Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Drug case reeks of judicial bias, misconduct

In a tale somewhat reminiscent of the Tulia debacle, NPR has a story out of Clarksville, TX of a politicized drug prosecution that a local judge tried to continue even after the Attorney General moved to dismiss. See:
Best fact bite in the story: The search warrant wasn't signed until after the local Sheriff, with the DA in tow in full body armor, had already executed an armed raid and search. The judge refused to let charges be dropped and himself attempted to negotiate a plea deal with defense counsel that would have dropped charges in exchange for dropping a federal civil rights suit over the incident.

Excellent stuff. A must read story.

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

And from Red River's neighboring county a news story about the sheriff of Titus County.

http://www.nuwavereporter.com/articles-11-14-2010-sunday01.html

Anonymous said...

Must read here:

http://www.npr.org/2010/09/24/130099092/civil-rights-judicial-bias-surround-texas-drug-case

freekory said...

the same thing happened in arlington tx on april 1 2010, but the arlington police covered it up it was never on the new or anything the also shot Kory Gautreaux during the raid , please read need media attention http://freekory.blogspot.com/

Anonymous said...

I'll apologize for the spelling flame, but that should be "reeks" in the headline.

Sounds like a judge needs some lessons in the law and some common sense.

Hook Em Horns said...

This happens in Harris County all the time. In Houston the D.A. just says they don't know where the search warrant is and then it "magically" appears. I recall at least one case where a search warrant wasn't signed. Of course, this was merely an "over-sight."

Hook Em Horns said...

George Godwin (Harris County) did EVERYTHING in chambers. Nothing was on the record, nothing decided from the bench.

Anonymous said...

At least hook em has shown his true conspiracy freak colors here.
Wow.

Anonymous said...

I really enjoyed the confederate statue keeping watch over "the blacks" tried & true template--not. Surprised Bo & Luke Duke weren't mentioned in the story as well. It's like 1860 all over again. Yeeeeeeeeeehaaaaaaaaaaaaw.
To me it's distracting and cheapens the story unnecessarily.

Anonymous said...

The nuwavereporter story is crazy. Should be removed because the writer has a history of arrest and also the teller of the story has legal problems. IT is not credible.

Anonymous said...

Lots of corruption everywhere it seems, but some places are worse than others. This one is a shocker the more one delves into the problems. All cases this Judge has ever done and the DA also needs to be investigated.

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately, I have spent more time than I care to remember in Clarksville, TX. I even went to high school with the DA. He was such a straight arrow back then I found it slightly shocking to read about his behavior now. However shocking, it wasn't hard to believe. Clarksville longs for the glory days of the past when local politics was king and the people in charge could do whatever they pleased without being questioned by those pesky outsiders. It is a sad, desperate place that I haven't missed for even the smallest amount of time.

Hook Em Horns said...

It's really not a conspiracy because the people who conducted or continue to conduct themselves this way, i.e. Godwin, D.A.'s and others, are operating in a SYSTEM that is broken. They don't need any damn conspiracy to get away with what they do.

Anonymous said...

Well, the system in this town has been broken since it became a town. Need not compare it with national, because it won't hold water. There are so many stories that is is impossible to cover them all. Red River County has its own set of laws which are separate from State or Federal. They thumb their nose at the Constitution. It means nothing to them.

Please stay with the story being addressed.

Anonymous said...

Oh, and they don't have a clue what "due process" means.

GalvestonLawyer said...

I have actually had to defend a murder trial in his court. Let's just say he appears to operate by a set of procedural rules which, by all accounts, don't remotely resemble things like the code of criminal procedure, rules of evidence, code of judicial conduct or such other trifling stuff the rest us mere mortals are subject to. Val Varley is also well known among the legal circles of east Texas as something of a vindictive nut who would rather pretend to be a cop. Still, the brilliant voters of Red River County continue to re-elect the man to office, despite his obvious megalomania and/or detachment from reality and reason at times. He also has no qualms about settling personal scores through the mechanism of the nifty little perk of his office by which he can criminally prosecute someone he doesn't like (ask Mark Lesher if you don't believe me). Sometimes I feel like I hung my shingle out in fascist paradise.

GalvestonLawyer said...

Check this story out: http://friendsofjustice.wordpress.com/2010/08/24/judge-miller-is-recused/

Anonymous said...

I attended public school in Clarksville public schools with Val Varley in the 1970's. I am shocked at his vindictive nature as a prosecutor. I recall him as a good student and a strong athlete. Sadly, Varley has apparently been consumed by his win-at-all-cost competetive nature with his latest streak of embarrassing and vindictive trampling of the constitutional right's of Vergil and Mark Richardson's, both innocent bystanders at the home of a drug dealing relative. The Richardson's good name and reputation suffered irreprable harm due to the incompetence at each step in this systematic failure judicial process. The case has brought national media and judicial scrutiny to this economically devastated community that has a blood stained history of corruption and misconduct. Red River County and Clarksville police have long been plagued by rampant misconduct. In fact, by 1980, US Federal District Judge, William Wayne Justice, so troubled by endemic police corruption that he enacted sweeping oversight measures to endure officers were qualified, professionally supervised and held accountable when necessary. Justice, made landmark rulings on racially charged desegragation of low income housing within Clarksville. He also served as magistrate in two federal civil rights violations of prisoners by abusive, corrupt officers. The first, 1979 an unjustified police shooting that murdered an 18 year old, unarmed intoxicated youth and subsequent coverup conspiracy by Clarksville officers that planted a box cutter on the dead teen suspect to justify his killing. Sending then Police Chief, Roger Stell, to federal prison for the killing and supervising the coverup. Soon thereafter, Doug Jackson, Chief Deputy of Red River County, was convicted of arson and federal civil rights violations after he conspired with a an impressionalble young deputy to burn down the offices of prominent defense attorney, Jim Dick Lovett, as a vindictive means to intimidate and ultimately thwart a federal civil rights investigation on Jackson stemming from brutally beating of a Clarksville youth at the jail. Varley should heed these tragic lessons of recent history in Red River County offical misconduct. There is a common theme in each of these recent miscarriages in Red River County's tainted judical past: an aggressive law enforcement official, so stubbornly bent on being right, no matter who it hurts, or what price it cost the whole community they are sworn to protect, decides that their pride is far more important than people they serve. Frustrated, the official's professional conduct is set aside and he resorts to petty, vindictive tactics in an ego driven, power hungry overreach of authority that explodes into corruption and subsequent downfall of the official.