It generally requires a video, or a written letter or text, or a wiretapped phone conversation. In July, Wooten received a call from her real estate agent in Colorado. She says someone in the purchasing department told her he tried to use up the wardrobe budget so she couldnt order a robe, and he packed her first months docket with more than 100 jury trials. They indicted Judge Wooten under regular bribery, where the person brings an envelope full of $10,000 cash, gives it to the judge the day before the hearing, and goes, Youre going to take care of what Im doing, right? Wink, wink. Dallas County has 32; Collin County has 13. Later, at the time of his indictment in the Wooten matter, he would be an officer with TDi, a tech company in Plano. His eponymously punny company, Spen-Off Strategies, touted itself as offering comprehensive and tailored strategies for operations, marketing, finance, technology, government relations, regulatory compliance and much more, with a global network of experts as support. And he had 162 years of history proving that his 464-vote margin entitled him to what was essentially a lifetime appointment. This case, like so many others brought by Roachs office, had nothing to do with truth. After serving in the Air Force, Spencer went into the healthcare field, managing a region for a home health company. I could be at a judges fundraiser Saturday night writing him up to a $2,500 check and then appear in his courtroom on Monday arguing a motion. There is no dispute that Wooten, for her part, paid every bill she received from Spencer. In his third letter to Milner, dated October 15, Sandoval wrote: The real reason for Ms. Wootens success was the radio advertising she did. At one point, according to a Collin County Bar Association judicial poll, it was 12 percent, the lowest in the history of the survey. Thats got to be illegal.. Her law license was suspended, so she worked as a paralegal and started building a mediation and trial consulting business. Given the timing of the next-to-the-last campaign finance report, and the time those ads began, I believe her reports are false. Its tempting to think that things have improved. In many ways his career has come full circle. But election fraud is now a national rallying cry. Wooten is farsighted, and she was familiar with the form from her time on the bench, so it was easy for her to decipher the jurys findings as the judge silently flipped through the pages: guilty, guilty, guilty. It was money well spent. Most judges were former prosecutors with no family law experience. Willis, however, was never indicted. In December 2008, a few weeks before Wooten was to take the bench, Milner reached out to Attorney General Greg Abbotts office. Dave was paroled at the end of 2014, after serving 19 months and 10 days. It just seemed like there had to be some kernel of truth to the whole bribery thing, some questionable if not illegal activity that allowed the Collin County DAs office to prosecute four innocent people, convict three of them, and force the fourth to plead guilty. The usual process is for the police to do their investigation and make an arrest, and then they turn the case over to the DAs office. There she met Dave Cary, a Northern Californian who had grown up in an old mining town and started his education in a one-room schoolhouse. The appellate judges agreed that Milner was performing investigative functions and therefore was not entitled to prosecutorial immunity. Dave and Stacy didnt do anything wrong. Suzanne Wooten did the impossible and became the first candidate to defeat a sitting judge in Collin County. With his Gregory Peck eyeglass frames and awkwardly oversize pinstripe suit, White resembled Atticus Finch if Atticus Finch were in the Federalist Society. Enjoy unlimited access to all of our incredible journalism, in print and digital. Now that being said, when I got arrested and bonded out, in the next year, my business tripled, Walpole says. 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. These are seasoned, experienced former federal prosecutors. Both Dave and Stacy were exonerated on all counts. He asked if Stacy might be interested in hiring him to do some research and consulting on her behalf. But what got me to my decision was one of my dear friends who was there. Consulting on other legislative issues for pay was his job. 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. Most people who arent lawyers or involved in the justice system go, How can they do that? Milner told Schulte that Wooten had one week to resign. Federal statistics on public corruption convictions show the two judicial districts that cover South Texas rank near the top nationwide. The hard part, she thought, was over. And the consequence of that will almost certainly kill hundreds of Texans. The email said that prosecutors should only conduct bench trials in Wootens court if they didnt care about the outcome and it was the only way to reasonably dispose of the case. Learn from it.. Toward the end of the year, she told the partners at a firm meeting that she intended to run for Sandovals seat. Or even his wife. Lubbock's. He knew the prosecutors were acting like cops, and there was Supreme Court case law that said if you act like a cop, you get qualified immunity like a cop. She was friends with Peter Schulte, a local criminal defense attorney and former cop, so she gave him a call. As they headed out of the courtroom, Schulte, a young, tough-talking former cop with a buzz cut, angrily told White, This is not over. They could select 20 to 125 prospective jurors the same way district court jurors are selected (i.e., randomly through voter registration and drivers license rolls), or they could appoint three to five people to serve as grand jury commissioners who wouldnt serve themselves, but who would in turn select 15 to 40 prospective jurors each. I want to be cystal clear about this, Spencer says. She was soaking in her bathtub, trying to figure out what to tell her kids, aged 15, 9, and 7, if the worst happened. Milner wasnt the only one talking that way. (The prison time was stayed pending her appeal.). 2 Constable Kelly Smith-A man (and I use that term very loosely here) who has been in law enforcement for almost 25 years and has managed to climb ALL THE WAY DOWN the law enforcement ladder from county cop to police chief to now being just one rung above a WalMart security guard as a constable. White had been participating with Milner in the grand jury investigations since at least December 2008, and Abbott had been briefed on the progress of the case. Enjoy!!!! I felt like that was the right thing to do, she says, not to put him in jail so that when he gets out he reoffends because he has nothing, hes getting no tools, hes not getting any help., The whispers about Wootens sentences made their way back to her. As of August 2022, Governor Greg Abbott had appointed 59 state court judges, 49 of which were district court judges. Two days after his wedding anniversary, he came home. 10. I remember going home thinking, What did I do? This was particularly cynical given the fact that Ms. Wooten was active in the Democratic party two years prior to this race. Due to the shortness of the race, Clements agreed to cut his fee in half to $25,000, and then he got to work booking radio ads. Wooten now has a busy mediation and trial consulting practice in McKinney called North Texas Litigation Solutions. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ). What followed is the unbelievable, epic tale of. This time, Sandoval named Jennifer the sole managing conservator of the girls, sanctioned Dave $50,000 for filing numerous frivolous pleadings, and ordered him to pay Jennifers attorneys fees in the amount of $417,000. She paid the campaign bills as she received them from Spencer, and then she used her line of credit to pay off the outstanding balance at the end. His clients run the gamut: crypto, natural gas, medical device inventions, nutritional supplements, vertical farming, cybersecurity, edge computing, bottled water. It is all bad news for Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, New Mexico, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania as their aggregate scores are in the highest quartiles . Suite 2100 Assistant Attorney General | 2003 2015, Peter Schulte Ben Smith, a former ADA from Roachs office, currently sits on the 380th. The law also mandates public disclosure of contributors and the amounts contributed. Its funny, because, as a police officer or whatever, John Roach used to refer to me as the faggot from Dallas because Im a gay man, Schulte says. Whatever was going on, her bank didnt want to be involved. Because this isnt a crime under Texas law. I couldnt tell you. John Roach Sr. was running uncontested for the 199th. Civil penalties can be assessed for violations of up to three times the amount of the political contributions accepted in violation of the section. Steve Spencer has not yet filed a motion with the court to overturn his conviction. This advocacy was his passion, something he did free of charge for his own personal ends. There are currently 485 district courts in the state. Of course, those are some of the most populated states in the . They have original jurisdiction over matters such as felony criminal cases, divorce and child custody disputes, and civil claims of $200 or more. How did you all fuck this up and continue to prosecute her? First, as Schulte noted, it is entirely legal for a law firm to write a check for $30,000 to a sitting judge at a cocktail fundraiser for his or her reelection campaign on Friday night and then have one or more of its lawyers appear before said judge for a hearing on Monday morning. After her divorce from her first husband, she was living on a working cattle ranch outside of Waxahachie, breeding horses and miniature donkeys, when she decided to adopt two children from Russia. Dallas, Texas 75201. I will lose myself in the crazy, corrupt, centuries-old history of the Collin County court system. He seemed to believe that they must have cost an exorbitant amount, and he suggested that they were paid for with secret funds paid to Spencer, her media consultant, by an unidentified third party. She adjusted her calendar, found something to wear, and got to work. Stacy says they fell in love on their first date, at Avanti in Dallas at Fountain Place. Then someone anonymously placed a copy of an email from First Assistant DA Greg Davis to Roach in her mailbox. It isnt a crimealthough its not smartto use money earned from one client to pay bills for another before they pay you back because you dont want to admit to anyone that youre broke. Corruption Index Score: 45.61. First he approached Michael Puhl, a McKinney attorney who had run and lost in 2006. Sandoval won 9,884 to 9,420. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it. He pled guilty and was sentenced to 100 days in jail and 10 years probation. And thats when I was told the allegation was bribery. Federal prosecutors convicted 206 defendants on public corruption charges in And they were women. Since Wooten, judicial races in the county are occasionally contested, and there are a lot more women on the bench. He didnt understand that he couldnt just indict people to get them to do what he wanted them to do.. On December 14, 2016, the nine justices handed down a unanimous opinion upholding Daves appeal and overturning Stacys. With that in mind, Best Life set out to determine the most corrupt state in America. Spencer came to Dallas to meet with the Carys the following month, and they talked in the Carys home for several hours. 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. The losing judge said there was no way Wooten could have won without cheating, and the DA needed to find the crime. But he was already working regularly with a local television station as a legal analyst. You get arrested, they take your TV, they take your cash. So she decided to sit out the race and spend the next four years getting ready. 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. They werent stupid. The Judicial Campaign Fairness Act places limits on judicial campaign contributions. Odessa's violent crime rate of 806 incidents per 100,000 inhabitants is the highest in Texas by a fairly wide margin; Lubbock, the #2 city on the list, drops down to 658 per 100,000. Wooten assured Spencer thatbetween her generous law firm salary, savings, and a $50,000 line of creditshe had sufficient funds at her disposal to cover anything she couldnt raise. Harry White, an assistant attorney general with election law experience, agreed to join the team. At first, while Dave was in the gang tank in the Billy Moore Correctional Center outside of Tyler, shed visit every week. She had continuous advertising on the most popular, hard-right talk shows. He wanted them all held accountable. Then Huntsville. Even so, Dave called Wootens office to request signs, which he posted at his office in Collin County. Suzanne Wooten Most try both criminal and civil cases, but in larger counties, such as Dallas, individual courts may specialize in civil, criminal, juvenile, or family law. She lived under a bridge for days before finally hitchhiking to Louisiana. It all sounds pretty straightforward, but there are three big problems: one of perception, if not reality; one of blind, partisan loyalty; and one of colossal power wielded by one individual. At the time, Bob Dole and Pat Buchanan were on the presidential ballot. In 2004, Milner indicted both Dallas County Sheriff Jim Bowles and Denton County Sheriff Weldon Lucas in a case alleging improper payments made by a jail commissary vendor. He knew unseating a Democratic judge in Texas wouldnt get attention; he needed to challenge a Republican. 44 South Carolina Shutterstock Public corruption convictions per 10,000 residents: 20 Adverse action reports filed from 1990 to 2020: 11,763 Medical malpractice reports filed from 1990 to 2020: 4,737 The Most Lawless County in Texas Suzanne Wooten did the impossible and became the first candidate to defeat a sitting judge in Collin County. Willis, who had taken her bench at the same time Wooten had, was presumably also a target because her husband, Judge Greg Willis, was planning to run for Roachs job as DA. Stacy had also appeared before her briefly after she had sued Jennifer for trying to garnish her personal investment accounts in Daves custody case, and the lawsuit had been subsequently transferred to the 380th because it was related. 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. So my attention was drawn to Collin County, because its the reddest county in the reddest state, Spencer says. Where are these places you wonder? ), One day, Wooten received a call at the courthouse from a drug rep. There were also ads run on the most popular morning and evening shows. Sometimes Im the guy who knows the guy.. Schulte started as a police officer in McKinney before getting his law license and going into private practice. The DAO has acted with seeming disregard for the personal, emotional, and financial costs to the individuals concerned., They also pointed out that Roach had been absent for at least one-third of the days normally worked by others in the courthouse, and that he was present at the seating of the grand jury and declined, in open court, to challenge any member of it as unfit.. On that November day in 2011, nobody could have foreseen that Wooten, whose hands were effectively tied behind her back without the ability to appeal, would emerge a decade later, Houdini-like, with a complete exoneration and a $600,000 settlement against Collin County. 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. The grandparents sued for visitation rights and got them. There will be many other names that will come up as being involved in the public corruption, Wood County Sheriff Kelly Cole, District Attorney Investigator Jerry Hirsch, District Clerk Suzy Wright, County Clerk Kelley Price, Assistant District Attorney Shauna Key, Attorney Cliff Thomas, etc., but Ill get to them as their names come up. Stacy says she hasnt seen them since. That for this money, youre going to do X.. Spencer and his wife, Kippling, had two daughters: one was Kipplings from a previous marriage; the other was their child together. The Texas Rangers' Public Integrity Unit and Public Corruption Unit are tasked with investigating crimes committed by state officers and state employees, as well as allegations of public corruption. The Collin County trials, however, ended when Wooten was elected. 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