​Who's judging the guys who judge the judges? Well, nobody, really.

That's because the legislative agency charged with evaluating other state agencies' functionality and raison d'être, the Sunset Advisory Commission, got shut out of their meetings and denied access to confidential documents.

Now, it's easy to understand the juggling act the judicial conduct commission must perform -- protecting the reputation of Texas' 3,900 judges from baseless misconduct allegations while ensuring that these arbiters of law interpret it fairly. But when the Sunset Advisory Commission -- bound to respect confidentiality -- can't get access to some of the judicial commission's most basic functions, the balance has been tipped too far in one direction.

The judicial commission isn't subject to either of the Open Meetings, Administrative Procedure or Public Information acts.

"The Commission would not allow Sunset staff to attend its largely closed meetings to observe its enforcement process and barred staff from viewing the memoranda the Commission's legal counsel provides to Commission members for formulating rulings on cases. As a result, staff could not assess the Commission's primary duty," the report says.

An utter lack of transparency wasn't the only problem it found. Remember when the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a 2007 Kentucky case arguing that the state's three-drug lethal injection protocol violated a constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment? A convicted killer here in Texas was set to be executed that night, and wanted to file an appeal based on the Supreme Court's decision. Texas' top criminal judge Sharon Keller refused to keep the Court of Criminal Appeals open past 5 p.m. that night. It was the judicial conduct commission who issued a public warning to Keller.

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Photos by Leslie Minora

Richard Miles second from left, with his lawyer Cheryl Wattley, left, Judge Andy Chatham, Miles's mother Thelma Lloyd and Jim McCloskey, founder of Centurion Ministries

​The ever-expanding and always sharply dressed brotherhood of Dallas County exonerees once again lined the courtroom at the Frank Crowley Courts Building for an exoneration hearing this morning, this time in support of Richard Miles, who they already know quite well. After 14 years behind bars for a murder and attempted murder he did not commit, Miles has been free for more than two years, waiting for the state Court of Criminal Appeals to hand down its decision. Miles finally got his answer in a 52-page document supporting his innocence published last week. His relief was granted based on actual innocence, meaning he was a free man in every sense, including being eligible for state compensation for time served.

This morning's court hearing affirmed the Court of Criminal appeals decision that no reasonable jury, had they known in 1995 what the courts know now, could have found him guilty of the murder and attempted murder at a Texaco near Bachman Lake for which he spent all those years as an innocent man in prison.

Like the litany of exonerations before his, Miles's was a celebratory occasion, but not without acknowledgement of the years he lost. His father, instrumental in gathering evidence of his innocence, died just five months before Miles was released from prison. "There's no amount of compensation that can be given to any individual to compensate what was lost," Miles told a group of reporters before entering the courtroom for his final hearing.

Judge Andy Chatham told Miles, "You're a free man today. ... I'm not just the judge anymore. I'm proud to say, today I am your friend."

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Judge Teresa Hawthorne

​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 and Carlos Gallardo during a 2009 robbery at a South Dallas mobile home. Dallas police also believe Harris may be responsible for another robbery and murder in Oak Cliff earlier the same month. Hawthorne's ruling had been lauded by the Texas Moratorium Network and others as a possible first step toward abolishing the death penalty in Texas.

Hawthorne didn't appear at this morning's recusal hearing, which was held in Judge John Ovard's courtroom. Harris was present, however, handcuffed and wearing a grey suit.

Assistant District Attorney David Alex argued that Hawthorne's bias against the death penalty was clear from statements she made during a December 19 pre-trial hearing. He quoted, in bits and pieces, things the judge said in open court that day, such as: "I remember when women and blacks could not vote. I remember when so-called witches were burned. I remember when gays had to hide to be in the military." Hawthorne said then she wasn't trying to engage in judicial activism; she insisted last month that she was not trying to "buck the system or stir the waters." Alex vehemently disagreed.

"The judge analogized the death penalty to some very heinous times in our American history," Alex told the court. It's obvious, he said, that she has "very strong emotional, personal feelings against the death penalty. ... But none of these things have anything to do with legal precedent."

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Photo by Anna Merlan

​A years-long dispute between a woman who runs a dog rescue out of her home and her increasingly annoyed neighbors has resulted in hundreds of phone calls to Animal Control, a felony robbery conviction, one dead dog and, we're guessing, some pretty awkward block parties.

"This has been going on for ages," Raanel Steel says, sitting in her South Dallas home on a recent afternoon. "It's just nonstop."

Steel has lived in here for 11 years. Her neighborhood is tucked off a major road, but it feels almost rural: the street is winding and narrow, bordered with thick trees. Most of the houses sit on gentle hills. On a recent weekday afternoon, Steel sits in her kitchen with a niece and a close friend. She's almost 60 and has short blond hair; she wears a worn plaid shirt, her black glasses perched on top of her head.

Outside, 16 dogs race around the two lots she owns side by side. In a nearly two-hour visit, they are mostly inaudible. From the street, at least during these cold months, you also can't smell them. But inside the house, even with the dozens of cinnamon candles Steel had burning, the scent of dogs is so strong it seems on the verge of becoming a solid, something you could trip over if you weren't careful.

Eight years ago, Steel started volunteering at the Humane Society and doing dog rescue. "People just dump dogs everywhere" in Dallas, she says. She began bringing animals home from the shelter that were due to be euthanized, or taking in injured or abandoned dogs from local vets or that friends and acquaintances found and brought to her. At times she's had up to 27 dogs on the two adjacent lots she owns.

Her next-door neighbors, a couple named Brent and Nancy Thompson, were less than thrilled about her new mission. "They just didn't like that at all," she says.

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Via Gawker

​Every decent-sized courthouse in the country has its own serial pain in the ass, the guy who thinks nothing of suing the kids who threw a ball over his fence or the cat who pooped in his yard. But there's a special subset of filing addicts: the inmates who while away their time in the pokey filing kooky pro se motions against Oprah, the CIA and Jesus. They undoubtedly belong in the hands of competent mental health professionals, but until our prison system learns how to deal appropriately with mental illness, we have stories like that of Lester Jon Ruston: a Dallas man crazy enough to believe that Katie Couric is stalking him yet just sane enough to file hundreds of often-coherent of lawsuits against seemingly everyone he's ever met.

Ruston's trouble with the law began in May 2004, when he was charged with threatening to kill North Texas magistrate judge Irma Ramirez. He had left her what court documents called a "rambling and profane" voicemail, telling her to "look out her window at the black helicopters circling her building from the U.S. Navy" and accusing her "of sending a Marine to to try to murder [the caller] for George Bush." He told the judge that next week she would be taken to Scotland, walked up a plank with a rope around her neck and "stretched from a red neck to a long neck." He gave her 24 hours to resign, uttered the word "die" several times and repeatedly called her a "'fucking whore' and a 'fucking cunt.'"

The call was traced back to room 102 of the Royal Inn in Carrollton, where Ruston had stayed for three days, including the night the call was placed. Ramirez told investigators that she knew Ruston's name. He was a "frequent filer" of suits in her court -- including ones against Dallas County, Bush and the city of Carrollton. In 2001, Ruston had been accused him of making threats against a Secret Service agent named Jeff Elmore. When he was arrested, Ruston was in the process of attempting to load a crossbow with "metal bolts to fire at the SS agents," records show.

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If you need one of Dallas's occupiers come Sunday evening, this is where they'll be.

​A hearing this morning at the Earle Cabell could have been a First Amendment showdown over Occupy Dallas's right to remain in Pioneer Park in downtown. Instead, it became a simple formality after protesters came to a late-night agreement to move to a plot of city-owned land at Akard and Canton, behind City Hall, per a request from the city.

Lawyers from both sides complimented each other's willingness to compromise in a conversation that sounded very much like a hug feels.

The two sides are working together to file a settlement that would allow protesters to keep the movement going in accordance with requests from the city. They hope to outline an agreement as early as this afternoon, though it may come as late as Monday, after which Team Occupy will dismiss the case.

"I appreciate the fact that you've worked together with this group," Judge Jane Boyle said to attorneys for the city.

Porta-Johns and the city's sprinkler systems came up in casual chatter between attorneys after the hearing, and quality of life issues will be addressed in the agreement -- though it's doubtful the city will bend on its rule against washing clothing in the fountain on City Hall Plaza. No one wants to see that.

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State Bar of Texas

​Friends of Unfair Park who followed the federal City Hall corruption trial in 2009 may recall the name Sarah Saldaña; she was among the more prominent prosecutors on that team. But till I glanced at her U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary questionnaire, I had no idea, for instance, that from 1989 till '91, the SMU grad served as an alternate on the city's Zoning Board of Adjustment as then-Mayor Annette Strauss's appointee; or that she was an eighth-grade language-arts teacher in the Dallas Independent School District in the early 1970s. That's quite the range.

And as of today, officially and at long last, Sarah Saldaña is the newest U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas, following this morning's swearing-in performed by Chief U.S. District Judge Sidney Fitzwater. Took a while to get the Obama nominee the title -- Richard Roper left for private practice in '08 -- but she got there today.

"I am honored by the privilege of serving as U.S. Attorney and greatly appreciative of President Obama's appointment and the consent of the United States Senate, particularly Senators Cornyn and Hutchison," Saldaña says in a statement just sent by the U.S. Attorney's Office. "I am fully aware of the special trust and confidence they have placed in me and of the grave responsibilities of this office. Along with the fine women and men who serve here, we commit to continue the pursuit of justice on behalf of the citizens of North Texas."

​This afternoon at the Frank Crowley courts building, Anthony Robinson, a chief investigator at the Dallas County District Attorney's Office, announced that 17 people have been indicted for allegedly taking part in a retail theft ring that stole an estimated $400,000 in goods. Police have arrested 14 people and expect more to be arrested soon.

"As we speak, investigators are out looking for these individuals," Robinson said.

The crimes were investigated by a partnership between the district attorney's Check/ID Theft Division and "investigators from the parent company of a national retail chain." What chain, you ask? Robinson didn't want to say, because the investigation is ongoing. But he was happy to tell everybody at the news conference exactly how the crimes were committed.

"It was a pretty good modus operandi, as we call it in law enforcement," he said. Basically, the crooks would shoplift from one store, taking off any theft-prevention tags in a dressing room. Then they would drive to a second location of the same store and return the items for a gift card. Then they'd sell the gift cards on Craigslist, eBay and by advertising them on their Facebook pages (which is both criminal and criminally irritating for their Facebook friends). The shoplifters always had getaway drivers waiting outside the first store, Robinson said, and police learned that when shoplifting occurred, "within 30 minutes they'd be at another store, exchanging the merchandise."

"We all know we're in a down economy," Robinson said. "... You think these are victimless crimes, but we as consumers pay in the end."

Robinson called the criminals "very, very efficient," and said the investigation into their activities has been under way since July 2010, under the name Operation No Returns.

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​The following is an excerpt from the Beat poetry of Michael Woolman of Lincoln, Nebraska, available in a complaint filed in Dallas federal court yesterday. He claims he checked in to Baylor for tonsil and sinus surgery, and left with an unexpected gift. Punctuation and spelling remain unchanged.

I was in ,"The Room after ,surgery& I needed ,to go to the bathroom .
I got up and a nurse assisted me to ,the bathroom.
I was going to the bathroom and , I finished.
All a sudden ,My cloth started falling off, I tried to pull ,my cloths up and ,,
My arm pit was bloody, Well I thought nothing of it, at the time.
Well , I came in for a since & noise surgery,? Why is my arm pit bloody ??????
Now after ,knowing ,what Bryan LGH was doing IS
Trying a new way to track people,
By inserting a GPS Device in people, Illegally.

The rest of his "proactclaimatipon" follows.More >>

​Of the myriad lawsuits involving the city, Doug Moore v. City of Dallas et al is among the most expensive -- and getting a little more pricey all the time. This case, for those not keeping score at home, has already cost the city $2.5 million, paid to the state and the feds in June over allegations that the Dallas Fire-Rescue and ambulance provider Southwest General Services of Dallas collected far more from Medicare and Medicaid than they should have by knowingly billing the government for "Advanced Life Support (ALS) level ambulance services for all 911 calls, regardless of whether the beneficiary's condition required that level of service."

It could have been worse: When the filed-in-'09 case came to light last summer, after it was unsealed in federal court, guesstimations were the city could owe close to $40 mil. When it settled with the feds and state earlier this summer, the city didn't admit to any wrongdoing or liability.

But the case is far from settled. On the other side are the docs filed in recent days as the City Attorney's Office and Moore -- who worked in the Fraud Waste and Abuse section of the City Auditor's Office and who blew the whistle on the overcharges to begin with -- wrestle over whether the city fired Moore for telling the feds about DFR and the ambulance provider's overcharges. Meanwhile, the city council will approve next week to spend even more money with Cathy E. Bennett & Associates, Inc., hired in April "for jury and trial consultant services." Initially the city agreed to spend $25,000 for Bennett's services; next week, the amount will increase to $100,000 out of the general fund. Because, far as the city's concerned ...More >>