Why Black Lies Matter

 

 I walked down the sidewalk on a typically hot Texas summer day. We all know the sidewalk is intersected by a street every block in your average neighborhood, and this was your average neighborhood.  Average for many reasons, including for the fact many blacks live here in peace,  including the one who was riding down the sidewalk on his bike.  Now I was walking in his direction and he was riding in my direction on the sidewalk, and we were separated only by the street which interposed perpendicularly between us. 

In the street a car was idling at the stop sign.  I saw the driver was staring down at her phone, probably pulling up directions.  It occurred to me that she might be so preoccupied with her directions that she might start pulling out into the intersection before looking up again.  So
I crossed with a wide berth behind her vehicle. 

Now the black rider saw something different.  Instead of seeing the driver, he saw me.  He saw me going out of my way to avoid something.  He thought that something was him.  Of course I mind my business when out, so he initiated contact by yelling “Yeah! Go all the way around the black man!” 

As he said this he rode into street at the same time the car pulled out, just as I had feared would happen.  I yelled back “look out!” but it was too late.  The driver pulled out and tossed the rider from his bike.

He struck his head on the pavement and it opened a fountain through the freakishly large gash.  I rushed to his side and tore off every article of clothing decency could allow to cushion, comfort, and stanch the rush of blood. As we waited for the ambulance, he told me something I’ll never forget. 

“All my life I have looked for white racism everywhere I have gone.  Now that today has come, my life will end because of it.  I regret that I looked for racism instead of the threat which was really confronting me.  Don’t let my death be a waste too.  Tell my people that the lies we tell our children are killing us.  Tell them Black Lies Matter.”

 

That boy died out there on the street that day.  While he may be gone, the lesson isn’t. 

 

Seeing white racism where it doesn’t exist is not just innocent fun, it has deadly consequences.   

A Judicial Candidate's Story of Breaking the Diversity Barrier in Harris County

 

De berry fust time I wuz erected Judge, I went to deh cawt, and Lawd, dis wuz dah fust time I was went into de district cawt and didn’t have to sit in the gallry no mo’ with my firends on de chain. Yes lahd, they told me I’se de judge now and I’se serposed to sit on der bench. 

Well, I spec dey didn’ no how to talk cuz when I’se was plopped down on top in der middle o’ duh’ bench they said you aint sposed to git on it lak dat!  Why yo’ feet dangling over and sitting on der place where de turneys put all dem papers!  You serposed to sit yoself behin’ it!

I says, why in der hell you say sit on it when de judge is serposed to sit behin’ it, dat don’t make no sense!  But I sits down behind it anyway.  I neber see der judge sit any which way cuz I’se just waitin most a’ der time wit my hiyed’ dun til’ dey called my name.

And I’d go up ter de judge and say my name all nice and specful’ and we’d all have laugher ‘bout it.  De judge dat was dar befo’, he ain’t laughin no mo’, do’.

Attorneys introducing the Constitution to Judge Ramona Franklin, who is proud of getting her hair did.

Knock dis chip offa my shoulda, beeitch nyigga! - A criminal addresses a black female defendant.

Bad White Judges: Country Edition

Number one, is the Texas Supreme Court which continues to overturn jury verdicts for campaign money.  As far as I’m concerned any judge who takes money from attorneys with pending cases is a criminal, without qualification.  Yet that is Standard Operating Procedure for Texas Judges because they have to have money to run for election.  I would say they should use their own money, but that would mean only rich people could be judges.  Oh wait…

 

When you think about the 258^th Judicial District Court, the real criminals are more often on the damn bench than in the gallery.  Judge Liz Coker texted one of the prosecution team members how to examine a witness in a criminal prosecution and that was barely sufficient to cause her to lose her bench.  The prosecuting attorney who received the message instead of being horrified, this cold calculating bitch thought it was a great way to take strategic advantage.  And she was disciplined.  Yet this prosecuting attorney, Kaycee Jones, got elected to a bench herself in the 411th! Guess the ignorant provincials thought this was a heroic service instead of a blight on our Anglo-Saxon legal system.  Kaycee Jones got voted out yet she still sits as Visiting Judge on the 258^th, presiding over the same voters who voted her out of the 411^th!  Voted her out presumably because she messed up again by telling the judge of the 258^th, Travis Kitchens, that a certain defendant on a case Kitchens was presiding over stole her car.

 

But wait, why did I still find this terrible woman sitting on the bench, next to the district clerk who never smiles? Yep, there she was, on the bench, complete with her unrepentant tongue too large for even her piggy cheeks.  And on one day she was presiding as visiting judge, the only person who objected was a defense attorney who had an outcry hearing in child rape case.  Bet that objection took .2 seconds to make. 

 

The differences between rural and major city could not be more apparent.  In Montgomery County JP 1 you have a self-aggrandizing judge Wayne L. Mack who wastes everyone’s time with his insincere patriotic politics.  He has the pledge of allegiance to the Texas and American flag said, which is bad enough, but he also invites some crazy preacher on a rotating interfaith basis to offer a prayer.  One time I was in there and it was this little old demure black lady who was mousy and reserved but boy she really let loose on that prayer like a whirlwind.  These scenes are not appropriate decorum.  And then there was this jury trial where a panel of 24 jurors was summoned because a defendant in a civil case paid the jury fee.  The defendant didn’t appear for trial.  But there was a lot of space reserved on the docket for this, so rather than letting the jury go when I waived jury trial to try a liquidated claim for under $10,000 when the defendant had defaulted, the judge kept me and the jury waiting while he went through all these motions just because jury trials are a great way for judges to meet voters and impress them with their BS patriotism.  And it’s because dumb white conservatives eat this shit up.

 

You also have the old school judges and attorneys who need to get busy and die, taking the old system with them.  There’s some judges who preside over their Court as a Supreme Village Elder, making peace instead of judicial decisions, crafting solutions they think is best instead of following the law.  The other Boomer problem I run into is the “gotcha lawyer” This is definitely the province of old school good ol’ white boy courthouse gangism, especially in the ignorant and provincial counties.

 

 

Here’s one example of this:

 

Me: Judge, the defense’s argument that he is making today, while it is meritorious, it is the first time we are hearing about it because the defendant did not include this allegation in his answer.  In fact, if you read the defense’s answer it actually makes a frivolous argument which defendant is not insisting on today, just to throw us off the scent.  We can amend our case to meet these arguments”

 

OC: Judge, I have included this argument in my answer.  You can interpolate it from the vague generalizations that I have thrown in there.  There’s no surprise here.”  He shouted shrilly.

 

The Court: I’m going to deny your motion without leave to amend and jettison this case in violation of the Texas Rule against general demurrers.  I’m also going to ignore the special exceptions procedure as set out in the Rules.  Good luck on appeal, son. 

 

OC: Gotcha.

 

This is entitled boomer white trash stuff.  Go take that discovery trial by surprise shit to your ever-nearing grave where it should stay buried.  This why local boys do better in provincial counties, cause they contribute to the judge’s campaigns.

 

Yeah, there’s a lot of problems.  It’s not just race.  Unqualified judges on the bench is bad no matter what, but we shouldn’t be afraid to explain why that happens, even if we don’t like the explanation, and even if that explanation is race. 

Goading Judges

 For those of you who don't read Attorney Murray Newman's blog, how the hell did you find this?  Anyway, he's about the best there is for the uninitiated to read about the nitty gritty going on in the Harris County Criminal Machine.  So read it here.  He wrote an extremely prescient article about Scapegoating the Judges, and I want to add a few things I know Murray can't say.

For so much time, Republicans enjoyed hegemony in Harris County.  Control by one party is the unfortunate product of the fact that conservative and liberals are no longer in both parties, which happened roughly around 1976 in Texas politics. 

While the County seat, Houston, is its own home rule municipality and has always been a liberal city as long as the rest of the big cities have, the balance of the suburb dwellers who were traditionally more conservative made sure that every county-wide officer who must sit for election was elected as a Republican.  For years, the important judicial races were decided in Republican party primaries, elections which attract far fewer votes than the general election, and which also tend to attract the most devoted partisans.  But these devoted partisans were obviously ignorant of the candidates they voted for.  A system of mailers skillfully addressed to likely Republican Primary Voters would endorse the "most conservative Republican" candidates and if you did not receive the endorsement of these two or three mailers, you didn't win the primary.  And if you didn't win the primary, you didn't win the general election in November, because only the Republican stood a chance.  Of course the endorsement for "most conservative" really just meant their check cleared.

This system of political mailers was so truly influential and powerful, that a narrow populist-leaning majority of the Harris County Republican Party Executive Committee was able to pass a resolution condemning the practice in the face of opposition from those who were controlling the Republican party at that time.  I'm referring to the time Jared Woodfill was Chairman.

The effect of this whole pay-to-play system was to make inside baseball in the Harris County Republican party the center of judicial intrigue.  Judges who were slashing you rudely behind your back and gossiping with their silly staff would kiss your ass at political meetings.  Every one of them wanted to grandstand and wave the Bible around, and God, they wanted to talk.  And talk.  And talk.  It was like every political meeting was taken over by commercials for candidates announcing their non judicial activism and vague Protestantism - instead of debating policy and operating the party.  Mercifully, the Republican party no longer has candidates with this disingenuous sleaze taking over meetings, because there are no candidates.  Being out of power purifies the party from the adventurers and opportunists with no real ideals.

In 2008 and 2010, Republican domination started faltering.  Democrats became competitive and suddenly a Judge which found himself/herself running in either party had to make a good case about their actual merit, rather than lip service to party platform platitudes.  Some of the elections were so close that it's totally possible the few deciding votes were actually on the merits rather than the result of a straight ticket pull.  This season of competitiveness ended too quickly in 2018, when the Democrats finally swept all important County offices.  There are still a few Republican officeholders, but even their combined efforts are not able to dictate county policy. 

But the fact the pendulum has swung the other way would be only temporarily concerning if it was indeed temporary.  But as you see the Democrats cannibalizing their own you realize the pendulum continued to swing within the Democratic party.  White Democratic Judges started drawing primary challengers even when the white judge was already doing a good job and was more qualified than the black candidate.  These candidates know that demographic shifts in the city and in the suburbs of the county made a way for demagoguery and black identity politics to elect black candidates over better qualified whites, even within the Democratic party. 

In addition to so many blacks now overrepresented on civil and criminal courts, all the family judges are black women, even though whites are 70% of Harris County and I suppose half are men.  The unfairness inherent in this is that the idea and concept of family differs from anglo culture to black.  With so many blacks coming from broken and dysfunctional families, it doesn't make sense, on the whole, they should be in the position to judge people whose culture has family values which often differ from the values of black Americans.  It presents more opportunities for racial revenge on whites than it does the best interest of the child.

I have seen the terrible behavior of black women at the courthouse when they were merely serving as office clerks.  They were rude, inhospitable, incompetent.  They talked with snack food in their mouth and slurped their iced tea as they hunched unhappily over their work.  They had a chip on their shoulder.  They took their time on purpose.  They made things hard for you if they could.  It's hard to imagine how this same attitude translates to the judicial office, but one must try to do so in order to grasp the enormity of the problem that we are facing prospectively. 

It disgusted me, the black clerks and bailiffs who would so openly gossip and laugh about the fact families were so broken up.  The judges do it too.  If these judges can't even pose with decorum and sense for what is furniture for sitting and what is not, do you think they can make difficult decisions about your future relationship with your children?

Some Black Women Judges Posing With a Lack of Decorum for the "Courtroom"

While one party rule was always wrong, it seemed a rest when the parties where competitive.  Now I fear that the demographic shift which caused the elevation of unqualified judges is permanent, If it is, it is the only distinction between our time and the worst horrors of the competition for power we last saw among the races in the aftermath of the Civil War.

The lesson of the story is two wrongs make a right. Party politics should not dictate judicial candidates.  In Texas, Judges are allowed to accept money from attorneys who have cases pending in their courts.  This is and was a travesty as much as partisan elections are.  With the permanent change in county demographics, the corruption can only worsen now that for those who sit on the bench, a mere reading of the Constitution of our Republic would constitute a liberal education in and of itself. 

It is insulting that attorneys should have to impress an electorate which is ignorant about law in order to become judges.  It is not a political position, and should not be political; in the same way executive officers and legislators ought to be political.  It leads to nasty demagoguery on both sides.  With the racial demagoguery going on on the left and right, it appears that the newest racial demagoguery concerning bail is going to be ineffective.  Setting bail is not the reason conservatives should be against an all non-white judiciary in Harris County. 

Using bail as a vehicle for communicating about the obvious racial problem is unhelpful because it was in fact the founders of our Republic who took the provisions of the English Bill of Rights of 1688 concerning bail and ensured they were made the Eight Amendment.  And the 1688 Bill of Rights was itself the product of centuries of movement towards the right to bail because imprisonment without it was long used in English history by the Crown to persecute political or religious (and therefore political) enemies.  Bail, habeas corpus, and other important rights were the invention of the English legal system, and certainly not the invention of African barbarism.

We need to pay attention to black female judges like Ramona Franklin of the 338th District Court, who has been without notice unilaterally revoking bail by arbitrarily raising it according to no reason she has disclosed to the public other than her hysteric whim.  I am disappointed to see the majesty of a legal system my ancestors helped create become a minstrel farce on which hangs the life, liberty, and property of all our citizens.

We must fix a system which promotes unqualified blacks over whites simply for the sake of check-marking the diversity box.  We must stop allowing judges to take money from attorneys who have cases pending in that Court.  We must stop the election of judges locally and create a system of executive or hybrid executive and legislative power to select judges which will have reasonable term limits, mandatory retirement, and insulation from popular and ignorant demagogic political pressure.

With these reforms, we can say goodbye to the sisters from the amen corner!

 

 

Harris County Bail - Democratic Judges

 

I'm so done with the peanut butter gallery of local Republicans using the fact the Constitution requires reasonable bail as a political football against the current slate of Democratic judges.  Being Democratic doesn't make them bad judges.  There's far worse characteristics when it comes to judges so why not make a better argument?  Because people who know nothing about our legal system get to vote for judges.  Dumbest idea ever.  It's insulting that I have to appear in front of some of these demagogues - just because they have the money to illegally litter their campaign signs in the public right of way.  And now since the Republicans are seemingly gone forever in Harris County, new candidates with no prior party loyalties have no compunction about putting that big "D" right next to their smiling face in said illegally placed campaign signs.

 

 In the bail bond handbook published by the Texas Association of Counties, it even neutrally states that bail is necessary as a practical matter to keep the jail population down.  This is the real nuts and bolts of running a county.  Most conservative voters don't know better, but the people perpetuating this BS certainly do.

 

With COVID bringing real, unmasked, and in person criminal jury trials to a halt (and even more importantly, civil debt collection as well), it was bound to happen that the jail would fill up.  So you have to make choices about who you really need to keep in there. 

 

One annoying example of this phenomenon is the murder of Corey Lennard Thompson.  The family is trying to make so much political hay out of their dead son by bringing up the issue that the guy accused of murder was out on bond.  The only thing he was out on bond for was some chickenshit assault case where he punched a dude over a dispute about girl.  What is a judge supposed to do?  Keep him locked up for two, three years until we can get to a misdemeanor assault trial? Most people haven't even thought through it this far.

 

Hey boomer, you're not for "law and order" if you tear down our legal system just because judges from the opposing party do their mandatory public duty in setting bail. If you're a real conservative, stop complaining about the fact bail exists. You want bail to disappear because you're desperate to make short term political gains in county politics? Be careful what you wish for.  a