Courts & Lawsuits

NorthPark Center’s parking garages would be better classified as dangerous stunt-driving tracks, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Dallas County. The suit, filed by the families of two men hit by a speeding car in the mall’s Nordstrom garage in March, calls for NorthPark’s garages to be shut down…

Rodney Reed will not be executed next week. Late Friday afternoon, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Texas’ highest criminal court, granted Reed, convicted of capital murder in 1998, a stay of execution so that the trial court in his case can evaluate new evidence. [pdf-1] As Reed’s execution date…

Ed Calderon deployed to Iraq three times as a Marine. There, driving fast was a necessity. So when he returned home, he relied on cruise control not to fall into old habits. But it didn’t stop him from getting a speeding ticket in 2007 while he was driving his wife…

For a brief moment in 2018, it looked like Texas might be dragged out of the dark ages and forced to fix one of its residents’ longest-standing frustrations. A decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit squashed that dream Wednesday, at least for the time being…

In March 2017, Neeraj Jindal had a problem. He ran a Richland Hills staffing agency that provided home health care agencies with therapists to do house calls. One of those agencies had just informed him that it was reducing the amount it would be paying for each house call. Jindal knew if…

Patrick Murphy, one of an infamous group of prison escapees who became known as the Texas 7, will not be killed by the state next week. Thursday, the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas gave Murphy, who’d been set to die on Nov. 13, his second…

It took the better part of two decades and a death row confession, but Texas’ highest criminal court found Quintin Lee Alonzo actually innocent of a 2001 murder Monday, opening the door to restitution and the rest of Alonzo’s life. A Dallas County jury convicted Alonzo of murder and two…

The Texas Democratic Party filed a lawsuit last week challenging Texas’ new ban on mobile voting, which took effect just before this election cycle. Critics say the law suppresses student voters.

The fallout from the National Rifle Association’s decision to cut ties with Ackerman McQueen, the ad firm behind its now-dead and formerly Dallas-based NRATV streaming service, continues, and it’s spectacular. In a federal court filing first reported on by The Daily Beast, the gun rights organization fumes that the product…

A Southwest Airlines flight attendant has filed suit against the airline, claiming that she caught a pilot watching footage from a hidden lavatory camera in 2017. After she reported the incident, the lawsuit alleges, the airline covered it up. The flight attendant, Renee Steinaker, was called into the cockpit by…

The death of Botham Jean, a 26-year-old accountant and innocent man, and the trial of his killer, former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger, have challenged Dallas as no event since the 2016 murders of five police officers in one terrible night downtown. Now as then, a big part of this…

Joshua Brown, a witness for the prosecution against former Dallas Police Department officer Amber Guyger, was killed during a drug deal that went bad, according to one of the participants in the would-be deal. Thaddeous Green, 22, shot Brown, 28, twice in the lower body after a fight interrupted a…

One of the state’s most memorable witnesses against former Dallas Police Department officer Amber Guyger was shot and killed late Friday night in Dallas, Lee Merritt, one of the civil attorneys representing Botham Jean’s family, confirmed Saturday. Joshua Brown, 28, lived across the hall from Jean in September 2018. Almost…

Moments after Amber Guyger was sentenced to 10 years in prison Thursday, Judge Tammy Kemp hugged the former police officer and handed over her personal Bible. “This will strengthen you,” Kemp could be overheard telling Guyger. “You just need a tiny mustard seed of faith.” Now, Kemp is drawing fire…

Dominique Alexander clarified that currently, the Next Generation Action Network has no plans to shut down the State Fair or the Texas-OU game.

The scent of burning sage and the sounds of Jamaican dancehall legend Buju Banton wafted down the steps of the Frank Crowley Criminal Courts Building on Wednesday night as protesters gathered to react to the sentencing of former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger. By the end of the night, one…

Sentencing of Dallas ex-cop Amber Guyger began Tuesday afternoon, hours after a jury found her guilty of murdering her upstairs roommate, Botham Jean, in a shooting last September. She faces five to 99 years in prison Prosecutors presented additional evidence, including Guyger’s application for employment at the Dallas Police Department…

Amber Guyger is guilty of murder. After about four hours of deliberation, that’s the decision made by Dallas County jury Tuesday morning. She’ll be sentenced to between five to 99 years in prison by the same jury that convicted her later this week. Following the verdict, Guyger sat at the…

Friday morning, the world finally heard from Amber Guyger. In as few words as possible and frequently through tears, the former Dallas Police Department officer described the night she shot Botham Jean. She shot and killed the PriceWaterhouseCoopers accountant, she said, because she said she feared that Jean was going…

First, there was the unfamiliar skyline on the fourth floor of the parking garage. Typically, Amber Guyger parked on the third. Then, there was the bright red mat conspicuously marking the foreign door. And, finally, the stench of marijuana emanating from the apartment that Guyger claimed she mistook for her…

A group of photojournalists is challenging a Texas state law that restricts how they can use drones, arguing the law represents a violation of the First Amendment. The law imposes fines and possible jail time for photographers caught using drones to shoot photos of people or private property, regardless of…