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…
Another Dallas County man exonerated by DNA walked out of prison today after Judge Lana Myers reduced his sentence on another charge to time served. Eugene Ivory Henton had accepted a plea bargain of four years for a 1984 sexual assault. After serving 18 months, he was paroled. Later charged…
Judge Sharon Keller — or “Killer Keller” or “Sharon Killer,” depending on your level of clever Folks who consider themselves tough on crime love, love, love Dallas-born Judge Sharon Keller, who, in 1994, was elected as a Republican to the state’s Court of Criminal Appeals. (The Greenhill School and SMU…
Dallas County Sheriff’s Department Joseph Robert Tellini, at left, and Ian McConnell Walker received their sentences today for their pot brownie prank. Pamela Karnavas, a 10th grade English teacher at Lake Highlands High School, took the morning off to be in the court of Judge Lana Myers — for the…
More than two decades after being convicted of murder, Clay Chabot will get another trial. Clay Chabot stays in prison — for now. For 21 years, Clay Chabot has been imprisoned for the 1986 murder of Galua Crosby. But a A DNA test has implicated the state’s chief witness against…
Hunt County District Attorney Duncan Thomas The strange capital murder case of Brandon Woodruff, accused of killing his parents in Royse City in October 2005, has taken another odd twist. A graduate of Rockwall High School, Woodruff, now 21, has been in the Hunt County jail almost two years, unable…
Back in February, Texas Syndicate member Ernesto Medrano and some 20 of his fellow gang members were in a Dallas federal courtroom receiving multi-year prison sentences for importing hundreds of kilos of cocaine into the U.S. — using military transport flights from Columbia to Ft. Bliss, Texas. But the convictions…
Floating around the legally minded blogs this week is this video, which is from a self-proclaimed redneck says he used to work as a correctional officer for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice — and, no, I don’t think it’s Larry the Cable Guy. (Link props to The Backgate Website…
