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In 1943, Richard James was working as an engineer at a shipbuilding company in Philadelphia.  It was the height of World War II and frankly, things were not going well for the Allies.  One day, at the company, James saw a torsion spring fall off of a table and flip end over end on a ship’s deck.  Impressed with the symmetry and beauty of the action, he told his wife, Betty, that he ought to make a toy out of the simple object.  So, together they went to work and made 400 of the stair-walking springs, completing this task in 1944.  Betty leafed through a dictionary and came up with the term “slinky.”  She felt it best described the fluid, easy movement and the muffled sound of the coiled metal as it expanded and contracted.  By Christmas, 1945, they were ready to spring the new product on boys and girls (and, as it turned out, men and women) of all ages.  Gimbels Department Store in Philadelphia was persuaded to let the James set up a ramp in the toy department.  What the audience saw was that the newly-christened “Slinky” could perform somersaults down a ramp or stairs.  Not only that, it turned every child into a faultless juggler.  At $1 each, all 400 sold out in 90 minutes.  An toy icon was born.  Ms. James ended up running the company that produced the Slinky after her husband left it and the family to pursue his religious identity in the wilds of Brazil in 1960.  She died this past Thursday, November 20, in Philadelphia at the age of 90.  Cause of death was congestive heart failure.

To date, over 300 million Slinkys have been sold.  I really don’t know how many I have owned over the years; it has to be twenty or thirty.  Counting all the regular, gray Slinkys, the rainbow colored ones and the Slinky Dog, enough have been sold to circumnavigate the earth 150 times, if stretched.  But that’s what screws them up; don’t do it.

Ms. James was always a bit of a “nazi” about keeping the price low on the Slinky.  What started out at $1 stayed there for decades.  By 1996, you could still pick up one for between $1.89 and $2.69.  When asked why she saw to it that the price stayed so reasonable, she replied: “So many children can’t have expensive toys, and I feel a real obligation to them.  I’m appalled when I go Christmas shopping and $60 to $80 for a toy is nothing.  With 16 grandchildren, you can go into the national debt.”  I wonder what she thought about all our profligate ways of late.  Thank you Ms. James for a great toy.

You may have watched yesterday’s televised game between WTAMU and Abilene Christian, won by ACU by the incredible score of 93-68.  I mean, the losing team scores 68 points and still gets beat.  I could only stand to watch snatches of it, too painful it was to watch the WT defense evaporate on each ACU running play.  Nevertheless, WT did come right back and try to make a game of it with its own potent offense.  A WT received by the name of Charley Martin was unconscious out there - five touchdown receptions!  He set several WT and Lone Star Conference records out there, all in a losing cause in his last game as a WT Buff.  But that’s not what this post is about. 

If you happened to watch the final play of the game, WT scored on a fine slant pass play to Martin which was good for about 55 yards.  After the PAT, there were exactly 3 seconds on the clock.  The game was to come to a merciful end, especially for the WT defense.  But that didn’t seem to matter to the ACU receiving team.  On the kickoff return, they were lateraling to each other, actually trying to score, I guess to run up the score to an even 100.  It was uncalled for.  It was unsportsmanlike.  It was cheap and low class.  The play ended on the WT side of the field and many of the Buffs went after the ACU players.  Of course, the ACU bench cleared and ran across the field.  It took the intervention of the entire coaching staffs from both teams to quell tempers.  But this time, it doesn’t matter to me which of the Buffs threw the first punch.  Each was justified in going after the ACU players and I wouldn’t have begrudged each WT player a little time to do some damage to every ACU player, particularly the smarmy twerps who decided to showboat in front of the WT bench.  It was low class. 

So, maybe WT will get their props next year with ACU.  And they’ll remember that little stunt.  I hope it serves as an extra incentive for each returning Buff player.  And by the way, did you notice OU pouring it on Texas Tech Saturday night, even when there was no doubt about how that game was going to end?  Remember that TT Coach Leach, over the past five years, has never shied away from running up the score on teams that were down by 25 or 30 points with little time left in the game.  Coach Leach has acquired a bit of a reputation for kicking the opponent when down, presumably believing that it helps in the BCS ratings system.  All it does is show his class and last night, he got it in his face, all on national television.  He had it coming.

Her maiden name was Bette Sharon Friedman, born in Chicago in 1942.  She earned a B.A. in English from the University of Illinois and later went to work as a copywriter in the fashion industry.  She later taught herself photography and parlayed that talent to become the queen of big-rig photography, spending the past three decades documenting the lives of long-haul truckers and the semis they push down the interstates and highways.  Her photographs burnished the country’s best-read trucking magazines, among them Truckers News, American Trucker and RoadStar.  Ms. Garber died this past November 13 in Philadelphia of pneumonia. 

While working as that copywriter, she married Charles Garber and together they founded an electron miscroscopy company in 1970.  She was often on the road promoting the company.  Out of boredom and as a hedge against the vagaries of traveling on the road alone, she bought a CB radio.  It opened up the truckers’ world to her.  She was fascinated by the trucker argot and personalities.  She began to listen, really listen and then she began to talk.  Eventually, the truckers began to trust her and brought her into their world.  So began her career of photographing the sleek, painted, chromium-shined rigs seen rolling down the roads.  She soon became the best of what is, in reality, a small but dynamic fraternity of photojournalists who document trucks and the men and women who drive them.  Before her death, she wrote and published four coffee-table books on trucks from the years 2003 up to this year.  At the time of her death, she was editor-at-large for Heavy Duty Trucking magazine and ran a stock-photo agency, Highway Images. (more…)

I have written before about my firm belief that the greatest threat to the solo practitioner, whether you be in the civil or criminal arena, isn’t booze, prescription drugs, fast women or gambling.  Granted, I suppose they all can wreck a career.  But for my money, depression is the primary cause for inordinate number of lawyers to pitch in the towel and call it quits.  And it’s probably contributed to as many lawyers heading off the rails into ruin as dope or liquor.  With the coming dark, belt-tightening times ahead - and make no mistake, financial insecurity is here to stay for some time - depression is and will continue to be a huge problem for the solo.  The State Bar recognizes this and it offers a free DVD, titled “Practicing From the Shadows: Depression and the Legal Profession” for the asking.  Simply call 800/343-8527 and they’ll shoot you up to three of them.  Who knows - if it can help you recognize the signs, you just might be able to help out a fellow lawyer who’s stumbling.  For too long, many of us here in Amarillo watched certain lawyers go down the drain when we all knew perfectly well what was going on and we did nothing.  Maybe it wasn’t depression but still, the principle is the same.   

It’s fitting, if I can use that term loosely, that this story should arise on this the thirtieth anniversary of the mass suicide at Jonestown, Guyana.  The Orange County (California) Sheriff’s Department homicide investigators are closing the books on their investigation into the suicide of five members of a successful family of Turkish immigrants.  They still have no idea why it happened.

The dead were the Ucar family - Manas (58), a Ph.D. engineer and accident reconstruction expert; his wife Margrit (49), one-time owner of a jewelry store in tony Newport Beach; their twin 21-year old daughters, Grace and Margo, who had just graduated with bachelor’s degrees at UC San Diego and their 72-year old grandmother, Fransuhi Kesisoglu.  The two sisters and the grandmother died from overdoses of prescription medication, including Vicodin.  Margrit shot her husband in the chest with a handgun before turning the gun on herself.  Manas Uncar also had lethal amounts of medication in his system as well but the autopsy concluded that he died as the result of the gunshot to the chest. 

There was no suicide note.  There was no evidence of financial stress or marital problems between the husband and wife.  None had medical problems.  Law enforcement had access to the computers located in the house and that turned up no clues at all.  The twins were found on a bed, the grandmother on a chaise lounge and the parents in a closet.  Each were dressed in all black.  And if that’s not enough to give you spooks, the bodies weren’t discovered for three weeks after death.  Emergency and medical personnel had to don scuba-like gear to carry out the grisly work of removing the bodies. 

This has to be the kind of case that drives investigators bananas.  It doesn’t make sense and there’s no evidence left behind to give even a glimmer of explanation.     

Phil Spector’s defense lawyers have strived mightily to prevent the admission of multiple extraneous incidents involving their client which illustrate his propensity to brandish handguns when irked.  And the circumstances that give rise to Spector’s use of weapons range from too much alcohol, late hours or a woman who doesn’t respond to his advances.  As in the first trial, several women have been or will be called to testify to these incidents.  But what to make out of the testimony from Dorothy Melvin elicited by Spector’s own lawyers?

Melvin testified on direct that on two occasions, Spector was ejected from Christmas parties hosted by Joan Rivers.  And both times, the reason was for Spector’s waving a gun at various guests.  What Spector’s motivation behind such behavior Melvin didn’t know.  But then came a real tidbit: on cross-examination, Doron Weinberg, one of Spector’s lawyers, had Melvin regale the jury about a confrontation in downtown Manhattan several years ago between Spector and a group of young men.  According to Melvin, these young men approached Spector, thrilled that they were rubbing shoulders with a music icon.  As they shook his hand and lavished praise which Spector was clearly soaking up, he then heard one of the young men exclaim ”I can’t believe we just met Dudley Moore!”  Enraged at being mistaken for the now-deceased, diminutive British star of the “Arthur” movie series, Spector pulled a gun and began chasing the men down the street.  And this came after Melvin told the jury on direct that Spector had pistol-whipped her when she refused to submit to his sexual advances.

In addition to this crazy case of mistaken identity (Dudley Moore is no doubt spinning in his grave), defense lawyer Weinberg then brought out through Melvin that Spector had locked her in a room at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in 1991.  Again, on cross, Melvin told the jury that Spector “wasn’t going to let me out until I made a sincere commitment to civil rights.  It was insane.  We never discussed civil rights!”  Melvin, a former manager to Joan Rivers, also described a 1993 incident where an inebriated Spector assaulted her with a handgun.  Oh man, what is this defense lawyer up to?  And this is one of the new guys that Spector hired to handle the retrial after his first set obtained the hung jury.  Do I smell a trainwreck?     

The Court of Criminal Appeals played to a packed house here in Amarillo in the 11th floor auditorium of the Santa Fe Building.  There was a smattering of lawyer, hangers-on, court personnel and lots and lots of high school students.  And, as I anticipated, the acoustics were abysmal.  The glitch with the microphones in the old auditorium is this: you have to get close to the mike to amplify but once you do, the system distorts speech, especially p’s and the sharp sh.  But, if you back off from the mike, then the voice wavers and speech can’t be discriminated.  It’s aggravating.  The bottom line is that the big room is just a lousy place to hold oral argument.  There’s someplace better out there than the 11th floor. 

I missed the first set of appellate lawyers on the one case I wanted to listen to (the victim-impact case).  However, I did observe and listen to about thirty minutes of the second set.  I don’t know who the young lady lawyer was representing the State but she had voice like fingernails on a chalkboard.  The lawyer representing the defendant (winner at the court of appeals) was a newbie and he let the court know it.  That’s not a good idea, telling them that it’s your first time before the court.  Believe me, they don’t care.  But he seemed to be better prepared for questions from the bench, for what’s it worth. 

After oral argument, the seven members of the Court who made the trek up to the Panhandle retired to the Amarillo Club where they were feted to a very nice lunch, courtesy of the Amarillo Area Bar Association.  The turn-out was pretty good, considering the fact that most of the lawyers who show up at these things are civil and couldn’t care a fig about criminal law.  I searched the crowd for any familiar faces from the defense bar.  And aside from Walt Weaver, current president of the local criminal defense lawyers group and my good friend Phil Jordan, nary another soul from the criminal defense bar.  I repeat, not another. 

Am I missing something here?  Wasn’t this a perfect opportunity for our criminal defense bar, what there is of it, to make its presence known and alternatively welcome the Court to Amarillo?  I do believe it’s the first time it has come to Amarillo to hear cases.  It may be the only time it does.  Doesn’t that call for some organized, concerted effort on the part of the criminal defense bar to reach out, make itself known and actually do something rather than sit around and buy drinks for each other once a month.  I mean, even if it’s as benign as making a presentation to Presiding Judge Keller with an ashtray, a clock, something.  It would have been something tangible that the defense bar could point to and say, well, at least we did that.  

And criminal defense lawyers in this town wonder why they don’t get the respect they crave, why things don’t get any better, why the practice seems to grow more and more tiresome with each and every passing year.  Another brick in the wall - another missed opportunity to burnish and enhance a public persona that is in woeful need of restoration.     

Want to know where to look for confirmation that the death penalty is the supreme exercise in legal dysfunction?  Search no further than California’s death row.  Take the case of Thomas Francis Edwards.  In 1981, Edwards shot a 12-year old girl between the eyes with a high-powered rifle for no reason whatsoever.  Just did it.  He was convicted of the little girl’s murder in 1983 but it took two penalty-phase mistrials before he was finally sentenced to death in 1986.  The there he sits and sits and waits.  Edwards is now 65, maybe the oldest of the 677 death row inmates there at San Quentin State Prison.  And there is little chance that any execution date will be set anytime soon.  Yes, his conviction and death sentence was affirmed by the Ninth Circuit but he has yet to file his writ of certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court.  And lot of good that will do him.  But, since he sits on California’s death row, he has at least two more bites at the apple while his lawyers challenge the method of execution in state courts.  You see, that is still a hot issue there in the Golden State. (more…)

The sole surviving member of the Jimi Hendrix Experience has been found dead in a Portland, Oregon hotel room.  Mitch Mitchell, 61, apparently died of natural causes.  An autopsy is scheduled.  Let’s just hope it was due to anything, anything other than drugs.  Mitchell rounded out the dynamic trio composed of Hendrix on lead guitar and Noel Redding on bass.  Redding died in 2003.  The band formed in 1966 and went on to fame in England.  it disbanded in 1970 following the death of Hendrix in 1970 from a heroin overdose at the age of 27.  If you want to experience the power of Mitchell’s talents, give a listen to his explosion on “Let Me Stand Next To Your Fire” from the Are You Experienced? album.  Just think - 38 years ago.  And I was a senior in the two-horse, endearing town of Marshall, Texas.  I still remember how I felt when I first heard the song. 

Washington joined Oregon as the second state in the union where physicians will now be allowed to prescribe lethal cocktails of medication to terminally ill patients who want to quicken their eventual progression toward death.  The Washington proposition passed by a fairly wide margin - 59-41%.  And it looks like it will withstand any legal challenges that might come its way since it is based on Oregon’s model which likewise has weathered similar court challenges.  Certain safeguards have been melded into the text of the law which, hopefully, deters hasty decisions. (more…)