During his tenure, Rick Perry appointed 112, 80 of which were district court judges. Just come on out and tell us you did it. Change), You are commenting using your Facebook account. Spencer is a remarkably talented individual who knows more about politics than probably anybody in this room will ever know, Dave would later tell a grand jury. In 2007, Wooten was the managing partner of the McKinney branch of Collins & Basinger, a boutique Dallas law firm. She adjusted her calendar, found something to wear, and got to work. Corruption and incompetence. 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. But when it deals with allegations of political contributionsand political contributions is a broad termany money associated with a campaign must be done under section 36.02(a)(4) [of the Texas Penal Code], which requires the prosecution to show direct evidence of an express agreement. I can help people with their divorces. That flicker of a plan was enough to get her out of the tub. 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. 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. Sandoval and Roach have retired. I had started to think Spencer must be some sort of Keyser Sze, a con man hiding in plain sight. He had been wanting to move out there for 20 years, and when the pandemic hit, he finally did. He's serving five years in federal prison for accepting illegal . It was money well spent. Spencer arrives for our meeting at the coffee shop in the Hilton Anatole dressed in a black zip-up polo, jeans, and gray loafers. In September 2007, Dave met with Royce Poinsett, the general counsel for the speaker of the Texas House of Representatives. Everyone else is just collateral damage. These six checks would later constitute the six bribery counts in Dave, Stacy, and Wootens criminal court cases. The laws werent terrible, per se. 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. 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. Judge Charles Sandoval resembled John Lithgow playing Winston Churchill in The Crown, only with more hair. Once they were in, they were in. He still sounds like a cop, deep-voiced and authoritative, and he peppers his conversation with the easy profanity of someone used to making small talk with felons and fellow officers. Bald, bespectacled, and trim, with a sideline swagger and locker room vocabulary, Scott Palmer could pass for a collegiate basketball coach. You might get acquitted. This one was a plea to prison officials to let his wife bring his wedding ring to prison and to let him wear it. A tall man with piercing eyes, Milner had the aura of someone youd best not mess with. How could he decide to go to trial and leave his freedom up to a jury after seeing what had happened to the three whod gone before him? If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it. Christopher Milner and John Roach Sr. could not be reached directly; their attorney, Bob Davis, did not respond to requests for comment on their behalf. I didnt choose this lifestyle. 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. If you don't know who Shaun is, you can find earlier segments here . 15. And then you have a split decision. Thats what became known as the Special Crimes Unit. I gave them my filing fee and my application, and they said, What are you doing? And I said, Well, Im going to run for judge.. So I took a flight a day early and came back, because I have children and a family. And the Court of Appeals fixes it. As a result, the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General announced charges against the former. She also refused to sign off on routine asset forfeiture requests from the DAs office until after a conviction. The Most Lawless County in Texas Suzanne Wooten did the impossible and became the first candidate to defeat a sitting judge in Collin County. 750 North St.Paul St. His family had a background in local politics, and he soon discovered that he had a natural affinity for it. The whole trial had felt like a terrible farce. And that brings us to the crime. Wooten planned to change all that. The $150,000 that Stacy paid Spencer from January 2008 to March 2008 was all deposited in Spencers joint checking account with his wife. Collin County District Attorney | 2002 2010, Christopher Milner The court then went one step further. She didnt want even the appearance of impropriety. There would be no opponent in November. The whole thing was a Catch-22. Judge of the 429th | 2009 present, Greg Willis, (husband of Jill Willis) On December 14, 2016, the nine justices handed down a unanimous opinion upholding Daves appeal and overturning Stacys. And then not only that, prosecute two, three other people? 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. He says sometimes C-level executives fail to see the forest for the trees, and you need to give them the top-down view so they can finally see the bear traps and the clear path through them. The appellate judges agreed that Milner was performing investigative functions and therefore was not entitled to prosecutorial immunity. In December 2008, a few weeks before Wooten was to take the bench, Milner reached out to Attorney General Greg Abbotts office. Read the full results below, with more details here: Rank State Score 51 North Dakota 0% 50 Wyoming 12% 49 Idaho 16% 48 Arizona 28% 47 Michigan 28% 46 Indiana 28% 45 Utah 31% 44 South Dakota 34% 43. I didnt know anybody that thought she committed bribery., Another lawyer made a similar clerical mistake in the use of a partially filled out form that still contained facts related to a different case. It must have been so tempting to make a plea deal or simply do what the prosecutors wanted from the get-go and turn on Spencer or Wooten. She figured it was just petty payback from a sore loser, not the harbinger of a scorched-earth campaign to unseat her. Report Public Corruption. Next: A famously combative governor presides over one of the most corrupt states in the Union. 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. After the fourth grand jury declined to indict and a fifth was convened, Wooten and Schulte took matters into their own hands and went to the FBI. They werent stupid. At one point, according to a Collin County Bar Association judicial poll, it was 12 percent, the lowest in the history of the survey. It isnt a crime to spend the money you earn. He said he had gotten a grand jury subpoena requesting records related to the vacation home she had purchased several years before her election. Otherwise, I would not have even been on the ballot. 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. And then she comes back in with an actual innocence writ. The laws regarding selecting grand juries have changed. Eventually the jurors had enough. Mr. He didnt understand that he couldnt just indict people to get them to do what he wanted them to do.. What Schulte and Wooten would soon discover was that on March 5, 2008, the day after Wooten had won the election, Sandoval had lodged a complaint with Roachs office. In addition to arguing that the Collin County District Attorneys Office was plagued by a pattern of abuse of power and malicious prosecution for political gain, Palmer and Cox also argued that Milner and Roach had grossly abused the grand jury process as part of their prosecutor-led investigation. Then Huntsville. Dallas County has 32; Collin County has 13. 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. Her first cases are still fixed in her memory. And I was told that their plan was to have me arrested at the airport with the media present. 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. They just chose not to accept it. Spencer told her that, while in Austin, he had heard of some interesting developments in the oil industry, including new pumping and smart grid tech, that might make for good investments. 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. 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. Dave was the last man standing. Sometimes Im the guy, he says. But they let the others off the hook, finding their involvement in investigative functions was more limited. 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. I kept saying, I dont wanna look. When the restaurant next door closed down at 10 pm, the owners came over with bottles of wine. I never even bothered to get it expunged. To say she needed Stacys money to win simply isnt true. The FBI is cracking down on rampant corruption in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. Dave Cary went to trial in April 2013. 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. Of the 80 intermediate appellate justices, 2835 percentare new. At first, while Dave was in the gang tank in the Billy Moore Correctional Center outside of Tyler, shed visit every week. The money, I believe, had to have been paid to the media prior to the reports that were filed reflecting no such payments.. Milner told Schulte that Wooten had one week to resign. The perfect storm, where youve got this political opponent who is sorry about losing. counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com . 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. District courts are the general jurisdiction trial courts in Texas. Were going to appeal this until the end of time.. After serving as an NCO in the Army in the 1970s, he became a CPA, got his M.B.A. at SMU, and went on to become the CFO of i2 Technologies Inc. How could three separate juries convict Wooten and the Carys, and how could a court of appeals uphold their convictions for something that didnt happen? Milner wasnt the only one talking that way. And a sentencing document filed by Assistant Attorney General White cites a litany of concerns, including: Spencer had been found guilty of writing bad checks in the recent past; he had pled no contest to felony insurance fraud in Utah with regard to a $37,000 claim for a lost diamond, which he says was dislodged from his wifes wedding ring during a car accident; he had failed to pay a $26,000 bill related to Wootens campaign, which she had reimbursed him for; and he had violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice in 1990 while in the Air Force. Then there was the older man whod stolen a bottle of $20 shampoo but was charged by prosecutors with felony theft because it was his third offense. Spencer and Wooten had achieved the impossible. This case, like so many others brought by Roachs office, had nothing to do with truth. Yet Sandoval had agreed to let Hythiam Inc., the L.A.-based biotech firm behind the drug (which was founded by a former junk bond salesman for Michael Milken), use his courtroom for clinical research trials. As for Sandoval, he was running against Judge Betty Caton for the newly created 380th seat. TikTok Timmy aka Pct. But if that were true, I couldnt understand why Wooten and Stacy still didnt have a bad word to say about Spencer. Normally you cant sue prosecutors, because they are entitled to absolute immunity. Dallas most important news stories of the week, delivered to your inbox each Sunday. They saw only a small piece of it, the rest obscured by evidence withheld by the judge or by the vagaries of criminal trials, where defendants often dont testify in each others cases, and maybe not even their own. He had the ability to craft written motions that made for great sound bites. This was particularly cynical given the fact that Ms. Wooten was active in the Democratic party two years prior to this race. Sandoval won 9,884 to 9,420. 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. That didnt pan out, but Spencer was able to help with other company matters that he found useful. If he could unseat one who had taken a bad position on parental rights, he thought, maybe he could finally get some traction. But before the agency could conclude its investigation, Milner got what he had been after. Texas. 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. Lindsay Lohan used it. Thats the type of man he was. What followed is the unbelievable, epic tale of. Beginning in 2005, he started going to Austin to try to amend laws regarding parental rights that he felt were unconstitutional. 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. But what got me to my decision was one of my dear friends who was there. The Empire State has the dubious distinction of being ranked the most corrupt state in the U.S., when looking at total number of public officials convicted of federal corruption charges from. Hes in Dallas on business. In his third letter to Milner, dated October 15, Sandoval wrote: The real reason for Ms. Wootens success was the radio advertising she did. Wooten noticed an assistant DA, Christopher Milner, sitting in the back of her courtroom during hearings he wasnt involved in. The most corrupt police force in Texas Written by Alan Bean In the next segment of this series, we will be looking at Shaun Cooks' experience with the criminal justice system in his home town of Hearne, Texas. They talked over the next few days, and Stacy agreed to pay him $150 per hour up to $250,000 for his services. I didnt know that you can be unknowingly bribed without. Dave had been involved in an ongoing contentious custody dispute with his ex-wife, Jennifer, in Sandovals court. For 162 years, district court judges had gotten their benches either by gubernatorial appointment when a court opened up due to retirement or death, or by election (often uncontested) when a new court was created. This advocacy was his passion, something he did free of charge for his own personal ends. With the writing on the wall, Palmer settled the case with Collin Countys insurance company for $600,000 in January 2022. They wrote a letter to the presiding judge, stating the DAO [District Attorneys Office] has used its authority, and the grand jury system, to investigate marginal cases against individuals acting in both public and private capacities. He still has an active consulting practice, although he has not worked on another judicial campaign. Write to [emailprotected]. A Dallas federal jury will soon decide the matter - at least in the case of local developer Ruel Hamilton, who is accused of bribing two former Dallas City Council members. Wooten couldnt appeal. The border has been a hotbed of corrupt activity. It was weird.. Stacy did appeal, but the panel of judges hearing it upheld her conviction. (Not to be confused with his son, Judge John Roach Jr., who currently presides over the 296th District Court in Collin County. There are currently 485 district courts in the state. By Roachs office, had nothing to do with truth vacation home she had purchased several before. 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