Thursday, September 13, 2012

Appellate court upholds ruling in favor of TYC whistleblower alleging misconduct at parole revocation hearings

Reported the Dallas News ("Appeals court upholds a Dallas attorneys award for blowing whistle on state judges," Sept 12), "An appellate court has upheld a judgment now totaling about $1 million awarded to Dallas attorney Chris Koustoubardis after he was fired for blowing the whistle on fellow judges at the Texas Youth Commission four years ago."

Go here for the best account available of the allegations upheld by the appellate court in affirming the jury verdict, which involved supervisors pressuring judges regarding their rulings in parole revocation hearings and an administrative judge coaching a police-officer witness in order to get inadmissible hearsay testimony admitted as an "excited utterance."

The former administrative law judge told the Dallas News "he doesn’t regret speaking up but didn’t realize it would cost so much," adding, “You know ... it doesn’t pay to do the right thing.” He's not the first at TYC/TJJD to think so, but in this case, if the appellate ruling stands, perhaps for once, this time it will.
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6 comments:

  1. Unknown9/13/2012 04:27:00 PM

    .Lets go back to the blog of September 10, 2012. "Districy Attorney's Report: Misconduct Exceedingly Rare."

    Enough said!

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  2. Gritsforbreakfast9/13/2012 04:52:00 PM

    We're gonna get there over the weekend, VVG. It's been a very busy week.

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  3. Anonymous9/13/2012 09:29:00 PM

    Who fired the whistleblower? Who covered this up? It seems to me that TYC did what it wanted to do (and still does). From my experience, they don't like whistleblowers.

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  4. Phillip Baker9/15/2012 12:11:00 PM

    If you were in a senior administrative post at TYC, would you like whistleblowers? TYC _ and even more TCDJ- need torrents of sunshine into their operations.

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  5. Anonymous9/15/2012 01:30:00 PM

    Chris Koustobardis is a good man. It's good to see that SOMEBODY stood up.

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  6. Anonymous9/16/2012 10:27:00 PM

    I know if you don't live on your feet you die on your knees.

    Now, if everyone employed by the State to take care of the kids who need our guiding, steady hands decided to all stand up at the SAME TIME... whoa. It would take a LOT of whistleblowing, though, to get the windows of transparentcy cleaned off enough to let some of those torrents of sunshine in. Sigh.

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