Life at the Harris County Criminal Justice Center

I'm going to start doing better about posting a link over here to the Fault Lines blog whenever I post a new column over there. If you aren't reading the columns over there, you are missing some great insights from some of the best legal bloggers in the country.  Check it out. I did a new post this morning on some controversial opinions about addiction in an Op/Ed piece from Sunday's Washington Post .  You can read it by clicking here .

While much has been said, about Steve Clappart's warrant for the arrest of Cody Ray Ellis as an alternate suspect in the murder of Belinda Temple, it appears that David Temple's defense team has been reluctant to publish the warrant itself.  Additionally, many of the local media outlets, specifically the Houston Chronicle  have decided not to delve into the details of it. Let's take it page by page -- So, to be clear, in this document, Steve Clappart is attempting to have Capital Murder charges filed against Cody Ray Ellis.  For those of you outside of the legal field, Capital Murder can be punished only by Life in Prison or the Death Penalty.  By signing off on this warrant, Clappart is verifying that he is completely comfortable with this. Clappart then goes on to explain how experienced he is as a police officer.  He also goes on and on about how experienced John Denholm was as a police officer.  This isn't necessarily abnormal, but it is pretty excessiv

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 mildl