On March 4, the day of the primary, she watched the returns from her office with friends and family. Meanwhile, Spencer, her media manager, enlisted the help of Hank Clements, an Austin-based lawyer and lobbyist with judicial campaign experience. I want to be cystal clear about this, Spencer says. 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. Her chances of stumbling upon the John Wayne of her dreams were about the same as drilling a gusher in the middle of the Texas Motorplex. She was soaking in her bathtub, trying to figure out what to tell her kids, aged 15, 9, and 7, if the worst happened. He's serving five years in federal prison for accepting illegal . As of August 2022, Governor Greg Abbott had appointed 59 state court judges, 49 of which were district court judges. What followed is the unbelievable, epic tale of. With his Gregory Peck eyeglass frames and awkwardly oversize pinstripe suit, White resembled Atticus Finch if Atticus Finch were in the Federalist Society. 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. Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Trevio talks to reporters Oct. 31, 2011, at the Hidalgo County sheriff's office in Edinburg, Texas. Eventually the jurors had enough. That grand jury would end up being the first of sixover the course of nearly three yearsto investigate her for alleged election code violations. And a member of Roachs staff now holds Wootens former bench in the 380th District Court. 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. A fellow prosecutor says that when he asked Milner why he charged the lawyer, Milner told him, That guy fucked me over years ago. What followed is the unbelievable, epic tale of the craziest case in the history of jurisprudence. 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. You might get acquitted. New York does come up in No. With respect to legal corruption, Kentucky is the most corrupt state followed by Illinois and Nevada while Massachusetts is the least corrupt state followed Michigan, Oregon, and Vermont. She has the no-nonsense, salty-for-emphasis, English teacher-ish temperament of an effective mediator, which she now is. Sometimes Im the guy, he says. He was focused specifically on limiting third-party rightsgrandparents, extended family members, and others he viewed as interfering with the rights of parents. It was my mailbox, but I didnt even own a dog.. Word of her intentions got around, and, in December 2007, she started receiving calls from Steve Spencer, a marketing-and-lobbying one-man band based in Austin who was known for wearing flashy clothes and driving nice rental cars. The FBI in San Antonio also has seen a sharp increase in . 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. After her divorce from her first husband, she was living on a working cattle ranch outside of Waxahachie, breeding horses and miniature donkeys, when she decided to adopt two children from Russia. There are over 200,000 inhabitants, approximately 70% white. These six checks would later constitute the six bribery counts in Dave, Stacy, and Wootens criminal court cases. The grand jury indictment accused her of conspiring with her media manager, Spencer, as well as a wealthy Park Cities couple that she didnt personally know, Stacy and Dave Cary. She also refused to sign off on routine asset forfeiture requests from the DAs office until after a conviction. I dont think this set of facts has ever happened, he says. After serving in the Air Force, Spencer went into the healthcare field, managing a region for a home health company. 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. The losing judge said there was no way Wooten could have won without cheating, and the DA needed to find the crime. At one point, according to a Collin County Bar Association judicial poll, it was 12 percent, the lowest in the history of the survey. Dave Cary went to trial in April 2013. 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. We dug a lot of dry holes, Stacy says of the research. Suite 2100 Corrupt Police Corruption scandals have emerged in most of the 14 border counties between Brownsville and El Paso. When the company attempted to repossess the furniture, they found the home empty. Yet Sandoval had agreed to let Hythiam Inc., the L.A.-based biotech firm behind the drug (which was founded by a former junk bond salesman for Michael Milken), use his courtroom for clinical research trials. Dave and Stacy didnt do anything wrong. Even though Caton was disparaged as a divorce, the race ended up being relatively close. Friends in the legal community told her she should wait. Spencer and his wife, Kippling, had two daughters: one was Kipplings from a previous marriage; the other was their child together. The whole thing was a Catch-22. And then she comes back in with an actual innocence writ. But the matter had ultimately been dropped. City-Data Forum > U.S. Forums > Texas > Lubbock: Most corrupt city I have ever lived in (Lubbock, West: waterpark, school) . Christopher Milner and John Roach Sr. could not be reached directly; their attorney, Bob Davis, did not respond to requests for comment on their behalf. From 2015 to 2020, the Texas Rangers completed more than 560 public corruption case investigations, but only 67 of those cases have been prosecuted, according to DPS data analyzed by . But the prosecutors had the whole picture. Milner indicted the attorney and had him arrested, but he was acquitted at trial. He kept copious journals in faint, prison-approved pencil. Wootens criminaldefense attorney. Prior to Daves trial, in 2010, a new judgewho had been assigned to his custody case after Wooten recused herselfdetermined that the sanctions Sandoval had awarded Jennifer were improper. 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. But for that, Wooten would never have obtained her exoneration. It just takes one jilted man and a few loyal henchmen to put a woman back in her permitted place. Dave was paroled at the end of 2014, after serving 19 months and 10 days. 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. How did you all fuck this up and continue to prosecute her? Part of the problem, Schulte says, is that Milner really just wanted to be a police officer. That didnt pan out, but Spencer was able to help with other company matters that he found useful. A Dallas federal jury will soon decide the matter - at least in the case of local developer Ruel Hamilton, who is accused of bribing two former Dallas City Council members. So on January 2, 2008, the last possible day to file, she walked over to the Collin County Republican Party headquarters. 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 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. She was friends with Peter Schulte, a local criminal defense attorney and former cop, so she gave him a call. 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. We just pissed some people off.. 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. The $150,000 that Stacy paid Spencer from January 2008 to March 2008 was all deposited in Spencers joint checking account with his wife. Dave also hired Spencer. Everyone knew someone else, and they almost all had a tie to the Collin County Republican Party. As a result, the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General announced charges against the former. The Special Crimes Unit has been disbanded. When the judge read the verdict out loud, Wootens husband collapsed and had to be carried out of the courtroom. Former Chief of the Special Crimes Division of the CCDAO. Thats when we discovered I won in the early voting 60 to 40 [percent], she says. During his tenure, Rick Perry appointed 112, 80 of which were district court judges. Austin Most Allegations of Political Corruption in Texas are Not Fully Investigated By Jef Rouner - October 13, 2021 One of the foundational tenets of America is that no person is supposed to be above the law. You have to mean to steal. Otherwise, virtually every campaign donation would be criminally suspect. The Civil Rights Division may also be contacted via telephone at 512-463-2642 or 888-452-4778 (in Texas only). He became passionate about criminal justice reform and started working with Doug Deason and his eponymous criminal justice reform center at SMU. She had continuous advertising on the most popular, hard-right talk shows. Im like, Bribery? There would be no opponent in November. Corruption Index Score: 45.61. 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