Change), You are commenting using your Twitter account. His eponymously punny company, Spen-Off Strategies, touted itself as offering comprehensive and tailored strategies for operations, marketing, finance, technology, government relations, regulatory compliance and much more, with a global network of experts as support. She remembers the woman charged with felony theft for an unpaid bill with a furniture rental company. To be eligible to run for a district court judge seat, you must be a citizen of the United States and Texas, be aged 25 to 74, be a resident of the district for two years, and be a practicing lawyer or judge for a total of at least four years. Harris County Democrats (Houston) have been using the same ballot corruption playbook George Soros owned Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs is. Especially if you dont even own a dog. I didnt know anybody that thought she committed bribery., Another lawyer made a similar clerical mistake in the use of a partially filled out form that still contained facts related to a different case. Actually, thats the easiest one to understand. During Wootens trial, Judge Russell refused to admit any evidence about the political motivations underlying the case: neither the communications between Sandoval and the DAs office that started the whole thing nor the half-dozen grand juries it took to get an indictment. Neither was interested. I mean, the guy just didnt understand that he wasnt God, Schulte says. He knew unseating a Democratic judge in Texas wouldnt get attention; he needed to challenge a Republican. Austin Most Allegations of Political Corruption in Texas are Not Fully Investigated By Jef Rouner - October 13, 2021 One of the foundational tenets of America is that no person is supposed to be above the law. Charged with nine felony counts that included bribery, conspiracy to engage in organized criminal activity, and money laundering, Wooten could be sentenced to anything from five years to life in prison. Dallas, Texas 75201. How could three separate juries convict Wooten and the Carys, and how could a court of appeals uphold their convictions for something that didnt happen? One of the grand jurors for the Wooten and Willis cases was the treasurer for the Collin County Republican Party. Learn from it.. So when he saw the report of her exoneration in the Dallas Morning News, his one thought was, Geez, sue the shit out of these people.. Even so, Dave called Wootens office to request signs, which he posted at his office in Collin County. This is the introduction to this website, which will be all about how a small urban Texas county (Wood County) allowed smalltime corruption among its public servants to go unchecked for decades, until it has finally ended up with UNBRIDLED CORRUPTION from the top (402nd District Judge Brad McCampbell, District Attorney Angela Albers and Texas Ranger John Vance) to the bottom (Wood County Sheriff Kelly Cole and his deputies, local police chiefs, county constables, CPS caseworkers, CPS Judge Deane Loughmiller, and the defense attorneys that are supposed to be fighting for the people that they are sworn to defend), and what the CITIZENS OF WOOD COUNTY are doing, and need to do be doing, to take back the power and control of the county that rightly belongs to them. In all, the campaign ended up costing Wooten $112,000: $27,000 of it for the one radio ad that ran on several stations prior to the primary, $25,000 for Clements services, $7,500 for Spencers fee, and the rest for everything else. Mr. After analyzing almost 335 of the most populous cities, we came up with this list as the absolute worst 10 places in the state of Texas: The 10 Worst Places To Live In Texas For 2021 Hutchins Diboll Cleveland Progreso Alton Livingston Palmview Port Arthur Robstown Humble What? One-third of all District Court judges in Texas have been appointed, not elected. He is an assistant city attorney manager for the city of Aurora. 10. After serving as an NCO in the Army in the 1970s, he became a CPA, got his M.B.A. at SMU, and went on to become the CFO of i2 Technologies Inc. Dave and Stacy didnt do anything wrong. After serving in the Air Force, Spencer went into the healthcare field, managing a region for a home health company. Investment options continued to be something the whole family was interested in, and they felt Spencers legislative insights were invaluable, even if his ultimate advice was that any given option was a bad one. If he could unseat one who had taken a bad position on parental rights, he thought, maybe he could finally get some traction. It just takes one jilted man and a few loyal henchmen to put a woman back in her permitted place. The DAO has acted with seeming disregard for the personal, emotional, and financial costs to the individuals concerned., They also pointed out that Roach had been absent for at least one-third of the days normally worked by others in the courthouse, and that he was present at the seating of the grand jury and declined, in open court, to challenge any member of it as unfit.. Wooten, having done nothing wrong, refused to leave the bench. Wootens criminaldefense attorney. When Stacy met Dave, he had joint custody of his twin toddlers and an acrimonious relationship with his ex-wife, Jennifer. It was my mailbox, but I didnt even own a dog.. Harry White currently has a law practice in Fort Worth. Otherwise, I would not have even been on the ballot. Milner wasnt the only one talking that way. His fee would be $7,500, and the rest would mostly go to cover signs, mailers, and print and radio ads. Yet the only evidence of a benefit that the State proved was that Stacy paid Spencer, and Spencer used the money to pay campaign expenditures before he was reimbursed by Wooten. His name was Steve Spencer. But if that were true, I couldnt understand why Wooten and Stacy still didnt have a bad word to say about Spencer. I could be at a judges fundraiser Saturday night writing him up to a $2,500 check and then appear in his courtroom on Monday arguing a motion. She had been accused of taking bribes from a couple, whom she swore she had never personally met, to fund campaign expenses, which she had checks to show she had paid for, in return for favorable decisions in a custody dispute, which she had recused herself from and never heard. Now that being said, when I got arrested and bonded out, in the next year, my business tripled, Walpole says. It is all bad news for Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, New Mexico, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania as their aggregate scores are in the highest quartiles . The FBI in San Antonio also has seen a sharp increase in. Dallas County has 32; Collin County has 13. They got married in December 2006, joining households with their four young children. Here are the 15 most corrupt states in America. She waives her right to appeal. "Southern Texas, specifically the Rio Grande Valley, is the most corrupt area along the border, " said Guadalupe Correa, a professor of government at the University of Texas at Brownsville. He says the first he heard of the unpaid bill was when White raised it as a gotcha moment at trial; he believes it was paid as soon as the issue was known. Two were in Fort Worth, but they werent up for reelection. So she went online. It was still a gut punch, though, when she saw the verdict form. On that November day in 2011, nobody could have foreseen that Wooten, whose hands were effectively tied behind her back without the ability to appeal, would emerge a decade later, Houdini-like, with a complete exoneration and a $600,000 settlement against Collin County. And confused. Wooten did, too. She gets convicted. You get arrested, they take your TV, they take your cash. She didnt do anything wrong, Palmer says. He saw Roach and Milner as bullies, routinely threatening lawyers and judgesanyone, really, who got in their waywith criminal prosecution. McKinney attorney Deric Walpole says that after accusing the DAs office of prosecutorial misconduct in a case on a Friday, he received a grand jury summons the following Monday. John Roach Sr. The will of the people is [Wooten] wins. First he approached Michael Puhl, a McKinney attorney who had run and lost in 2006. It was money well spent. Her lawyers reassured her there was no rational basis for a conviction. Even though hes not a lobbyist and has never been to college, he says he has an effective network of people to help him if he doesnt have the answer. After Wooten was elected, a hearing in the case was scheduled in her courtroom, but she recused herself as soon as she realized that several of the lawyers involved were from her old firm or had helped on her campaign. There will be many other names that will come up as being involved in the public corruption, Wood County Sheriff Kelly Cole, District Attorney Investigator Jerry Hirsch, District Clerk Suzy Wright, County Clerk Kelley Price, Assistant District Attorney Shauna Key, Attorney Cliff Thomas, etc., but I'll get to them as their names come up. Even if she were sentenced to prison time, White wasnt sure how long she could stay on the bench during the course of an appeal. Case in point: while Milner was convening multiple grand juries to investigate Wooten, he was also convening multiple grand juries to investigate Judge Greg Willis, who, at the time, was campaigning to be the next Collin County DA. This story originally appeared in the October issue of D Magazine. They have original jurisdiction over matters such as felony criminal cases, divorce and child custody disputes, and civil claims of $200 or more. Dave filled his time writing her letters and working on his appeal. I can help people with their divorces. That flicker of a plan was enough to get her out of the tub. Meanwhile, Spencer, her media manager, enlisted the help of Hank Clements, an Austin-based lawyer and lobbyist with judicial campaign experience. He's serving five years in federal prison for accepting illegal . In all, I am told, 443 Texas judges are new to their jobs. I was like, thats where I wanna go fishing.. These are seasoned, experienced former federal prosecutors. It was weird.. She figured it was just petty payback from a sore loser, not the harbinger of a scorched-earth campaign to unseat her. Given the timing of the next-to-the-last campaign finance report, and the time those ads began, I believe her reports are false. She said, Do you want to be right or do you want to be free? Wooten knew that if she were sentenced to more than 10 years, she would not be entitled to an appeal bond; she would go straight to prison without seeing her kids. His wife, Judge Jill Willis, still sits on the 429th. A third of the 254 constitutional county judges are new. Collin County District Attorney | 2002 2010, Christopher Milner Friends in the legal community told her she should wait. In August 2014, a three-member panel of the Court of Appeals for the Fifth District of Texas affirmed the jurys finding of guilt 2 to 1. She paid the campaign bills as she received them from Spencer, and then she used her line of credit to pay off the outstanding balance at the end. Witnesses appeared to have been badgered, and despite the numerous grand juries, there never appeared to be any evidence of a crime. Well, crapShawshank Redemption, Wooten thought. They wrote a letter to the presiding judge, stating the DAO [District Attorneys Office] has used its authority, and the grand jury system, to investigate marginal cases against individuals acting in both public and private capacities. But Milner figured he could cut the police department out of the equation on high-profile cases, doing his own investigations within the confines of the grand jury so no one would know what they were up to. Per capita, Louisiana is the most corrupt state, followed by Mississippi. For the State to prove its case under the general bribery statute, the appellate court said, it had to prove that Stacys payment was not a political contribution. The border has been a hotbed of corrupt activity. Wooten noticed an assistant DA, Christopher Milner, sitting in the back of her courtroom during hearings he wasnt involved in. He was elected to fill the vacancy left by Suzanne Wooten. Would you say hes a lobbyist?. In July, Wooten received a call from her real estate agent in Colorado. And they were women. It was the snake oil stuff that was supposed to cure people who were meth addicts, Wooten says. But he was already working regularly with a local television station as a legal analyst. And even if it had, it wasnt a crime. As a result, the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General announced charges against the former. Palmer wasnt able to convince the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to let him go after all of the named parties, however. Civil penalties can be assessed for violations of up to three times the amount of the political contributions accepted in violation of the section. Report Public Corruption. Even though filing paperwork to run for judge isnt illegal, and supporting a candidate who shares your political and social ideals in the hope that the person will be elected and rule in your favor isnt illegal, and there was no allegation of an explicit agreementin fact, there was absolutely no evidence of money ever making its way from the Carys to Wootenthe case was allowed to proceed. I didnt choose this lifestyle. One way Ive tried to just explain it to people who dont get itlawyers dont get it eitherits like I was charged with walking my dog to my mailbox to get the mail when they knew for a fact that not only did I not walk to the mailbox, but it would not have been a crime. Most of the time, Stacy wasnt actually sure where her husband was. But he was able to articulate every single committee in the Senate, in the House, who the personalities were, who they would respond to, and he was always right., One of the grand jurors, still fuzzy on Spencers role, asked, But would you sayif I wasif I was looking forif Mr. Spencer was looking for a client, what would he be doing for that client?, He would be doing something very, very creative, Dave replied. I want to be cystal clear about this, Spencer says. The perfect storm, where youve got this political opponent who is sorry about losing. At the time, she was 34 and visibly pregnant with her youngest child. The Judicial Campaign Fairness Act places limits on judicial campaign contributions. On December 14, 2016, the nine justices handed down a unanimous opinion upholding Daves appeal and overturning Stacys. Dave also hired Spencer.