The True Story of How a Series of Lies Sent an Innocent Man to Prison
In my previous post, It’s Even Harder for Innocent Defendants Now, I pointed to an article from a Houston defense attorney about how difficult the situation has become for innocent individuals who have been accused of sex crimes, especially those against children, now that Texas has adopted two Federal rules of evidence (413 and 414). …
My brother, Steve, was convicted in 2006. Part of my argument in the book has been that prejudice against people accused of sex crimes, especially against children, runs so high that it’s difficult for the innocent defendant to receive a fair trial in Texas. Here’s an interesting blog post from John Floyd, a Houston attorney, …
A Conversation About Steve’s Appeals Steve usually calls me every Saturday, and we talk for a half hour or so. Recently, we spent much of our conversation talking about the two posts before this one (read Part 1 here and Part 2 here). Here is an abridged version of part of our conversation. I’ll pepper …
Parts of this post were used in Aggravated. What the Court Got Wrong Much of the following is directly quoted from court records (with names changed, of course). Just to recap, Argument 2 concerned Steve’s marijuana conviction. Steve thought it shouldn’t have been admitted because of its age (24 years before). Argument 3 charged that …
Parts of this post were used in Aggravated. Two Arguments the Court Got Wrong In Steve’s first appeal (to the 19th Court of Appeals, in Keegan, Texas), he made four arguments, all of which the court ruled against. I’m only going to deal with Arguments 2 and 3 in this post, but here’s a quick …
Parts of this post were used in Aggravated. Bolstering Truthfulness – Gonzo’s Trial In the previous post, we looked at Blake Goudy’s and Ada Dixon’s testimony in Steve’s trial, and I wondered if Dixon’s insistence that her clients were always truthful was typical of her trial behavior. In the court’s opinion for the appeal for …
Parts of this post were used in Aggravated. Bolstering Truthfulness – Steve’s Trial I’m not a lawyer, and if I’ve interpreted this incorrectly, someone please tell me, but I believe that a federal rule of evidence (Number 608) precludes a witness (like an expert witness) from being able to say that they know someone is …
Texas v. Munsen – The Complaints I mentioned in an earlier post that the Texas State Board of Examiners of Professional Counselors (TSBEPC) had been given two complaints against Ada Dixon early in her counseling career (the first was closed with a “No Violation” status, the second was closed by issuing her a Warning Letter). …
Texas v. Munsen – Dixon’s Testimony On Day Four of the 2013 Munsen trial, about 9:00 am, the prosecutor began by having Dixon list her qualifications (RN, licensed professional counselor, in business for 21 years, gives lectures, wrote a book about abuse, etc.). When he asked her what her work as a counselor was like …
Parts of this post were used in Aggravated. Texas v. Munsen – Dixon’s Excuses The Gonzo and Munsen cases happened five and seven years, respectively, after Steve’s 2006 trial (2011 and 2013). As I said in the last post, Dixon said that she had testified in 30 or 40 trials by 2006. So I wondered, …