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This was a wild story which received nationwide coverage (even made Drudge). The guy who got impaled was Clay Carpenter out of Springtown who later sued the golf course. I could have sworn there was a Decatur connection to all of this, but I can't find it.
- Thought I'd check in on the COVID fall.
- Here's what the Corsicana killer looked like.
- This is a good discovery, and picture, by the Dallas Morning News. A sign not authorized by law faces witnesses in the grand jury room in Dallas County. District Attorney John Creuzot said he knew nothing about it.
- The hog contest over in Bridgeport is throwing around some big figures.
- Yesterday's meeting between Putin and France's Emmanuel Macron was held at a very large table.
- Late yesterday evening, the new Supreme Court confirmed that the Voting Rights Act which they previously killed is indeed really dead.
- For the life of me I don't understand how they got past the various governmental immunity protections.
- Very, very unconfirmed rumor I heard: Former Decatur AD and football coach Mike Fuller is a strong candidate for the open Coppell High School job.
- A sixth Texas National Guard member assigned to the border has died. That is four suicides and two accidental shootings. All have been with their own personal weapons according to the story.
- The Tarrant County DA's office released its "Annual Report" yesterday which was predictably boring, but I found this chart interesting. Back in the day, police just submitted their offense report, witness statements, lab reports, or other paper in their case report packages to be considered for potential prosecution. But now look at the amount of video which is being included in those packages. With bodycams and dashcams, there's now a ton of it. Videos in a case used to rare. Now it's an avalanche.
- Here's a dirty little secret: There is a 100% chance that prosecutors do not look at every video before they file the case in court. I bet most cases are filed without the videos being watched at all.
- And let's be honest. The pressure to ignore some of the video in some cases is high. Say you've got a DWI case where the bodycam of the arresting officer shows the defendant was really drunk. You watch all of it, and it looks like a slam dunk. Are the prosecutor and defense lawyer going to also watch the bodycam video of the backup officer who was just watching from the side before trying to resolve the case by a plea bargain? What if it's an hour long? Two hours?
- In an under-the-radar case last week, wheels off lawyer Michael Avenatti was convicted of stealing $300,000 from his client Stormy Daniels.
- But it didn't look like it was going to happen. The jury sent out a note that they were deadlocked because one juror was refusing to further deliberate. The judge read them an instruction to continue to try and reach a verdict and then this happened:
- But they did convict, although the verdict form looked like this. The "Not Guilty" space had been checked and then marked over.
- Legal nerd stuff: Disgraced Trump lawyer Sidney Powell's appellate brief on why the district judge should not have referred her for possible disbarment because of her false election claims is just as bad as you would expect. She argues that her claims might have been, or possibly been, true because other people believed them.
- We were told that former Ranger's pitcher John Wetteland's criminal trial in Denton was supposed to start last week, but it's been rest to August based upon online court records.
- Fun fact: Ronald Reagan's birthday is now closer to Thomas Jefferson inauguration than it is to today.
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