His clients run the gamut: crypto, natural gas, medical device inventions, nutritional supplements, vertical farming, cybersecurity, edge computing, bottled water. During the break, White approached Shook and offered 10 years probation if Wooten would waive her right to appeal. The grandparents later alleged that their daughter and son-in-law moved to Utah with the girls without telling them. The 43-year-old Collin County District Court judge was used to observing the courtroom from the opposite vantage point. 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. Attempts to improve things or to bring your department into compliance with the law will be frowned upon. She never had less than $36,000 cash in a bank account. 15. Most judges were former prosecutors with no family law experience. A big part of his job is to help the police department implement a consent decree issued by the Colorado Attorney Generals Office after it found a history of racial bias in the department. It was followed by Los Angeles with 1,547 and New York's Southern Judicial District with 1,360. At one point, according to a Collin County Bar Association judicial poll, it was 12 percent, the lowest in the history of the survey. Neither was interested. They got married in December 2006, joining households with their four young children. Hes in Dallas on business. In 2004, Milner indicted both Dallas County Sheriff Jim Bowles and Denton County Sheriff Weldon Lucas in a case alleging improper payments made by a jail commissary vendor. I mean, its just mind blowing., Over the course of his career, he had numerous encounters with Milner and Roach in Collin County, and, even though he didnt know her, he had even donated a small amount to Wootens campaign. You have to understand what novices we were; of course, most of us are. The laws werent terrible, per se. Dallas, Texas 75201. With his Gregory Peck eyeglass frames and awkwardly oversize pinstripe suit, White resembled Atticus Finch if Atticus Finch were in the Federalist Society. No, Dave replied. Word of her intentions got around, and, in December 2007, she started receiving calls from Steve Spencer, a marketing-and-lobbying one-man band based in Austin who was known for wearing flashy clothes and driving nice rental cars. The Most Lawless County in Texas Suzanne Wooten did the impossible and became the first candidate to defeat a sitting judge in Collin County. John Roach Sr. And thats when I was told the allegation was bribery. Yet the only evidence of a benefit that the State proved was that Stacy paid Spencer, and Spencer used the money to pay campaign expenditures before he was reimbursed by Wooten. Wooten noticed an assistant DA, Christopher Milner, sitting in the back of her courtroom during hearings he wasnt involved in. But during the trial, when the jury stopped making eye contact with her, Wooten knew she was in trouble. Harry White currently has a law practice in Fort Worth. Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Trevio talks to reporters Oct. 31, 2011, at the Hidalgo County sheriff's office in Edinburg, Texas. Shell just let anybody off.. But despite the complexities of the accounting minutiae, Schulte believes the real reason the jury convicted Wooten is actually pretty simple. Even after the Spencers moved back to Texas, the grandparents werent notified, and they were unable to see their grandchildren for five years. This advocacy was his passion, something he did free of charge for his own personal ends. I dont think this set of facts has ever happened, he says. I never even bothered to get it expunged. In 07, we had sold our oil company, kept some royalty, and everybody was flush, she says. In fact, he asked us to hire a lobbyist, but therewe do have a lobbyist. The $150,000 that Stacy paid Spencer from January 2008 to March 2008 was all deposited in Spencers joint checking account with his wife. I didnt choose this lifestyle. 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. The 380th Judicial District Court in Collin County was created in 1996. And the consequence of that will almost certainly kill hundreds of Texans. From 2015 to 2020, the Texas Rangers completed more than 560 public corruption case investigations, but only 67 of those cases have been prosecuted, according to DPS data analyzed by . Spencer, after all, was the fulcrum between Wooten and the Carys. So my attention was drawn to Collin County, because its the reddest county in the reddest state, Spencer says. What followed is the unbelievable, epic tale of the craziest case in the history of jurisprudence. She needed to meet her opponent in his own primary, in March. After Wooten was elected, a hearing in the case was scheduled in her courtroom, but she recused herself as soon as she realized that several of the lawyers involved were from her old firm or had helped on her campaign. On March 25, 2015, a different trio of judges on the Court of Appeals for the Fifth District of Texas came to a different result in Daves case. (LogOut/ Their surprise was understandable. 21. The police eventually tracked her down in a womens shelter in Louisiana, and the district attorneys office brought her before Wooten for a bench trial. He encourages cops, prosecutors to subvert the will of the people and indict her for something that isnt a crime. There are currently 485 district courts in the state. Then Huntsville. Of the 80 intermediate appellate justices, 2835 percentare new. Her bangs are now tinged with gray, but her diamond stud earrings match the intensity of her bright blue eyes. But for that, Wooten would never have obtained her exoneration. At the time, she was 34 and visibly pregnant with her youngest child. She was soaking in her bathtub, trying to figure out what to tell her kids, aged 15, 9, and 7, if the worst happened. When the judge read the verdict out loud, Wootens husband collapsed and had to be carried out of the courtroom. Although he told the Carys about Wooten at some point, Spencer says he also told them he didnt want them involved in her campaign. I was elected president of the local defense bar. Shed need at least $50,000 of her own money to have a shot. There she met Dave Cary, a Northern Californian who had grown up in an old mining town and started his education in a one-room schoolhouse. During voir dire, when the attorneys and the judge went into chambers, he says he found himself alone in a room of 100 or more potential jurors. Hes brilliant. (LogOut/ Wooten had considered running as an independent, because she felt judicial races shouldnt be partisan and party affiliation shouldnt make a difference. Wood County District Attorney Angela Albers-A woman whose physical ugliness is only surpassed by Brandons, and only got her job by going along with her best friend Brandon Baades unscrupulous plan to take over the Wood County DAs office by making false accusations of sexual harassment against her former boss Jim Wheeler. Friends in the legal community told her she should wait. Yes, that is the university that was founded by Pat Robertson, who believes strange shit like that people can get demon possessed by buying used shirts at yard sales that are already demon possessed. And it was the best thing that ever happened in my career. Between 2015 and 2021, the Texas Rangers completed investigations into more than 560 public integrity and corruption complaints, including allegations of theft, bribery, abuse of office, sexual. But before the agency could conclude its investigation, Milner got what he had been after. Before Wooten was sworn in on January 1, 2009, Charles Sandoval made his first attempts at sabotage. Dave filled his time writing her letters and working on his appeal. He looks like a middle-aged dad, which he is. It isnt a crime to spend the money you earn. He and Roach were concerned that if Greg Willis became the new DA, hed drop the charges against Wooten. Lindsay Lohan used it. White had been participating with Milner in the grand jury investigations since at least December 2008, and Abbott had been briefed on the progress of the case. 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. Sometimes Im the guy who knows the guy.. New York drops to No. Her lowest point came the night before the verdict. Smith County has a long been association with police corruption and misconduct with one local blogger calling it The Corruption . Known as Hang Them All Sandoval, he had an abysmal approval rating among members of the local bar. 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. Except, it turned out, for Judge Kerry Russell, the visiting judge from Tyler assigned to the case. Attempting to behave professionally and not accede to political influence . On that November day in 2011, nobody could have foreseen that Wooten, whose hands were effectively tied behind her back without the ability to appeal, would emerge a decade later, Houdini-like, with a complete exoneration and a $600,000 settlement against Collin County. The only saving grace was that the jury had spared her a first-degree felony conviction, so now the worst-case scenario was 20 years. Beginning in 2005, he started going to Austin to try to amend laws regarding parental rights that he felt were unconstitutional. When I catch him on the phone in March, he says they just had a big snowstorm and its pretty outside, the fresh powder blanketing his new home. She has the no-nonsense, salty-for-emphasis, English teacher-ish temperament of an effective mediator, which she now is. Suzanne Wooten had 10 minutes to decide her own fate. The allegation was that two years prior he had mistakenly filed a document that hadnt yet been notarized; when the clerk had caught the error, hed had the document notarized after the fact. Suite 2100 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. Instead, the evidence mainly focused on the timing of payments made by the Carys to Spencer and the timing of bills sent by Spencer to Wooten. He estimated the overall cost would be $100,000 to $150,000. Judge John Roach Sr. is rumored to have retired to New Mexico; his son, Judge John Roach Jr., currently sits on the 296th. He says he agreed to do consulting work on behalf of both Stacy and Dave for pay and that any advice he gave them with regard to parental rights he was glad to provide for free. She lived under a bridge for days before finally hitchhiking to Louisiana. Judge of the 429th | 2009 present, Greg Willis, (husband of Jill Willis) It was the Tuesday before Thanksgiving in 2011, and the jury just wanted to go home. There is no dispute that Wooten, for her part, paid every bill she received from Spencer. Lubbock's. And I still find it difficult to fathom. It isnt a crimealthough its not smartto use money earned from one client to pay bills for another before they pay you back because you dont want to admit to anyone that youre broke. Instead of the usual assistant district attorney who presented cases to the grand jury, Assistant District Attorneys Greg Davis and Christopher Milner presented the cases against Wooten and Willis. The ultra-right conservatives here will hate you, they told her. The AGs office missed it, too. Over half of the inhabitants reside in the county seat of Tyler with the rest residing in small rural towns. A tall man with piercing eyes, Milner had the aura of someone youd best not mess with. If he could unseat one who had taken a bad position on parental rights, he thought, maybe he could finally get some traction. I spent six months conducting interviews and reviewing hundreds of pages of records trying to understand what happened to Suzanne Wooten. In July, Wooten received a call from her real estate agent in Colorado. Spencer pled guilty. The FBI in San Antonio also has seen a sharp increase in. The FBI in San Antonio also has seen a sharp increase in . She wanted to move fast; the family already had several offers on the table for the oil business. Based on Milners use of the grand jury as a manipulative investigative tooland Roachs knowledge of itPalmer felt he had enough to go after the pair. Dave and Stacy didnt do anything wrong. She figured it was just petty payback from a sore loser, not the harbinger of a scorched-earth campaign to unseat her. My experience is completely different from Wootens. After analyzing federal corruption convictions, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review bestowed a new title on Edinburg: the dirtiest town, in the most crooked county, in the most bribable state. He has just flown in from Virginia, where he had been caring for his daughter who was recently in a car accident. And confused. From the Rio Grande Valley to Val Verde County the integrity of public officials has been compromised on a massive scale. With only two months to win the primary, she started attending every meeting she couldJunior League, Rotary Club, political party, chamber of commerce. In August 2014, a three-member panel of the Court of Appeals for the Fifth District of Texas affirmed the jurys finding of guilt 2 to 1. At first, while Dave was in the gang tank in the Billy Moore Correctional Center outside of Tyler, shed visit every week. (LogOut/ Stacy disagrees. Stacy appealed her conviction first. Palmer wasnt able to convince the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to let him go after all of the named parties, however. I was at a judicial conference in San Francisco when they indicted me, Wooten says. The price of oil was spiking, and the siblings thought it might be a good time to sell. Ben Smith, a former ADA from Roachs office, currently sits on the 380th. He never looked at that as a failure. Wooten assured Spencer thatbetween her generous law firm salary, savings, and a $50,000 line of creditshe had sufficient funds at her disposal to cover anything she couldnt raise. This time, Sandoval named Jennifer the sole managing conservator of the girls, sanctioned Dave $50,000 for filing numerous frivolous pleadings, and ordered him to pay Jennifers attorneys fees in the amount of $417,000. But when her first financial report was due in mid-January, the Secretary of States office told her they didnt have her listed as a candidate. She said, Do you want to be right or do you want to be free? Wooten knew that if she were sentenced to more than 10 years, she would not be entitled to an appeal bond; she would go straight to prison without seeing her kids. 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. In his third letter to Milner, dated October 15, Sandoval wrote: The real reason for Ms. Wootens success was the radio advertising she did. I thought thats what we were there for., The district attorney at the time was John Roach Sr., a white-haired Air Force veteran who preferred to be addressed as Judge Roach in recognition of his previous two decades on the bench, having taken the opposite approach to the usual legal career progression. He wanted them all held accountable. I was like, thats where I wanna go fishing.. Next: A famously combative governor presides over one of the most corrupt states in the Union. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. 2 Constable Kelly Smith-A man (and I use that term very loosely here) who has been in law enforcement for almost 25 years and has managed to climb ALL THE WAY DOWN the law enforcement ladder from county cop to police chief to now being just one rung above a WalMart security guard as a constable. The prayer for relief included damages for mental anguish, lost wages, and punitive damages. They filed a report stating that the Collin County DAs office was misusing the grand jury to undertake politically motivated investigations. In all, the campaign ended up costing Wooten $112,000: $27,000 of it for the one radio ad that ran on several stations prior to the primary, $25,000 for Clements services, $7,500 for Spencers fee, and the rest for everything else. But Spencer confirmed what her law partners had already told her: to run in Collin County as anything other than a Republican would be futile. 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. If there was, every judge in the state of Texas could be indicted as well. Of course, those are some of the most populated states in the . John Roach Sr. was running uncontested for the 199th. Its tempting to think that things have improved. Texas Attorney General | 2002 2015. Wooten and Jill Willis, who were friends, were also outsiders: they were rare examples of Collin County jurists who had not taken the bench via the DAs office. The process invites abuse, and Walker's reporting led to an audit that uncovered corruption. 750 North St.Paul St. She said that from the beginning, the cases against the judges seemed off. Because those juries never had the whole picture. He didnt want anything to jeopardize Wooten (who knew nothing about his dealings with the Carys). In addition to Collin County, the complaint named Assistant District Attorney Christopher Milner and his boss, District Attorney John Roach Sr., and Assistant Attorney General Harry White and his boss, Attorney General Greg Abbott. In Collin County, where courts utilized the second pick-a-pal method, it was possible to end up with a grand jury made up entirely of strategic, political appointees. There will be many other names that will come up as being involved in the public corruption, Wood County Sheriff Kelly Cole, District Attorney Investigator Jerry Hirsch, District Clerk Suzy Wright, County Clerk Kelley Price, Assistant District Attorney Shauna Key, Attorney Cliff Thomas, etc., but Ill get to them as their names come up. Sometimes Im the guy, he says. Her chances of stumbling upon the John Wayne of her dreams were about the same as drilling a gusher in the middle of the Texas Motorplex. They werent stupid. Because judicial elections are rarely contested, gubernatorial appointments play an outsize role. (Not to be confused with his son, Judge John Roach Jr., who currently presides over the 296th District Court in Collin County. Wooten is farsighted, and she was familiar with the form from her time on the bench, so it was easy for her to decipher the jurys findings as the judge silently flipped through the pages: guilty, guilty, guilty. "Southern Texas, specifically the Rio Grande Valley, is the most corrupt area along the border, " said Guadalupe Correa, a professor of government at the University of Texas at Brownsville. The bigger problem was the inconsistent way judges enforced them. With that in mind, Best Life set out to determine the most corrupt state in America. Copyright 2023, D Magazine Partners, Inc. We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. Since the first district court was established in Collin County in 1846, no one had challenged an incumbent judge, whether in a primary or general election. Blow the whi The whole thing was a Catch-22. Most people who arent lawyers or involved in the justice system go, How can they do that? In addition to discussing the issue of parental rights, Stacy mentioned that her father, who was getting on in years, had recently transferred his oil company to his four children. Time, she was 34 and visibly pregnant with her youngest child intensity her. Commenting using your WordPress.com account Im the guy.. New York drops to no ; s. i... Agent in Colorado motivated investigations of us are or involved in Inc. we use cookies to that... The grandparents later alleged that their daughter and son-in-law most corrupt counties in texas to Utah the! Want to be free case in the reddest County in Texas Suzanne did! 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