Results tagged “districtattorney”

Good morning, Houston. Who said Barbie never did anything for anybody? She's helped make 4-year-old Phoebe Swann famous, at least for a little while: Swann recently caught a 50-pound Black Drum with a Barbie fishing rod. It happened during a family trip to Rockport; Swann was using the Barbie rod with a red plastic worm as bait when she reeled in the big fish. In case you're wondering, Swann and her dad threw the fish back — and there's no word on whether she's willing to sell the lucky pole.

Good morning, Houston. We're sure you're as excited as we are to get right into this year's news, so without further ado ...

Good morning, Houston. We've run into some, uh, active parents of student athletes in our day, but we can't remember remember hearing about one who was actually banned from his kid's sporting events — until now, that is. Meet Joe Dalton, who has been barred from his son's Stafford High home football games because school district officials allege he assaulted a student. It happened at the last home game Dalton attended, where he said...

The Chronicle reported yesterday on Harris County's plans to demolish two of its buildings to make way for another amazing county plaza. Fair enough — the county has a lot of buildings, and apparently we could always use another plaza. The problem is that the two structures that are potentially on the chopping block — the former District Attorneys Building at 201 Fannin and the Family Law Center at 1115 Congress — happen to be...

Jurors heard opening arguments yesterday in the murder trial of Ashley Benton, the girl accused of stabbing a 14-year-old gang member to death at Chew Park near Montrose last summer. Benton — who was 16 at the time — was involved with the Crazy Crew gang, members of which got into a fight with members of MS-13, the gang with which Granillo was affiliated. Benton's defense attorneys told jurors Monday that she stabbed Granillo in...

Good morning, Houston. Thanks to KHOU, we have a couple more details on the coming switch from Time Warner to Comcast cable — sort of. Next week, 20 new channels will come to the Houston cable market, including five HD channels — but Comcast isn't saying what they are (aside from ESPN HD and the NFL Network, which should appeal to you sports fans). Up to this point, the most visible result of the...

Jurors in the trial of Bart Whitaker, the Fort Bend County man accused of arranging the murders of his mother and brother so he could get the family inheritance for himself, found Whitaker guilty of capital murder yesterday — meaning that, beginning today, jurors will begin deciding whether Whitaker should die. Whitaker's mother, Patricia, and his brother, Kevin, were killed the evening of Dec. 10, 2003, at home as the family returned from dinner. Whitaker...

Houston law firm Fulbright & Jaworski is still in damage-control mode over a recruiter's use of language during a recent visit to Duke University. If you haven't heard about the incident, here's what happened: In the course of speaking with some Duke law students, an unnamed Fulbright attorney told a story about Leon Jaworski's defense of a black man on trial for murder in Waco in the 1920s (which we assume was the 1929 case...

Good morning, Houston. After almost two weeks of clouds and rain, we were starting to wonder if we might be getting seasonal affective disorder — we stuck our head under our desk lamp for a while, but it didn't seem to help. Needless to say, we're really happy to see the sun this morning. But not, you know, this happy. >> Another DeLay?: The Travis County District Attorney's office is appealing a court decision...

Have you heard about Aaron Atherton, the classy gentleman who used his camera phone to snap a shot up a Slick Willie's waitress's skirt Saturday? Turns out he's probably the first guy in Harris County to be prosecuted under a new law that makes it illegal to secretly take a picture of another person for sexual pleasure. Houstonist guesses we'll have to ditch our super-covert bowtie camera.

Looks like there might be a pretty important element missing in Houston's fight against pollution: federal prosecution of environmental crimes. According to the Chronicle, the last time prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's Office convicted anyone of an environmental crime on its own was 2004, when two Fayette County farmers were fined $500 for the illegal use of a pesticide. It's part of a downward trend in environmental prosecutions from the Southern District of Texas, which...

More in the murder of 16-year-old Ashton Glover: Matthew R. McCombs, one of the two teen suspects caught trying to escape to Canada last week, has confessed to shooting Glover in the head. And why'd he do it? "Morbid curiosity," he told police.

Remember when you were in school and always had to sell crap? Magazines, sausage baskets, wrapping paper, candy bars — it was all done to benefit school programs, and of course you were guaranteed to do pretty well, because what adult would turn down a little kid with a catalog full of sausages? What we never would have imagined was someone stealing our hard-earned money, but that's what police say the PTO treasurer at a...

Ah, Priscilla Slade — we hadn't heard anything from the soon-to-be-former TSU president in a while, but today there's news that she has decided not to attend the public hearing she requested to try to clear her name and keep her job. Slade, accused of spending nearly $1 million in university funds for unauthorized personal purchases during her seven years as head of TSU, said through her attorney that she won't get a fair hearing, so she's staying home. Anyone want to bet that she complains later that no one listened to her side of the story?

Time for the confusing news lead of the day: A Texas woman wanted in Florida on marijuana charges was jailed in Alabama after claiming to be an attorney for a man arrested on drug charges, part of what authorities said was a pattern of targeting Hispanic drug defendants and charging high fees. Bear with us while we try to sort this one out. The woman, 50-year-old Carmen Saldana Meyer, was charged with practicing law without...

City Councilwoman and former Mayor Pro Tem Carol Alvarado used at least four city employees to set up meetings with a personal client who has paid her nearly $75,000 in consulting fees since 2002, despite her earlier assertion that she never asked staffers to do non-city work, the Chronicle reports today. Messages from Alvarado's city e-mail account show Alvarado asked city workers to set up meetings on several occasions with San Antonio buinessman Rudy Rodriguez,...

A new development in the invesigation into City Councilwoman and ex-Mayor Pro Tem Carol Alvarado: Prosecutors have subpoenaed records from Alvarado's outside consulting jobs, which we assume is just another part of the Harris County DA's probe. DA investigators have spent the past couple of days in San Antonio and the Austin area subpoenaing documents from a couple of political consulting firms for which she’s done contract work. Alvarado’s personal financial statement on file at...

Brazoria officials had been after ex-mail carrier Russell Meuth for months about the trash in his back yard — not only was the yard junky, but there were reports of smoke there a couple weeks ago, a violation of a city ordinance and county burn ban. But when officials got a search warrant and went into the yard over the weekend, they were surprised at what they found: several containers of chemicals and 34 U.S. Postal Service boxes full of undelivered mail. Some of the chemicals may have been taken from a nearby Dow Chemical plant, and the mail seems to date from 2003, when Meuth delivered mail in Brazoria.

Steve Sanguedolce, chief of the Magnolia Volunteer Fire Department, resigned amid accusations he used department payroll funds to pay other firefighters to step in for him at the Houston Fire Department.