Archive for the ‘WCDA’ Category

Obit watch: April 25, 2019.

Thursday, April 25th, 2019

Wow. Lots going on.

This is breaking news: Lawrence beat me to it (because I had to wait for my lunch hour to post).

Former Williamson County DA Jana Duty was found dead in a South Texas condo yesterday.

I have a WCDA tag for reasons: if you go back and look, or read Lawrence’s post, you’ll see that former DA Duty was controversial and apparently had some issues during her tenure. But this is still a sad and awful thing.

Mark Medoff, playwright. He was best known for “Children of a Lesser God”, which won multiple Tony awards and was the basis for the Oscar winning Marlee Matlin movie.

This one is for Mike the Musicologist: Heather Harper, soprano.

An unanticipated performance in 1962 brought Ms. Harper international attention when, on 10 days’ notice, she substituted for Galina Vishnevskaya in the premiere of Britten’s “War Requiem.” The work was written to dedicate the new Coventry Cathedral in England, the original 14th-century structure having been bombed into ruin during World War II.
As a gesture of reconciliation, Britten, a pacifist, had intended the soloists to be the tenor Peter Pears (an Englishman), the baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (a German) and Ms. Vishnevskaya (a Russian). But the Soviet government refused to allow Ms. Vishnevskaya to travel to Coventry for the premiere. Ms. Harper, just turned 32, took her place and triumphed.

She did a lot of work with Britten (including Ellen in the 1969 BBC production of “Peter Grimes”) but she had a larger repertoire, including singing “Lohengrin” at Bayreuth.

Fay McKenzie, actress. Her story is interesting:

Ms. McKenzie made her screen debut in 1918, when she was 10 weeks old, cradled in Gloria Swanson’s arms in “Station Content,” a five-reel silent romance. Her last role was a cameo appearance with her son, Tom Waldman Jr., in “Kill a Better Mousetrap,” a comedy, based on a play by Scott K. Ratner, that was filmed last summer and has yet to be released.

She was also in five Blake Edwards movies and five Gene Autry movies. Ms. McKenzie was 101 when she passed.

Ken Kercheval. He did a lot of TV work (no “Mannix”, though) and was probably most famous as Cliff Barnes on “Dallas”. (He was also in “Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell“, which I’d kind of like to watch. Lawrence, however, does not seem to care much for movies involving demonic dogs.)

Finally, Grand Duke Jean of Luxembourg. Noted:

As the crown prince, he fled Luxembourg with the grand ducal family after Germany invaded the country in May 1940 and found refuge in France, Portugal, the United States and Canada before moving to Britain to join the Irish Guards, a regiment of the British Army, as a private in 1942.
He participated in the Allies’ invasion of Normandy in 1944 and fought in the Battle for Caen there. Three months later he took part in the liberation of Brussels.
Among other honors, he received a Silver Star from the United States, a War Medal from Britain and the French Croix de Guerre. He was promoted to colonel in the Irish Guards in 1984 and was made an honorary general of the British Army in 1995.

Dumb de dumb dumb.

Thursday, July 19th, 2018

Dumb de dumb dumb…

The stories I am about to link to are true. I haven’t changed any names, because none of these people are innocent.

Dumb: threatening a judge.
Dumber: threatening two judges.
Dumbest: threatening two judges, one of whom was already shot and wounded by another idiot three years ago.

“I have every right to hang your (expletive),” Holgate said in a message according to the affidavit. “You have every goddamn right to be afraid of me. I am the law and you shouldn’t have crossed me.”
In another message, Holgate threatened to kill one of the judges, according to the document.
“I have the right to (expletive) kill you. You understand that?” He said. “…But we will see if we can resolve it. I don’t think we can, I think we are just going to hang your (expletive).”

And by the way…

…his arrest affidavit said he identified himself at the beginning of each of his threatening messages.

Meanwhile, over in Williamson County, the relatively new sheriff and prolific tweeter Robert Chody is in a micturition contest with one of the county commissioners, Dan Gattis.

Sheriff Chody has opinions about how county government is run, especially when it comes to sewage leaks, and does not hesitate to share them. This, in turn, seems to upset Judge Gattis:

“He stuck his finger in my chest — he didn’t actually touch me — and said, ‘Tell that sheriff if he doesn’t quit tweeting, I’m going zero his budget out,’” Chief Deputy Tim Ryle told the American-Statesman on Wednesday. “My comment to him was, ‘Judge, are you sure you want to say that?’ He said, ‘Yes, tell him to stop tweeting about me and my people.’

This little spat wouldn’t be noteworthy to me, except for what happened next:

Gattis’ alleged threat crossed a legal line, say Williamson County prosecutors, who filed a misdemeanor official oppression charge against him. Law enforcement officials issued a summons for Gattis to appear in state District Court in lieu of being arrested.

Yes, you read that correctly: the WillCo DA filed criminal charges against a county commissioner (who, by the way, is not running for re-election this year) because he shot his mouth off.

Personally, I think they’re all idiots: the sheriff’s office and the DA for filing charges over a political disagreement, and Judge Gattis for making empty threats. (“I’m going zero his budget out”. Yeah, Judge, you’re going to zero out the sheriff’s department budget. Call me when the pigs start flying.)

Random notes: June 13, 2016.

Monday, June 13th, 2016

I was busy all day yesterday, and I have nothing profound or interesting to say about Orlando. Go look at the smarter people on my blogroll if you’re looking for that: I’d suggest Tam and Lawrence as good starting points.

In other news: there’s now an official lawsuit pending to remove Williamson Count District Attorney Jana Duty from office. And I’m thinking I need a WCDA tag.

I missed this until Lawrence sent me a link to a Daily Mail story: Sean Whent, the police chief in Oakland, resigned on Thursday.

Chief Anthony Batts quit in 2011 after receiving a scathing report from Robert Warshaw, the court monitor assigned to ensure that the Police Department was implementing reforms ordered by a federal judge. Batts’ successor, Howard Jordan, left suddenly in 2013 amid a spike in violent crime and a wave of anger over how police were handling Occupy protests. Interim Chief Anthony Toribio, who came in after Jordan, lasted only two days.

The general belief seems to be that Whent was working to stabilize and clean up the department, but there were a whole host of recent scandals on his watch:

Officer Cullen Faeth was charged with misdemeanor battery, public intoxication and trespassing after he allegedly tried to break into a home in Oakland’s Redwood Heights neighborhood in December and attacked a woman who lived there. In February, Officer Matthew Santos was arrested for allegedly pulling his gun on a man painting Santos’ apartment in Emeryville. Santos was fired shortly thereafter.

But the biggest issue is a messy sex scandal. Five officers have been placed on administrative leave so far.

The woman at the center of the sex scandal is claiming she had sex with two dozen current and former officers in five cities, a newspaper investigation published Sunday found.

More from the Mercury News:

…she slept with three of the 24 officers — all from Oakland’s police department — before she turned 18 last August.

She also said that two Oakland officers provided her confidential police information, including tips on scheduled anti-prostitution stings…

Followups.

Thursday, June 9th, 2016

Theresa Saldana: NYT. A/V Club.

Lawrence was kind enough to throw me a backlink and add some additional context to the Jana Duty story. Latest update: even though Duty will be out after the election, “Williamson County business leaders” are demanding that she resign now. In addition to her troubles with the State Bar, the people demanding her resignation are claiming she’s pretty much stopped showing up for work:

Justice of the Peace Bill Gravell also spoke at the news conference and said that Duty “has largely been absent from her post.”
“This makes doing my job as a judge in the community more challenging and very difficult to serve the people of Williamson County effectively,” Gravell said.

And Mike the Musicologist sent me a link to a CNN story about Rear Admiral Robert Gilbeau pleading guilty to one count of “making a false statement to investigators”.

Two things about that story:

1) Rear Admiral Gilbeau’s plea is related to the ongoing investigation into the “Fat Leonard” scandal.

2) Linked it before, I’ll link it again: “Really, seriously, just shut the fuck up.”

Annals of law (#10 in a series)

Wednesday, June 8th, 2016

Two sort of random notes:

1. Jana Duty, the elected district attorney of Williamson County (Williamson County is just up the road from Austin/Travis County: it covers Round Rock and Georgetown) has been placed “on probation” by the State Bar of Texas for 18 months.

Duty will still be able to practice law but will have to comply with the terms of her probation.

Why? “Professional misconduct”. Specifically, Ms. Duty was accused of withholding evidence in a murder case.

“It is unknown to the court why Ms. Duty intentionally and willfully withheld the means to view time stamps on the Walmart Surveillance video other than from Ms. Duty’s statement that “(defense counsel) acted so horribly to me during the first trial, that I just — I didn’t want to speak to them,’” the court document said.

Here’s the Wilco DA’s website. I find that quote from Article 2.01 deeply ironic.

2. On Monday, a judge for the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals ruled that Sonia Cacy was innocent of murder.

Ms. Cacy was sentenced to 99 years in prison in 1993: she allegedly doused her uncle with “an accelerant” and set him on fire.

Except there were problems with the evidence.

During at punishment retrial in 1996, her new attorney enlisted Dr. Gerald Hurst, the late Cambridge-educated chemist from Austin, to evaluate the forensic evidence that clinched conviction against her. Hurst discovered that the original tests, conducted by Joe Castorena of the Bexar County Forensics Lab, had been completely misread. The results didn’t find the indicators of an accelerant as he claimed. Castorena, a toxicologist by training, had in fact identified the products of pyrolysis—compounds created by burning plastic, which in many ways are similar to those of an accelerant.

Lots of problems:

…Castorena, the toxicologist, admitted in a letter to her [Cacy’s – DB] counsel, Dallas lawyer Gary Udashen, that the clothing samples he’d tested had been contaminated in either the morgue or the lab. Thus, his baffling reasoning went, anyone who didn’t know about the contamination couldn’t accurately interpret the results. Asked why he never reported this, Castorena replied, “nobody asked me.”

The full court has to concur before Ms. Cacy is officially exonerated, but as the TM article notes, that almost seems to be a formality now.

Justice?

Friday, November 8th, 2013

I have written previously about the wrongful conviction of Michael Morton, and the prosecution of former Williamson County DA Ken Anderson for withholding evidence in that case.

According to the timeline at the Texas Tribune, Michael Morton was convicted on February 17, 1987, and released from prison on October 4, 2011. Microsoft Excel tells me that is 8,995 days. (I am not taking into account time Michael Morton served while awaiting trial, since I can’t find a good figure for that.)

Former Williamson County district attorney Ken Anderson will serve 10 days in jail and give up his law license for hiding favorable evidence in the 1987 trial of Michael Morton, who served almost 25 years in prison for a murder he did not commit.

The ten days Ken Anderson will serve, on a “contempt of court” charge, work out to 0.11% of the time Michael Morton served.

Updates from the legal blotter.

Wednesday, September 25th, 2013

I wrote previously about the case of Charles Malouff, a former cop convicted of illegally possessing “destructive devices” and who was supposedly facing life in prison after being charged with fraud. (The fraud case was related to federal grants for a wind farm near Austin.)

Malouff was convicted on the fraud charges, and has been sentenced to 15 years in prison. That sentence will run concurrently with his sentence on the other charges.

Judge Ken Anderson has resigned. You may remember former Judge Anderson as former Williamson County prosecutor Ken Anderson. You may also remember former prosecutor Anderson as the guy who wrongfully sent Michael Morton to prison for 25 years, and is now facing charges of concealing evidence that would have established Morton’s innocence at the time. More from Grits for Breakfast.