TEXAS:
Defense says driver deprived of rights----Attorney claims statements in
the smuggling case shouldn't count
All statements to investigators by a Jamaican truck driver facing the
death penalty in the deaths of 19 illegal immigrants should be suppressed
because he never spoke with a consular official from his country, his
lawyer contends.
By failing to give Tyrone Williams access to Jamaican officials, federal
investigators violated the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, which
has been affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court and recognized by the federal
government, according to a motion by attorney Craig Washington.
Washington is asking U.S. District Judge Vanessa Gilmore for a hearing on
his request to suppress Williams' statements to investigators before his
second trial begins Nov. 28.
Williams and 13 others were indicted in connection with the deaths of 19
illegal immigrants who had been crowded into a stifling trailer that was
found abandoned at a Victoria truck stop May 14, 2003. At least 74 people
had been placed in the trailer, authorities said.
Williams, who investigators said was driving the tractor trailer, faces a
possible death sentence. The retrial was scheduled after a jury in March
failed to reach a verdict on 20 of 58 smuggling counts.
A gag order issued by Gilmore prevents federal prosecutors and Washington
from commenting, but a legal scholar says Washington must show how the
lack of consultation with Jamaican officials affected his client.
"In the past, the key issue related to consular notification has been
whether the defendant can establish an actual negative impact from the
denial of consular access," said Geoffrey Corn, a professor at the South
Texas College of Law. "I think this would be difficult if he were advised
of his rights and had an attorney."
(source: Houston Chronicle)
**********************
Ngai Found Insane - What Now?
The Texas insanity defense asks of jurors a feat akin to mind-reading. In
addition to finding that a defendant was insane at the time of the
offense, juries must determine whether a defendant knew his actions were
"wrong." It's a tough standard, and rarely met. But last Thursday, Oct.
20, jurors found former UT grad student Jackson Ngai not guilty by reason
of insanity of the murder of his music professor, Danielle Martin.
Ngai had a history of psychiatric problems that began shortly after he
came to Texas from Hawaii in August 2003. Ngai, a pianist, was supposed to
start graduate studies in UT's music department in the fall semester. Soon
after his move, he began calling friends and family back home with
improbable stories about computer hackers, identity theft, and kidnappers.
Ngai's family contacted Martin, a UT piano professor, and asked her to
check on him. When Martin went to visit Ngai at his apartment, he had what
seems to have been his first psychotic break, believing that Martin was
trying to kidnap him. He began breaking windows and was committed to the
Austin State Hospital for two weeks. At ASH, doctors diagnosed Ngai with
bipolar disorder and gave him medications to control his moods. (It
appears this was a misdiagnosis - Ngai has subsequently been diagnosed
with schizophrenia - which may have contributed to his troubles. The
medications helped to control his moods and behavior but apparently
allowed his delusions to continue unchecked.)
After Ngai's release, he and Martin became close friends. Martin had been
diagnosed with bipolar disorder herself years ago, and friends say she
believed she could help Ngai manage his condition. She also suffered from
multiple sclerosis, and needed Ngai's help running errands, doing chores,
and sometimes just moving from room to room. When Martin had an acute
attack of MS over the 2003-04 winter break, Ngai stayed in Austin to be
near her instead of going back to Hawaii. Friends who visited Martin in
the hospital say Ngai was with her almost every day.
In the spring, Ngai's mental condition worsened. In January, he had begun
weaning himself off his medications, after consulting with Martin and his
father. The drugs made him tired all the time, he said, and made his hands
tremble too much to practice the piano. Friends and classmates say he
seemed increasingly paranoid, telling stories about computer chips that
kept track of him and controlled his mind. On April 29, 2004, the evening
of the murder, Ngai believed Martin was trying to poison him, trying to
make him cut off his fingers, and trying to starve him to death, according
to a psychiatrist appointed by the court to evaluate his sanity seven
months later. He believed that night that Martin was being controlled by a
computer chip planted in her brain. While the pair ate dinner together,
Ngai left the table, went into the kitchen, and picked up a meat cleaver
from the counter. "I did this two times," psychiatrist Dr. Richard Coons
quoted Ngai to the jury, from a November 2004 interview. "The second time
I decided I should stab her, and I went for it." Ngai cut and stabbed
Martin more than 200 times, mostly around the head, with the cleaver and
other sharp objects. A police officer who viewed the body told the jury
her head appeared to have been "excavated."
The taped police interview, conducted just hours after the murder, shows a
young man in the middle of a full psychotic episode - pacing in tiny
circles, shaking violently, and asking officers again and again if they
were trying to kill him. Ngai seemed unable to answer most of their
questions; to direct accusations that he had committed a murder, he said
"computer chip" and "robot." "I'm not a criminal," he told one officer. "I
need help."
Ngai's prosecution pointed to details of his testimony to doctors and
police officers over the last 18 months - that he says he put the knife
down more than once before attacking Martin, that he referred to Martin in
the past tense during his police interview - as proof that he knew at the
time that his actions were wrong. Dr. Coons testified for the prosecution
that Ngai, although seriously mentally ill, knew that society would
condemn the murder.
However, Dr. Mary Anderson, a court-appointed psychiatrist who interviewed
Ngai two days after the murder to determine his competency to stand trial,
told the jury that ideas of right and wrong are muddied during psychotic
episodes. "The best analogy is the thought process of a nightmare," she
said. "At times you start to wake up and you realize it's a nightmare, and
at other times it all becomes very real." Ngai told Anderson he believed
Martin wanted him to kill himself that night but that he was afraid he
would be assassinated if he left her house. Anderson said a patient as
sick as Ngai might need several months in the hospital before being
stabilized and even then would need a doctor to be easily accessible, in
case something went wrong. Those resources likely weren't available to
Ngai, Anderson acknowledged. "Our mental health system is hard to get
into."
Ngai is in that system now, though at a terrible cost. Travis Co. Judge
Bob Perkins is expected to send Ngai back to Vernon State Hospital, where
he was held for three months after the murder until declared competent to
stand trial. Doctors at Vernon will evaluate Ngai for 90 days, after which
he is likely to be committed to a longer stay in one of the state's mental
hospitals. He will be periodically re-evaluated, until it's determined
that he's no longer a danger to himself or others. "Someone is dead, so
he's probably going to be considered a danger for some time," says Ngai's
lawyer, Jim Erickson. On the other hand, evaluating doctors will also
consider Ngai's behavior before and since the murder, which, Erickson
says, has been exemplary. "He's a good boy," Erickson says. "This is
someone who's been held up as an example to others his whole life."
Erickson is uncertain whether the state will let Ngai return to Hawaii,
where his family and friends are, after his eventual release. The terms of
his probation may require him to remain in Texas for some time. Maybe by
then, the state will have a mental health care system capable of taking
care of him - a system with the resources to stabilize patients and keep
them stable, where they don't have to wait months to see a doctor, where
they are not refused hospitalization for being insufficiently dangerous.
More likely, the system will be what it is now - underfunded and chaotic,
where a patient's surest shot at treatment is to commit a serious crime.
If the system has not changed, there are grim precedents for Ngai's
future. In April 2004, a Beaumont jury found Kenneth Pierott guilty of the
murder of his girlfriend's 6-year-old son and sentenced him to 60 years in
prison. A previous jury had found Pierott not guilty by reason of insanity
in 1998 for beating his sister to death and committed him to a mental
hospital. Pierott was released from the state hospital after just a few
months; at his second trial, his family testified they were unable to find
help for him when the symptoms of his illness reappeared.
Ngai isn't talking yet about the future or what his plans might be if and
when he is released, Erickson says, but he has said that he's happy he'll
be going back to Vernon State Hospital. "There a piano there for him to
play," Erickson says. "It's not the best piano - it's pretty old and
beat-up - but he can play it."
(source: Austin Chronicle)
***********************
Texas Fold 'Em: Texas Supporters' Efforts Don't Pay Off for Miers
Jerry K. Clements talked to her friend and former law partner Harriet E.
Miers on Thursday morning, only minutes after the White House disclosed
the news: The president had accepted Miers' withdrawal of her nomination
to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"She said she wasn't angry. But I told her, I was," says Clements, who is
head of the litigation section at Locke Liddell & Sapp, where Miers used
to be a co-managing partner.
Clements and dozens of other Texas lawyers, including Texas Supreme Court
Justice Nathan Hecht, U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade of the Northern
District of Texas, and U.S. Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn,
both Texas Republicans, expended tremendous personal and political capital
over the past few weeks combating attacks against Miers' nomination,
mostly from the conservative right.
Their efforts failed.
In a letter to President George W. Bush released on Thursday, Miers said,
"I am concerned that the confirmation process presents a burden for the
White House and our staff that is not in the best interest of the
country."
In his statement that morning, Bush laid blame for Miers' withdrawal at
the feet of senators, who, he said, pressed too hard for internal White
House documents that would breach executive privilege. "It is clear that
Senators would not be satisfied until they gained access to internal
documents concerning advice provided during her tenure at the White House
-- disclosures that would undermine a President's ability to receive
candid counsel."
Despite the White House's emphasis on protecting executive privilege, no
one who reads newspapers, scans blogs or watches television could have
missed the point: Conservatives had galvanized a relentless campaign
against Miers' nomination raising questions about her commitment to their
judicial agenda and her credentials. With her confirmation hearings
scheduled to begin on Nov. 7, those opponents appeared ready to turn up
the volume next week.
On Tuesday, a group led by conservative columnist and former White House
speechwriter David Frum announced that it had formed a nonprofit
organization, Americans for Better Justice, and begun preparing television
ads to combat the Miers nomination. The group also launched a Web site
intended to raise money for the anti-Miers campaign.
"In the long run we're all going to be stronger because of her
withdrawal," says Ephraim "Fry" Wernick, who had recently joined the board
of Americans for Better Justice. Wernick is an associate with the
Washington, D.C., office of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and a former
vice president of the University of Texas School of Law's chapter of the
Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, a group of
conservative lawyers.
Ever since Bush announced Miers' nomination on Oct. 3, conservative
columnists had beaten their drums for Miers' withdrawal. On Oct. 5, two
days after the White House announced her nomination, columnist George Will
wrote: "First, it is not important that she be confirmed. Second, it might
be very important that she not be. Third, the presumption -- perhaps
rebuttable but certainly in need of rebutting -- should be that her
nomination is not a defensible exercise of presidential discretion to
which senatorial deference is due."
As the cries from critics grew louder, Senate support for the nomination
seemed to dwindle by the day.
U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Senate Judiciary
Committee, will remember. While stating that Miers' confirmation amounted
to an "open question," on Thursday Specter chided the Bush administration
for withdrawing her nomination. The committee, Specter said, "did not
intrude on the executive privilege," as Bush suggested in his announcement
about Miers' withdrawal. Specter condemned the attacks on Miers'
qualifications, which had been "subjected to a one-sided debate in news
releases, press conferences, radio and television talk shows, and
editorial pages." While acknowledging the right of Americans to voice
their opinions, Specter said the outcry against Miers precluded her from
receiving due process.
He pointed out that Miers met the deadline for sending supplemental
materials to the Judiciary Committee. Miers sent more than eight boxes of
materials late in the evening on Wednesday, but now, Specter says, the
senators will not need to read those documents.
While numerous prominent Texas attorneys and judges went to bat for Miers
-- including a contingent of former Texas Supreme Court justices who
rallied around her nomination during a meeting at the White House and a
group of former Dallas Bar Association presidents who held a press
conference to support Miers -- their ultimate ineffectiveness raises the
question of whether the state's elite attorneys have wasted their
political capital and will be taken less seriously should Bush nominate
another Texan to the nation's highest court.
Former Texas Supreme Court Justice Craig Enoch, for one, is surprised at
the turn of events, especially in light of his trip to Washington on
Monday, when he and five other former justices attempted to bolster Miers'
nomination with the Senate. "I thought we had a good reception," says
Enoch. "I thought they just needed us to get inside the Beltway and talk
about her qualifications, which we handled pretty well."
Miers' spirits were high, recalls Enoch, and "she was very confident about
how she would do before the Senate committee," he says. "But apparently
there were other agendas driving the train -- on both sides -- and for
some reason, they wanted a fight. Harriet wasn't willing to provide them
with one."
Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist
University -- Miers' law school alma mater -- says it would have looked
strange if prominent Texas lawyers didn't support Miers.
"People look for the unexpected and discount the expected. Having all of
the former Texas Supreme Court justices up there was expected. If it
hadn't happened, people would have noticed its absence," Jillson says.
Jillson says the one Texan who did a little too much for Miers was current
Texas Supreme Court Justice Hecht, who gave hundreds of favorable
interviews about his longtime friend, many of which probed into Miers'
anti-abortion beliefs.
"I do think that Nathan Hecht did his friend no good service. He was
entirely too visible by trying to calm the right by winking at them,"
Jillson says. "And obviously that did no good. If someone did expend
political capital that did no good it was Nathan Hecht."
Hecht did not return two telephone calls seeking comment before presstime.
Hutchison and Cornyn each did not return a call. And Kinkeade declines
comment.
For a half-dozen Texas lawyers who know Miers or the institutions with
which she has been associated, the whole episode seems tragic.
"This is a huge disappointment for the firm," says Clements. Locke Liddell
lawyers were not surprised, she says, nor unprepared for the onslaught of
anti-Miers activity that took place after the president announced the
nomination. "We understood the politics from the beginning. We knew the
attacks were coming. We always believed in the long run whatever scrutiny
came upon her she would survive," Clements says.
Battling allegations of cronyism, Miers, a close friend of the
president's, has had her credentials scrutinized for the past few weeks.
In 1985, she became the first female president of the Dallas Bar
Association, and in 1992, she became the 1st woman to serve as president
of the State Bar of Texas. She was co-managing partner of Locke Liddell
from 1998 to 2000. In 1995, then-Texas Gov. Bush appointed her as
chairwoman of the Texas Lottery Commission, where she served until 2000.
She graduated from Southern Methodist University School of Law in 1970.
"I think that attacks [on her credentials] were unjustified and
unwarranted. They were so biased that a rational person could only presume
it was about politics. This wasn't about Harriet Miers. This was about the
right wing of the conservative party trying to tell the president who he
should nominate," Clements says. "They never even gave her a hearing."
The withdrawal of Miers nomination may not bode well for SMU Dedman School
of Law. The heated, snobbish battle over Miers' credentials often centered
around the school, whose reputation was blackened by conservative
commentators who found it an institution of lower learning, unworthy of
birthing a Supreme Court justice. In an April 2005 issue of U.S. News &
World Report's America's Best Graduate Schools 2006, SMU law school's
overall ranking was No. 52 out of the top 100 law schools in the country.
"I am not blinking at the notion that our school got criticized for not
being one of the elite law schools," says SMU law Dean John B. Attanasio.
"But if the question is, 'Does SMU have something to be embarrassed
about?' the answer is no. I think we were in fast company just to have one
of our graduates nominated."
Attanasio believes the attack on Miers' qualifications was orchestrated by
2 conservative sources: "those who felt there wasn't enough known about
the certainty of her views and those who felt she wasn't part of the club
-- that she hadn't gone to the right schools." He also feels these attacks
were "ludicrous. She has had a storied legal career. I am very
disappointed, more for the country than for the school. She was a great
nomination and would have been a great justice. My heart goes out to
Harriet."
Apart from Democratic attorneys such as Buck Wood and Charles Soechting
(now chairman of the Texas Democratic Party) who tangled with Miers during
her tenure as chairwoman of the Texas Lottery Commission, Democrats have,
for the most part, held their fire about Miers. Many are amazed that
Republicans, so disciplined and in lockstep with the Bush agenda, had
splintered over the nomination.
"Watching this as a pro-choice liberal has been surreal," says Susan Hays,
a Dallas solo and former Dallas County Democratic Party chairwoman. "After
looking at her record, I figured Roe v. Wade was gone. But the left never
had to raise its voice before her nomination was toast."
At the same time Hays found herself appalled at the way right-wing pundits
treated Miers. "The idea that no one educated west of the Mississippi is
qualified to be on the Supreme Court is ridiculous," she says.
Hays sees Miers' withdrawal as a harbinger of the implosion of the
Republican Party. "The economic right has used social messages to get the
vote of the religious right," she says. "Now the religious right is
demanding a blood oath that you are going to have to overturn Roe to get
their support for a nomination."
"Face it, the right wing was not convinced she was going to overrule Roe,"
adds Fred Baron, founder of Dallas' Baron & Budd and a member of the
finance board of the Democratic National Committee. "I have said to anyone
who will listen that [Miers] is a fine lawyer and has all the skills
necessary to be a Supreme Court justice. But if Bush kowtows to the
religious right, he can expect a fight from Democrats who want a more
moderate nominee."
Baron believes that tactics such as the filibuster and the nuclear option
are still on the table for nominees with extreme views. "People are tired
of the extreme edge of both parties dominating each issue. We need an
independent selection that is not being forced upon the president by one
of the factions of his party."
But several pro-life groups in Texas supported Miers' nomination. "I trust
the president," wrote Joe Pojman, executive director of Texas Alliance for
Life on his organization's Web site. "Bush appears to have made a solid
pick."
Pojman still feels Miers would have done a fine job. He says his
organization is not looking for someone who has "a demonstrated overt
record on abortion," but rather "someone who has a demonstrated record of
following the intent of the drafters of the Constitution." Whether this
original-intent mantra is code for gutting Roe is a question Pojman will
not answer. "We are not looking for someone who is going to tilt the Court
to the left or the right. We are just looking for a level playing field."
That is what Pojman felt Bush gave the country in Miers, and that is what
he trusts Bush will offer in his next pick.
But the In-Bush-We-Trust message didnt play well for many conservatives,
says Austin political consultant Bill Miller, who often works for
Republican incumbents. "The right wing was given an unknown with the words
'trust me,' and that wasn't sufficient for them," says Miller. "They
wanted someone they could crow about and rally around. For them there were
too many unknowns. The wink, wink, nod, nod approach just doesn't work on
a national stage for a Supreme Court nominee."
Miller faults the Bush administration for being politically shortsighted
by nominating someone without a documented record to defend. "She was
being forced to talk about things in her role as presidential counsel, and
the White House wasn't going to give her the tools to talk about them," he
says. "Those guys [senators] were just not going to confirm her with no
record. It was going to be a very short hearing."
NEXT NOMINEE?
A big question mark remained as of presstime about who the president will
nominate to fill the Supreme Court slot of retiring Justice Sandra Day
O'Connor. In a brief statement on Thursday, Bush pledged to make a new
announcement in a "timely manner."
Christopher D. Kratovil, a senior associate and appellate lawyer with
Hughes & Luce in Dallas, says the White House should nominate someone with
judicial experience and a heavy appellate law background, much like Chief
Justice John Roberts Jr.
"It's back to the drawing board," Kratovil says. "I think they need to
pick the most Roberts-like nominee -- someone with impeccable credentials
who's a conservative and not an ideologue and somebody whos been vetted."
"The White House needs to avoid surprises like that with the next nominee,
and nominating a sitting appellate judge would go a long way toward that,"
he says.
A natural place for Bush to look for a new nominee is the 5th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals -- the federal appeals court whose jurisdiction includes
Texas. 3 political observers believe Bush still wants a high court nominee
from Texas, where he'll live once he leaves office.
The most commonly named 5th Circuit candidates include judges Edith Jones,
Priscilla Owen and Emilio Garza -- all reliable conservatives. But a
selection from the 5th Circuit could bring flak from the left, especially
on issues that have conflicted with mainstream jurisprudence.
Capital punishment would likely be one of those issues, says Adrienne
Urrutia, a criminal-defense attorney who practices before the 5th Circuit.
"I wonder if that will be a liability for the 5th Circuit, because Texas
is continually getting the attention because of death penalty cases and is
continually questioned by the Supreme Court," Urrutia says.
As for Miers' future, the White House has announced she will continue as
White House counsel. Miers now is one of about a dozen nominees since 1789
who have withdrawn their names from high court contention, according to a
U.S. Senate Web site.
Darrell E. Jordan, a former Dallas Bar Association president and managing
partner of the Dallas office of Godwin Gruber, hasn't talked to Miers
since her withdrawal. He has, however, supported her nomination
vigorously, going to Washington, D.C., to lend a hand. "If she had just
hung in there," Jordan says.
But political consultant Miller believes that Miers' withdrawal was likely
for the best. "She has already endured a lot of humiliation ... . It is
better that she withdraws rather than bleed to death on the national
scene."
(source: Texas Lawyer)
********************
Another inmate may be innocent
The names of Lenell Geter, Joyce Ann Brown and Randall Dale Adams I will
remember until the day I die.
I've met Adams only once, but I got to know Geter and Brown pretty well.
What these three people have in common is that they were convicted in
Dallas County for crimes they did not commit. Geter and Brown were
sentenced to life in prison, and Adams receiving a death sentence. Their
names were subsequently cleared, and they were released from the
penitentiary.
I should hasten to tell you that I also knew the legendary Dallas County
District Attorney Henry Wade, who was around when Lee Harvey Oswald was
charged with the slaying of John Kennedy in 1963 and was still in office
when these 3 people were put on trial in the 1970s and 1980s.
Wade, who before his death allowed me to do a television profile of him,
never accepted that Geter, Brown and Adams were not guilty, even though he
set them free.
During an interview on his farm one evening, he emphatically told me that
he believed the 3 committed the crimes for which they were charged and
convicted, and that they were free only because of the national media
exposure.
It's been my belief that prosecutors and police never like to admit a
mistake even when it means innocent people go to jail and prison.
Take the 2001 fake drug scandal in Dallas, in which dozens of people were
charged with crimes based on the actions of unscrupulous paid informants
and lying police officers. Just this spring, special prosecutors said many
other people, including some judges and lawyers, should share the blame
for this injustice.
For those who don't want to believe it, I'm here to tell you that innocent
people sometimes do go to prison.
I now wonder if I can add another name to the list of Geter, Brown, Adams
and dozens of fake drug case victims.
Please note the name of Gregory Bruce Dunagan, a man I told you about in
Wednesday's column who is serving a life sentence in the 1997 death of a
Grand Prairie convenience store owner.
Barkat Ali, 41, was shot to death in the presence of his wife shortly
after the couple arrived to open their store for the day.
Ali's wife, Ishrat Khan, and another witness didn't get a good look at the
two bandits because they were wearing bandanas over their faces. Frank
Kubala, a nearby business owner, told police that the gunman was
African-American, about 6-foot-1 and 200 pounds.
>From that, police came up with a composite sketch. After a few months,
they essentially suspended the investigation when they developed no leads.
Then, 18 months later, a guy in jail facing murder charges, who already
had been convicted in another murder, told police that just days after
Ali's slaying, he overheard Dunagan at a nightclub bragging about the
shooting. A 2nd inmate gave a similar sworn statement.
In its account of the arrest, The Dallas Morning News reported: "The two
inmates whose sworn statements form the foundation of Sgt. [Alan] Patton's
case probably will receive reduced sentences for their help, he said.
"'What's motivating them now is getting help with their felony cases,' he
said. 'I'm glad the information came forward. It's just frustrating
because here a year and a half later, this inmate all of a sudden gets a
conscience.'"
When he was 18, Dunagan pleaded guilty to using a pellet gun in a robbery,
so he had a criminal record. He was paroled after serving five years of a
15-year sentence and had been out of prison for six years when Ali was
killed.
In fact, his parole officer visited him that very morning, a couple of
hours after the crime was committed. The parole officer was prepared to
testify to that fact at the trial, but he was never called as a witness.
Another convict, who was brought back to Dallas for the trial at the
request of the defense, was prepared to say he had heard the jailhouse
informant plotting to set up Dunagan for a crime that he -- the informant
-- had actually committed. That convict was in the Dallas County Jail and
was ready to testify, but he, too, was not called to the witness stand.
The 2 jailhouse informants, whom police used as the "foundation" for their
case, never testified either.
And the victim's wife, who did take the stand at Dunagan's trial, failed
to identify him in the courtroom - not once or twice, but 3 times.
Each time, she pointed to someone else.
Still, Dunagan was found guilty of capital murder and sentenced to life.
A federal magistrate judge did recommend that Dunagan be granted a writ of
habeas corpus, but it was denied by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals,
and the Supreme Court did not take the case.
With his appeals exhausted, Dunagan remains in the penitentiary staunchly
declaring his innocence and insisting that he was "railroaded." His family
has spent more than $50,000 trying to free him.
In Sunday's column, I'll give you more details about this case, and I'll
introduce you to the man to whom the victim's wife pointed in the
courtroom.
(source: Opinion, Bob Ray Sanders, Fort Worth Star-Telegram)
