By KERA News & Wire Services
Dallas, TX –
A DNA exoneree unhappy with a $1 million attorney's fee is accusing his ex-lawyer of participating in an illegal kickback scheme with an Innocence Project of Texas official.
Steven Phillips, who spent nearly 25 years in prison for a sexual assault and burglary he did not commit, amended a lawsuit filed in September to add Jeff Blackburn as a defendant. Phillips alleges that Blackburn, chief counsel of the Texas innocence group, steered cases to a Lubbock attorney who successfully lobbied the Texas Legislature to increase compensation to the wrongly convicted.
That attorney is Kevin Glasheen, who represents 13 wrongly convicted Texans receiving millions of dollars in state compensation. Glasheen said Wednesday he is not paying Blackburn any money in Phillips' case.
HS baseball player dies after tryout in Fort Worth
Relatives say an 18-year-old Fort Worth student complained of breathing problems before he died after baseball practice. The Tarrant County medical examiner's office confirms Ryan Powell died Tuesday night at a hospital. A cause of death was not listed on the office's Web site.
A spokesman for the office did not immediately return messages Wednesday from The Associated Press.
Rose Powell told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that her son never had any evidence of heart trouble, but that the case is considered a sudden cardiac death. The teen had practiced Tuesday, trying out for the Southwest High School varsity, then experienced discomfort about an hour after arriving home. His parents called for an ambulance.
Woman on Texas death row loses appeal
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has upheld the conviction of an Arlington woman sent to death row for the starvation death of a 9-year-old boy who weighed 35 pounds. Jurors at Lisa Ann Coleman's 2006 trial in Tarrant County heard testimony that Coleman beat, bound, neglected and starved Davontae Williams.
Coleman shared an apartment with the boy's mother, Marcella Williams. Williams subsequently pleaded guilty to avoid a death sentence and is serving a life prison term.
An autopsy determined the child had more than 250 scars on his body when emergency medical crews in July 2004 responded to a 911 call about a child having breathing difficulties. The 34-year-old Coleman, one of 10 women on Texas death row, raised 21 claims of error from her trial. The court Wednesday rejected all of them.
WWII veteran had Hitler's book sitting on shelf
John Pistone was among the U.S. soldiers who entered Adolf Hitler's home in the Bavarian Alps as World War II came to a close. He took an album with photos of paintings.
The 87-year-old veteran recently learned that the album on a bookshelf in his Beachwood, Ohio, home for decades is part of a series compiled for Hitler. The albums feature art Hitler wanted his planned museum in Linz, Austria. Pistone's album is expected to be formally returned to Germany in a January ceremony at the U.S. State Department.
Pistone's literary journey began this fall when a friend became curious about the book. The friend discovered, via the Internet, that the Dallas-based Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art was involved in 2007 in the restitution of two other albums.
Those albums were part of a series documenting art stolen by the Nazis from Jewish families.
Pope names new bishop for Brownsville
The Vatican says Pope Benedict XVI has chosen a Texas native to serve as the next bishop of Brownsville. The announcement Wednesday says Benedict tapped 48-year-old Monsignor Daniel E. Flores, who has been serving as an auxiliary bishop in Detroit since 2006.
Flores was born in Palacios and had his first assignments as a parish priest in Texas. He moved to Rome for pontifical university studies, and has a doctorate in theology. Flores speaks Italian, as well as English and Spanish. He replaces retiring Brownsville Bishop Raymundo Joseph Pena.