Category Archives: State news

Court shows rare compassion, halts execution

August 20, 2016 kanelis2012 1 Comment

Jeff Wood isn’t going to die in the Texas execution chamber — at least not yet — thanks to a ruling from the state’s highest criminal appellate court.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals — which I guess you can call the Killin’ Court — has sent the case of Jeff Wood back to a lower court.

Wood was scheduled to die because he was in a pickup truck while his friend actually killed someone while committing a robbery. But under Texas law and a provision called the “law of parties,” Wood was deemed as guilty as the shooter for the capital crime.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/08/19/execution-halted-jeff-wood-who-never-killed-anyone/

It amazes me that the CCA would halt the execution. This is the same body of jurists that at times has shown a remarkable lack of compassion for capital criminals. Sure, the criminals are bad guys and there are those who contend they don’t deserve anything from the state.

A trial jury sentenced Wood to death for the murder that was actually committed by Daniel Reneau, who was executed in 2002, just six years after committing the crime.

Wood’s role in the crime and the sentence he received has drawn national attention. Wood also drew support from an unlikely source, a conservative Republican lawmaker — state Rep. Jeff Leach of Plano — who intervened on Wood’s behalf while asking his sentence is commuted to life in prison.

The law of parties is an unreasonable provision in Texas law that needs to be removed.

That’s a fight for another day in another venue — which would be the Texas Legislature.

As for Wood, he’s been given a chance to defend himself once again. It fascinates me in the extreme that it would be the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals that has exhibited a healthy dose of fairness.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2016/08/law-of-parties-may-kill-the-wrong-man/

legal news, State news

‘Law of parties’ may kill the wrong man

August 18, 2016 kanelis2012 1 Comment

It’s called the “law of parties.”

The law means that in Texas someone who’s involved in any way with a capital crime — a murder — can be put to death if convicted even if he or she didn’t actually commit the crime.

I probably had heard of it, but I’d forgotten about it.

Jeff Wood is scheduled to die for a crime he technically never committed. He shouldn’t have to pay the ultimate price for his role in a 1996 murder. The actual gunman has been executed already.

Wood, though, has an most unlikely ally in the Texas Legislature. State Rep. Jeff Leach, a Plano Republican, has come to Wood’s defense, arguing that Gov. Greg Abbott should commute Wood’s death sentence to life in prison.

What’s interesting to me is that Leach is considered one of the Legislature’s more conservative members. He said he still believes in capital punishment, just not in this case.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/08/17/state-rep-leach-speaks-out-against-jeff-wood-execu/

I’m with Leach on this one.

Wood was driving a pickup in Kerrville when his friend, Daniel Reneau, went inside a gas station to steal a safe. The clerk inside would comply with Renau’s demands, so Reneau shot him to death.

He was convicted of capital murder and was put to death in 2002.

Now it’s Wood’s turn.

Prosecutors at the time of trial argued that Wood knew that Reneau would kill someone while committing the robbery, which made him culpable — under state law — to murder in accordance with the “law of parties” provision.

According to the Texas Tribune. Leach “believes in the death penalty under the law of parties in cases where the accomplice was clearly involved in the murder. But when he came across Wood’s case during his work for the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee, it didn’t seem right.”

Wood surely should never have been in the vehicle while his friend was committing the terrible crime. He made a patently egregious decision. Should he pay for it, though, with his life?

I say “no.” He didn’t commit the actual crime of capital murder.

Rep. Leach is asking the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to recommend a commutation. Gov. Abbott has the option of accepting or denying the recommendation.

I hope the governor can reach the same determination that one of his Republican colleagues has reached.

local news, State news

Facing down an RV demon

August 18, 2016 kanelis2012

This is the latest in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on upcoming retirement.

Yes, I have demons. We all do … I believe.

One of my demons involves the recreational vehicle my wife and I own, which is a 28-foot fifth wheel we pull behind our three-quarter-ton pickup.

On our most recent trip, I managed to face down my RV demon.

We went to Caprock Canyons State Park, which is about a 90-minute drive southeast of Amarillo. It’s a beautiful park, with rugged back country that one must see to believe.

It has several very nice campsites.

They’re all back-in sites. No pull-through sites. When we made our reservation at the state park, I asked perhaps three times whether there were any pull-through sites. “No sir,” came the reply. “They’re all back-ins.”

All righty, then. We’ll do it.

So, we went to Caprock Canyons. We arrived at the park gate, said “hey” to a group of bison grazing near the office, and then drove to our site at the Honey Flats camping area.

We pulled the RV to the site, then positioned the truck and the fifth wheel in a fairly straight alignment with the site. I surely understand the principle of backing a vehicle up with another one hitched to the rear: you turn the steering wheel in the opposite direction of where you want to turn the attached vehicle.

I backed the rig up. No sweat.

OK, truth be told, I had done this once before. We drove to an RV resort in Mesa, Ariz., a year ago, where we hooked up with my sister and brother-in-law. It, too, only had back-in sites. I managed — after considerable grief and perspiration — to get the vehicle backed into the site. I had considerable navigational help from my wife, sis and bro-in-law.

After backing in, I was exhausted. Pooped, man.

This time, at Caprock Canyons, the ordeal was far less stressful.

For that I am grateful. I haven’t conquered the demon just yet.

However, it’s on the ropes.

We plan to knock the RV demon out soon enough.

political news, State news

New poll makes Democrats’ hearts flutter

August 16, 2016 kanelis2012

If you listen carefully, you just might be able to hear the sound of Texas Democrats’ hearts beating rapidly.

A new public opinion poll puts Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton a mere 6 percentage points behind Republican nominee Donald J. Trump.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/08/16/poll-trump-leads-clinton-only-6-texas/

It’s Trump at 44 percent, Clinton at 38.

Game on in Texas?

Hmmm. Maybe … but probably not.

The poll was done by PPP, a reputable polling firm. The survey, though, suggests that while the state may be starting to develop a two-party “trend,” it doesn’t necessarily augur for a victory for Clinton this time around.

According to the Texas Tribune: “Polling on the presidential race in Texas has been scant, but the margin found by PPP is the narrowest yet. Previous surveys, including one commissioned by Democrats, have found Trump’s lead ranging from seven to 11 points.”

I’m one of those who would like to see the presidential candidates engage in what’s called “retail politics” here. In battleground states, the candidates show up for public events, shake hands with voters, engage real people in real conversations about politics and policy.

We don’t get that kind of activity here, given the state’s strong GOP leaning. Democrats usually give up on us, while Republicans take us for granted.

Might there be some continued narrowing of the Clinton-Trump gap? If so, I’ll be among the first to welcome the major-party presidential candidates to Texas.

Until then, though, Texas Democrats probably will need to calm their beating hearts.

media news, State news

‘Celebrating’ the Klan’s birthday?

August 9, 2016 kanelis2012

Some things simply defy one’s ability to comprehend.

Such as whether you should in any way, shape or form honor the existence of a certifiable hate group.

An East Texas newspaper, the Longview News-Journal, did what I — and many others — consider to be the unthinkable when it published a front-page story commemorating the 150th year since the founding of the Ku Klux Klan.

http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/readers-revolt-over-longview-newspapers-coverage-of-the-klans-birthday-8573838

The paper had a big front-page picture of a cross-burning with hooded Klansmen standing around.

The outrage in the community has been profound. It also was expected. Residents in the town tucked in the Piney Woods of Deep East Texas are calling for a boycott of the paper.

Indeed, this is a remarkable thing to witness in the second decade of the 21st century.

The Klan deserves only to be condemned for the violence it has brought to Americans over the past century and a half.

I once lived and worked not too far from Longview. The southeast corner of Texas has a community or two perceived by many to be havens for Klan-type activity. You mention the name of the town Vidor to anyone near Beaumont — where I lived and worked for more than a decade — and you often get a sort of knowing glance and wince.

The town, about 10 miles east of Beaumont on Interstate 10, is full of fine folks. But they all live with the knowledge of what their town symbolizes to many people.

Indeed, East Texas has been scarred — as have many regions throughout the South — by the Klan.

As the Dallas Observer reported: “After the story — which was adapted from an Associated Press wire story — ran on Saturday, reader Hillary Sandlin laid out the case against the paper on Facebook. ‘This makes us look like a bunch of backwoods racists and only further reinforces incorrect stereotypes about most of the people in this area. These ‘chapters’ could be six guys who made a group, but the map makes it appear like it’s a thriving organization,’ she says.”

For the newspaper of record in Longview to single out a hate group has opened up some deep and festering wounds.

Simply unbelievable!

national news, political news, State news

George P. breaks ranks with Dad, Uncle W. and Poppy

August 8, 2016 kanelis2012

Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush has swilled the Donald J. Trump Kool-Aid.

He says it’s time to support the Republican Party’s presidential nominee.

Well, I never …

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/08/07/george-p-bush-trump-holdout-urges-support-him/

George P. hasn’t exactly “endorsed” Trump, who performed a major hatchet job on the young land commissioner’s father, Jeb Bush, during the GOP primary. Trump’s campaign so angered others in the iconic political family that the Bushes’ two former presidents — George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush — stayed away from the Republican convention in Cleveland.

So did Jeb, of course.

According to the Texas Tribune: “From Team Bush, it’s a bitter pill to swallow, but you know what? You get back up and you help the man that won, and you make sure that we stop Hillary Clinton,” Bush said, according to video of the remarks provided by an audience member.

There you have it. The goal is to “stop Hillary Clinton,” the Democratic nominee. No matter what. Regardless of how Trump trashed P.’s own father, how he said Uncle W. deceived the nation and lied us into war in Iraq.

Politics at times produces the strangest alliances imaginable.

This appears to be one of them.

political news, State news

Voter ID: a solution in search of a problem

August 8, 2016 kanelis2012

Let’s talk for a moment about voter fraud.

If there’s an overblown, overhyped and overstated problem with the American electoral system, it has to be voter fraud.

Even in Texas, ,which has become somewhat legendary because of one instance of voter fraud. It occurred in 1948 when Duval County in South Texas supposedly recorded more votes than registered voters. The inflated number of votes allegedly pushed a young political candidate, Democrat Lyndon Johnson, over the top in his party primary runoff contest for the U.S. Senate.

How many instances of ballot-box chicanery have occurred in Texas since then? Damn few.

Republicans, though, have seized on voter fraud as a compelling national political problem. They keep insisting that Americans must prove they are eligible to vote by showing photo ID documents when they go to the polls.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/the-integrity-of-our-elections/

I don’t necessarily object personally to showing photo ID when I go vote. I am able to present a valid driver’s license. A lot of Americans, though, do not drive; they don’t own passports; they don’t have licenses to carry concealed weapons. They’re out of luck.

Some courts have ruled that voter ID laws, therefore, to be inherently unconstitutional.

The most objectionable element of this discussion, though, has been the canard put forward that the electoral system is corrupt. Fear mongers — now led by Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump — keep insisting that illegal immigrants are voting by the thousands to elect Democrats to public office.

As Erica Grieder writes in her blog for Texas Monthly: “It’s true that voter fraud is real. It’s even true that there have been recorded instances of people passing themselves off as someone else in order to cast a fraudulent vote, which is the specific form of fraud that laws requiring photo ID might prevent. But that crime is not even remotely common, nor do Americans have any real cause to worry about elections being stolen in the most labor-intensive way imaginable.”

Trump is now predicting that the presidential election will be “rigged.” How does he know this to be true? He just says it.

Those who are following his futile efforts to change the subject away from his abject ignorance about anything relating to government and public policy, are buying into it.

legal news, State news

Texas AG seeks to do the seemingly impossible

August 4, 2016 kanelis2012

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton deserves credit for perseverance.

He’s been indicted by a grand jury on charges of securities fraud. Paxton says he’s innocent and has entered a plea to that effect. He’s now taking his case to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest criminal appellate court.

He wants the CCA to do for him what it did for former Gov. Rick Perry, when it tossed out an accusation that Perry had coerced a public official by demanding her resignation after she had pleaded guilty to a drunken driving charge. Perry had been indicted by a Travis County grand jury and complained that the Democratic-leaning county had stacked the grand jury with Democrats pre-disposed to indict a Republican governor.

Perry made the case to the all-Republican Court of Criminal Appeals.

Paxton’s indictment is quite a bit different.

A Collin County grand jury indicted him on charges that he failed to improperly report personal profit from investment he had given; the Securities and Exchange Commission also has filed a complaint against the AG.

Now, why is this so interesting?

Paxton represented Collin County before he was elected attorney general in 2014. The county is among the more Republican-leaning counties in Texas. I don’t know this, but I’d be willing to bet real American money that many of the grand jurors voted for him as attorney general and also for him when he ran for the Legislature, where he represented Collin County.

The grand jury indicted its home boy, not some political outsider.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/08/03/brief-august-3-2016/

Which makes me wonder whether the attorney general is going to get a favorable ruling from the Court of Criminal Appeals.

military news, national news, political news, State news

Gov. Abbott weighs in on Khan kerfuffle

August 2, 2016 kanelis2012

Now it’s Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s turn to speak out against remarks aimed at the parents of a slain U.S. Army hero.

Abbott, the state’s Republican chief executive who’s now backing GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump after backing Ted Cruz initially in the party’s presidential primary, said this, according to the Texas Tribune:

“The service and devotion of Gold Star families to America cannot be questioned,” Abbott said in a statement provided Monday to The Texas Tribune. “Captain [Humayun] Khan, like many heroes who paid the ultimate sacrifice, will be forever remembered for their service in protecting the freedoms we cherish in America.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/08/01/trump-attacks-greg-abbott-muslim-soldier/

OK, governor. Good words. But like so many Republican political leaders who now are backing Trump — who’s been battling Capt. Khan’s parents, Kzhir and Ghazala Khan, over their statements against the GOP nominee — he declined to say the rest of what needed to be said.

If he would have asked me to write his statement, I would have added: “Therefore, it is disgraceful that our party’s nominee, Donald Trump, would soil Capt. Khan’s service in such a manner by criticizing his parents for exercising their constitutional rights — as U.S. citizens — to speak out in a public political forum.”

Capt. Khan, a U.S. Army officer who happened to be Muslim, died in Iraq in 2004 while protecting soldiers under his command from the enemy. His parents spoke out at the Democratic convention against Trump’s candidacy.

Trump has said Kzhir Khan had “no right” to criticize him.

Actually, as a U.S. citizen, Mr. Khan had every right.

education news, legal news, State news

Campus-carry takes effect … very soon!

July 31, 2016 kanelis2012

Monday will be a big day in Texas.

Fifty years ago, a gunman climbed to the top of the Texas Tower at the University of Texas campus in Austin and opened fire with his high-powered rifle.

Sixteen people died that day before the cops got to the gunman and shot him dead .

Aug. 1, 1966 is one of the state’s most infamous days.

Texas is going to mark that date by allowing people to carry guns on college campuses.

Ironic, yes? Tragically so? Yes again.

It’s interesting to me — and to a lot of others — that educators oppose this notion. Only one private university is allowing guns on its campus; the rest of them have said “no thanks.” Public universities are required under the law to allow students to carry guns into classrooms.

UT Chancellor William McRaven — the former Navy SEAL and special forces commander — is one of those who opposes campus-carry. But, what the hey? What does he know?

I’ll stipulate that I have come to accept concealed-handgun-carry as a way of life in Texas. I don’t necessarily endorse it.

Allowing guns on campuses, though, does present a unique set of concerns. What if a professor hands out a failing grade to a student who, um, might have a short fuse that could be lit with a dose of bad news? Does that student then pose an extra threat to the prof if he’s packing heat under his jacket?

Well, Texas is about to enter another era on its college and university campuses.

I’m going to hope for the best.

If only the state could have picked another date to allow guns on our campuses.

High Plains Blogger