Knife murderer says previous convictions 'not true'

Tennessee offenses to enhance sentence

Waco – They call him “T,” or Memphis, and he has large bags under his eyes, a weary urban cool affect when he walks. He sat with a downcast expression in the well of the 19^th District Court following the jury's ultra-swift deliberations that made him a convicted murderer.

When asked by the judge if it's true he received a felony sentence in Tennessee for assault to rape and aggravated assault, two prior felony convictions, Allen Latoin Story pleaded “not true” after a jury reached a unanimous verdict of guilt for murdering a Waco man after deliberating less than a half-hour. They got the case at 3:50 p.m. and returned at 4:15.

After a two-day trial during which prosecutors elicited testimony from witnesses that left little doubt in jurors' minds as to his intent to kill a Waco man who sought only to defend his sister, his words carried a certain weakness, his demeanor sank a little bit lower.

Today, those same jurors will hear testimony regarding T's previous life of crime as they deliberate upon his sentence. Due to the two previous felony convictions, his sentence could be enhanced to life, or not more than 99 years or less than 25.

Prosecutor Chris Bullajian told them “Zach Davis is dead because he tried to protect his sister. Zach's not here because of the actions of that fellow.”

Examination of witnesses revealed that Story told Davis if he interfered with his argument with Renee Davis over his alleged attentions to other women, he would kill him.

He then went into the rear of a residence at the Kate Ross Apartments and returned with a knife and plunged its full length into his chest, not once, but three times.

Bullajian told jurors that their charge required they find those five elements to be true – that on or about September 22, 2011, at that location, with intent to cause serious bodily harm, he did there and then attack and kill a human being with a knife and cause his death.

Lead prosecutor J.R. Vicha urged them to “Use a little common sense,” as they deliberated. “When you stab someone with the full length of the blade three times, I think it's pretty clear what your intent was...The only way you can find him not guilty is if you find the state has not met these elements.”

After jurors heard defense attorney Sam Martinez urge them to understand that “The burden of proof is on the state,” and that any one element of reasonable doubt of any one element of proof is enough to acquit a defendant, Vicha returned to his original argument of guilt.

Judge Ralph T. Strother

“Who hit who first?...Zachary did not deserve to die because he protected his sister.” He had earlier warned Story that he was not going to sit by and watch him beat his sister, according to witnesses.

Following the killing, he reminded them, Story led Waco Police and McLennan County Sheriff's officers on a 4-hour manhunt. “What's your number one indicator of guilt? Flight, and that's what he did.”

When jurors return to court today, they will hear expert testimony and character witnesses who will establish what type of man Story is. As Judge Ralph T. Strother dismissed them for the day, he said, “Well, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the realities of the real world. We're all out of witnesses at this time...”

The time was 4:45 p.m, and the work day completed on Wednesday, December 11, 2013.

Banned from City Hall, banished from the Civic Plaza

Whistleblowers 'excluded from civic process'

San Antonio – He burns for justice, doubts the veracity of any official, elected or appointed, and demands action through alternative means to the white hats and heros of Texas mythology.

John Foddrill/photo-SA Current

John Foddrill says any investigation by police and Texas Rangers into the violent campus police shooting death of a university student over a traffic stop is doomed before it starts.

Why?

Because “any 'investigation' by the DPS/Texas Rangers is tainted due to the fact that DPS Director McCraw, DPS Major Alvin Alexis and others are helping to conceal the aggravated perjury, oppression, obstruction, falsification of documents, etc. of former Texas Ranger Chief Hank Whitman and others who assisted in the ongoing criminal conspiracy to conceal massive long-term public/police corruption inside the City/County.”

Like Socrates, he is in the peculiar position of a man who has been accused of no particular wrongdoing, other than voicing his “shrill” opinions.

Those opinions are backed by graphic evidence in the form of documents that prove elected and appointed officials in San Antonio and Bexar County have totally ignored the fact that hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer funds budgeted for telephone communications are routinely misapplied for such items as office remodeling and junkets to hotels.

That's not all. He has a series of e-mails that show how a department head directed a vendor to falsify pay records to show employees were compensated for hours worked, then the funds were used to pay for other projects at the direction of staff members who report to elected officials.

For nearly four years, Foddrill was an enraged lion, bearded in his den, firing information requests and e-mails off at a brisk pace that left his correspondents overwhelmed, bewildered at his vehemence.

Media outlets and reporters admit they long ago gave up on him during the course of a 45-month “ban” on any visits to City Hall or the Civic Plaza, City Council meetings, or city offices that City Attorney Michael Bernard and San Antonio Police Chief William McManus unilaterally and extra judicially placed upon he and former Fire Department contract compliance officer Michael Cuellar.

Michael Cuellar/photo-NPR

Or else what?

They would both be arrested for the misdemeanor crime of criminal trespassing – on public property. John Foddrill says it's an ordeal that resembles more a reign of terror than a civil process of settling a dispute.

They have something in common, Foddrill and Cuellar. Both of them allege in federal lawsuits that they were deprived of their civil rights by an active conspiracy by police and other officials when one day a couple of police officers showed up on their front doorsteps with a letter informing them of their new status as banished and banned personas non gratas in the civic arena. There was no explanation, no recourse to appeal, no other due process of law explained, offered, or denied. Sphinx-like, the City of San Antonio answered no questions, made no replies to repeated inquiries until ordered by a federal Court.

It's a story straight out of the hell of the darkest days of the apartheid government of South Africa, but it didn't happen in some third world toilet. It happened in downtown San Antonio, cradle of liberty in the Lone Star State.

Here's how Foddrill describes his transgression. He says he merely exposed, through a constant barrage of public information act requests and e-mails to officials and media that “Bexar County DA Susan Reed and her Office are not to be trusted to find justice for Cameron (Robert Cameron Redus) as they have assisted with the ongoing criminal conspiracy by City/ County officials and employees to conceal three decades of grant fraud, bond fraud, theft, accounting fraud, 45 months of open meeting abuses, official oppression by Chief McManus, 'fraud upon the court,' retaliation, etc.”

One day, said Foddrill, the federal judge who is hearing a case filed on his behalf by Texas Civil Rights Project attorney Jim Harrington asked him confidentially why he didn't just go on back to City Hall and see what would happen. Harrington took on the City of Austin in federal court and got a reversal of a similar ban on the Occupy Austin movement from being able to visit City Hall in that community. 

The judge later lifted the ban on Foddrill and Cuellar's visits to San Antonio City Hall.

Foddrill's reply, couched in the words of an e-mail: “People still ask me and the federal judge asked me why I never defied the illegal ban and just went down to City Hall or a Council meeting in defiance of the law. I told the Judge and tell everyone that I feared for my life and still do. I didn't want to give McManus and SAPD any excuse to handcuff, Taser or arrest me as too many innocent people have died while in jail or under arrest by our corrupt cops. I feared being Tasered to death, being found hung in my cell , getting shot in the back in a failed escape attempt, etc. It happens all the time. I still will not attend public meetings and will not go to City Hall out of fear. I want McManus and the others prosecuted and jailed so that citizens like me don't have to live in fear any more. This thing has drug on for years BUT I am still alive and still am here for my family.”

His lawyers have told him not to make waves, to keep his mouth shut while federal litigation drags on and on through the system. But his anxieties speak more loudly.

“Recently, when a University of the Incarnate Word cop shot 23 year-old student Cameron Redus five times killing him at a traffic stop , when an off duty sheriff deputy murdered an unarmed commuter because their cars accidently bumped , when a Castle Hills police officer left his jurisdiction when he drove across town to shoot a mentally ill citizen and when SAPD officer Jackie Neal handcuffed and raped a pregnant 19 year old teenager on the trunk of his patrol car I said...enough is enough. I can't stand by and wait for our corrupt legal system to fix things...a pipe dream at best.”

He's not alone. Cuellar got a new city job after his bad experience with the Fire Department, in which he, too, uncovered similar fiscal abuses and also lost his job over rumors of workplace violence and a testy working relationship with other staff members – complaints that, as in Foddrill's case, never resulted in a criminal investigation or complaint.

Cuellar told an interviewer he didn't report for work on the new job, fearing an arrest for trespassing that could have resulted in complications too frightening to contemplate.

But the evidence remains, and though there was a trial in a state court, it resulted in a take nothing judgment, and Foddrill has never had an opportunity to bring out the documents, the audio recordings that prove his allegations. He is burning to expose them to the public.

Here is a small sample: A smoking gun e-mail Foddrill obtained details how City IT manager Jose Medina committed wire/mail fraud with Isabel Gonzaba, an official of IG Communications/Globalscope, a city vendor, to steal $200,000 from a HUD grant by falsifying pay records.

Foddrill wrote that the records represent “fraudulent payments were processed via the city's internal telephone 'variable' billing account that was used for decades to secretly gain access to tens of millions of dollars with no competitive bidding, public review, city ordinance, council vote...in violation of the city charter, state law and OMB/federal regulations/statutes."

Watch these columns for more evidence as it becomes available, as promised.

Audio recording eagerly awaited in San Antonio shooting

Student 'charged' cop in an attempted arrest over traffic stop

Robert Redus was an honors student and co-valedictorian of his high school class

Alamo Heights, San Antonio, Texas – Friends are hard-pressed to believe police reports about the final, violent moments of Robert Redus' life.

Citizens and police await the decision by the District Attorney whether to make a public release of an audio recording of the traffic stop that led to a University police officer fatally shooting and killing the senior class student five times on Friday, December 6, as he arrived home at his apartment complex.

According to Alamo Heights Chief of Police Richard Pruitt, a preliminary investigation has revealed that Redus, a communications major at the University of the Incarnate Word who was scheduled to graduate in May, had broken free of Capt. Chris Carter as he attempted to handcuff him in an arrest for speeding and erratic driving off campus.

Scene of killing - KTRK

Chief Pruitt told newsmen that Redus grabbed Capt. Carter's baton and hit him with it before the police officer got it back.

A witness has told Alamo Heights police and Texas Rangers investigating the killing that Redus was heard saying, “Oh, so now you're going to shoot me.”

Carter told investigators he warned Redus that he would shoot him if he did not stop and submit to being handcuffed. When the reportedly mild-mannered honors student further resisted, Capt. Carter said he drew his .40-caliber semi-automatic pistol and fired six times, fatally wounding Redus in the chest, neck, eye, arm and thigh as Redus charged him with an arm upraised to strike him.

Though university police are issued pepper spray to be used in subduing unruly suspects, Chief Pruitt said, Capt. Carter had none.

There is no video recording of the attempted arrest because the video camera mounted on the dashboard of the pickup truck Carter used as a patrol unit had fallen off. Police had scheduled a repair to the unit in order to have it remounted, Chief Pruitt explained to news reporters.

An audio recording is available, and investigators indicated it will be useful in determining the exact sequence of the actions of Capt. Carter and Redus, and the escalation of events as they occurred that led to the curbside killing of a man suspected of driving in excess of the speed limit and in an erratic fashion in a shooting that left his upper body riddled with bullets.

Capt. Carter has been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation and Grand Jury determination regarding his conduct.

Emotions in this genteel north side community, which is studded with golf courses and located near Breckenridge Park and Ft. Sam Houston, are running high.

According to published reports, Redus' associates at the university were hard-pressed to reconcile his reported actions with their experience of him as an individual and a friend.

“He was not that kind of person,” said Miriam Thomas, 20, a junior at the university. “Everyone has been completely heartbroken over this.”

Redus graduated as co-valedictorian from Baytown Christian Academy, located in his home town, an industrial suburb of Houston located on the Ship Channel.

There have been no published reports of Redus having a firearm at the time of the attempted arrest and killing over a misdemeanor traffic offense. Officials have not as yet reported the toxicology of his bodily fluids, nor discussed any evidence of the contents of his pockets or his automobile.

This dashcam video depicts the arrest of M/Sgt. C.J. Grisham on Saturday, May 16 of this year, as he hiked down a rural road near the Airport in Temple, Texas, on a Boy Scout hike with his son, Chris, Jr. He had armed himself with a loaded AR-15, he told officers, in case of an attack by feral hogs.

There is no law against walking on a public roadway armed with a loaded long gun – a rifle or shotgun.

Bell County prosecutors and a visiting County Court-at-Law jurist, Judge Neel D. Richardson, of Harris County, refused to release the material until they had obtained a conviction of Sgt. Grisham for the Class B misdemeanor crime of interfering with a public official in his appointed duties.

In a second trial following a mistrial due to an irrevocably deadlocked panel, jurors made a finding that his actions in grasping the weapon after Officer Steve Ermis drew his .40-caliber semi-automatic pistol and began to struggle to disarm him by force amounted to proof of the commission of that crime.

They assessed punishment with a $2,000 fine and eschewed a possible sentence of six months county jail time. He is presently petitioning the Court to regain possession of his weapons – an AR-15 and a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol - and faces similar disorderly conduct misdemeanor prosecution for criminal trespassing in a Travis County Court-at-Law for carrying a toy revolver on the grounds of the State Capitol. 

God rest ye merry, gentlemen...

Let nothing ye dismay…

39-day detention sparks federal lawsuit in Hill County

Offense: 'breathing while brown'

Hillsboro, Texas – In certain Texas communities, traveling with money will get you locked up - pronto.

A suspicious State Trooper leveled bogus charges against two Hispanic men that led to an extended stay in the Hill County jail under legal conditions that resemble the standards of medieval courts – all because they had money.

Roberto and Jaime Moreno-Gutierrez allege in a federal lawsuit that when DPS Trooper Carl R. Clary stopped them on I-35, he asked for permission to search their vehicle with the assistance of his canine partner.

Try as he might, the dog could sniff out no drugs or drug paraphernalia.

But the trooper smelled money, and when he discovered the $14,000 in cash and checks they had saved to buy a used Nissan hybrid electric car, he asked them to accompany him to a place for an interview “where it was quiet.”

He never told them they were under arrest, or even that they were being detained.

He didn't handcuff them, didn't warn them of their rights under the Miranda decision; he just took them to the Hill County Jail, where they languished for 39 days without charges, with no probable cause, and under the twin falsehoods that they were money launderers, detained by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Division of the Department of Justice .

Records show no such federal detainer was ever filed, no state charges were ever filed, and no affidavit of probable cause was ever presented to a magistrate, according to their attorney, Cary Toland of Brownsville.

On the morning of March 31, 2011, the men left their home in Killeen to visit a used car dealer in Plano. They had cobbled together the cash to buy the hybrid Nissan following the sale of an older Dodge Envoy, borrowed an additional $4,000, and chipped in some more cash; they were ready to buy the Nissan that day.

In a traffic stop that resembles the classic portrait of racial profiling, they were stopped for traveling while brown, both driver and passenger's driver's licenses were scrutinized and scanned electronically, and questioned by means of a “translator apparatus” to convert the trooper's questions into Spanish.

"There was simply no indication of wrongdoing. Nevertheless, Trooper Clary seized the money and waited for backup...,” the federal complaint states. Attorneys with the Peek and Toland law firm conducted an investigation which turned up a property receipt for the $14,000 in cash seized that day. That part is clear. From there, the record becomes downright murky.

Attorneys never found the federal affidavit form that would have supported a detainer for an illegal immigration investigation, just an advisory that the government would not press charges.

That's not all they never found.

"There was no warrant; there is no record of the plaintiffs being brought before a magistrate; there is no record of a bond hearing; and no bond was ever set by Hill County authorities, all of which has been confirmed by FOIA requests and USDOJ FBI CJISD Reports." The two men were never advised they were under arrest, nor were they ever handcuffed. The law men just threw them into the casa de calaboose for a striped sunshine treatment.

The suspicion voiced by lawmen and never recorded in the annals of law and order: “money laundering.”

DPS and Sheriff's office officials stonewalled numerous attempts to exercise the right to an application for a writ of habeas corpus, according to the attorneys.

"Between April 6, 2011 and April 12, 2011, counsel made several calls to the Hill County Sheriff Department/Jail and was told they had no information and to call DPS Officer Clary or the district attorney," the complaint states. "On April 12, 2011, counsel sent a request to the Waco, Texas office of the Texas Department of Public Safety for contact information on the detective assigned to the case for copies of the probable cause affidavit and arrest warrant or offense report. None was provided...There was no cause number, offense report, warrant, or probable cause affidavit; defense counsel for plaintiffs had no reference for their requests for bond or bond hearing... Between April 12, 2011 and April 25, 2011, counsel, in a series of calls and visits, pointed out to the jailers there were no charges; no offense report; no probable cause affidavit on file; and plaintiffs were being held more than 72 hours in violation of Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, Section 17.033(b)...Counsel was told to contact the arresting officer or the office of district attorney.

“On another occasion, counsel was told there was an 'ICE hold detainer.' The 48 hours passed and plaintiffs were not released. The FOIA request reveals no ICE hold detention (Form I-247) notice during this time." (Parentheses in complaint.) After the plaintiff's attorney sent a letter to State Trooper Clary asking for information about their charges and did not get a response, he filed a motion with the Hill County DA's office for an examining trial, and another motion with Hill County's district clerk, seeking information and/or a case number. 
     Again there was no response, plaintiffs say. On May 9, 2011, (the first time immigration documents showed up in the FOIA file), ICE sends an immigration warrant, at which time immigration officials were told no charges were going to be pursued and an immigration bond was set and paid," according to the complaint.

"Plaintiffs were released after 39 plus days of incarceration with no charges; no hearing; and no probable cause, all in violation of state and federal laws and constitutional requirements. 
All authority to continue detention under the immigration detainer or state law had expired 36 days earlier. It was defendants' legal duty to immediately release plaintiffs. Nevertheless, defendants continued to imprison plaintiffs, without legal authority, for approximately 39 days.

That is 36 days longer than the three days the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure law allows  lawmen to place a suspect in custodial detention without charges and reasonable bail.

In a final note, laconic and somewhat ironic, the lawsuit concludes, “Trooper Clary is not a party to the complaint."

McLennan Court raises budget, raiding jail contingency

Reporting by R.S. Gates

Story by The Legendary Jim Parks

Waco – Crony capitalism strikes again amid idle promises, a historic tax rate hike, and a stated goal to reduce the McLennan County budget by 4 percent.

Look for heat and light at tomorrow's regular session of Commissioners Court, if not blood and feathers on the floor.

Come Tuesday, voters will see the beginning of a slide down a slippery slope to a rising budget, and it's all about the jail – overcrowding – and an attempt to clear cases by using a new concept called the “rocket docket.”

County Judge Scott Felton

At the center of the controversy, a retired banker named Scott Felton, who accepted an appointment as County Judge while making noises that he will not seek re-election, a Commissioners Court acting in reaction to taxpayer rage, and a junta of five State District Judges who vowed to reduce jail crowding and reduce a runaway budget.

The result? The Court is slated to transfer $200,000 in contingency funds to the court security budget to pay officers to guard the Courts as the defense bar and the Criminal District Attorney's staff struggle to attempt to stem the overwhelming tide of criminal prosecution that has not cleared the system due to an intractable attitude precluding plea bargaining. If a conviction calls for a 15-year sentence, the office's plea offer is for 15 years. Accused offenders are in no hurry to become convicted and transfer to the state penitentiary. The resulting squeeze is disastrous for taxpayers.

If the court repeats this action each quarter, the result will be an $800,000 rise in the annual budget for court security.

We've been here before.

Criminal District Attorney Abel Reyna gained election to his first term in 2010 by attacking veteran DA John Segrest's track record of prosecuting only about 50 percent of offenses charged.

“That's no better than a coin flip,” he told voters, as he made the rounds of quincerias, family reunions, lodge picnics and golf tournaments. Three quarters through that first term, the court found itself making adjustments, and the appointed County Judge – a banker with a long track record of analyzing balance sheets - talking about a sinking cash reserve fund that wouldn't fly with any lender or board in the corporate world. With a sagging credit rating looming, he led the Commissioners Court in a historic tax rate hike.

It's all about the debt service on a $49 million boondoggle, the publicly funded, privately operated Jack Harwell Detention Center, which represents an annual obligation to taxpayers of $4.5 million. To meet that obligation, the Sheriff's Office has closed a 350-bed jail in the Courthouse Annex, thus creating another component to the artificial demand for bunk space.

An ill-advised idea of a GOP-dominated Court that did not foresee a glut in county jail bed space, it is the result of hundreds of conservative local governments getting on the bandwagon to privatize a ministerial duty prescribed by the State Constitution – to provide jail space for those awaiting trial, doing time on federal charges, or awaiting transfer to the state penal colony.

Why shouldn't private investors clip the coupons, collect the profits, and the wrongdoing of offenders provide a revenue stream?

Because the numbers just won't support it, that's why.

Said a knowledgeable observer, “I mean, it's just scheme after scheme after scheme to make that jail pay off, and there's people getting rich over it...They have to pay that $4.5 million each year whether there are people in the jail, or not.

“When the budget was passed with a huge tax increase, they said there would be a 4% reduction required by each department. Not even 3 months into the budget, they are right back to plundering the emergency fund. Do you think it is a coincidence the public record is one page with no explanation to support the budget increase?”

State had no duty to protect VA Tech students

State Supreme Court – 'Who knew?'

Richmond – Most people missed it amid the sensational headlines of late October, but the Commonwealth of Virginia neatly excused itself of all culpability in the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

Seung-Hui Cho began his rampage by slipping into a dormitory where he killed 4 students with a handgun; then he hid from police for three hours before finishing the assault that left a total of 32 students dead after attacking an additional 28 in an instructional hall across campus. The State Supreme Court ruled, “the commonwealth did not have a duty to protect students against third party criminal acts.”

The unhappy Korean student knew little English and was suffering in his studies as a result, but he was cunning enough to chain the exit doors shut to prevent his prey from escaping before he began his final assault after three hours of terror as police tried in vain to apprehend him.

The unfortunate students trapped inside could have escaped had they been alerted to the initial shootings at the dormitory, according to an argument offered by attorneys who represented the parents of the students who later lost their lives in Norris Hall.

Instead, they continued their studies, trapped inside classrooms from which there was no easy escape while an enraged gunman stalked the corridors, firing at will.

The justices of the court wrote, “Based on the limited information available to the commonwealth at the time prior to the shootings in Norris Hall, it cannot be said that it was known or reasonably foreseeable that students in Norris Hall would fall victim to criminal harm...”