Dallas County Home Chemical Collection Center

The Dallas County Home Chemical Collection Center (DCHCCC) accepts boxes of burned-out bulbs, sacks of old batteries and half-empty cans of paint, pool chemicals, motor oil, household cleaners, personal computers and cell phones.

See the entire list at
http://www.dcfr.org/hhw/hhw.htm


Residents of Dallas and surroundings need only to bring them to the white and turquoise facility at 11234 Plano Road, north of I-635.

How did Dallas convict so many innocents?

Chains of Evidence
How did Dallas convict so many innocents? With faulty eyewitnesses, sloppy police work and overzealous prosecutors.
By Glenna Whitley Published: August 2, 2007
Mark Graham
Veteran defense attorney Michael Ware is working with Texas Wesleyan School of Law students to review requests for DNA tests from 400 people convicted in Dallas County.
Subject(s): The Innocence Project, wrongful imprisonment, eyewitness reliability, rape, DNA exonerees
A half-hour after her boyfriend left her Irving condo on an icy night in January 1988, Marilyn M. heard pounding on her door. Thinking her boyfriend might have had car trouble, Marilyn opened the door and confronted a stranger who pushed his way into her home and dragged her to the bedroom, dousing the lights as he went. From 8:45 p.m. until 1:20 a.m., the man sexually assaulted Marilyn in the darkened bedroom, leaving only after she feigned sleep.
Marilyn later described her attacker as 5-foot-8 and stocky with a light complexion, sandy-brown hair, a scraggly beard, a scar on his cheek and several tattoos. He chain-smoked Marlboro Reds. During a brief period in the lighted bathroom, Marilyn studied a tattoo on his shoulder blade that depicted a woman with large eyes and cascading hair. The day after the assault, Marilyn worked with police to create a composite picture of her rapist and the tattoo.
Five months later, Gregory Wallis was buttering a piece of toast when Irving police came to his door and arrested him for aggravated sexual assault and burglary.
"You're crazy," Wallis said. At his arraignment, Wallis was baffled. "I was carefree," he says. "I thought I didn't have anything to worry about. They couldn't make it stick. [Rape] is just not in my nature."
At trial Wallis learned that Irving police had shown Marilyn five different photo lineups with no success. Then an informant in the jail saw a photo of the tattoo and identified Wallis.
Marilyn picked Wallis out of the last photo array and then identified the tattoo on his arm as that of her attacker. Wallis' tattoo showed a woman with long hair, but it was on his arm, not his shoulder blade. The scar on his face was not on his cheek but on his forehead. No physical evidence linked him to the crime.
"The only time I had seen this lady was when I went to court," Wallis says. The trial lasted three days; the jury took an hour to convict him.
Sentenced to 50 years in prison, Wallis left his wife and 2-year-old son behind. He had served 16 years when he learned from another inmate of a new law that would allow Wallis to seek a DNA test.
It took nearly three years, but a judge finally assigned a public defender to his case. A sophisticated DNA test on Marlboro cigarette butts at the scene proved that Wallis could not have been the rapist. After serving 18 years for a crime he didn't commit, Wallis was released.
Since 2001, when the option of discretionary DNA testing became available to inmates, 13 men in Dallas County have been exonerated. Given sentences as long as 50 years to life, these innocent men struggle with lost years and the legacy of prison etched on their souls.
Around the country, DNA testing has exonerated more than 200 people so far, and Dallas County has far more exonerations than any other county in the nation.
"Dallas is ground zero for criminal justice change," says Jeff Blackburn, an activist lawyer, founder and director of the Innocence Project of Texas, a nonprofit consortium of attorneys and law students who aid those who claim they have been falsely convicted. It's modeled after the Innocence Project founded by lawyer Barry Scheck at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in New York.
"[Dallas County's] small enough to make it work but big enough to make a difference," Blackburn says. "The only thing that's rare about Dallas is we have this objective benchmark."
The benchmark is the result of two factors: The county's private lab, the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences, had to preserve the evidence to maintain its accreditation, Blackburn says. And in case an appeals court gave a convicted felon a new trial, the Dallas District Attorney's Office wanted to maintain evidence to try to convict the accused again.
"This is a perfect storm of accidental facts," Blackburn says. "I can tell you, if 20 years ago the Dallas DA's Office thought those convictions would be endangered they would never have gotten into this system of saving samples."
Blackburn says wrongful convictions happen for three reasons: eyewitness misidentification because police do not use objective procedures; failure of prosecutors and police to turn over exculpatory evidence, which he calls "pervasive"; and bad defense attorneys.
But the problem goes much further than Dallas County.
A study of 290 non-capital cases tried in four cities in 2000 and 2001 was released this spring by Northwestern University. It concluded that juries got the verdict wrong in one out of six criminal cases. One-fourth of those defendants pronounced guilty by juries were actually innocent. Judges had an even higher rate of false convictions; 37 percent of those deemed guilty by judges after "bench trials" were actually innocent. The study also found that judges and juries agreed on the outcome in only 77 percent of the cases.
In 35 Dallas DNA cases approved for tests so far, 13 men were found innocent. What happened in the trials of these men? (One, Eugene Henton, pleaded guilty and received a four-year sentence rather than go to trial.) How did the system go so horribly wrong? The Dallas Observer obtained the trial transcripts of 10 cases—all sexual assaults—and combed through the proceedings to see what they have in common.
Knowing in hindsight that the man on trial is innocent adds to the shock when one sees how little evidence was needed to convict him. In most cases identification of the defendant by the victim was all it took for juries to overcome reasonable doubt. How could the victim be wrong about who attacked her?
In years past, the Dallas District Attorney's Office earned a reputation for caring more about convictions than justice. Many of the DNA exonerations date to the 1980s when legendary District Attorney Henry Wade still reigned. The county's chief prosecutor from 1951 to 1986, Wade hired top attorneys and set them loose to get the bad guys.
Former Judge Manny Alvarez was a prosecutor from 1985 to 1989. "As a prosecutor I never lost a case," says Alvarez, now a defense attorney. "It's not like we maliciously prosecuted people. I pled the ones that were weak and tried the high-profile cases." But he could win in those days taking the first 12 people who showed up for jury duty.
"These people wanted to believe you," Alvarez says. "All they needed was a leader to take them down this road. It's white hat versus black hat, good versus evil."
Black and white played a different role earlier in Wade's tenure. In 1986, The Dallas Morning News exposed a 1963 memo advising Dallas County prosecutors on picking juries: "Do not take Jews, Negroes, Dagos, Mexicans or members of any minority race on a jury, no matter how rich or well-educated."
Though the majority of prosecutors and police officers were honest, Alvarez says, a pattern would emerge over time with certain people who prevaricated or fudged the rules. "Yeah, it happens," Alvarez says. "Sure it does."
In 1984, a black engineer named Lenell Jeter won his freedom after being convicted of armed robbery by a Dallas jury. His co-workers insisted he hadn't done it and national publicity led the District Attorney's Office to reopen and ultimately dismiss his case.
That was followed by the 1989 exoneration of a black woman named Joyce Ann Brown. Convicted for armed robbery, Brown was released after the District Attorney's Office admitted it made a mistake and a key prosecution witness had lied on the stand.
The office's reputation took a national hit with the 1988 release of Errol Morris' documentary The Thin Blue Line, about the conviction and death sentence of Randall Dale Adams for the 1976 murder of a police officer. Three days before he was to be executed, Adams' sentence was commuted to life.
The documentary alleged that Wade's first assistant, Doug Mulder, withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense. Adams' attorney maintained Mulder manipulated key witnesses. Mulder denied that and said he'd simply "forgotten" to turn over a witness statement pointing to another man.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ordered Dallas County to grant a new trial, and then-District Attorney John Vance dropped the charges.
Then came the '90s. Under District Attorney Bill Hill, more than a dozen innocent people were sent to prison by the Dallas County District Attorney's Office during a fake drug scandal in which confidential informants planted billiard chalk on innocent people and testified they were dealing cocaine. The District Attorney's Office had a policy of not testing the evidence unless asked by defense attorneys and withheld or "missed" tests that showed the chalk was not cocaine.
Jeter, Brown, Adams, several dozen victims of the fake drug scandal and now 13 DNA-exonerated convicts and more expected—can it be coincidence?
"I think it was a win-at-all-costs mentality," says a criminal defense attorney who worked several years as a prosecutor under Wade. He asked not to be named. "It was a culture built around Doug Mulder. He was a very powerful first assistant. It was an environment of 'anybody can convict the guilty; it takes real talent to convict the innocent.' People actually said that laughing like 'yuk, yuk, yuk,' but it's nothing to yuk about."
He does not blame Dallas police for wrongful convictions.
"The prosecutors would take control of making it all come out right," he says. "The police were just foot soldiers. They bring a case, and then it's like, 'This asshole deserves to be hammered. What needs to be said or done that's going to lead to a conviction?' The masterminds on that were the prosecutors, but they had willing witnesses to work with. I think it's just Dallas. That's just the way it works."
The mindset and practices put in place years ago, like not testing drugs unless the case goes to trial, were still affecting the process in 2000. He calls it ironic that the DNA evidence, originally preserved in part just in case an appeal led to a retrial, is now exposing the truth.
Defense attorney Peter Lesser calls the conviction of innocent defendants "a combination of errors," including pressure on law enforcement to solve and punish heinous crimes. He believes there are far more innocent people convicted than guilty people acquitted.
"I'm not ready to say the reason we have all these exonerations is that the DA was looking to convict innocent people," Lesser says. "Some didn't have good lawyers. Sometimes you need better judges. The police get away with a lot of unethical stuff. For the system to work as it should work, everybody should be operating in good faith, and that's not always happening."
Lesser puts much of the blame on the district attorney's "closed file" system, in which prosecutors limit what information they give to the defense. The rules require that "exculpatory evidence" be turned over, but that's at the discretion of the prosecutor.
"When I walk into the District Attorney's Office in Hunt County, there's a package with all the discovery, all the reports," Lesser says. "They give me complete access to their files. If they don't give you the information you need, bad things happen. There may be something that, had a jury heard it, they might not have found him guilty in the first place. The problem is judges don't throw cases out and teach law enforcement a lesson. Things are better now, but back then, Dallas prosecutors liked to play trial by ambush."
Current District Attorney Craig Watkins has instituted an open-file policy, but Lesser says it comes with a 40-page explanation. "Now they are saying we can't do this, we're going to have to black out names," Lesser says. "The rules are stupid. There's one way to avoid the problem."
Open the files.
Lesser was involved in the '90s in an effort to help James Curtis Giles, convicted in the 1983 gang rape of a Dallas woman. He served a decade in prison before being released on parole. His appeals went nowhere. The District Attorney's Office blocked his efforts to get a DNA test.
Then the Innocence Project of New York unearthed evidence the prosecution had failed to disclose, that another man, James Earl Giles, lived near the victim. Prosecutors had failed to disclose that he was implicated in the crime and police had confused him with the other Giles.
While DNA can be a silver bullet that rips the guts out of a jury conviction in a sexual assault, what about cases in which DNA is not a factor, where there's no silver bullet? It's a haunting question: How many of those defendants are innocent?
On January 15, 1986, pregnant hospital worker Felicia W. left her home near Fair Park at 6:25 a.m. to catch her bus to work. Felicia heard steps behind her and glanced back to see a man striding toward her. The man grabbed her and put a knife to her throat. He pulled Felicia down the street, then pushed her to the ground on the driveway in front of a car. He kissed her breasts for five or so minutes before raping her. Then the man was gone as quickly as he had appeared.
Crying, Felicia ran to her apartment and told her husband what happened. They called police.
Felicia described her attacker as black, about 5-foot-7, 145 pounds, with short hair, wearing a light-colored jogging suit, black shoes and a dark hat over a stocking cap or plastic bag. Felicia was confident she would recognize him again. Although it was dark, Felicia claimed she had a good look at her assailant in the light of a streetlamp.
By 10:30 a.m., police arrested a 30-year-old parolee named Wiley Fountain.
That afternoon, Officer T.L. Pettiet showed Felicia a photo lineup: six men, all black, all supposedly matching the description given by Felicia within a couple of hours of the assault. She picked Fountain.
Fountain went to trial on September 8, 1986, in the court of Judge Faith Johnson. The lead prosecutor was Lana McDaniel, who would go on to become a judge. Defense attorney Mike Rodgers represented Fountain.
As per the "closed file" policy of District Attorney Wade, the defense had no prior access to important evidence like police reports, but Rodgers did learn before trial that there were no fingerprints, footprints or other physical evidence that tied Fountain to the rape.
During jury selection, the prosecutor asked potential jurors a key question: Could you convict a defendant on the basis of one witness? Those who said they could not were stricken from the jury.
On the stand, McDaniel queried Officer Pettiet about his search for the rapist. Pettiet described driving around the corner to another apartment complex looking for a man wearing a light jogging or warm-up suit and a blue baseball cap over a plastic bag or stocking cap. Within minutes, he'd found Fountain.
Q: Officer Pettiet, what went through your mind when you saw this man standing there on the sidewalk of these apartments on Junction Street?
A: That's got to be the suspect.
One of the other men standing with Fountain on the sidewalk, Ralph Dobbins, told the officer that earlier that morning he'd seen Fountain walking from his mother's house in Pleasant Grove, about five miles away, and had given him a ride. But Pettiet said Fountain seemed nervous and gave the officer a fake name and birth date.
Dobbins allowed Pettiet to search his vehicle, but Pettiet didn't find a knife or anything else that implicated Fountain. On cross-examination Rodgers asked Pettiet if he had looked for anyone else after he saw Fountain.
A: No.
Q: Is it unusual for black males to wear stocking caps or shower caps or whatever it is you're talking about?
A: No, they wear it quite often.
Q: And of course, jogging outfits or sweat suits aren't anything unusual, are they?
A: No.
Pettiet testified that he didn't bother to obtain a search warrant for Fountain's home. He didn't take pictures of the other men. He didn't ascertain whether Fountain had a driver's license or access to a vehicle. (Fountain had neither.)
The afternoon after the attack, a detective came to Felicia's apartment to show her photographs of six men and told her she didn't have to pick anyone, but to let him know if her rapist was among them.
McDaniel: Is there any doubt in your mind that this man over here that you identified in court is the same man who raped you on January 15?
Felicia: No.
But under Rodgers' cross-examination, Felicia testified that she never noticed Fountain had a mustache, even though he supposedly kissed her mouth and nuzzled her breasts. In fact she had told police her assailant had no facial hair.
Rodgers also pointed out that Fountain was the only man in the six-photo lineup dressed in a light jogging suit and cap.
Q: OK. So it wasn't just because of his face that you picked him out, it was because of his clothes too, right?
A: Yes.
The lineup was flawed even under standards used in 1986, tainting Felicia's memory of her attacker.
Rodgers got a detective to testify to all the ways Fountain did not match the description of Felicia. He wasn't wearing jeans under his sweat suit, as she had described. The sweatpants had a black stripe; Felicia had told police the rapist's pants had none. Fountain had no knife; she said he put a knife in his pocket but also described it as a butcher knife. Police didn't test Fountain's pants to see if they had seminal fluid on them.
Though Felicia told police she had talked to a woman immediately after the attack, the detective had made no effort to find the potential witness.
Because Felicia was pregnant, which created a "hostile environment" for sperm, the results of other blood tests that might have linked Fountain to the assault were negated. (DNA testing was not available.)
Fountain testified that at the time of the rape, he was home in bed. His cousin Fredrick Williams had woken him up that morning, and Fountain got out of bed about 7:30 a.m., when the teenager left for school. He left the house about 8:45 a.m. on foot.
As he was walking to the bus stop about a mile from his house, Dobbins offered him a ride. They went to a car wash, a convenience store to buy beer and then the apartments on Junction Street to get another friend.
Fountain said Pettiet arrived and "asked me my name and told me I looked like somebody he had been looking for." He gave the cop a fake name because "I had a fine downtown [for public intoxication] and I didn't have the money at the time to pay it."
Fountain testified that Pettiet never attempted to take a statement from him.
Fountain's mother, Florence Fountain, said her son had been home that evening when she went to bed. His cousin and Dobbins backed up Fountain's alibi, but their credibility was undermined because they both had criminal records.
"Come on, what's the theory here?" Rodgers asked. "Is the theory that Wiley Fountain got up from his house over here and took a taxi? In the middle of the night? Because I don't think the buses run then. How did he get home? Where are the blue jeans? Where's the knife?"
The prosecution didn't have a theory. They had an eyewitness, the victim. Fountain was convicted and sentenced to 40 years in prison. He served 16 years before a DNA test unlocked the door to his prison cell in 2002.
Prosecutor Lana McDaniel was later elected to a state district court bench; she's now Judge Lana Myers. She remembers how shocked she felt on learning about Fountain's exoneration.
"I really couldn't believe it," Myers says. "I wasn't convinced the DNA test was even correct. The victim was very good and very credible and she had no doubt."
She had no concerns about the police lineup. "I guess at the time it wasn't unusual to me," Myers says, adding that victims often would forget to mention a significant physical feature like facial hair.
Are they forgetting? Is it possible to make a positive identification when such a salient fact is left out?
Myers had never talked to Fountain, but she has apologized to two other men exonerated by DNA. After her election to the bench, Myers presided over hearings on their requests to have DNA tests; against the wishes of the District Attorney’s office, Myers ordered the tests. At their exoneration hearings, Myers apologized to them on behalf of the state of Texas.
The conviction of Entre Nax Karage, sent to prison in 1994 and exonerated in 2005 for the murder of his 14-year-old girlfriend, was based on false testimony by police investigators. But in the dozen other exoneree cases, juries put their faith in the victims who identified their attackers.
Though experts have long understood the fallibility of witness identification, the system still operates much as it did decades ago.
"We know that eyewitness identification is unreliable, especially under stress," Lesser says. He calls that the single most common denominator in all wrongful convictions. "We know that techniques that police use for lineups can be suggestive. It's awfully hard for a jury when the witness can say, 'That's the man who raped me. His face is ingrained in my memory.'"
Eyewitness memory is "trace evidence, malleable and contaminatable, like blood on the ground," says Professor Roy Malpass of the University of Texas-El Paso. "Some of the procedures that law enforcement uses actually contaminate the memory."
Each time the victim or witness is shown a suspect's photograph, it destroys the usefulness of any subsequent pictures, Malpass says. Does the victim remember the suspect from memory, from the photo, from the lineup, a pretrial hearing, at trial?
Gary Wells, professor of psychology at Iowa University, has studied eyewitness identification for more than 30 years. "It has two properties," Wells says. "It's readily believed by judges and juries, especially if the witness indicates they are confident or certain of their ID. But it's also highly unreliable. Even without DNA, we could have predicted about three out of every four [false convictions], maybe a bit higher, would be cases with mistaken identification."
Once convicted, except for DNA evidence these men had virtually no hope of being freed.
"I don't see courts doing very much about [witness misidentification]," Wells says. "They are not sure what to do. I think courts could be more critical, more demanding of the standards that this kind of evidence needs to pass before it's admitted at trial. In the long run, the solution is going to be in reforming police practices and how they do these lineups."
Wells has been pressing police departments to use only double-blind lineups, shown to the victim by an officer who doesn't know who is the suspect and who are fillers. That eliminates unconscious cues from investigators.
The filler photos should be chosen by an officer of the same race, since such an officer is likely more sensitive to differences in features, Malpass says, and the strength of the witness' response should be recorded.
Wells says the police should never do a photo lineup until they have developed enough other evidence that indicates they are on the right track. "They should have pretty good evidence before they put an innocent person in jeopardy," Wells says.
Wells has met with the Dallas Police Department and says they are "eager" to set up a double-blind system. "I don't think they want this [false convictions] to repeat itself."
On July 24, 1985, Sharon L., 38, was shaken awake about 6 a.m. by a stranger standing over her, his exposed penis thrust in her face and one of her own steak knives at her throat. He had slipped in through an unlocked sliding door on the balcony of her second-floor apartment in Garland.
The man raped Sharon and shut her in a closet. She waited a few minutes and, hearing nothing, opened the door.
Police arrived by 6:35 a.m. Sharon described the man as white, about 5-foot-8, 140 pounds, athletic, tanned and with very blond hair. He'd been wearing no shirt, just light-colored or white jeans.
While she was talking to the officer, Sharon's phone rang. "Who is there with you?" She recognized the rapist's voice.
That began a bizarre series of phone calls from the rapist, who said he lived in her complex and had been watching her from his apartment. He told Sharon that about 1 a.m., he had climbed a tree to her second-floor balcony and entered the apartment sliding door, which she had left open.
"I am sorry of the way it happened, the way I did it. I love you very much. Will you see me again?" But he also said if she went to police he'd kill her.
Sharon did a composite sketch and, at the encouragement of police, taped his phone calls, which continued for a month.
In late August, a Garland detective showed Sharon six photos. She didn't pick out any of the men. Later that afternoon, Sharon was shown a live lineup with the same six people. This time Sharon picked out 24-year-old David Shawn Pope.
Pope, who had no criminal background, went to trial on February 4, 1986. Officer William David Thurman testified that he had been on patrol at 6:30 a.m. on August 28 when he saw Pope on foot in the Eastgate Apartments.
A house painter, Pope had been evicted from the apartment complex for not paying rent. On August 28, Pope told Thurman he was living off and on with a friend and out of his car and had taken a shower at the complex gym that morning.
Thurman called another officer, who thought Pope resembled the description of the rape suspect. When Pope consented to a search of his vehicle, police found a pair of white pants, a knife and other things in the trunk.
At first, Sharon didn't pick Pope out of the photo array, which all but screamed he was the suspect: Five men were photographed in front of blue backdrop wearing white overalls. Pope was photographed in a T-shirt, standing in front of a tile wall at the jail. But Sharon said she wasn't sure.
When she viewed the live lineup a few hours later, Sharon realized it was the same six people. She asked if she could hear them speak. She picked out Pope, the only one with a tan and blond hair.
Sharon testified that she was "shaking because, you know, I recognized him and I felt all the fear and the death as when I was standing right next to him."
But as defense attorney Curtis Glover would point out, the detectives, feeling her identification was tentative, put Sharon in a room and told her she needed to make a "definitive statement."
After being alone for a half-hour, Sharon emerged to say she was "positive" he was the rapist.
At trial, Larry Howe Williams, an officer with the Houston Police Department, presented "spectrographic" comparisons of the defendant's voice reading into a tape recorder and the tapes made of the rapist's repeated calls.
Williams had no college degree but had taken a two-week training course. He showed how the recordings made similar zigzags on a paper drum and testified that the tapes of the "unknown" matched David Pope. There was no possibility of inaccuracy.
The prosecution also offered a pioneer in voice identification, who likened voiceprints to fingerprints.
The defense called an expert on voice analysis who testified that voice spectrographic analysis was "useless" because it had never been scientifically proven. But the jury was left with the impression that the match was "scientific."
After he was evicted, Pope lived with Craig Furche and his parents in Garland. Both father and son Furche were painting contractors. Pope worked for the son.
The night before the rape, Furche and Pope had gone to see the newly released movie Back to the Future. Furche remembered it because Pope had already seen the movie and liked it so much he wanted to see it again; he had to borrow money from his boss until payday. Then the two went home, went to bed and got up the next day to work. Pope couldn't have been in Sharon's apartment.
Pope testified in his own defense, saying that he'd bought the white pants found in the truck at a garage sale without trying them on, thinking they'd be good painter's pants. They turned out to be much too small for him, as he demonstrated to the jury. The steak knife in the trunk was with a bunch of other utensils and household goods from his move.
Prosecutor Kimberley Gilles connected the personal data the rapist had given Sharon on the tape recordings: that he was 24 and went to Eastfield Community College, just like Pope. But the rapist had also said he was 20 and several other ages. And Pope went to Richland Community College, not Eastfield. Gilles waved away that discrepancy by saying the two schools were in the same community college system.
The jury took little time to convict. Sentenced to 45 years in prison, Pope was pardoned in 2001.
Spectrographic analysis still is not considered reliable enough for court. Instead of comparing the defendant's voice to the tape, Wells says, police should have provided the expert with recordings of five other male voices and asked which voice matched the perpetrator's phone calls.
"Police say, 'We know this guy did it,'" Wells says. "'What we need is for somebody to throw some electronic measurements on this so you can come into court and say it's the same guy.'"
Wells calls this the "CSI effect," in which juries regard forensic evidence such as bite marks, hair and fiber samples, and other techniques as more scientific than they really are.
DNA is the only forensic tool that came from scientists, Wells points out. "It's not scientists actually doing the work," he says. "It may be a cop with a biology degree, but it's a cop. The co-opting of forensic science has played well in the courtroom."
The TV show CSI has had one positive impact, says Judge Myers, by raising jurors' expectations about the thoroughness of police investigations. In the 13 Dallas DNA exonerations, once the victims identified suspects, little effort was expended to gather more physical evidence.
"As a judge, I've seen in the last five years that police are doing a lot more than what they had done in the past as to collection of physical evidence," Myers says. "Jurors expect it in light of CSI. They are more skeptical."
Prosecutors still query potential jurors: If it comes down to the testimony of one witness, could you convict? Myers says more jurors are saying no.
On the morning of Saturday, April 26, 1981, Carol C. woke to being rolled over and straddled by a man with a knife. She struggled for the knife but after her attacker cut her several times, Carol stopped. He raped her and within five minutes disappeared.
The police arrived at her Oak Lawn apartment within 10 minutes to find Carol covered with blood.
At Parkland hospital, a doctor stitched up Carol's hand and gave her a rape exam. Carol, who was white, described the man to police as black, average build, in his 20s, with a short Afro and regular features. Though the room was dark, she'd seen him with the light from a clock radio.
Her attacker had removed a screen, broken a pane and unlocked a window. He left muddy footprints on the carpet near the window but no fingerprints.
Two days later, an officer came to her apartment with a photo array of six black males. She studied the photographs and after about 10 minutes picked one: Larry Charles Fuller, who lived about a mile from Carol's apartment and had a criminal record for an armed robbery. He'd done his time and had been released in 1978.
Carol then asked if she could see a more recent picture.
A week later, a detective went to the home of Fuller and his girlfriend. He asked Fuller if he could take his picture. The detective didn't explain what the charges were; he simply said the picture could exclude Fuller. Fuller agreed.
The detective showed Carol another photo array. Both arrays included Fuller. She again picked Fuller.
"I was very slow in identifying him," Carol said at an examining trial, "because I didn't want to identify an innocent man."
Carol had told police she didn't remember her rapist having facial hair; Fuller had a beard.
An artist, Fuller, 32, went to trial on August 24, 1981, before Judge Marvin Blackburn.
Fuller's girlfriend, a bank teller, testified they'd gone to bed about 1:30 a.m., then woke and had sex early in the morning. There was no physical evidence against him. Tests of the rapist's semen showed that the rapist could have been Fuller and 20 percent of the black male population.
Fuller took the stand in his own defense and insisted he wasn't guilty. None of that overcame Carol's identification. Fuller was convicted. Prosecutor Jim Jacks asked for a maximum sentence.
"He cannot be rehabilitated, because the first step to being rehabilitated is to admit that you have made a mistake and that you need help," Jacks said. "He has not done that. He will not do that, apparently." Sentence: 50 years.
Fuller maintained his innocence. After years of appeals, his request for a post-conviction DNA test was granted by Judge Lana Myers. Announcing the dismissal of the case against him in 2006, Myers apologized on behalf of the state of Texas to Fuller from the bench.
"I expected bitterness from him," Myers says. "And he didn't have that. He came back with forgiveness. He said God had a plan, and he never lost his faith. It had made him strong, and he held no grudges. I was really having a hard time trying to conduct the hearing."
Crying, Myers got down from the bench and hugged him.
The knock woke 35-year-old Billy Smith from sleep on the couch in his sister's apartment in 1986. At the door, the apartment manager asked to talk to Smith, so he stepped out on the second-floor walkway. The manager asked Smith if he'd heard anything unusual that night. Smith said no and went back to bed, only to be awakened by police pounding on the door and shouting, "Open up!"
They arrested Smith for aggravated sexual assault, taking with them some of Smith's clothes and a kitchen knife.
The manager's common-law wife had been standing below to identify Smith, who had just moved in. She would testify that Smith confronted her in the complex's laundry room, dragged her to a vacant field and raped her.
As a young man, Smith had used drugs, stolen a car and served time for robbery. But he'd started going to Alcoholics Anonymous and church and was getting a job the next day.
Even Smith's parole officer testified on his behalf, saying he didn't find the accuser credible and that the manager's statements didn't match the accuser's. Only the victim's identification linked him to the crime.
Smith says his court-appointed attorney did little for him.
"He never once went to the scene of the crime to get any information," Smith says. "My attorney never talked to my sister or alibi witnesses.
"The day I got my verdict he had some kind of doctor's appointment," Smith says. Nor did the attorney attend court when Smith was sentenced to life in prison.
Smith served "19 years, 11 months and 7 days" in prison. His mother and six other close family members died while he sat in a cell. Even after a DNA test proved Smith had not deposited the semen in the victim, Dallas prosecutors fought his release, saying they needed another sample from the victim to be sure.
Smith now is 55, a muscular man with a close-cropped head and beard showing flecks of gray. A leather eyeglass case in the pocket of his blue shirt is tooled with the name Al-Amin, the name Smith took after converting to Islam in prison in order to survive the anger, the gangs and his own bitterness.
"After the first two years, I contemplated suicide at least once a year," Smith says.
When he was released in July 2006, Smith didn't have bus fare. No one would give him a job; he still has received no monetary compensation. Smith isn't bitter at the loss of 20 years of his life, but he can't get excited about being out of prison.
"Something has been taken from you," Smith says. "I know now how easy it is to be accused of something."
Poor legal representation is a major reason the innocent get convicted, says Blackburn of the Innocence Project of Texas. In many cases the defendants are indigent and can't afford experienced lawyers.
"Every lawyer who practices at the courthouse knows this dirty little secret," Blackburn says. "You don't get appointed [to represent indigent clients] if you aggressively defend clients. You won't be paid enough to fight aggressively. Judges are typically byproducts of the prosecutor's office, and no judge ever got re-elected acquitting people."
Blackburn is on a crusade for Texas to build up a strong public defender system. "These are horrible human stories we are talking about. Being in prison for something you didn't do is hell on earth. All these DNA cases do is show us how wrong the whole system is."
Moments after Sharon G. stopped her minivan at a Garland stoplight on February 23, 1999, a strange man opened the door, pointed a gun and told her to drive. It was about 9:30 p.m., and Sharon G. was on her way to visit a friend.
The man directed her to a vacant lot. He forced her to give him oral sex, then pushed Sharon G. to the ground and raped her.
The stranger then told her to drive back to the area where he'd gotten into the car, climbed out and disappeared on foot.
Sharon G. described her attacker as white, about 6-foot-3 and on the heavy side, 200 pounds at least. He had been wearing a dark T-shirt under a brown tweed-type sport coat, dark baggy jeans and black tennis shoes. He had not been wearing glasses, had a large scar on the right side of his face and smelled bad. He had rough hands and had been wearing a distinctive ring in the shape of Texas.
A Garland police officer heard about the assault as he started his shift that night. He drove around the area and about 2 a.m. slowed down when he saw a man rummaging in a vehicle at an apartment complex. The man looked up "like a deer in the headlights," the officer said, then shut the door and entered one of the apartments.
The next morning, Garland police talked to the man, Andrew Gossett, 39. The apartment belonged to his girlfriend's daughter. Gossett lived with his parents.
After Gossett's parents gave police permission to search their home, they confiscated a dark T-shirt, baggy camouflage pants, a blue plaid flannel shirt, black tennis shoes and a brown winter coat.
A Wal-Mart stocker who had just gotten into the company's management training program, Gossett gave a voluntary statement, saying he'd spent the night with his girlfriend.
No physical evidence linked Gossett to the crime: no fingerprints on the car, no seminal fluid. Police found no tweed coat, Texas-shaped ring or gun. But a detective handling his first sexual assault put together a photo array. Sharon G. picked out Gossett, who had five DWIs and a conviction for methamphetamine distribution.
His defense attorney located a surveillance tape from a nearby convenience store that showed Gossett entering about 10:15 p.m. wearing a white T-shirt, glasses and camouflage pants, not jeans. He stood all of 5-foot-8 and weighed 140 pounds. He was wearing glasses; Sharon G. said her attacker didn't have on spectacles.
But Sharon G. insisted Gossett was her rapist.
On February 10, 2000, Gossett was convicted and sentenced to 50 years in prison.
Over breakfast at a Garland diner, Gossett looks small and pensive.
He says talking to police led to his own destruction. "It hurt me more than it helped me," Gossett says. "They put words in my mouth. I didn't ask for an attorney."
Gossett passed a polygraph and voluntarily gave police a DNA sample, but the test was "inconclusive."
In 2001, Gossett wrote to the Innocence Project in New York. One of their attorneys told Gossett a more sophisticated test was available.
On an icy day in January, Gossett went to the Dallas County courthouse and learned that the test cleared him. New District Attorney Craig Watkins was there to shake his hand and apologize.
Watkins has since apologized to more exonerees. He lobbied the Dallas County Commissioners Court to get funds to hire veteran defense attorney Michael Ware to focus on the 400 people who have petitioned his office for post-conviction DNA tests. Ware is teaming with 30 students from Texas Wesleyan School of Law, under the aegis of the Innocence Project of Texas, to examine each case to see if testing could confirm or deny their guilt.
Gossett has still received no compensation or a pardon.
Though Gossett has reunited with his girlfriend, they have no money and no place to live. He can't get hired because his pardon hasn't come through. Blackburn sent him $1,000, but a doctor's bill took $500.
"Seems like I'm still paying for it," Gossett says.
Greg Wallis spent 18 years in prison as a result of his wrongful conviction for the rape of Marilyn M.. "I missed my boy growing up," he says. "I lost my wife, my first love." They managed to reconcile and are now back together, but like all the exonerees, Wallis carries with him the memory of harrowing experiences in prison.
So does Keith Edward Turner, who went to prison in 1983 at age 22 for rape after the victim swore she would never forget his face.
Ten years after he was paroled, in 1999, Turner was told he'd have to wear a monitor, register as a sex offender and put a sign in his yard.
A sign, a label of "monster," even though he was innocent.
After seeing a story on post-conviction DNA exonerations on Court TV, Turner began writing letters. The Innocence Project said his case was too old. Finally, in 2005, Turner marched into the courtroom of the judge who had sentenced him.
"I told him that they were listing me as a sex offender and a rapist and I wasn't guilty," Turner says. "The judge told me I needed to get an attorney."
Turner said he had four kids and no money to hire a lawyer, so the judge appointed an attorney and an investigator.
After Turner passed a polygraph, which cost him $250, prosecutors agreed to the DNA test. Then the amazing news: "They had kept the evidence in the same spot for 21 years," Turner says. "That was just the Lord. When he got ready to do it, he preserved it for everything to be possible."
The Lord or Henry Wade.
Turner got the news of his exoneration on December 23, 2005. Turner's mother had died six months after he went to the penitentiary. After he got the report that the DNA didn't match, he took it to her grave. "I told her she didn't need to worry about me," Turner says.
Judge Manny Alvarez tried to right the wrongful conviction of a woman for child abuse in a trial that happened in his own court. It cost him his job.
In March 2006, Alvarez had gone to the courthouse and talked to Greg Wallis—the exoneree he had prosecuted—and apologized. Wallis told him he had no hard feelings, he understood Alvarez had a job to do.
Now a defense attorney, Alvarez says lawyers today have more tools to ensure the right suspect is charged, but not every case can be solved with DNA.
When he presided over the 2005 child abuse trial of Maria Hurtado, 26, in a "shaken baby" case, Alvarez says, he kept expecting her attorney John Read to present a defense, to answer obvious questions, to rebut the prosecution's evidence.
"He did no cross-examination," Alvarez says. "There were no witnesses called. There were CPS records that favored her. Read is a good lawyer, but in this trial he wasn't worth a damn."
At the end of the two-day trial, Alvarez had serious doubts about Hurtado's guilt. But the jury convicted her and sentenced her to eight years in prison. So Alvarez began looking into the case himself.
"The evidence showed the baby had acute over-hemorrhaging," Alvarez says, "meaning there was new blood over old blood," indicating long-term problems. The baby had had seizures and convulsions in her first two months. "What was so convincing to me, if she had been shaken, there would have been bruising or broken ribs. There was nothing along those lines."
Alvarez was accused of overstepping his bounds as a judge for investigating and releasing Hurtado on her own recognizance. He lost his race for re-election. But Hurtado got a new trial. "They worked the case and presented it as it should have been, and she was acquitted," Alvarez says. "Do I say something and take the heat? There was no better feeling than when that jury came back with a 'not guilty' verdict."
Maybe more prosecutors should be willing to fade the heat, he says. When the fake drugs were resulting in convictions, someone should have screamed, Wait a minute!
"I was part of the system. Every time I go to a conference, that's the first thing out of their mouths," Alvarez says. "When all this stuff was happening, nobody said, 'Hey, this is bullshit.' As a prosecutor, your job is to seek justice, not convict people. It starts from the top and works its way down."
Show Pages
Write Your Comment hide comments (7)
How did Dallas convict so many innocents? With faulty eyewitnesses, sloppy police work and overzealous prosecutors.By Glenna Whitley Published: August 2, 2007______________________________Glenna Whitley, part of the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth, who verbally bashed the career of a hero in order to get George W. Bush elected.....is now asking the above question.MORE FUN WITH HYPOCRISY....This is rich.
Comment by Jack Jett — August 2, 2007 @ 06:38AM
Excellent story. Glenna, your research is so extensive and time-consuming. You are the best!!!! I am sure the wrongly convicted persons are grateful for this revealing article.
Comment by Gloria Rehrig — August 2, 2007 @ 09:05AM
Glenna You and Jackie Collins are two of my favorite writers. I loved Hollywood Husbands, although I wasn't that crazy about the television movie. I like the way that you write about what you think is right. Like, you are a right writer. Funny huh? I also enjoy the works of your husband, Robert Bobo Burket. I hope someday that the two of you will work on another piece of science fiction together. In my opinion, John Kerry should be in prison for his lack of service in Viet Nam. The other day someone asked my wife, Bridgetta, who we would like to be stranded on a deserted island with and without missing a beat, we said in unison, Glenna, Bobo, George and Laura. One can dream, oh how one can dream. Of course, if John Kerry had become president, he would have outlawed dreaming. So keep up the right writing so we know who is right and who is not right. I've got 16 can of Pork & Beans to open as Bridgetta is preparing her famous Potted Meat and Beans Casserole (with melted Velvetta cheese on top) for our Friday night key party.Bob LevyToot Toot, heyBeep Beep
Comment by Bob Levy — August 3, 2007 @ 12:58PM
Incredible! Absolutely Incredible! No wonder we are headed down a path of destruction. We will soon be a 3rd world country. If that makes you mad; GOOD! Because you might step up and do or say something to make a difference. So freekin incredible! I have learned that I don't "fight" as much as I used to becasue it ain't about being right or wrong it is about winning and I usually pick a "fight" with somebody who holds the upper hand. ie: your boss will always win if he wants to. He don't have to be right. He just wants to win! Oh well, wwweeeee down we go. Enjoy the slide because you are on it. We been on it a long time it just becomes more evident each day that you poke your head out of that hole and look around. God it makes me sad!Cavebilly
Comment by Robbie — August 5, 2007 @ 12:37PM
Just more crap from Miss Swift Boater herself. Thank God for her as she helped to get George Bush elected and look how compassionate he has been. Good thing we didn't get someone in there who had actually been to a war...we wouldn't want that would be Glenna?Someone with experience...not good.....a drunk draft avoiding rich boy...yeah...that's the ticket.Here is another example of the compassionate conservatism that exist in Dallas.ARLINGTON, Texas — A megachurch canceled a memorial service for a Navy veteran 24 hours before it was to start because the deceased was gay.Officials at the nondenominational High Point Church knew that Cecil Howard Sinclair was gay when they offered to host his service, said his sister, Kathleen Wright. But after his obituary listed his life partner as one of his survivors, she said, it was called off."It's a slap in the face. It's like, 'Oh, we're sorry he died, but he's gay so we can't help you,'" she said Friday.Wright said High Point offered to hold the service for Sinclair because their brother is a janitor there. Sinclair, who served in the first Gulf War, died Monday at age 46 from an infection after surgery to prepare him for a heart transplant.The church's pastor, the Rev. Gary Simons, said no one knew Sinclair, who was not a church member, was gay until the day before the Thursday service, when staff members putting together his video tribute saw pictures of men "engaging in clear affection, kissing and embracing."Simons said the church believes homosexuality is a sin, and it would have appeared to endorse that lifestyle if the service had been held there."We did decline to host the service _ not based on hatred, not based on discrimination, but based on principle," Simons told The Associated Press. "Had we known it on the day they first spoke about it _ yes, we would have declined then. It's not that we didn't love the family."Simons said the decision had nothing to do with the obituary. He said the church offered to pay for another site for the service, made the video and provided food for more than 100 relatives and friends."Even though we could not condone that lifestyle, we went above and beyond for the family through many acts of love and kindness," Simons said.Wright called the church's claim about the pictures "a bold-faced lie." She said she provided numerous family pictures of Sinclair, including some with his partner, but said none showed men kissing or hugging.The 5,000-member High Point Church was founded in 2000 by Simons and his wife, April, whose brother is Joel Osteen, well-known pastor of the 38,000-member Lakewood Church in Houston. Now High Point meets in a 432,000-square-foot facility in Arlington, near Dallas.Wright said relatives declined the church's offer to hold the service at a community center because they felt it was an inappropriate venue. It ultimately was held at a funeral home, but the cancellation still lingered in some minds, she said.___On the Net:High Point Church: http://www.churchunusual.com
Comment by Jack Jett — August 11, 2007 @ 12:35AM
I wish they would have the balls to print this in the Dallas Morning News. Out of sight and out of mind.
Comment by Billy — August 29, 2007 @ 03:25AM
has anyone checked to see if anyone of these cops or the police department been involved in any other sloppy police work? Why isn't the State openning up an investigation on this matter? Why no one seems to care?
Comment by a — January 20, 2008 @ 07:40PM

Off the Short Bus - Steve Fleming fought to make his Special Olympians equal, and that got him torched

Mark Graham
"It was amazing seeing how those kids felt in those uniforms and shoes versus what they had," Fleming says. "And I realized something, these kids can do more if you push them."

Off the Short Bus
Steve Fleming fought to make his Special Olympians equal, and that got him torched
By Jesse Hyde Published: September 13, 2007
Mark Graham
Mark Graham
"It was amazing seeing how those kids felt in those uniforms and shoes versus what they had," Fleming says. "And I realized something, these kids can do more if you push them."
Courtesy Flower Mound Mustangs
Steve Fleming turned the Flower Mound Mustangs into a golf powerhouse. At one tournament, they took gold, silver and bronze.
Courtesy Flower Mound Mustangs
Fleming made sure his teams looked good for competitions. "Don't tell me they don't know the difference," he would say.
Courtesy Flower Mound Mustangs
Courtesy Flower Mound Mustangs
Subject(s): Flower Mound, Special Olympics, basketball, Lewisville
On this much, everyone agrees: Steve Fleming was unlike anything the Special Olympics had ever seen.
At 6 foot 3 and 240 pounds, the former Marine had an imposing presence. He was also black, and in the 23-year history of the Lewisville Special Olympics delegation, there had been few, if any, blacks.
What made him unusual, however, was his philosophy. He didn't believe that his kids were special. Sure they were special, as any kid is, and yes, they had special needs, but he wasn't going to treat them differently than he would any other athlete. Instead, he would treat them like they were "normal."
And so he recruited, he drew up plays, he yelled—he even encouraged his players to talk trash. It wasn't rare to see him playing right alongside his players—swatting shots, hitting fadeaways, talking smack the whole way. In his words, he brought the "black funk" to the Special Olympics.
He also brought a new attitude. He taught the players to have pride in themselves. "They're athletes, all right?" he would say. "They may not be able to perform at the level of the varsity basketball player, but they're still athletes, and I want to treat them like they're athletes."
For Fleming it was simple: Give a kid a gray T-shirt and a bologna sandwich, and he'll play like a Special Olympian. Hook him up with new gear, make sure he has Gatorade to drink, and you'll be amazed at his capabilities.
One day in practice, for example, he noticed a player laboring to get up the court. Fleming called her over and asked her what was wrong. "My feet hurt, coach," the girl said. Fleming took a look at the girl's shoes, and there he found the problem. The girl was wearing one shoe from K-Mart and another from Wal-Mart.
So Fleming called up Nike and said, "I'm sure you get people all the time asking for donations. I don't want that. Just give me a deal on some discontinued items." The Nike rep was stunned. Never before, in 20-odd years, had he heard a request like that. So he agreed to give Fleming some shoes. Not just for the girl with the mismatched sneakers, but for the entire team.
Suddenly, the girl who couldn't run was flying up and down the court. The same thing happened when Fleming convinced Nike to outfit his team with silky new uniforms and warm-up suits. A boy who could never hit a shot, now decked out in his new gear, went to the top of the key and drained five jumpers in a row. Fleming couldn't help but smile.
It was hard to argue with his results. In his first year as basketball coach, his team won the state championship. And they didn't just win. At times, Fleming had to play three-on-five to keep it competitive.
Despite his success, not everyone was pleased. To some parents, Fleming's emphasis on winning seemed to fly in the face of everything the Special Olympics stood for. For many kids, the Special Olympics was their only social outlet. If Fleming made it too competitive, they would have nowhere else to go.
Plus, some of the kids on his team, well, they hardly seemed "special." The trash-talking, the swagger—the worldliness, as one parent put it—it all seemed so out of place in the Special Olympics. It was like he had brought the cutthroat world of Texas youth sports into the last arena where kids could still play just for fun.
The Lewisville delegation was divided. Half the parents believed in what Fleming was doing. Thanks to him, their children were performing at levels they never thought possible. The rest wanted him gone. Eventually, the delegation, 120 families strong, would split in two: Half the parents would follow Fleming to form a new group, called the Flower Mound Mustangs, and the other half would stay behind to pick up the pieces.
Today, Fleming is out of Special Olympics altogether. In July the Special Olympics banned him for a year and disbanded his start-up delegation, the first time in recent memory either has happened in Texas.
As a result, some of the athletes that followed Fleming are now in limbo. Their parents say the old delegation won't welcome them back, and without another place to play, they aren't sure where they will go.
But Steve Fleming remains unapologetic. His methods, he is convinced, while controversial and unorthodox, are the most effective way to help kids with mental disabilities. "You aren't doing your kids any favors if you treat them with kid gloves," he says. "At some point, they're going to have to go out in the world, and if they're not ready, they'll get their teeth kicked in. So I try to treat them as much as possible like regular kids."
As strange as it sounds, he may be right.
To understand how Steve Fleming got in this mess in the first place, you have to meet his son, Steven Fleming Jr. On weekdays after school you will find him on the football field with the Hebron Hawks. If he works hard enough, he might play varsity next year.
That is something of a miracle. The boy has the size. At 6 foot 4 and 240 pounds, he is now taller than his father. He can anchor a defensive line, like he did last year. But playing tight end, like the 16-year-old is this year, requires smarts. The boy may be many things, but smart is not one of them. He has an IQ of less than 70.
That he is playing high school football is a tribute to his parents, and especially his father, who has made it a point to pass on every bit of his athletic knowledge to his son.
It's been that way since the boy was in the first grade. At the time, the Flemings were living in Cleveland. One spring afternoon, while most kids were outside playing, Fleming came home to find his son sitting on the couch. Fleming asked his son why he wasn't outside playing. "No other kids will play with me," the boy said. They said he was too dumb.
"Man, that cut me like a knife," Fleming says. "So I made a decision right then and there that from then on, he would have someone to play with, no matter how tired I was."
Fleming had known his son was slow since the boy was 2, but he had been in denial. Part of it, Fleming says, was fear. He had been shot at, been in fights, been unable to pay his bills, but he had never faced a challenge like this one. "What did I know about raising a special needs child?" he asks. "I was terrified."
Once Fleming realized how far behind his son was in school, he and his wife did everything they could to help him, even investing thousands of dollars on teaching aides and tutors.
Fleming also believed in the power of sports to build self-esteem—he had played football in college and came from a family where much of life revolved around sports—and so he began teaching his son how to dribble a basketball, catch a football and swing a golf club.
In Cleveland, the Special Olympics program was small and disorganized. It wasn't until the family moved to Lewisville seven years ago that Fleming and his son became heavily involved in the Special Olympics.
At first, he wasn't impressed with what he saw. It looked like play time. No structure, no guidance; in his words, "just a bunch of kids running up and down the court."
To Fleming, sports were fun, but they were also about discipline. He had spent five years in the Marines, and if the experience had taught him anything, it was that success came only after hard work.
He volunteered to coach the Special Olympics basketball team his son was on, which happened to be one of the lowest-level teams. Immediately, things changed. He ran drills. He made the kids run "suicide" wind sprints. If someone made a mistake in practice, he stopped play to explain what they had done wrong. He also taught discipline and respect for the game. Talking trash was fine in practice but never in a game or to an opposing player. Talking back to refs would not be tolerated.
Despite his athletic background, he found it difficult to get through to the kids. Simple concepts like switching from one diagrammed play to another were hard for them to grasp. His point guard, for example, couldn't figure out what to do when the defense adjusted to a certain play.
One day, while running practice, he had an idea. So he called his point guard over. "David," he said. "Do you watch TV?" The boy nodded. "When you watch something you don't like, what do you do?"
"I change the channel, coach."
"That's right, you change the channel. Here's what I want you to do. When you're out there and you see something you don't like, you change the channel, OK? You've got two channels: play one and play two. When you see that one don't work, just change the channel."
And like that, it clicked. Finally getting through to his players, Fleming felt a joy he had never experienced in coaching.
At the time, Fleming was traveling a lot for work and periodically had to leave his team in another coach's hands. One day after practice, a parent approached him. "Steve," the parent said, "I don't think you realize when you're gone how big a difference it makes to these kids. It's totally different when you're here."
That was the first time Fleming had any indication that what he was doing was working. Complete validation would come that year at the state games in Waco. By this time, Fleming had secured the new uniforms and shoes from Nike.
"We go down there, and we hadn't won a game," Fleming recalls. "It was like watching a third-rate racehorse finally turned loose—we couldn't hold them back. We won every game.
"It was amazing seeing how those kids felt in those uniforms and shoes versus what they had. It was unbelievable how they responded. And I realized something, these kids can do more if you push them."
Not everyone was happy. One day in practice Fleming looked up to see a group of parents in the stands talking to each other. "What's going on?" he asked another coach. "They're trying to start trouble with you," a parent said. "They think you're pushing the kids too hard."
But Fleming wasn't going to stop. His kids were more than catching on; they were really beginning to believe in themselves. After they won the state championship the next year they told Fleming they were ready to take on a team full of "normal kids."
So Fleming called up SMU and asked if he could bring a team to the summer basketball camp. If he slowed the camp down in any way, he would take his team home, he promised.
The opposite happened. His kids were embraced. And when it came time for the tournament that would end the camp, two of Fleming's top players were drafted to the championship team. Fleming himself was coaching one of the teams, matching wits with a Division I college coach on the opposite sideline. As he puts it, he was in "hog heaven." It only got better when one of his players hit the game-winning shot.
When Fleming returned from the camp, there was trouble waiting for him. The board, a group of volunteer parents who oversaw the delegation, wanted to know why he had only taken his team to the camp. Why hadn't he invited the delegation as a whole?
And there were other complaints. One parent said he was bumping white players from his team in favor of black ones. Those who played on his team also got special treatment. On tournaments where traveling was required, for example, he often bought them dessert while other kids in the delegation had none. To Fleming, this was his way of rewarding his players for their hard work. But other parents didn't see it that way. In their minds, he was only interested in helping the most capable of athletes. In the "lower-functioning" kids, he had no interest.
Fleming couldn't believe it. He had raised money for the organization, he had volunteered countless hours, he had even spent money out of his own pocket to take care of his team. And for what? A bunch of ungrateful parents.
If they wanted him out of the organization, he would go.
There is another side to this story. That Fleming was an egomaniac, a man obsessed with winning at all costs, who would push aside anyone who didn't agree with him, whether they were parents who had been coaching for years or players who weren't good enough to make his team. He not only split the delegation in two, a delegation that had existed peacefully for more than 20 years, they say, he drove parents and their children away with his abrasive, and at times abusive, personality. According to several parents, he made physical threats, warning one school administrator that he would "kick his ass" if he ever messed with his son. There are some members of the delegation who say they fear him and will not be a part of Special Olympics if he is involved.
Because Steve Fleming isn't the only person in trouble with the Special Olympics, because the entire Lewisville delegation is on probation, none of the parents involved with the delegation, be they supporters of Fleming's or detractors, would speak on the record for this story for fear that they would be blacklisted by Special Olympics Texas.
"You've got to understand," one parent says. "If we get kicked out, our kids have nowhere else to go. This is the only game in town."
Parents on both sides will agree that the problems started long before Fleming came into the picture. For at least eight years, there were complaints about the delegation's head, an adaptive physical education teacher with the Lewisville Independent School District named Jim Domer.
Domer had helped start the delegation, but, according to several parents, he did little if anything as head of the delegation, even though the Lewisville school district was paying him a stipend on top of his regular salary for his work with Special Olympics. According to these parents, he often forgot to schedule buses to take kids to tournaments, he failed to have gyms open for practices and he sometimes showed up late for events. "I wasn't really sure what he did," says the mother of an autistic child who was part of the delegation for nearly 10 years. "All I knew was he was this guy who was always standing around talking to people, but as far as what his job was, I had no idea."
"Everyone did his job for him," says another mother who had been in the delegation for nearly 15 years. "There was no real responsibility there, even though the school district was paying him."
In the late '90s, a group of parents organized what one would describe as a "coup attempt" to have Domer removed. When that failed, the parents decided that they would have to make the best of a bad situation.
Other parents saw things differently. They saw Domer as a caring man who knew each of their children well. Sure, he made mistakes here and there, but they were minor. For the time he put in, they felt like he went above and beyond the requirements. (Domer would only reply to questions via e-mail and didn't respond to more than half, because, in his words, he saw no point in responding to negative personal attacks.)
When Fleming came along, things began to change. "He brought a fresh attitude. He started to question things. He wondered why our kids weren't treated the same by the school as regular athletes were," says one mother. "It sort of opened our eyes."
As a coach, and later, as an elected member of the board that oversaw the delegation, he recruited new kids into the program, focusing especially on minorities, which, according to Fleming, had been ignored under Domer. He put on the delegation's first ever basketball clinic, scoring sponsors to supply the water and cater lunch as well as a coach from SMU to run the clinics.
Over time, he built a relationship with SMU. Members of his delegation were ball boys at SMU basketball games, and during football season they had tailgating events with SMU athletes and cheerleaders.
"He brought in corporate people, landed sponsorships we didn't have before," says another mother. "He was exposing our kids to more than just the occasional competition and getting a medal. There was much more social interaction, and the kids loved it."
As the program grew in ambition, Domer's responsibilities became more important. On a number of occasions, say Fleming and his supporters, the Lewisville coach dropped the ball. One of the most egregious examples, at least in Fleming's mind, was the basketball camp held in 2005. For weeks, Fleming had worked to set up the clinic.
According to Fleming, he had told Domer well in advance about the camp. As head of the delegation, it was Domer's job to schedule the gym. A few days before the camp, Fleming stopped by the gym to make sure everything was set up. To his shock, the gym hadn't even been scheduled. What was worse, a remodeling project was set to commence that week.
Fleming says he got on the phone, and after a conversation with the school's principal, averted disaster. The camp went off without a hitch. He was furious, but he says when he complained to Domer, he was met with indifference. "What's the big deal?" he says Domer told him. "It all worked out."
Fleming and his supporters had had enough. In November 2005, the president of the volunteer board that oversaw the delegation wrote a letter to the head of the school district's special education department complaining about Domer.
While Domer's supporters would see the letter as an attempt to get him fired, those who wrote it say this was not their intention. Instead, they say they were hoping that the district could help him perform his job better.
When word of the letter spread, parents who had not been consulted about it, and who had been in the delegation for years, were furious. "They didn't speak for me," says one mother. "Could Jim Domer have done things a little better? Absolutely. But you have to remember that he had a full-time job and that's teaching special needs kids every day. He cared about those kids, and his heart was in the right place."
"We're all volunteers, everyone's doing the best they can, and all of a sudden they're treating this thing like it's a Fortune 500 company and Jim's the CEO," says another father. "His job was sort of like being the Scoutmaster for five troops. He was responsible for 100 to 120 people in 10 sports. He needed some help, not people trying to tear him down."
At a meeting several weeks later, tensions that had been bubbling for years between the two groups finally erupted.
"It was like a bad wedding," says one parent who was there. "You had one group sitting on one side and another group on the other."
At one point, according to several parents, Steve Fleming and a female supporter of Domer's got into a shouting match just inches from each other's faces. Others said the yelling between parents spilled into the parking lot after the meeting.
The bickering would continue for months, until finally, Special Olympics Texas and the Lewisville school district decided that the only way to resolve the matter was to split the delegation in two. Domer's supporters would remain in the original Lewisville delegation. Fleming's would become the Flower Mound Mustangs.
For a few months, this arrangement worked, but before long, the two groups were back at it. The Lewisville delegation accused Fleming's new group of recruiting athletes from their delegation. Then they accused them of stealing uniforms and gear. What was worse, Fleming was refusing to share uniforms Nike had given him. The equipment was donated to him, he insisted, not the delegation. Special Olympics Texas put both delegations on probation, meaning their athletes could continue participating in Special Olympics events but that if things didn't change, the delegations would be suspended.
But the problems didn't stop. First, three of the five starters on Fleming's state championship team were arrested on charges of auto theft. The whispers began. If these kids were smart enough to steal cars and take them to a chop shop, should they even be in the Special Olympics? (Fleming says only one of the boys was actually charged and that the boy stole a car so he could buy oxygen for his ailing grandmother. Fleming kicked all three boys off the team.) Then Fleming blew up at the State Games, causing something of a scene when his depleted team was seeded higher than he thought fair. The Special Olympics had seen enough. In May, on what seemed like a trumped-up technicality (inability to fill out paperwork and the creation of an unapproved Web site), they banned him from the organization for a year and suspended his delegation.
The dispute would make the front page of The Dallas Morning News in August. The article, which appeared under the headline, "Parents Fighting Leaves Special Olympics in Limbo," drew several letters to the editor. "I am appalled at these overly competitive parents," one reader wrote. "It seems to me that it is the parents, not the children, who lack sufficient brainpower. Get a grip!"
From the outside looking in, the ugly affair—which climaxed in threats of lawsuits and allegations of racism and theft—does seem one more example of parents pushing their children too far. But local special education experts say it actually represents something else—progress.
"If there's a silver lining in this whole thing, it's that parents are having this argument about kids with disabilities. Going back 20 years ago people really perceived students with disabilities as being largely incapable of athletic activity, among other things," says David Chard, the dean of the education program at Southern Methodist University.
For much of the last century, children with mental disabilities were viewed as a lost cause when it came to education. It wasn't until 1975 that the federal government, under a law called the Intellectual Disabilities Education Act, required states to educate the mentally retarded. Up until that point, some states refused to let special needs children through the school doors.
"Special education really rode the coattails of the Civil Rights Movement," says Tandra Tyler-Wood, an education psychology professor at the University of North Texas. "In fact, a lot of the language they used came directly from civil rights leaders like Dr. King. When you look at some of the things he wrote, you'll see that he wasn't just talking about black children, he was talking about all children."
The Special Olympics, which was founded in 1962 by Eunice Kennedy Shriver, represented a watershed moment for the movement. "With the Kennedys, I think because they were Camelot, they gave us the idea that it's OK to have a child who is mentally handicapped. Because until that point, if you had a child that was mentally retarded it was sort of your fault and you just kept that kid in the back closet."
Since the mid-1990s, the movement has been toward inclusion, or mainstreaming, which means placing children with mental disabilities in regular education classrooms. This can mean rearranging the curriculum or having special aides in the class to accommodate students with learning disabilities or more difficult mental challenges. Several states—and local districts, including Irving and Dallas—have experimented with this idea, to mixed results. Some say inclusion is the best way to prepare for the real world, but skeptics say it doesn't work, that regular-ed teachers aren't equipped to deal with a child who is mentally handicapped. As a result, special needs children in standard classrooms often don't get enough attention, or they get too much, impairing the education of everyone else in the class.
Tyler-Wood says Fleming's philosophy of treating special ed kids as normally as possible would be applauded by proponents of the inclusion movement. His contention that winning and "looking sharp" often matters as much to the mentally retarded as it does to "regular" kids is an opinion Tyler-Wood shares, and one that is backed up by research.
"Years ago I coached a Special Olympics basketball team that won the district tournament, and that meant so much to the kids," she said. "They had their names announced on the intercom, and they were heroes in the school for once in their lives. People were going around slapping their hands and saying, 'Way to go, you actually put our school on the map.'
"They had a school dance—none of them had ever gone to the school dance—and all of a sudden, people were asking them to dance. It was a miraculous breakthrough.
"How do you measure something like that? What makes a person successful in life? Quite honestly the reason people who are mentally retarded don't keep jobs is not because they can't read well or because they can't write well, it's because of their social skills. And really, that's what special education is about. It's about maximum integration into the greater society."
Nancy Meadows, director of the Alice Neeley Special Education Institute at Texas Christian University, has also seen the benefits of expecting more out of children with developmental disabilities. At TCU she helps run an early intervention program called KinderFrog for children with Down syndrome or other developmental disabilities. By the time children leave the program, at the age of 6, they are ready to enter an inclusive setting with typically developing children.
"We fully recognize that they have disabilities, but we have high expectations, the parents have high expectations, and if we didn't, they wouldn't achieve as much," Meadows says.
Meadows can empathize with Fleming and his supporters—parents who choose to enter her program are often second-guessed by other parents with special needs children. "It's the same argument among parents who choose to have their children included with regular education kids and parents who choose to have their kids in a more private, more self-contained setting, in a more protective environment. It's a very personal decision."
The most important thing, Meadows says, is to find an educational environment that works for the child.
But Meadows also stresses that the spirit of Special Olympics is one of participation. If that is lost, and kids aren't having fun, it loses its value. The same could be said of all youth sports, Chard says, whether the participants are disabled or not.
"I think the really exciting aspect of this, again, is that parents are having this argument in the first place," Chard says. "It sounds like an argument any group of parents about any group of children could be having. How much do you want your child to be in a competitive sport and at what age? And it's exciting that today parents with children who have disabilities are asking themselves these questions, because even 20 years ago, that wouldn't have happened."
A month has passed since Steve Fleming was kicked out of the Special Olympics and his Flower Mound delegation was disbanded. Some parents who followed him still don't know what the future holds. They say the original delegation, which is also on probation, has been less than welcoming. In one case in particular, they denied a boy's bid to rejoin the delegation after he'd left for Flower Mound. The reason? His father is a troublemaker.
Members of the Lewisville delegation say they are trying to put the past behind them. They say that things are better now that Fleming and his supporters are gone. The group made mountains out of molehills, they say, specifically when it came to Domer. The last few months, parents say, have been especially hard on Domer, who was one of the delegation's founding members 25 years ago.
If there are any questions about his dedication, they point to the fact that he has given up his district-paid stipend to continue running the delegation.
"Our delegation chooses to focus on continuing to provide sport activities and opportunities for the Special Olympics athletes, which is why we are here. There are a tremendous number of families who devote countless hours to this organization and who also want to move forward and focus on the athletes, consistent with the Special Olympics mission," Domer wrote in an e-mail.
The most important thing, Domer's supporters say, is that their children are having fun again. That, they say, is the true spirit of the Special Olympics.
"We just want our kids to go out there and do their best and have fun and feel good about themselves. You have to remember that for most of these kids, this is the only place where they can go and feel good about themselves. And it's the only outlet for their parents to be around people who understand what it's like to raise a special needs child," says one mother. "We don't care if the kids win or they have the most expensive uniforms on the planet, and honestly, neither do the kids."
But other parents wonder. They say Fleming opened their eyes to new possibilities. One mother says she never believed her son could grasp golf. Fleming convinced her otherwise, and now her son loves the sport.
"He elevated my opinion of what I should expect or not expect of my kid and what is acceptable and not acceptable," says one mother. "Why shouldn't our kids be treated like other athletes—why shouldn't we expect more out of our kids?"
Late last month, Special Olympics Texas approved the formation of a new delegation made up of former members of the Flower Mound Mustangs, meaning those children who were caught between two warring groups of parents will now have a place to play.
Steve Fleming, however, says he will not be joining them. If he has any regrets, it is that he became involved in the organization in the first place.
He knows he offended many people, but he remains unapologetic. His focus, he says, is on his son. Soon, the boy will be old enough to strike out on his own. What will take place if something happens to his father and mother, and he has no one to care for him? The thought terrifies Fleming.
"I'm in a position in my life right now where it's simple, either you're an asset or you're a liability. With my son, there's no question, I want the best for him. And if you're not giving him that and you're not getting out of the way for people that can do that, you and I are going to have problems."
Right now, the boy is in a good place. He's at a high school where his principal and his teachers are responsive to all his needs. Every week, Fleming says, his son's teachers brief him on the boy's progress. Fleming has put the same enthusiasm he directed toward the Special Olympics into helping the school: Not long ago he convinced a local business to donate $17,000 in computer equipment to the special education department.
Sometimes, when he gets off work early, he heads over to Hebron High to watch his son play football. He can't believe how well the boy is progressing. And the best part is that his teammates consider him one of their own.
He insists that he wants nothing more to do with the Special Olympics, but sometimes when the anger over his suspension subsides, when he remembers how things were in the beginning, you have to wonder.
"I remember the first team I ever coached and that girl came up to me and never had a decent pair of shoes and she cried because I got her a pair. I been with a girl last year, I'll never forget this. She never got a hit. All the games, all the practices, she never got a hit. We go to state games, two people on base, two outs, she got a double, and I went crazy.
"All that work you do, you don't think they can do it, and every time they step up."
The old Marine, the man known for yelling and trash talk, pauses to compose himself. "I get worked up just thinking about it," he says. "For these kids, it was the first time they had ever been treated like real athletes. And the saddest part is, because of a lot of bureaucracy and red tape and parents who didn't get what we were trying to do, they're never going to get to feel that again. We could've created something beautiful."
Show Pages
Write Your Comment hide comments (7)
Who writes this crap? I'm sure this is an amazing story and all, but it sounds like you're making it up as you go. In one sentence you write about a girl with mismatched shoes, then in the next paragraph you write about the boy with mismatched shoes. Don't y'all read this stuff before it goes to print?Kathy Leary
Comment by Kathy Leary — September 14, 2007 @ 06:07PM
This is in response to your article dated 9/13/07, "OFF THE SHORT BUS" Dallas Observer By Jesse Hyde. I am hopefully that from this article, some eyes will be opened in order to see what is happening to all the contributions that are donated to the Special Olympics and how much actually go to these children. It sure is not getting to the children. Occasionally, they go to a camp (3 or 4 to a room), facilities to practice (tax money,) Travel expenses back and forth to a camp. Anything else? And as far as Steve pulling in more Blacks than Whites - there are more Whites than Blacks in this program. Steve is for all children. Some accountability needs to be investigated as to where all this donated money is going. Information that is more positive should have been given to Steve rather than all the negative information. It was mentioned that 3 of his player got in trouble - but it was not mentioned that he had gotten jobs for a lot of the children, took some of them home, fed them, picked some of them up to go to these practices and games. Put on activities to raise money (So that the children could have the bread and not the crumbs.Working hard to get contributions to help his Delegation - no money from the Special Olympics. And so much more work that he did helping the children. It was not mentioned that Steve had received “Volunteer of the Year” for the year 2006. In addition, I cannot believe you printed his son’s IQ and that, “he may be many things, but smart is not one of them.” What a statement! - What is up with that? We are not all smart in everything. I just cannot believe this statement was printed. It is interesting that Mr. Domer has now given up his “district-paid stipend to continue running the delegation.” Why now? I am sure, when Eunice Kennedy Shriver founded this program in 1962; it was for the children and children only. How did this program get so far out of control? I just wonder who is watching whom. God help us all!
Comment by E.Chavis — September 15, 2007 @ 06:54PM
This is in response to your article dated 9/13/07, "OFF THE SHORT BUS" Dallas Observer By Jesse Hyde. I am hopefully that from this article, some eyes will be opened in order to see what is happening to all the contributions that are donated to the Special Olympics and how much actually go to these children. It sure is not getting to the children. Occasionally, they go to a camp (3 or 4 to a room), facilities to practice (tax money,) Travel expenses back and forth to a camp. Anything else? And as far as Steve pulling in more Blacks than Whites - there are more Whites than Blacks in this program. Steve is for all children. Some accountability need to be investigated as to where all this donated money is going. Information that is more positive should have been given to Steve rather than all the negative information. It was mentioned that 3 of his player got in trouble - but it was not mentioned that he had gotten jobs for a lot of the children, took some of them home, fed them, picked some of them up to go to these practices and games. Put on activities to raise money (So that the children could have the bread and not the crumbs.)Working hard to get contributions to help his Delegation - no money from the Special Olympics. And so much more work that he did helping the children. It was not mentioned that Steve had received “Volunteer of the Year” for the year 2006. In addition, I cannot believe you printed his son’s IQ and that, “he may be many things, but smart is not one of them.” What a statement! - What is up with that? We are not all smart in everything. I just cannot believe this statement was printed. It is interesting that Mr. Domer has given up his “district-paid stipend to continue running the delegation.” Why now? I am sure, when Eunice Kennedy Shriver founded this program in 1962; it was for the children and children only. How did this program get so far out of control? I just wonder who is watching whom. God help us all!
Comment by E.Chavis — September 15, 2007 @ 07:10PM
Do you authenticate the people writing comments - because the two (same) letters By E. Chavis comments - Off the Short Bus sounded like that person was intimately involved with Mr. Flemings' life to have so much personal information, yet they knew nothing about Special Olympics.Special Olympics is an extremely worthwhile charity and after being involved for the past 14 years, I encourage everyone to donate both their time and money to this worthwhile charity! Now to highlight a few (too many to touch all) false statements in this article - Athletes never go to camp - the writer must be confusing Special Olympics with a church function or Scouts, but there is no Special Olympics' camp! Also, E. Chavis, spoke of a stipend paid for being Head of Delegation - NOT TRUE - that was paid a School District position and Mr. Domer is a TEACHER in that School District! He has forfeited that position when the job requirements changed. As for the comment on raising funds portion so the kids could have bread and not crumbs. Our athletes are fed in very clean, wonderful restaurants when we go to State Games - in fact, before Mr. Fleming was removed from his Head of Delegation duties in Special Olympics, he took some teams to State Games, and we happened to eat at the same restaurant! Mr. Domer along with some other members of L.I.S.D. founded the Special Olympics program 24 years ago. Why not write a feature article on how the lives of Athletes participating in Lewisville I.S.D. Special Olympics have benefited by the opportunity to participate in this wonderful program! Sincerely, Vicki Griffin, O.C.D.S.
Comment by Vicki Griffin — September 19, 2007 @ 01:24PM
Great article! I think Steve should be commended for his hard work and dedication. I don't know the man personally, but what he did for those kids...JOB WELL DONE!
Comment by Lynette Givens — September 19, 2007 @ 01:25PM
This writer should have researched deeper and would have found out more!
Comment by Bubba — October 22, 2007 @ 11:12AM
While I don't disagree with what Steve was trying to do, I do disagree that the program suffered greatly without him. There are absolutely a wonderous amount of people in Lewisville who care. My daughter grew up in that program. I also take offense that most athletes are ill dressed and not cared for. While alot of us don't habe the money Steve has, we have the heart and have been coaches and volunteers for alot longer than him. all of the athletes I knew were almost always taken care of and NEVER misdressed unless you consider if it isn't NIKE is just ins't.As for bottle bottom glasses, i personally cannot afford $3-400 a pair but it doesn't mean I don't care and love my child, nor do I ever judge athletes by the way they dress. Maybe we just weren't good enough or affluent enough.I stand with Special Olympics decision knowing all of the facts. The goal is to make it all about the athletes. regardless of how they dress EVERY COACH I know never treated them as DISABLED. we all expected the best they could do. AND there are SEVERAL teams that won those same state games at the same time.Further more, Special Olympics ecourages good sportsmanship at ALL times. I would have an athlete sit down if he talked trash. To me that is making fun of others who possibly can't jump as high because they JUST can't, not for lack of trying or being encouraged!.There was never any regulations against any person or race participating, everyone was welcome opened arms. I am not disagreeing there were personal issue between some of the people, but that was it, THEY WERE PERSONAL. IF WE BRING THE NORMAL WORLD OF SPORTS INTO OUR PROGRAM WE TEACH NOTHING BUT BITTERNESS AND SORE LOOSING.NO THANKS!
Comment by sharon — February 8, 2008 @ 03:32PM
toggleReaderComments(true, 7);

Train Wreck - DART Needs to Build a Subway Downtown

DART Needs to Build a Subway Downtown
If DART backtracks on its subway promise, downtown traffic will be even more congested
By Jim Schutze Published: April 24, 2008
MORREY TAYLOR
Being on a train, reading a book—good. Being stuck in your car, waiting hours to cross a train track—very, very bad.
Subject(s): subway, commuter trains, downtown traffic, DART
Look, if you're like me you don't wake up in the morning thinking, "I can't wait to find out what happened overnight in regional rail policy."
I could wait a lifetime. But I also don't want to wake up two years from now in a nightmare where downtown Dallas is a ghost town switching yard for suburban commuter trains.
That would be bad. And that could happen. Then I will be sorry I stayed in bed.
For the last five months the stories about DART, our regional transit agency, have been enough to make me want to bury my head beneath the pillow. Awful. Billion-dollar budget goof. Chairwoman tossed out in stink. Chairwoman .
But as terrible and incomprehensible as all of that may be, none of it is the real story. The real story is that DART could be on the verge of severely shafting downtown Dallas for the next decade. I mean the big shaft. The do-or-die shaft for downtown.
DART must build a second rail line through downtown, some of it in a subway, or downtown is screwed. Unpleasantly, aberrantly so.
Four extensions of DART's light rail service are in play here. Two will go out to new stations in the suburbs; the Green Line, from Pleasant Grove to Carrollton by 2010, the Orange Line from the Love Field area to Rowlett by 2012. Two will go in Dallas, one from downtown to South Oak Cliff, the other, a second rail route through downtown, which is the problem.
Unless DART moves quickly to build the second downtown line, the existing downtown line is going to become a solid wall of trains down Pacific Avenue from the east end of downtown to the west end, with car and bus traffic stacked up at the crossings like cordwood.
That second line downtown is the big story. It has been for nearly 20 years. In 1990 after years of debate, the Dallas City Council forced DART to sign a contract promising to build a second line downtown with a subway when train traffic on Pacific Avenue reaches a certain point.
A bit of history: The proper way to bring a train through downtown is underground. A subway is the only way downtown rail can reduce traffic congestion instead of making it worse. But in the late 1980s, the suburban cities that belong to DART rebelled against a subway for downtown.
It was always about money. The suburbs thought a subway downtown would cost so much that DART would never have enough cash left to build rail lines out to them in the boonies. They threatened to pull out of DART.
DART's supporters were able to fend off the desperate-housewife secessionists by striking deals with them. For one thing, DART gave the suburbs nearly $200 million for street improvements just to shut them up.
Then DART also agreed not to build a subway until absolutely necessary. In the meantime we got what we have now—a design by which all DART train routes must pass in and out of downtown on Pacific Avenue, like sand sifting through an hourglass.
Cars wait for trains. Trains wait for cars. And we have agreed to do it this way until the train traffic gets so busy that it is in danger of shutting down all of the north-south rubber-tire traffic in downtown.
Downtown is already a maze. Nothing goes exactly north-south or east-west. Sometimes the streets downtown run sort of northeast-southwest, but then you drive two blocks and the directions shift again. It's enough to melt your compass, even without trains cutting across the streets.
Now imagine putting a solid wall of trains down Pacific and Bryan streets. Then the only way you can drive from City Hall to McKinney Avenue is by going all the way out of downtown, either west to Industrial Boulevard or east somewhere in deepest East Dallas, because the stupid trains have got you totally blocked off.
What do you do? I know what I'd do. I'd say screw downtown. I've got enough aggravation. If I am a major employer, I don't think I'm going to rent three floors of a high-rise if it's going to take me and my employees an hour to get out of downtown. That's time a major employer could be playing golf, studying Greek love poetry, reading to orphans and planning for world peace.
Why is DART train traffic about to increase so dramatically downtown? Because DART is on the verge of completing and opening the Green Line, bringing new train traffic that must sift up and down Pacific Avenue with the existing lines. In 2010 when that happens, the traffic on Pacific will exceed peak capacity.
According to DART's own published traffic projections, peak capacity for the Pacific Avenue "transit mall" is 24 train trips per hour. DART figures that if 24 trains an hour pass up and down Pacific, that will leave two and a half minutes between them, which should be enough for the cars and buses to barely squeeze through.
Any more trains than that, and the cars and buses are dead in the water. All day long, crossing Pacific will be like trying to cross an eight-lane boulevard at rush hour without a light.
The solution? Don't put all those new trains to the suburbs down Pacific. Build a "second alignment" through downtown with a subway. Why a subway? Well, otherwise the second alignment will still have a tendency to screw up traffic, even if you put it 10 blocks from the first one. It's like two long lines of hurdles 10 blocks apart.
In fact, it could be even worse. You could get caught between the two, so you wouldn't even have the option of turning round and giving up. Then your only option would be to climb up on the roof of your car and hurl imprecations at the Fates. That would be a memorable way to spend your last visit to downtown Dallas. Ever.
That's why the Dallas City Council 18 years ago made DART sign on the dotted line: According to DART's "Interlocal Agreement" with the city, a copy of which I have in my desk, "DART will commit to construction of a subway downtown" as soon as the train trips on Pacific reach 24 per hour.
I mention that I have the agreement in my desk, because, incredibly enough, some members of the current DART board and the current city council have professed surprise in public meetings when informed that such an agreement exists.
It's not just a handshake agreement. It's a fully executed, written contract.
I also have in my desk a DART study called "Corridor Capacity" showing that the "trigger" level of 24 trips per hour will be blown through the roof in 2010 as soon as the Green Line becomes operational.
So the subway will happen, right? It's in the contract. Right? If it doesn't happen, downtown Dallas is screwed. DART wouldn't do that. The city council wouldn't allow that to happen. Right?
Umm. Think back with me. On November 22, DART CEO Gary Thomas reveals to the DART board that DART has under-estimated its capital construction costs by, uh, let's see...100 percent. Instead of costing $1 billion, DART's current expansion plans will cost $2 billion, Thomas says.
Thomas explains he has kept the shortfall a secret from his board for a year, because he was hoping it would go away. I submit this is like a guy with a large tusk growing from his forehead. You say, "Gary, pardon me, but you have a tusk on your head." He puts his fingers to his lips and says, "Shhh."
On January 30, DART board chair Lynn Flint Shaw resigns under a cloud involving personal finances, criminal charges, a secret personal contract with Deloitte Touche (DART's external auditor) and allegations of irregularities with political contributions. On March 10 she and her husband are found shot dead in their home.
Stick with me through another wrinkle here. Shaw was treasurer of a political fund-raising committee for Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert. Even though Leppert has denied it publicly, it is well-known and was widely reported at the time that in August 2007, two months after he took office, Leppert personally engineered Shaw's ascent to the chair of the DART board.
Leppert and the city council now are in gridlock over an appointment to replace the late Ms. Shaw on the DART board. Half the city council wants to replace her with Joyce Foreman, the person Leppert helped remove from the board in order to pave Shaw's way to the chair. The other half is listening to Leppert's personal pleas not to reappoint Foreman.
Leppert and the city council have been stuck on the dime ever since the Shaw situation began to unravel six months ago. The effect has been to leave the Dallas DART board members in disarray and without leadership, to say nothing of being generally humiliated.
The suburban members, meanwhile, leapt into action immediately when the budget shortfall was revealed.
A clever, coordinated campaign enabled them to get the Irving-Rowlett Orange Line on the books—committed, ready for contracting, practically under way—while Leppert and the Dallas City Council were still flubbering around about the Shaw situation.
You can't blame the 'burbs. They want their new lines built. We want new lines built. New rail lines cost about $80 million a mile. For a good five months, it looked as if there was only going to be enough money for one side to win.
The 'burbs will never admit this, but I have been talking to DART board members on both sides, off the record, for months: The truth is the 'burbs don't care if downtown traffic gets backed up. They want their lines. No matter what. If traffic downtown gets messy, too bad. Downtown Dallas is for the City of Dallas to figure out. The 'burbanites are just passin' through anyway.
DART now claims it has enough money budgeted to pay for the second alignment and subway downtown, at a cost of $464 million. But a close look at DART's 2008 proposed capital budget shows that almost 40 percent of that money isn't really in the budget before the year 2018.
2018? By then they will have changed the name of the city to Lower Frisco.
How about year 2010, when DART's own corridor study shows creeping gridlock downtown without a second alignment and subway? By then, DART only has around 8 percent of the requisite funds in the budget.
And what about that budget? It assumes more than 5 percent growth in sales tax revenues for each of the next 20 years, even though Texas cities are already beginning to report serious budget shortfalls due to declining sales tax collections in a recessionary economy.
I won't dredge too deeply through the rest of the DART budget, but it also assumes major new borrowing levels based on two types of costly loans the agency has never taken out before. And it assumes the Texas Legislature will change the law to let DART borrow money without voter approval.
Listen. If I had to bet right this minute whether they will come up with the money for the second downtown alignment, or they won't—I would put my chips on won't. And they'll tell us they are very, very sorry about it.
Of the six Dallas representatives on the DART board right now, there probably is only one who understands the gravity of the situation. Dallas member William Velasco told me last week, "We have secured the money to do the Orange Line, but everything else is at risk."
"Everything else" means the subway and the South Oak Cliff line. To get those done, Velasco said, he thinks Dallas must get its act together, appoint the right people to the DART board and press its case aggressively.
But do the rest of the Dallas DART board members get it? Not so much. Generally speaking, Dallas' DART board members have been a timid lot.
Dallas member William Tsao said, "I anticipate that there will be some shortfall in the Central Business District," but he said the problem of construction costs is universal and not DART's fault.
Dallas member Scott Carlson said there are uncertainties, but he's sure DART will resolve them. "Yeah," he said, "I think I'm comfortable."
Joyce Foreman apparently wasn't timid enough. Leppert's main ally on DART matters, city council member Dwaine Caraway, has repeatedly explained the putsch to throw Foreman off the DART board last year by saying she was "too confrontational."
Caraway verbally attacked Foreman when she appeared before the council April 14 to be interviewed for reappointment to the DART board. Foreman kept her cool, but Caraway became angry and ultimately left the room before the interview was over.
The DART bureaucracy and the suburban members, meanwhile, have come to a peace agreement on Thomas' billion-dollar boo-boo. There will be no formal external audit of DART. A few underlings have been fired. Thomas will keep his job. It's all forgiven and forgotten.
This may all sound complicated. It's not. Think of it this way: The suburbs have got their act together and are about to get what they want from DART. Dallas is mucking around about side deals, contracts and influence-peddling and is about to get screwed.
What else is new?


Just to set the record straight, the Rowlett line is an extension of the existing Blue line going northeast of Garland, the Orange line will connect downtown with DFW airport and the UNT line will extend the Blue line in the south.
Comment by Nathan — April 23, 2008 @ 06:18PM
Jim, I find myself sharing your viewpoints quite often, so this is a rare miss. I do agree with the second half of the article. Dallas is too often a pushover in the region, seeming as if it is afraid to hurt the feelings of the suburbs. If Dallas were as take charge as say Addison or Irving on everything, it would be in a lot better shape. Dallas needs a no BS-style attitude that Joyce has.That said, the doomsday scenario you painted about a solid wall of trains blocking north and south downtown is just pure hogwash. Part of the reason is based on the presumption that trains every 2.5 minutes is the tipping point between traffic congestion and free-sailing roads. Part of this, I think, is Dallas' unfamiliarity with railed transit. The City forced DART into that agreement, but it is faulty.Here is some math for you. With light rail transit (LRT) trains run every ten minutes during rush hour. Currently, with two lines, that means a train will run every 5 minutes in one direction. With the introduction of the Green Line, that will mean trains every 3.3 minutes, and will be reduced to 2.5 with the Orange Line.At this point, I am sure that I am not introducing you to something you aren't used to. Now, compare that to a standard traffic light. I'll use the one adjacent to my home, the intersection of Saint Paul and Elm. It takes one minute, twenty seconds for the light to cycle through. Elm, the major street goes from green to red in only 32 seconds. So Elm, with its major traffic, sits at a red light for close to a minute.Now compare that to a train intersection. It takes a train, depending on the length and proximity to a station, between 15-30 seconds to clear an intersection. So, if every intersection was timed to allow a train to pass, then be clear for auto traffic, the street would be clear for 2 to 2.25 minutes. Now add both directions and assume one enters the intersection just as the other is about to leave, the intersection is occupied for one minute and unoccupied for a minute and a half. In other words, auto traffic is more free-flowing at this type of train intersection than it is on Elm Street at the St. Paul intersection.Now, onto your statement about the second line causing a black hole for congestion in the core, if the second line were built and the Green and Orange Line were operating, both would be operating on the new line downtown and both downtown lines would be operating at a capacity similar to today's Red/Blue combo. The answer isn't an expensive subway, although there are places were it would be more suitable for reasons other than congestion. The answer is simply timing of the train lights to stop traffic when a train is passing through, and allow auto traffic to pass through the rest of the time.That said, anything interesting happening lately with the Trinity River Project?
Comment by Branden Helms — April 23, 2008 @ 08:46PM
Is it also true that the trains cannot be longer than 4 cars going thru downtown Dallas so that their span does not exceed a city block? - in which case they would block traffic when they stop.
Comment by RRB — April 24, 2008 @ 02:13PM
The three cars trains DART sometimes uses now already block some intersections downtown
Comment by Alfredo — April 24, 2008 @ 03:01PM
I've been following this issue in the Observer since long before DART even made its original rail proposal, so I'm well aware of the issues with downtown trains and traffic. But just a quick question: Why all the emphasis on a subway? What's wrong with elevated rail? Wouldn't that be considerably less expensive than a subway?
Comment by Tom — April 25, 2008 @ 03:23PM
how about a monorail - probably much cheaper and faster to construct?
Comment by jonat — April 25, 2008 @ 04:44PM