ustxtxb_obs_1973_09_21_50_00008-00000_000.pdf

than red folks, how about this: Frances Farenthold is going to Moscow and Latvia Oct. 1-15 as a guest of the Soviet Women’s Committee. And she an honorary Texas Ranger. It didn’t take long for the question of resentencing to reach the Court of Criminal Appeals. On Sept. 5, just nine days after the new drug law went into effect, the court heard arguments on the constitutionality of the law’s provision for new sentences for previously-convicted marijuana offenders. Travis County DA Bob Smith brought the case, seeking a writ of prevention against District Judge Tom Blackwell, who had set a resentencing hearing for Frank Demolli. Demolli was found guilty of possessing 21 pounds of grass in 1971 and was sentenced to 25 years. Smith told the court that commutation of sentence by any other name, including resentencing, is still a power exclusively vested in the governor. He pointed out that Atty. Gen. John Hill advised the Legislature the provision was unconstitutional during consideration of the bill. He also claimed the majority of legislators knew that was invalid and left it in only to appease a “vociferous minority in the House.” Doing most of the arguing on the other side was Austin attorney Sam Houston Clinton. Clinton maintained the bill does not provide for commutation, but for a judicial procedure to bring sentences currently being served into line with those that will be meted out under the new law. And he said it is ironic that the section Smith said would usurp gubernatorial powers was approved by the governor along with the rest of the bill. In point of fact, Governor Briscoe opposed the idea of resentencing throughout the time the bill was before the Legislature. He also promised back then that he would review the sentences of persons convicted under the old two-to-life statute if resentencing was not included in the bill. Roy Coffee, Jr., who served as Briscoe’s liaison with the House and put much of his time into the drug bill, has left the governor’s employ to return to private law practice in Dallas. Coffee raised quite a few hackles in the House, most memorably those of Baytown Rep. Joe Allen, who \(as chairman of the from the floor on two occasions. The new drug law was also on the minds of the county and district attorneys and sheriffs who assembled in Austin recently. Harris County DA Carol Vance briefed the group on provisions of the new statute. The lawmen also got a pep talk from John Hill \(“Texas is Number One among the states we know that. I want to keep doing the things we need to do to 8 The Texas Observer Another death at the Austin State School for the Mentally Retarded has continued the shifting of attention in Texas’ ongoing child care scandal to state institutions. Carole Ann Perry died when she slipped down in her wheelchair, strangling herself on the bathrobe strings an attendant had fastened to the chair to prevent her falling out. Travis County JP James Dear is investigating. Free the Slow, Inc., the association of employees and former employees of institutions like the Austin State School, responded to the news of Perry’s death by pointing out that neglect by “overworked attendants” is only another of the results of Department of Mental Health-Mental Retardation policy and the “warehouse” system of care for the retarded. The House Human Relations Committee is continuing its investigation of Brother Lester Roloff’s child care operations, but one of its aides is not. Pat Conway, a Legislative Council employee working with the committee and co-author of a report to the panel on Dallas Kinky Friedman and The Texas Jewboys rode into Dallas Sept. 4 to see if Big D was ready for their earthy and satirical country and western act. It wasn’t at least not as far as Vernon Gatlin, owner of The Western Place, was concerned. Kinky, author of “Ride ‘Em, Jewboy,” was told in essence to “Ride On, Jewboy.” And he did on to Liberty Hall in Houston and perhaps a more peaceful gig. Friedman’s hilarious act lasted for one set that Tuesday, of a scheduled two, before Gatlin told him in rather harsh terms, according to Kinky, to clean it up or get out. Friedman said he would have been willing to go part-way with Gatlin’s request he has done cleaner shows on such programs as the Grand Ole Gospel House Gatlin’s approach. And since Gatlin had to pay the boys for three nights anyway, under the no-cut contract, Kinky didn’t stand to lose much except some exposure. He and the Jewboys mounted their super van and station wagon and rode off into tropical storm Delia. It was all sort of surrealistic. Kinky, climbing fast on the country scene as sort of the Lenny Bruce of C&W music, has had big successes on both coasts and in Nashville, where he had played a Labor Day outdoor concert with Jerry Lee Lewis billed as “The Killer and the Kink.” He has contains an occasional obscenity. So Gatlin should have had some idea of what he was getting. Thus it was a little stunning when Gatlin confronted Friedman about his act, Roloff’s Rebekah Home for Girls, is trying to get a job with Brother Roloff. Naturally, he’s taking a leave of absence from his state job, which he says has nothing to do with his efforts to find other work. He thinks he can help Roloff with “fundraising and image-building.” An association of retarded children’s parents, the Texas Association for Retarded Children, says the problems at the Austin State School and similar institutions are the result of bad funding, not bad policy. “Consistently, the Legislature has appropriated millions of dollars less than requested for direct care personnel and programs in our state schools,” says the TARC. the group also claimed that the funding deficiency is so serious that no state school meets minimum federal standards for accreditation. And the TARC revealed that the deaths of two boys at the Austin facility in the spring of 1972 were reported to the association, which then investigated. \(The deaths were not reported to a which carries occasional four-letter references to various sexual and excretory functions. Here’s what Gatlin had to say the next day: “His act was not the type of act that this club books. We booked him thinking he was a country and western star, which he thinks he is but I don’t think he is. He had some profanity in his act that he refused to take out which was just unbelievable. I never dreamed that he would do this, and he did it unbeknownst to anybody. And of course, he got it out before I knew about it, and the damage was done as far as that first show. And he refused to take it out of his second how, and I just paid him off and sent him on his way . ,” Gatlin said. “This club is not this type of club,” the owner said, “He can do what he wants to wherever he wants to and wherever they’ll permit him to, but this’ll never happen in my club. Never has and never will. . . . I just told him to leave the club, I didn’t want him in the club anymore. If I’ve got to make it on that kind of deal, well, I don’t want to make it.” Kinky, after the aborted show, said that “any crudity in the act is creatively crude. What is one man’s put-on is another man’s poetry. The language I’m using is familiar to every Texan.” He said he didn’t think he offended the audience, which included Dallas Cowboy Bob Hayes and Kinky’s parents, who had driven up from Austin to hear him. “I realize the absurdity of this,” Kinky said. “I want you to know that.” Dave McNeely Hicks nix Jew boys’ licks