"The only thing I can tell you is we presented some information to the grand jury from the Commission on Judicial Conduct that exonerated our client," West said last week. "I can't get into the particulars."
What's fascinating about this is that the commission--which received Inez Clark's complaint over a year ago--hasn't completed its investigation yet. So says its director, Robert Flowers, with whom I spoke last Saturday, two days before Christmas.
When the commission completes an investigation, he says, it sends official notification to the complainant and the judge in question.
"If a judge was exonerated, that would be a conclusion of the matter," Flowers says, "and at the same time, the complainant would get a letter so stating."
Inez Clark hasn't gotten any such letter. That's because there isn't any such letter at this point, Flowers says.
"I don't know what the senator has," Flowers says. "I haven't spoken to him. You'll have to ask him what document he's referring to."
But West isn't saying. The commission "hasn't released it to the public yet," West says. "It's a confidential document."
Really? Gee, that's interesting. How does a state senator get his hands on a "confidential document" that hasn't yet been disseminated to the public?
West is offended by this question. Then again, he isn't exactly giving me any information that would lead me to a better conclusion either.
"I am his lawyer, and needless to say, they've corresponded with him," he finally says cryptically, referring to some unknown letters between the commission and the judge.
West also peddled this doo-doo about official exoneration to The Dallas Morning News on the day the grand jury no-billed Jones. "Mr. West said...he presented the results of a recent review of Ms. Clark's complaint by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct that found his client had done nothing wrong," the newspaper story read the next day.
Nine days after Inez Clark cried foul--explaining to the reporter who wrote the story that no such "results" existed--the paper printed the following correction: "An attorney's comments were reported incompletely regarding a judicial panel's action in a citizen's complaint against Justice of the Peace Thomas Jones," the paper stated. "The attorney, state Sen. Royce West, said the State Commission on Judicial Conduct had found no intentional wrongdoing by Judge Jones but had ordered him to receive 20 hours of mentoring from a more experienced judge."
It doesn't really matter when Inez Clark gets her official letter--the commission is not only slothful, it's grossly weak, rarely ever disciplining a judge. (Mentoring for a justice of the peace who's been in office for five years? Get rid of the guy!)
Nothing is going to happen to Jones unless the voters wise up when he comes up for reelection in three years. It's all enough to make Inez Clark--a proud, tenacious, smart black woman who is a topnotch former county probation officer and now owns an Oak Cliff funeral home with her husband--downright sick.
"It's the same ol', same ol'," Clark says. "People like Jones and West just have more connections than people like me to keep things like this from being pushed out in the open. And when they are pushed out in the open, they just say it's a race-based situation.
"I'll put it like this," she adds. "Black people can do all the wrong in the world, but as long as they're black and elected and you have KKDA telling folks 'you're being raped, you can't make it, you're oppressed by the white man'--and John Wiley Price is the worst one of all on that--then whatever wrong a black elected official does is OK. It's covered up. It's allowed to go on. It's a double standard."
Have a great 1996, Inez Clark. And go get 'em.
