally screwed up by saying you don't have to have any criminal intent, unlike the main actor of a crime, to be "just as guilty." The example he was given was an otherwise innocent "getaway driver." He's just flat wrong.)  Dear Tarrant County Republicans: Nominate him at your own peril. (Relevant part begins at 3:45)

  • Nerdy legal stuff #2: Don't do this in the federal Fifth Circuit. Or anywhere.  

  • Now the officer "finally knows who shot him after DNA data in a forensic genetic genealogy test gave them the name of a man living in Oklahoma. Mark Alan Long, identified by forensic genetic genealogy company Indentifinders International, shot Garner on March 3, 2003 after he robbed a bank in Watauga." Long shot himself the other day once he found out the cops were on to him. 

  • 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: 1,015 days.
  • Messenger: Above the Fold

at 8:31 AM

4.14.2022

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts





(1) I had forgotten that over a month passed from the date of the incident, 2/26/12, to the date of arrest, 4/12/22.  (2) There is no way the Murdock owned New York Post runs with that cover today. It's become way too Fox Newsy. 

  • We've got an update on the murder/self-induced miscarriage case and it is a stunner. After Lizelle Herrera's indictment and then after her arrest, her husband filed for divorce. And you want to know who his lawyer was? An assistant district attorney in that DA's Office who was allowed to have a private legal practice on the side.  The conflict of interest here is mind-boggling. And if that assistant DA is the reason the "abortion case" got indicted, the DA's office needs to be burned down (figuratively). And the Washington Post needs to have put these facts in the headline. 


  • Wise County social media quick hits:
    • A defamation lawsuit was filed by Terry and Elaine Priest in Wise County's district court against the person who allegedly ran the Facebook page "Rhome Watch". (Cause no. CV22-04-251 and Ernest "Skip" Reynolds is their lawyer.)

    • Five members of a female wrestling squad called the "Hollywood Knockouts" out of California, where weed is legal, were arrested traveling though Wise County. They were headed to a gig at the Whiskey Garden on West 7th Street in Fort Worth.


    • You can't get to it without being allowed in, but there's a big brouhaha brewing on the Facebook "Bridgeport Resident's Page" in connection with the alleged tactics of a candidate for the Bridgeport School Board.
  • After buying 10% of Twitter, Elon Mask is now performing a "pump and dump" stock manipulation trick for all to see. Despite making this offer in an official SEC regulatory filing, he doesn't have $40 billion in cash on hand to back it up. When Twitter turns him down, he dumps his stock at a profit. All of this is a crime in plain sight. 

     
  • A pharmacist for CVS has gone missing and "police said his cell phone was last pinged on April 6 around 2:15 a.m. in Wise County in the areas of Bridgeport, Decatur and Paradise." He was still missing per a news report yesterday. 

  • Greg Abbott had a bad day with his publicity stunts:
    • After they volunteered for the bus, he gave a free ride to D.C. to 20 immigrants seeking asylum. They were greeted yesterday with a handshake, a hug, and help. Video. They were then allowed to go wherever they want in the U.S. until their asylum claims can be processed. What was the point of this?

    • Back at the border, Abbott had to hold a press conference backing off his truck inspections because it turned out to be unworkable.  He justified it by saying he signed a "memorandum of understanding" with the governor of the Mexican state of Nuevo León who promised to do the extra searches on the Mexican side. Ummmkay. 

  • This was my favorite part of Abbott's press conference.
    • Question and Answer:

    • Uh, Abbott's campaign lapdog, DPS Director Steven McCraw, was standing right behind him at that moment but didn't even try to respond to the question. (You pay McCraw a salary of $299,813 a year in taxpayer money and all he does it follow Abbott around to be a prop for Abbott's campaign stunts.)

  • Crypto currency scam news from yesterday:
    • Jerry Jones wants "millions" of you to "buy your crypto currency" from blockchain.com or, as he called it throughout his press conference, "Block Chain Com."  It made me insane.

    • Proving that NFTs are nothing more than worthless digital Beanie Babies, the guy who bought the NFT of the first tweet by Twitter's owner Jack Dorsey (that sentence also makes me insane) tried to sell it at auction. After paying $2.9 million for it, the highest bid he received was $280. 

  • Clayton Kershaw was throwing a perfect game yesterday but was pulled after he threw 80 pitches. The sure firer Hall-of-Famer had reached his pitch count limit.  Decatur's Bryce Elder should have had a pitch count as well. In his very first start, had thrown 82 pitches when he finally ran into trouble. After retiring the first two batters in the 6th inning, but going to full counts on both of them to reach the 82 pitches, he was left in the game. He then gave up back to back homeruns. 

at 8:30 AM
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