It happens again: A white police officer in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, area fatally shoots a black woman while she looks out the window of her own home

Atatiana Koquice Jefferson

For the second time in two weeks, a white police officer in the Dallas-Fort Worth area has generated international headlines for fatally shooting a black resident in his or her own home. The most recent incident came early Saturday morning when an unidentified officer shot Atatiana Koquice Jefferson, 28, as she looked out a window of her Fort Worth home.

This comes on the heels of a Dallas jury finding officer Amber Guyger guilty of murder in the off-duty shooting death of Botham Jean after she had entered the wrong floor and mistakenly entered his apartment, thinking he was an intruder in her apartment, which was directly below.

These stories are hard to take here in the Schnauzer household. The reports likely add to the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with which my wife, Carol, and I have been diagnosed after two incidents where heavily armed cops broke into our home -- both times with no lawful grounds for doing so, in apparent attempts to shut down our reporting on this blog about judicial and political corruption.

Loyal readers have kept us financially and emotionally afloat during the aftermath of these incidents, and we certainly need assistance right now. (See note at the end of this post.)

How does this kind of incident keep happening? This is from a report at CNN on the Jefferson shooting:

A black woman was shot and killed by a white police officer in her Fort Worth, Texas home after a neighbor called dispatchers to report the woman's front door was open, police said.

The officers were searching the perimeter of the woman's home when they saw a person standing near a window inside and one of them opened fire, killing her, Fort Worth police said.

The Tarrant County Medical Examiner identified the woman killed as 28-year-old Atatiana Koquice Jefferson. She died at 2:30 a.m. Saturday in the bedroom of her home.

Hours after the shooting, police released a heavily edited version of the officer's body camera footage. The nearly 2-minute video shows officers walking outside the home with flashlights for a few minutes before one of them yells, "Put your hands up! Show me your hands!" and shoots his weapon through a window. (The body-cam footage is embedded at the end of this post. Warning: The sheer stupidity of the officer -- firing his weapon into a home without identifying himself as a cop -- is disturbing.)

"The Fort Worth Police Department is releasing available body camera footage to provide transparent and relevant information to the public as we are allowed within the confines of the Public Information Act and forthcoming investigation," police said.

In a statement, police said the officers entered the home and gave the woman medical treatment, but she died at the scene.

The neighbor who thought he was doing a good deed by calling the police, said he now feels horrible and angry about what happened. From CNN:

James Smith, Jefferson's neighbor, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram he called a non-emergency police number when he saw her doors open and lights on in the early morning hours. He said he knew Jefferson was home with her nephew.

He said he was trying to be a good neighbor and called authorities so they could check on Jefferson.

"I'm shaken. I'm mad. I'm upset. And I feel it's partly my fault," he told the news outlet. "If I had never dialed the police department, she'd still be alive."

According to the Star-Telegram, the shooter did not identify himself as a police officer upon demanding that Jefferson raise her hands. What dangerous activity was going on at the Jefferson home? She was playing video games with her nephew:

Jefferson was playing video games with her nephew when they heard what they believed to be a prowler outside, her relatives’ attorney said. When she went to the window to see what was going on, she was shot, the attorney said.

Police said that the officer, who joined the department in April 2018, saw a person standing inside the house near a window.

“Perceiving a threat, the officer drew his duty weapon and fired one shot striking the person inside the residence,” the department said in a news release. “Officers entered the residence locating the individual and a firearm and began providing emergency medical care.”

Police released photographs of a gun they said that they found in a bedroom at the house. They did not say whether Jefferson was holding the weapon when the officer shot her.

Reading accounts of the Jefferson shooting cause horrifying images to flood our brains. As regular readers know, an Alabama deputy named Chris Blevins entered the garage underneath our house on October 23, 2013, and knocked me to a concrete floor three times and directed pepper spray into my face--all without showing a warrant, stating he had a warrant, or stating his purpose for being on our property. This all resulted from my alleged civil contempt in a lawsuit regarding alleged defamation, having nothing to do with a crime. I essentially was "arrested for blogging" and spent five months in the Shelby County Jail -- the first U.S journalist since 2006 to be incarcerated and apparently the only one in U.S. history to be jailed over a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction, both of which are unlawful under more than 200 years of First Amendment Law. To this day, my reporting on the relationship between Alabama GOP operative Rob Riley and lobbyist Liberty Duke never has been proven defamatory, as a matter of law. And what about the so-called "civil contempt"? We did not appear at a court hearing because we never were served with a summons to appear. In fact, we never were lawfully served with a copy of the complaint.

That's not our only experience with law-enforcement officers barging into our home. In September 2015, six to eight Missouri deputies (under the direction of Greene County Sheriff Jim Arnott) -- some dressed in SWAT gear -- conducted an unlawful eviction, which included one deputy pointing an assault-weapon at my head. The incident ended with cops slamming Carol butt-first to the ground and yanking on her limbs so violently that they broke her left arm -- a comminuted fracture that required roughly eight hours of trauma surgery, plus insertion of plates and screws for repair. As recently as this past weekend, she experienced significant pain in the arm.

After the Missouri cops finished terrorizing Carol and me, the so-called "eviction crew" ("thievery crew," working on behalf of landlord Cowherd Construction, would be a more appropriate term) placed all of our furniture outside at the sidewalk and proceeded to drive off with just about everything they could carry. We lost all of our possessions except the clothes on our backs -- furniture, clothing, household goods, etc. ("Neighbors" apparently helped themselves to our furniture while it was on the street.) We still are struggling to recover from that nightmare, launched by crooked cops.

Back to the question we raised earlier: How do these incidents keep happening around the country? From hard-earned experience, I have an idea or two. For one, cops seem to be increasingly reckless about their actions in and around homes, even though federal law says they are to be particularly careful in such surroundings.

In a case styled Payton v. New York, 455 U.S 573 (1980), the U.S. Supreme Court held:

The Fourth Amendment, made applicable to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment, prohibits the police from making a warrantless and nonconsensual entry into a suspect's home in order to make a routine felony arrest.

Why is this so? Here is background from the Payton opinion:

The physical entry of the home is the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed. To be arrested in the home involves not only the invasion attendant to all arrests, but also an invasion of the sanctity of the home, which is too substantial an invasion to allow without a warrant, in the absence of exigent circumstances, even when it is accomplished under statutory authority and when probable cause is present. In terms that apply equally to seizures of property and to seizures of persons, the Fourth Amendment has drawn a firm line at the entrance to the house. Absent exigent circumstances, that threshold may not reasonably be crossed without a warrant. 

The reasons for upholding warrantless arrests in a public place, United States v. Watson, 423 U.S. 411, 96 S.Ct. 820, 46 L.Ed.2d 598, do not apply to warrantless invasions of the privacy of the home. The common-law rule on warrantless home arrests was not as clear as the rule on arrests in public places; the weight of authority as it appeared to the Framers of the Fourth Amendment was to the effect that a warrant was required for a home arrest, or at the minimum that there were substantial risks in proceeding without one. Although a majority of the States that have taken a position on the question permit warrantless home arrests even in the absence of exigent circumstances, there is an obvious declining trend, and there is by no means the kind of virtual unanimity on this question that was present in United States v. Watson, supra, with regard to warrantless public arrests. And, unlike the situation in Watson no federal statutes have been cited to indicate any congressional determination that warrantless entries into the home are "reasonable."

Experience has taught us two things about post-modern cops that are driven home by the Dallas-Fort Worth shootings:

(1) A lot of cops are ignorant of the law they are sworn to uphold? How many cops have even heard of Payton v. New York and are familiar with its holdings? Our guess is that the percentage is in single digits.

(2) Many Americans, like the neighbor in Fort Worth, think calling the police makes sense because they are likely to solve a possible problem; we used to share that feeling. But no more. Experience has taught us the involvement of cops is more likely to make a problem worse than better. The body-cam video below the personal note provides evidence to support that claim.


(A Personal Note: The Legal Schnauzer journalism family -- including "Gabby, the Investigative Tabby," needs your help. Loyal readers have sustained this blog for years, and support is urgently needed now, as we fight for justice and transparency on multiple fronts, for ourselves and for the many other victims who have been the subjects of our reporting. Perhaps most importantly, we want to make sure Gabby has no shortage of "noms" in his bowl.

(If you believe America's broken court system needs to be restored; if you believe our courts should dispense justice for all Americans, not just an elite few; or maybe if you are a fellow animal lover who happens to enjoy a good legal tale now and then . . . we hope you will consider making a donation. 

(If you are able to help along our journalism journey, please click on the yellow donate button in the upper right corner of the blog, under the "Support the Schnauzer" headline. We are deeply grateful for your support through the years -- and we are especially grateful now to have Gabby, so he can join in a big round of thanks.)

St. Louis Cardinals' shocking 13-1 win over Atlanta Braves in National League playoffs rekindles fond childhood memories, with a dose of sorrow for our many Braves friends from years of living in Deep South

Tommy Edman, the rookie who sparked the
St. Louis Cardinals' run to the playoffs.

With a blog that originated -- and matured into national status -- in Birmingham, AL, I've always assumed many of my readers are Atlanta Braves fans. In fact, I know many of my readers in the Birmingham metro area are Braves fans because they are friends with whom I've shared deep baseball discussions. Blog statistics show that we have regular readers in every corner of the country, with pretty decent numbers in various outposts around the world.

With that being said, our numbers always will be heaviest in a swath that stretches across the Deep South -- from Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina -- and that is solid Braves territory.. That means Mrs. Schnauzer, "Gabby the Investigative Tabby," and I were a tad torn as we watched yesterday's deciding Game 5 of the National League Divisional Series (NLDS) between the St. Louis Cardinals and Atlanta Braves.

We very much hope to get back to Birmingham (sooner, rather than later), but for now are based in Springfield, MO ("Queen City of the Ozarks"), where I grew up and became a Cardinals fan for as long as I can remember. I first started to follow the team at age 6 in 1963 when I happened to be perusing the radio listings in our local newspaper -- I was a strange 6-year-old, who actually did stuff like that -- and noticed that "San Francisco Giants v. St. Louis Cardinals" was scheduled for that evening on station KGBX.

I wondered what that was all about and tuned in at the appointed time (7:15 p.m., I think) and immediately was enthralled -- by the cheers of approval and groans of disappointment that came from the stands, by the crack of bat against ball, by the sounds of vendors ("Get your popcorn, hot popcorn," "Cracker Jacks, get your Cracker Jacks," "Beer, Cold Beer").

Mostly, I was entranced by Harry Caray and Jack Buck, who I consider to be the greatest baseball broadcasting team of all-time. Caray went on to work for a number of other clubs -- most notably the Chicago Cubs -- and later in life, became the subject of a classic parody by Will Ferrell. (See video at the end of this post.) Caray had the memorable home-run call -- "It might be . . . it could be . . . it is . . . a home run." Buck was the consummate broadcast pro, with a wry sense of humor: "They're having a power outage at the Reds game in Cincinnati -- not the hitters, the lights."

All of that is a way of saying I was thrilled that the Cardinals won yesterday's game, 13-1, and will advance to the National League Championship Series (NLCS) against the surprising Washington Nationals, who last night beat the heavily favored Los Angeles Dodgers (clearly the NL's best team during the regular season).  Meanwhile the New York Yankees and (probably) Houston Astros will face off for the American League title -- although the Astros still have to get past the pesky Tampa Bay Rays in a game at Houston tonight. The two winners will advance to the World Series -- and while they remain long shots, the Cardinals are still in it, which has me revved up, mainly because their offense seems to be coming alive after being putrid for most of the season.

Still, I feel bad for Braves fans. They've had a lot of post-season heartbreak over the past 25-30 years -- with huge amounts of regular-season success -- and that trend continued yesterday when the Cardinals offense awoke to score 10 runs in the first inning and remove pretty much all drama about the outcome. (A by-product of my 35-plus years living in Birmingham is that my second favorite MLB team is the Atlanta Braves.)

Speaking of the regular season, the Braves won six more games than the Cardinals did during the year, and in moments when I was honest with myself, I had to admit that I thought the Braves had the better team. Plus, I thought the Cardinals blew their chance in Game Three when Manager Mike Shildt -- with the Cardinals leading, and the Braves down to their final out -- chose to intentionally walk aging Braves catcher Brian McCann to bring up shortstop Dansby Swanson, who promptly doubled in the tying run and scored one of two go-ahead runs.

After raging about Shildt's stupidity -- essentially gifting the series to the Braves, I thought -- I figured the Cardinals would roll over, ending the series with a loss in Game Four at St. Louis. To my surprise, the Cardinals squeaked out a dramatic, 10-inning win on Kolten Wong's double and Yadier Molina's sacrifice fly, sending the series back to Atlanta. The Cardinals' bats erupted early yesterday in Game Five against Mike Foltynewicz (who had pitched brilliantly in Game Two) -- "Where have these hitters been all season?" Mrs. Schnauzer said in disbelief. -- ending the Braves' season and sending the Cardinals to the next playoff round.

The Cardinals have missed the playoffs every year since 2015 -- a long time for a franchise with demanding (spoiled?) fans. So yesterday's win unleashed a flood of childhood memories. There was our wonderful neighbor -- Irene Weatherwax -- who sent a missive to the Cardinals, asking if they could send an autographed photo of Harry Caray to the young fan. who lived two doors up the street. I never will forget the thrill of opening a piece of mail to find a signed photo of Harry Caray. The photo, I believe, has been lost to the winds of time, probably from the chaos following our 2014 foreclosure in Bimringham.

By the way, Mrs. Weatherwax knew I was a huge Cardinals fan because I would take a bat and ball into our backyard most days and create the game in advance in my imagination -- announcing the proceedings as they developed in my best and loudest Harry Caray voice. (I told you I was a strange kid.) Mrs. Weatherwax would stop me occasionally and say, "How did the Cardinals do today, Roger?" (Meaning the version of that day's game in my backyard.) "Oh, they won, 8-7," I'd say. The Cardinals always won in my backyard, in dramatic fashion usually, with tight scores.

My first full season of following the Cardinals was 1964, when they came from way back to overtake the Philadelphia Phillies for the National League pennant on the last day of the regular season and won the World Series in seven games over the New York Yankees (who had Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Elston Howard, Whitey Ford, and other luminaries.) Probably the key blow of that series was Ken Boyer's grand slam off Al Downing to help the Cardinals win Game Four. (By the way, Downing went on to pitch for the Los Angeles Dodgers and gave up home run No. 715 to he Braves Hank Aaron, breaking Babe Ruth's career record.) That Ken Boyer grand slam cemented a love for the Cardinals, and baseball in general, that probably never will away for me.

By the way, I can still reel off the usual starting lineup for that Cardinal championship team of '64:

LF -- Lou Brock
CF -- Curt Flood
1B -- Bill White
3B -- Ken Boyer
C -- Tim McCarver
RF -- Mike Shannon
SS -- Dick Groat (or Dal Maxvill)
2B -- Julian Javier
P -- (Bob Gibson, Ray Sadecki, Curt Simmons, Ray Washburn)

I didn't have to use Google on that -- Scout's honor.

Probably the greatest thrill of my childhood came on June 5, 1965, when my family drove to St. Louis to see a game in person -- the Cardinals against the Houston Astros. I recall my breath being taken away as we neared the end of a portal and could see the stunningly green grass of the outfield and overall beauty of the stadium; it was called "Beautiful Busch Stadium," and it really was beautiful. This was Busch Stadium No. 1, also known as Sportsmans Park, which once was home to both the Cardinals and the St. Louis Browns, who became the Baltimore Orioles.)

Thanks to the miracles of the Internet, I can call up the box score from that 1965 game. The Cardinals won 4-3 when Boyer hit a triple and Tim McCarver drove him home with a line drive off the right-field screen. (A ball had to go up on the roof to be a home run in that area of the park. I always thought that was uber cool; I also loved the big Longines clock in right-center field.) The Astros started a youthful second baseman that day named Joe Morgan, and he went on to become a Hall of Famer.

I saw many games at Busch Stadium 2, which is perhaps best known for Whitey Herzog's great Runnin' Redbirds teams of the 1980s -- featuring Ozzie Smith, Willie McGee, Vince Coleman, Tommy Herr, John Tudor, Bruce Sutter, and Joaquin "One Tough Dominican" Andujar. I hope someday to attend a game at the current venue, Busch Stadium 3, but I always will be grateful to have seen a game at Busch Stadium1, the original site of Cardinals baseball -- although several stadiums sat on the same piece of land, starting in 1866.

As for yesterday's game, I have hope that the Cardinals will advance to the World Series -- even though the Nationals have three superb starting pitchers in Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, and Patrick Corbin. I was certain the Dodgers would beat Washington, and figured the Cardinals had little hope against LA. But against Washington, who knows; the Cardinals will be favored and have home-field advantage in a seven-game series.

I have good news for Braves fans -- they are set up for a string of successful seasons. CF Ronald Acuna Jr., 2B Ozzie Albies, and SS Dansby Swanson are among the best young players in baseball, and the Braves minor-league system is stocked with talent. The Braves have a bunch of promising young arms, especially lefty Max Fried and righty Mike Soroka.

The Cardinals also have a lot of young talent -- especially uber utility man, Tommy Edman, without whom they probably do not make the playoffs -- so maybe the two teams will see each other in the postseason for years to come.

(Below is a video of a Harry Caray-Jack Buck broadcast from 1963, followed by Will Ferrell's version of Harry Caray. After that, is a video recap of the Cardinals' first inning from yesterday. Still can't believe it played out that way.)

Birmingham lawyer Barry Ragsdale, Doug Jones' legal enforcer in effort to take over Alabama Democratic Party, has represented Judith Ann Neelley, one of most notorious killers in U.S. history, for more than 30 years

Judith and Alvin Neelley, in front of a Confederate flag
(From New York Daily News)

We have been operating under the assumption that former federal judge and wife-beater Mark Fuller probably is the worst person Birmingham attorney Barry Ragsdale has represented. But Fuller, it turns out, is not even close. That distinction almost certainly belongs to Judith Ann Neelley, who is one of the most notorious murderers in American  history.

As for Ragsdale, we're not talking about any old Alabama lawyer. U.S. Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) has enlisted Ragsdale to fight off any legal challenges to Jones' attempt at a takeover of the Alabama Democratic Party (ADP). Is it part of Jones' "progressive vision" to align himself with an attorney who has represented perhaps the most crooked U.S. judge ever to serve in Alabama and a murderer of historic proportions?  Has Jones lost his mind, or is his alliance with Ragsdale a sign that the senator is a DINO (Democrat In Name Only), beholden to the right-wing interests who helped put him in office? If Jones succeeds in taking over the ADP from current leaders Nancy Worley and Joe Reed, does that mean both parties in Alabama essentially will be controlled by Republicans?

Barry Ragsdale

Let's examine a May 2018 article at al.com about Neelley's parole hearing. Title of the story is "Judith Ann Neelley waives parole hearing in teen's brutal 1982 rape, murder":

After years of fighting for a chance to be released from prison, Judith Ann Neelley is giving up her shot at parole.

Neelley, 53, was convicted in 1982 for the rape and murder of 13-year-old Lisa Ann Millican. She was set for a parole hearing on May 23, but according to her appellate lawyer Barry Ragsdale, she has waived the hearing. . . .

Originally sentenced to death, Neelley had her sentence commuted to life in prison by former Alabama Gov. Fob James before he left office in 1999.

His order, however, did not specify whether Neelley would be eligible for parole. The legislature changed state law in 2003 specifically to block Neelley from the possibility of parole, but earlier this year a federal judge ruled that law unconstitutional. . . .

Ragsdale said he recently visited Neelley, and told her about the media coverage she was receiving and about the Millican family's concerns regarding her parole hearing. "She said, 'Do we have to make [the Millican family] go through that?'" Ragsdale said. He told her no, and that's when she decided to cancel the hearing.

Ragsdale has represented Neelley for three decades during her appeals. He said throughout the years of legal battles, Neelley didn't start seriously thinking about parole until the hearing was quickly set in April. And, she didn't think the board would grant her release.

How did Judith Ann Neelley make history? A 2018 article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) provides details. The headline reads: "No parole for Georgia woman who raped, tortured, murdered girl in 1982":

Judith Neelley, the youngest woman ever sentenced to be executed in the United States, will remain in prison for the 1982 murder of a 13-year-old Georgia girl, according to a decision reached by the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles 18 years after the then-governor commuted her death sentence to life in prison.

Neelley was 18 and a mother of three when she was sentenced to the electric chair for kidnapping, raping, torturing and killing Lisa Ann Millican. Neelley spotted Millican outside a mall in Rome, Georgia., then took the child to Alabama. Among other atrocities, she injected the child repeatedly with drain cleaner, shot her in the back and dumped the body over a cliff. . . .

This was the first time Neelley was considered for parole since then-Gov. Fob James commuted her death sentence to life on his last day in office — only three days before she was to be electrocuted. She will next be eligible for parole in 2023. Neelley had told the parole board she wanted to waive consideration now, but leave open the option for parole later.

How horrific were Neelley's crimes? Here is more from the AJC:

The 13-year-old Millican was the first of two people Neelley admitted to killing in the fall of 1982. The child’s body was found Sept. 28, 1982, while 23-year-old Janice Chapman was killed in North Georgia on Oct. 4, 1982.

Judith Ann Neelley mugshot

Neelley, looking for a young girl for her husband, saw Lisa outside Riverbend Mall in Rome, Georgia, where the teenager had gone for an outing with other adolescents from Ethel Harpst Home in Cedartown.

Judith Neelley and Alvin Neelley took the girl to a Scottsboro, Alabama motel, where they both sexually assaulted her over several days until they took her to the edge of Little River Canyon in Fort Payne, Alabama It was there that Judith Neelley injected Millican six times with Drano and Liquid Plumber and shot the still-conscious girl in the back. The Neelleys then dumped Millican’s body over the edge of an 80-foot cliff. Police found it on the canyon floor four days later.

The next week, the Neelleys were again in Rome, where they kidnapped Chapman and her fiance, John Hancock. They shot the couple, leaving them near a back road in Catoosa County in northwest Georgia.Hancock survived and identified Judith Neelley, who was sentenced to life in prison in Georgia for kidnapping Chapman and Hancock.

How did Ragsdale get involved with the Neelley case, going back more than 30 years? That is not clear, but this from his bio at the Sirote and Permutt Web site gives some insight:

About Barry Ragsdale 

Barry is a trial and appellate lawyer in our Birmingham office. Barry represents plaintiffs and defendants in complex commercial and business litigation, including antitrust, shareholder, and closely held corporate disputes and class actions. Barry also represents parties in trust and estate litigation in both state and federal courts. He represented on a pro bono basis the only death row inmate to have her death sentence commuted by an Alabama governor in more than fifty years.

That highlighted last sentence is a reference to the Neelley case. To be sure, Judith Ann Neelley is entitled to a vigorous criminal defense -- and Barry Ragsdale is entitled to provide one. But does that qualify Ragsdale to be Doug Jones' enforcer in an effort to take over the Alabama Democratic Party? Jill Simpson -- retired lawyer and longtime progressive political activist in Alabama -- says the answer is no. From a post at Simpson's Facebook page:

Barry Ragsdale represented Judith Ann Neelley the woman who murdered a 13-year-old girl shooting Drano into her veins after allowing her husband to sexually molest her, then pushing her off a cliff at Little River Canyon. Republican Gov. [Fob James] changed the  sentence that Judge Cole gave Neelley, putting her on death row. So folks in Montgomery tried to keep Judith from ever getting parole, and then along comes Barry Rahsdale and gets the law declared unconstitutional. This is the guy who is going to represent the New "Doug Democrats" in their fight against Alabama's Real Democratic Party? It just keeps getting better and better. . . .

Notice the confederate flag behind Alvin and Judith Neelley and the gun (in the photograph). I am not sure, if I was Barry, I would brag about representing in my firm bio Judith Ann Neeley; she is one of the most notorious killers of all times. Does the new "Doug DINO Democrat Party" want an attorney, who is associated with such a heinous child killer and molester, representing the party? Doug Jones really knows how to pick a lawyer for Alabama Democrats.

And people think Nancy Worley and Joe Reed make goofy decisions? Doug Jones' supporters in the Alabama Democratic Party seem to think he brings a certain professionalism and class to the proceedings. For a heavy dose of "class," those folks should check out the clients of Barry Ragsdale, Jones' hand-picked legal enforcer.

Doug Jones' effort to take over the Alabama Democratic Party includes assistance from lawyer Barry Ragsdale, who tried to keep wife-beating, Siegelman-railroading judge Mark Fuller on the bench

Doug Jones

A faction of the State Democratic Executive Committee (SDLC), led by U.S. Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) has aligned itself with a Birmingham attorney who represented former U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller in proceedings that led Fuller to resign from the bench over charges that he beat his wife in an Atlanta hotel room in 2014. Until the wife-beating episode became public, Fuller perhaps was best known as the George W. Bush appointee who handled the prosecution of former Democratic governor Don Siegelman so corruptly that it resulted in a prison sentence of more than six years for what we have described as "a crime that does not exist" and obviously could not have been committed.

Despite Fuller's unsavory conduct, Barry Ragsdale (of Sirote and Permutt in Birmingham) stepped up to represent Fuller in the wife-beating case, in which judicial investigators described Fuller's conduct as "reprehensible."

The Jones-Ragsdale-Fuller connections provide more evidence that Jones is a DINO (Democrat in Name Only), according to a veteran state political activist. A prominent commentator says the Fuller case is a classic example of the corruption that is rotting America's foundations.

Jones essentially is trying to take over the Alabama Democratic Party (ADP) with the assistance of a lawyer who supported a Republican-appointed judge -- one who engaged in demonstrably corrupt actions on the bench, with a history of abusive actions toward women in his personal life. Fuller faced allegations of physical, verbal, and substance abuse from two ex wives, but Ragsdale did his best to sweep Fuller's actions under the carpet and protect a spot for the Siegelman "hanging judge" on the federal bench.

Barry Ragsdale

Those actions failed, but now Doug Jones has sought Ragsdale's help to fight off legal challenges to his attempted takeover of the ADP. Bringing Ragsdale on board -- with his history of protecting a corrupt, wife-beating, right-wing judge -- is supposed to represent progress in Alabama? Do integrity, decency, and the rule of law have any place in Doug Jones' vision for the Democratic Party in Alabama? Is the alliance with Ragsdale another sign that Jones is beholden to his Republican boosters more than the mostly black, female voters who put him in office? From a report at al.com about this past weekend's SDLC meeting in Montgomery, where the Jones faction approved new bylaws in a major step toward replacing current party leaders Nancy Worley and Joe Reed:

The Alabama Democratic party has been deeply split over leadership for more than a year. The SDEC reelected Worley as chair in August 2018. Some Democrats challenged the results. The DNC decided there were irregularities and in February ordered the SDEC to adopt new bylaws followed by new elections for chair and vice chair.

After deadlines were missed, the DNC invalidated the national party credentials of Worley and First Vice Chair Randy Kelley. The DNC has withheld money from the state party and has not yet approved the state’s delegate selection plan for next year’s Democratic National Convention.

Worley has said those who wanted a different result in the August 2018 election for party chair are to blame for the dispute, including Sen. Doug Jones, who backed her challenger last year. . . .

Worley said the turnout at today’s meeting shows a lack of broad support for what was approved.

“While 78 attendees show ‘loyal opposition,’ that number does not show a groundswell of support for the DNC’s agenda,” Worley said in a text message. “I look forward to the October 12 meeting, at which time the SDEC members will discuss the negative effects of the Doug Jones/DNC Bylaws.”

Where does Ragsdale enter the picture? Here is more from al.com about this past Saturday's meeting:

Attorney Barry Ragsdale attended today’s meeting and said he would represent the position of the SDEC members who attended in any legal challenge to the legitimacy of the new bylaws.

Ragsdale said members at today’s meeting should attend the Oct. 12 meeting called by Worley if they wanted to.

“But it’s important to note that meeting will be guided by the bylaws that we adopted at this meeting,” Ragsdale said. “Their failure, if there is a failure to follow those bylaws, that meeting will be subject to legal challenge.”

Is the Jones-Ragsdale alliance a ruse that could trip up progressives in Alabama? We have addressed that question in several posts, including this one, showing that Jones has a history of stabbing fellow Democrats in the back:

Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman and U.S. Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) engaged in a heated political discussion shortly before Siegelman was forced to go to the doctor and wound up having heart surgery, sources tell Legal Schnauzer.

Siegelman had heart-bypass surgery on Feb. 9, the same day that his son, Joseph, qualified to run as a Democrat in the 2018 race for Alabama attorney general. Joseph Siegelman's political plans were at the heart of a tense conversation between Jones and Don Siegelman, sources say.

Don Siegelman, apparently under the mistaken impression that Jones would be supportive of the younger Siegelman's plans, asked the senator for an endorsement. Jones declined, which should not have been a surprise considering the evidence of his support for the other Democrat in the race, Bradley Arant lawyer Chris Christie.

Jones' negative reaction to the idea of a Joseph Siegelman endorsement should not have been a surprise for several other reasons:

(1) Jones clearly has been aligned with the so-called "Alabama Gang" of Republicans -- including Rob Riley, Bill Canary, Jeff Sessions, and Karl Rove -- dating at least to the work Jones and Riley did together in the early 2000s on a lawsuit against HealthSouth and related entities, a case that generated more than $50 million in attorney fees.

(2) Jones was Don Siegelman's defense attorney for a time in the federal bribery case that wound up unlawfully sending the former governor to federal prison for roughly six years. Jones inexplicably extended the statute of limitations for the government to build a case it obviously didn't have at the time. Jones also charged Siegelman $300,000 while doing relatively little legal work -- and then bailed out of the case before trial because of a conflict on Jones' end. We've seen no sign that Jones returned any of the money, and he has refused to answer our questions on the subject. To add insult to insult, Jones went before a Congressional committee in 2007 and talked glowingly about Bill Pryor, the current federal judge who, as Alabama AG in the late 1990s, launched the Siegelman investigation before the new governor's fanny barely had hit the office chair.

Mark Fuller mugshot

 (3) Jones apparently favors Chris Christie, even though a prominent spokesperson for the Christie campaign is Sirote Permutt lawyer Barry Ragsdale. That's the same Barry Ragsdale who helped former U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller fight charges that he beat his wife in an Atlanta hotel room -- events that led to Fuller's forced resignation from the bench. Fuller, of course, is the judge who oversaw the Siegelman trial, repeatedly making unlawful and one-sided rulings that helped ensure a conviction. Jones essentially supports a candidate whose campaign has ties to wife beating and the kind of judicial corruption that sends innocent people to prison.

Alabama progressives should be leery of the Jones-Ragsdale tag team, veteran political activist Jill Simpson said on her Facebook page yesterday. Simpson noted that three individuals who helped unmask Fuller -- herself, attorney-blogger Donald Watkins, and yours truly -- came under attack from right-wing forces aligned with Jones and Ragsdale:

What a hoot, corrupt former Republican Judge Mark Fuller's lawyer, Barry Ragsdale, is going to represent the renegade Dixiecrats' new Democratic party for Doug Jones's bunch against Joe Reed and Nancy Worley's real Alabama Democratic Party. That should be a wake up call to Alabama progressive Democrats that Doug's new party has hired the lawyer of the wife-beating judge that threw Don Siegelman in prison. 

Barry Ragsdale is who the Alabama Progressive Resistance fought tooth and toenail to remove wife beater Mark Fuller from the bench. Roger Shuler, Donald Watkins , and I worked hard day in and day out to get that crooked Republican wife-beating Judge Fuller off the bench. It was Barry Ragsdale who was trying to keep him on the bench and was our foe. 

That said, you all in the new party of Doug have a lawyer that helps a wife-beating judge, who crookedly threw your last Democratic governor in jail -- what the hell are you nitwits thinking? Now you all are getting a dose of what Doug is about -- and his Alabama Gang is about playing all sides and y'all are their blind sheep. 

Yep, I still remember Barry Ragsdale representing the wife-beating judge that mistreated Gov. Don Siegelman; it was hard for us progressive Democrats to beat him, but we beat him on Fuller and got the judge bounced off the bench, and we spent a lot of time due to Ragsdale protecting Fuller, but we got Fuller's ass thrown off the bench under the leadership of Nancy (Worley) and Joe (Reed), with Obama. All the time, Doug was behind the scenes helping Ragsdale against us. As many of you know I wrote Obama the first open letter about Fuller, the wife beater, and the need for zero tolerance for such behavior. The letter was published in a lot of places, including OpEdNews, and it asked to have that terrible wife-beating judge removed -- and I heard in D.C. that Doug and Ragsdale were trying to keep Fuller from being removed. Shortly after that is when the Alabama Bar forced me on to disability status. . . .

Now maybe you folks will start to see why we did not want Doug Jones in that Senate seat; he was playing both sides, and burning candles on both ends eventually is going to burn him in the meddle.

Alabama State Bar takes no action for profane threats from Montgomery lawyer and radio talk host Baron Coleman, suggesting complaint from Eagle Forum's Becky Gerritson did not receive a fair review

Baron Coleman

If anyone was uncertain about the Alabama State Bar's ability to discipline members of the legal profession, the bar surely erased all doubt by refusing to take action against Montgomery lawyer and right-wing radio host Baron Coleman.

What did Coleman do? He used his radio platform to call a female political figure -- Becky Gerritson, executive director of the Eagle Forum of Alabama -- a "whore" and a "bitch," while hinting he would burn her house to the ground and using language drenched in violent imagery. What was Gerritson's sin? She disagreed with Coleman publicly about medical marijuana.

Gerritson responded to Coleman's attack by filing a bar complaint and contacting Coleman's radio sponsors to essentially ask if they really wanted to be affiliated with a radio host who used such language on the air. Specifically, Gerritson alleged Coleman violated Rule 8.4 (titled "Misconduct") of the Alabama Rules of Professional Conduct by engaging in "conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation." Gerritson particularly took exception to Coleman's alleged claim that Eagle Forum took money from large pharmaceutical companies.

Did Gerritson's complaint receive a fair review? We see reason to doubt it.

In a letter dated Sept. 12, 2019, Assistant General Counsel Jeremy W. McIntire informed Gerritson the State Bar would take no action against Coleman. From a report published Oct. 4 at al.com:

The Alabama State Bar won’t take action against Montgomery lawyer and talk show host Baron Coleman because of a complaint filed by Eagle Forum of Alabama Executive Director Becky Gerritson over comments Coleman made on his radio program.

Coleman released a letter from the State Bar to Gerritson saying that two attorneys had reviewed the complaint and his response.

“In view of the nature and content of the complaint and the enclosed response of the attorney, we will take no further action in this matter at this time,” the letter says. It’s dated Sept. 12 and signed by Jeremy W. McIntire, assistant general counsel for the State Bar. . . .

The dispute started after Gerritson spoke against a medical marijuana bill at the Legislature in May. On his radio program, Coleman called Gerritson a “big pharma whore” and said Eagle Forum had received money from the pharmaceutical industry or related industries, which could lose business if medical marijuana became legal in Alabama.

Gerritson filed a complaint with the State Bar accusing Coleman of “dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation.” Gerritson said Eagle Forum had not received money from the pharmaceutical industry. Gerritson contacted advertisers to Coleman’s program and asked them to reconsider their sponsorships.

How weak was Coleman's response to Gerritson's complaint? He posted it on his Facebook page, and here are some of the key points:

* Coleman claims that calling Gerritson a "Big Pharma whore" does not amount to calling her a "whore." (How disingenuous is this? If a critic calls Mike Pompeo a "Trump-administration liar," he's called him a "liar,: right? Never mind that the label almost certainly is accurate.")

* We see no sign that Coleman tries to defend calling Gerritson a "bitch" or hinting that he was of a mind to burn down her house." This kind of language is suitable for a lawyer, and the Alabama State Bar has no problem with it? How low is the bar at the Alabama State Bar?

* Coleman suggests Gerritson's goal was to "completely bankrupt" him and leave him "without a single source of income to care for his stay-at-home wife and their seven school-aged children. That was her goal." (So, it's Gerritson's fault that the Colemans decided to have an unusually large family, especially by today's standards? Is Coleman using his kids as a shield, suggesting he should not be held accountable for abusing others because he chose to have a passel of young 'uns? If Coleman is concerned about the welfare of his wife and children, perhaps he should be more careful in making statements about other people over the public airwaves?)

* Coleman claims Gerritson has discussed her bar complaint with Republican Party officials, supposedly in an effort to ruin his career? Even if true, how would this be unlawful or even improper? Didn't Coleman bring it on himself?

How vile was Coleman's language directed at Gerritson? Here are some samples, as we reported in an earlier post (see here.):

(1) "I've hired lawyers, and I'm pursuing a strategy of slash and burn, seek and destroy. If you come after me, you'd better be ready to go to the mat. . . .

"I never let someone come after me and don't take them out. Never. I will lose everything in search of making sure your life is hell. . . .

"I've got a new enemy, and her lawyer sucks, too. I'm going to destroy this bitch. I'm going to absolutely destroy her. Her life will never be the same. . ."

(2) "If you threaten me, I will burn your damned house to the ground. Not in the physical sense, but I will have you running back to Texas, I promise."

(3) You come at me, you lose everything. You threaten me, I sue you or destroy you. That's it. there is no third option.

(4) There is going to be some real fireworks across this state in the near future. Some once-proud organizations will be brought completely to their knees and bankrupted. That's what I do. I don't "F" around. . . .

Have your gun under your arm. Bring your ammo.

Notice all the references to guns, ammunition, fire, and burning -- not to mention promises to destroy Gerritson's life and make her life hell. And yet, Coleman claims in his response that he didn't threaten Gerritson -- no kidding. And the Alabama State Bar buys this crap?

Maybe that's because Gerritson's bar complaint did not receive a fair hearing. Jeremy McIntire's letter to Gerritson says: "Two attorneys in the Office of General Counsel of the Alabama State Bar have reviewed your complaint and the attorney's response to the complaint."

Who were those two attorneys on the bar staff? McIntire doesn't say. According to the bar Web site, there are only three attorneys under General Counsel Roman Shaul, and McIntire is one of them. The other two are Tripp Vickers and Mark Moody. As we've reported here several times, Vickers and Coleman used to be partners at the same Montgomery law firm, so that means the bar complaint could have been heard by Coleman's buddy.

Given what we've learned about the Alabama State Bar over the years -- especially recently -- that would not surprise us one bit.

Former Dallas, TX, police officer Amber Guyger is sentenced to 10 years in prison for a "murder" she did not commit, as trial court fails to properly apply one of the most profound concepts in U.S. criminal law

Botham Jean's brother hugs Amber Guyger
at yesterday's sentencing.

Former Texas police officer Amber Guyger yesterday received a 10-year prison sentence in the shooting death of Botham Jean, an event a Dallas jury incorrectly found to be a murder. How do we know the jury erred, -- probably along with the judge and prosecutors?  It goes back to a 25-year-old case where a Dallas-area husband named Michael Williams went looking for his wife, found her conversing with a man named  Lawrence Earl Cook, and wound up with a fatal stab wound to the chest.

Cook was charged with murder, and a jury convicted him of voluntary manslaughter. At the close of trial, Cook's attorney objected to the judge's jury instructions on definitions of culpable mental states, particularly the words "knowingly" and "intentionally," which are at the heart of murder law in the Texas Penal Code. The trial judge denied the objections, the Texas Court of Appeals denied the objections and upheld Cook's conviction, but the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals -- in a case styled Cook v. State, 884 SW 2d 485 (Tex Court of Criminal Appeals, 1994) -- overruled the jury instructions, clarified the meanings of "intentionally" and "knowingly," reversed Cook's conviction, and remanded the case to the trial court.

The Cook ruling makes clear that it -- and the Guyger case -- involve one of the most profound concepts in American law. But our analysis shows the Guyger court butchered the concept. In the aftermath of the verdict, social-media commentators -- mostly liberals (like me), it appears -- are celebrating the Guyger outcome, some even critical that she received only a 10-year sentence. But no American should celebrate when a fellow citizen is wrongly convicted of a crime. We did not celebrate when former Alabama governor Don Siegelman was wrongly convicted of bribery-related offenses, and we should not celebrate when Amber Guyger is wrongly found guilty of murder.

Botham Jean

How does Cook v. State inform us about Guyger? First, we must look at issues related to jury instructions. We have not seen a full copy of the jury instructions in the Amber Guyger case, but multiple news reports indicate the definition of intentional that was deemed incorrect in Cook was used in Guyger.  In fact, Dallas District Attorney John Creuzot made out-of-court statements that indicate he intended to push for the case to be decided on a flawed definition of "intentional." That was one of several dubious statements that suggest  prosecutors were so hungry for a conviction, they did not mind if the law -- and justice -- got trampled.

Next, we need to take a closer look at the facts in Cook. Here is how they are described in the ruling, with husband Michael Williams referred to as "decedent":

The decedent and two co-workers were searching for the decedent's wife, when they saw appellant talking to the wife. The decedent confronted appellant and ordered appellant to leave. Appellant and decedent began to argue and shove each other. During the altercation, appellant stabbed the decedent in the chest with a knife. After stabbing the decedent, appellant said: "I didn't mean to hurt you, man." The decedent died as a result of the stab wound. 

Appellant was charged with murder under Tex.Penal Code Ann. § 19.02(a)(1). The indictment alleged appellant: 

... knowingly and intentionally cause[d] the death of [the decedent], an individual, by stabbing [the decedent] with a knife a deadly weapon.

Notice the evidence that Cook did not intend to hurt the "decendent" -- or cause him to become a "decedent."

At trial, a dispute ensued about the meaning under Texas law of "knowingly" and "intentionally," as spelled out in the following colloquy (as lawyers like to say) between the trial judge and Cook's attorney, Mr. Tinsley:

At the close of trial, appellant objected to portions of the definitions and application portions in the jury charge and requested the following limitations on the definitions of intentionally and knowingly:

MR. TINSLEY: The objection that I now make on the record goes to the definition of knowingly and intentionally, which happen to be defined for the jury in the abstract in the Court's charge. And we object to the Court's charge defining knowingly and intentionally as it reads under 6.03(a) and (b) of the code—of the Penal Code.

And the reason we object is that it is our theory that the crime of murder is a result offense, rather than a conduct offense, and we object because the Court's charge does not limit the definition of both culpable mental states to the result of the offense only.

THE COURT: I'm going to overrule that requested charge.

MR. TINSLEY: Note my exception.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ultimately found Mr. Tinsley was right, reversing his client's conviction and stating:

We have long held that intentional murder is a "result of conduct" offense. Martinez v. State, 763 S.W.2d 413, 419 (Tex. Cr.App.1988), and Lugo-Lugo, 650 S.W.2d at 80, 88. As a "result of conduct" offense "[w]hat matters is that the conduct (whatever it may be) is done with the required culpability to effect the result the Legislature has specified." Alvarado, 704 S.W.2d at 39 (emphasis in original). Any other language relating to conduct is inconsequential. Id. As the San Antonio Court of Appeals correctly stated in Wallace v. State, 763 S.W.2d 628 (Tex.App.—San Antonio 1989):

Murder is an offense which requires that the culpable mental state accompany the result of the conduct, rather than the nature of the conduct. A charge which defines "intentionally" or "knowingly" as they relate to the nature of the conduct as well as the result of the conduct is error.

How does this tie to the Guyger conviction? Consider these words from a Dallas Morning News editorial, focusing on statements of District Attorney John Creuzot to justify bringing a murder charge:

We’re on record with our worries that Dallas District Attorney John Creuzot took a big risk in charging Guyger with murder rather than manslaughter. Creuzot and his prosecutors pointed out that Guyger didn’t accidentally discharge her weapon. She intended to shoot Jean. Manslaughter calls for a determination of recklessness.

Creuzot's statement that "Guyger didn't accidentally discharge her weapon" is a reference to the "nature of he conduct" that the Cook court described as "inconsequential," with the "result of the conduct" (did she intend to kill Jean?") being the only issue that matters in a Texas murder case.

Creuzot's statement indicates his office intended to use a faulty definition of the "intentional" state of mind to seek a conviction in the Guyger case.That indicates his office comes up short on matters of ethics. That's not the only dubious statement from prosecutors. Consider the following from CNN:

"I ask God for forgiveness, and I hate myself every single day. ... I wish he was the one with the gun who had killed me. I never wanted to take an innocent person's life," [Guyger] said.

Prosecutor Jason Fine seized on her testimony -- specifically, her assertion that she would never want anyone to endure what she's gone through -- before attacking Guyger as an unreasonable person who decided to kill Jean before she opened his apartment door.

"Are you kidding?" Fine said Monday, crumpling up a piece of paper from which he was reading. "That is garbage. Most of what she said was garbage."

That is garbage? You have to go to law school to come up with a brilliant rebuttal like that? I've heard more enlightened arguments from third graders on a school bus. And where did Fine get the notion that Guyger "decided to kill Jean before she opened his apartment door"? Was such evidence introduced at trial? I've seen no sign of it. And if Guyger thought she was entering her apartment -- as she emotionally stated 19 times on a call to 911 shortly after the shooting -- why would she have intended to kill Jean before opening the door, when apparently she had no idea he was there, and she was at the wrong apartment?

This is in keeping with the mumbo-jumbo we've seen from prosecutors over the years: in general, they want a win -- a notch to put on their professional belt -- with little or no concern about whether justice was served.

How badly was justice butchered in the Guyger case. Consider the Cook court's statement about the profound issues presented in such a case:

This case involves the most basic and fundamental concept of criminal law, that in order to constitute a crime, the act or actus reus must be accompanied by a criminal mind or mens rea. Perhaps this concept was best explained by the United States Supreme Court many years ago in Morissette v. United States, 342 U.S. 246, 72 S.Ct. 240, 96 L.Ed. 288 (1952).

"The contention that an injury can amount to a crime only when inflicted by intention is no provincial or transient notion. It is as universal and persistent in mature systems of law as belief in freedom of the human will and a consequent ability and duty of the normal individual to choose between good and evil ...

"Unqualified acceptance of this doctrine by English common law in the Eighteenth Century was indicated by Blackstone's sweeping statement that to constitute any crime there must first be a "vicious will."...

"Crime, as a compound concept, generally constituted only from concurrence of an evil-meaning mind with an evil-doing hand, was congenial to an intense individualism and took deep and early root in American soil. As the states codified the common law crimes, even if their enactments were silent on the subject, their courts assumed that the omission did not signify disapproval of the principle but merely recognized that intent was so inherent in the idea of the offense that it required no statutory affirmation."

In State v. Guyger, the law of intent was twisted and perverted to such an extent that it was virtually unrecognizable -- and it produced a grossly unjust outcome. None of us should be celebrating that.

Jury in Dallas, Texas, convicts ex-cop Amber Guyger of murder in shooting of Botham Jean, providing more evidence that our courts often fail to dispense justice

Amber Guyger

I probably am among the least likely people on the planet to defend the actions of a cop.  But even I was aghast upon learning yesterday that a Texas jury had found former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger guilty of murder in the 2018 shooting of Botham Jean. I've written numerous critical posts about the unjustified use of police force, especially against black citizens. (Guyger is white; Jean was black.) Still, the Guyger conviction provides more evidence that our courts are citadels where truth and the rule of law go to die.

State v. Guyger is particularly disturbing because it points to prosecutors who were overzealous, corrupt, incompetent -- or some combination of all three.

As regular readers know, my interactions with law enforcement officers have been almost uniformly horrific. In October 2013, an Alabama deputy named Chris Blevins entered our Birmingham home -- without showing a warrant, stating he had a warrant, or stating  his grounds for being there -- beat me up in our basement-garage, doused me with pepper spray, and hauled me for a five-month stay in the Shelby County Jail. I've described this event as a "state-sanctioned kidnapping" (no warrant or other document lawfully authorizing my arrest ever has surfaced) and written that it amounts to an "arrest for being a liberal blogger" (because it grew out of civil allegations of defamation from GOP political operative Rob Riley and lobbyist Liberty Duke, without even a whiff of alleged criminal conduct). To this day, by the way, my reporting on the Riley-Duke relationship never has been found to be defamatory, as a matter of law.

In September 2015 -- after we had essentially seen our home stolen via a wrongful foreclosure and been forced to move out of Alabama, I saw Missouri deputies break into our home for an unlawful eviction that ended with them brutalizing my wife, Carol, and yanking on her limbs so severely that they caused a comminuted fracture of her left arm, which required roughly eight hours of trauma surgery (and installation of numerous plates and screws) for repair. Carol and I then saw Sheriff Jim Arnott conspire with Greene County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Patterson to bring bogus "assault on a law enforcement officer" charges against Carol -- who, in fact, was the victim of a criminal assault, by thug cops.

This was an obvious "cover charge" designed to cover for blatant use of excessive force, and Carol and I were forced to sit through a carnival trial where four officers repeatedly lied under oath -- with at least one case of clear perjury -- causing Carol to be wrongfully convicted before a crooked judge named Jerry Harmison. What was Carol's punishment? It essentially amounted to a $10 fine.

Bottom line: You might say I have grounds for a healthy hatred of cops. At a minimum, I have reason to view them with extreme distaste and contempt. Despite that, I see the Amber Guyger conviction as a grotesque injustice. Guyger, 31, faces up to life in prison and already had been fired from her job before the trial; Jean, 26, was an accountant for a major firm. They lived, one directly over the other, at South Side Flats Apartments in Dallas.

Based on evidence at trial and press reports, here are the facts of the case:

Guyger had gotten off duty from a long shift, about 10 p.m. when she pulled into a space in the parking deck attached to her large apartment complex. As she entered the building, she did not realize she was on the fourth floor, not the third floor where she lived. A witness testified at trial that residents of the complex stated the parking deck and apartment building are designed in a confusing manner, causing many of them to get off on the wrong floor at different times.  

At some point during the day, Guyger had been texting about intimate matters with her male married police partner. She was having an affair with him, and that evidence was introduced at trial. 

Guyger went to the apartment directly above hers, and noticed the door was ajar, perhaps from a malfunctioning door knob. That allowed her to enter as Jean was sitting on his couch, watching TV and eating vanilla ice cream. Guyger saw a silhouetted figure in a fairly dark room and thought she had walked in on a burglary at her home. She commanded Jean to show his hands, but likely confused as to why this strange woman was in his apartment and bossing him around, Jean approached her at a "fast-paced walk." Guyger fired her service weapon, fatally striking Jean in the chest. He died after being taken to a nearby hospital.

By almost all rational accounts, this could be described as a tragedy that defies description -- even belief. Jean, a native of St. Lucia, was a smart, likeable, talented young man with a bright future. Aside from having an affair with a married man, Guyger seemed, before and during the trial, to be a solid citizen who performed pretty well in a high-stress, male-dominated profession. Sentencing phase of the trial began yesterday, and it was revealed Guyger had sent racially insensitive texts and vulgar online posts. How is that relevant to a murder case? That remains unclear.

Some bigger questions: Was this really murder? Was it even a crime -- despite its awful outcome?

Botham Jean

To understand the relevant law in State v. Guyger, we turn to Chapter 19 ("Criminal Homicide") of the Texas Penal Code. Texas recognizes four kinds of criminal homicide: murder, capital murder, manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. Guyger originally was charged with manslaughter, and the jury could have convicted her of that, but they went with murder instead. (Note: Texas does not recognize various degrees of murder -- first, second, third, etc. Everything that meets the definition of murder is "murder.")

The key statutory law in Guyger is found in Sec. 19.02 ("Murder"), at (b) (1) (2) (3), which reads:

(b) A person commits an offense if he:

(1) intentionally or knowingly causes the death of an individual;

(2) intends to cause serious bodily injury and commits an act clearly dangerous to human life that causes the death of an individual; or

(3) commits or attempts to commit a felony, other than manslaughter, and in the course of and in furtherance of the commission or attempt, or in immediate flight from the commission or attempt, he commits or attempts to commit an act clearly dangerous to human life that causes the death of an individual.

Item (3) is not a factor in this case, so we consider (1) and (2). The inquiry, however, does not end there. Various forms of the words "intentionally" and "knowingly" are central to the offense. To grasp their meaning under Texas law, we turn to Sec. 6.03(a), which states:

(a) A person acts intentionally, or with intent, with respect to the nature of his conduct or to a result of his conduct when it is his conscious objective or desire to engage in the conduct or cause the result.

Many everyday folks, including me, are likely to need clarification on what sub-section (a) actually means. For that, we turn to Texas case law -- especially a ruling styled Cook v. State, 884 SW 2d 485 (Tex Court of Criminal Appeals, 1994), which holds:

Murder is an offense which requires that the culpable mental state accompany the result of the conduct, rather than the nature of the conduct. A charge which defines "intentionally" or "knowingly" as they relate to the nature of the conduct as well as the result of the conduct is error.

In other words, the central question is this: Did Guyger intend to cause Jean's death (the result), not did she intend to shoot him (nature of the conduct)? In this case, the evidence suggests she did not intend either one. Guyger testified in her own behalf and said she did not intend to be in Jean's apartment, that she thought she was in her own home. Guyger also stated, “I never wanted to take an innocent person’s life. I am so sorry.”

That statement might not be determinative of the entire case, but it's close. This is from a Daily Beast account:

“I thought it was my apartment,” Guyger told dispatchers 19 times on the frantic 911 call played in court. “I thought it was my apartment. I’m fucked. Oh my God. I’m sorry.”

We can find no sign that the prosecution effectively countered any of Guyger's defenses. The evidence suggests the following:

* She was, in fact, unaware she was on the wrong floor -- a mistake many of her neighbors had made;

* She did, in fact, think she was entering her own apartment. After all, she did, in fact, live directly below Jean;

* Guyger's own words, on the stand and in the 911 call, show she did not intend to kill Jean, or anyone else, and we see no sign that prosecutors impeached her testimony on that issue;

* Under Texas law, the nature of Guyger's conduct -- mistakenly entering his apartment and firing her weapon -- is not a factor in the criminal mindset necessary for a murder conviction, but the record indicates she did not intend to even be in his apartment, much less firing her weapon.

South Side Flats

The prosecution's case consisted largely of claims that "she should have recognized this" or "she should have done that." But such points do not go to a culpable mental state. They suggest Guyger made a series of mistakes and was unable to correct them before events turned tragic inside Botham Jean's apartment.

One paragraph in a Dallas Morning News editorial yesterday suggests prosecutors pulled a con game on the public -- and the jury -- and Judge Tammy Kemp apparently let them get away with it. From the editorial:

We’re on record with our worries that Dallas District Attorney John Creuzot took a big risk in charging Guyger with murder rather than manslaughter. Creuzot and his prosecutors pointed out that Guyger didn’t accidentally discharge her weapon. She intended to shoot Jean. Manslaughter calls for a determination of recklessness.

The newspaper's editorial board should be more than worried about Creuzot's actions. They should be outraged that they have a fraud sitting in the DA's chair -- a man who is paid to know the law and apply it correctly, but clearly did neither in this case.

Was a murder charge appropriate in the Guyger case? For the reasons cited above, the answer is absolutely not. What about manslaughter? Here is how the Texas Code describes the requisite mental state for a finding of recklessness required in manslaughter:

(c) A person acts recklessly, or is reckless, with respect to circumstances surrounding his conduct or the result of his conduct when he is aware of but consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the circumstances exist or the result will occur.  The risk must be of such a nature and degree that its disregard constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care that an ordinary person would exercise under all the circumstances as viewed from the actor's standpoint.

Guyger's trial testimony and her call to 911 show, over and over, she was not aware of the risk that she was entering an apartment other than her own, and she did not consciously disregard anything. Our conclusion: There was no crime here, and no charges should have been brought.

Does that leave the Jean family out in the cold in their search for justice? No, but proper remedies are on the civil side. We foresee viable lawsuits against the apartment complex, its owners, the Dallas Police Department, and perhaps other entities.

That won't bring back Botham Jean, but neither will yesterday's verdict. At least with a civil case, the matter will be in the proper legal arena. There never should have been a criminal case.

Even in my post-eviction, followup visit, medical records show I made no mention of having a firearm or threatening to use one against law enforcement

Burrell Behavioral Health

Two Missouri mental-health workers claim in a 911 call that I threatened to shoot any sheriff's deputies who attempted to evict Carol and me in September 2015. Specifically, the 911 callers claim I made such a statement during an appointment with my health-care provider on 8/4/15, roughly five weeks before our scheduled eviction. Medical records from that visit make no mention of such a threat from me. Medical records from my followup visit on 11/13/15 make no mention of such a threat, either.

What were Joshua Davis and "Whispering" Kathryn Mays, both of Burrell Behavioral Health at the time, thinking when they placed a 911 call that: (a) Violated my medical confidentiality; (b) Was patently false, according to their own patient records; and (c) Was based on information from my brother-lawyer David Shuler, with whom Burrell had no permission from us to communicate -- and Davis and Mays admit that in their 911 call?

I don't have an answer to that question, but it raises all kinds of concerns about privacy, public safety, and the intersection between mental-health care and law enforcement. It's especially important because deputies at the scene of our eviction repeatedly cited the 911 call (which they claimed I had made) as the reason they arrived with 6-8 officers, multiple assault weapons, and more handguns than we could count. Without the 911 call (which, of course, actually came from Davis and Mays), the officer who broke Carol's arm likely would not have been on the scene.

Here is a question that remains at the forefront of my mind: Why did Davis and Mays concoct a fairy tale in their 911 call that differs radically from the notes of my health-care provider, psychiatric nurse Matt Charles? (Video of 911 call is embedded at the end of this post.) We've already shown that Charles' notes from the 9/4/15 appointment don't say anything about me threatening to shoot anyone. Now we know that Charles' notes from my followup visit, on 11/13/15, make no mention of a threat either. The following is from medical records re: my November visit:

Patient has not been present in the clinic since early August. He reports that since that time, he and his wife were evicted from their home. He states, "They broke Carol's arm during the eviction." He states that she was severely injured and required emergency surgery to correct this. He states, "She will be lucky to get 75% of her function back."

Evidently, Greene County Sheriff's Office was present during the eviction, and he claims that the Sheriff's Deputy assaulted her when she tried to go back into the home to remove property. Since this eviction, the patient's brother has petitioned for legal guardianship of Roger. Roger is frustrated regarding this, stating, "There is no basis for it."

He states that he and Carol have been living in a pay-by-the-week hotel, stating, "I like it better than the place we lived at before." He reports his mood has been good; despite all these issues, he has been sleeping well. He denies suicidal or homicidal thoughts. He denies anxiety or panic. He continues to be fixated on being harassed by the legal system and police and denies other hallucinations."

Any mention in that of a gun or my intent to use one? Nope.

As noted in a previous post, I generally believe Matt Charles presents a fair assessment of my visits, but the medical-records process apparently is far from perfect -- and his notes sometimes include items that aren't accurate, that I don't agree with, or sound just plain goofy. For example, Charles states: "He continues to be fixated on being harassed by the legal system and police and denies other hallucinations."

A literal reading of that statement, at least to my eyes, says Charles considers my statements about being "harassed by the legal system and police" are "hallucinations." Of course, it's a matter of public record that we were unlawfully evicted and cops broke Carol's arm. Charles could have checked the record or viewed X-rays of Carol's injuries, including all the hardware required to piece her arm back together -- and I think that would have answered any questions he had about "hallucinations."

In reality, I suspect Charles did not mean that sentence to come off the way it literally is written. While some points in his notes are unclear, it's very clear that I never claimed to have a gun or threatened to use one. That makes you wonder why two of Charles' co-workers called 911 with a tall tale that ran wildly contrary to notes in my medical records.