Posting the sane and insane news about the law and what otherwise strikes my fancy.
The opinions and commentary made by this author is solely his own. It does not reflect the opinion of any other individual or organization including the 83rd District Attorney's Office or Pecos, Brewster, Presidio or Jeff Davis Counties.
Holy Smokes!! That is a bundle of moolah she embezzled isn't it?
Will she be hit by the IRS for failing to disclose the "income" as well?
Embezzlement suspect stood to inherit salon
By Craig Kapitan - Express-News
After more than two decades of working her way up at a Newby's Hair Styling Salon, former receptionist Kathleen Kavooras Pierce had been set to inherit control of the popular local franchise when its owners considered retirement 10 years ago.
Instead, prosecutors said Wednesday as her felony trial began, she opted to embezzle roughly $1 million from the business over four years.
If found guilty of the misapplication by a fiduciary charge, Pierce, 49, could face up to life in prison.
I don't think so as this has all been looked at in the recent past.
Rights group wants judge's law license yanked
By Guillermo Contreras - Express-News
A civil rights group is asking the state to revoke the law license of a judge who has been a lightning rod in debates over the death penalty.
The Austin-based Texas Civil Rights Project filed a grievance Wednesday with the State Bar of Texas against Justice Sharon Keller, the presiding judge of the Court of Criminal Appeals, saying she is unfit to retain her license to practice law. Records show Keller has been licensed since graduating from SMU's law school in 1978.
By J. Louise Larson - New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung
NEW BRAUNFELS - It's a new year and a new chief at the Garden Ridge Police Department. And with her comes a new leaf. Sworn in on Jan. 1, Donna O'Conner is the first female police chief in the city of Garden Ridge, and the only one at this time in Comal County.
O'Conner was one of three daughters born to a Presbyterian minister and his wife, and it was instilled early on that there was no such thing as "can't."
This reminds me of a story that actually occurred to me back when I was a geologist. The company I worked for, Marathon Oil Company, had several different training courses for geologists to show us real world depositional environments and their ancient analogues.
This was to help us be better petroleum geologists. In 1981 I was sent on the Carbonate course which in its first part, we traveled to and flew around the Florida Keys and the Bahamas. (Yes, I know, it was very tough work, but someone had to do it)
Anyway, I collected 5 or so pounds of a very fine, pure white carbonate sand, calledoolitic sand in a clear plastic bag. The next day my roommates and I left our room, which was full of cameras and stuff, and the clear bag of sand which I left in my back pack. We returned later that evening to find the door unlocked, no equipment or money missing; but the bag of oolitic sand was stolen out of my back pack!
I always swore that someone, somewhere, had stalactites growing out of their nose.
Burglars snort man's ashes, thought it was cocaine
MIAMI -(Reuters) - Burglars snorted the cremated remains of a man and two dogs in the mistaken belief that they had stolen illegal drugs, Florida sheriff's deputies said on Wednesday.
The ashes were taken from a woman's home in the central Florida town of Silver Springs Shores on December 15. The thieves took an urn containing the ashes of her father and another container with the ashes of her two Great Danes, along with electronic equipment and jewelry, the Marion County Sheriff's Office said.
Investigators learned what happened to the ashes after they arrested five teens in connection with another burglary attempt at a nearby home last week.
"The suspects mistook the ashes for either cocaine or heroin. It was soon discovered that the suspects snorted some of the ashes believing they were snorting cocaine," the sheriff's report said.
Once they realized their error, the suspects discussed returning the remaining ashes but threw them in a lake instead because they thought their fingerprints were on the containers, sheriff's spokesman Judge Cochran said.
Police divers were trying to recover the ashes. The suspects were jailed on numerous burglary and other charges.
Much credit is due to Jennifer Tharp, Comal County's newest Criminal District Attorney and to Chief Misdemeanor Prosecutor Mel Koehler for putting this all together.
Also credit is due as well to Susan Reed the Bexar County DA who first started and implemented the no-refusal policy in Bexar County.
Comal cracks down on drunken driving County adopts no-refusal policy for weekends
By Roy Bragg - Express-News
Bad news for drunken drivers on U.S. 281 and Interstate 35: Every weekend is a no-refusal weekend in Comal County.
Mirroring a policy in Bexar County, officials are cutting the red tape to get drunken drivers off the road. If a driver gets stopped on suspicion of driving drunk and declines to cooperate with police, the driver will be detained, a warrant will be issued and a mandatory blood sample taken.
Law enforcement agencies began toying with the idea in 2009, said Mel Koehler, the county's chief misdemeanor prosecutor. Agencies used several trial runs to iron out the wrinkles in how it would work. It started in earnest with New Year's weekend.
Official oppression earns ex-cop a year behind bars
Case involved sexual assault of a transsexual prostitute.
By Craig Kapitan - Express-News
A former San Antonio police officer accused of raping a transsexual prostitute while on duty was ordered Tuesday to spend a year in jail.
Attorneys for Craig Nash, 39, had asked state District Judge Lori Valenzuela for deferred adjudication probation during the brief sentencing hearing, pointing out that he otherwise had been commended for his service during his six years with the department.
Prosecutors sought the maximum one-year sentence for the official oppression charge, which is a Class A misdemeanor.
Is it any wonder that California and its municipalities are sinking under enormous deficits?
I just have a hard time reconciling huge government costs and that cities and states are having to make draconian budget cuts yet the City of Berkeley is extending employee benefits.
Something needs to be cut, and no, I don't mean that.
Berkeley set to offer sex-change employee benefit
By Carolyn Jones - SC Chronicle
While other cities are slashing employee benefits, Berkeley is slated to add one more: paying for sex-change operations.
The City Council is poised to vote tonight to set aside $20,000 annually for city workers' gender-reassignment surgery. The procedure is not covered by the city's two health insurance providers, Kaiser and Health Net.
"We offer all kinds of benefits to our employees. This brings our benefits in line with what's just and fair for the transgender community," said City Councilman Darryl Moore, who originally proposed the idea in 2007.
California city considers DUI mugshots on Facebook
By Thomas Watkins - MyWay News
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Police in a city ranked top in the state for alcohol-related traffic fatalities might soon be trying a new tactic to keep drunken drivers off the road: Electronic shaming on Facebook.
In a contentious move that has raised the hackles of privacy advocates and been met with resistance from a police department fearful of alienating residents, a councilman in Huntington Beach wants police to begin posting the mug shots of everyone who is arrested more than once for driving while under the influence.
"If it takes shaming people to save lives, I am willing to do it," said Devin Dwyer, the councilman behind the proposal. "I'm hoping it prevents others from getting behind the wheel and getting inebriated."
A cat has been summoned to do jury service, even after his owners told the court he was "unable to speak and understand English".
Telegraph.co.uk -
Anna Esposito, wrote to Suffolk Superior Crown Court in Boston, US, to explain that a mistake had been made, but a jury commissioner replied saying the cat, named Tabby Sal, "must attend" on March 23.
Mrs Esposito had included a letter from her vet confirming that the cat was "a domestic short-haired neutered feline".
Tabby Sal had been entered by Mrs Esposito under the 'pets' section of the last census. "When they ask him guilty or not guilty? What's he supposed to say - miaow?" She said.
"Sal is a member of the family so I listed him on the last Census form under pets but there has clearly been a mix-up."
A website for the US judicial system states that jurors are "not expected to speak perfect English".
Ahh yes. The old "I pointed the gun up in the air when I fired and I didn't see any cops" defense.
Good luck with that.
Man accused of firing at Austin police
American-Statesman Staff -
Police have charged a 29-year-old man in connection with shots that were fired at officers who were investigating a collision Sunday in Northeast Austin.
No one was injured in the shooting.
Gabriel Benitez Trujillo was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
No one knows why, or are not releasing what they know.
Drug deal gone bad? Lover's spat? Wrong place at the wrong time?
We'll find out some day.
Man shot to death in Kyle
By Roy Bragg - Express-News
A 36-year-old man was gunned down in a mobile home park south of Kyle early Monday.
Kyle Police Chief Michael Blake, in a news release, identified the victim as Gabriel Vasquez, 36. He was found motionless on the ground near a vacant home. Justice of the Peace Beth Smith pronounced him dead at the scene.
Police received numerous calls about gunshots in the 350-resident complex, located just off Interstate 35 in this Hays County community shortly after 4:10 a.m.
A Medina County man was sentenced to life in prison Monday in Kimble County for his role in the slaying a year ago of his girlfriend's husband, Darryl Carpenter, 42.
Richard D. Harris, 57, of Yancey was originally charged with capital murder, but he pleaded guilty Monday to murder in exchange for a life sentence, which was imposed by state District Court Judge Rex Emerson.
District Attorney Amos Barton said Carpenter's family signed off on the plea deal under which Harris agreed to testify truthfully at the trial of co-defendant Donna Leigh Carpenter, 40, on a charge of murder.
KERRVILLE — A former community supervision officer, Tanna Mozel Tyler Hurt, also known as Tanna Brown, was indicted Monday on dozens of felony charges of embezzlement of fees and restitution paid to her by probationers.
“It's a shame a public servant did what she did,” Kerr County Sheriff Rusty Hierholzer said of Hurt, 45, who resigned in September after six years with the 198th Judicial District Community Supervision and Corrections Department. She was the director of the county's juvenile detention center before moving to the adult probation job.
Hurt didn't cooperate with the investigation, which Hierholzer said showed that since 2007 she'd pocketed at least $24,000 in cash and money orders from probationers who reported to her.
How fitting is it that the homes and school of the pot-smoking 3rd graders is in Roswell, New Mexico.
Home of the UFO and mysterious aliens of 1948.
Roswell third graders caught smoking pot at school
Associated Press -
ROSWELL, N.M. (AP) - Authorities in Roswell say two third-graders at Berrendo Elementary School have been caught by their principal smoking marijuana in a bathroom after school hours.
When a responding sheriff's deputy asked one of the boys how many times he had smoked pot, the boy replied he has "hit it hard a lot."
Chaves County Sheriff's Lt. Britt Snyder told the Roswell Daily Record deputies have responded to calls about drugs in elementary schools before.
But Snyder says the Jan. 10 incident marked the first time he's ever heard of third-graders using drugs.
According to police reports, principal Kathleen Gallaway doesn't want to press charges and will punish the children "administratively through the school."
The sheriff's office contacted the Children, Youth and Families Department and determined the case to be closed.
They had to be something really good, like Bill Miller BBQ french fries.
Even still, shooting someone over french fries? Really?
Police say man shot over french fry argument
CBS Philly -
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - A man was shot after an apparent argument over fast food in the city’s Northern Liberties section early Monday morning.
The two men were in a parked car near the intersection of 2nd and Callowhill Streets, eating fast food when an argument broke out over french fries, according to police.
The two men got out of the car, started fighting, and investigators say that’s when one of them pulled a gun and shot the other.
The victim was taken to Hahnemann University Hospital in critical condition.
Witnesses tell police the shooter drove off in a silver Mercedes. The hunt continues for that car.
No word on what started the argument over the fries.
