There are two sides to every story, and on Thursday, District Judge Carlos Cortez’s version of what happened at his Uptown condo on the night of December 28 won out, when a Dallas County grand jury declined to indict him on charges that he choked his girlfriend and held her…
We’re not entirely sure why Denton Mayor Mark Burroughs just paid $2.2 million for a condo at Dallas’ One Arts Plaza. Vacation home? Rental property? That’s between him and the voters of Denton; the deed is now in his name, according to Dallas County records. (“My wife buys, makes over/redesigns…
Fired Dallas Voice editor John Wright’s feud with his former employer didn’t end with the parting shots he delivered here and elsewhere, nor with the launch of Lone Star Q, Wright’s new online news venture. It’s simmered on, first in hearings last fall before the Texas Workforce Commission, where Wright…
U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia didn’t hand down any ruling Wednesday following a hearing on two Texas couples’ lawsuit challenging Texas’ gay-marriage ban. A decision, on whether to grant the couples’ request for a preliminary injunction blocking Texas’ constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex unions, “will be forthcoming at some time,” he…
Vic Holmes and Mark Phariss, the gay Plano couple suing to overturn Texas’ ban on same-sex marriage, will be in San Antonio on Wednesday trying to convince a federal judge to allow their case to continue. The battle lines are familiar by now. Gay marriage, proponents say, is a constitutionally…
Jordan Ross Hatcher made a number of undeniably stupid decisions on the afternoon of January 24, 2013. He stole a Wii controller from a Grand Prairie Target, then knocked down the cop who tried to stop him. The 22-year-old, a recently discharged Marine, according to his obituary, then ran across…
In June 2012, attorney William Trantham was riding high. He’d just scored a half-million-dollar jury award on behalf of his client, a black Denton County prosecutor named Nadiya Williams-Boldware who was outraged by racist remarks from colleagues and superiors. Two days after the verdict, District Attorney Paul Johnson fired four…
It was the shot heard by a couple of neighbors in Rylie but, thanks to a neighbor’s conveniently placed surveillance camera, seen by thousands more: On October 14, 2013, Dallas police officer Cardan Spender shot Bobby Gerald Bennett in the stomach. Bennett was confronted by police after his mother called…
After spending two years on the brink of shutting down, Parkland Hospital has turned a corner. Things are far from perfect, but the federal government is reasonably confidant that Parkland won’t kill you. That’s the medical side of things. According to a trio of nearly identical wrongful termination lawsuits filed…
Finally, after nearly two months being kept on life support, Marlise Munoz will be allowed to die. Just after 4:15 p.m., a Tarrant County Judge sided with Munoz’ family, declaring her legally dead and ordering her removed from support. The decision came after less than an hour of debate. Fort…
Marlise Munoz is, as she has been for the past two months, in a Fort Worth hospital bed, being kept alive by machines. A Tarrant County judge could decide tomorrow whether she is legally dead, thus allowing her family to pull the plug as they all agree she would have…
It was inevitable, really. Some lawmaker, surfing the outrage stoked by the wrist-slap handed down to 16-year-old Ethan Couch for drunkenly running over four people in Burleson last summer, was bound to propose a law attacking his novel “affluenza” defense. It’s just weird that it would happen in California. On…
It’s been seven weeks since Marlize Munoz suffered a pulmonary embolism and collapsed at her home. It’s been clear for almost as long that she’s lost all or most of her brain function and is destined to exist, so long as her heart is kept beating, in a vegetative state…
On Thursday, the Texas Supreme Court will thrust itself into a debate as old as the Internet: Is the web a place where ideas and opinions, often vile, sometimes damaging, should be allowed to flow unencumbered? Or should there be some means of identifying defamatory speech and purging it from…
On January 22, 2013, the day his case was set to go to trial, Dr. Glen Hurlston entered a plea of no contest to charges that he assaulted his wife at their Princeton, Texas, home on the previous New Year’s Day. It wasn’t an admission of guilt, just a suggestion…
Ruben Riguero’s friends and family have never gotten the justice they felt they deserve. Riguero, a 29-year-old Venezuelan father, bodybuilder, fitness instructor and stripper at LaBare, was gunned down in September 2012 after a fight at The Fare Room, Cabaret Royale’s after-hours club. His killer, identified by police as Branagan…
While its students enjoyed the waning days of 2013 as a reprieve from schoolwork, the University of Dallas was eyeing the new year with trepidation. On January 1, Obamacare’s contraception mandate was set to kick in, meaning the school would have to start offering free contraception under its insurance plans…
The lawsuit Patricia Lawson filed Tuesday against Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas is a straightforward discrimination claim. Lawson, a 64-year-old surgical systems supervisor with two decades’ experience at the hospital, says Presby fired her in October 2012 for being too old and a woman. The hospital didn’t admit that,…
There were already questions swirling about whether State District Judge Carlos Cortez’ moral character befit the dignity of the office. As The Dallas Morning News detailed earlier this month, he is in the middle of a long-running legal battle to keep allegations about his personal life, reportedly involving drug use…
The photos that started showing up under Evelina Elterman’s name on Russian social media — photos showing a woman with her bare ass pointed toward the camera, back arched in pornographic longing — didn’t actually show Evelina Elterman. They were cut-and-paste jobs, photos of the Queens woman grafted onto Internet…
Airport Freeway in Bedford is not a likely source of breakthroughs in consumer electronics and medical technology. But there, in a nondescript office building overlooking a Twin Peaks and Super 8 motel, is the world headquarters of iLife Technologies and Solutions. So far, the company has solved sleep apnea, elderly…
One day in 1997, seven police officers walked into the Institute of Ancestral Braiding in Oak Cliff and arrested Isis Brantley, a local hair guru whose clients include Erykah Badu, for braiding hair without a cosmetology license. Brantley no longer has the cops to worry about. In 2007, a decade…
