Random notes: March 28, 2019.

March 28th, 2019

Chron Eye For The Killer Guy:

Raised by a single mother who avoided taking care of him, [Patrick] Murphy was beaten and abused as a child, according to court records. His grandmother taught him to shoplift at a young age, and by 17 he’d run away and moved into a homeless shelter.

What did Mr. Murphy do? He’s one of the Texas 7, who broke out of prison in December of 2000, went on the run, and killed Irving Police Officer Aubrey Hawkins while stealing guns from an Oshman’s.

When it was over, Hawkins lay dead in the parking lot, shot 11 times and run over by an SUV as the men fled.

Part of the argument is that Mr. Murphy didn’t actually pull a trigger: he was just a lookout, and it was five other guys who shot Officer Hawkins. But he was still convicted and sentenced to death based on…yes, the law of parties. (Still want to do that podcast some day.)

Even though Murphy went along the day of the killing, his lawyers say he didn’t want to take part in the crime, pointing out that he left as soon as he told the others of the officer’s arrival. Now, they say, executing him would be cruel and unusual punishment.

Pull the other one, guys: it has bells.

(The execution is currently delayed while the Supreme Court evaluates Mr. Murphy’s claim that he’s entitled to a Buddhist spiritual advisor in the death chamber.)

On a much happier note: up yours, Andrew Cuomo. Up yours, Bill de Blasio.

A federal judge ruled today that New York’s notoriously nonsensical law criminalizing “gravity knives”—which groups have said for years is used by New York City to selectively prosecute people, especially the working class and minorities, for carrying common folding knives—is unconstitutionally vague.

Posted in Cops, IANAL, Knives, Law | Comments Closed

This is intended to enrage you. (#9 in a series)

March 28th, 2019

The decision of the University of Texas to suspend the Texas Cowboys spirit group for six years because of hazing is disappointing and might prevent the group from continuing its community service and charitable donations, the group’s alumni association said Thursday.

I’m sure Nicholas Cumberland’s family is disappointed, too. Disappointed that they won’t see him again in this life.

The Cowboys are best known for firing Smokey the Cannon when UT scores at home football games. In addition, “our members have volunteered tens of thousands of community service hours, donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to charity and contributed to campus learning through activities such as hosting a lectureship series featuring world leaders on campus,” the alumni association said.

…

Nicholas Cumberland, who was majoring in business, finance and radio-television-film, was traveling in a pickup with other members of the Cowboys when it rolled over in Lampasas County after the September retreat, which occurred at a private ranch in Brown County. He was ejected from the vehicle and died four weeks later.

…

UT’s dean of students office on Wednesday told the Cowboys that it was suspending the group after its investigation found that a host of violations took place at a retreat in September, including coerced consumption of alcohol, cat food, Spam, milk and Tabasco sauce, as well as so-called Oklahoma drills, in which two people run directly at each other in a confined space. A UT Police Department spokeswoman said Thursday that its criminal investigation, separate from the student conduct investigation, is ongoing.

…

“As an organization, we are disappointed by the misconduct of certain student members,” the alumni association said in a statement provided to the American-Statesman by Eddie Lopez, the association’s president. “In fact, we have expelled and suspended from our organization the students who were connected to the hazing. Their actions violated University regulations and did not align with our organization’s standards — and they do not represent the heart and soul of our organization.

“However, hazing did not cause the car accident that took Nicky Cumberland’s life,” the statement added, noting that the university’s report determined that sleep deprivation did not occur at the retreat.

Oh, what a relief. The hazing didn’t kill him, and they dumped all the hazers anyway.

Formed in 1922, the Cowboys have been subjected to harsh penalties previously as a result of hazing. In 1995, [Gabe] Higgins, 19, drowned in the Colorado River after what school officials said were hours of alcohol-fueled hazing. In response, UT disbanded the Cowboys for five years.

Enough said.

Posted in Rage | Comments Closed

From the legal beat.

March 28th, 2019

A mistrial was declared yesterday in the murder case against Charles Reedy.

Mr. Reedy was accused of stabbing his roommate to death. However…

…Travis County prosecutors discovered several hundred new photos that Austin police detectives had taken as evidence. Their discovery prompted state District Judge Brad Urrutia to order a mistrial after Reedy’s lawyers said the new batch of photos might have impaired the case they had planned to present to the jury.

I believe that is what lawyers call a “Brady violation”, also known as “bad move, space cadet”. But that’s not why this story is interesting.

You see, Mr. Reedy has been convicted of murder before:

In 2001, a jury found him guilty of killing John Teller in a wooded area near St. Edward’s University and Interstate 35. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
But in 2006, the 3rd Court of Appeals in Austin overturned the conviction. Chief Justice W. Kenneth Law wrote an opinion saying, “The jury’s verdict is unsupported by proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Kind of makes you go “Hmmmmmmmm”, doesn’t it?

Posted in Law, TCDA | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 27, 2019.

March 27th, 2019

Larry Cohen, noted film director and writer.

I actually rented “Q” at one point when I was younger, and wouldn’t mind watching it again. As I recall, it was kind of silly, but I like Quetzalcoatls and Michael Moriarty.

I haven’t been able to find a reliable source for this, but Mike the Musicologist forwarded me a Wikipedia link: Michel Bacos apparently passed away yesterday. Mr. Bacos was the pilot of Air France 139 when it was hijacked on June 27, 1976. As you know, Bob, the plane eventually ended up in Uganda at the Entebbe Airport, and things proceeded from there.

Posted in History, Movies, Obits, Planes | Comments Closed

Less Miles.

March 26th, 2019

Tim Miles out as men’s basketball coach at Nebraska.

Seven seasons, 116-114 overall, 19-17 (6-14 in conference) this season.

Mike Anderson gone at Arkansas after eight seasons. 18-16 this season (8-10 in conference), 169-102 overall.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Win free stuff!

March 23rd, 2019

You may very well have seen this elsewhere, but: the folks at BulkMunitions sent me a nice personal email and suggested the two of you who read my blog might be interested in their giveaway.

They’re offering a .50 caliber ammo can with foam inserts for two pistols and a 25 pack of dessicant.

You can enter here.

I’m not going to be entering, because I don’t think it’s fair to my loyal readers. Also, I haven’t had any dealings with BulkMunitions, so this is not an endorsement: as I said, they sent me a nice email, personalized so it didn’t come across as spam, so I’m willing to give them some space here.

Contest ends April 13th, two days before Buy a Gun Day. So if you win the contest, you have a built-in excuse to go buy something to keep in your ammo can.

Posted in Guns | Comments Closed

Quick TMQ Watch.

March 23rd, 2019

TMQ, October 30, 2018:

TMQ would think the single easiest thing in all of sports would be to predict success for LeBron James. Yet this is currently unfashionable.

…

He’ll be a force in the 2019 NBA postseason with the Lakers. Why isn’t this obvious?

ESPN, March 23, 2019:

After the Los Angeles Lakers missed the playoffs only five times in the first 65 years of the franchise’s existence, Friday’s 111-106 loss to the Brooklyn Nets officially eliminated them from postseason contention for the sixth straight year.

Yes, yes, “all predictions wrong or your money back”, but: obvious?

Posted in Sports, TMQ watch | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 20, 2019.

March 20th, 2019

Richard Erdman, noted character actor. He was on “Community”, which I never watched. But before that, he seems to have done guest shots on many TV shows of the 1970s and 1960s (except “Mannix”). Like everyone else in Hollywood, he was also in “Tora! Tora! Tora!”, and played Hoffman in “Stalag 17”.

Al Silverman passed away on Sunday. He worked in publishing, spending 16 years with Book of the Month Club and later becoming an editor with Viking Books.

Before that, he was a freelance sportswriter and later editor in chief of “Sport” magazine. While he was editing “Sport”, he met and wrote about Gayle Sayers, who was recovering from a knee injury. Ultimately, Mr. Silverman and Mr. Sayers collaborated on Mr. Sayers’s autobiography, I Am Third. And, in turn, a chapter from that book became the basis for “Brian’s Song”.

“I don’t remember my father talking about his greatest projects, but in terms of royalties, it was the best,” Brian Silverman said by telephone.

Another great story:

When the running back Paul Hornung was celebrated for leading the Green Bay Packers to the 1961 National Football League championship, Sport awarded him a 1962 Corvette. Mr. Hornung soon after sold the car and got into a dispute with the Internal Revenue Service in United States Tax Court after he failed to disclose the full market value of the car as part of his gross income for 1962.
“My father testified to Hornung’s defense that he should not pay income tax on the car,” Brian Silverman said. His father argued that the car was an unsolicited reward for Mr. Hornung’s talents and thus should be tax-exempt — “the same as a Nobel Prize, because football was Hornung’s art and he performed it to an award-winning degree.” Mr. Hornung lost the case.

Posted in 1970s, Books, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Notes from the legal blotter.

March 19th, 2019

Mildly interesting, though the Statesman is short on details (perhaps because law enforcement is not giving those out):

State officials cancelled liquor permits for Club Casino, 5500 South Congress Ave., and Zota’s Night Club, 4700 Burleson Road, on March 8., TABC officials said.

The bars were shut down “after a months-long investigation into human trafficking, narcotics and drink solicitation” involving both TABC and the Travis County Sheriff’s Office.

More interesting: APD fired officers Donald Petraitis and Robert Pfaff yesterday.

Why? February of last year, the two officers arrested a man named Quentin Perkins:

Petraitis and Pfaff filed reports that said Perkins had tried to walk away from them and glanced back as if he were planning to run. However, video footage from the incident presented during the officers’ trial showed that Pfaff used a stun gun on Perkins despite Perkins being on his knees with his hands raised.
Parts of the officers’ reports are “simply not true,” Police Chief Brian Manley wrote in their disciplinary memos, which were released Monday.

…

Manley also accused Pfaff and Petraitis of coordinating a false story.
“I find it improbable that both officers came up with a similar version of events, which included things that did not happen … as well as not recalling what actually did happen. … I have serious concerns that Officer Pfaff and Petraitis got their stories straight before they spoke with (a supervisor) and prepared their reports and the probable cause affidavit,” he wrote.

…

The disciplinary memos also say a police academy supervisor told the Austin police internal affairs unit that the stun gun use under these circumstances was unreasonable.

Even more interesting: the two officers were charged criminally as a result of this incident…and were acquitted of all the charges. Which is an additional illustration of something they tell the students in our Citizen’s Police Academy classes: you can do everything within the bounds of the law…and still get fired for violating APD policy, if that’s the way the chief wants to go. (And if you actually violated policy. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to tell the Taser story.)

Edited to add: I was going to include a link to the chief’s memo, but the city of Austin has reorganized the website and made the disciplinary memos extremely hard to find. DuckDuckGo to the rescue, but: the most recent one posted is from January 10th.

Edited to add 2: How bad does a jail have to be before even the people who run it quit? This bad.

In addition to the carbon monoxide issue, Barnett cited exposed electrical wiring, mold, bad plumbing, and an instance where a snake fell on an inmate’s head.

Posted in Austin, Cops, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 19, 2019.

March 19th, 2019

Reason has a nice obit up for Dick Dale.

“…We’re like Johnny Appleseed, crossing the country and sowing the seeds of survival.”

Johnny Thompson, aka “The Great Tomsoni”,

…a pompous caricature of a magician. His act, full of deadpan humor and often performed with his wife, Pamela Hayes, as his indifferent assistant, left spectators laughing so much that they might not have fully appreciated that they were also seeing expertly executed tricks.

He was more than a magician, though: he was a consultant and advisor to other magicians (including Penn and Teller, who he worked extensively with) and an expert magic historian.

“Johnny had a profound way of taking an idea and creating an illusion that worked,” he said by email. “When I called him and asked, ‘How do I make a guarded car vanish from inside of a dealership?,’ without missing a beat he said, ‘We don’t, we vanish it from a tent outside, just like the vanishing elephant illusion,’ ” a reference to a classic trick performed by Houdini and others.
Mr. Jillette said that this knowledge of history had also come into play in a less visible role that Mr. Thompson filled: that of informal mediator when one magician thought another might be stealing material.
“If two people felt they were doing material that was too close, Johnny knew the provenance of everything,” Mr. Jillette said. “He could adjudicate that.”

You should read all the way to the end of this obit: there’s a story involving Mr. Jillette that I won’t spoil for you here.

Posted in Magic, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 18, 2019.

March 18th, 2019

Dick Dale. Guitar World.

I missed the surf guitar era – I was too young. But Mr. Dale was an interesting guy: one of the other online obits I’ve seen (and can’t find now) states he practiced martial arts for 30 years. Not only that, but he used his martial arts practice as a tool to deal with the pain he suffered from multiple chronic illnesses.

How about a musical interlude?

Posted in Music, Obits | 1 Comment »

Something you don’t see every day.

March 18th, 2019

Raw live feed from Houston’s KHOU of a tank farm fire in Deer Park, Texas.

Multiple storage tanks containing naphtha and xylene are involved. The fire’s been burning since yesterday.

(Hattip: Lawrence.)

Posted in Clippings, Hysteria | Comments Closed

Bibilohoplophilia.

March 17th, 2019

Or is it hoplobibilophilia? What do you call it when you have a fondness for gun books?

Whatever it is, I have the fever. And the only cure is…more cowbell, er, buying more books. Now it’s your turn to suffer for my -phila.

Seriously, I’ve picked up a couple of books lately that I want to endorse and document Lawrence style. (Please do not confuse “Lawrence style” with “Gangnam style“.) Half-Price Books has been having another coupon sale, but the first two books here I actually ordered new from the publishers.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Books, Endorsements, Guns, Holsters, Hoplobibilophilia | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 17, 2019.

March 17th, 2019

Johnny “Lam” Jones, former UT football player and track star.

In his freshman year he ran in the same backfield as another Johnny Jones. To distinguish the two, Coach Darrell Royal gave one the nickname Lam, for Jones’s hometown, and the other the nickname Ham, because that Jones came from Hamlin, Tex.

He was an Olympic gold medalist in 1976 and a star football player for UT, but did not have an entirely successful pro career.

W. S. Merwin, noted poet. While I like me some poetry, and have heard of Merwin, I confess to not knowing his work very well. But:

In later years Mr. Merwin was equally known for his work as a conservationist — in particular for his painstaking restoration of depleted flora, including hundreds of species of palm, on the remote former pineapple plantation in Hawaii where he made his home. He had lived there, in blissful near-solitude, since the 1970s, refusing to answer the telephone.

Anyone who’s a fellow member of the Alexander Graham Bell Was a Meddling SOB Society is okay in my book.

Posted in Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

I shouted out “Who killed the Kennedys?”

March 16th, 2019

Billy Kennedy out as head coach of Texas A&M men’s basketball.

151-116 over eight seasons, two Sweet 16 appearances, but 14-18 this season.

Edited to add: with a rebel yell, he cried more more more.

Marvin Menzies out at University of Nevada-Las Vegas. Three years, 17-14 this season, 48-48 overall.

Mike Dunleavy Sr. out at Tulane (Green Wave!).

Dunleavy’s .258 winning percentage (24-69) is the second-poorest among all coaches in school history. The only coach with a poorer winning percentage is Ted Lendhardt, whose 1963-64 team lost the first 22 games before beating LSU in the final game for a 1-22 record (.043).

They were 4-27 this year, lost their last 21 games in a row and went 0-18 in conference.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

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