They talked over the next few days, and Stacy agreed to pay him $150 per hour up to $250,000 for his services. Since 1846, the Texas Constitution has mandated that all Texas judgesfrom the Supreme Court of Texas to justices of the peaceare to be selected by general election. 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. Even though Caton was disparaged as a divorce, the race ended up being relatively close. The Civil Rights Division may also be contacted via telephone at 512-463-2642 or 888-452-4778 (in Texas only). Stacy and her sister-in-law sent him the Economist and the Wall Street Journal. Beginning in 2005, he started going to Austin to try to amend laws regarding parental rights that he felt were unconstitutional. Their surprise was understandable. It was followed by Los Angeles with 1,547 and New York's Southern Judicial District with 1,360. But they let the others off the hook, finding their involvement in investigative functions was more limited. That didnt pan out, but Spencer was able to help with other company matters that he found useful. 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. When she was running, I had similar feelings that Judge Wooten did, that Charles Sandoval was a complete moron and an asshole and needed to be removed, he says. He still has an active consulting practice, although he has not worked on another judicial campaign. 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. 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. One of the grand jurors for the Wooten and Willis cases was the treasurer for the Collin County Republican Party. In December 2008, a few weeks before Wooten was to take the bench, Milner reached out to Attorney General Greg Abbotts office. Change), You are commenting using your Twitter account. There would be no opponent in November. Dallas, Texas 75201. 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. From January to March 2008, she paid him a total of $150,000: $50,000 on January 4, $25,000 on January 30, $25,000 on February 14, $25,000 on February 26, $10,000 on March 7, and $15,000 on March 14. His name was Steve Spencer. He encourages cops, prosecutors to subvert the will of the people and indict her for something that isnt a crime. 402n District Judge Brad McCampbell-A man who got his job only because the people of Wood County were fed up with the CORRUPTION of his predecessor former District Judge Jeff Fletcher, so they gave him a chance by electing him to replace Fletcher and he has done nothing but slap those citizens in the face at every chance he gets by doing whatever immoral deed Brandon Baade tells him to do. 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. Suzanne Wooten had 10 minutes to decide her own fate. As far as I know, everybody had Wootens back. But, as the pragmatic daughter of a career Air Force officer puts it, I am really not a kill yourself kind of gal. So she started looking for ways to make something out of the situation. At the time, under state law, to determine the members of the grand jury, district court judges had two options. Texas Attorney General | 2002 2015. But the matter had ultimately been dropped. I can help people write appeal bonds. Meanwhile, Spencer, her media manager, enlisted the help of Hank Clements, an Austin-based lawyer and lobbyist with judicial campaign experience. Thats when we discovered I won in the early voting 60 to 40 [percent], she says. Collin County District Attorney | 2002 2010, Christopher Milner (LogOut/ He was a young lawyer when he met Wooten in the summer of 2008, only a few years out of law school. She figured it was just petty payback from a sore loser, not the harbinger of a scorched-earth campaign to unseat her. 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. The reason I laughed was theres not a district judge in the world thats not going to quash this indictment.. There are over 200,000 inhabitants, approximately 70% white. 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 I'll get to them as their names come up. At one point, according to a Collin County Bar Association judicial poll, it was 12 percent, the lowest in the history of the survey. Considering that Wooten wasnt able to practice law and had to step down from the bench after her indictment in 2010 until the State Bar of Texas reinstated her license in 2017; and considering that she had again attempted to run for an open seat in 2020 but the Collin County Republican Party deemed her ineligible, claiming she hadnt been a practicing attorney for the four years prior, contrary to the State Bars retroactive reinstatement orderit wasnt nearly enough. She didnt even know he was suffering from thrombosis until she discovered theyd moved him to the medical unit in Galveston. Because those juries never had the whole picture. And Milner and White, their henchmen, have moved on to private practice. But in the end, I will discover that no matter how hard people try to distort it, the truth tends to be clear at its core. And they were women. She never had less than $36,000 cash in a bank account. I never even bothered to get it expunged. During Wootens trial, Judge Russell refused to admit any evidence about the political motivations underlying the case: neither the communications between Sandoval and the DAs office that started the whole thing nor the half-dozen grand juries it took to get an indictment. He argued that the fees should have been paid before the ads ran, and, according to her campaign finance reports, she didnt have enough funds in her campaign account to pay them. I promise you, I never would have found that lobbyist.. 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. The money, I believe, had to have been paid to the media prior to the reports that were filed reflecting no such payments.. Henderson. Hes brilliant. Brings new meaning to the phrase Sunday Funday. She says notes like this pop up all the time in places they shouldnt, like in her car insurance folder. (Although you cant run after you turn 75.). He had mental health and addiction issues. Just the other day, Stacy found a tissue-thin piece of paper with a note from him in faint prison pencil. Both indictments were thrown out; the judge in Bowles case noted that the sheriff had been prosecuted for behavior that, even if true, did not constitute a criminal offense. And everybody was innocent because they didnt do anything wrong. 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. When Spencer first met the Carys, he already had a plan to unseat Sandoval, but he hadnt yet identified a candidate. Copyright 2023, D Magazine Partners, Inc. We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. He made his fortune when the Irving-based business went public in the late 1990s, going from a $1 million operation to a $5 billion behemoth with Dave as CFO. This one was a plea to prison officials to let his wife bring his wedding ring to prison and to let him wear it. Were going to appeal this until the end of time.. Weird stuff kept happening. If there was, every judge in the state of Texas could be indicted as well. There was nothing left for her to do but wrap up her practice and order her robe. They got married in December 2006, joining households with their four young children. Smith County has a long been association with police corruption and misconduct with one local blogger calling it The Corruption . Wooten was familiar with his namethey ran in some of the same circles and had some of the same friendsand she needed the help. How dare she, prosecutors were heard saying. She didnt do anything wrong, Palmer says. A tall man with piercing eyes, Milner had the aura of someone youd best not mess with. So one of the things that I said early on is, if this stands, every judge in the state of Texas could be indicted tomorrow, Schulte says. The FBI in San Antonio also has seen a sharp increase in . During the legislative session that ended in 2007, he started to wonder if he was going about his parental rights advocacy the wrong way. Any claim that they came on as independent prosecutors late in the game was pure fiction. He's serving five years in federal prison for accepting illegal . They never give it back, Wooten says. In a daze, she followed her lawyers, Peter Schulte and Toby Shook, to the attorney-client conference room for a 10-minute break before sentencing. Judicial elections in Texas are still partisan. Learn from it.. It just takes one jilted man and a few loyal henchmen to put a woman back in her permitted place. He kept copious journals in faint, prison-approved pencil. Harris County Democrats (Houston) have been using the same ballot corruption playbook George Soros owned Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs is. These six checks would later constitute the six bribery counts in Dave, Stacy, and Wootens criminal court cases. 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. (Not to be confused with his son, Judge John Roach Jr., who currently presides over the 296th District Court in Collin County. And it was the best thing that ever happened in my career. Most judges were former prosecutors with no family law experience. Friends in the legal community told her she should wait. He and his wife are divorced but, he says, amicably so. By law, each county in the state must be served by at least one, which, for small rural counties, can be shared. Spencer pled guilty. Schulte started as a police officer in McKinney before getting his law license and going into private practice. Dave was paroled at the end of 2014, after serving 19 months and 10 days. Don't try to fix it, that's how they like it. In July, Wooten received a call from her real estate agent in Colorado. When Stacy met Dave, he had joint custody of his twin toddlers and an acrimonious relationship with his ex-wife, Jennifer. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison probated and 30 days in jail. Milner wasnt the only one talking that way. 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. Suzanne Wooten had 10 minutes to decide her own fate. We already know. Between that and Stacys sentence, he figured a fair shake wasnt forthcoming. This story originally appeared in the October issue of D Magazine. Former Chief of the Special Crimes Division of the CCDAO, Jill Willis, (wife of Greg Willis) 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. Stacy appealed her conviction first. And then there were the lawyers. 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 the. They filed a report stating that the Collin County DAs office was misusing the grand jury to undertake politically motivated investigations. The FBI is cracking down on rampant corruption in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. I was like, thats where I wanna go fishing.. Texas Commission on Judicial Selection Final Report, 2020. On December 14, 2016, the nine justices handed down a unanimous opinion upholding Daves appeal and overturning Stacys. As for the military claim, Spencer says the allegation was never substantiated, and the military actually entered into a confidential settlement agreement with him over it. As part of the job, he started getting involved in legislative initiatives and marches on Capitol Hill. Greg Willis has been the Collin County District Attorney since January 1, 2011. I didnt do anything wrong. It determined there were no loans and no giftsabsolutely nothing of benefit passed to Wooten. Here is the cast of characters that you will be reading the most about: First Assistant District Attorney Brandon Baade-A man whose physical unattractiveness is only surpassed by his lack of intelligence and moral bankruptcy, but has somehow tricked the people in the courthouse that he is brilliant and that they have to heed every bit of horrible advice that he gives, even though it took him 3 years to pass the bar exam after graduating law school from the LESS THAN PRESTIGIOUS Regent University Law School. Well, crapShawshank Redemption, Wooten thought. She had been accused of taking bribes from a couple, whom she swore she had never personally met, to fund campaign expenses, which she had checks to show she had paid for, in return for favorable decisions in a custody dispute, which she had recused herself from and never heard. The prayer for relief included damages for mental anguish, lost wages, and punitive damages. Ever. I couldnt tell you. I sat there and I thought, OK, you have to have intent when you steal. Investment options continued to be something the whole family was interested in, and they felt Spencers legislative insights were invaluable, even if his ultimate advice was that any given option was a bad one. Stacy says they fell in love on their first date, at Avanti in Dallas at Fountain Place. 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 . Even by Texas standards, Williamson County is known for its rampant political corruption. I dont think this set of facts has ever happened, he says. Since Wooten, judicial races in the county are occasionally contested, and there are a lot more women on the bench. Whatever was going on, her bank didnt want to be involved. 15. Austin Most Allegations of Political Corruption in Texas are Not Fully Investigated By Jef Rouner - October 13, 2021 One of the foundational tenets of America is that no person is supposed to be above the law. Kathy Wise has been the executive editor of. Milner indicted the attorney and had him arrested, but he was acquitted at trial. The DAO has acted with seeming disregard for the personal, emotional, and financial costs to the individuals concerned., They also pointed out that Roach had been absent for at least one-third of the days normally worked by others in the courthouse, and that he was present at the seating of the grand jury and declined, in open court, to challenge any member of it as unfit.. In September 2007, Dave met with Royce Poinsett, the general counsel for the speaker of the Texas House of Representatives. She remembers the woman charged with felony theft for an unpaid bill with a furniture rental company. Then he read the comments and saw a thread that mentioned Sandoval. Shed stop proceedings to ask if he needed something, but he would respond that he was just watching.. 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. Or even his wife. She said that from the beginning, the cases against the judges seemed off. He seemed to believe that they must have cost an exorbitant amount, and he suggested that they were paid for with secret funds paid to Spencer, her media consultant, by an unidentified third party. 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. Even so, Dave called Wootens office to request signs, which he posted at his office in Collin County. The perfect storm, where youve got this political opponent who is sorry about losing. He had the ability to craft written motions that made for great sound bites. But that didnt stop the lead prosecutor, Assistant Attorney General Harry White, from projecting on screen a photo of Marlon Brando as Vito Corleone in The Godfather and saying, Not all mob bosses look like that.. It was a great struggle. Because judicial elections are rarely contested, gubernatorial appointments play an outsize role. Dave and Stacy didnt do anything wrong. Bald, bespectacled, and trim, with a sideline swagger and locker room vocabulary, Scott Palmer could pass for a collegiate basketball coach. Montgomery County Texas Watchdog. Dad used to say if you dig a dry hole, that gives you more information of where to drill next time. 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