Archive for December 16th, 2010

The Strange Case of Anthony Graves.

Thursday, December 16th, 2010

Today’s HouChron has an interesting article about prosecutor Kelly Siegler, investigator Otto Hanak, and how the case against Anthony Graves fell apart.

Siegler, who had tried many capital murder cases as a Harris County assistant district attorney, and Hanak, a state trooper and Texas Ranger for 28 years, were deeply embedded in the criminal justice establishment. But each new development in their investigation pointed to the conclusion that they reached independently: Graves was innocent, the victim of a prosecutor who had manufactured evidence, misled jurors and elicited false testimony.

For those unfamiliar with the case, Graves was convicted of murdering six people (a grandmother and five children) in Somerville, Texas in 1992. The major evidence against Graves was the testimony of Robert Carter, who was also convicted of the crime and executed in 2000. There is a great deal of circumstantial evidence against Carter, as well as Carter’s own confession; Carter had motive and opportunity, while Graves had neither. Only Carter’s testimony, which he recanted before being executed, ties Graves to the crime, and there appears to be evidence that the local prosecutors made a deal with Carter; if he implicated Graves, they would not pursue Carter’s wife, who was believed to be involved in the crime as well.

(I’m glossing over a lot of detail here. The best account I’ve seen, albeit one that’s been overtaken by events, is Pamela Colloff’s “Innocence Lost”, in the October 2010 Texas Monthly.)

This is a disturbing case, and I find it even more disturbing that the original prosecutor is making threats against Siegler. Not that Ms. Siegler is a shirking violet: you may remember her from the Susan Wright case, where she tied up one of her fellow prosecutors in the courtroom and re-enacted Ms. Wright’s stabbing of her husband 193 times.

Bravo to her and to Mr. Hanak for acting out what should be the prosecutor’s motto: “Fiat justitia ruat caelum.“

Posted in Clippings, Law | 1 Comment »

What’s My Melodic Line?

Thursday, December 16th, 2010

This little gem came across on a mailing list I subscribe to: a group of British musicians has gotten together as “Cage Against the Machine” and released their own recording of  ” 4′ 33″ “ for charity.

(The recording does not appear to be available from iTunes, but you can go to Amazon and pick from the original or seven different remixes of ” 4’33” “, only one of which is actually listed at 4’33” in length.)

What the article doesn’t mention, but the mailing list post does, is that “Cage Against the Machine” is also a deliberate attempt to keep the winner of “X Factor” in the UK from reaching #1 on the charts on Christmas weekend. (A similar attempt to do the same thing last year with an old “Rage Against the Machine” song actually worked.) When I mentioned this to Mike the Musicologist, he informed me that I was about 10 days late and a dollar short, and sent along a link to this thoughtful blog post.

Pretty much anything that sabotages one of Simon Cowell’s glorified karaoke competitions fills me with delight, and there have been times when I’ve wanted to walk up to musicians and slip them a few bucks to play ” 4’33” “. But I’ve got to give the blogger points; he’s right that there’s more to Cage than that one composition, and we run the risk of turning Cage into a joke by concentrating on that one piece.

(Subject line hattip.)

Posted in Art, Clippings, Music | Comments Closed

Random notes: December 16, 2010.

Thursday, December 16th, 2010

I was tempted to make some play on Bob Feller’s name in the headline, but I figure everyone’s going to be doing that. So here’s your NYT obit link, sans pun.

As I was in the process of composing this post, I found out about the death of Blake Edwards. I expect fuller obits in tomorrow’s papers.

Speaking of the NYT, there’s quite a bit of interesting stuff in today’s paper. Here’s a quick set of links:

Today is the 50th anniversary of the “Park Slope” plane crash: a United Airlines DC-8 and a Lockheed Constellation collided and fell to the ground in the Park Slope area of Brooklyn, killing 134 people. The “City Room” blog has been doing retrospectives on this story for most of the week: the best place to start is probably here, with the “How It Happened” post, and then browse the list of related posts below. It would be nice if the NYT bloggers could tag all the posts on the subject for easy linking…

(Edited to add: for some reason, the tags were not showing up for me earlier in Firefox 3.6, but they are now: this link will show all the posts tagged “Park Slope Plane Crash”.)

There’s also a retrospective on the murder of Ken Rex McElroy in Skidmore, Missouri “nearly” 30 years ago. The hook here is that the county prosecutor, who was just starting the job at the time of the murder, is now leaving office, and there still haven’t been any prosecutions.

There’s also a pretty shallow article on the rise of home science labs. I say “shallow” because the article is basically “Oh, look at all this cool stuff computerization has made affordable” and doesn’t cover any of the issues around home labs and amateur science experimentation; the CPSIA and science kits for kids, laws in some states (like Texas) restricting the purchase of “chemical glassware”, BATFE and the war on high-power rocketry,  or the CPSC’s attempt to shut down sales of chemicals for home experimentation, among other issues.

How bad is the California Institute of Technology basketball team?

The last time Caltech (2-5) won two games in a season was in 2001-2. The last time it won three was in 1996-97. The last time Caltech had a winning season was 1954.

In local news, I would have liked to be a fly on the wall for this conversation at the Hays County sheriff’s office: “So let me get this straight: you lost the interview with the victim.”

Jack Shafer on the nutmeg scare. I think many of the commenters are missing a key point: shouldn’t we be happy that kids these days are still reading the classics?

Posted in Clippings, Geek, Law, Loser, Obits, Planes, Sports | Comments Closed