Five years ago, the trade group representing America’s prison chaplains conducted a survey to find out which state prisons allowed inmates to grow facial hair. The results of the American Correctional Chaplains Association survey were mostly positive for beard-lovers. The majority of prisons allowed facial hair, no religious reason necessary,…
The killer of two Henderson County law enforcement officers will not be executed by Texas as scheduled on Wednesday. Randall Wayne Mays, 55, was set to die by lethal injection before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals gave him a stay of execution, agreeing with Mays’ attorneys that more time…
Kory Watkins is like the kid who got a Zune instead of an iPod for Christmas. The Open Carry Tarrant County leader is upset — very, very upset — that the Texas Senate passed a bill yesterday that would legalize the open carrying of handguns in the state. Watkins is…
Jason Harrison’s mother, Shirley, appears calm on the Dallas police officer’s body camera footage as she steps out of her home, followed by her son Jason. “He’s off the chain,” she says, shaking her head and looking annoyed. “Bipolar, schizo,” she says, explaining her son’s mental illness to the police…
Nykerion Nealon has been arrested for killing Ahmed Al-Jumaili, the Iraqi immigrant shot as he, his wife and his brother took pictures in the snow on March 5. Nealon, 17, told police he took to the streets near Al-Jumaili’s apartment in far northeast Dallas after someone shot into his girlfriend’s…
One week ago, I went on something called a human-trafficking bus tour and have been struggling since to make sense of what happened. On a DART bus, accompanied by a police officer and about a dozen other human-trafficking tourists, we were taken past the Shops and Park Lane, where a…
As video released by Dallas police of the suspects confirms, the department has frustratingly little to go on in its search for the killers of Ahmed Al-Jumaili. Al-Jumaili, 36, had recently emigrated to Dallas from Iraq. Wednesday night, he saw snow for the first time; when he, his wife and…
Texas has some of the worst civil forfeiture laws in the country. In 2010, the Institute for Justice gave the state a grade of D- in terms of how easy it is for police to take property allegedly linked to criminal activity, and how hard it is for the property…
Ahmed Al-Jumail was outside with his wife just after midnight Thursday taking pictures of the newly fallen snow when witnesses saw two men walk casually past the couple before turning around and shooting at them, police say. Al-Jumail was hit and transported to the hospital, where he died. He was…
Not content to let its southern suburban sibling have all the fun, the Dallas Police Department has released a new hopes-to-go viral video of its own. It’s not nearly as good as the Cedar Hill McConaughey spoof…
Christina Morris disappeared on August 30, 2014, after walking into the Shops at Legacy garage where she’d parked her car with Enrique Arochi. After police found Morris’ DNA in Arochi’s trunk, he was arrested and charged with kidnapping 23-year-old Morris. He’s been sitting in Collin County Jail since December. Now,…
David Campbell should have thought this one through. When you and your buddies have, as DeSoto police believe Campbell did, stolen a monster truck and hidden it deep into the woods, it’s not the best idea to try to claim a reward offered for the trucks safe return. People are…
Some things are just begging to be made fun of. Texas naked-bongo player in chief Matthew McConaughey’s 2014 Rust Cohle-channeling Lincoln ads are one of those things. It’s not a hard thing to parody. Still, the officers at the Cedar Hill police department deserve credit. Their spoof is perfect…
Lee Lemons still doesn’t know the name of the tow truck driver who killed his son, Lance. If he did, he’d want to ask the driver why he used deadly force over something that may have been a misunderstanding. “Why was your initial impression shoot first?” Lee Lemons said in…
Why did a few thousand immigrants imprisoned in South Texas riot last week against the nice private prison corporation that was housing them? Management and Training Corp.’s version of events is that its inmates “refused to participate in regular work duties or attend breakfast early Friday morning,” which certainly seems…
Just after 9 p.m. Tuesday night, an Erath County jury found Eddie Ray Routh guilty for the February 2013 shootings of American Sniper author Chris Kyle and Kyle’s friend Chad Littlefield. Routh never disputed that he shot Kyle and Littlefield. At trial, he and his defense team claimed he was…
The tow truck driver who shot and killed a young, unarmed probation officer named Lance Lemons earlier this month was not arrested afterward, and Dallas police are still refusing to identify the shooter. They say they don’t have to reveal his name unless they decide to send his case to…
If there was any doubt that Eddie Routh, the former Marine who shot and killed Chris Kyle and Kyle’s friend Chad Littlefield in 2013, was profoundly disturbed, Thursday’s testimony at Routh’s murder trial erased it. Now, the jury is going to decide whether Routh knew that shooting Kyle and Littlefield…
The last time we wrote about Excalibur towing, the person whose car had been towed wondered if someone broke into her car to rip off her parking sticker, possibly causing her car to be towed — assuming the sticker went missing before her car was hauled away instead of after…
Texas Ranger Danny Briley and a videotape gave a thorough account Wednesday of the confession given to Briley by Eddie Routh, the man on trial for the fatal 2013 shootings of Chris Kyle and Chad Littlefield. “I know you had a tough day, but I’d like to talk a little…
The outcome, what happened after Texas gun fetishists Kory Watkins and Amy Hedtke testified before the Texas Senate Committee on State Affairs is what’s scary. It’s not that it now seems inevitable that students over the age of 21 will be able to bring guns onto college campuses, nor that…
On January 14, vice cops fanned out across East Dallas and descended on a half dozen aging storefronts in crappy, low-rent strip centers: one off Columbia Avenue a mile east of Deep Ellum, another where Garland Road transitions from isn’t-it-nice-to-be-near-White-Rock-Lake! to all-beauty-has-been-extinguished-from-the-world, the rest along Ferguson Road. Later, they visited…
