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Posts filed under category: Law and Order
The Fort Hood Tragedy
I'd like to highlight some of the better news coverage of yesterday's stunning attack at Fort Hood.
The Washington Post has the most-revealing story I've seen yet about the shooter, Nidal M. Hasan.
He's from Virginia and -- as you probably know -- worked at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in D.C.
The Post story begins:
He prayed every day at the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring, a devout Muslim who, despite asking to be discharged from the U.S. Army, was on the eve of his first deployment to war. Yesterday, authorities said Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, a 39-year-old Arlington-born psychiatrist, shot and killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex.
In an interview, his aunt, Noel Hasan of Falls Church, said he had endured name-calling and harassment about his Muslim faith for years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and had sought for several years to be discharged from the military.....
Hasan was born in Arlington and grew up in the Roanoke Valley of southwestern Virginia, a bookish young man who, his father hoped, would go on to significant professional achievement. He spent nearly all of his Army medical career at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the District, caring for the victims of trauma, yet spoke openly of his deep opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Post story is must-reading, if you want to know who this person is.
The Statesman has provided excellent, ongoing coverage on this blog.
The Statesman reports (for those of us in the Austin area who want to donate blood) that the central Austin blood center is overwhelmed today. The Blood and Tissue Center of Central Texas is asking that Austinites wait to donate blood during the coming holiday season:
Because of the donor response to this tragic event, the blood supply continues to be adequate at this time. Rather than give a donation today, we encourage you to make an appointment now to donate during the Thanksgiving or the Christmas holidays and continue to donate once a quarter.
Posted under: Law and OrderThe Causes of Wrongful Convictions
"If it can happen to Tim, it can happen to anyone."
That's what Cory Session -- the brother of Tim Cole, the Texas Tech student who was wrongly convicted of rape and who later died in prison -- told a conference room full of lawyers, judges and criminal justice policy-makers this morning in Austin at the first meeting of the Tim Cole Advisory Panel on Wrongful Convictions.
It was ostensibly an organizational meeting. But the first order of business was to hear a powerful speech from Session. Sitting next to other members of Cole's family at a long conference table, Session described his brother as a young college student who was trying to live the American dream. He spent 13 years in prison -- before dying from complications of asthma -- for a crime he didn't commit.
"This was my brother," Session said through tears. "This was my mother's son. He never met my children. He never married."
Session suggested the flags on all state government buildings be lowered to half-staff on Dec. 2 -- the date that Cole died in prison -- to commemorate everyone who's been wrongly convicted.
Cole's tragic story made national news last year and prodded the Legislature to enact two bills in Cole's name (one increased compensation for the wrongly convicted and the other created the panel.)
But much of the discussion at this morning's two-hour meeting revolved around the reforms that didn't pass the Legislature this year. That included a bill to reform police lineup procedures -- the reform that, had it been in place in 1985, might have saved Tim Cole. It was a witness misidentification due to poor police lineup procedures that sent him to prison (incorrect witness ID is the leading cause of wrongful convictions.)
Grits has an excellent run-down of the major players at the meeting -- including an appearance by embattled Judge Sharon Keller -- and what they said. (More after the jump.)
Posted under: Law and OrderThe High Court’s Checks and Balances
Most Texans probably couldn't name a single member of the Texas Supreme Court -- although they may have voted for some of the justices. I also suspect many people don't know that the judges on the state's highest civil court are elected, and that the justices' campaigns are heavily financed by the very law firms and corporations who regularly argue cases before the court.
It all looks pretty unseemly, and I doubt many Texans even know this is how the system has functioned for years.
The resourceful muckrakers at Texans for Public Justice released a new report today examining which special interests bankrolled Supreme Court candidates in 2008. (You can read the whole report here.)
TPJ, a nonprofit watchdog group, examined the campaign finance reports for the three justices who raised the most campaign cash in 2008: Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson ($1.19 million), Justice Phil Johnson ($777,392) and Justice Dale Wainwright ($851,753).
Big law firms and corporate interests supplied half the campaign money for these three justices, according to the TPJ report.
Top contributors included the Dallas law firm Haynes & Boone, Houston-based Vinson & Elkins, and the Bob Perry-funded HillCo PAC. All regularly appear before the court -- either as attorney or client.
That's not to say the money sways the High Court's decisions (although the Nathan Hecht situation looked very bad). But it's the appearance of influence-peddling -- the possibility that we all might not be equal in the eyes of the law -- that's unsettling.
There has to be a better way.
Posted under: Law and OrderDept. of Inconsequential Punishment
The death row inmate who called state Sen. John Whitmire last year with a smuggled-in cell phone (and later threatened to kill him) has received his comeuppance.
The Statesman reports:
Death row killer Richard Lee Tabler....pleaded guilty this morning to threatening the lawmaker and possessing contraband.
During a brief courtroom appearance in Livingston, in East Texas, Tabler got [a] 10-year sentence stacked atop his death sentence."Posted under: Law and Order« Older PostsRobbing the Wrongly Convicted….
....to pay the lawyers.
So, the State of Texas ups the compensation to the wrongly convicted, and now some attorneys want a big cut of that money.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram has the story:
A man freed from prison by DNA evidence has asked a judge to stop his former lawyer from taking more than $1 million in fees out of his expected $4 million in state compensation.
Lawyers for Steven C. Phillips, 51, filed a petition in state district court in Dallas asking the judge to declare an agreement with his former lawyer "unconscionable and thus unenforceable."
That contract with his former lawyer obligated Phillips to give up one-fourth of his award from the state for the 24 years he spent incarcerated for a string of sexual assaults the courts now say he did not commit."I'm not going to begrudge the lawyers some compensation for their work. But $1 million?
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