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…
The Dallas Police Department has already admitted that the chase that killed Fred Bradford Jr. on the night of April 21 shouldn’t have happened. Bradford, 51, was riding his bicycle along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, allegedly stopping to peek suspiciously inside parked cars. Officer Bryan Burgess gave chase in…
Many athletes, amateur and professional alike, swear by cryotherapy. The three-minute sessions, which take place in a chamber cooled to a chilly -220 degrees Fahrenheit, do wonders for muscle recovery, never mind the ambiguity of the scientific literature. It’s like an ice bath, only better. So, what’s the downside? At…
It’s been two years to the day since a group of kids, aged 12-15, shoved 19-year-old Octavius Lanier into a moving DART train while trying to rob him of his cell phone at MLK Station. Lanier, who was on his way home from a doctor’s appointment, was dragged for about…
For David Tran, October 29 was a very good day. He beat a drunk-driving rap he picked up in Arlington three years earlier, when he was 17 years old and blew a .095 into the Intoxilyzer — just a shade over the .08 legal limit. The offense could be expunged…
If a same-sex marriage happens outside of Texas, but no law in Texas was there to recognize it, did the marriage ever even happen? Earlier this year, a state senator asked Attorney General Greg Abbott to weigh in on the question in light of all the same-sex couples employed by…
