Scott Henson, our pal dishing out Grits for Breakfast, points out this Dallas Morning News story from yesterday, about $9-mil-plus being spent on overtime pay at the Dallas County jails, and wonders if that ain’t just the tip of the penal iceberg. After all, Henson asks, what happens in February…
Shortly before Charles Chatman was freed from prison last week, after becoming the 15th Dallas County man exonerated by DNA evidence since 2001, State District Court Judge John Creuzot treated him to a T-bone steak — after teaching Chatman how to use the knife he’d been denied in prison. In…
Yesterday, The Dallas Morning News reported that the Dallas Police Department and the University of North Texas are teaming up to create a crime-fighting institute. According to the story, the goal of the institute is to “train the next generation of Police Department leaders” by helping them get college degrees,…
At noon today, the city council’s Public Safety Committee will meet at City Hall, and among the items on the agenda is “Proposed Adjustments to Sworn Disqualifiers.” In short, the committee will discuss whether the Dallas Police Department should lighten up on folks who want to become cops. There are…
Sterling Winfield Sterling Winfield’s a producer and engineer best known for having produced albums by Pantera (the band’s adios, Reinventing The Steel) and the post-Pantera projects Damageplan and Hellyeah. (Says his Nomad Studios bio, he’s also “worked and toured with” everyone from Metallica to the Foo Fighters to the Fugees.)…
In story after story this morning, Charles Chatman has said the same thing: People will know my story. Surely, you know it by now: The 47-year-old Chatman, sentenced to prison in 1981 years ago for aggravated rape, yesterday became the 15th wrongfully convicted prisoner in Dallas County to be exonerated…
Whilst tending to the morning YouTube sweep, I stumbled across surveillance-camera footage shot at a 7-Eleven at 9820 Walnut Street, taken just before the store was robbed by two men. The video was posted by the Dallas Police Department, and it marks the department’s debut on the YouTubes. “We are…
In other exciting holiday season news, The New York Times today reports: “For the first time in the modern history of the death penalty, more than 60 percent of all American executions took place in Texas.” Used to be around 37 percent, for those keeping a body count at home…
A Friend of Unfair Park points our attention this morning to this Texas Lawyer profile of Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins — the “Impact Player of the Year,” which I thought was going to Tony Romo, but, anyway. The terrific piece, penned by our old pal Mark Donald, contains…
Beginning January 1, the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office and the Washington, D.C.-based Urban Institute will begin eyeballing the city’s eyewitness identification procedures. That’s if the city council today gives its blessing to the study, which it will. After all it’s not costing the city a penny — the Urban…
I’ve written about illegal drugs here and there, and I’ve been inside a few prisons for those stories and others. And along the way I’ve met more than a few individuals serving inordinate amounts of time for piddly drug offenses — specifically, crack cocaine offenses. It’s hard to argue that…
A press release we just received from the U.S. Attorney’s Office sounds like a movie pitch. As in: “[Manuel] Alvarez worked at Neiman Marcus as a store loss prevention specialist. In 2004, Alvarez met an accomplice and they agreed to sell jewelry on Ebay and split the proceeds. Alvarez would…
At this very moment down in Huntsville, folks are marking the 25th anniversary of lethal injection in the U.S. at the Texas Prison Museum, which is hosting a panel discussion titled, fittingly, “25 Years of Lethal Injection: What Have We Learned?” Good question — same one the Supreme Court’s scheduled…
Courtesy Dallas Is My Home, I’ve just spent the last too long browsing Bandit Tracker, where local and federal law-enforcement agencies are posting surveillance-cam photos taken during bank robberies. It’s been around since the spring, Mark White, the FBI’s local media relations coordinator, tells Unfair Park this morning, but it…
Justin, who was physically abused before trying to escape from TYC in January, is one of four young men to be profiled in the forthcoming documentary. Via Grits for Breakfast, we learn today that investigative reporter Emily Pyle — who wrote an oft-cited piece about former Dallas school board president…
Clay Chabot, not yet one of those technically exonerated by DNA evidence In an Unfair Park item I posted last week about the case of Clay Chabot, I quoted Susan Campbell, spokeswoman for the family of Galua Crosby. Chabot has served 21 years in prison for her Crosby’s 1986 murder…
More than two decades after being convicted of murder, Clay Chabot will get another trial. Susan Campbell, spokesman for the family of Galua Crosby, who was murdered in 1986, wants families of victims to be informed about developments when someone convicted of killing their loved one has been granted a…
If you mail a threatening letter to Bob Mong, editor of The Dallas Morning News, you just might wind up with 20 years in federal prison. That’s just what happened today to Alan Van DeLaughter, who was convicted in August of “mailing threats to damage or destroy property and mailing…
Last week, Fort Worth police chased 24-year-old Jose Garcia from near Hulen Mall in Fort Worth all the way to the Dallas Zoo, damned near, after he allegedly stole a GMC pick-up from an apartment complex parking lot. You might have read about it, but thanks to the YouTubes, you…
Craig Watkins is for the death penalty. Also, against it. Newsweek wonders in the new issue whether Texans have lost their taste for the death penalty. Yes, the state “still accounts for more than half of all executions in the United States,” report Evan Thomas and Martha Brant, but “Texas…
Authorities are fitting Clay Chabot with an electronic monitor this week in anticipation of his release from prison Wednesday. Judge Lana Myers ruled on Friday that Chabot be released on bail pending a new trial — if the Dallas County District Attorney decides to retry him for the murder of…
Fresh off declaring a mistrial in the Holy Land Foundation case, Chief U.S. District Judge A. Joe Fish of the Northern District of Texas this month will take senior status, leaving a vacancy in the federal courthouse downtown. By the end of next week, his replacement will likely be on…
