{"id":416,"date":"2004-04-10T19:33:51","date_gmt":"2004-04-10T19:33:51","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:08:34","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:08:34","slug":"some_good_news_from_texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=416","title":{"rendered":"Some Good News From Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"

A bad cop, with the likely connivance of a bad D.A. arrested 45 poor black defendants on trumped-up drug charges in Tulia, TX. They sued and ultimately got justice<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now, the wheel turns<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The district attorney who prosecuted a succession of defendants arrested in a since-discredited drug bust in the west Texas town of Tulia now faces possible disbarment for his conduct during the trials. <\/p>\n

In a disciplinary petition filed by the State Bar of Texas on Wednesday, Swisher County Dist. Atty. Terry D. McEachern is accused of failing to tell defense lawyers about the criminal history of his star witness, undercover agent Tom Coleman.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Note that they’re not talking about firing him from his post as D.A.; they’re taking about disbarring<\/b> him, which would (rightly, it appears) end his career as an officer of the court.<\/p>\n

I’ve commented in the past<\/a> that righting these wrongs – that we live in a society where these wrongs can get righted – makes me happy.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m interested in why it is, when we correct the injustices of the past, and devise tools to ensure that it will be difficult to make the same mistakes again, we are dwelling on the “Oh, no, we were so bad”<\/i> rather than the “we’re getting better”<\/i>. See, I think that real liberalism…the kind that builds schools and water systems and improves people’s lives…comes from a belief in progress.<\/p>\n

We aren’t perfect. No one is or ever will be…to quote William Goldman, “Life is pain, Highness! Anyone who says differently is selling something.”<\/i> But we can either keep trying to get there or sit on the floor dwelling on our shortcomings. Which one would you rather do, and why?<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A bad cop, with the likely connivance of a bad D.A. arrested 45 poor black defendants on trumped-up drug charges in Tulia, TX. They sued and ultimately got justice. Now, the wheel turns. The district attorney who prosecuted a succession of defendants arrested in a since-discredited drug bust in the west Texas town of Tulia […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}