Then Huntsville. They just chose not to accept it. Now, she was seated at the defense table, dressed not in a robe but in a conservative pantsuit, her blond hair pulled back in a basic bun. When the judge read the verdict out loud, Wootens husband collapsed and had to be carried out of the courtroom. And thats when I was told the allegation was bribery. Yet the indictment alleged that payments made by Stacy to Spencer, totalling $150,000 between January and March 2008, were intended to induce Wooten to run for Sandovals seat, beat him, preside over the 380th, and issue unspecified favorable rulings., When I read it, I laughed, Schulte says. ! He's serving five years in federal prison for accepting illegal . Texas Commission on Judicial Selection Final Report, 2020. First he approached Michael Puhl, a McKinney attorney who had run and lost in 2006. With the help of James Roberts, the head of the firms civil rights section, they turned the whole thing around in a month and filed the lawsuit on May 18, 2018, with less than a week to spare. Do I really want to be a judge? Wooten says. Judge of the 380th | 2009 2011, Harry White It was my mailbox, but I didnt even own a dog.. Odessa's violent crime rate of 806 incidents per 100,000 inhabitants is the highest in Texas by a fairly wide margin; Lubbock, the #2 city on the list, drops down to 658 per 100,000. This one was a plea to prison officials to let his wife bring his wedding ring to prison and to let him wear it. He asked if Stacy might be interested in hiring him to do some research and consulting on her behalf. She wasnt stealing, Wooten says. Shortly after the settlement was announced in January of this year, I drive up to McKinney to meet with her in her law office, which is on the second floor of a building just off the historic town square, to find out how she was able to magically free herself through no action of her own. In 07, we had sold our oil company, kept some royalty, and everybody was flush, she says. He was convicted by a jury and sentenced to concurrent sentences of 14 years in prison for each count. He was a young lawyer when he met Wooten in the summer of 2008, only a few years out of law school. It was because the jurors couldnt believe the way judges are elected in Texas. During the break, White approached Shook and offered 10 years probation if Wooten would waive her right to appeal. She gets convicted. But before doing so, Stacy wanted to make sure they had somewhere to park the proceeds so they wouldnt have to pay taxes on the substantial capital gains. Where are these places you wonder? Attempts to improve things or to bring your department into compliance with the law will be frowned upon. It has been said that Montgomery County, Texas is the most corrupt county in the state. She never had less than $36,000 cash in a bank account. Attempting to behave professionally and not accede to political influence . He didnt understand that he couldnt just indict people to get them to do what he wanted them to do.. A wildcatters daughter, Stacy Cary had spent her entire life in the family oil business, and she had cultivated an adventurous entrepreneurial spirit of her own. In the following days, the DAs office would begin to use the existing grand jury to start issuing subpoenas for records related to Wooten. John Cornyn and Greg Abbott were running unopposed for the Supreme Court of Texas. 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. Federal statistics on public corruption convictions show the two judicial districts that cover South Texas rank near the top nationwide. Milner told Schulte that Wooten had one week to resign. Or a six-figure settlement. Corrupt Police Corruption scandals have emerged in most of the 14 border counties between Brownsville and El Paso. The most dangerous places in Texas are usually areas or neighborhoods located inside larger cities. One morning, she woke up and realized she was surrounded by elderly farmers. He knew unseating a Democratic judge in Texas wouldnt get attention; he needed to challenge a Republican. In December 2008, a few weeks before Wooten was to take the bench, Milner reached out to Attorney General Greg Abbotts office. He estimated the overall cost would be $100,000 to $150,000. He became passionate about criminal justice reform and started working with Doug Deason and his eponymous criminal justice reform center at SMU. Consulting on other legislative issues for pay was his job. Harry White, an assistant attorney general with election law experience, agreed to join the team. Schulte now lives with his partner, Brett, in West Arvada, Colorado, between Boulder and Denver. Im like, Bribery? (Stacy and Dave kept their finances separate after marriage.) Thats when we discovered I won in the early voting 60 to 40 [percent], she says. Two days after his wedding anniversary, he came home. The appellate judges agreed that Milner was performing investigative functions and therefore was not entitled to prosecutorial immunity. She figured it was just petty payback from a sore loser, not the harbinger of a scorched-earth campaign to unseat her. How dare she, prosecutors were heard saying. She remembers the woman charged with felony theft for an unpaid bill with a furniture rental company. I was elected president of the local defense bar. The ultra-right conservatives here will hate you, they told her. Otherwise, I would not have even been on the ballot. She managed to raise $79,000 in campaign donations, leaving her with $33,000 in out-of-pocket expenses. As I said, Im a lawyer. Shed need at least $50,000 of her own money to have a shot. Her law license was suspended, so she worked as a paralegal and started building a mediation and trial consulting business. Because this isnt a crime under Texas law. (Not to be confused with his son, Judge John Roach Jr., who currently presides over the 296th District Court in Collin County. 66-year-old Eric Clifford, who had deep roots in political office holding in Lamar and Red River counties before being elected to his judgeship, violated virtually every rule of judicial conduct, a 400-page complaint included: Threatening a police officer whose relatives were reportedly harassing a local court reporter; So I had to scramble, do some FedExing, get some paperworkI had copies of everything, Wooten says. Now, he says, laughing, Im the faggot from Colorado.. Milner wasnt the only one talking that way. Of the 80 intermediate appellate justices, 2835 percentare new. Wooten subsequently filed for a Writ of Habeas Corpus Declaring Actual Innocence as a Matter of Law. Mr. She was soaking in her bathtub, trying to figure out what to tell her kids, aged 15, 9, and 7, if the worst happened. Her lawyers reassured her there was no rational basis for a conviction. According to a Dallas Morning News article published at the time, the judge also found that Jennifer had alienated the girls with false accusations against their father. Stacy had also appeared before her briefly after she had sued Jennifer for trying to garnish her personal investment accounts in Daves custody case, and the lawsuit had been subsequently transferred to the 380th because it was related. District courts are the general jurisdiction trial courts in Texas. His clients run the gamut: crypto, natural gas, medical device inventions, nutritional supplements, vertical farming, cybersecurity, edge computing, bottled water. In his third letter to Milner, dated October 15, Sandoval wrote: The real reason for Ms. Wootens success was the radio advertising she did. But the prosecutors had the whole picture. Wooten, having done nothing wrong, refused to leave the bench. Enjoy!!! One obnoxious guy in the second row said loudly, So did you do it? And then you have a split decision. Even by Texas standards, Williamson County is known for its rampant political corruption. Suzanne Wooten had 10 minutes to decide her own fate. This was particularly cynical given the fact that Ms. Wooten was active in the Democratic party two years prior to this race. Harris County Democrats (Houston) have been using the same ballot corruption playbook George Soros owned Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs is. In fact, he was so concerned that they might miss the statute of limitationsit wasnt clear based on the facts if they had one or two yearsthat he brought in Sean Cox, an appellate lawyer, to help with the drafting. I had started to think Spencer must be some sort of Keyser Sze, a con man hiding in plain sight. 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 . We already know. Between that and Stacys sentence, he figured a fair shake wasnt forthcoming. Wooten couldnt appeal. Wooten noticed an assistant DA, Christopher Milner, sitting in the back of her courtroom during hearings he wasnt involved in. Dave was paroled at the end of 2014, after serving 19 months and 10 days. He knew the prosecutors were acting like cops, and there was Supreme Court case law that said if you act like a cop, you get qualified immunity like a cop. Otherwise, virtually every campaign donation would be criminally suspect. Neither was interested. It was followed by Los Angeles with 1,547 and New York's Southern Judicial District with 1,360. It had been that way for more than 160 years. Its a battle scar. The money, I believe, had to have been paid to the media prior to the reports that were filed reflecting no such payments.. I thought we had checks and balances. Spencer and his wife, Kippling, had two daughters: one was Kipplings from a previous marriage; the other was their child together. That grand jury would end up being the first of sixover the course of nearly three yearsto investigate her for alleged election code violations. In order to determine the best states in which to pursue a law-enforcement career, WalletHub compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia across 30 key indicators of police-friendliness. The grandparents sued for visitation rights and got them. He wanted them all held accountable. If she didnt, he threatened, she was going to face indictment and would lose her house, law license, family, and reputation, and he would put her in prison for a long time. Judicial elections in Texas are still partisan. Both Dave and Stacy were exonerated on all counts. Harry White, Greg Willis, and Charles Sandoval did not respond to requests for comment. So when he offered his services as a turnkey media manager for her campaign, even though hed never managed a judicial campaign before, she agreed. At the time, Bob Dole and Pat Buchanan were on the presidential ballot. Over the last couple of centuries, almost every state has tried partisan elections for judges at some point, but Texas is one of only six that continues to do so for judges at all levels. Youre supposed to be raising your children. Plus, they warned, getting lawyers to donate to a judicial campaign against a Republican incumbent in a blood-red county, when their donations are a matter of public record, would be tough. Would you say hes a lobbyist?. Once they were in, they were in. Then he was transferred to Palestine. 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