By KERA News & Wire Services
Dallas, TX –
An attorney for Southern Methodist University says SMU has settled with a former condominium owner in a land dispute over the site of George W. Bush's presidential library.
SMU attorney Mark Lanier said a deal was finalized Friday with Robert Tafel. He had sued SMU in 2005, accusing the school of illegally taking control of a condo complex near the University Park campus and forcing out the residents.
Lanier wouldn't disclose terms of the deal. He says the agreement will be entered into the court's official record next week.
In their lawsuit, Tafel and former condo owner Gary Vodicka alleged SMU lied about its intention to use the condominium property for the Bush library. SMU has said the process of acquiring the complex was lawful.
Vodicka's suit against the university continues.
Leader of Texas science panel is conservative DA
Critics are wondering whether the conservative new leader of a forensics panel will let politics trump science in its probe of whether Texas executed an innocent man.
Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley has vowed to let the facts "lead us wherever they do." His first move as the ranking member of the Texas Forensic Science Commission was to cancel its Friday meeting, citing a need to study the issues.
The board was about to consider a report critical of the arson finding leading to Cameron Todd Willingham's execution for the deaths of his three daughters in a 1991 fire.
Bradley is the first elected official on the panel since its inception in 2005. Critics say the commission is now tainted by ideology and politics, when it should be focused on science.
Soldier gets 3-year prison term for kidnap hoax
A Fort Hood soldier has been sentenced to three years in prison and dishonorably discharged for spinning a kidnapping hoax to cover his absence without leave.
The sentencing of Pfc. James Andrew Gonzalez came Friday after he pleaded guilty at a Fort Hood court-martial to charges that included desertion, making false official statements and obstruction of justice. Gonzalez had faced a maximum of more than 22 years' confinement and a dishonorable discharge.
His brother, J.C. Gonzalez, had said the FBI had told the family the Army received a July 13 ransom call. The caller said the soldier had been abducted and demanded $100,000 and withdrawal of U.S. troops from the border. The soldier was arrested unharmed July 22 in a Laredo traffic stop.
Texas begins $3 billion quest to cure cancer
Texas sent man to the moon, but can the Lone Star State cure cancer?
A new state agency in Texas is ready to spend upward of $3 billion over the next decade trying. That would make the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas the nation's second-largest source of cancer research funding, behind only the National Cancer Institute.
Lance Armstrong, the cycling champion and cancer survivor, helped sell the plan to Texas voters in 2007 through a bond measure. The first wave of funding is expected to be handed out by spring.
Institute leaders say the money will gamble on high-risk research and attract big-name scientists to Texas.
But a sagging economy has some skittish about future funding. State lawmakers already did not fully fund the institute over the first two years, leaving $150 million on the table.
Texas tax preparer sentenced, owes IRS $28 million dollars
A North Texas woman who pleaded guilty to preparing and presenting false federal tax returns has been sentenced to 18 years in federal prison.
U.S. District John McBryde of Fort Worth also ordered Joyce M. Simmons on Friday to pay more than $28 million in restitution for defrauding the government.
A statement from the U.S. attorney's office says Simmons did business as Diamond Notary and Tax Service in Fort Worth. She admitted that six of the tax returns she submitted claimed deductions she knew the taxpayers weren't entitled to.
The judge also concluded that she obstructed justice by lying under oath, as well as shifting more than $1 million worth of property after learning the Internal Revenue Service was investigating her.