CRIMINAL JURISDICTION

Fifth Circuit Orders Acquittal in 1964 Mississippi Murder Case, Cold Case Initiative Fails, Statute of Limitation Prevails

By: Houston Criminal Defense Attorney John T. Floyd and Senior Paralegal Billy Sinclair

Several years ago the Federal Bureau of Investigation created a Cold Case Initiative designed to bring to justice persons who committed horrific racially motivated crimes during the 1950s and 1960s civil rights era. One of those cases involved James Ford Seale, a former Mississippi deputy sheriff, who was convicted in June 2007 of kidnapping and conspiracy to commit kidnapping in the disappearances of Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee.

The two 19 year old African American men were hitchhiking in rural Franklin County, Mississippi in 1964 when Seale and fellow Klansmen allegedly picked them up, drove them into the Homochito National Forest in Franklin County, brutally interrogated and beat them, bound them with duct tape, tied a car engine block and railroad rail to their bodies, and while they were still alive and presumably pleading for their lives, threw them into the Old Mississippi River. The bodies of the two men were accidentally found two months later during a search for three missing civil rights workers in another infamous civil rights murder case that would become known as the “Mississippi Burning” case.

Seal and another man named Charles Edwards were arrested for the murders of Moore and Dee in 1964 but were immediately released on bond and were never tried. After the FBI turned the case over to local authorities, a justice of the peace dismissed the charges saying witnesses refused to testify against Seale and Edwards.

Law enforcement interest in the case was revived when Charles Moore’s brother, Thomas, discovered that Seale was still alive during a visit to Franklin County in 2007 as part of a documentary being produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation about the civil rights slayings. Thomas Moore gave the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi the FBI files on the case which he had obtained from a Mississippi reporter. That prompted Assistant U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton to assist in the creation of a task force that re-opened the four decade old murder cases. The FBI-led task force generated enough evidence to produce an indictment against Seale. The FBI hailed the indictment as a prime example of its efforts to close cold cases from the civil rights era. (more…)

Enormous Mismanagement of the FLDS Case, Loss of $12 Million to Taxpayers, And an Egregious Affront to Fundamental Principles of Law

By: Houston Criminal Defense Lawyer John T. Floyd and Mr. Billy Sinclair

Since the April 2008 military-styled raid, led by the Texas Rangers and the state’s Child Protective Services, on the Yearning for Zion Ranch owned by Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Days Saints (FLDS) in Eldorado, Texas, we have been consistently been critical of the methods used by law enforcement and the CPS efforts to destroy the FLDS church. These official efforts stem from allegations that some male FLDS members used religious practices to engage in “spiritual marriages” with underage teenage girls. CPS reported in August 2008 that it was still investigating 10 cases involving marriages of girls ranging in ages from 12 to 16. As we have previously reported, these investigations have already cost Texas taxpayers at least $12 million.

The Houston Chronicle reported on September 4, 2008 that the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, the parent agency of Child Protective Services, has mismanaged millions of taxpayers’ dollars. Five years ago the Texas Legislature mandated that the Commission hire private contractors to assume duties of state employees in agencies such as CPS. The Chronicle reported this effort “has been a slow-motion disaster.”

The newspaper reported that the Commission terminated its contract last year with one company, Accenture, “after [an] attempt to privatize eligibility screening for social service programs caused chaos and erroneously denied services to thousands of qualified Texans.”
A 2006 state audit was highly critical of a five-year $85 million deal the Commission made in 2004 with another company, Convergys, to provide human resources and payroll services for the more than 46,000 employees in the state agencies supervised by the Commission. The audit warned that the Commission’s supervision of the Convergys contract was lax and that this had resulted in late or incorrect paychecks being issued to employees and produced inadequate spending on technology and training programs.

The Chronicle also reported that “a return visit by the auditors this year found that payroll and management problems at the state agencies continue. Texas State Auditor John Keel reported that more than $738,192 had been mistakenly paid out to more than 1,200 former state employees after they had been terminated. Only half of those taxpayer dollars have been recovered. In addition, 43 employees were allowed to take paid emergency leave because of criminal charges, with an average length of 70 days. Nine out of 10 agency supervisors had not received required training, while nearly three-fourths of employees sampled had no performance evaluations in their files.” (more…)

By:  Houston Criminal Defense Attorney John T. Floyd and Mr. Billy Sinclair

Would you want a Judge presiding over a criminal case against you sleeping with the District Attorney prosecuting that case?

Didn’t think so. Most people wouldn’t. You expect a Judge to be neutral, free of the slightest appearance of impropriety. You expect a District Attorney to be zealous, honest, and even-handed in the prosecution of criminal cases. Those general expectations – what the State Bar calls the rules of ethical conduct – are compromised when a District Attorney prosecutes a case before a Judge with whom the District Attorney is having a sexual liaison.

That controversial issue has become a highly-publicized feature in the capital murder case of Charles Dean Hood. Attorneys working to save Hood from lethal injection charged, and ultimately proved, that 19 years ago when the condemned inmate was tried and convicted in a Collin County District Court, former District Attorney Tom O’Connell, who prosecuted Hood, was reportedly having a romantic affair the former trial judge, Verla Sue Holland, who presided over the trial.

Hood was scheduled for execution on September 10, 2008, but the day before the execution was to be carried out, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued a reprieve in the case. The appeals court, on which Holland had previously served as a judge, ducked the sexual liaison issue involving Holland and O’Connell and instead issued the reprieve on what the court said were “developments in the law regarding (jury) nullification instructions.”

The appeals court had previously rejected this same jury instruction issue in Hood’s case but said it was now “prudent to reconsider the decision we [previously] issued.” (more…)

By: Houston Criminal Defense Lawyer John Floyd and Senior Paralegal Billy Sinclair

In July 2008 a Schleicher County grand jury indicted five members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, including FLDS leader Warren Jeffs, on sexual assault of children charges and a sixth member for failure to report a child abuse charge.

On August 20, 2008 the same grand jury indicted two additional FLDS members on sexual assault of children charges and added an additional charge of bigamy against Warren Jeffs.

This litany of criminal charges stem from allegations that some male FLDS members engaged in “spiritual marriages” with underage teenage girls. Records from Texas’ Child Protective Services indicate the agency is investigating 10 cases involving marriages of girls ranging in ages from 12 to 16 while the Texas Rangers are investigating as many as 20 cases of sexual assault and 50 cases of bigamy. The Texas Attorney General’s Office, which is presenting the FLDS case to the grand jury, will only say that the case remains under investigation.

The Texas Ranger investigation is being led by Captain L.C. Wilson. He replaced Ranger Captain Barry Caver who supposedly retired in June to take a job in the oil industry. Caver was in charge of the military-style raid on the FLDS compound in Eldorado last April that triggered “the FLDS case.” Five of the 17 Rangers now under Wilson’s supervision are working full-time on the case. Attorney General Greg Abbott has not disclosed how many of his staff are involved in the investigation and prosecution of the case. As we reported in a previous column, the case has already cost Texas taxpayers at least $12 million dollars. (more…)