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Judge who gave Ethan Couch his ‘affluenza’ punishment should have studied Chris Clary’s case


Judge Jean Boyd, who sentenced 16-year-old Ethan Couch to probation after he killed four people while driving drunk might have done us all a favor by researching a similar history that I’ve written about previously on this blog. It’s the case of Chris Clary, another son of a well-to-do, influential North Texas father who got him off with probation after he killed a teenage girl riding in his car. Clary also was a drunk teenage driver.

In December 1998, Clary killed Stefani Robertson, a 15-year-old DeSoto High School student. Clary was drunk at the time, and Robertson was his passenger. As is often the case with rich kids, dad got a good lawyer. Clary, just like Couch, received 10 years of probation.

Amazingly, just like Couch, this wasn’t Clary’s first offense. About a year earlier, he had been cited for drunk driving but clearly hadn’t learned his lesson. Affluenza apparently has been sweeping the area for decades.

Did probation allow Clary to rehabilitate himself in the way that the judge envisions in Couch’s case? Hardly.

In 2009, he was ticketed for driving 90 mph in a 50 mph zone.

 Zip ahead to 2011. The “rehabilitated” Clary, driving a Porsche, was driving down the on-ramp of Central Expressway at Yale. I don’t know where he was looking at the time, but it wasn’t at the road ahead. I don’t know the state of his sobriety, nor did police. But he clearly hadn’t been paying attention. Had he been, he might have noticed Latonya Lyons, a single mother of three, whose car had broken down beside the on-ramp. She was in her Ford Taurus, emergency lights flashing. Clary’s Porsche plowed into her car, hitting it so much force, the Taurus flipped on its top and landed 60 feet away. Lyons was killed.

I don’t know if Dad intervened again, but amazingly, police let Clary leave without even writing him a ticket. Perhaps they were feeling the fever and chills and achiness of affluenza. They did not conduct a sobriety test on a two-time killer with an established history of drunk driving.

Zip ahead to 2013. August 10, to be exact. That’s the day Chris Clary was arrested for possession of heroin and cocaine. Police found a shotgun in the trunk. Stories have circulated for years about Clary and drugs. They continue to circulate.

Wow, that 10 years of probation certainly turned Clary’s life around. I don’t doubt Ethan Couch will grow up with an equal level of utter disregard for the sanctity of human life.

 

Toll road drivers vent (and NTTA responds) about icy roads

Tha Mang, second from left, and Ral Lian, third from left, along with another man help a woman who became stuck on the bridge along with several other cars on Highway 121 on December 7, 2013. (Sarah Hoffman/The Dallas Morning News)

Your beef with local road crews during the ice-out basically correspond to what roads you take for your commute. People have unloaded on TxDOT galore. It’s hard not to, when some folks were stuck in immobilized, miles-long strings of traffic for more than 24 hours. Isn’t there an item in the manual for avoiding that?

Now I have here two items from unhappy NTTA customers. One is a letter than ran in today’s paper, and the second is an email that came my way. Here are both complaints, followed by a response from the NTTA’s Michael Rey.

The letter to the editor from today’s newspaper:

The North Texas Tollway Authority performed terribly in the recent ice storm. This “cash cow,” to have one lane cleared and the overpasses weakly sanded, was a disgrace. Traveling the tollway was far from what it calls itself: “Safe and expedient travel.” There are three lanes, and only one is plowed! A joke. The tollway passes over roads more then going under them. So where is all the sand for those overpasses?

TxDOT and local communities handled the situation far better. This “cash cow” should consider refunding the tolls to all of those who thought they had “the safest and most expedient” road to travel during the storm.

I suggest the Legislature rethink the support and authority they have extended to NTTA.

As for those truck drivers, in the next Mother Nature storm, hire some Minnesota or Wisconsin natives to work the clearing of snow and ice.

If they can bill us, they can refund us as well!

Bill Kwech, Celina

An email that was written and send to this newspaper Wednesday and forwarded to me:

Last night it took me over an hour on the George Bush Turnpike to travel east from the North Dallas Tollway to Preston Road. As you know that is just a couple of miles. I began at 6:10 and reached Preston at 7:10. Checking my GPS, I saw Bush was solid red (back-up) to 114. 

Originally thinking this was only related to rush hour (after all, the ice and snow stopped on FRIDAY), I knew to be patient (but really had no other choice). Finally, as we crossed the Hillcrest overpass, we discovered the problem: The two left lanes were blocked by UNOCCUPIED snow plows and sanding trucks. I suppose the crew had taken a dinner break. Four or five big trucks and plows, just sitting there, empty, DURING RUSH HOUR!

We wondered who in the world thought that was a good decision, and was willing to impact thousands of drivers on their evening commute and plans (we were 90 minutes late to a Birthday dinner in Rowlett). Past Hillcrest all was smooth sailing. 

It goes without saying that taking 4 days to clear major highways after a storm is an indictment of incompetency itself. TxDOT and NTTA really need to explain that and commit to improvements. But, then, to further complicate matters and drive us all to our ultimate limits, they elected to simply abandon their equipment and block 2 of the 3 eastbound lanes during rush hour! We all know crews need and deserve breaks, but the equipment could have easily been parked just ahead at the Coit overpass on Bush which has a large amount of unused space (where manual toll paying used to occur. 

Sadly, the roads were only minimally icy, as proven by the drive through itself. They (the crew) seemed to be making minimal if any improvement while cause a major, major back up.

Has anyone else complained about the gigantic back-up on eastbound Bush at Hillcrest last night? 

Ernie Richardson

A response today from the NTTA’s Michael Rey, media relations manager:

During the region’s recent extraordinary ice storm we have heard a lot of customer feedback, much of it very positive. Others want to express overall frustration with the storm itself and how it impacted the region, we understand that.

Judging by some news coverage and comments from some drivers, I think there are often unrealistic expectations for treating the conditions faced by the North Texas region during this extraordinary event.

Throughout the event, all NTTA roads remained open and passable – meaning, no roads were closed due to ice or stranded motorists. That was due to the NTTA’s Maintenance, Command Center and Roadway Customer Service crews, who remained on high alert until the roads were completely cleared. Crews worked 12-hour shifts over seven consecutive days to treat roadway surfaces during the initial storm and aftermath. During most of this period, temperatures remained well below freezing. Given the severity of the ice storm, I think it goes without saying that the conditions themselves warranted extreme caution on the part of the driver. In doing so, traffic moved very slowly throughout the ice storm, as it naturally should have.

Once again, it was demonstrated that, unlike many other areas of the country, North Texas often gets some form of ice rather than snow. It’s an important distinction because, while snow plows can be used to push slush following de-icing treatment and rising temperatures, they are not as effective for the treatment of hard ice that forms almost instantly or re-forms as a result of a freeze. Stubborn ice on bridges and overpasses resists multiple passes of sand, salt and de-icer. The NTTA spread more than $1 million in de-icer alone during this event. We recorded roadway temperature readings at or below freezing for nearly the entire week-long event.

NTTA maintenance crews treated the entire NTTA system (850 lane miles) by plowing, sanding trouble spots and applying de-icer continuously. Crews maintained 74 sanding/plowing routes and used nine sanding trucks with mounted snow plow blades and 70 dump trucks with large spreaders to combat the ice. NTTA vehicles working the event recorded 66,000 miles traveled.

There are 11 material stockpiles, containing both MD 20 (Magnesium Chloride de-icer) and sand, placed strategically throughout the NTTA system for improved response times. Stockpiles were ample to last through this ice event. The NTTA has restocked and stands ready should more winter ice or snow visit North Texas.

 Regarding the letter published in today’s Dallas Morning News, we don’t think the writer accurately represented the condition of our roadways or showed an understanding of the true severity of the event.

Another customer was confused about ice removal on the President George Bush Turnpike near Ohio/Hillcrest. What they described as unattended trucks are actually “attenuator” trucks. They have crash cushions attached to the rear frames of the truck and lighted arrow boards to warn motorists of lane blockage ahead. They are stationed on the roadway to divert traffic and protect workers ahead.

These trucks are not used for sanding or plowing. They were positioned for traffic protection near a stubborn ice spot on the bridge. Front end loaders had been scraping ice on the President George Bush Turnpike throughout the day in an emergency situation.

Again, the region was hit by a severe ice storm that took considerable time, effort and money to mitigate. We are proud of our employees and the work that they do to keep NTTA roadways safe under extraordinary conditions.

Outrage over Ethan Couch verdict still runs hot, but at whom?

State District Judge Jean Boyd won't face voters again, which is probably good for her after her Ethan Couch ruling (AP Photo/The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Bob Booth)

The outrage over the astounding pass granted to the spoiled, DWI-killer son of wealthy parents undoubtedly has a bottom. We just haven’t reached it yet.

It was way back on Tuesday that state District Judge Jean Boyd decided the deaths of four innocent people and critical and possibly permanent injuries to two others warranted no worse than 10 years’ probation for 16-year-old Ethan Couch.

Couch, in the judge’s view, needed pricey rehab in the Southern California sunshine more than he needed even one day in a Texas youth lockup. If daddy Fred Couch was willing to cover the $450,000 annual cost, it’s all good. Except it’s not, and any reasonable reading of the situation would tell you that.

Michael Graham asked on his Boston-area radio show what the reaction was like here in North Texas. Same as everywhere else, I offered: People are mad, and they aren’t getting over it soon. But mad at whom?


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Murky bureaucracy as a criminal matter

Jerry Cobbs' booking photo

It happens in every bureaucracy. Controversy erupts over some bone-headed or debatable outcome, yet suddenly no one seems able or willing to explain who is responsible.

It’s happening now at DISD involving overly generous commissions for real estate brokers who may or may not have earned it for assembling tracts for a school. It happened recently at Dallas City Hall involving a surprise agenda item that, had it slipped through, would have weakened Uber, an upstart competitor of well-connected Yellow Cab. Last year City Hall was trying to explain how a gas company negotiated a sweet deal to drill on city parkland.

In none of these bureaucratic mysteries did anyone or will anyone take a hard fall and end up at the defendant’s table in the courthouse. That’s a rare outcome typically reserved for someone who’s stealing money.

Not so with the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. A Travis County grand jury handed up an indictment last week against a former high-ranking CPRIT official related to one of those mystery outcomes.

In this case, it was over approval of a grant that hadn’t received the proper pre-screening. What was the proper scrutiny? Hard to say precisely, since the grant was the first so-called “commercialization” award the board had made at the time. Pressure appeared to be on to get grants out the door on this new $3 billion fund.

One odd thing here is that there’s no suggestion that the indicted Jerry Cobbs was out to benefit himself or any buddies, if indeed he took bureaucratic shortcuts to get board approval of this grant. His sin may have been shading the truth to other CPRIT officials or investigators — the old story about the coverup, not the sin itself, being someone’s undoing.

Cobbs’ real misfortune was being caught in political cross-currents between GOP Gov. Rick Perry, a principal progenitor of CPRIT, and Travis County DA Rosemary Lehmberg, a Democrat.

Recall that Perry wanted her to resign over a drunken-driving arrest in the spring, and he dangled a veto threat regarding funds for her office. Well, she didn’t resign, and he nixed the funds. So six months later her office gets an indictment to further sully a showcase Perry project.

Take politics out of it, and Cobbs may have gone the way of most bureaucratic functionaries caught up in controversy. They typically fade from view and move on to work the levers of some bureaucracy elsewhere.

Cobbs probably won’t do the fade. He’s taking the fall, instead. Even if he deflects the charges and gets back on his feet, it’s with the indictment on his record, probably, and at least with a hefty legal bill to pay.

My most personal memories of Nelson Mandela might surprise you

Soon after I heard of Nelson Mandela’s death,  I reached to the  top shelf of my bookcase for a copy of his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom. There on the inside flap was his autograph, which I obtained during a trip to South Africa almost 14  years ago.

It brought back memories. Waiting at his foundation for him to arrive. Listening to him speak powerfully about the future of South Africa in a dimly lit room because bright lights and flash photography bothered his eyes. And then, shaking his hand in a receiving line as he asked about me. I wish I could remember what he asked, or even what I said. It didn’t matter. Star struck and all, I had met Nelson Mandela, a man whose handshake was remarkably strong and a reminder that he had been a boxer in his youth. Then he politely excused himself, saying he was off to London to meet with Prime Minister Tony Blair, apologizing that he couldn’t continue social chatter at a reception his wife, Graca Machel, was hosting later that evening in their home.

Me, then Tony Blair. What rarefied air I was sharing.

The remarkable thing about Mandela is that he was always a fighter. Not just a resistance leader, or as he became in the years after his release from prison, a spiritual compass for a nation that needed spiritual rebirth. That is no small  test of fortitude and character. And that is the mortar that sustains legacies.

In the past few days, I’ve  looked back over things I penned about that trip and came across this remembrance column on his 90th birthday. I thought I’d post it here.

I waited more than an hour in the blistering South African sun, weary from a long bus ride but energized at the prospect of an audience with one of the greatest figures of the 20th century.

Meeting Nelson Mandela has a way of doing that to you.

Mr. Mandela symbolizes South Africa, new and old. His opposition to apartheid and 27-year imprisonment exposed the racist regime’s foundational cracks. After his release in 1990, he deftly negotiated the end of racial rule, crafted one-man, one-vote democratic elections, and in 1994 became the first black president of the country. Remarkably, he did so without plunging the country into bloody racial conflict.

As my shirt began to moisten with beads of sweat, a small security detail ushered us through metal detectors and past the 12-foot walls onto the grounds of his charitable foundation. This was spring 2000, barely a year after Mr. Mandela had done what few African leaders could – step aside at the height of power to permit an orderly succession.

Like schoolchildren, we sat in folding chairs, chatting with the sort of glibness journalists resort to when nervously killing time. Then Mr. Mandela shuffled toward a table, with an aide gripping his arm. In his 80s then, he looked feeble. Yet when he shook hands, his grip reminded that he had been a prize fighter in his youth. And when he spoke, we felt the power of a voice and spirit that remained uncompromised.

That day, he talked about HIV and AIDS in guarded tones, acknowledging the devastation across Africa but steadfastly refusing to question the policies of South Africa President Thabo Mbeki. Weeks earlier, Mr. Mbeki had denounced the scientific links between HIV and AIDS.

The conversation later turned to Zimbabwe’s despotic President Robert Mugabe, whose early history as a freedom fighter in his country tracked Mr. Mandela’s in South Africa. One could sense Mr. Mandela’s annoyance at the questions.

He said that there was a time and place for criticism, and this was neither. In that response, he reflected the unity of Africans, whose shared history as oppressed people made it difficult to criticize outside the family.

On the occasion of his 90th birthday Friday, I’ve been thinking back to that 45-minute meeting. What I witnessed was not Nelson Mandela the revolutionary, nor even Nelson Mandela the statesman. What I saw was a cautious and surprisingly private man for whom a long life of pain, suffering, elation and triumph had taught the folly of rashness.

He survived prison and triumphed as president because he knew when and how to pick a fight. Only years later, after the death of his son to HIV-AIDS, did he more stridently question South Africa’s policies. Similarly, Mr. Mandela held his tongue about Mr. Mugabe’s excesses until last month. I think of Nelson Mandela neither as saint nor sinner, but as a remarkable voice of morality whose intonations the world may not have much longer. In him, South Africa found a soul for redemption and reconciliation, and so has the world.



Your faithful newspaper carriers for Texan(s) of the Year?

This letter came in as a Texan of the Year nomination. Done.

I’d hate for it to look like we here at The News go blowing our own horn, so let’s just let a reader blow it for us.

Take a look at this letter that came in today. This reader was so impressed with her newspaper delivery person, she nominated him and other carriers for Dallas Morning News Texan(s) of the Year. So they are hereby added to the official list of nominees that we get from readers.

I might add that I got my paper every morning through the big ice-out.

Every school district called off classes, and businesses closed. DART couldn’t run its trains. No one got out of the airports. Many highways closed and stores couldn’t get their deliveries.

But somehow the daily paper and daily mail got through, didn’t they?

Congrats, ladies and gentlemen who go door to door for us with the old standbys.

So here is the updated running list of TOY nominees, carriers and the rest:

Ted Cruz, U.S. senator

Wendy Davis, state senator

West, Texas, first responders who died in the fertilizer blast

All first responders who responded to West disaster

Citizens of West, Texas

West Mayor Tommy Muska

Jim Leavelle, DPD detective who was handcuffed to Lee Harvey Oswald

Maria Conroy, Dallas Arboretum VP who spearheaded new children’s garden

Tinsley Oden, director of UT’s Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences

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Wealthy teen learns that even the deadliest actions don’t have to have consequences

Tarrant County prosecutors wanted 20 years in prison, which didn’t seem unreasonable as accountability for the trail of death and destruction Ethan Couch left behind.

Couch was 16 on June 15, when he lost control of a Ford F-350 pickup registered to his dad’s company and started a deadly chain of collisions on Burleson-Retta Road in southern Tarrant County. He would admit drunkenness after his blood alcohol tested at 0.24 percent. That’s three times the legal limit for an adult and infinity times what the law allows for a minor. He also had Valium in his system.

He managed to achieve his blissful state of wastedness by stealing beer from a Walmart before driving into two parked vehicles, killing a stranded driver, a youth minister who had stopped to assist and two other Good Samaritans who were trying to help.

Of the seven other teens jammed into Couch’s truck, four were tossed, and two remain seriously injured.

Tarrant County Sheriff Dee Anderson called the crash “probably the most difficult accident scene we’ve ever had to work.”

Today, state District Judge Jean Boyd, who presides over a Tarrant County juvenile court, can explain why all that carnage by a drunk teen driver adds up to 10 years probation, not a prison cell. Boyd, ironically, announced only days before Couch’s fatal joyride that she would not seek re-election and would retire when her term ends in December 2014.

Boyd apparently swallowed whole the defense argument that Couch was just a poor, little rich boy effectively abused by parents who set no boundaries and gave him everything except actual parenting.

Earlier Tuesday, a psychologist testified that the teen essentially raised himself. His parents had a volatile and co-dependent relationship, and had a contentious divorce, said Gary Miller, who began evaluating the teen on the day he was released from a hospital after the wreck.

The parents argued often, which the teen witnessed, Miller said. The teen’s father “does not have relationships, he takes hostages,” Miller said.

Miller described the mother as a desperate woman who used her son as a tool to get her husband to act the way she wanted. The mother gave the teen things, Miller said. “Her mantra was that if it feels good, do it,” Miller said.

The teen’s intellectual age was 18, but his emotional age was 12, Miller told Boyd. “The teen never learned to say that you’re sorry if you hurt someone,” Miller said. “If you hurt someone, you sent him money.”

So exactly what just happened? The judge sternly told Couch how responsible he was for so many people’s pain, shaking the figurative finger of admonishment, and then she did pretty much what his parents had always done, which is let him skate.

Of little matter, apparently, was that Couch had an underage drinking arrest from a few months before the wreck, this one involving beer, vodka and a teen even younger than him. Blame his parents, who may richly deserve it, but bear in mind that this young man will again be driving the same streets as you and yours one day. Watch out for big, speeding red pickups.

Instead of prison, Boyd accepted the defense recommendation to send Couch to what seems like a fairly comfortable rehab center in Southern California. Couch’s dad agreed to foot the annual $450,000 bill. Let’s presume this is not an option available to the great majority of teen intoxication manslaughter defendants.

Despite all the death in his wake, Ethan Couch didn’t learn a thing he didn’t already know: It’s far better to come from that wealthy place where actions seldom have those nasty old consequences. That’s for other folks.

Trees — suddenly, the ice-laden enemy

Branches of this oak tree engulf utility wires down the alley from me. These wires pop and sizzle whenever it r ains. (Photo by Rodger Jones)

If you have asked me a month ago about the tree-cutting crews that hack away around electric wires, I’d have told you they’re heartless environmental vandals. Who needs all that “easement” anyway?

What a difference one ice storm makes.

This morning — after 30 hours without electricity over the weekend — I took a walk down my alley looking at trees as threats, not friends. Power was knocked out to my street because branches that had grown all around the wires had sagged under the weight of ice and tripped line breakers. That was according to Alabama Power and Light guys who were in town to restore power. They were waiting for tree crews to clear out the branches.

Why, I wondered, had Oncor let things get to that point in the first place?

It’s probably because of neighborhood whiners like me who had given them static for enforcing that safety easement in the first place. Now, I’m a changed man. I want to turn in overgrown trees and bushes. I want order. I want my electricity unmolested and undisturbed.

Who do I call? How do I turn in an offending branch?

Why would anyone plant a pecan or oak under utility wires anyway?

TEXAS FAITH: How do you assess Nelson Mandela’s complex legacy?

Photo of Nelson Mandela at Johannesburg memorial service for nation's former leader

How do you assess the complex legacy of Nelson Mandela?

There are so many ways to get into this question. So, let me start with these three quick summaries of his long journey:

In a powerful and controversial move as president, he set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission after apartheid officially ended. The commission allowed those who testified about crimes in the apartheid era to step forward and tell the truth without fear of retribution. The sins of the past were acknowledged in exchange for individual amnesty.

On the other hand, Mandela was part of a group in the early 1960s that decided to take up arms against the apartheid government. They decided that rising up militarily against their oppressors was the best strategy. Of course, that was not the non-violent approach that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and Mahatma Ganhdi embraced.

And then there was this revelation in Bill Keller’s obituary of Mandela in the New York Times:

Mr. Mandela said he regarded his prison experience as a major factor in his nonracial outlook. He said prison tempered any desire for vengeance by exposing him to sympathetic white guards who smuggled in newspapers and extra rations, and to moderates within the National Party government who approached him in hopes of opening a dialogue. Above all, prison taught him to be a master negotiator.

There are many aspects of his long, storied and complicated fight for justice. So, let me stop here and ask you:

What do you make of Nelson Mandela’s complex legacy?

Read on for some nuanced and insightful replies:

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Our very own bridge guy makes it to the Vatican

As most of us entered the freezing-and-sliding part of winter in North Texas last week, the Vatican was opening its first exhibition of a living architect. Ever.

Which is a fairly long time when you’re talking about the Vatican, which has been around for about 1,500 years. The Vatican Museums themselves have been around for 500 years.

And who was the architect bestowed such an honor?

None other than our own bridge guy, Santiago Calatrava.

Journalists attend a preview of an exhibition of the works of Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava in the Braccio di Carlo Magno at the Vatican. In the foreground is "The Wave," made in brass. (Domenico Stinellis/AP Photo)

The exhibit, titled “Santiago Calatrava. The Metamorphoses of Space,” will feature the first showing of Calatrava’s St Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church at Ground Zero. The show will include 140 of Calatrava’s other works including bridges, cathedrals, railway stations, sculptures, paintings, ceramics, models of stage sets for the New York City Ballet, projects under construction, and models of projects never realized.

The man must not watch much TV.

Spanish-born architect Santiago Calatrava poses in front of his brass sculpture, "The bird" (1986), at his personal exhibition in the Braccio di Carlo Magno at the Vatican. (Domenico Stinellis/AP Photo)

And bridges? Projects never realized? Hmmm…I wonder if it might include a certain Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge and/or models of our two-bridges-too-expensive-to-make?

Dallas and the Vatican. Two subjects I never thought I’d put in the same sentence.

I’ll see what I can find out and update with additional information.

And if you get to the exhibit, send me an e-mail or call and let me know what you thought. Make sure to take some digital pictures.

The exhibit runs through Feb. 20.