Random Monday Morning Thoughts

 

• Wise County active cases: 18 (with no update since Thursday.)
• Texas hospitalizations. My "flattening out" prediction between 4,000 and 6,000 has officially failed.
  
  
  
• Yes, we will return to "It's Friday - Let's Get Out of Here" on, well, Friday. The Aric Maxwell case has understandably been a whirlwind which caused me to miss it last week. Speaking of, I've got more on that at the bottom of this since our Sheriff seems to have lost his mind. 
• Two Los Angeles Sheriff's Deputies were ambushed and shot and it was caught on video. Both will survive. It's horrible. It's disgusting. But how that turned into a political issue is amazing. The shooter is an evil guy and needs to be prosecuted and incarcerated. There are bad guys among us. And there were four or five unbelievable jerks who showed up at the hospital to taunt cops which was also caught on tape. We will always have the fringe nut cases who will do stuff like that (i.e. see Westboro Baptist Church.) And , no, it wasn't a mass crowd of BLM supporters at the hospital.
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• Trump was out there promoting voter fraud on Twitter, Twitter called him on it, but decided to let the tweet remain so you could know he's promoting voter fraud. 
  
  
  
• I don't think that extra-judicial executions by federal agents based upon "retribution" is the way the criminal justice system works and it especially is not "the way it has to be."
  
  
  
• "Masks are required."
  
  
  
• Like these responsible young men:
  
  
  
• I think I could pull of Cam Newton's look from yesterday. 
  
  
  
• Dallas went 3 of 12 on third downs last night. There's your ballgame. But they had their moments.  Here's one for those of you who were boycotting the NFL last night (but not engaging in "cancel culture") and didn't get to see it. 
  
  
  
• Now to the Aric Maxwell case. Out Sheriff pissed me off even more: 
• Mitch Mitchell of the Star-Telegram had a very good story about the dismissal of capital murder charges which focused on how outrageous all of this is. 
• To quickly bring those up to date: Aric Maxwell was arrested by the Wise County Sheriff's Office for capital murder on a non-existent circumstantial case. He was indicted for murdering Lauren Whitener while sexual assaulting her. But when the sperm cell DNA analysis came back, it cleared Aric. (The wild part of the story is that the Wise County Sheriff's Office had that DNA report since September of last year but didn't know how to read the report.) Full press release here.
• With that in mind, this quote from Wise County Sheriff to the Star-Telegram story is flat-out delusional. It makes me seriously wonder if he needs to step down. 
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• He's out of his mind. His own private expert -- who taxpayers have payed thousands of dollars to -- says the sperm cells were left during a time frame the corresponds exactly to the time of the murder -- the early morning hours of July 5, 2019.
• So during that time frame, sperm cells were left, the Sheriff doesn't know who left them, yet he doesn't consider that person to be a suspect?!  Are you kidding me? 
• As one of the avalanche of emails I received this weekend said: "Have you even noticed how in every documentary on Netflix or HBO where someone is cleared by DNA that the cops and prosecutors never admit they were wrong?"  That's exactly what is going on here. A Texas Sheriff refusing to admit he botched a case, arrested the wrong guy, and a killer is on the streets. 
• What could he possibly think happened? That some guy just casually came over in the middle of the night to have consensual sex - a guy who Lauren had never texted and never contacted on social media? A guy who has just stayed in the shadows all this time? Every conceivable partner, no matter how far fetched, has given their DNA sample in this case and all have been cleared. Their DNA did not match the mysterious sperm cell DNA. 
• So if you left the sperm cells and killed Lauren, don't worry. The Sheriff has your back. He doesn't believe you were "involved." 
• And you know what's worse? Sheriff Lane Akin, because of this fiasco, has created the perfect alibi for the killer: Say they accidentally find out who killed and sexually assaulted her and left the sperm cells. You know what the killer now says? "Yeah, it was consensual sex. And then I left. And, by the way, when I left her duplex in the middle of the night, I think I saw Aric Maxwell standing on his porch looking at me! I think I even saw a knife in his hands!" And you know who his first witness is: Lane Akin. Because Lane is promoting that theory in order to save his own ass. 
• Did I mention I got even madder of the weekend?
• You want to see how much the Sheriff's Office jumped to conclusions in this case? They brought in Texas Ranger James Holland to grill Aric for over nine total hours less than a week after the killing.  And you know what Aric told him? The DNA evidence would clear him. Watch some of the excerpts here. 

  

  
  

• "The true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned." - From an email to me sent by a total stranger on Friday. Thanks to all of you who reached out to me this weekend.