Temple Trial Takeaways

As you doubtlessly know by now, the punishment phase of The State of Texas vs. David Temple ended in a mistrial on Friday after jurors failed to reach an agreement on an appropriate punishment for the man they easily convicted of murder.

I've heard from multiple credible sources that the split between the jurors was 10-2, with ten of the jurors demanding Life in prison for the man they convicted of killing his 8-month-pregnant wife, Belinda, by placing a shotgun to the back of her head and pulling the trigger.  The remaining two jurors were holding out for something far less and neither side seemed willing to budge from their position despite almost two days of deliberations.

A jury that convicts but then deadlocks over punishment is not unheard of, but it is fairly uncommon.  Since Temple was convicted of a 1999 murder, the law of 1999 applies to the case.  Back then a person could receive probation for murder, so Temple could technically receive it, as well.  Due to this, there is apparently an argument to be made that Temple could be placed on bond while awaiting his punishment.

If 178th District Court Judge Kelli Johnson elects to give Temple a bond, she will doubtlessly consider the brutality of the case, how many jurors wanted Life for Temple, and the fact that when released from jail in 2016, Temple vowed "for the people that lied and cheated who put me there to be held accountable."  Texas Attorney General Prosecutors Lisa Tanner and Bill Turner will likely point out that these combined factors make Temple a high flight risk with a revenge agenda who has nothing to lose.

Although the hung jury on punishment prevented bringing the 20-year saga of David Temple to a complete close, the fact that he was convicted again will more than suffice for the time being.

It has been a long and winding road that gave David Temple a second chance at getting away with murder, one that most murderers don't get.

Temple was originally convicted and sentenced to Life in 2007 in a trial that pitted Harris County Assistant District Attorney Kelly Siegler against prominent defense attorney Dick DeGuerin.  Despite the fact that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the case, DeGuerin lobbied the District Attorney's Office under then-D.A. (and Siegler's political rival) Pat Lykos to perform an off-the-books investigation into an alternate suspect.

In July of 2012, Pat Lykos was a "lame duck" D.A., having lost her bid for re-election to Mike Anderson in the Republican Primary.  DeGuerin asked then-1st Assistant Jim Leitner to "review" the Temple case before the Lykos Circus left town at the end of December.  Inexplicably, Leitner complied, as I detailed in this post.

Leitner had been informed that newly-minted defense attorney and former Harris County Homicide Lieutenant John Denholm had been sucking up to working for DeGuerin on developing an "alternate suspect" to the murder of Belinda Temple.  Despite the fact that the Court of Criminal Appeals had recently affirmed Temple's conviction, Leitner was more than happy to do DeGuerin's bidding and assigned Denholm's buddy (and current HCDA investigator) Steve Clappart to work on the case.

By September 2012, the dream team of Clappart and Denholm had drafted a Capital Murder warrant for the arrest of a "suspect" named Cody Ray Ellis based on evidence so absurd that I won't even address it in this post.  You can check out the legal document that these two nimwits tried to get signed by clicking here.   (NOTE:  Don't forget to scroll down to the transcript where Leitner testified that he would have signed that warrant.)

Here's a fun fact, in case you didn't pick up on it already:  During the retrial, Stan Schneider didn't even advance Ellis as his "alternate suspect," instead focusing on another teenager from the neighborhood, Riley Joe Sanders.  The juries in both the 2007 and 2019 trials quickly rejected all alternate suspects in favor of Temple.

In the meantime, DeGuerin (now joined by Stanley Schneider) filed an "Out of Time Motion for New Trial or Alternative Application for Writ of Habeas Corpus Based on Actual Innocence, Newly Discovered Evidence, and the Willful Suppression of Exculpatory Evidence." (Stanley apparently gets paid by the word.)  It is worth noting that during all of this, the Lykos Administration never bothered communicating what was going on to the family of Belinda Lucas Temple, which is something I noted here.


Wanting to avoid the appearance of impropriety, Lykos appointed local defense attorney Brad Beers to be a "special prosecutor" on the Temple matter.  There was a small conflict of interest on that, however, seeing as how Beers had previously represented Clappart twice (once in a lawsuit and once on a disciplinary infraction within the Office).

All of this ultimately led to a hearing in 2015 that David Temple wasn't entitled to and that very few others have been the beneficiary of.  During that hearing, Stan Schnieder and then-licensed attorney Casie Gotro got to revisit the entirety of the Temple case.  That rendition of Team Temple rejected at least five judges to hear the extra-judicial hearing before settling on Judge Larry Gist.

As we all know, the multi-week hearing ultimately resulted in findings from Gist that Kelly Siegler had been untimely in turning over evidence to Dick DeGuerin during the 2007 trial, and recommended that Temple receive a new trial.  My opinion then and my opinion now is that Judge Gist wasn't paying attention to much of the evidence that he was hearing.  He certainly wasn't paying attention when he signed off on an order where Gotro and Schneider had slipped in an extra finding.

I know that I'm biased, because Kelly Siegler is one of my best friends, but I will go to my grave feeling that the District Attorney's response to Gist's finding, coupled with Houston Press journalist Craig Malisow's article Unreasonable Doubt: Did Kelly Siegler Really Railroad an Innocent Man Eight Years Ago held far more accurate accounts of the Temple hearing than Gist's findings.

Regardless of how I feel, or how Kelly Siegler's detractors feel, David Temple ultimately got his case reversed.  Due to Kelly's fame as one of the best prosecutors in the State of Texas, the Houston Chronicle writers were ecstatic.  Lisa Falkenberg wrote a really touching article on how Clappart and Denholm were heroic and brave for taking a stand in pursuing the "real killer," despite losing friends.

SPOILER ALERT:  Denholm and Clappart lost friends because everyone knew that they (and their warrant) were full of shit, Lisa.  They were full of shit then and they are full of shit now.  Just FYI.

Brother Denholm even had the audacity to file a grievance against me with the State Bar (with attached affidavits from Gotro and Schneider) for daring to blog about Temple (and try to ruin Temple's fight for freedom).  It got rejected summarily.  I'm still a practicing lawyer, and that's all I'll say about that topic.

And then came the Reign of Ogg.

Kim Ogg took Office on January 1, 2017, and in her inauguration speech, she thanked Dick DeGuerin profusely for all he had done for her and her career.  Within a week, she vowed to be the One Woman Review Team who decided whether or not the District Attorney's Office would retry David Temple.  She appointed Steve Clappart to be her CHIEF investigator, and hired John Denholm to a Division Chief position.  Despite these clear conflicts of interest with Team Temple, Ogg steadfastly refused to recuse herself from the case.

Again, the Houston Chronicle was giddy with the prospect of the Temple Case being dismissed, because, you know, Kelly Siegler cheated!

While in the midst of Ogg's One Woman Review of Temple, DeGuerin even threw her a fundraiser! It was co-hosted by Paul Looney, who had also been a member of Team Temple at one point.

Coincidentally, Team Temple attorney Stan Schneider said that he was "completely comfortable" in whatever Ogg decided.  Gee, I wonder why.  

Ultimately, Kim Ogg relented under public pressure and recused the Harris County District Attorney's Office from The State of Texas vs. David Temple.

And the result? Justice. He was convicted again of Murder last week.

The circus that surrounded his case merely resulted in him getting a two and a half year break from prison that he clearly did not deserve.  Somewhere in the midst of all of this, the prosecutorial team of Lisa Tanner and Bill Turner were able to turn the focus back to the evidence of the case and back to Belinda Lucas Temple and her unborn daughter, Erin.

The postponement of the punishment phase to March will hopefully serve as merely an extremely lengthy epilogue for David Temple.  The real story concluded with the guilty verdict and Temple going back into custody.

Justice prevailed last week.  

The Flip Side of the David Temple Findings

While much has been said about the findings of fact in the David Temple hearing, there seems to be a couple of items that haven't been fully explained by mainstream media.  Contrary to some of the early headlines by the Houston Chronicle, the findings by Judge Gist don't automatically mean that David Temple is getting a new trial.  What Gist has basically written is his evaluation of the hearing and the earlier trial as a summary to the Court of Criminal Appeals.  The Court of Criminal Appeals does have the power to overturn the case, but they also have the power to disagree with Judge Gist's findings.

It could be several months before the Court of Criminal Appeals reaches that decision.

In the meantime, Temple's attorneys, Casie Gotro and Stanley Schneider, have approached District Attorney Devon Anderson and requested that she agree that Temple should be granted bond while awaiting the Court of Criminal Appeals' decision.  Although the law does provide that the D.A.'s Office could agree to a bond during this waiting period, there is nothing that demands they do so.   Anderson declined to agree to a bond, which sent Ms. Gotro and Mr. Schneider into a screaming tizzy.  They held a press conference at Stanley's office, demanding that the District Attorney's Office recuse itself from the Temple case.

Now, I'm a little bit curious.  Did they want the D.A.'s Office to recuse itself before or only after Anderson refused to agree to a bond on Temple?  I mean, if they thought Anderson was cool enough to approach about a bond, did they only change their opinion when they didn't get their way?

And who exactly do they think would be an acceptable Special Prosecutor if they don't want Harris County?  I'm just going to go out on a limb here and guess that Gotro and Schneider want it to be a defense attorney running that prosecution.  They objected to the first couple of judges to try their hearing, so it would probably be expected that they would be pretty choosy about who they got for a prosecutor.  I would imagine that if Anderson did decide to pass the case off to, say, the Montgomery County District Attorney's Office, that Gotro and Company would pitch a fit.

But, see, here's the deal -- Defense Attorneys don't get to pick and choose who prosecutes their cases.  Trust me, if they did, there would be many prosecutors dying of loneliness because nobody wanted them on their case.  As Gotro and Schneider have now taken their case to the media via press conferences and Gotro's highly bombastic Twitter account, I still haven't seen any compelling reason why the Harris County District Attorney's Office should just hand the keys to the courthouse over to the Temple defense team.

While everyone has focused on Gist's findings as they relate to Kelly Siegler, most have failed to notice a couple of other points from the findings.  Specifically, the fact that Gist found that Temple's "newly found" star witness, Daniel Glasscock, wasn't credible.

You remember Mr. Glasscock, don't you?  I wrote about him back in 2012 in a blog post entitled "David Temple and the Dereliction of Duty."  Now, the fact that I wrote that blog post along with this one and this one earned me a little time on the stand in the Temple hearing, too.  I testified for several hours about the blog posts, my education, my marriages, and my salary for working on Cold Justice.  In that blog post, I basically accused Jim Leitner of doing whatever he could to help Dick DeGuerin get the Temple verdict overturned.

I specifically accused him of allowing then-District Attorney Investigator Steve Clappart to run a covert investigation on some "exculpatory evidence" that Clappart's friend (former Harris County Sheriff's Office Homicide Lieutenant and current Defense Attorney) John Denholm had discovered.  That newly discovered evidence came from Daniel Glasscock.  This is what I wrote in 2012:

Clappart has been shopping around a warrant for the arrest of the (then) teen for the Capital Murder of Belinda Temple.  He cites the testimony of a new witness [Glasscock] who, per the warrant, had only learned of Belinda Temple's death (which happened in 1999) only "5 or 6 months ago."  Furthermore, that "Smoking Gun" evidence that this new witness has involves him overhearing one of the three (then) teens admitting to shooting a dog during a burglary and throwing it in the closet.

Yep, you read that right.

There isn't some new confession to the murder of Belinda Temple.  There's the confession of shooting a dog that Clappart and Denholm would like to extrapolate into a Capital Murder warrant.  There are no fingerprints.  No DNA.  No confession.  Yet a licensed peace office and a former licensed peace officer would like a judge to arrest someone for Capital Murder because he stated that he once shot a dog.

Now, apparently the fact that I wrote that blog post back in 2012 really offended Ms. Gotro.  She took to the Twitter airwaves with this:

The only problem with that was that what I wrote wasn't a lie.  How do we know that?  Well, ironically, we know that thanks to everybody's favorite lovable lunatic, Don Hooper.  Don decided it would really put me in my place if he ran a transcript of my testimony, as well as the testimony of Jim Leitner's during the hearing.  I'm actually thankful to him for doing so.  If you want to read them, here they are.  Mine is pretty much just me pontificating on why I thought the way Leitner was handling the investigation was wrong.

However, Leitner confirms pretty much everything I accused him of:

•     On pages 11 & 12, he confirms that early on in the Lykos Administration, he was approached by DeGuerin and Schneider about reviewing the Temple case.  He confirms that he had the Temple files brought to his office.

•    On page 15, he acknowledges that he didn't want Roe Wilson, the head of the Writs Division, to supervise the Temple investigation.

•    On page 16 & 17, he begins talking about how Steve Clappart came to him with the "newly discovered evidence" on the Temple case.  Here's where it gets kind of funny.  Leitner then says:

"So I didn't know if somebody set me up to put something in Murray's blog or something else again, so I said "Wait a minute, Steve," and I believe it was right then and there when he in the office, I called -- I believe I called DeGuerin or I called DeGuerin's office and said, "I have just been told that there's evidence that has to be Brady evidence that exists in the Temple case.  I want you and whomever you want to be with you to come to the DA's office so we can sit down and as they line it out to me, they're lining it out to you at the same time, so nobody can ever say that I've kept anything from you that's Brady."

Um, okay.  So apparently, my blogging skills back in the day were so powerful that whenever someone spoke to Jim Leitner, he assumed it was some kind of trick that I had initiated.  Setting aside how hysterical that is, am I the only person here who finds it a little unusual that the second Clappart says a word to Leitner about a case (that Leitner just so happens to coincidentally have in his office), that the 1st Assistant of the Harris County District Attorney's Office stops EVERYTHING to call Dick DeGuerin?

•    On page 18, he acknowledges that he wanted Clappart's investigation kept quiet, so he intentionally kept it away from the Conviction Integrity Unity, who should have had jurisdiction.

•    On page 105, Leitner begins talking about how Steve Clappart had written an affidavit for an arrest warrant for an individual named Cody Ray Ellis. [NOTE:  This is where the information from Glasscock comes in.  Glasscock said he remembered a conversation from 12 years earlier where Ellis and some others had talked about breaking into a house and shooting and killing a dog."  Not a woman.  Not Belinda Temple.  A freaking dog.]

Leitner's response to Clappart's ridiculous warrant is frightening:

"I have read it and you asked me to look at that, and in my own honest opinion, if I had been a judge, I would have probably signed the warrant."[p 110 & 111]

Just so we are clear here, Leitner has just now admitted that if Clappart had brought him a warrant saying that he heard from a dude who heard it from another dude that a dude shot a dog, he would sign a warrant for CAPITAL MURDER, despite the fact that somebody else was already sitting in prison for that very same murder.

Are you freaking kidding me?  Mental note:  don't vote for Leitner for judge!

I know the Defense Bar is celebrating Gist's Findings of Facts and his recommendation for a new trial right now, but is the Defense Bar really thinking that is sufficient for a Probable Cause for a Capital Murder warrant?  I mean, seriously.  Throwing out some good old fashioned reasonable doubt on a case is one thing, but Clappart and Denholm wanted to go arrest somebody for Capital Murder!

As noted above, Gist found that Glasscock was not credible and noted, "Glasscock substantially varied the facts originally given to Trial Counsel.  In substance, Glasscock repudiated the most important details to the extent that his future credibility as a witness is significantly impaired."

I guess it's a good thing Clappart couldn't find a judge who would sign an arrest warrant on Cody Ellis, isn't it?  Turns out their star witness in that super secret investigation was full of crap.

None of that slowed Clappart and Denholm down from showing up at Gotro and Schneider's press conference though.

So, despite the press conference and Ms. Gotro's warpath on Twitter, it shouldn't really be surprising that Devon Anderson won't agree to a bond on David Temple.  From the prosecutorial perspective, they don't believe that they have the wrong guy in prison. 

At the end of the day, they believe that the person who cornered a pregnant Belinda Temple in her own closet and shot her in the head with a shotgun was her husband, David Temple.  

As much as Ms. Gotro and Mr. Schneider would like for you to believe that David Temple is the next Anthony Graves or Michael Morton, the Harris County District Attorney's Office does not agree -- nor do they have to.

As I said before, whether or not David Temple gets a new trial remains to be seen.  The Court of Criminal Appeals does not have to accept Judge Gist's findings.  If they review the record and concur with Judge Gist's findings, then he most likely will receive a new trial.

If he does get a new trial, a prosecutor with the Harris County District Attorney's Office will most likely be trying it.  Although I'm sure Ms. Gotro and Mr. Schneider would like designate their own prosecutor, they know better than to think that would ever happen.  

That's just not how the System works.