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…
Operation Kindness Operation Kindness’ exec director Jonnie England with Mercy, shortly after the dog’s April 18 surgery Assistant District Attorney Terri Moore, Craig Watkins’ top assistant, took on her first jury trial in Dallas — not by going after a capital murderer, but by taking on a man dog-lovers would…
A man from Weatherford has filed suit today against Meditronic — “the global leader in medical technology [for] alleviating pain, restoring health and extending life for millions of people around the world” — claiming the damnedest thing: “body-snatching.” The full release is after the jump, but the opening paragraph is…
Former UTD electrical engineering student Syed Maaz Shah got more than six years in prison last week. On Friday, in a court ruling that went with little local notice, a federal judge sentenced a former student at the University of Texas at Dallas to six and a half years in…
Almost two years after this Texas Monthly story ran, Steven Phillips has been cleared of at least one sex crime for which was convicted in the early 1980s. This morning, you probably picked up your daily paper and saw the story about Steven Phillips, who was convicted of sexually assaulting…
Too liberal? Too soft? Craig Watkins would beg to differ. Late yesterday afternoon, I finally spoke with Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins about his comments in Thursday’s New York Times concerning Los Angeles’ — and, by extension, Dallas’ — failure to reduce gang-related crimes. Seems L.A.’s attempts at busting…
In The New York Times today is a piece about how Los Angeles’ attempt to crack down on gangs and gang-related crime just ain’t working. Turns out, that city’s myriad laws — among them, ones that “prohibit public gatherings of two or more people suspected of being gang members; establish…
This week, the so-called “Leprechaun Bandit,” 27-year-old Richard Earl Kemp of Fort Worth, pleaded guilty in federal court to two counts of bank robbery. He faces up to 40 years in prison, where he’s sure to get plenty of ridicule from bank robbers who thought ahead and ended up with…
Since we’re all degenerate hippies — well, most of us — we’re known to thumb the occasional copy of In These Times, where this week there appears a story headlined “The Counterproductive War on Gangs.” Turns out, most of the info from the piece — which insists increased law enforcement…
As of today, Greg Wallis is suing everyone he believes responsible for his wrongful imprisonment. For the second time in two weeks, a Dallas County man exonerated with DNA evidence has filed a federal civil rights and malicious prosecution lawsuit. And this one has a couple of twists. Greg Wallis,…
Even The Dallas Morning News yesterday called for the governor to stop Thursday’s scheduled execution of Kenneth Foster. The September issue of Texas Monthly features a long story by Michael Hall on Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins, who is “rethinking the concept of guilt and innocence.” (The story deals,…
After we posted Avi Adelman’s much-commented-on short film yesterday, we got an e-mail from Allen Gwinn, who wanted to know whether we’d seen the video he posted to Dallas.org on Saturday. Not at the time, but we have now: It’s a clip from some surveillance footage provided by a woman…
If I was taking a poll right now for most bizarre story in Dallas in 2007, I would have to go with the tale of two Muslim women who keep drawing attention to themselves by acting as if they have jihad on their minds. It started after midnight on Monday…
