Lisa Falkenberg's Alfred Brown Double Down

Lisa Falkenberg and I have always had a bit of an up and down friendship.

To be fair, I may have been a little bit antagonistic during the heated 2008 D.A. Election when I referred to her as Pippi Longstocking.  To her credit, when I actually met Lisa a year or so later, she was very gracious despite some of the potshots I took at her on the blog.  Although we didn't agree on many issues, we shared the common interest of the Harris County Criminal Courthouse.  Despite the opposing views, I like her and consider her a friend.

When she first began writing about the Alfred Dewayne Brown case, she asked me a couple of questions here and there about the Grand Jury process for background information.  I was more than happy to share my thoughts, and I thought she was on the right track.  I was happy for her when she won the Pulitzer.  Even though I didn't know enough about Brown's case back then to form an opinion on his guilt or innocence, I agreed with Lisa that the Grand Jury system had been abused and that needed to be brought to light.

I've never had a problem being friends with somebody that I disagreed with -- something that irks some of my friends in prosecution/law enforcement from time to time -- and I disagreed with Lisa on several issues over the years.  Unfortunately, we had a falling out over her coverage of the David Temple case.  She wrote an article singing the praises of John Denholm and Steve Clappart, and I responded with this post, pointing out that I felt they were dishonest morons.

Lisa sent me a tersely worded e-mail, blasting me for my response and telling me I had my facts wrong on Clappart and Denholm.  I disagreed.  I was (and am) pretty comfortable in my assessment of those two.  That exchange was pretty much the last time we spoke.

The reason I write all of that backstory is that I want to make it clear that I don't feel any animosity towards Lisa for what she writes.  Whether I think her point is correct or incorrect, I think she usually writes from a place of intellectual honesty.

But I think that she's gotten too close to the Alfred Dewayne Brown case and it is drastically coloring her perspective on it.

Just to clarify, I write from a completely biased perspective every time I write something for the blog.  I try to justify what I'm thinking with logic and I also acknowledge counter-views, but I'm biased as hell.  It would be silly to argue otherwise.

But I'm a blogger with small to medium readership --not a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for a newspaper in a major metropolitan area.

Earlier this month,  Lisa wrote a column demanding that Harris County hurry up and pay Brown for all the years he "wrongfully" spent on Death Row.   The column itself didn't surprise me.  It is natural for Lisa to feel tied to the Brown case -- it won her the Pulitzer, after all.  I thought it was a little strange that an investigative journalist was criticizing the idea of John Raley looking further into the case.  What really surprised me, however, was a pretty gross misstatement of the law and facts that Lisa made in that article.  She strongly insinuated that Brown had been found practically innocent by the Court of Criminal Appeals, which couldn't be further from the truth.  I called out the misstatement in this post.

Last week, the news broke that the Harris County Attorney's Office was in strong disagreement over Brown's innocence. Their argument was that a phone call that could have potentially exonerated Brown, actually proved his guilt.

Given Lisa's closeness to the case, I was curious as to what she would have to say about Mr. Brown now.  This morning, she answered that question quite clearly by doubling down on her belief in Brown's innocence.

In a column entitled "It's Harris County Attorneys, not Alfred Dewayne Brown, bluffing in federal court," Lisa assails the County Attorney's allegation of Brown being guilty as a "ridiculous claim."

If the records didn't help Brown's defense, then the county attorneys reason that they weren't exculpatory, and so Brown's prosecutors didn't violate his rights by withholding them.  Thus, they conclude Brown's conviction shouldn't have been reversed, and he lacks a civil rights claim as well.

See, I told you they got creative. 

Not exactly.  As one of my commenters in the last post noted:

Brown's lawsuit is demanding compensation because he was factually innocent.  The County Attorney's response is counter to that.  A person can be factually guilty and still have his rights violated.  If that happens, he deserves a new trial.  A new trial doesn't make one factually innocent and thus entitled to millions of dollars.  

And Lisa knows that.  

Lisa's article is attempting to equate the fact that Brown deserved a new trial to his factual innocence.  She's vilifying the County for not wanting to pay cash money to Brown and saying that they are arguing he should have never gotten his case reversed, either.  I haven't seen the entirety of the County Attorney's pleadings, so I don't know if they are arguing that exact point.  If they are arguing that he didn't deserve a new trial, they are wrong.  

There is no dispute in my mind (or the minds of prosecutors or defense attorneys) that Brown deserved the remedy of a reversal of his case due to the exculpatory evidence being hidden.  The dispute arises over whether he should receive a nice lump sum payment in addition to the reversal . . . or another trip back to Death Row.

Lisa concludes this morning's column with this:

A prosecutor has a duty not to convict, but to do justice.  The moment Rizzo realized he had evidence that had even the potential to help Brown, he was bound by law to turn it over.  He didn't.  He sat on it, and then claimed years later the phone record was lost inadvertently.

That's a violation of Brown's rights.  That comes across loud and clear.  The rest is just static. 

Now, who's being creative?

In essence, this is what has happened:

HARRIS COUNTY:  Mr. Brown did not receive a fair trial so his case should be reversed.
LISA:  Pay him millions, too.
HARRIS COUNTY:  Slow down, Lisa.  We are going to see if we have enough evidence to retry him.
LISA:  Pay him his millions.
HARRIS COUNTY:  Doesn't look like we are going to be able to try his case again, so . . .
LISA:  So, you're going to pay him his millions?
HARRIS COUNTY:  No.  For him to get his millions, we have to believe that he actually didn't commit this crime.
LISA:  That's ridiculous.  Pay him his millions.
HARRIS COUNTY: We don't think he deserves his millions.
LISA:  You're all idiots.  You violated his rights.  Pay him his millions.
HARRIS COUNTY:  After looking at these phone records, we actually think we may be able to prove he's guilty.  We may even take him back to trial.
LISA:  You're just being difficult.  That's impossible.  Pay him his millions.

The first blog post that I wrote about Lisa's coverage of the Alfred Dewayne Brown case was entitled "Tunnel Vision & The Falkenberg Articles."  In that post, I criticized people who have tunnel vision to the degree that they aren't willing to examine any other possibility than the theory they believe in.  In that post, I was talking about Rizzo's tunnel vision, but I could borrow that same title for this post.

Lisa's articles on Brown reflect an absolute inability to consider the possibility that he may actually have been responsible for murdering Houston Police Officer Charles Clark.  In the picture accompanying today's column, she is literally seen hugging Brown as he is released from custody.  This case is the one that won her the Pulitzer.

Maybe Lisa is the one suffering from a little bit of tunnel vision now.

Actual Innocence and Alfred Brown

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg announced yesterday that she was asking attorney John Raley to lead an independent investigation into the "actual innocence" of former-Death Row prisoner Alfred Dewayne Brown.  It was a wise move for a couple of reasons.

For starters, Raley is a highly respected attorney who has dealt with claims of factual innocence on previous occasions, most notably, the case of Michael Morton, who was wrongfully convicted for the murder of his wife, Christine. As most of you know, Raley's work on that case led to the exoneration of Mr. Morton, which, in turn, brought Christine Morton's actual killer to justice.

More importantly, it keeps the Ogg Administration from potentially being boxed into a decision that would not be well received by the Harris County Defense Bar.  As I've noted before, Ogg is in a tight spot with this.  If Ogg declines to declare Brown factually innocent, it isn't going to sit well with the Defense Bar. Ogg would be put in the awkward position of acknowledging that Brown is legally not guilty but not deserving of the money paid out to those proven factually not guilty.

Chronicle columnist Lisa Falkenberg characterized the Raley investigation as an unnecessary delay to Brown's desired compensation, asserting her belief that Brown has already been proven factually innocent . . . more or less.

That standard [for a legal finding of actual innocence] is roughly similar to the one that led the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals to toss Brown’s conviction due to constitutional error. An inmate must show that the constitutional error at trial “probably” resulted in the conviction of one who is actually innocent and that no reasonable juror would have voted to convict in light of the new evidence.

Um, maybe in the same sense that Sesame Street is "roughly similar" to The Wire.  Both deal with life on the streets in an urban area, right?

Brown's case was overturned based on a Brady violation when the D.A.'s Office realized that the defense had not been provided with a copy of telephone records that supported Brown's alibi by his girlfriend, Ericka Dockery.  The D.A.'s Office agreed that Brown deserved a new trial and the Court of Criminal Appeals signed off on a Writ of Habeas Corpus.

I'm not sure why Lisa is insinuating that the Court of Criminal Appeals practically made a finding that there was a constitutional error at trial that "'probably' resulted in the conviction of one who is actually innocent."  That is not the case.

In fact, whether or not Alfred Dewayne Brown is factual guilty is very much up for debate.

I've spoken with a couple of the prosecutors who handled the Brown case after it came back from the Court of Criminal Appeals.  Without hesitation, they will gladly state unequivocally that he deserved a new trial.  There is no debate that the evidence withheld by Rizzo was exculpatory and should have been turned over to Brown's defense counsel during trial.

But they will also tell you that they fully believe that Brown is factually guilty.  So will every HPD Homicide investigator that worked on the case.  I don't know enough about the details of the case to form my own opinion on Brown's guilt or innocence, but I will say that there can be a tremendous difference between legal innocence and factual innocence.

There can also be a tremendous variance in the strength of alibi evidence.  Some alibis can unequivocally exonerate somebody.  Others are less definitive.  The people who I've spoken to about the phone records that supported Ericka Dockery's story acknowledge that they were evidence of an alibi, but they were far from definitive.  They say if Rizzo had just turned over the phone records, he could have easily explained them away at trial.

Despite Brown and Falkenberg's protestations to the contrary, Brown's factual innocence isn't quite the no-brainer they portray it to be.

I'm going to hazard a guess that D.A. Ogg was a little concerned about Brown's innocence herself.  Having watched how she has handled this case, as well as others, I believe that she would have loved nothing more than to declare Brown factually innocent while lambasting the "toxic culture" of previous administrations.  She certainly had no problem notifying the press of other shocking developments on the case.

But I found this paragraph in Falkenberg's column to be very interesting:

But if Raley does not find Brown “actually innocent,” Ogg said she may have decide whether to charge him again in Clark’s murder. She chose Raley, she said, not to pass the buck, but because she felt the case needed an independent, fair review by someone outside the DA’s office.

Ogg leaving the door open to the idea of re-prosecuting Brown is shocking to me. There's no chance in hell that Ogg doesn't know the facts of the case.  She may not have the time to delve into it as deeply as she feels necessary, but I guarantee you that she has more than a passing familiarity with it. I have no doubt that she has formed an opinion on what needs to be done.

I'm not accusing her of "passing the buck;"  to the contrary, my guess is that she wanted a credible voice such as Raley's to support whatever decision is ultimately made.

That's just smart politics.

Dan Rizzo and the Alfred Dewayne Brown Case

It's not easy being Dan Rizzo these days.

After retiring from the Harris County District Attorney's Office some time during the Pat Lykos Administration, he probably thought that he put all of the uncertainty and acrimony of being a prosecutor behind him.  While most prosecutors who leave the Office make some effort to keep in touch with one another, he kind of faded into oblivion.

He hadn't been gone all too long before he found himself in the crosshairs of the Houston Chronicle's Lisa Falkenberg, who was working on a story about the potential abuses of the Grand Jury system.  Initially, the story Falkenberg was working on dealt with how Rizzo and a member of the Grand Jury had used the Grand Jury's power to intimidate a potential alibi witness on a capital murder case.

It just so happened that the case where that occurred was the State of Texas vs. Alfred Dewayne Brown, which Rizzo not only presented to the Grand Jury, but also prosecuted at trial.

The case itself was a bad one, but it didn't grab as many headlines as some other capital murder cases in Harris County.  At least, it didn't until Falkenberg's Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation.

The allegations were that on April 3, 2003, three men robbed a check-cashing business where a woman named Alfredia Jones was working.  One of those men, Elijah Joubert, held a gun to Ms. Jones' head during the robbery, but Ms. Jones was able to notify her supervisors of a robbery in progress.  Because she alerted a supervisor of what was happening, the Houston Police Department dispatched patrol and Officer Charles Clark was the first to arrive on the scene.  When the police arrived, Joubert is believed to have executed Ms. Jones by shooting her in the head.  A second person (allegedly Alfred Dewayne Brown) shot and killed Officer Clark.

A third person, Dashon Glaspie, acted as a lookout and he named both Joubert and Brown as the principal shooters.

As noted in Falkenberg's original articles, Rizzo used the Grand Jury to bring in Alfred Dewayne Brown's girlfriend, Erika Dockery, as a witness.  Dockery had initially attempted to alibi Brown, but the transcripts from that Grand Jury meeting ultimately led her to recant the alibi testimony.  Before doing so, she was threatened with a multitude of things -- from charges of aggravated perjury to never being able to find employment.  Dockery not only recanted her alibi, but testified against Brown in trial, testifying that he admitted his presence at the check-cashing business at the time of the murder.

However, Dockery's original alibi of Brown actually had some corroborating evidence in the form of phone records.  Those records as (also) reported by Lisa Falkenberg were never admitted into evidence.  They were ultimately found in the garage of Homicide Detective Breck McDaniel.  Those records are what ultimately led the Harris County District Attorney's Office to agree that Brown was entitled to a new trial.  When the Court of Criminal Appeals granted that new trial, the D.A.'s Office decided that there was no longer sufficient credible evidence to retry him.

As I noted in a blog post last June, Alfred Brown decided to seek compensation for the time he spent on Death Row.  The trouble with that was that he had to be found "factually innocent" for the compensation to kick in.  Under Devon Anderson's Administration, that was going to be an uphill battle for Brown.  The Anderson Administration as well as the Homicide Investigators on the case believed that Brown was factually guilty, although they didn't feel they could prove it at trial.  What I wrote back then was that it put District Attorney Kim Ogg in a difficult position -- if the D.A.'s Office were to agree that Brown was factually innocent, it would be damaging to relations with HPD.  If she refused, it would be damaging to her relationship with a Defense Bar that looked to her to be a progressive and open-minded District Attorney.

A couple of things have changed since that blog post.  First off, D.A. Ogg has proven that she isn't really all that bothered about upsetting the Houston Police Department.  More importantly, however, was Ogg's revelation last week that an email had been discovered from HPD's Breck McDaniel to Dan Rizzo, notifying him of the corroborating phone calls.

"I was hoping that it would clearly refute Erica's claim that she received a call at work," McDaniel wrote, later continuing: "But, it looks like the call detail records from the apartment shows that the home phone dialed Erica's place of employment on Hartwick Street at about 8:30 a.m. and again at 10:08 a.m."

To put this into context, prior to the e-mail revelation, Rizzo had been able to maintain that he didn't know that there were phone records in existence that corroborated Erika Dockery's alibi of Alfred Brown.  It was a mistake. A miscommunication.   McDaniel's e-mail clearly shows that Rizzo was informed of it.  He just chose not to disclose it to the defense.  He also lied about it later.

And because of that e-mail, Rizzo is now joining the ranks of vilified ex-prosecutors at the levels of Charles Sebesta and Ken Anderson.

As well he should be.

I knew Dan when he and I were both at the Office.  He was a Division Chief and far senior to me.  Although I didn't have a personal problem with Dan, I didn't trust him.  I thought he was a dishonest guy.  I can think of at least two different scenarios where he lied to me personally.  The reason I knew that he was lying was because he contradicted himself.  They weren't on big issues.  They were pretty minor, but the guy couldn't keep his stories straight to save his life.  He just wasn't bright enough, quite frankly.

If you were to ask me if I thought Dan would downplay or neglect to mention some exculpatory evidence on a case, I would tell you that it wouldn't surprise me if he did.  It wasn't that he was evil.  He just suffered from tunnel vision.  He regarded the phone records in question to be an inconvenient piece of evidence that would distract from his firm belief that Alfred Dewayne Brown was one of the shooters.  He didn't think that it proved Brown's innocence, so therefore it wasn't exculpatory.

He was wrong about that.

Whether or not those phone records conclusively prove Brown's innocence or are something that could still be explained away is an argument that I will leave to someone more familiar with the case than I am.  But the records are most definitely exculpatory.

Exculpatory evidence is evidence favorable to the defendant in a criminal trial that exonerates or tends to exonerate the defendant of guilt. It is the opposite of inculpatory evidence, which tends to prove guilt.

The Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association today called for Rizzo to be prosecuted for Attempted Murder for seeking the death penalty on Brown.  That earned a big eye roll from me.  They know that is never going to happen and to pen a public letter to the D.A. advocating for it is just grandstanding.

But an investigation should be launched into whether or not Rizzo should hang on to his law license.  If proven to be true, his actions are no different than those of Sebesta or Anderson.

If his actions were no different, then the consequences for those actions should be no different, either.

The Denholm and Clappart Column

For those of you who have subscriptions to the Houston Chronicle, you may have seen that Lisa Falkenberg had a column yesterday morning praising defense attorney John Denholm and his friend, former Harris County District Attorney's Office investigator, Steve Clappart.  In a moment of very dramatic titling, the headline reads "Former officers saw through evidence, sought truth in Temple case."  ( NOTE:  Unless you have access to the Chronicle's premium content, I don't believe you can read the full article online.)

I talked to Lisa on Friday about the article and gave her my thoughts about Clappart and Denholm.  Although Lisa is a friend of mine, this was one of those many moments where we agreed to disagree.  I've read her article a couple of times now, and I think she misses the mark on many, many points.

To be clear (again), I am very biased on this topic.  John Denholm and I are not friends and we don't care much for each other (to put it mildly).  I used to be friends with Steve Clappart and I like him as a person, but his actions on the Temple case have made me question his judgment.  That being said, I still fail to understand what the big contribution was that Clappart and Denholm are alleged to have provided to the Temple investigation.

Clappart and Denholm were chomping at the bit to get a young man arrested for Capital Murder based on the word of a guy named Daniel Glasscock.  As I pointed out in this post and this post, in 2012, Glasscock had a "sudden memory flashback" to a conversation he had overheard in 1999.  In that decade old memory, he seemed to recall having overheard three of his then-teenage friends talking about killing a dog and throwing it in a closet during a burglary.  Clappart and Denholm surmised that they were really speaking "in code" about the murder of Belinda Temple and tried to get a Capital Murder warrant signed against one of the teens.

No judge in the Harris County Criminal Justice Center would sign that warrant.

In Judge Gist's (now infamous) findings of fact on the Temple case, he specifically rejected Glasscock's testimony as being inconsistent and not credible.  So, although Denholm and Clappart are getting a very large column on the front of City/State section of Sunday's Chronicle, Gist's findings dismissing their findings are never mentioned.

Despite this invalidation of their investigation, the column treats Clappart and Denholm as tragic heroes who lost friends and colleagues for their dogged pursuit of justice.  The article claims that they were ostracized for daring to question the ruling by "Siegler loyalists."

It is very true that Denholm and Clappart lost friends and were ostracized by former co-workers.  A detective I know mentioned to me a few weeks ago that he doubted the Sheriff's Office could "drum up enough people to carry a casket" for Denholm.  However, stating that they earned these feelings simply because they went against Siegler loyalists is simply false.  It was the way they went about it that earned them the distrust and alienation that they now lament.

Despite the animosity between me and Denholm, I actually identify with his motivations in several aspects.  He was a law student (as well as a Lieutenant with the Sheriff's Office) when Kelly Siegler asked him to take part in a mock trial as she prepared for the Temple case.  Like any law student would be in that situation, he was motivated to do a good job and dazzle the Office's best prosecutor with his skills.  As noted in Lisa's article:

"Denholm told Siegler her case had problems.  Her response, according to Denholm's sworn affidavit, was that most of his questions were improper and she would have objected to them anyway.

"'You know, to me,' Denholm says, 'if it's about procedure and not justice, that's a big problem right there.'"

Well, that's a bit disingenuous, isn't it?  Kelly told him that many of his questions were objectionable and, in her opinion, inadmissible, and he had a problem with that?  I understand the hubris of being a law student in a mock trial.  Trust me, I do.  Those pesky rules that keep us from making the points we want to make, however, are the Rules of Evidence that we have to follow.  With all of the allegations being hurled at Kelly Siegler right now, I think it is kind of ironic that Denholm would make such a statement.

Lisa's article goes on to point out how Denholm bashed his fellow detectives for their shoddy work on the Temple investigation.   It does not point out, however, that he told Kelly Siegler and his co-workers he would have gotten a confession out of Temple, if he had been running the investigation.  Denholm's surprise that he is no longer beloved by his brethren at the Sheriff's Office is amusing -- everybody loves a co-worker who tells you how much better he is than you!

Denholm was very proud of the job he felt he had done during the mock trial.  As he transitioned from Homicide Lieutenant to defense attorney, he was not shy about telling people of how he had made short work of the State's case during a mock trial on David Temple.  Nobody faults him for that.  When you are a defense attorney in private practice, you should be able to proclaim your courtroom prowess.  That's just good business.  I would have done the same in that situation.

Eventually, Denholm's tales of his mock trial skills got back to Temple's trial attorney, Dick DeGuerin.  DeGuerin, who believed Temple's conviction and subsequent Life Sentence were wrongful had a golden goose with Denholm.  The Harris County Sheriff's Office's Homicide Division had investigated the murder of Belinda Temple, and here he had a former Lieutenant of their own Homicide Division talking about how insufficient the evidence was.

Lisa's column is highly ambiguous about Denholm came to be involved in the re-investigation into the Temple case.

"Years later, in 2012, Denholm heard that a new witness had emerged, someone who'd overheard one of the youths confessing to the murder."

Hmm.  I wonder how Denholm heard that.  You don't suppose Dick DeGuerin called him up, by any chance, do you?

Don't get me wrong -- DeGuerin was doing what a good defense attorney should do.  He was capitalizing on a person who had the pedigree to give his client's innocence claims a higher level of credibility.  He would have been a fool not to contact Denholm and ask for his help.  However, Lisa spinning it like Denholm was just sitting around stewing over the injustice done to David Temple is misleading.

And stating that the one of the youths was "confessing to the murder" is an outright lie.

Enter Daniel Glasscock -- the witness who allegedly overheard someone confessing to a murder.

In 2012, thirteen years after the murder of Belinda Temple and five years after David Temple's conviction for that murder, Glasscock came forward after having his memory "jogged" by a television show covering the murder.  Glasscock was claiming that he had forgotten about a conversation that he had overheard thirteen years earlier between three friends of his.  Glasscock stated that he had only learned of Belinda Temple's murder in 2012.  The conversation he was now remembering was one where the three friends admitted to burglarizing a house, shooting a dog and throwing it in the closet.

Under DeGuerin and Denholm's belief, Glasscock's information was a confession to the Capital Murder of Belinda Temple.  (NOTE:  If you agree that this was, in fact, a confession to a capital murder, then you might as well stop reading now.)   Pretty much everyone else (outside of David Temple's circle of supporters) thought that was the biggest stretch of logic that the Harris County Criminal Justice Center had ever seen.

Let's take a moment and pretend that instead of Glasscock's highly attenuated story, DeGuerin had come across a story that had more teeth to it.  Tweak the facts of Glasscock's testimony just a little bit and pretend that instead of hearing his friends admitting to killing a dog, he overheard them admitting to actually killing Belinda Temple.  Don't you just know that DeGuerin would have bypassed Denholm and gone straight to the media?  He would have had Glasscock interviewed in an exclusive news story and made sure there was an outpouring of support to have David Temple released from his Life Sentence.

But the reality is you gotta dance with who brung ya, and at the end of the day Glasscock's story was a steaming pile of crap.  Denholm was an experienced Homicide detective and he knew that.  That's why he pitched it to the only person who might indulge this incredible stretch of a story -- his dear friend of 20 years, Steve Clappart.  As I mentioned in the earlier blog posts, Clappart shopped the new information to Jim Leitner, who wanted it kept quiet -- a strange position for the 1st Assistant to a District Attorney that had campaigned on transparency.  One of the lesser publicized portions of Kelly Siegler's transcript during the Temple hearing was when she spoke of Clappart calling her on her cell phone, crying, and saying that Leitner and DeGuerin were forcing him to look into the Glasscock story.

After I ran a blog post exposing the secret investigation, Leitner decided a Special Prosecutor was needed.  The District Attorney's Office passed the investigation off to Brad Beers, who had once been Clappart's lawyer when Clappart "had been the subject of what he calls a couple of baseless accusations of wrongdoing."  Team Temple did not see any conflict of interest or anything wrong with that.  I wonder if they would feel the same if Devon Anderson recused the Office from Temple now and appointed me as a Special Prosecutor now.  I'd be glad to help out!

Clappart and Denholm sang "woe is me" over how many friends that they lost because of the Temple investigation.  Those damn Siegler Loyalists are a bitter bunch of people, right?   Lisa's column painted a vivid picture of misunderstood law men with the courage to go against the grain in their unbending pursuit of true justice.

"'Someone blew this woman's head off,' Denholm says.  "Why wouldn't you want to find him?"

To the prosecutors and Sheriff's deputies who worked on the case, "this woman" was a pregnant mother named Belinda Temple and they very much wanted to find who did it.  As a matter of fact, they believe strongly that they did find who did it -- her husband.  A jury agreed in record time and now David Temple sits in prison.

The lack of respect and friendship that Clappart and Denholm are experiencing now isn't because they "went against the grain."  It is because they tried to use such a weak story to free a convicted killer.  The fact that they were going about it through back channels made it all the more distasteful. The fact that they were willing to let somebody else go down on a Capital Murder charge for it is terrifying.

Whether or not David Temple gets a new trial will be up to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, of course.  They have many things to mull over.  The information provided by Denholm and Clappart is not something that is likely to be a factor in that.  Judge Gist was quite clear that the newly found Glasscock information was not reliable.

Apparently, the folks at the Chronicle haven't been very interested in hearing any other side to the David Temple story, unfortunately.  That's not surprising, since it is run by an editorial board that took it upon themselves to run an entire editorial dedicated to bashing Kelly Siegler with the ridiculous accusation that she intentionally prosecuted an innocent man just to get a television show.  Apparently the idea that Kelly prosecuted David Temple because the evidence showed he murdered his pregnant wife was not something the Chronicle editors were interested in examining.

To my knowledge, neither Lisa nor Brian Rogers has interviewed anyone from the Harris County Sheriff's Office, the Harris County District Attorney's Office, or Belinda Temple's family about their perspective on the case.  I know that none of the concerns that I shared with Lisa on Friday managed to make it into the article.

When I talked to Lisa, she did ask me what would be the incentive for former Homicide guys like Denholm and Clappart to do what they did on the Temple case.  I told her that Dick DeGuerin was a highly respected defense attorney who was considered one of the best (if not THE best) in Houston and Texas -- being in his good graces had benefits.

Having a Sunday morning Houston Chronicle article painting you like God's gift to criminal justice is a pretty good benefit too.

It makes for a better story that way, I guess.

Tunnel Vision & The Falkenberg Articles

If you pay attention to the goings on at the Harris County Criminal Justice Center with any regularity, you are probably already aware of Lisa Falkenberg's two outstanding articles on the Harris County Grand Jury that indicted Alfred Dewayne Brown for the Capital Murders of Houston Police Officer Charles R. Clark and store clerk Alfredia Jones.

Part One of the column ran on Thursday.  Part Two ran Friday.  As of this writing, we are still waiting on Part Three.   NOTE:  If the Chronicle's "premium content" website is blocking your access, the Washington Post did a pretty decent synopsis you can read by clicking here.  My friend, Scott Greenfield, has also weighed in on the columns here.  The attention these articles are garnering is just beginning, in my opinion.

The very condensed version of events are as follows:  Alfred Brown was suspected of being part of a group of males that robbed a check-cashing business and murdered the clerk and a police officer in the process.  Brown stated as his alibi that he was on the phone (landline, not cell) with his girlfriend, Ericka Jean Dockery, at the time of the offense and when Ms. Dockery tried to confirm that to a Grand Jury, they threatened her with financial, legal and even child custody repercussions.  She ultimately changed her story, but Harris County prosecutor Dan Rizzo filed Aggravated Perjury charges on her anyway.

Lisa's column is very much on point about the secrecy of the Grand Jury -- a fact that seems to have given several Pat Lykos/Rachel Palmer supporters new life in their never-ending war against the 185th Grand Jury Investigation of 2012.  Politics really do make strange bedfellows when you've got Lykos supporters rooting for a person accused of killing a police officer.

The bigger issue that Lisa's column covers is the extreme lengths that some people in the Criminal Justice System are willing to go to when they are suffering from Tunnel Vision.

As a former prosecutor, I can attest to the fact that Assistant District Attorneys are inclined to believe the version of events that are initially presented to them by police officers.  There is nothing wrong with that -- the System would come to a screeching halt otherwise.  Can you imagine if all calls from the police went like this:

OFFICER:  I stopped a vehicle for speeding and running a stop sign . . .

PROSECUTOR:  Oh really?  Are you really a police officer?  Was your radar calibrated?  Where was this stop sign?  Did anybody else see this?  Why don't you put this person that you are accusing on the phone and let me ask him what really happened.

 I can't fault prosecutors for believing the initial version of events presented to them by an investigating agency.  Where things become troubling is when they believe those events so strongly solely because they came from the police officer.

I think that if you ask any practicing criminal defense attorney if they know any prosecutors that suffer from Tunnel Vision, you will be in for a very lengthy conversation.  I'm not naming any names of prosecutors, but I was once told by a prosecutor that he was "insulted" that I would tell him I believed a client I was representing was factually innocent.

Insulted.  Not only were they not interested in examining my reasons for believing my client was not guilty, they were insulted that I would even dare approach them with it.

We used to joke about a prosecutor that was so determined to NOT dismiss a case that if you provided her with video footage of your client sitting behind the President during the State of the Union Address at the time of the alleged offense, she would only offer you a better plea offer on a lesser charge.

Of course, the prosecutorial counterpoint to my argument would be, "You have no idea how many B.S. stories we hear on a daily basis."  Yes, I do know.  I did that job for nine years.  I once had to call a very -- shall we say "country" -- gentleman and ask him if he had, in fact, "donated" his pride Dually pick-up truck to the very crack-addicted felon who was charged with stealing it.  My eardrum still twitches at the angry yelling I had to listen to in response.

But I made the call because that's what the defense attorney told me his client was claiming.  Sometimes you have to look down a lot of rabbit trails to avoid Tunnel Vision and unfortunately, that's part of the job of being a prosecutor.  You have to rule out Reasonable Doubt -- even if it doesn't seem that "reasonable" to you.

The prosecutor who believes an investigator's version of events so much that they shut down even the mere possibility of a contradiction becomes the most dangerous person in the courthouse.

Charles Sebesta shut down the possibility that Anthony Graves wasn't involved in the murder of six people in Somerville.  Ken Anderson shut down the possibility that Michael Morton didn't kill his wife.  Now, Dan Rizzo, with the backing of a Grand Jury, is on the hot seat.

To be fair, there are several people within the Harris County District Attorney's Office who have told me that although they agree Alfred Dewayne Brown deserves a new trial, they still believe he is factually guilty.  That was District Attorney Mike Anderson's position when the Office agreed that Brown deserved a new trial.

What is so frightening about Ericka Jean Dockery's case is that Rizzo filed Aggravated Perjury charges against her because he and the Grand Jury didn't believe her.  There wasn't a concrete piece of evidence that contradicted her.  There wasn't a change of story that had come from her own volition (change of stories based on extreme coercion doesn't count).  At the end of the day, the decision to file felony charges (of moral turpitude) against Ms. Dockery flowed from Rizzo and the Grand Jury's opinion that she wasn't being truthful.

Put yourself in the shoes of a person accused of something for a moment.  You have an alibi witness.  That witness is willing to testify and clear you.  However, that witness is told by prosecutors, in no uncertain terms, that not only do they not believe her testimony,  they will file felony charges against her for daring to back you up.

Take a moment and ponder how truly frightening that is.

Lisa Falkenberg's Column on Transparency and Retaliation

There's a good article from Lisa Falkenberg in today's print edition of the Chronicle regarding the ongoing dispute between the Harris County District Attorney's Office and Amanda Culbertson, formerly of the HPD Crime Lab.  I will link to it when it comes online.

The long-story-short is that Harris County has apparently had a contract for twenty years with Lone Star College for the testing and maintenance of the instruments used to test breath test results.  Earlier this year, Amanda Culbertson told officials that the Mobile "B.A.T. vans" that have intoxilyzers in them were not reliable, thus jeopardizing numerous DWI cases where they were used.  Her findings were documented in e-mails within HPD, and defense counsel Brent Mayr had filed a Writ in March of this year alleging Brady violations for withholding that information.

Fast forward to July, when defense attorneys Dane Johnson and Jordan Lewis find themselves in trial on another B.A.T. van case, where a trial case had to be continued mid-trial when prosecutors claim that this is the first time they've heard of these allegations.  As noted in the article by the Chronicle's Brian Rogers and Anita Hassan, Amanda Culbertson stated she left the HPD Crime Lab over her reports of the B.A.T. van problems and moved to Lone Star College, where she continued in her duties for a different agency.  Rather than being the chemist for HPD, she is now doing it for Lone Star, which does the supervising of those intoxilyzers used by the Harris County Sheriff's Office and other county agencies.

Apparently incensed that Culbertson had called into question the H.P.D. cases, the County is now trying to suddenly cancel that contract with Lone Star.  You can draw your own conclusions as to whether or not that move was in response to their new employee -- Amanda Culbertson.

As Lisa points out in the article, Lykos and Crew over at the D.A.'s Office are attempting to play the "who me?" card on what has inspired the termination of the contract, acting as if this was a move made by County Commissioners without the Office's involvement.  However, this seems to fly in the face of logic under the circumstances.  At the last Commissioners' Court meeting on the subject, ADA Rachel Palmer, who is the Deputy Chief of the Misdemeanor Division (which handles the vast majority of DWI cases for the Office) was in attendance when the matter was addressed.

To top things off, there have been rumblings and threats from the D.A.'s Office about looking into whether or not they could indict Culbertson for perjury.

Lisa's column is a great one, but I think we are just hitting the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this story.

Sound a little retaliatory yet?

My friend and fellow blogger, Paul Kennedy, pointed out yesterday in his blog that he was somewhat perturbed at the rush to defend Amanda Culbertson and other members of Lone Star College by the defense bar, arguing that it gave them credibility on future cases in advance.  I understand his position, but I think at some point there may need to be a weighing of the evils involved here.

Defense attorneys standing up for a whistleblower witness that is risking her livelihood to testify about faulty evidence that affects hundreds of cases is the right thing to do, even if it means having to begrudgingly admit that you find her credible down the road.

The dangers of a District Attorney's Office that will literally go after that same whistleblowing witness like John Gotti after Sammy "the Bull" Gravano is a much more alarming proposition, in my opinion.

A Second Blog

I was recently invited by the Houston Chronicle's Dwight Silverman (via Lisa Falkenberg) to join the Chronicle's blog section on www.chron.com.

So today, I'm starting a second blog over with the Chronicle.  It's called "Criminal Background", and you can reach it by clicking here.

To be clear, nothing is going to happen to this blog.

There are some rules and parameters that I have to follow over with the Chronicle that will necessitate it being a little more toned down than what we talk about over here, so please keep that in mind (ahem, Rage).

I'm excited about the opportunity to reach out to more readers through the new blog.  We may have more "insider" debate on this blog, but I think the Chronicle blog will be a chance to educate more people about how the Criminal Justice System works in Harris County.

I'll need y'all's help.  Please help me with your input (either through the comments or your off-blog e-mails) on the different sides of different issues.  Remember that it is a family newspaper so we need to keep the comments clean (ahem, Rage).

And while we are on the topic of the comments, I will probably be a little more restrictive on folks posting as "Anonymous".  If you like the blog over there and want to comment on it, I'd appreciate it if you developed a pseudonym so that the readers can identify your perspectives by authorship.  I'm not saying you need to sign your name, but I'd love to see regular and easily-identifiable commenters over there.

And, as always, I'll appreciate your input on the blog itself -- whether publicly or privately.

(NOTE:  From a technical standpoint, the blog layout over there is a little different from the one I'm used to here, so please have patience if it takes me a little bit to figure out how it all works.)

Lisa Falkenberg's Article from Yesterday

Most of you have probably already read this, but in case you missed it, the Chronicle's Lisa Falkenberg did a great article yesterday on the D.A.'s Office's handling of the Tata case.

In case you missed it, you can check it out by clicking here.

It's Not Just the Republicans . . .

Lisa Falkenberg is back from maternity leave with a good column this morning covering a couple of the judicial candidates that the the Democrats have put forward this year, despite the fact that they have no criminal experience.

Lisa's article focuses on candidate Brandon Dudley, who at least was very candid about his lack of experience, and has some things in his background that at least tie to criminal law. He's running against Judge Jeannine Barr in November.

And then there is Kathy Cheng, who has made the decision to run against one of the most highly esteemed and the most senior judge on the bench, the 209th's Judge Michael McSpadden.

Both Judge McSpadden and Judge Barr are well regarded judges with years and years of experience. It would be pretty sad to see them lose to people who never tried a case, wouldn't it?

But, the Democratic Party seems to be working its ugly back-room deals just like the Republicans. At least the Democrats aren't standing behind a hate-mongering rodent like Terry Lowry, though.

There is a heartwarming quote from other criminal law rookie, Sharolyn Wood, that she is running because she just really really likes jury trials.

Hmm.

Well, I still really really like football, and nobody has made me quarterback of the Texans yet.

Lisa Falkenberg's Column Today

I'm a little late on the draw on commenting on Lisa Falkenberg's column this morning about the actions of Judge Kevin Fine in a recent sexual assault trial.

I think it is a very good column and makes a very good point, and I say that despite the fact that I like Judge Fine, and Judge Fine has never been anything but kind to me (both as a lawyer and now as a Judge).

The problem is that sometimes when shifting into a new job position, one needs to learn that the role you used to play isn't the one you will be playing any longer. I can certainly sympathize, having shifted from a prosecutor to a defense attorney right around the same time that Judge Fine switched from defense attorney to Judge. Although I've been criticized for blogging like a prosecutor, I think that all of my clients would gladly tell you that once we're in the courtroom, I am able to put my past career entirely behind me.

I'm there to represent them wholeheartedly.

If I didn't do that, I would have a very short career as a defense attorney ahead of me.

In the trial case mentioned by Lisa in her column, it would appear that Judge Fine was having some difficulty in putting his past career as a member of the Defense Bar behind him.

And as Lisa aptly points out, he just can't do that.

It doesn't mean that Judge Fine is a bad person. I can attest that he is a very good person who is truly trying to make a difference in the Criminal Justice System. Unfortunately, it sometimes results in some unorthodox methods that lead to complications that should not be coming from the Bench.

In this case, a line was crossed, and major credit should go to prosecutor Ed McClees for standing up for the Complainant in his case. Lisa described it:

The question drew an objection from Prosecutor Ed McClees, who questioned the relevance in a tense exchange.

Objecting to a Judge (as opposed to Opposing Counsel) is a gutsy move, and not a lot of Prosecutors (or Defense Attorneys, for that matter) would have been brave enough to do so. A lawyer can quickly find himself in jail for objecting to a judge.

But Ed clearly understood the definition and parameters of his job, and he did the right thing despite potentially being held in contempt. In an Office that seems to rapidly be losing a lot of its Leadership, I think younger prosecutors can look to Ed as somebody who can lead them in the right direction and by example. It is very easy to stand up for something when you are surrounded by people. It's much more difficult to stand up alone at counsel table, which is exactly what Ed did.

Judge Fine was a very talented and brilliant Defense Attorney in the years he spent before becoming a Judge. I have no doubt that he has the potential to be a talented and brilliant Judge, as well. But I think he's going to have to let go of the past life to progress to the new one.

I have no doubt he would have passed along the same advice to me if I was still behaving like a prosecutor in his courtroom.

At least I hope he would.

Lisa Falkenberg's Column on Carvana

In case you haven't seen it already, make sure to check out Lisa's column on Carvana Cloud leaving the Office in today's Chronicle.

I love it that Lykos gets caught in a lie about the number of minorities in the Office. I also think its pretty damn interesting that she doesn't deny screwing over Carvana for political reasons. Hopefully Lisa's column today will make more citizens of Harris County aware of what the hell Lykos and her Davidians are doing.

Lisa Falkenberg's Excellent Column

Bet you never thought I would write a post with that title, did ya?

But, I gotta say that I loved Lisa Falkenberg's column today on Pat Lykos' new poorly-thought-out plan for Pre-Trial Diversions for first time DWI offenders. From start to finish, the whole article kept me laughing, and that laughing was mostly at Lykos' expense.

Now, I would imagine that Lisa probably went over to interview Lykos and her stand-in "Yes Man" Roger Bridgwater with the best of intentions as a way of illustrating how wonderful the new plan would be. But even the liberally slanted columnist for the very pro-Lykos Chronicle was forced to point out that the "program is far from thoroughly thought-out" and "a new district attorney launching a controversial program should probably be a little more prepared before going public."

Ya think?

I love Lykos' explanation that the reason the details hadn't been ironed out yet was "because news [of the plan] broke a bit prematurely".

No kidding? I hear that Lykos holding a press conference announcing the plan was a leading suspect as to the cause of why the news may have "broke a bit prematurely".

Funny how that works out. I bet that really caught the Old Girl off guard.

In defense of her plan's disorganization, Patsy decided to rely on some of her campaign experience and decide to launch some negative publicity -- not at detractors of her plan, but at other counties.

"We're not going to engage in any fraud as they do in other counties by calling a DWI something else."

Holy crap, that one nearly made me spit out my coffee. First of all, this statement alone from Patsy pretty much ensures that nobody from another county is going to dance with her at the next annual Texas District and County Attorney's Association meeting. Second of all, who on EARTH is Lykos to be criticizing other counties and the way they handle DWI cases?

The Lykos plan is to erase the first DWI that an offender gets, and make it as if it never happened, and she is blasting counties like Bexar County that apparently utilize other offenses as a method of plea bargaining? You've got to be kidding me.

And she emphasizes that the purpose of her plan is "to reduce the number of repeat offenders". Well, um, yeah, if you don't actually count the first offense, I suppose that will technically reduce the number of repeat offenders from a mathematical standpoint. You aren't a true repeat offender if the first one didn't count, right?

And then she points out that DWI is a "pandemic in Harris County". And the elected District Attorney's solution to that is to treat it less seriously?


To wrap up, Lisa points out that Roger Bridgwater and Lykos weren't even on the same page as to the requirements they would demand for their Pre-Trial Diversion. Bridgwater, who does not drink, wanted to make no alcohol at all a requirement for the probation, leading Lykos to disagree and state: "I'm not Carrie Nation."


NOTE: I am glad that Lykos cleared up that she is not, in fact, Carrie Nation (pictured above), however, I think there is still an astounding chance that they may have been sorority sisters.

The conclusion of Lisa's article wraps up with Lykos joking (over Bridgwater's doddering attempt to downplay it) about her own drinking habits:

With a laugh, she [Lykos] added, "I wish I had a Jack and Coke right now."

I don't have a problem with Patsy having as many Jack and Cokes as she wants.

She just needs to cut down on making these policy decisions after so many of them.

Interesting Column

Interesting article by Lisa Falkenberg this morning on her analysis of the 351st Judicial Race. Um. not quite sure what to say about it, so I'll let you guys do the talking.

On an unrelated side note, I will be legally changing my name to Joe Kickass.

Cry Me a River

I gotta admit that I thought it was pretty damn funny to read the Chronicle's editorial this morning lamenting Ken Magidson's decision to create a media office.

I mean, it just absolutely cracks me up.

Let's see, Jeff Cohen and crew have been calling the prosecutors at the Office racists, corrupt, and stupid for quite some time now, and yet they now seem stunned (just, stunned, I tell you!) that perhaps the Office has decided to exercise some "caution" in talking to reporters.

Don't get me wrong, I will freely admit that as a prosecutor, I love(d) talking to the media about my cases. It was always great to send a link to a website on one of my cases to the folks back at home. Its a sad day that it can't be done anymore, but I think Mr. Magidson's decision is a reasonable and prudent one.

Will it make the jobs of the roving reporters and columnists who work the courthouse more difficult? Yep.

Do I feel sorry for them? Well, yes and no. I like Brian Rogers and Peggy O'Hare and I don't think that they ever abused what a prosecutor had to tell them.

For them, I feel sorry.

For Lisa Falkenberg, Rick Casey, and my boy, Alan Bernstein? Not so much.
(As an aside, I did find the complaint about the "establishment of a fresh layer of bureaucracy" to be pretty funny as well. This is the same Chronicle that allows Falkenberg to write four articles a week advocating the creation of the Public Defenders Office, right?)

And do I feel sorry for the Chronicle as a whole? Absolutely not.

Over the past five months their "institution" has done everything it can to make the jobs of the people at the District Attorney's Office as difficult as they could. I'm not feeling much sympathy if the D.A.'s Office is doing the same thing to them now.

Cohen and Crew are griping about the Office talking to them in a more limited fashion?

Hell, they should be glad that the Office is talking to them at all.

Ah, Statistics

You just gotta love the Chronicle.

What other major city has a newspaper that writes an article and then actually pays a columnist to write her own version of what the article means? It's cute really. It's kind of like Lisa Falkenberg has the journalistic equivalent of an Easy Bake oven where she writes a little column that corresponds to what the grown-up article is.

Today's topic is about a recent study created by Scott Phillips, a University of Denver sociology and criminology professor, which analyzed those cases where Harris County sought the death penalty, broken down by race. (NOTE: I haven't seen the entire report (although I would very much like to), so I'm relying on what was reported in the articles for my article.)

An interesting idea? Absolutely.

The results? Probably rather disappointing to Mrs. Kase (I mean, Jeff Cohen).

Turns out that between the years 1992 and 1999, Harris County sought the death penalty on 27% of white defendants charged with capital murder, 25% of Hispanics charged with capital murder, and 25% of African-Americans charged with capital murder. As a white person, I plan to protest around the CJC tomorrow based on the 2% increase in my likelihood of getting the death penalty if I'm ever charged with capital murder, because clearly, it is based solely on my race.

The beautiful thing about statistics is that you can "statistify" pretty much anything. As a matter of fact, on the drive home today, I realized that out of the restaurants that I frequent, only about 2% of them start with a vowel. Yep, I discriminate when I eat. I frequent Burger King, Taco Bell, Chuy's, McDonald's, and Whataburger. I realize that I am clearly not frequenting Escalante's and Imperial Palace enough.

The above listed statistic is about as useful to you in your day-to-day life as Dr. Phillips' study on when the Harris County District Attorney's Office sought death on capital cases.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not faulting the study for being created. If the statistics had come out with something dramatic, like say, the State sought death on 60% of African-Americans charged with capitals, versus 15% of white defendants, that would have been extremely alarming.

Frankly, I'm glad that he did the study. But the results aren't likely what he was hoping to find.

The statistics end up showing that a white defendant is slightly more likely to have the death penalty sought against him or her than an African-American or Hispanic person.

Not that such information would slow down an intrepid journalist such as Pippi Longstocking. Her article ran under the headline of "Remedying unequal punishment". To support her mathematically illogical position, she notes that Phillips had somehow miraculously quantified those cases which were "serious" or "heinous". Phillips concluded that under the definitions of "serious" or "heinous", African-Americans were disproportionately sought out for the death penalty.

In a related note, it appears that Phillips studied statistics under Republican D.A. candidate Pat Lykos.

Look kids, if the criminal justice system was so easy that we could put a meaningful statistic on it, 95% of the attorneys would be out of jobs. Each case is different and complex. There is a difference between the convenience store robbery where the defendant panics and shoots the clerk and leaves, versus the one where he shoots the clerk multiple times and seems to be enjoying every last minute of it. There are countless factors that juries assess.

And speaking of juries, Falkenberg cites cases where the juries returned life sentences (even though the State was seeking death) as some sort of proof that the community was trying to somehow rectify the State's erroneous decision to seek death. I wonder if the Journalistic Genius figured into the equation that jurors come from all walks of life and just a single juror's refusal to give the death penalty will ultimately result in a life sentence via mistrial?

The bottom-line is that this study didn't come out the way that the death penalty abolitionists had hoped.

I don't blame people for being against the death penalty. I really don't.

What I have an issue with is trying to mix and adjust statistics to try and prove a point that they don't actually support.

For future reference, a little intellectual honesty would go a lot further with me.

From Our Humor Section . . .

Top 10 Reasons the Chronicle Endorsed Pat Lykos for D.A.

10. Despite years of chain smoking, she still has dazzling white teeth like the Osmonds.

9. The way her eyes twinkle before she calls other judges "f*ck face".

8. She makes Clarence Bradford look a little more competent.

7. Because dirty campaigning and baseless allegations sell papers, dammit!

6. Lykos stating the same meaningless things over and over again make Lisa Falkenberg's articles seem a little less repetitive and irrelevant, by comparison.

5. Drug Legalization Advocate Dean Becker wasn't running.

4. She reminds Chronicle editor Jeff Cohen of his great-grandmother.

3. Threats of "I'll get you, my pretties" during meeting with the Editorial Review Board.

2. She is rumored to be in possession of nude photographs of Alan Bernstein.

1. Every fifth time she cites "The Rule of Law", the Editorial Board gets a free pizza from Pizza Hut.

A Prelude of Things to Come?

Lisa Falkenberg's column today was her third in an apparent three-part series of saying the exact same thing -- that Harris County needs a Public Defender's Office. This time, the article, in addition to saying the exact same thing, had quotes!

Quotes from people!

Quotes from people in politics!

Other than that, it was nothing new.

As I've mentioned before, I don't really give a rat's behind whether or not we get one, although I don't think it would be beneficial for defendants.

What was interesting to me was how the Chronicle is already starting to turn its back on its endorsee Pat Lykos in favor of the, uh, wisdom of Clarence Bradford. Check out this quote regarding Lykos' response to the idea:

"It's going to take some considerable thought," said Lykos. "We certainly can't go on the way we are. And I certainly don't have a visceral rejection of it by any stretch."
She paused.
"That doesn't make sense, what I just said, does it?"

Well, no, it doesn't, Pat, but that's never really slowed you down before.

I'm just kind of surprised that the Chronicle is already pointing out Pat's dumb moments in an effort to make Bradford's generically meaningless statement seem more intelligent:

"There has been a tendency to accept the principle of locking everybody up and throwing away the key is the answer," Bradford said. "That has failed."

Um, yeah, this from the guy who brought you the Crime Lab Scandal and the K-Mart Raid.

And, as a side note, wouldn't Bradford be a more appropriate choice for the Elected Public Defender, rather than District Attorney? Think about it. He could argue "You should never convict on this shoddy evidence. It came from the HPD Crime Lab. Who would know that better than me?"

And people said that Ron and I were crazy when we said that the Chronicle is conspiring to get Lykos the Republican nomination because she would be easier for Bradford to beat . . .

The Bottom Line: Vote Safe. Vote Siegler.

Is that you, Lisa?

Lisa Falkenberg wrote a column today that was actually sympathetic to the ADAs left at the Office in the wake of the Rosenthal resignation.

I'm stunned and thankful.

And by the way, you looked lovely in your staff photo this morning.