Criminal Sentencing and Punishment

"Pill Mill" Pharmacist Sentenced, Doctor Who Wrote Fake Prescriptions for Homeless Is Next

Dr. Nicolas Padron was a Dallas physician with a moderately successful practice, Padron Wellness Clinic. Located near the edge of White Rock Lake, the clinic must have been an idyllic setting to operate a drug distribution ring, at least until the feds showed up. Authorities say Padron was part of ... More >>

The Private Texas Prisons Housing Undocumented Immigrants Are a Disaster

Until 2011, Luis lived in Mexico, where he made a living building houses. Luis' wife and children, who are American citizens, lived in Los Angeles. Luis visited his wife and children as much as he could, until he was arrested for illegal reentry. For this crime, he served a three-year sentence at Bi ... More >>

Texas May Be About to Execute a Mentally Retarded Prisoner

At 6 p.m. this evening Robert James Campbell will, odds are, become the first U.S. prisoner executed since Oklahoma spectacularly botched the lethal injection of Clayton Lockett two weeks ago. His lawyers have filed a last-ditch appeal, citing Lockett's death and the mysterious source of Texas' supp ... More >>

Asylum Insanity

Welcome to the land of the free. While we decide whether we feel like deporting you, we've got a cold dank cell that'll suit you just fine.

Texas Won't Have to Identify Its Execution-Drug Supplier After All

The last time the Texas Department of Criminal Justice secured a cache of pentobarbital, the drug it uses to execute prisoners, the Houston-area compounding pharmacy that supplied it had second thoughts. "[I]t was my belief that this information would be kept on the 'down low,' and that it was unli ... More >>

Texas Can't Give 17-Year-Old Murderers Mandatory Life Without Parole, Appeals Court Rules

It took more than a year and two special sessions to do it, but last July, the Texas legislature finally provided a constitutional option for punishing teen murderers. In Texas, 17-year-olds are treated as adults for purposes of criminal law, which previously meant that those convicted of capital m ... More >>

In Texas, Death-Row Gold Diggers Reportedly Marry Texas Inmates for Life Insurance

It's a curious phenomenon, the "death row groupies" who become enamored with men who committed some of the most vile crimes you can imagine. When Scott Peterson arrived at California's San Quentin State Prison fresh off a conviction of murdering his wife and unborn child, he received a marriage prop ... More >>

Doin’ It For Themselves

Dallas County is Now the Death Penalty Capital of Texas

Even after a wave of exonerations have confirmed the fallibility of the criminal justice system, even after the state's supply of lethal-injection drugs has been all but cut off by squeamish pharmaceutical companies, even as national support for capital punishment steadily declines, Texas remains en ... More >>

Texas' Cobbled Together Supply of Execution Drugs Works Just Fine

Turns out, Michael John Yowell had nothing to worry about. A week after filing a federal lawsuit to delay his execution on the grounds that the state's custom-made supply of pentobarbital, ordered hastily from a Houston-area compounding pharmacy last month, might cause an unconstitutional amount of ... More >>

Pharmacy Owner Having Second Thoughts About Being Texas' Only Supplier of Execution Drug

Death row inmate Michael Yowell's last-minute, Hail Mary lawsuit, based on the claim that the state was going to experiment on him with untested execution drugs, failed to sway U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes. In an order handed down Saturday, she dismissed that as "a guess piled on an assumption" a ... More >>

Texas, Fresh Out of Pentobarbital, Begins Experimenting With Execution Drugs

UPDATE: After this item ran, we sent a question to Texas Department of Criminal Justice public information director Jason Clark, asking him -- not to put too fine a point on it -- why Texas doesn't just switch to an alternative method of execution altogether, like the electric chair. The short answe ... More >>

Court: Texas Can't Forcibly Medicate a Schizophrenic Just so He'll Be Sane Enough to Execute

Steven Kenneth Staley's guilt was never much in doubt. The facts of the case, attested to by multiple witnesses, were clear. One evening in 1989, Staley and two female accomplices showed up at a Tarrant County Steak & Ale with guns. When police showed up, Staley took the restaurant manager hostage, ... More >>

As Execution Nears, Plano Road-Rage Killer Claims Inhumane Treatment, Neglects to Mention He Tried To Tear Phone From Wall

Barring a stay of execution, Douglas Feldman is scheduled to die in nine days. His petition for a state writ of habeas corpus based on ineffective assistance of counsel has gone nowhere. He claims his trial attorney failed to investigate the role his alleged bipolar disorder played in the murders. N ... More >>

Texas Beats the National Average in Juvenile Detention Sex Abuse

As the Texas Legislature's special session drones on, the state's lawmakers are grappling with what to do with teenagers -- specifically with 17-year-olds convicted of murder. Last Thursday the Senate approved mandatory life sentencing with parole for 17-year-olds convicted of capital murder -- with ... More >>

Legislators to Consider Measure for 17-Year-Old Capital Murderers as Jake Evans Trial Looms

The Parker County district attorney is keeping an eye on the Legislature's special session. Next month, Jake Evans' case is scheduled to go to trial. The 17-year-old kid from a gated community in Aledo is accused of methodically gunning down his mother and his little sister then calmly phoning 911. ... More >>

Lauryn Hill's Side of the Story

Lauryn Hill will be gone till October. A week after making headlines for signing a million dollar five-song deal with Sony, she showed up to court on Monday with a check for $970,000. But it wasn't enough to save her from jail time. The five-time Grammy winner and highly esteemed queen of neo-soul w ... More >>

As Texas' 500th Execution Approaches, Death Penalty Opponents Ramp Up Calls For Reform

On an August night in 1998, Douglas Feldman pulled his Harley up next to an 18-wheeler that had just cut him off on a highway in Plano. Feldman shot and killed the driver, Robert Everett, then paused on his way home to murder an Exxon tanker driver named Nicholas Velasquez. A week or so later, he ki ... More >>

Faking Car Accidents Not A Great Business Model, Will Get You Sent To Prison, Fort Worth Family Learns

There must be easier ways to make a living than faking car accidents and submitting false insurance claims for those fake car accidents. It also sounds like a ton of work to set up fake chiropractic clinics to generate fraudulent medical records and bills to submit with those fake insurance claims. ... More >>

Dallas Parole Officer Nichelle Derricks Took Bribes To Overlook Alan Todd May's $7 Million Oil Scam, Feds Say

It's hard to forget Alan Todd May. He's the Texas con man who, until his phone privileges were revoked, used to sell spaces in made-up trade shows from his Harris County prison cell, not to mention any number of more pedestrian financial misdeeds. His boldest scheme started in 2008, when he formed ... More >>

Chicago Police Make Arrest in Murder of 22-Year-Old Dallas Woman Brianna Gardner

It was not the scene housekeepers expected to find when they entered the seventh-floor room of the upscale Whitehall Hotel in Chicago: the body of Brianna Gardner, a 22-year-old Dallas woman, fatally shot in the head. Police found a cell phone in the room and, shortly after, brought it's owner in f ... More >>

Kimberly McCarthy, Lancaster Woman Convicted of Murdering Neighbor For Crack Money, Set to Die Jan. 29

It was a grisly scene Lancaster police found on July 22, 1997: Dorothy Booth, a 71-year-old retired psychology professor, stabbed to death on the floor of her dining room stabbed, her left ring finger severed from her hand. The evidence quickly led police to Kimberly McCarthy, Booth's next-door nei ... More >>

Waxahachie Man Gets Life Sentence For Driving Drunk. Again.

In 1997, Blas Hernandez was convicted of drunk driving in Ellis County. It was his third DWI, making it a felony and, since he had two previous convictions for assaulting a public servant, they threw the book at him: Hernandez was sentenced to life in prison. Fast-forward to 2012. Hernandez, who wa ... More >>

Texas Eclipses California As State With Largest Prison Population

Last month, Texas' prison population was right at 154,000, the lowest its been in five years. Lower crime rates, an aging population, and alternative treatments have all contributed to the decline. But as the Star-Telegram noted yesterday, the drop hasn't been enough to spare Texas the dubious dist ... More >>

Today, We Find Out if Texas' Single-Drug Lethal Injection Actually is More Humane

Texas has executed five people so far this year, all using the same procedure. First, a barbiturate, pentobarbital, is administered to induce unconsciousness. Then a dose of pancuronium bromide paralyzes every muscle in the body. Finally, a dose of potassium chloride stops the heart. That wil ... More >>

Texas Executes Prisoners Like Dogs Now. And (If We're Going to Kill Them Anyway) That's A Good Thing

On Tuesday, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice announced it would use a single drug -- pentobarbital, a barbiturate -- to carry out executions due to a shortage of one component in a three-drug cocktail. Overseas manufacturers of pancuronium bromide, a powerful paralytic, have halted shipment ... More >>

Texas Prisoners Cost $620 Million More Than They Did in 1990, Thanks to Longer Sentences

Meet the average modern Texas prisoner, released in 2009. He spent 2.8 years behind bars -- 32 percent more time than his average prisoner predecessor released in 1990. If he was busted for a violent crime, he spent 5.3 years locked up, a 44 percent increase from his predecessor in 1990. You've spen ... More >>

Citing Carlos DeLuna, Protesters Call on Dallas DA Craig Watkins to Abandon the Death Penalty

Rick Halperin, head of SMU's human rights program, has been saying for years what became nationally recognized this week: "Yes, America, We Have Executed an Innocent Man," to borrow a headline from the Atlantic. Halperin has spent his career doing the academic equivalent of banging his head against ... More >>

Too Many Dallas Teens are Getting Locked Up in Adult Jails, Study Says. And That Ain't Good.

An exhaustive new study has found alarming conditions for Texas teenagers housed in adult jails while awaiting trial, a practice that Dallas and Harris counties use more than anywhere else in the state. In essence, the study found that there's really no good way to keep teens and adults safely in ... More >>

Before George Rivas's Execution, His Attorney Talks About the "Poster Boy for Death Penalty"

It's been 11 years since George Rivas lead the Texas Seven in their escape from prison and shooting of a police officer, and the hour of his death is fast-approaching. At around 6 p.m, the State of Texas will end his life by lethal injection. Rivas confessed that he was the ringleader of the group ... More >>

Exoneree: Guantanamo Bay Is "Peanuts Compared to What's Going On In" Texas

Via.Anthony Graves, exonerated from death row in 2010​As "the death chaplain" at Huntsville prison, Reverend Carroll Pickett has counseled 95 prisoners, one at a time, on the day the state has scheduled to end their life. Death by lethal injection, the chaplain found, is not a quiet exit. It's ... More >>

Dallas County Judge Who Ruled Death Penalty Unconstitutional Is Forced To Recuse Herself

Teresa Hawthorne, the Dallas County judge who ruled that the state's death penalty statute was unconstitutional, must recuse herself from a capital murder case, a judge ruled today. Hawthorne was presiding over the capital murder trial of Roderick Harris, who's accused of killing brothers Alfredo ... More >>

Beyond DNA, Difficult Tests for the Justice System

Freeing the wrongfully convicted through science was the easy part. Now what?

In Dallas and Across Texas, More and More It's Life Over the Death Penalty

Via....not seeing a whole lot of action.​In the death penalty debate, Texas has a long-standing reputation for abiding by one guiding principal: an eye for an eye. But the state has increasingly chosen to holster its lethal-injection needles in recent years, with death-penalty sentences decrea ... More >>

NatGeo's Dallas Reality Show Pitch: "Gripping, Gritty Long-View Into World of Incarceration"

​Just a couple of weeks back some Brits asked Dallas County for the okee-doke to film a 3D programme in the county jail for a couple of days, to which the commissioners courts said: Sure, fine. But the request going before Dallas County higher-ups today is much, much bigger -- as in, 120 days' wor ... More >>

"That Could Have Been Me:" An Evening With Five Innocent Men Nearly Executed

Photo by Leslie MinoraFive innocent men who were nearly put to death for others' crimes.​Imagine spending five years in a Nebraska prison for having brutally murdered a teenage honor student but knowing that the real killer is at large. Or rolling over in the middle of the night to put your ar ... More >>

Head of Pot Distribution "Conspiracy" That Included Ex-Cowboy Gets 24 Years in Prison

University of Notre DameBob Davie, then coach at Notre Dame, with a freshman Kurt Vollers back in '97 ​In April 2009, John Patrick Newton was arrested by Drug Enforcement Administration agents for growing, storing and selling marijuana out of an apartment on N. MacArthur Boulevard inIrving. Said t ... More >>

Report: Dallas County's DA Cited as One Reason for Decline in Texas's Use of Death Penalty

​The Associated Press this morning directs our attention to this year-in-review: The Death Penalty in 2010, released at midnight by the D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center. Says the report, Texas is still executing more inmates than any other state -- 17 in 2010, the lowest in almost a dec ... More >>

Realtor Eleanor Mowery Sheets Sentenced to One Year In Federal Prison Home Confinement

Eleanor Mowery Sheets and husband Nicky​And so the long, sordid story of high-tone Realtors Eleanor and Nicky Sheets comes to an end. Four months after Eleanor pleaded guilty to four counts of tax evasion, she was sentenced this morning by U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul D. Stickney to a year in prison ... More >>

Four Months After Hubbie Pleaded Guilty to Tax Evasion, Realtor Eleanor Sheets Joins In

Eleanor Mowery Sheets and husband Nicky​Again, this is Candy Evans's beat -- why, just today she noted over on D's DallasDirt that the former manse of Eleanor and Nicky Sheets is selling at half off the original asking price after it failed to move at an IRS auction in February. Nevertheless, this ... More >>

The State of Texas Cannot Execute The Mentally Retarded, But That May Not Prevent A Dallas Cop Killer From Being Put To Death.

Two Months After Taking Guilty Plea, Terri Hodge Sentenced to Year in Prison

Sam MertenTerri Hodge​The staff was all tied up today and couldn't make it to the Earle Cabell for Terri Hodge's sentencing. But the guilty-plea-taking ex-state represenative got a year in federal prison, because U.S. District Judge Barbara M. G. Lynn didn't really buy her story that, look, it was ... More >>

Craig Watkins Won't Always Talk to the Media. But He'll Talk About the Media.

Craig Watkins speaking at SMU on Wednesday​Speaking of Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins ...This week, SMU hosted a Media and Human Rights Symposium that featured among its guests Watkins, a few profs and even a noted Oscar-winning filmmaker. Watkins delivered his presentation on Wedne ... More >>

Two Who Took Guilty Pleas in City Hall Corruption Case Were Sentenced Today

Hey, Don Hill, how many years in prison did guilty-plea-taker John Lewis get today?​John Lewis and Kevin Dean were among the first two to plead guilty, both to one count of extortion, in the Dallas City Hall federal corruption case -- Lewis in March of last year; Dean, in June. When Lewis pleaded ... More >>

The Feds' Local Tax Busts Best-Of: The Chart-Topping Hits From 2009

​There's magic in these hits hot off the charts, all charged with original star power -- pure power! New, from K-Tel and the U.S. Attorney's Office, this hit parade of local tax preparers, investment advisers and other no-filing nogoodniks currently serving five to Top 10! The original hits of '09 ... More >>

Hey, it Could be Worse. Dwayne Goodrich Still Sits in Prison.

​You think the current Dallas Cowboys are bumming today? Consider the plight of a former player, Dwayne Goodrich. You remember Goodrich. Couple years back he speeds through an accident scene on I-35 and kills two Good Samaritans. Ring a bell? Well, the good news for Goodrich is that in Octobe ... More >>

For Seven Years, Dallas Law Firm Faked Car Accidents. Says Judge, Not Cool.

Not every day you get a press release about an law firm being sentenced in federal court. But such a missive just arrived in the Unfair Park in-box courtesy the U.S. Attorney's Office concerning yesterday's sentencing of Trey Allen, P.C., the Firm Formerly Known as The Law Office of John H. Allen, I ... More >>

Dallas-Based Texas Syndicate Leader Gets Life in Prison