When now Dallas County District Judge Brandon Birmingham started working in the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office’s cold case unit, there was set of files that was forbidden fruit, even for the highest ranking members of the office. “There, in the warehouse of the DA’s office in a corner, was…
The job listing was clear. KTVT-TV (Channel 11), Dallas’ CBS affiliate, needed a traffic reporter with “strong knowledge of local traffic in the Dallas/Fort Worth area” and at least five years of professional broadcasting experience. The station seemingly had the perfect candidate, too. Tammy Dombeck, a longtime fixture on local…
Ezekiel Elliott will keep playing for at least two more weeks. On Friday afternoon, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals elected not to make an immediate decision on the league’s request to stay a lower court decision that’s allowed Elliott to play as the case has made its way…
After 15 months, the end of the NFL’s investigation into a series of domestic violence allegations made against Dallas Cowboys star running back Ezekiel Elliott is coming into focus. Sometime soon, as early as today and likely no later than next week, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will…
Work crews are dismantling a Dallas statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from a Dallas park bearing his name. The statue had nearly been taken down last week, but a court order and fatal traffic accident delayed the statue’s removal. The Dallas Observer’s Facebook Live coverage is here. You…
A federal judge dissolved a temporary restraining order Thursday that barred the city of Dallas from removing a statue of Robert E. Lee from Lee Park. U.S. District Judge Sydney Fitzwater approved the order yesterday, halting the work crews that had started the demolition at Lee Park. Plaintiffs argued that their…
Even as work crews began dismantling the Robert E Lee statue, it seems a court has intervened. Councilman Scott Griggs posted on Facebook that a Temporary Restraining Order has been granted in federal court preventing the statue of Robert E. Lee from coming down. “Case filed by Hiram Patterson against…
Dallas Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott will not begin serving his potential six-game suspension until at least week two, when the team plays the Denver Broncos, after a federal court hearing in Sherman on Tuesday night. U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant III did not rule on Elliott’s request for a…
It was a long weekend, so there was plenty of time for sleuths to pour through the thousands of pages of exhibits that accompanied Ezekiel Elliott and the NFL Players Associations’ request for a temporary restraining order against the league. While Elliott’s lawsuit is intended to cutoff the six-game suspension…
The NFL Players Association preemptively sued the NFL in federal court late Thursday, seeking to vacate the NFL’s suspension of Ezekiel Elliott if it’s upheld by Harold Henderson, the former league executive appointed to hear Elliott’s suspension appeal. Elliott’s suspension is based on a series of domestic violence allegations made…
As of today, Sept. 1, Texas police officers can pull people over and give them tickets for texting and driving. Those busted will face fines of up to $99 for a first offense and $200 for a second offense. Advocates against handheld phone use say the new law will save…
Joshua Baish looks uncomfortable in his orange jumpsuit as he tells his story in a video conference call at the Denton County Jail in early August. Fifteen video monitors line the walls inside the small visitation room, and nearly all of them are in use this Sunday afternoon. Several children patiently…
While the length of Ezekiel Elliott’s suspension might have come as a surprise, the fact that it came wasn’t a shock. Since being picked fourth overall by the Dallas Cowboys in the 2016 NFL draft, Elliott has made a series of poor decisions, seemingly daring NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to…
Liberals, friends of affirmative action, champions of diversity, all of you, my people — please, let’s catch our breath. Can we all quit the knee-jerk belly-aching over the Trump Justice Department’s interest in revisiting higher education admissions schemes for five minutes? Take it from Texas. This is not going to…
Ed Butowsky is having a rough Tuesday. “The story is ridiculous, it’s all made up crap,” the Dallas financier told the Observer on Tuesday morning before begging off the phone. He’d love to tell us the full story, he said, but he just didn’t have the time to talk. He might,…
In a sense, John Wiley Price is getting back all that cash the feds seized from his safe in 2011. It isn’t being turned over to the government as part of civil forfeiture proceeding, so Price is entitled to it. He’s not really getting it back, though. Not after U.S. Magistrate…
During President Obama’s term in office, it was an almost weekly activity for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to announce his newest lawsuit against the federal government. Whether it was environmental regulations, LGBTQ rights or immigration policy, the formula was the same: Paxton picks an issue important to his conservative…
A Dallas County grand jury indicted former Balch Springs police officer Roy Oliver on Thursday on two counts of aggravated assault by a public servant. The new charges for Oliver, the fired officer who shot and killed Jordan Edwards earlier this year, are not related to the events that led to…
Anthony Robinson, a longtime employee of the Dallas County district attorney’s office, avoided federal prison Wednesday despite admitting taking a $200,000 bribe from a man attempting to keep his name off the sex offender registry. Robinson rose through the ranks to become District Attorney Craig Watkins’ chief investigator from 2007…
Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price’s legal troubles are over. Late Friday afternoon, John Parker, the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Texas, announced that the federal government will not retry Dallas County’s longest serving elected official after a Dallas federal jury acquitted him on bribery and mail…
A former Baylor University volleyball player sued the school this week, claiming that the university failed to act on her report of a vicious sexual assault at the hands of Baylor football players. The Baptist university’s inaction to curb similar behavior, the woman claims, left her at risk for the assault…
Late Thursday, U.S. District Judge Sidney Fitzwater canceled one of North Texas’ most anticipated trials of the summer when he pulled the plug on Exxxotica’s lawsuit with the city of Dallas, dismissing the suit just before the trial’s slated June kickoff date. Fitzwater didn’t rule on the case’s central issue,…
