Yawn. I’m not an organizational man. Never have been. Hampton would have done a much better job than Trichter, but fortunately that year is past.

I’m all for sunsetting the SBOT, but that’s another discussion for another day.

You’d think that being elected would include placing the organization as some sort of priority, wouldn’t you?

As Dorothy Parker said, you can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.

Austin’s criminal defense culture is, it seems, very different than Houston’s.

I have been in the ACDLA doghouse ever since, as a baby lawyer, I mandamused a local judge in Stotts v. Wisser, and won.

I’ve always been very good at the game of “What’s Really Going on Here.” I saw enough in April 2008 to solve the ACDLA puzzle.

Oops. I have a lot of typos in there. That is Ex parte Reposa, not Ex parte Womack. And it should have said I am surprised he did not throw a shoe, not a show. But Keith needed to be defeated for President-Elect.

I get bored seeing the same mildly informed people speaking at every single CLE — some exaggerating their prowess as a trial lawyer when they don’t try cases or generally plead misdemeanors. With all the fantastic talent in this State, there is just no excuse for this state of affairs. ACDLA puts on a free Friday CLE, and recycles the same 20 people for the most part. The JP who directs it awards the title of “The Honorable” to the prosecutors, but not the defense attorneys. We love that kind of disrespect here in Austin!

While I’m at it, I might as well expose another Keith lie: He applied for the A felony appointment list in Travis County and was turned down. These judges know his character well. For some reason, he gratuitously sent out an e-mail, when nobody asked, stating that he had applied to take “a few select cases,” given his stature, and was turned down. That was a lie. He applied for general inclusion at that time and was turned down. The case he got the “lawyer of the year” award for — he told the Fifth Circuit after COA was denied that he did not realize until relief was denied that he had “accidentally filed the wrong brief.” We all write at least three or four briefs and then file our best one — not. The Fifth Circuit clearly did not believe him, in the published opinion, but looked at the claim anyway, calling his conduct “inexcusable.” But he did pull a lot of political strings to get Desmond Tutu to help his client get clemency — on the plus side. I think Desmond Tutu should have been named lawyer of the year. It just like that New York blawger said, about these guys scratching each other’s backs and giving each other awards — uncanny.

I’ll bet you had no idea how right-on you were in April 2008.

Like I said in April 2008, Booooo.

Members of the ACDLA group came to dominate TCDLA, including Betty Blackwell, Keith Hampton, and Cynthia Hampton, and their personal picks. Betty’s father was the local D.A. and a district judge. Another D.A.’s daughter currently sits on a bench. This pack crushes anybody they don’t like. Here are is one example:

Adam Reposa, local wild man and trial attorney, who can be a real pain, got crosswise with Betty Blackwell because a friend of his did a parody of Betty’s TV commercial in a local rag distributed in bars, featuring a character called “Butty Butthole,” which was a derriere answering a phone. Well, nobody messes with the queen. Shortly thereafter, Adam made a “masturbatory hand gesture” in an almost empty courtroom at our most despised prosecutor. Walter Pink of Houston once gave the finger to a prosecutor in the middle of a trial and said, “Well then, sir, give that to your mother.” So this is not something new in the criminal courthouse. However, this occurred in front of Judge Jan Breland, whose husband had been defeated for election to a different bench by a defense lawyer two days earlier. Jan not only held Adam in contempt; she also issued a memo to the other judges not to grant Adam a personal bond, to which he was entitled by law. Judge Baird signed the personal bond letting him out of jail hours later.

ACDLA had a meeting to discuss the situation. Nobody cared that an attorney had been illegally detained and denied a bond. Instead, ACDLA issued a statement, a sort of anti-amicus, saying the did not condone Adam’s actions (obviously never having glanced at the Pink line of cases), but that he was well-represented by ACDLA members (me and my office mate Todd Dudley) after the trial de novo. Neither of us are members any more.

The trial de novo was a circus designed to give Betty a record she could take to the grievance committee, which she did immediately after the trial. A civil judge was brought in to preside. It was a total circus — it was an indictment of this lawyer as a person, and everything misstep he had ever taken in his life, including satirical cartoons drawn by friends, was brought into evidence. On of the co-conspirators (who has a baby practice but was president of ACDLA because she knows everything) could not keep her lip zipped, so we heard about discussions between Betty and the First Assistant to get Adam.

When the sentence of 90 days was read, everybody gasped. Only one former ACDLA president was smiling and giggling. My office mate convinced me that the ACDLA crowd had gone beyond the pale, so I got Adam a personal bond out of the CCA pending the writ, which upset the people who wanted him to lose his liberty and his bar card. Because he was despised by these pompous lawyers, I was put in the position of acting as a one-woman strike force.

Then Keith Hampton, who was just defeated for President-Elect, used $1500 of TCDLA money to put on a CLE in conjunction with ACDLA, the topic of which was that only Keith or someone on the District 9 strike force was qualified to do what I just did. The judges who attended were pissed because they learned nothing as, indeed, it seemed to me that Keith had no idea what he was talking about. Association funds were used to promote Keith’s ego — he was not gracious enough to congratulate me on doing something unheard of — instead he need to tell everybody I was just not the right person to call. Despite the fact that I am Chair of the Criminal Law Exam Commission for Texas, serving second year as Chair and my fourth year as a member; and Co-Chair of the ABA Criminal Justice Section’s Appellate and Habeas Committee; Chair of the Habeas Reform Committee; as well as having served on the ABA Postconviction Task Force, meeting quarterly in DC for two years to put together recommendations for revising Postconviction Remedies Standards for the first time in 28 years. One of our members is the adorable Professor Ira Robbins, who appeared on the Colbert Report recently because of his great paper “Digitus Impudicus: The Finger and the Law.” Who am I to handle an original writ of habeas corpus to the CCA as compared to Keith. I am surprised he didn’t throw a show at me.

Then we got a horrible opinion from the CCA (Womack), which said the rules of evidence did not apply because this was a direct contempt, even though the trial de novo was, in fact, an indirect contempt. The assertion that this was nothing like the Walter Pink episode was totally disingenuous; Stan Schneider got Pink off in that case. Meyers and Holcomb dissented when my motion for rehearing was denied. I did hear, however, that the law clerk who wrote this crap was recently hired by our local D.A. Isn’t incest fun?

Then Keith published another rather thin paper on criminal contempt law in The Voice, which fails to discuss any of the glaring errors in Ex parte Womack. Since I am a non-person as far as he is concerned, there is no reason why he would have asked me about that. Keith, for years, has literally pretended that I am invisible when he sees me. Even when he was talking to my co-counsel at a death penalty trial this past fall. Tom Weber and I laughed so hard the tears were rolling down our cheeks.

Speaking of incest, why are almost all in-house publication edited by either Keith or his lovely bride Cynthia. Why was the lovely Kellie Bailey kicked out of the general counsel slot in favor of Cynthia, whose titles just seem to increase as the years go by. [Kellie Bailey writes: “I was most definitely not kicked out of TCDLA. I was recruited to go work for a civil firm. My departure from TCDLA was professional and, as those things go, pleasant. In fact, I am still on very friendly terms with all the then officers and staff, including Keith and Cynthia Hampton. ” Ed.] Is it cool for one couple to make hundreds of thousands of dollars from the same non-profit? And also put the husband on as a speaker at CLEs on topic he knows little about? The longer I am in this profession, the less I learn at CLEs. I go to the State Bar Advanced Course every year and learn nothing every year. Do we really need 30 minutes on the five Barker v. Wingo factors?

Anyway, as a result of our writ for Adam, the trial de novo judge reconsidered the sentence, and a bunch of judges testified at a hearing Todd had that Adam was a talented lawyer. It’s weird when the judges come through for defense lawyer, when the defense lawyers are the ones trying to have him deprived of his liberty and his bar card.

17 plus years of this has been more than enough for me.