Whipped Cream Difficulties

I went around and around about posting this, because I was worried about spoiling the broth boring my readers. But I think this is worth noting.

Over the weekend, David Hanners, the Dallas Morning News reporter who did the early coverage of the Cook case, posted a long comment in response to Michael Hall’s post, “What the ‘Tyler Morning Telegraph’ Failed to Tell You about Kerry Max Cook”.  The Texas Monthly blog promoted that comment to a full post (in the process cleaning up the formatting so it is more readable): that post is here.

Summarizing, Hanners also has issues with the daily paper’s coverage of the case, and doesn’t believe Cook is guilty.

I am probably one of the few people who has gone into Mr. Cook’s case with objective eyes. When I began looking into it, I wasn’t out to prove him guilty or innocent; frankly, I didn’t care. My reason for looking into his case was to try and answer a very simple question involving the administration of justice: Why did it take the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals nearly eight years to rule in his initial appeal?

Hanners also mentions a couple of things about the police investigation that I didn’t know, and are frankly shocking. The police apparently did not interview the victim’s co-workers until they complained, then “the detectives went out to the school and basically waited for people to come to them—in full view of Mr. Mayfield. [the other suspect in the case -DB]”

Then there’s the missing stocking. Police initially found just one sock at the crime scene. The prosecution claimed that the killer mutilated Linda Edwards body, and took body parts away from the crime scene in one of her stockings. Apparently, there were no body parts taken…

When the jurors in the first retrial had the trial exhibits back in the jury room, they opened the sealed evidence bag containing Ms. Edwards’ jeans, pulled them out and held them up. The “missing” stocking dropped out. The cops couldn’t even find a stocking in a pant leg.

And, now that there’s DNA pointing to someone else…

I clearly remember David Dobbs, the prosecutor handling the retrials, telling me prior to the testing that they were excited about the prospects of a test because the semen sample “could only have been left by the killer.” Those were his exact words to me, and I remember him saying it as if it were yesterday. So then the sample is sent away for testing, the deal with Mr. Cook is offered and accepted—and then the results come back showing the semen belonged to someone other than Mr. Cook. Suddenly, the prosecution’s story changes. Now they say, “Well, of course it was somebody else. But Mr. Cook is still the killer.”

Over at the Texas Monthly web site, Michael Hall has an interesting blog post about the case of Kerry Max Cook.

To be honest, I’d heard the name, I’d seen some of the press coverage, but I never quite had a handle on what happened with this case. Hall’s post is a pretty good introduction.

In brief, Cook was charged with the 1977 murder of Linda Edwards. He was convicted at his first trial in 1978: ten years later, the Dallas Morning News exposed various issues from the first trial (a lying jailhouse snitch, a detective who claimed he could tell how old fingerprints were). Cook was granted a retrial in 1991.

The second trial ended in a hung jury. During that trial, even more evidence of prosecutorial misconduct came out in court. Cook was tried a third time in 1994, and was found guilty (again) and sentenced to death (again).

That third conviction was reversed in 1996 by the Court of Criminal Appeals, which specifically called out the misconduct on the part of the prosecution and police.

Cook, for various reasons, ended up entering a no-contest plea “in which Cook would maintain his innocence while only acknowledging the evidence the state would offer to try and convict him” before the fourth trial. DNA testing (the results of which became available only after Cook’s plea) seems to point to another man as the actual culprit. Cook is attempting to get additional DNA testing done, and to get a declaration of actual innocence from the Texas courts.

The entire case is much more complex than I’ve outlined here; I commend Hall’s post to your attention.

(Hattip: GFB.)

Garden city of Washington state.

Brad Thoma was a sergeant with the Spokane Police Department up until 2009. That year, he was charged with driving while intoxicated and hit and run: apparently, he hit a pickup with his personal vehicle and fled the scene.

Thoma received “deferred adjudication” in the case, which basically meant that if he kept his nose clean for a certain amount of time, the charges would go away. As part of the agreement, he had to have an ignition interlock installed on any vehicles he drove, according to state law at the time. This would be awfully inconvenient to put on a police car, so Thoma was offered a non-driving desk job. He turned down that offer, so the Spokane PD fired his butt.

Now we’re in 2012. Thoma, of course, complained after he was fired, and the “Washington State Human Rights Commission” negotiated a settlement in which Thoma would be rehired as a detective and get $275,000 in back pay.

The Spokane City Council, in their infinite wisdom, rejected the settlement.

And Thoma is suing, claiming he was discriminated against due to his disability, namely alcoholism.

If you want to read the FARK discussion, I’d recommend hitting yourself repeatedly with a ball peen hammer until the urge goes away. If it doesn’t go away, the thread is here.

And, yes, I usually don’t cover stuff that is on FARK, but:

1. Mike the Musicologist sent it to me as blog fodder, and

b. It reminded me of another former Spokane police officer that I hadn’t checked on recently. So how’s Karl F. Thompson Jr. doing these days? (You remember former officer Thompson, don’t you? He beat Otto Zehm to death.)

Well…

• Former officer Thompson still hasn’t been sentenced. A date hasn’t been set yet.
• Former officer Thompson says that he’s “taken responsibility” for his actions, and is requesting a reduced sentence. Sentencing guidelines call for a sentence of between 27 and 33 months, but Thompson is requesting that his sentence be reduced to below that level. Originally, the prosecution was asking for a sentence of between six to eight years.
• Former officer Thompson is still seeking a new trial; this time, his attorneys are claiming that the expert testimony of a witness was “mischaracterized” by the prosecutors.
• “A special panel – including a former U.S. attorney, a retired state Supreme Court chief justice and others – is set to investigate the Spokane Police Department’s use-of-force training and practices next month in a review that will extend beyond the Zehm case.”

Here is a particularly noteworthy quote:

Although the state’s top police trainer concluded that the fatal 2006 confrontation with unarmed janitor Otto Zehm was indefensible, the department’s own instructors and the city’s legal advisers have insisted that Spokane police officers were justified and handled the encounter appropriately.

• The Zehm family has agreed to mediation with the city in their lawsuit.
• The city is considering the use of body cameras. I’m not sure how much good that would have done in this case; there was video evidence of what happened (that’s what hung Thompson). And one of the major issues (as I see it) is the city’s instance that everything that happened was proper and consistent with the Spokane PD’s operating procedures.
• Here’s a great example of karma coming back around:
  

  A Spokane police officer who says he feared for his life after being threatened by a felon was asked in court Wednesday about supportive comments he posted on a Facebook page in support of another convicted felon – former Officer Karl Thompson.