Of the 80 intermediate appellate justices, 2835 percentare new. As they headed out of the courtroom, Schulte, a young, tough-talking former cop with a buzz cut, angrily told White, This is not over. The price of oil was spiking, and the siblings thought it might be a good time to sell. But before the agency could conclude its investigation, Milner got what he had been after. She needed to meet her opponent in his own primary, in March. But for that, Wooten would never have obtained her exoneration. Thats what became known as the Special Crimes Unit. Suite 2100 Poinsett said hed put him in touch with a guy who was just as passionate about protecting families from government intervention as Dave was but who had a whole lot more experience. A big part of his job is to help the police department implement a consent decree issued by the Colorado Attorney Generals Office after it found a history of racial bias in the department. Assistant Attorney General Harry White would argue that the consulting agreement was fabricated after the fact to cover the real purpose of the $150,000the bribery of Wootenand that the only work Spencer did was to pass off industry analyses from places such as the Harvard Journal of Legislation as his own. What followed is the unbelievable, epic tale of the craziest case in the history of jurisprudence. He seemed to believe that they must have cost an exorbitant amount, and he suggested that they were paid for with secret funds paid to Spencer, her media consultant, by an unidentified third party. Enjoy!!! It just seemed like there had to be some kernel of truth to the whole bribery thing, some questionable if not illegal activity that allowed the Collin County DAs office to prosecute four innocent people, convict three of them, and force the fourth to plead guilty. She said, Do you want to be right or do you want to be free? Wooten knew that if she were sentenced to more than 10 years, she would not be entitled to an appeal bond; she would go straight to prison without seeing her kids. Eventually the jurors had enough. But during the trial, when the jury stopped making eye contact with her, Wooten knew she was in trouble. The Most Lawless County in Texas Suzanne Wooten did the impossible and became the first candidate to defeat a sitting judge in Collin County. 44 South Carolina Shutterstock Public corruption convictions per 10,000 residents: 20 Adverse action reports filed from 1990 to 2020: 11,763 Medical malpractice reports filed from 1990 to 2020: 4,737 After analyzing almost 335 of the most populous cities, we came up with this list as the absolute worst 10 places in the state of Texas: The 10 Worst Places To Live In Texas For 2021 Hutchins Diboll Cleveland Progreso Alton Livingston Palmview Port Arthur Robstown Humble What? (LogOut/ Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Trevio talks to reporters Oct. 31, 2011, at the Hidalgo County sheriff's office in Edinburg, Texas. And thats when I was told the allegation was bribery. When I catch him on the phone in March, he says they just had a big snowstorm and its pretty outside, the fresh powder blanketing his new home. In September 2007, Dave met with Royce Poinsett, the general counsel for the speaker of the Texas House of Representatives. The money, I believe, had to have been paid to the media prior to the reports that were filed reflecting no such payments.. Toward the end of the year, she told the partners at a firm meeting that she intended to run for Sandovals seat. Thats got to be illegal.. Actually, thats the easiest one to understand. Otherwise, virtually every campaign donation would be criminally suspect. Read the full results below, with more details here: Rank State Score 51 North Dakota 0% 50 Wyoming 12% 49 Idaho 16% 48 Arizona 28% 47 Michigan 28% 46 Indiana 28% 45 Utah 31% 44 South Dakota 34% 43. Two were in Fort Worth, but they werent up for reelection. To say she needed Stacys money to win simply isnt true. Plus hes a fag.. A tall man with piercing eyes, Milner had the aura of someone youd best not mess with. I can help people write appeal bonds. He looks like a middle-aged dad, which he is. It just takes one jilted man and a few loyal henchmen to put a woman back in her permitted place. Since Wooten, judicial races in the county are occasionally contested, and there are a lot more women on the bench. She says Spencer provided the services that she paid him for, and the dates of the checks produced in court are misleading. And he had 162 years of history proving that his 464-vote margin entitled him to what was essentially a lifetime appointment. Its funny, because, as a police officer or whatever, John Roach used to refer to me as the faggot from Dallas because Im a gay man, Schulte says. He estimated the overall cost would be $100,000 to $150,000. And I was told that their plan was to have me arrested at the airport with the media present. . Milner indicted the attorney and had him arrested, but he was acquitted at trial. I will lose myself in the crazy, corrupt, centuries-old history of the Collin County court system. He argued that the fees should have been paid before the ads ran, and, according to her campaign finance reports, she didnt have enough funds in her campaign account to pay them. The bigger problem was the inconsistent way judges enforced them. They are dealing with low income, high unemployment, and lack of quality housing, resulting in poor living conditions and high crime. Advertisment. (LogOut/ In 2020, Dave Cary was riding his bike home from his office in Richardson around White Rock Lake when he was hit by a car and killed. Lubbock's. He thought the consultant might be able to help develop a government sales pipeline for his companys tech products. In the following days, the DAs office would begin to use the existing grand jury to start issuing subpoenas for records related to Wooten. So when he saw the report of her exoneration in the Dallas Morning News, his one thought was, Geez, sue the shit out of these people.. If it was a political contributioneven if it was a covert indirect transfer of money not labeled as suchthen there was no crime because it was an exception to the definition of bribery under the statute. She managed to raise $79,000 in campaign donations, leaving her with $33,000 in out-of-pocket expenses. During voir dire, when the attorneys and the judge went into chambers, he says he found himself alone in a room of 100 or more potential jurors. What followed is the unbelievable, epic tale of. The ultra-right conservatives here will hate you, they told her. Do I really want to be a judge? Wooten says. That for this money, youre going to do X.. If it wasnt a political contribution, then there was no crime because there was no actual bribe. Later, at the time of his indictment in the Wooten matter, he would be an officer with TDi, a tech company in Plano. This one was a plea to prison officials to let his wife bring his wedding ring to prison and to let him wear it. Im in this blur, Wooten says. Greg Abbott is the incumbent Republican governor, up for reelection on November 8. Steve Spencer was set for trial in December 2012. Based on Milners use of the grand jury as a manipulative investigative tooland Roachs knowledge of itPalmer felt he had enough to go after the pair. But in the end, I will discover that no matter how hard people try to distort it, the truth tends to be clear at its core. On March 4, the day of the primary, she watched the returns from her office with friends and family. TikTok Timmy aka Pct. I never even bothered to get it expunged. (LogOut/ In addition to arguing that the Collin County District Attorneys Office was plagued by a pattern of abuse of power and malicious prosecution for political gain, Palmer and Cox also argued that Milner and Roach had grossly abused the grand jury process as part of their prosecutor-led investigation. And a sentencing document filed by Assistant Attorney General White cites a litany of concerns, including: Spencer had been found guilty of writing bad checks in the recent past; he had pled no contest to felony insurance fraud in Utah with regard to a $37,000 claim for a lost diamond, which he says was dislodged from his wifes wedding ring during a car accident; he had failed to pay a $26,000 bill related to Wootens campaign, which she had reimbursed him for; and he had violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice in 1990 while in the Air Force. But Spencer confirmed what her law partners had already told her: to run in Collin County as anything other than a Republican would be futile. Now, she was seated at the defense table, dressed not in a robe but in a conservative pantsuit, her blond hair pulled back in a basic bun. With the help of James Roberts, the head of the firms civil rights section, they turned the whole thing around in a month and filed the lawsuit on May 18, 2018, with less than a week to spare. How could three separate juries convict Wooten and the Carys, and how could a court of appeals uphold their convictions for something that didnt happen? Known as Hang Them All Sandoval, he had an abysmal approval rating among members of the local bar. Suzanne didnt do anything wrong. Maine She figured it was just petty payback from a sore loser, not the harbinger of a scorched-earth campaign to unseat her. He became passionate about criminal justice reform and started working with Doug Deason and his eponymous criminal justice reform center at SMU. Stacy had also appeared before her briefly after she had sued Jennifer for trying to garnish her personal investment accounts in Daves custody case, and the lawsuit had been subsequently transferred to the 380th because it was related. In 2007, Wooten was the managing partner of the McKinney branch of Collins & Basinger, a boutique Dallas law firm. He and Roach were concerned that if Greg Willis became the new DA, hed drop the charges against Wooten. On October 14, 2010, nearly two years after she had taken the bench, Wooten was indicted by the sixth grand jury to hear her case. Since the first district court was established in Collin County in 1846, no one had challenged an incumbent judge, whether in a primary or general election. On the appellate and district courts alone, the Texas Judiciary in the last election lost seven centuries of judicial experience at a single stroke.. Everyone knew someone else, and they almost all had a tie to the Collin County Republican Party. I can help people with their divorces. That flicker of a plan was enough to get her out of the tub. She had continuous advertising on the most popular, hard-right talk shows. Dallas, Texas 75201. By law, each county in the state must be served by at least one, which, for small rural counties, can be shared. As of August 2022, Governor Greg Abbott had appointed 59 state court judges, 49 of which were district court judges. In 07, we had sold our oil company, kept some royalty, and everybody was flush, she says. Don't try to fix it, that's how they like it. Dave had been involved in an ongoing contentious custody dispute with his ex-wife, Jennifer, in Sandovals court. So my attention was drawn to Collin County, because its the reddest county in the reddest state, Spencer says. Milner wasnt the only one talking that way. She says she used Spencers services before and long after the dates at issue. But what got me to my decision was one of my dear friends who was there. Her bangs are now tinged with gray, but her diamond stud earrings match the intensity of her bright blue eyes. Bonham. After analyzing federal corruption convictions, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review bestowed a new title on Edinburg: the dirtiest town, in the most crooked county, in the most bribable state. And then not only that, prosecute two, three other people? Spencer is a remarkably talented individual who knows more about politics than probably anybody in this room will ever know, Dave would later tell a grand jury. Now, he says, laughing, Im the faggot from Colorado.. The Collin County Republican Party had cashed her filing check, but they had reported Sandovals seat as unopposed. The perfect storm, where youve got this political opponent who is sorry about losing. For the State to prove its case under the general bribery statute, the appellate court said, it had to prove that Stacys payment was not a political contribution. And it was the best thing that ever happened in my career. Brings new meaning to the phrase Sunday Funday. They saw only a small piece of it, the rest obscured by evidence withheld by the judge or by the vagaries of criminal trials, where defendants often dont testify in each others cases, and maybe not even their own. Everyone else is just collateral damage. Harry White currently has a law practice in Fort Worth. The most dangerous places in Texas are usually areas or neighborhoods located inside larger cities. Learn from it.. So when he offered his services as a turnkey media manager for her campaign, even though hed never managed a judicial campaign before, she agreed. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ). If there was, every judge in the state of Texas could be indicted as well. Then he killed her dog, put it in her bed, and told her he was going to kill her. I was at a judicial conference in San Francisco when they indicted me, Wooten says. And the Court of Appeals fixes it. She was soaking in her bathtub, trying to figure out what to tell her kids, aged 15, 9, and 7, if the worst happened. The laws werent terrible, per se. If you don't know who Shaun is, you can find earlier segments here . District courts are the general jurisdiction trial courts in Texas. They got married in December 2006, joining households with their four young children. Corrupt Texas Governor Greg Abbott is the poster child for corrupt Republicans' sellout to the fossil fuel industry. She was friends with Peter Schulte, a local criminal defense attorney and former cop, so she gave him a call. My experience is completely different from Wootens. We just pissed some people off.. John Roach Sr. Two widely publicized cases in 2013 involved a former Hidalgo County sheriff and his son, a former police officer. The police eventually tracked her down in a womens shelter in Louisiana, and the district attorneys office brought her before Wooten for a bench trial. He is an assistant city attorney manager for the city of Aurora. The woman testified that she didnt pay because her boyfriend beat her up. He kept copious journals in faint, prison-approved pencil. The FBI in San Antonio also has seen a sharp increase in . Federal statistics on public corruption convictions show the two judicial districts that cover South Texas rank near the top nationwide. Even by Texas standards, Williamson County is known for its rampant political corruption. 10. 750 North St.Paul St. In fact, he asked us to hire a lobbyist, but therewe do have a lobbyist. During Wootens trial, Judge Russell refused to admit any evidence about the political motivations underlying the case: neither the communications between Sandoval and the DAs office that started the whole thing nor the half-dozen grand juries it took to get an indictment. Then Huntsville. The third problem with the current system is that the Texas Constitution allows the governor to fill interim court vacancies (due to death or retirement) before an election can be held. Harry White, an assistant attorney general with election law experience, agreed to join the team. That grand jury would end up being the first of sixover the course of nearly three yearsto investigate her for alleged election code violations. These investigations have resulted in needless costs and no discernable benefit to the taxpayers of Collin County. He's serving five years in federal prison for accepting illegal . At the time, Bob Dole and Pat Buchanan were on the presidential ballot. The email said that prosecutors should only conduct bench trials in Wootens court if they didnt care about the outcome and it was the only way to reasonably dispose of the case. Here are the 15 most corrupt states in America. There will be many other names that will come up as being involved in the public corruption, Wood County Sheriff Kelly Cole, District Attorney Investigator Jerry Hirsch, District Clerk Suzy Wright, County Clerk Kelley Price, Assistant District Attorney Shauna Key, Attorney Cliff Thomas, etc., but I'll get to them as their names come up. We already know. Between that and Stacys sentence, he figured a fair shake wasnt forthcoming. Shell just let anybody off.. Report Public Corruption. Charged with nine felony counts that included bribery, conspiracy to engage in organized criminal activity, and money laundering, Wooten could be sentenced to anything from five years to life in prison. It must have been so tempting to make a plea deal or simply do what the prosecutors wanted from the get-go and turn on Spencer or Wooten. Her readily accessible credit, available on credit cards and through a line of credit, never totaled less than $150,000 during the course of her campaign. Now that being said, when I got arrested and bonded out, in the next year, my business tripled, Walpole says. Once they were in, they were in. In December 2008, a few weeks before Wooten was to take the bench, Milner reached out to Attorney General Greg Abbotts office. The court then went one step further. Stacy says she hasnt seen them since. Shortly thereafter, when she stopped by her bank, they told her they were going to have to close her account because they had received grand jury subpoenas for her bank records. It involves parental rights. 2 Constable Kelly Smith-A man (and I use that term very loosely here) who has been in law enforcement for almost 25 years and has managed to climb ALL THE WAY DOWN the law enforcement ladder from county cop to police chief to now being just one rung above a WalMart security guard as a constable. Normally you cant sue prosecutors, because they are entitled to absolute immunity. For district courts where the population is more than 1 million, individual contributions are limited to $5,000, law firm and their member contributions are limited to $30,000, and PAC contributions are limited to $52,500 per court. The whole trial had felt like a terrible farce. Suzanne Wooten did the impossible and became the first candidate to defeat a sitting judge in Collin County. He had mental health and addiction issues. So I took a flight a day early and came back, because I have children and a family. It determined there were no loans and no giftsabsolutely nothing of benefit passed to Wooten. There was nothing left for her to do but wrap up her practice and order her robe. How could he decide to go to trial and leave his freedom up to a jury after seeing what had happened to the three whod gone before him? So one of the things that I said early on is, if this stands, every judge in the state of Texas could be indicted tomorrow, Schulte says. There were also ads run on the most popular morning and evening shows. Wooten had considered running as an independent, because she felt judicial races shouldnt be partisan and party affiliation shouldnt make a difference. So I had to scramble, do some FedExing, get some paperworkI had copies of everything, Wooten says. But election fraud is now a national rallying cry. This was particularly cynical given the fact that Ms. Wooten was active in the Democratic party two years prior to this race. Ever. In Collin County, where courts utilized the second pick-a-pal method, it was possible to end up with a grand jury made up entirely of strategic, political appointees. Nearly a year later, while a fourth grand jury was investigating Wooten, Schulte, her lawyer, was finally able to arrange a meeting with Milner to try to find out what was going on. Bald, bespectacled, and trim, with a sideline swagger and locker room vocabulary, Scott Palmer could pass for a collegiate basketball coach. (Although you cant run after you turn 75.). First, as Schulte noted, it is entirely legal for a law firm to write a check for $30,000 to a sitting judge at a cocktail fundraiser for his or her reelection campaign on Friday night and then have one or more of its lawyers appear before said judge for a hearing on Monday morning. Corruption and incompetence. There she met Dave Cary, a Northern Californian who had grown up in an old mining town and started his education in a one-room schoolhouse. Spencer came to Dallas to meet with the Carys the following month, and they talked in the Carys home for several hours. 15. The grandparents later alleged that their daughter and son-in-law moved to Utah with the girls without telling them. Governor Orders Major Election Investigation on Most Corrupt County in Texas. The Empire State has the dubious distinction of being ranked the most corrupt state in the U.S., when looking at total number of public officials convicted of federal corruption charges from. I remember going home thinking, What did I do? Attempts to improve things or to bring your department into compliance with the law will be frowned upon. It was my mailbox, but I didnt even own a dog.. Spencer says he and his wife fully complied with the visitation agreement and told his in-laws where they were going, but a court ultimately fined Spencer $12,000 (he paid $100), sentenced him to jail for 1,200 days (he served 10), and awarded $100,000 in attorneys fees to his in-laws. Wooten planned to change all that. If youve ever walked into a voting booth and had your eyes glaze over at a long list of judicial candidates with unfamiliar names, you know how tempting it is to simply vote a straight ticket. She also refused to sign off on routine asset forfeiture requests from the DAs office until after a conviction. That didnt pan out, but Spencer was able to help with other company matters that he found useful. Yet the indictment alleged that payments made by Stacy to Spencer, totalling $150,000 between January and March 2008, were intended to induce Wooten to run for Sandovals seat, beat him, preside over the 380th, and issue unspecified favorable rulings., When I read it, I laughed, Schulte says. She didnt want even the appearance of impropriety. I mean, he found us a lobbyist who is a great lobbyist. He encourages cops, prosecutors to subvert the will of the people and indict her for something that isnt a crime. Except, it turned out, for Judge Kerry Russell, the visiting judge from Tyler assigned to the case. It isnt a crime to spend the money you earn. When I ask him what he thinks makes him good at his job, he points up to the open hotel atrium above us. They talked over the next few days, and Stacy agreed to pay him $150 per hour up to $250,000 for his services. I couldnt tell you. The allegation was that two years prior he had mistakenly filed a document that hadnt yet been notarized; when the clerk had caught the error, hed had the document notarized after the fact. Wooten noticed an assistant DA, Christopher Milner, sitting in the back of her courtroom during hearings he wasnt involved in. Yes, that is the university that was founded by Pat Robertson, who believes strange shit like that people can get demon possessed by buying used shirts at yard sales that are already demon possessed. Whatever was going on, her bank didnt want to be involved. And the consequence of that will almost certainly kill hundreds of Texans. I promise you, I never would have found that lobbyist.. Corruption, of course, exists in big cities across the country, too, and Richard Durbin, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas, said the dollar amounts involved in Texas cases. First he approached Michael Puhl, a McKinney attorney who had run and lost in 2006. He continued to focus on his appeal and wrote a book, Normandy: A Fathers Ship and a Sons Curiosity, about Stacys dad and his service in World War II. The current Harris County administration is receiving the same kind of complaints and reports from voters that Maricopa . Here is the cast of characters that you will be reading the most about: First Assistant District Attorney Brandon Baade-A man whose physical unattractiveness is only surpassed by his lack of intelligence and moral bankruptcy, but has somehow tricked the people in the courthouse that he is brilliant and that they have to heed every bit of horrible advice that he gives, even though it took him 3 years to pass the bar exam after graduating law school from the LESS THAN PRESTIGIOUS Regent University Law School. Theres another legal issue mentioned in Whites sentencing document, however, that cuts to the heart of the matter. These are seasoned, experienced former federal prosecutors. After Wooten was elected, a hearing in the case was scheduled in her courtroom, but she recused herself as soon as she realized that several of the lawyers involved were from her old firm or had helped on her campaign. Shortly after the settlement was announced in January of this year, I drive up to McKinney to meet with her in her law office, which is on the second floor of a building just off the historic town square, to find out how she was able to magically free herself through no action of her own. The appellate judges agreed that Milner was performing investigative functions and therefore was not entitled to prosecutorial immunity. He knew the prosecutors were acting like cops, and there was Supreme Court case law that said if you act like a cop, you get qualified immunity like a cop. (The prison time was stayed pending her appeal.). She was facing not only the loss of her career but also the loss of her family. (Stacy and Dave kept their finances separate after marriage.) You have to mean to steal. (Collin County currently meets the 1 million population threshold; in 2008, however, it was under, so contributions for Wootens campaign would have been limited to $2,500, $15,000, and $30,000, respectively.) There are currently 485 district courts in the state. Wooten sentenced him to treatment. Texas Commission on Judicial Selection Final Report, 2020. In February 2019, during his State of the Judiciary address to the 86th Legislature, Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht (a Republican) addressed this issue: Historic as was the blow Hurricane Harvey dealt the Texas Judiciary, so was the blow from the November election, he said. From January to March 2008, she paid him a total of $150,000: $50,000 on January 4, $25,000 on January 30, $25,000 on February 14, $25,000 on February 26, $10,000 on March 7, and $15,000 on March 14. Willis, however, was never indicted. 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