R.I.P. Joe Jamail

"At the end of trial Thursday, Ferguson got in a shouting match with a young attorney on the defense team who stood up in the gallery and accused him of misstating the record. After Judge Floyd recessed and left the courtroom, the attorney stepped forward. Jamail got in his face. “You’re not lead counsel, so you sit your ass down!” Barger moved between them. “Darrell, you tell him to shut his ass up or I’ll kick the s--t out of him!” Without blinking, the young attorney returned to the gallery.

Afterward, outside the courthouse, Edwards apologized.

'Who the f--- was he?” demanded Jamail.

'One of our appellate attorneys.'

'He looked like a f---ing appellate attorney,' said Jamail."

- See more at: http://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/the-greatest-lawyer-who-ever-lived/#sthash.dM3REBMl.dpuf

Except for that lawyer he lost to in his second trial, which was in Fort Worth, the only lawyers who ever every seriously messed with him were bankruptcy and appellate lawyers.

Last in his class at UT Law, Jamail won what was the largest monetary judgment in history at that time. When Percy Foreman had a disciplinary dispute with the State Bar, he hired a very, very young lawyer to represent him-- you guessed it-- Joe Jamail. 

Joe had only one marriage which ended only at his wife's death. I can't find the quote, but he said something like Lee's the one who loved him when he didn't have any money.

H/t to Mike Higgins

The Queen of Qualifications, Mary Lou Keel, Is Ready to Rise

Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Larry Meyers must be a strange cat. He was the first Republican of the wave that washed over the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. And then he switched to the Democratic party to run for the Texas Supreme Court, and having not succeeded there, he now defends his seat as the only Democrat not only on his court, but as the only statewide Democrat in Texas.
Mary Lou Keel, presiding judge of Houston's 232nd Judicial District Court, believes that this is her moment.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals is an appellate court. Unhappy litigants in criminal court and people claiming that they are illegally imprisoned send papers to the court, and it orders relief or doesn't. Some of the most important work that it does is to write opinions that not only decide cases, but also guide Texas's criminal courts how to do all their cases. These opinions interpret the United States Constitution, the Texas Constitution, opinions of the Supreme Court of the United States, former opinions of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, and Texas statutes among many other authorities. And yet, in this most scholarly and intellectual of Texas criminal courts, prospective judges are sometimes not the strongest scholars.
But this doesn't apply to Judge Keel. She started her career as a briefing attorney for the First Court of Appeals in Houston, an intermediate appellate court. Then she spent eight years as a Harris County prosecutor, first as a trial lawyer, than an appellate lawyer. While she was there, she became board certified in criminal law, which puts her in the specialization elite. After that, she's spent the last two decades-- more actually-- on her bench. And she's no ordinary judge, she's the wiretap judge for the Second Administrative Judicial District. For pro bono work, she does Spanish translations to support Cuban dissident journalists and bloggers.
Poor woman, she grew up in Austin and went to undergraduate school and has lived the rest of her life in the Houston area-- backwards from what I would think is luck.
What bad things do her adversaries say about her? That her husband is a Democrat.
She is a clever, tough campaigner, showing on her candidate website that she's done hundreds of appeals while her adversaries' appeal counts are in the single digits, that she's been a felony judge longer than her adversaries, that she's been a specialist longer than the one of her adversaries who's also a specialist. The one thing that seems conspicuously absent is experience as a defense counsel.
She's an introvert, a little awkward with strange reporters, but of everybody I know who's worked with her closely-- they all love her: former Harris County prosecutors Colleen Barnett (now a realtor), Celeste Blackburn (now a Board Certified Criminal Law specialist in Conroe, Texas), and Brett Ligon (elected Montgomery County District Attorney).
Her Republican adversaries are Ray Wheless and Mr. Chris Oldner.
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Sid Harle, Long Time San Antone Judge with Many Achievements, Runs for CCA Place 5

Sid L. Harle runs for Texas's Court of Criminal Appeals Place Five to replace retiring Judge Cheryl Johnson. He's been judge of the 226th Judicial District Court in San Antonio since 1988. Has been unopposed since 1990. He was formerly the Chair of the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct, which is the kind of job they don't choose chumps for. His background primarily was as a Bexar County Assistant District Attorney, though he had time as a defense lawyer. He has been an adjunct professor at St. Mary's Law School for more than 20 years. He was the judge who supervised the exoneration of Michael Morton, touching Morton and many onlookers with his insistence that enough people had been looking down on Morton long enough, and climbing down from the bench to hand him his exoneration papers. With Red McCombs as a major supporter, his campaign should be well-financed.
Harle is a shy man, who seemed uncomfortable telling me, a stranger, about his accomplishments. The oldest judicial photograph of him here shows a wary man, and each later one shows a man more and more comfortable in his own skin.

Running against Harle as Republicans is Williamson County Assistant District Attorney Brent Webster, somebody named Steve Smith, and another named Scott Walker. A Betsy Walker will run for the Democrats.

The Candidates for Texas's Court of Criminal Appeals

Texas's highest criminal court has three openings this election season.

Texas and Oklahoma are the only U.S. states that have separate highest courts for civil and criminal matters. Texas's Supreme Court only takes civil matters. In Texas, juvenile cases, cases the State brings against young people who are delinquent or in need of supervision go to the Supreme Court, not the Court of Criminal Appeals.

Place Two is presently held by Larry Meyers, who pioneered Republicans' being on the court switched parties last cycle to become the only Democrat holding statewide office in Texas. He runs for reelection as a Democrat. The Republicans vying to challenge him are Houston state District Court judge Mary Lou Keel, Collin County District Judge Mr. Chris Oldner, and Collin County District Judge Ray Wheless. Collin County, county seat McKinney, is a suburban county just north of Dallas, except for the tiny part of Dallas which is in the county.

Cheryl Johnson is retiring out of Place Five on the Court. Republicans seeking to replace her are: San Antonio District Judge Sid Harle, Williamson County prosecutor Brent Webster, Steve Smith, a successful advocate in Hopwood v. Texas in which the Fifth Circuit struck down reverse racial discrimination at UT-Austin until the United States Supremes reversed it- he also won a partial term as a Texas Supreme Court justice, also a Tarrant County lawyer named Scott Walker is running. Somebody named Betsy Johnson, apparently from San Antonio, has signed up to run as a Democrat.
Judge Michael E. Keasler runs for reelection in Place Six. Richard Davis, the Richard Dean Davis from last cycle is running against him for the nomination. . A Robert Burns, apparently from Dallas, will run as a Democrat.

Possibly Coming Soon to a Texas Criminal Trial Court Clerk Near You- E-filing in Criminal Cases!

Rules governing electronic filing in Texas criminal cases have been finally approved. A clerk may implement criminal case electronic filing in that clerk’s office when that clerk has the written consent of a majority of the judges in the county who have jurisdiction in criminal cases and who are served by that clerk. Appellate courts generally require e-filing for documents filed by attorneys in criminal matters, so these new rules apply to trial courts. Under these rules, e-filing may not be the exclusive manner of filing documents; paper filing must still be allowed (i.e. the kind of filing done presently). Charging instruments cannot be e-filed; they must be paper-filed. Otherwise, the e-filing is similar to that in civil cases, viz. no in camera material, no material under seal or proposed to be under seal, no sensitive information.
New rule 1.04(b) does not appear to be harmonized with Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code Annotated section 132.001 (West Supp. 2015). It appears to me that a statute trumps a supreme court administrative rule.

Personable, Hard-Charging, Drug-Court Leader Wants to Replace Larry Meyers on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

Spanning the state to bring you the constant variety of Texas Court of Criminal Appeals politics, I am finding candidates for next year's election. First up--366th District Court Judge Ray Wheless of Collin County (the county north of Dallas County, and red as a beet), seeking position two. It is currently occupied by Lawrence Meyers, who switched from the Republican Party to the Democratic.
Judge Wheless's court handles civil and criminal cases. He is married to Cynthia McCrann Wheless, presiding judge of Collin County's 417th District Court, which has a juvenile docket.
Born in Abilene, Wheless dropped out of school and joined the Air Force during the Vietnam era. He fixed fighter aircraft in California and came out four years later with a G.E.D. and four years of college under his belt. He got a Bachelor's in Business Administration in California and went to UT Law in Austin. He became an AV-rated specialist in civil trial law and personal injury trial law, served as president of the Plano Bar Association, the Collin County Bar Association, and the Plano Metro Rotary Club. A 35-year Republican Party activist, he was appointed a public member of the State Board of Chiropractic Examiners, a county-court-at-law judge in 2000, a district court judge in 2009. He's been a member of the Texas Parental Rights Advisory Panel. His main claim for preferment is that he established Collin County's first misdemeanor and felony drug courts, is Chair of the Specialized Courts Advisory Council, and is President-elect of the Texas Association of Drug Court Professionals.

This guy is very charming and energetic. I've had two phone conversations with him and enjoyed both of them immensely, Since I interviewed him in July, he has been to more political functions in my home county, Montgomery, than I have. What kind of Court of Criminal Appeals judge would he make? Only God knows. He doesn't have a background as an appellate lawyer nor as a prosecutor nor as a criminal defense attorney.

Houston criminal district judge Mary Lou Keel is the other person in this race with a campaign committee. I intend to have a piece about her at the end of the week

Effective September 1 The Texas Supreme Court Changes Juvenile Certification Appellate Practice

The Texas Supreme Court ordered that juvenile certification appeals be accellerated and that juvenile courts tell a respondent of that person's right to an immediate appeal, effective September 1.  A juvenile court certifying a juvenile to stand trial as an adult must must tell the juvenile and the juvenile's attorney orally on the record in open court and in writing of the right to immediately appeal the certification decision and the accelerated nature of the appeal. As far as reasonably possible, those appeals are to get to final disposition within 180 days.