Episode Transcription: 

roxo media house
0:13
welcome to fortitude everyone jw wilson my co-host and buddy for life brinton
0:18
payne uh being here fortitude brinton where the story never
0:24
dies or stories never die stories uh brought to you by captex bank they make
0:29
all this beautiful world happen for us they’re just the the best place to be if you bank you better be making it cap
0:35
tech you’re not you’re probably doing something wrong yes and if you’re doing something wrong this guy between us
0:41
might actually uh pin you down so i catch you today’s show brinton is a bit of a step out for us uh we are we
0:47
brought on one of our longtime friends friends of the show eddie brown he’s a 12-year uh staff writer for the fourth
0:53
weekly uh throughout his career as a writer he’s uncovered many many issues dealing with government malfeasance
1:01
today’s particular topic is one of those back in may he wrote an article titled who’s watching the judges
1:07
that that article dealt with some judicial misconduct in tarrant county
1:13
uh and it’s it’s pretty heavy brinton so uh sit down hold on tight yeah a lot of a lot of stuff going around about judges
1:21
nationwide yeah locally like you be the judge you know no fun intended but um
1:27
so how do you get into this eddie like i mean how does this how do you get into the investigative reported and then what led
1:34
you kind of down this path towards this subject so my background i don’t have a college degree in journalism my
1:41
background is actually i have a music degree but i started writing for the fourth weekly doing reviews i wasn’t
1:48
doing news at first we had an editor at the time a wonderful woman pulitzer
1:53
prize-winning journalist herself named gail reeves and i i just i became interested in news stories and i wasn’t
1:59
good at it at first but i kept trying i kept getting better and just really loved it it’s an
2:05
interesting way to get to know your community you feel like you’re doing something really good for the community when you’re uncovering these things um
2:11
it’s just endlessly um interesting um work so i just it’s really my passion okay did you
2:17
watch a lot of news growing up i mean were you kind of a news you know did it make an impact on your life i don’t
2:23
think there was anything about my adolescence that pointed toward this okay um even being a writer per se um um
2:31
my background again you know was in music and i thought i was gonna be a music teacher and i still am yeah uh but
2:36
this is a really really uh enjoyable um job that i have and yeah i don’t know it just once i found it i just fell in love
2:43
with it i would just say i think i know one of the students you had for two weeks or so um you might be sitting in
2:49
this room i don’t think you’ll put that on a cutting room floor i know i don’t know if i went up to that yes well eddie you’re the reason you’re here today to
2:55
talk about um who’s watching the judge’s article back from may like we talked about but before we get into the crux of
3:00
the story uh please explain to the our audience what what’s going on with the retired judge system here in tarrant
3:07
county and how that all works pre uh moving into the story okay yeah
3:12
so um cases can be presided over by uh retired judges and a lot of people don’t
3:18
understand this system so if i’m an active judge i have a career and i retire i could just just retire
3:25
and never preside over a case or i could elect to become a visiting retired judge also known as a
3:32
senior judge we’ll talk about that title because it’s really important and once i meet certain qualifications
3:38
under chapter 74 or 75 of texas government code if i do all the steps involved
3:43
i can be requested for civil criminal family courts depending on what my previous career
3:50
what my qualifications and experience um are so one thing that’s interesting about
3:57
retired judges is that they are requested and in tarrant county’s felony courts
4:04
judges are randomly assigned we’re told they’re randomly assigned because ontario county’s websites um they say
4:10
you know very clearly active judges are randomly assigned there’s a reason for that because you don’t want a judge who
4:15
chose you because they had some kind of personal vendetta they may have known the victim whatever so the system is
4:21
meant to be unbiased well retired judges are hand-selected by basically their
4:28
buddies and um it kind of undermines that whole system of of having randomly selected
4:34
judges they’re paid about five hundred dollars a day so it’s not an insignificant amount of
4:40
money um the active judges continue to earn their salary while their friends that they pull in are making about 500
4:46
bucks a day um so that’s that’s one possible issue but the bigger issue
4:52
that i found um is two part one is the retired judges not taking their oath of
4:57
office and um in one case there was a judge who never attained senior status
5:04
and that judge’s name is daryl coffey do you want me to go and talk about you
5:10
might as well get into this is the big part if i can ask what what was the reason for
5:15
the these retired judges to come back was it because to just move things along more was it so the actual judge could
5:21
take vacation and they can still yeah you’re basically right so there needs to be a pool of um judges who are qualified
5:28
to fill in for active judges because active judges um they do take time off work they do have emergencies
5:35
they do do ongoing training educational training and so if you just have active judges you can’t
5:41
pull in another active judge their doc gets busy so you have a list of retired judges and they’re like
5:48
substitute teachers in a sense you can go on the list and pick this this judge and have him or her fill in for you uh
5:55
while you’re um unavailable so that’s that’s i believe that’s the the reasoning behind why we even have this
6:00
system how big a list is that any of the retired judges excuse me yeah it’s it has uh fluctuated over the
6:06
years i’ve seen that all the lists um in 2015 it was rather long it would be um [Music]
6:12
a couple dozen right now the list is a rough estimate it’s like two pages or maybe one page of
6:18
retirees so um i would say maybe it’s a rough estimate i didn’t bring the documents but there’s maybe 20
6:25
25 retired judges who are eligible right now so and a lot of them don’t get a sign or maybe they don’t want to get assigned
6:30
they’re not all being used there seems to be a small number of those um who are actively
6:36
being used possibly because they’re the ones that are more well-connected right so the ones that have friends who are so
6:41
active they’re calling their their buddies up and you know having that person earn some extra
6:46
money is there so you mentioned the randomness of it is there a way that the
6:52
judges uh similar to like a jury trial if you have some type of um connection
6:57
there where you’ll be recused from it does that work the same way with the judicial assist like being a judge
7:03
is that oh wait i like you mentioned the scenario where oh you know the victim and
7:08
it’s random because of it what if just randomly that judge was selected and does know say the victim or the whoever
7:16
uh the crime was or whatever knows somebody or something about it does um
7:22
did they then recuse like how does that happen there well it’s on the judge they’re the ones that need to um state
7:28
that there is a conflict and then in that case um they’ll recuse themselves and often retired judge judges are
7:34
brought in because of a recusal because you have kind of a vacancy last minute as for you know our retired is more
7:41
likely to not um be clear about uh conflict of interest i’m not quite i’m not quite
7:47
sure if they’re worse at that than active judges but that’s a that’s a burden that falls on judges to always
7:52
mention if they know the victim or they have some kind of personal stake in the case they should not be presiding over it so this focus is more on
8:00
that pool of backups and your thoughts of being that that
8:05
there’s some kind of coordination going and getting back into the system based on this is that kind of where
8:11
things are going absolutely i mean the fact that they’re able to to request their friends um already conflicts with
8:18
the county statement on its website that uh district level courts are chosen randomly because there’s this form
8:24
called a request for assignments and it’s a form that a lot of people are not aware of it’s a
8:31
form that we discovered through our request for documents a lot of attorneys don’t know that it
8:36
exists and i think when we even talked about that it was something that was unknown but the biggest thing that i
8:41
found um was this judge daryl coffey um who was listed on 200 orders of
8:48
assignments as a senior judge and what we found out was that he um was
8:54
not a senior judge and he even admitted as much possibly he didn’t understand how important that was but the reason is
9:01
it is important is because only a senior judge this is a term that only applies to retired judges right so it’s a
9:08
term that means a qualified uh retired judge that’s given by the supreme court
9:14
justice and you have to have that designation to preside over cases at that point you
9:20
become what they call a judicial officer um and to learning about this stuff um
9:27
is difficult because there’s no book that um tells you the rules that
9:32
judges have to play by when i whenever i reach out to the state commission on judicial conduct or
9:39
um even you know smu school of law or um the supreme court justice you find very
9:46
quickly that when you’re investigating a judge people don’t reply they don’t answer your questions
9:51
there’s it’s kind of like there’s yeah there’s it’s very clear that um you’re going into territory that um you know
9:59
maybe you you shouldn’t be or they’re afraid to comment on it so that was interesting
10:04
but in order to find out that you have to be a senior judge i had to do some research into court of
10:10
criminal appeal rulings which is the highest court in the land on par with the supreme
10:15
court and by looking through their rulings and the way they would describe like they described a case where there
10:20
was a senior judge who had his uh entire ruling overturned because
10:26
he did not gain senior judge status until after he had ruled he retired he
10:31
assigned himself to a case presided over it and then got senior
10:36
judge status and so that whole ruling was overturned so i know from that and the language they used
10:41
the court criminal pill used very clear language that says any ruling that’s done with before you gain the title of
10:48
judicial officers nolan void so what matters for tarrant county is that um
10:53
i have 200 documents that show daryl coffey was assigned to 200 plus criminal cases
11:01
in some instances felony cases in one instance a gentleman was sentenced to life in prison
11:08
and you can only imagine everything in between and so right now there are people in prison um
11:14
who were presided over by a judge who should never have presided over cases
11:20
and in a system that knew he was not qualified so the reason i can
11:26
our reporting shows that the administrative judge for the region david evans knew coffee was not a senior
11:33
judge it’s because on the public list that these judges are given in the list of retired judges they can choose from
11:39
it always listed daryl coffey as a non-senior judge 2015 2016 17 18 19 20
11:46
21 up to this year he’s correctly listed as non-senior the reason they had to say
11:52
that publicly is because someone might see that maybe the supreme court justice would see that and it would catch the
11:58
error but privately he was assigned under this false title basically they were appears they were covering for him
12:05
and in the process he may have made hundreds of hundreds of thousands of dollars um presiding over cases that he
12:11
should not have presided over so you know i want to emphasize it wasn’t it appears it wasn’t a mistake or over
12:18
or a lapse of judgment it was a system that was allowed to persist for seven years where
12:24
judges knew that he was not qualified the administrative judge knew he was not qualified and he was continually
12:31
assigned to criminal cases that in some cases landed people’s life in prison was
12:36
he presiding over the cases or he was he was assigning another uh retired judgment coffee was sitting um good
12:42
question daryl coffey was sitting on the bench presiding ruling over cases and so if
12:47
there is a case where a judge was not constitutionally qualified uh there’s a lot of precedent that shows
12:53
that ruling is uh void so these people it’s up to some 200 maybe you would say
12:58
i know it’s at least two there’s i have 200 plus documents that are assignments that he was given over several years
13:04
which is a lot so he was yes he was pretty busy as a retiree you were though like a lawyer in one of those cases and
13:11
you you kept losing or the the the um verdict didn’t go your way wouldn’t a
13:18
lawyer have brought this up right like i mean is this where you got the story idea from or how did that it appears
13:23
that no attorney at any point um ever really understood the complexities of what we’re talking
13:30
about today um i don’t no judge sorry no attorney from what i can tell ever realized he
13:35
wasn’t a senior judge the whole system is so um somewhat convoluted and complicated and it’s not something
13:42
that’s well known and that’s rather appears to be intentional and so the attorneys didn’t know and also it’s
13:48
important you know a lot of defendants and attorneys when you walk into a courtroom and something as serious as a
13:53
you know a felony case you assume your judge is qualified to be here just like you would
13:58
assume a doctor is about to perform surge surgery on you is qualified something at that level people tend not
14:05
to question and what we’re finding is that there’s a lot of botched
14:10
and falsified documents behind the tarrant county judiciary
14:15
that people maybe shouldn’t trust them as much as they have historically well
14:20
you know your question earlier was a great one what brought you this case how did this how did this information find
14:25
you and what why did you want to pursue this somewhat stumbled upon it um i was following a trial in january of this
14:32
year for a former former justice of the piece named jacqueline wright um she reached
14:38
out to me i knew some of the details about her case and i found it to be very unusual that’s kind of its own story so
14:43
i attended her attended her trial um saw daryl coffee preside
14:49
she did not know that this retired judge was going to be sitting on her case so again at the time she assumed he was
14:55
qualified and then i was actually contacted um shortly after by a gentleman in
15:00
austin who follows judges very closely that’s his thing he’s a government watchdog and he alerted um me to the
15:08
fact that this judge had not filed his oath of office at the
15:13
beginning of that trial and that’s kind of a separate topic um i’ll try to summarize it very quickly retired judges
15:20
their oath of office is dead so as an elected or appointed official you have an oath of office that you take it it
15:27
survives the term of your office and then it dies and we know that because um you have to
15:32
retake your oath of office if the president’s reelected he doesn’t just float through float by with his previous
15:38
oath he retakes the oath and there’s a lot of court um rulings that have affirmed that so we know judges that are
15:44
retired they don’t have an active oath of office that they can just carry around their pocket it doesn’t exist and
15:51
so they’re supposed to take their oath of office with each assignment that’s been the the historically that’s how it was done
15:58
and retired judges have um consistently failed to do that and there seems to be
16:03
a concerted effort on their part to avoid this constitutional requirements
16:08
and i have you know um a theory and actually was presented by this gentleman in austin that the retirement system and
16:15
i’ve looked this uh looked this up the retirement system for retired judges pauses when you file your oath of office
16:21
and so by not filing the oath of office they’re able to continue to earn retirement
16:27
while they’re making 500 a day some would say that’s double dipping on the taxpayers money
16:33
but that’s definitely a benefit they get from not found their oath of office and i think that’s the best um theory i have
16:39
right now um but that’s what started this whole thing at the beginning i didn’t quite know what a senior judge was i knew some
16:45
judges were called senior some didn’t i didn’t realize how important it was until um i eventually stumbled upon a
16:51
supreme court criminal appeal ruling um in the early 90s that clearly stated
16:56
that judges have to have this title retired judges and if they don’t their rulings are overturned and in that
17:02
case um this huge civil case uh was overturned what’s the qualifications for
17:08
becoming a senior judge so any retired judge you have senior judges and a non-senior right like or just well most
17:15
of them it’s interesting on the list most of them 98 of the judges on the list that we’re
17:21
talking about are senior judges which makes sense what gets you a senior judge so it’s a two good question it’s a
17:26
two-step process um we’re going to call it chapter 74 chapter 75 which is what it’s listed
17:31
under under texas government code chapter 74 is when you reach out to your administrative judge of your region and
17:38
you say um i qualify i meet the qualification to be on your list because of x y and z i’ve never been disciplined
17:45
by the commission on judicial conduct um you know kind of obvious things i imagine you know having a clean criminal
17:50
history having served a certain number of years you can’t just be a judge for a year and then retire and get into the
17:56
system so you have to meet certain qualifications and then once you’ve done that you alert the supreme court justice
18:02
that you have met these qualifications and you and you ask to be uh become a judicial officer and that’s actually the
18:08
term they use in these in these formal letters and then the judge probably just makes sure that you have
18:14
qualified and it’s a pretty straightforward process you get a letter back in the mail from nathan heck that
18:20
says you are now a senior judge and you have to have that title to preside over cases daryl coffey never
18:26
sent that letter so the the magnitude of what your what your your article is the crux of it is that these people that
18:32
were incarcerated been incarcerated have a potential appeal opportunity and
18:37
because this judge was not qualified to make these rulings uh before we dig into that a little further
18:43
as an investigative journalist eddie what who are you going when you’re digging this story up are you
18:48
approaching judge coffey in the tarrant county da’s office and who all are you seeking out and who how much how much
18:54
help are they offering you i’m curious on your steps of getting to the bottom of this what you had to go through to
19:00
get there so in these kinds of stories i’m necessarily doing research that
19:06
undermines the credibility of our criminal justice system right and so the more serious the story is the less
19:13
cooperation i i generally expect to get and and the less cooperation i do get the district attorney’s office has
19:20
ignored um this information i know that they are aware of it because i’ve done open records requests because i want to
19:26
see what they’re talking about and i know that sharon wilson has been updated on on this situation um david evans um
19:33
the the judge who signed all these documents um fraudulent fraudulently um
19:39
has refused to comment on it so so he has ignored my request um considering
19:44
that he created this situation i feel like he owes people some kind of answer for what happened but um that’s not
19:50
gonna happen um daryl coffey did talk we we uh emailed several times
19:55
um initially um well i guess those were private emails so i don’t want to talk about
20:01
that but he he did he he definitely did you have to write off the record on him or something like that i’m kind of being
20:08
facetious there he’s always allowed to do that but because the emails were kind of personal nature
20:14
i don’t want to go into go into that we did publish some statements that he that he said and he did want to defend
20:21
himself um it wasn’t a very good defense his defense was that i never
20:27
portrayed myself as a senior judge um so he said i never said i was a senior judge and you showed me cards
20:33
that you know say retired and i don’t think he unders i don’t think he understood how bad that sounds because
20:40
he he apparently doesn’t know what it means to be a senior judge well what what does it um you know we talked about
20:46
what you needed to do to get to b1 but then is it just kind of like a senior pilot where you get all the good you
20:53
know the good sp flying uh gigs like all the junior pilots pick you know these
20:58
times and you get to bump them and get the the cush day spots not fly through the night like what was it
21:03
it sounds fancy the term uh sorry the title senior sounds very fancy um it’s really a pretty straightforward
21:10
process um that just means that you’re allowed to preside over cases as a retired judge
21:16
i don’t think there’s any special perks amongst retired judges to become a senior judge other than you have to be a
21:21
senior judge to make any money as a retiree to make this extra money i should say oh but you
21:27
could be a retired judge and then just what you just don’t get the money that’s it’s strictly a financial you can also
21:32
just be a retired judge that pulls in uh from the retirement plan but you’re not presiding over cases for
21:37
extra money and the system it looks the system looks like it was intended to not allow this double dipping so again you
21:44
know the the way the the rules were set up um from what i’ve read once you go back to work as a as a
21:51
senior judge you’re supposed to notify the retirement system and they they say tell us the dates of your trial
21:58
beginning and end and they will pause your retirement which you know sounds fair you’re going back to work you’re making money
22:05
uh just let us know you know when you’re going to be working and we’ll pause your but they appear to have found a way to
22:10
circumvent that by just never telling people that they’re going back to work but then why did they i mean even do
22:17
this is kind of gonna get stuck on it but then it’s like why would they have the senior judge
22:23
incentive there were they like out of retiring judge you know it’s like what was the point in then putting that
22:30
moniker on to pay these folks like were they not getting enough retired judges like oh it was
22:36
like a jury deal we’re like we can’t find anybody because nobody wants to come back and do it especially for free
22:41
you know kind of thing is that what was happening that they needed a way to i would say that’s a good theory and
22:46
actually i haven’t dug uh back that far and why they created that system yeah but the benefits i mean
22:52
it’s it’s more than just money for some for certain judges they are retired they really enjoy the
22:58
work they want the ability to go back and preside over big they can preside over big cases sometimes because they’re
23:03
no longer limited to their old court um daryl coffey for instance was a misdemeanor judge but as a senior judge
23:10
he presided over many uh felony cases which he never would have been allowed to do as an active judge so there are
23:16
certain incentives some of them have to do with purely maybe pure ego reasons you know because you’re you have a title
23:22
you can go back and oversee a murder case you’ve never gotten to do that there is a hierarchy for judges they may not admit it but district judges are um
23:30
you know they probably see their positions as more important than your dwi misdemeanor judges and they probably
23:35
think they’re more important than the justice of the peace and so and so so this system allows these judges to jump
23:41
around and try different trials they never would have had access to as an active judge again making extra money
23:48
i think the original system was fair where they were expected to pause their retirement for a couple days at a time
23:53
um but they don’t they appear to not be abiding by that agreement anymore eddie you uh so
23:59
um your story and i’ve read it several times it’s you offer some very compelling evidence to support this
24:05
argument you’re making here today what what is your what is your end goal and all this what do you hope to see happen
24:11
is it the obvious get these people a retrial get him out of jail see judge
24:17
i coffey let go at some extent what are you trying to get out yeah and he is not being assigned anymore i know
24:24
that i i know that much this is more of a of a personal
24:29
statement that i’ll make because i’m you know i’m here as a reporter but i’m also
24:35
a person i’m also um you know a u.s citizen someone who cares about this community i have a
24:40
social conscience as you guys do so i’ll speak from that point of view these defendants
24:47
deserve some kind of relief for what happened if if it were simply an oversight that
24:54
someone misfiles in paperwork one could argue ethically that there’s not a moral obligation to fix this
25:01
but um as we found there was a concerted effort to cover up his false title by a lot of
25:08
people not just david evans but all the judges who requested him would have known
25:14
from the list that he’s not qualified to preside over cases and they allowed it to happen
25:19
um so from that point of view there is a there is a moral obligation of the judiciary to fix this problem
25:26
these defendants you know many of whom are languishing in prison they have no idea that their
25:31
case was bogus it was it was all something that was set up to help this judge make some extra money
25:38
so his buddies could you know um bring them on and whatever favors went back and forth with that that whole system
25:45
um so to answer your question you know one of the reasons that i’m very adamant about getting this story
25:51
out we’ve published it but that reaches so many people i want to reach other people is because this county needs to fix
25:57
fix this they need to fix it is it your thought eddie that like almost it would
26:02
be like um kind of a good cop bad cop like me ask you know
26:07
asking my wife like hey i need the you know the the real stern person to
26:13
come in like on this is your thought that they would kind of that some of this would be calling a judge in like i
26:20
need you to handle this one because i need this kind of uh verdict on this deal
26:26
are you going that coordinated with it or you just there’s a couple there’s a couple ways to answer that like with
26:31
with coffee um he was strictly a misdemeanor dwi judge
26:37
and so he also i will say he the people i’ve talked to as far as his career as an active judge he had a very very good
26:43
reputation yeah so i mean there is people would have brought him in for different reasons um they might have brought him in because they know him
26:50
um personally they might have brought him in because they thought he did a good job as an active judge um more broadly retired judges from what
26:57
i’ve seen oh that was first book oh okay so it must be a poltergeist action someone’s
27:03
upset there’s no no angry ghost judges going after my hope retired judges
27:08
they get assigned to a lot of very controversial cases from what i’ve noticed and we’ve looked into this
27:14
some of them have involved exonerating uh people who committed um murder like outright there was a
27:21
story in south texas there was a gentleman who shot a young black um 19 18 year old boy in the neck cold
27:28
blood a retired judge comes in finds him now i shouldn’t say he did the jury did he preside over the case um there was a
27:35
case of uh um someone who is believed to have been innocent uh who was on death row and he
27:41
was executed by the signature from the signature of a retired senior judge
27:46
and so they do seem to be given i’ll just say maybe the dirty cases you
27:52
know there’s some stronger words but there’s something something interesting going on with with why they’re being
27:58
picked for for certain and if i’m an active judge and i see i see there’s a case on my docket uh it has a lot of um
28:07
ethically compromising i know there’s a lot about it that you know maybe the defendant was set up or there was some
28:13
questionable police work involved i might just want to back out and call in a retired judge so that might be part of
28:18
the reason why we why we see that you mentioned that judge coffee is no longer being assigned has anything else
28:24
come since your story was published in may and obviously this is going to recharge some of that we hope because we
28:29
have our listeners i’m sure they’re going to want to know some more stuff about this but has anything further come from this
28:36
story since uh besides the judge coffee assignment you just mentioned so um our reporting
28:42
did lead to some of his assignments being cancelled um there was a june assignment um as this stuff was getting
28:50
known all his assignments were pulled right um my understanding is he’s no longer
28:56
active in the area i don’t think any judge would uh want him or you know with with what’s um happened
29:03
um as far as action has has gone from the part of the government to fix the situation there’s been no movements
29:10
um there are there are i should say there are other people besides myself who are
29:16
working to raise awareness of this with the supreme court justice people in austin um the aclu different groups you know
29:23
and i’m trying to help people um enable people to to do something as well well
29:28
here’s here’s the really scary part um that there’s 200 plus people sitting in
29:34
in a correctional facility right now that i got to believe they have a reason or a
29:41
an opportunity to appeal that being said i mean what what happens
29:46
to happen there because i’m not saying that judge coffey or whoever sat there that wasn’t qualified made the wrong
29:53
decision or helped the guy get put in prison but these people are in jail if they had
29:58
this information in front of them i got to believe they would play that card and
30:03
if one of them were to hear this or a family member doesn’t that open up a whole new situation where yeah i imagine
30:11
if i could magically inform the family of 200 people what happened they would collectively file a lawsuit or something
30:17
would happen but um part of the problem it’s it’s complicated to find these defendants names
30:24
um i personally think the first thing that needs to happen if the government
30:29
did its job is they have an obligation to contact these defendants they know the names they know the
30:34
addresses they know what prisons uh these folks were in and to and and inform them give them this basic information give
30:41
them a form for a writ of habeas corpus which allows you to appeal your case uh give them the documents um to do at the
30:48
very least that’s that’s step one you know the more important step would be to just offer a retrial or if it warrants
30:55
it you know drop the case all together but so i mean kind of back to i mean if
31:00
i’m like um a defender of those folks i would think i would be the first one
31:07
i mean you like when you talk about two like that’s a lot of people a lot of
31:12
cases wouldn’t the um the person defending it would be the first one i mean i would think if i’m a
31:20
lawyer and you know doing my job and doing it to the best of my ability and i’m publicly
31:25
defending somebody i would be the first one to to call this out that hasn’t happened at all right so
31:33
yeah i think it’s because there’s because they’re part of the game too like i mean like that’s part of the
31:38
scene i think the defense attorneys of all these um defendants definitely would like to know what happened um what they
31:44
would do with that information depends you know i hate to break it down to money but if these people are in
31:50
prison they don’t have the money to pay a retainer for legal counsel and attorneys have to be paid to work
31:55
um i am reaching out to some defense attorneys i do think there should be interest within the the defense attorney
32:01
community uh to know about this because there were a lot of attorneys who um tried to defend their their clients and
32:07
didn’t have this information and again like as you said they should be the first to know about this because they
32:13
also would know what the remedies are but then again the other thing is these defendants by this point um they no
32:18
longer have assets you know they’ve they’ve spent their money defending themselves by this point they’ve exhausted their appeals so these
32:24
attorneys unfortunately wouldn’t have any clear way to get paid but all those are kind of factors that would have to
32:29
play out at some point and should play out has anybody in tarrant county uh
32:35
publicly said things to the negative and you’re in your situation they called you out
32:40
for being you know a nosy guy or spreading slanderous lies have they had
32:46
anybody said anything to the to the contrary what you’re trying to get to not to my face um i
32:52
did reach out to um the process there’s there’s an interesting connection with the italiana
32:57
jefferson case and i believe i i was reaching out to some assistant district attorneys to let
33:03
them know that uh this retired judge um didn’t take her out of office and she was making a ruling related to this
33:09
ongoing trial and the message that was relayed back to me was that i don’t know what i’m talking about so
33:15
yeah i’m sure they all i’m sure it depends on you know who stands to win or lose uh with the information i have
33:20
right the people who tend to lose a lot they probably would like to discredit but everything that i’ve found is well
33:26
documented so ongoing still as well eddie the investigation is still moving forward i mean is there more to uncover
33:32
you mentioned talking to the defense attorneys is there more people that need to be involved in this i think public
33:37
awareness is is a big part of this you know i i think at some point maybe this will start gaining speed as um families of these
33:44
defendants start recognizing the name coffee um defense attorneys once they start talking and realize like oh you
33:50
know i preside over case i have an interest in um addressing this there is a defense attorney’s association in
33:56
tarrant county and they can make this they can make a public stink if they care to you know and it once you reach
34:02
that kind of level then maybe you’ll finally have some traction um but the other side
34:07
wants this to go away they want to ignore this way and i very much i’m very much aware of that
34:13
which is why i’m kind of stubbornly you know looking into this and and speaking to
34:18
folks like you um as far as you know new this is opened up in the proverbial can
34:25
of worms because once now that i know how this works i can look for inconsistencies elsewhere um if they
34:31
were doing this for coffee they’re definitely um likely covering for other judges as well
34:36
who aren’t qualified um so one thing i did and it doesn’t take rocket scientists um
34:42
you have to be a rocket scientist to understand this i went through the list of who’s not a senior judge and there
34:48
are four judges um in tarrant county who are not senior judges they’re listed as non-senior right
34:54
and then i asked for all their assignments within the past six months and i already know from
34:59
what i’ve received so far that there are 167 pages that are coming my way eventually and so
35:06
if and i’ve reached out to the supreme court they have a very good spokesperson who actually always responds
35:13
to ask if these folks ever requested to be senior judges and they may have i don’t know yet um
35:19
it looks it’s looking like we might have some other situations where we had non-senior judges being placed on
35:27
criminal courts probably again falsely listen them as senior judges but i’m gonna find out you know and when i
35:33
find out you guys will find out fantastic so do you um you know you
35:38
mentioned uh kind of discrediting and the information we’re kind of i mean not to like
35:45
this info you know i mean you’re you’re spending time digging up stuff that is
35:51
contrary to [Music] most people’s just normal lives kind of moving through that type of thing um
36:00
where do you see the media and yourself in this like what what is it that you’re
36:06
trying to accomplish here is this for for trying to get those 200 convicted folks um
36:12
you know what you would deem as a fair shake is it too um you know
36:17
the timing of it is here we are in almost september before a november uh midterm election you know like is
36:24
there aspects of that i mean and i think those are tough to answer yourself because we’re all influenced by all the
36:31
things around us you know i mean today i could be influenced by the way he was acting earlier rather than the way i was
36:37
whatever you know the case may be but so what is it that um
36:42
that that you feel the media’s or your part is in in this kind of discussion and
36:48
kind of who benefits most from it i guess so i want to answer that a couple of ways one is
36:55
um i can only speak for myself and i can only speak for my newspaper
37:01
and while the media has a has a kind of a collective
37:06
job and uh mandates um they’re also very different and so
37:11
i could you know i honestly wish other local uh publications looked at the
37:16
stuff that i’m looking at i i think these are the things that really matter because if you’re just doing superficial
37:24
reporting you know ribbon cutting type stuff that doesn’t help our society become
37:30
more protective of civil rights the kind of stuff that that we look into
37:36
at the fourth weekly i think it really really matters to the readers because it affects um their freedoms
37:43
how they interact with government government accountability to what extents you know will the government ever
37:49
change and become more accountable to the people so it’s important work
37:54
i don’t know if if my work has really changed over the years other than to say that it’s i do feel
38:01
like i’m constantly inundated with just the the craziest um
38:07
news story news stories that i that i hear about and it’s always more than i can uh have time to report on if that makes
38:14
sense but that’s because things are uh particularly bad right now in tarrant county especially on the the
38:20
county level with how they’re operating and how they are or aren’t operating
38:26
within the law so why do you think that is you think that goes from uh up above or you think
38:32
it’s just because they’ve managed themselves for so long like what do you think the impetus of that is
38:39
it’s a lot of factors you have an older elected officials on the county are are
38:44
older they have a different mindset they’re more entrenched in their positions
38:49
they’ve been there longer they probably feel more like they have more um stability
38:55
and with that you you end up having more arrogance and and kind of a lack of accountability our city council i think
39:02
is great you know we have a youngish city council um very diverse you know
39:07
really reflects the population but if you look at if you look at our city council you look at who are the
39:12
leaders at the county level you can just you just see you just see the difference they’re just they’re just from a different generation and i think
39:19
the country’s moving in a certain way we expect more of our elected leaders and they’re very much just stuck in the way
39:26
they’ve done things for 40 years maybe that’s the best answer i have well i admire you eddie because it’s got to
39:32
take a certain level of courage to to go after the system itself i mean you’re going after some pretty powerful folks
39:37
you know we’re not here to take aside one way or other but we do we do appreciate someone who spends time and learns and
39:44
does that does the due diligence to get to the heart of a matter and if that is the case i think this is an incredibly
39:49
powerful story you put together uh is there a way that people can stay current with what you’re doing in this story
39:56
with you in regards to you yes and we’re going to keep like we may we may publish something online today
40:01
that’s related to this because we keep finding new things out um not just about coffee but of course judges and in
40:07
general and and tarrant county but to answer your question the easiest way folks can find out is they can go to fw
40:13
weekly.com and click on news we of course we do it music food all that kind of fun stuff
40:20
but if you’re interested in news click on news uh feature metro
40:26
and static is our editorial section so you’ll have more of our our opinion
40:32
language kind of stuff there but we always disclose our opinion pieces in our straight
40:37
reporting pieces is there anything else on the store you like to share before we end the show because i mean we’ve left a
40:42
lot on the table there not not that it needs to be solved here today but there’s some people in behind bars that
40:48
probably uh you know have some some work to do right we like to know how this story goes if
40:54
something comes of this down the road we’d love to continue the story but uh i i’m i appreciate the time being
41:00
here this is anything else that you can share with us before we go last thing if you know an elected official even if
41:05
it’s at whatever level of government just when you see them next mention this
41:11
story just say you have concerns about these defendants that were deprived of their constitutional right to a fair
41:17
trial and if you really want to take the time to email or write a letter it’s it’s worth it you know whatever you think of
41:25
people who are in prison they’re human beings and they deserve a fair trial and these people were not given that and
41:32
they deserve that um and they’ll deserve it until someone gives it to them it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re
41:38
not guilty correct we’re not saying they’re innocent but we’re saying we have we have certain
41:43
institutions and certain beliefs in this country you’re innocent until you’re proven guilty um you have a right to a
41:48
free and fair trial we have certain things that were that we are given constitutionally and this really gets to
41:54
the crux of that and is the government gonna gonna fix this or not does is this happening anywhere else
42:00
throughout the country like where these type of kind of technicalities are getting statements to reason right yeah
42:07
that’s safe to say i think people don’t dig into judges in in the at all and so
42:12
that’s probably the case unfortunately all right eddie brown staff writer for the fourth wiki thank you for talking
42:18
about this very interesting uh yeah sorry it’s pretty heavy i know you guys are going to go and take a shower
42:26
please no no thank you for joining us thank you to cap tech bank for making all this happen uh mike thomas we know
42:31
you’re out there thanks for watching buddy thank you appreciate you thank you guys thanks for coming thanks for being afforded to daddy we appreciate you
42:36
we’ll see you guys next time thank you thank you