CRIMINAL JURISDICTION

Lying Texas Ranger, Overzealous Child Advocate Experts and Pro-Prosecution Judge Mock Justice

By: Houston Criminal Lawyer John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair

Most human tragedies are produced by random acts of Nature run amok. But far too often human tragedies are man-made, particularly in our criminal justice system. That’s what has happened in the so-called “Mineola swingers club” case. According to Michael Hall, in his latest Texas Monthly article about the case titled “Trial and Error,” this criminal justice tragedy began in 2005 when Margie Cantrell, a career “foster mom”  (27 adopted children over 36 years) who either fled or migrated from California to Texas in 2004, walked into the Mineola Police Department, located in Wood County (just north of Tyler), and informed the police that two of her foster children had been forced to perform “sex shows” at the Retreat Club, a local “swingers’ club.”

Before we get into the core facts of this legal nightmare, let us set the cast of characters who have made it all possible:  Judge Jack Skeen, Jr., who presides over the 241st District Court in Tyler, Smith County, Texas, and who has presided over all the criminal trials flowing out the Mineola swinger club case; Smith County District Attorney Matt Bingham who has prosecuted all the defendants thus far put to trial in the case; Sergeant Philip Kemp,  the Texas Ranger and lead investigator in the case; Shauntel Mayo, Jamie Pittman, Patrick “Booger Red” Kelly, Dennis Pittman, Sheila Sones, and Jimmy Sones, the six defendants indicted in 2007 in the case.

Three of the defendants, Mayo, Pittman and Kelly, were convicted in 2008 while a fourth defendant, Dennis Pittman, was convicted last month. All were sentenced to life imprisonment, although the convictions of Shauntel Mayo and Jamie Pittman’s convictions were reversed this past June by the 14th Circuit Court of Appeals.

And, finally, there are the five alleged child sexual abuse victims whose testimony alone—without any physical evidence or adult witness corroboration—produced the four convictions in this case. The children essentially said they had been trained in a “sex kindergarten” to dress and perform in sexually provocative ways before audiences at the Retreat Club.

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Houston Press Reports Our Victory in Court and Client’s Life After False Allegations

By:  Houston Criminal Attorney John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair

One of our recent success stories was profiled in the cover story of the May 6-12, 2010, edition of the Houston Press.  In Oh Hold, The Press exposed the hard reality that charges of child sex crimes can haunt a person for life, even though he may be exonerated before a jury of his peers, or, as it was in this case, after two separate trials and two “not guilty” verdicts.

Michael Serges was a Houston deputy constable when he was arrested in March 2008 for aggravated sexual assault. He was fired by Precinct 4 Constable Ron Hickman immediately after his arrest. Serges retained the John T. Floyd Law Firm to represent him. We knew it was going to be a difficult case. All child sexual assault cases are. This one involved a 7-year delayed outcry. The alleged victim was a former inmate in a local juvenile detention facility where Serges worked at the time (2000). She charged that Serges had raped her in the shower of the facility. The prosecutor would attempt to support victim’s charge with testimony from another former inmate at the same facility who was a twice-convicted felon by the time Serges was put to trial.  The jury would also be presented with a very sympathetic complainant, one who was dying from lupus, who would be rolled into court in a wheel chair, wrapped in a blanket to warm her withering body and whose very breath required support from a nearby attached oxygen tank, a defense lawyer’s nightmare.  The case would only grow worse as the investigator from the D.A’s office seemed to magically come up with four new “victims,” who stories were eerily, and unsettlingly, similar.

The first case’s difficulty was primarily due to it being a classic “she said/he said” case. The prosecution, of course, portrayed the victim as a “helpless” troubled child taken advantage of by a demented, corrupt prison guard.  The opposite was the case. The complainants had long histories of lying (even by their own admissions), drug use, stealing, and serious psychological disorders. In fact, the sexual abuse allegations by one of the former inmates against Serges had been thoroughly investigated in 2000 by detention center staff, the Houston Police Department and the District Attorney’s office. The three law enforcement agencies determined the allegations were not credible, and, in fact, the alleged victim ultimately recanted the allegation, admitting that she had told lies against Serges in this particular instance and in other instances just to “get him in trouble.”

The District Attorney’s Office chose to continue with this case, we believe, primarily because of the massive scandal revealed in 2007 about prison guards abusing inmates throughout the state’s juvenile institutions. The prosecution bolstered its case by hauling in a “child sexual assault expert” from the Harris County Children’s Assessment Center (“CAC”) who testified that in such cases the “studies” and “literature” show that only 3 percent of children make false sexual assault allegations.

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