More than three decades ago, a then-21-year-old Ronald “Buffalo” Chambers was sentenced to die. Today, he got yet another reprieve — this time, from the Supreme Court. On April 10, 1975, Ronald “Buffalo” Chambers and another man kidnapped 22-year-old Texas Tech student Mike McMahan and 20-year-old Deia Sutton, drove them…
I love stories about stupid criminals — you know, the guy who gets stuck in a chimney while trying to steal Christmas presents and the thief who hands a stick-’em-up note to a bank teller written on a deposit slip for his own bank account. But I have noticed a…
Knock on wood, somebody, quick! It’s been three months since my car was broken into (for the second time) in my little corner of Junius Heights in East Dallas. I do miss my friendly stereo thieves, who brought excitement to otherwise lame Friday and Sunday nights last winter. And I…
James Curtis Giles At 11 this morning, a law student from Chicago named Lauren Kaeseberg will be standing alongside Barry Scheck — and other attorneys with The Innocence Project — in the court of Judge Robert Francis. They will be presenting new evidence in an exoneration hearing in the case…
Charles Anthony Nealy, who was executed on March 20 On March 2o, a man from Michigan came down to Texas to witness the execution of Charles Anthony Nealy, who was sentenced to death in 1998 for robbing and killing two convenience-store clerks in South Dallas in August 1997. That man…
Because the Friend of Unfair Park loves reading ACLU-generated reports so close to closing time, we thought we’d direct your attention to the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas’ just-released study about the prison population in Texas titled Texas: Tougher than Ever. Specifically, the report compares how Texas and New…
The Dallas County Commissioners Court has just agreed to settle the the James Mims lawsuit that sparked a series of investigations into the troubled Dallas County Jail. Voting unanimously, the commissioners agreed to pay the families of three county inmates $950,000, an extraordinary sum for this type of litigation. Typically,…
A hearty Monday-morning “mazel tov” to a couple of local(ish) legal blogs: Unfair Park faves Grits for Breakfast, Scott Henson’s statewide crime-and-punishment round-up, and Dallas public defender Mike Howard’s The Wretched of the Earth, which deals specifically with the Dallas criminal justice system’s treatment of the indigent. Both were honored…
