Texas Supreme Court Justices Discuss Their Views on Dissents and Contrasting View's in Texas's Highest Civil Court

If you've got a case going before the Texas Supreme Court, this Texas Lawyer article will be of interest, and possibly help to you. Justices Jeff Brown and Jeff Boyd are interviewed. The Texas Lawyer has a weird paywall that lets you read, I believe, five of their articles per month for free.

Houston's Fourteenth Court of Appeals Overturns Improper Strikes of African Americans

Robert Nathaniel Jones appealed his felony conviction for possessing a controlled substance. He said that the State peremptorily struck an African-American veniremember in violation of Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986). He claimed that the State’s explanation for striking one African-American veniremember applied identically to three non-African-American veniremembers who ultimately served on the jury.

The State said that, after striking less favorable veniremembers, it used its final strikes against veniremembers who rated law enforcement in their community a “seven” on a scale of one to ten. It said its strategy was to “str[ike] everybody who was a six [on law enforcement] and then everyone who was a seven, up until [it] got to the point of . . . [veniremember number] 26 or 27,” where it “ran out of strikes”; it “took seven or lower and just moved up the scale from [veniremember number] one.”

The trial court should not have accepted this explanation because it is against the record. When the State struck veniremember number twenty-four, an African American, it skipped over two non-African-American veniremembers with lower numbers who also gave law enforcement a score of seven. Additionally, the State’s strikes revealed disparate treatment of African-American veniremembers. So Justice J. Brett Busby, writing for a panel including Chief Justice Kem Thompson Frost and Justice Marc W. Brown reversed and remanded the case for retrial.

Trial lawyers, Batson error is very rarely properly preserved, but that’s old news for readers of this blog.

Robert Nathaniel Jones v. State of Texas, ___ S.W.3d ___, No. 14-12-00515-CR (Tex. App.-- Houston [14th Dist.] ) Oct. 1, 2012) (no pet. h.)

Music Stops; All the Players Find New Seats

Nabors Corporate Services general counsel and former judge of Harris County's 129th civil District Court Grant Dorfman takes over Harris County's 334th civil District Court. Former presiding judge of the 334th Ken Wise-- what a great surname for a justice-- rises to Houston's 14th Court of Appeals. Wise takes the place of Jeff Brown, elevated to Texas's Supreme Court. Brown takes the seat of Nathan Hecht, who will now be the Chief Justice, while Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson leaves his seat to go earn some money with the law firm now to be called Alexander Dubose Jefferson and Townsend, which, as far as the judicial seats go, completes the cycle. People who can do the work of a Texas Supreme Court justice-- or the work of a justice on any Texas appellate court-- can make much more money in private practice than they can in working on a court. I don't know if it is practical to raise judicial salaries to a level such that they would be competitive with private sector pay. It is sad, though, to see the passage of good justices off the benches because of money. Former Chief Justice Phillips, former Justice Hankinson, former Fort Worth Justice David Keltner, and others too numerous to mention are sorely missed.

There are a lot of reasons not to treat appellate justices poorly. One of those reasons is the financial sacrifice that practically all of them make to serve.