Alas, we were deprived of that opportunity because he pled guilty. You know, that thing were the guy stands there and says “Yeah, I did it, my bad.”.
Boy, is my face red! Here I was thinking that if a guy swears an oath to uphold lofty concepts and ideas and he does the opposite, that’s a crime in and of itself. But it isn’t? Well, son of a gun!
Good luck with that. Bricker has repeatedly indicated that notions of justice and morality are not useful topics of discussion, and that only specific legal process matters. The notion that there should be a correlation between morality, justice and the legal system is a quaint delusion that has no place in the court room, or in this forum for that matter.
“Equal justice before the law”. Should the “sorta kinda” asterisk be at the beginning of the phrase, or tacked onto the end?
Gentlemen! You can’t have justice in here! This is the court room!
He plead to tampering with a government record.
How could this be anything BUT an intent to defraud?
Are you saying that THIS prosecutor thought a conviction was unlikely without the deal? Was it not enough that they have the phony signatures and Casey’s signature that he witnessed them sign? Sounds more likely that he just didn’t much care.
Christ, as far as I can see, he didn’t even have to pay a fine. This doesn’t even count as a slap on the wrist. He got off scott free.
Oh, it’s far worse than that. He shows no indication of even comprehending that there are such concepts as justice and morality that are distinct from the written law, or from Vatican dictates. Even the suggestion that there could be a distinction merely confuses and enrages him. There’s just something missing up there.
Well, he had 318 signatures; he needed 250. To prove an intent to defraud, I suspect the prosecutor would have needed to show that 69 or more signatures were fake. In other words, in Texas, Tex. Pen.Code Ann. § 37.10(f) provides a statutory defense: that the false entry or false information could have no effect on the government’s purpose for requiring a governmental record.
Right?
Now, the misdemeanor aspect of the crime was much easier to prove; even one fake signature is a misdemeanor. But for the felony, as I read it, the state must prove both that the accused had an intent to defraud or harm a person (and, to be sure, “the state of Texas,” counts as a person) AND the state must be prepared to disprove a claim that the false entry could have had no actual effect.
Of course, I’m not licensed to practice Texas law, and so I welcome cited correction on this point. But Wingo v. State, 143 SW 3d 178 (Tx Ct App 4th Dst. 2004) seems to describe exactly the standard that I laid out above.
Do you agree?
A misdemeanor is just fine. As my cite above shows, the misdemeanor can carry jail time AND\OR a fine. The prosecutor chose to allow him to plea and walk. *
Nothing to do with amount of forged signatures. There were forgeries and signed that they were witnessed.
His intent to defraud was “falsely claiming witnessing all signatures on his petition for election”. Would not that false claim nullify, and wouldn’t THAT be an actual effect?
*[sub]I did see ONE cite that says he did pay a 1000 dollar fine. That cite also says the 2 brown women were offered plea deals for probation but turned them down. None of the other sites had this, so I will take it with a grain of salt. [/sub]
The conditions of his plea deal were:
[ul]
[li]Resign[/li][li]Spend five years on probation[/li][li]Pay a $1,000 fine[/li][li]Stay off the premises of the Southlake Government Complex and the Tarrant County northeast courthouse, unless for official business[/li][/ul]
Again, I point out that plea deals typically offer less punishment than the offender could receive at trial, which is what makes them a viable option. Since the case against Tarrant was at best a misdemeanor, and he was a first offender, even a conviction would be unlikely to include actual jail time.
Do you agree with that?
The case against Ortega was a felony, and she elected to go to trial as opposed to accepting a plea deal. The result of the trial was a guilty verdict, and, again, the result of going to trial and losing is a harsher sentence that the accused could have received had the plea offer been accepted.
Do you agree with that?
The effect has to be an effect on the government’s purpose for requiring a governmental record. (See § 37.10(f) ). Here, the government’s purpose is ensuring that 250 people were willing to sign in support of the candidate’s ballot appearance. The effect must affect (sorry!) that outcome.
I mean, okay, most of the time I agree with this… but c’mon. Pretty straightforward question - “Is this something based on racism?” And Bricker went ahead and answered the question - “Yeah, he took a plea bargain to avoid potentially being convicted of a felony, and other two lost in court.” At which point everyone else went ahead and dogpiled him for only focusing on the legal aspect. I don’t think that’s a fair critique of his response. Why yes, it is a shitty reality of how our justice system works. But that’s hardly his fault.
How you think that answers the question asked is baffling.
I do not. It does not look to me like a zealous prosecution. I think he could have gotten a conviction, or at least a plea that included jail time. I think you could have gotten that. Hell, I think ***I ***could have gotten that. The fact that it was election fraud and he was a freaking Judge fer crissakes. That should fact alone should rule out any ‘first offender’ nonsense.
We are talking about the integrity of elections, are we not? If we are, then THIS guy should be made an example of.
I agree that she probably should have accepted the offer for probation. (again, I saw only one site that says probation was offered) Either way, eight years is way too long of a sentence considering the severity of acts.
Assumes facts not in evidence. I blame bad reporting.
None of the sites I looked at, and I looked at quite a few, show the actual number of forged signatures. And more, none say that anyone has verified ALL the signatures. One site says only that there were ‘dozens’. (we need better journalism in this country 
)
So it conceivable that:
a) there were 70 forged signatures
b) the plea deal stopped the investigation as to the rest of signatures
c) that may be the point
We do have to ask ourselves ‘Why submit a form with ‘dozens’ of forgeries if you truly have the legally required amount of signatures?’.
Can you explain what authority you’re relying upon for the proposition that when a judge is the first offender, it erases sentencing standards for first offenders? I’m not familiar with it.
Are you saying you’re confident that you could have gotten a felony conviction? Or a misdemeanor conviction?
If the former, I don’t agree. If you’re saying you’re confident that you could have gotten a misdemeanor conviction, I agree, but I don’t agree that a sentence would likely have included jail time, based again on the aspect of this being a first offense with no actual provable effect. Can you explain specifically why you believe this to be untrue?
Perhaps – it’s unclear to me what her PSI looked like, what aggravating or mitigating factors were adduced at sentencing, and without that information I can’t really offer an opinion. May I ask if you know this information?
One answer is that submitting 250 signatures is a risk, because even one invalid signature submitted in good faith – say, from an ineligible voter – scuttles the ballot.
But the problem now is that you’re asking me to accept supposition: no fact adduced in this reporting supports a claim that there were as many as seventy forged signatures. So your argument is now apparently, “It must have been racism, because it must have been a felony, because there must have been at least 7o forged signatures.”
Matthew 7:36: It’s “a foolish man who built his house on sand.”
Even if the plea deal stopped the investigation, the main point remains that this is an utterly normal, non-racist way for the system to work: plead to a lesser offense and receive a lesser penalty. Nothing about that suggests a worse outcome based on skin color.
I have no information other than what is in the sites
Are you calling me foolish? 
Even if the plea deal stopped the investigation is an important point to no actual provable effect . That there might have been 70 forgeries is no more supposition than there were definitely less than 69. Had the investigation continued, we may have actually had that ‘provable affect’. Now, we may never know.
Which, again, may have been the point. They agreed to deal to stop the investigation. They get cover and appear to have done something and the white Judge doesn’t have to do any time and doesn’t have to pay much money. I agree that this may sound like paranoia, but sometimes truth is actually stranger than paranoia.
On a side note, we haven’t seen that much of you in the Pit recently. Good to see you back!
If we entirely ignore any implication of racial bias…in Texas? Shockedshocked!..his offense is still worse, because he is a sworn officer of the law. There is a term for that, when an offense is made worse, and it aggravates me that I can’t think of it.
Since we have already Lazarusized the** BrainGlutton** Memorial Thread, might be a good time to check in with the Kurt Kobach Klown Kar rolling fiasco. Not that I want to argue with **Bricker **about that, rather watch somebody else do it.
Big fan of mental gymnastics, and the Counselor is the master, he can jump up in the air, do a double back flip, tie himself in a granny knot on the way up, untie on the way down and land twinkle-toe perfect! The rhetorical equivalent of Nadia Comăneci!
I wonder if **Bricker **will let me know which of my family members the government should allow to die so as not to rob him of his chance to level up with Jesus by saving one of them should he have the inclination and the means to do so. Last time I asked him he ran off faster than Clothahump’s broken dick.
I know there are 218-ish pages in this thread, so it’s entirely possible I missed this no doubt genuine and highly relevant question. Can you provide a post number, that I might refresh my recollection?
It’s not my job to remember things for you. If you want to go looking for your old posts, get to it. I’m not doing it for you.
Well, this is the Pit.
But no – I was urging you, a wise man, to learn from the example of the foolish man.
In the federal system, there is a bizarrely complicated formal system of assigning points to various prior convictions, aspects of the crime, mitigating circumstances, and aggravators, and the judges are – while not literally bound – they are effectively bound by the results; they have to address on the record any departure from sentencing norms.
States typically give more leeway, but judges are still constrained by sentencing norms; it’s difficult, though not impossible, to sentence a first-time offender as though he were a career criminal. Those are general principles; I admit to not having researched Texas’ specifics.
No - a first time offender is literally that: a person, of whatever age, with no prior criminal record.
Well, sure - but that was penned in the wake of a guilty plea and agreed-upon sentence. I am very confident that had he been convicted, he would have stood before a sentencing judge with Disney-wide eyes, contrite and cooperative.
In other words, you cannot argue his lack of repentance would have aggravated hsi sentence, since it’s very likely he would have adopted a repentant attitude if he needed to.
Yes, but “we may never know,” is not a point that supports an argument. It is, in fact, a logical fallacy known as argumentum ad ignoratium: “We may never know, so you should infer that my version would have come to pass.” You bear the burden of supporting your argument; you cannot point to ignorance and say, “See? If we knew this, it would prove my point!”
[quoteI agree that this may sound like paranoia, but sometimes truth is actually stranger than paranoia.[/quote]
Same problem.
Thanks. The new blood pressure meds work like a champ! 