Can we force Texas to secede already?

[kowboy]

I loves me some 3rd District Court of Appeals in Texas like I love watching "The Girls Next Door" on the E! channel. Which is to say I don't, except in the part of me that likes be surprised at how stupid a person can actually be and obtain a position of prominence in our culture

Comments

[faerieburst]

Um, you are leaving some very important points out here.

Like, the original anonymous call that started this off? Child Protective Services very, very quietly dropped that case a little while back, after determining that there was no such person as the call claimed, and that it was more than likely a fraudelent call made to get CPS to intervene.

However, they kept right on with the prosecuting and such, and false imprisonment (see part 2), AFTER the base complaint was ruled to be invalid.

Not to mention the fact that CPS FAILED to do ANY investigation after the call, but before the raid. They went immediately to the raid stage, which was absolutely inappropriate.

That's a bit like saying "Someone made an anonymous call to the cops saying there was 100 lbs of coke in your home. The cops make no effort to verify this information, but rather immediately burst in with a SWAT team and seize everything in your apartment. They then discover that there is no coke, and that the phone call was fraudulent, so they drop the drug charge, but they KEEP YOUR THINGS AND will proceed to claim they have a right to keep them, even though the case they had seized them for evidence for is no longer pending." Yeah, not so much legally.

Second part: Many of the "children" that were seized were not, in fact, children. I believe CPS grabbed upwards of 400 individuals...many of those individuals were 18 or older (the oldest if I recall turned out to be 26 or 27), all of whom had ID showing that they were 18 or over, but CPS STILL HELD THEM, and REFUSED to release them, in utter violation of their rights and CPS's jurisdiction.

Third part: There was no investigation done by CPS before the raid. So yeah, CPS had NO EVIDENCE of any actual threat or danger to any of these kids. Remember, AFTER the raid, AFTER they started looking into it, CPS realized that the original phone call claim was false, and so dropped that investigation. So damn straight those kids should be returned to their families. Like polygamy, don't like polygamy, whatever, it is not INHERENTLY a "threat" or "danger" to the children, and there was no evidence of abuse or neglect.

CPS fucked up here. They didn't take the time to investigate. They didn't get their facts. They didn't do anything other than kneejerk "FOR THE CHILDREN" and they ended up with a fuck ton of egg on their faces. It should NOT have taken a fucking federal appeals court to order them to give those children back.

The State of Texas will be damn lucky if they aren't hit with a mirade of false imprisonment and negligent infliction of emotional distress lawsuits.

~Aramada

[kowboy]

Oh I have no doubt about the legality of returning the children based on an anonymous claim that later turned out to be false. To be honest, I sort of agree with them in this one instance because you are perfectly correct in stating CPS and the Texas AG completely over-stepped their authority in refusing to return the children to their families after it was determined there was no imminent threat of harm.

I was simply pointing out the irony of a court that returns children to admitted felons (bigamy is a class 3 felony in Texas) in this case while removing them from others.

[faerieburst]

But your post feels like you are castigating them...and it reads like you think they were wrong for ordering the return.

I'm personally glad they got it right this time.

~Aramada

[kowboy]

Sorry about that, I had ten minutes between meetings to gather my thoughts and post something before heading back. I should have processed it a tad more carefully. The judges in the Texas judicial system stick in my craw because they only seem to "get it right" when it suits their perceived constituency. In this case, my "cultural warrior" buzzer began going off. It's the same one that went off when the TCOA refused to grant sole custody to the grandparents of a young boy after the mother (their daughter-in-law) confessed to murdering him for profit. She was white, Christian, and from Texas, which made it a private family matter that's second only to gun rights for most Texans as far as needing protection is concerned.

[kowboy]

Sorry. I meant she'd confessed to murdering their son, the father of the boy.

[faerieburst]

"The judges in the Texas judicial system stick in
my craw because they only seem to "get it right" when it suits their
perceived constituency. "

I can appreciate that, but it makes this case even MORE of a reason to give them kudos. 'Cause I guarantee you that an offshoot polygamous sect of the Mormons is NOT their "perceived constituency". If they had wanted to appeal to their standard constituency, they would have allowed CPS to keep the kids 'cause those people are a "weird cult" and they do family different and so they MUST be harming the kids, right? Instead, they applied the law equally and evenly, and I love seeing that happen.

Also, these aren't "Texas judges" in this case. This was a federal appeals third district court, which just happens to have the seat in Texas.

~Aramada

[kowboy]

Actually, they are Texas judges as it was in the 3rd District Court of Appeals for Texas in Austin, at least according to the opinion. ;-)

I also find it interesting that in their opinion they fairly tightly parse out Texas law. They admit there were several minor girls who were pregnant at the time of the raid on their ranch. They also admit several women and girls had admitted to being pregnant prior as minors with some as young as 13 when being impregnated. But it gets weird when they then go on to state the presence of pregnant minors is not grounds for assuming risk to other minors, which would be true is the literature of the group in question did not openly advocate for the marriage and sexual initiation of minor girls to adult males. The court danced around that fact by ignoring it completely, preferring to treat the circumstances as if the CPS had raided an apartment complex in downtown Houston. It's also interesting that no mention was made of bigamist "weddings" to these same pregnant minors in violation of Texas law.

[faerieburst]

Ah, it was the third district of Texas, not the third district of the federal system. Mea culpa on that one!

~Aramada

[kowboy]

It's perfectly understandable. That was my assumption when I read it as well. My second thought was, "Oh my Lord help us all if the 3rd has move to San Antonio!"

On a side note, was it the 3rd or the 5th that ruled a death row inmate had received proper representation from a public defender that slept through more than half of his trial?

[faerieburst]

Not sure off the top of my head. And honestly, I don't think my blood pressure can take looking it up today. It has been a day CHOCK FULL of stupid, let me tell ya.

::smiles::

~Aramada