Ole Bubba
Ole Bubba, attorney at law, ended himself up on the front page of the Houston Chronicle newspaper today.
Lisa Falkenberg, one of the few remaining investigative reporters in Houston and certainly one of the smartest, discovered a problem in Fort Bend County, where Ole Bubba and I live.
The story starts with a Department of Public Safety lab worker who got caught red-handed falsifying lab reports on drug tests. He handled 5,000 cases in Texas since 2006. They fired him. However, the 5,000 cases he handled may have included more than a smattering of lies, lies, and double lies that put innocent people in prison.
Ole Bubba gets peeved about stuff like that. He’s just an old country lawyer but he genuinely cares about justice and almost always sides with the underdog.
So, when Bubba discovered that some of his clients may have been convicted on false evidence, he was mad enough to squeeze mud out of a rock. But is the Fort Bend County District Attorney doing something about it? Is the Pope pregnant?
Other District Attorneys in other counties did the right thing.
Former Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos requested re-testing from DPS, but also sent notices in October to attorneys for former defendants whose cases may have been affected, and referred them to the public defender’s office for help.
Galveston District Attorney Jack Roady’s office sent letters, too. He also asked judges to appoint a panel of defense attorneys to represent former defendants in drug cases touched by Salvador. Of the 700 such cases in the Galveston area, the panel began filing appeals first in the 26 cases where people were still behind bars.
Even Texas’ highest court, which ain’t no bastion of liberalism, said that evidence handled by this guy at DPS should “be considered tainted.”
John Healey
But people in Fort Bend County are sitting in prison who in all likelihood were convicted with false evidence. I just don’t know how a man could sleep with himself at night knowing that and not giving a flip. But, John Healey thinks he knows more than the court does and what’s a little prison time for an innocent person? It ain’t like we executed them.
Bubba knew Momma would be reading the front page of the newspaper, so he couldn’t say “too damn little too damn late,” when Healey said he’d notified a few of the lawyers about it verbally.
… Healey says he now feels compelled to send notices to those who may be affected: “We would have liked to have waited until the rest (of the test results) came back to give a more complete picture to the defense counsel,” he told me.
Some defense lawyers may appreciate that gesture. But Don Bankston, for one, did not: “If they’d just sent out a letter, instead of having their eyes checking it, we could have had the eyes of 150 defense lawyers checking it.”
If you can read the whole story, you’ll like it.
I am told that you can read the whole story here.
Thanks to Ole Bubba for the heads up and not saying damn on the front page of Momma’s newspaper.
Proud of ya, Don. Sic ’em!!!!
1The Matlock of Fort Bend County. Comfy as an old shoe … smart as a whip! Good on ya, Don!
2Good on Bubba! He sounds like a great guy, and must be since he hangs around TWMDBS. John Healey, on the other hand, sound like a real AH.
3Love that Bubba…………………
4…Healey needs to be dropped in a vat of pee…I work at a drug testing lab ,we have lots of positive and negative pee samples…. We freeze all the positives and keep them for several years… I’ll find him a spot in the positive storage freezer .His punishment will be cleaning out the old frozen samples..the smell is awful…Just like him…Thank you Bubba for standing up for the little Ft Bend guy………
o continue reading this story, you will need to be a digital subscriber to HoustonChronicle.com.
Read more: http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/falkenberg/article/Area-prosecutors-interpret-duties-to-justice-4365066.php#ixzz2O2kFQUvO
So, if I’m not a “digital subscriber” it’s tough luck?
5Yeah, Larry. I think I should be running the Houston Chrnicle but they won’t let me.
6Lots of papers are doing that worldwide now, Larry, putting some of their content behind a paywall. About the only one I’ve seen lately that hasn’t gone that route is the Washington Post. With the bucket of money they lost in the last quarter, it may only be a matter of time.
7Dear me, Healy looks a lot like Carnival Cruz to me! Is he Cuban too?
Go Bubba go!
8Umpty,
9The Wapo goes behind a paywall sometime this summer. Sigh, not my favorite paper, but gonna miss it.
Bravo Bubba! We hereby authorize you to bite as many butts as necessary to get this fixed!!
10(And, Remind them that a bunch of Old ladies with Samsonite purses are behind every move you make!!!)
Hooray for Bubba and Lisa. Good lawyering and good reporting, at least from what I can tell since the Chron has now put up a pay wall.
11I don’t understand the “paywall” thing. But, I guess I’ll have to buy a paper. Lisa Falkenberg is not in the on-line edition this day. Great article from what I saw using the link.
It’s sad when this happens to people. It shouldn’t.
Sic ’em Bubba.
12Hee hee, Samsonite purses! Good one aj!
13Can you imagine sitting in jail, knowing you did nothing wrong?
14We had a similar situation in Massachusetts that may have involved more than 30,000 cases. The Suffolk County (Boston) D.A. Daniel Conley has assembled a seven-member legal team in his office that has finished reviewing all of the cases of those currently incarcerated based on drug evidence tested by Dookhan. (DPH employee who cooked her books) but he says most of the 18,000 or so affected cases in Suffolk County involved those who’ve already completed their sentences, so his team has even more work ahead.
“To put that into perspective, any given year we handle about 40,000 cases,” he said. “We get thrown another 18,000, you can see the magnitude of this.”
But they are doing it. One of the best ADA’s I know is in charge and the Commonwealth is also funding (in part) services from the public defenders’ offices to ramp up the number of defense attorneys.
15Oh Bubba, you are my hero!
(Duree Lee, I love that pee idea. Perfect!)
16Good work, Bubba. Betcha now Healey feels like the ass he is~if not, get rid of him next election~yeah, I know, I live in gerrymandered Repigland myself.
17Since this thread is based on legal issues and I forgot to send this the other day – for the fun of it – here is the actual appeal of BillO the Clown’s child custody nonsense. The best part is KNOWING that BillO is having to pay gazillions in legal fees for being such a hatefilled liar:
http://www.nycourts.gov/reporter/3dseries/2013/2013_00053.htm
Trying to get your ex-wife ex-communicated because you are wealthy and angry – priceless~
18Most of the prosecutors I have known were honorable. That being said, forever, DA’s and the attorneys that work for them have been able to get away with stuff that would earn other attorneys time out sitting on the bank, if not disbarrment. Case in point, the former DA, now district judge and his chief henchman in Williamson County, who have made the news of late. Mr. Healy may not be as unethical as that, but it sounds like he possesses all the criteria of a first class chicken-shit. (Sorry Momma, but there doesn’t seem to be a word or phrase that means the same thing as chicken-shit.)
19It sounds like Healey studied with Ken Anderson, former Williamson County DA and now a judge (shudder). He’s the one who hid evidence that could have kept Michael Morton out of prison (25 years) and he still says he did nothing wrong.
Maybe DA doesn’t always mean District Attorney?
20“The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.” Atticus Finch, To Kill A Mockingbird
Bubba = Atticus Finch.
I will bet you $20 to a box of frozen Weight Watcher taquitos that this is the EXACT same type of lab work they have in mind when they want to drug-test unemployment and welfare recipients.
21Tell Ole Bubba that if he hears cheers coming from Dallas, it’s me! Good for you! Go get ’em!
22Prosecutorial misconduct!!!
Rhetoric is not logically unavoidable.
“To enforce one’s rights when they are violated is never a legal wrong, and may often be a moral duty.”
Mornington v. Lafayette Hotel Co.
(Cardozo, B.)
“The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal,
well-meaning but without understanding.”
Olmstead v. United States
, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (Brandeis, J., dissenting).
http://www.fd.org/pdf_lib/FJC2010/fjc2010_Prosecutorial_Misconduct.pdf
We are Anonymous We do no Forget We do not Forgive Expect Us —-Anonymous—-
23I think he is the long lost twin of o’ Teddy Cruz……
24Ouch! This has been happening also at the FBI, for pity pot’s sake for some time. They just happened to notice it. ???? Here’s the deal. If there was other evidence in a case that completely all together pointed to somebody’s guilt, then the FBI did not get all that excited about doing a nose close to the ground type of re-search. However, if the lab test was the only incriminating thing against all sorts of other good stuff like no record and outstanding citizenship, then the guy or gal sittin’ in a jail cell they didn’t deserve will get their case re-examined. And if there was all sorta nastiness behind the lazy, inaccurate testing, some places are just going to drop and remove all charges and open the cell doors since every bit of lab tested evidence is now compromised over the moon. Just watch all the tight girdle law and order no matter what types go nut cakes! As far as they are concerned, there is no such thing as an innocent person jailed by mistake.
25All I can say is that if I ever get arrested in Texas, Bubba will be the first one I call!
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