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Every time I think that I can’t be shocked any further by the high-handed disregard for justice displayed by Judge Barbara Walther, I find another example of her appalling behavior. 

 

During the last few days I have been studying the transcript of the Suppression Hearing held in May 2009, challenging the legality of the raid on the YFZ Ranch.  The upcoming hearing in Judge Steven Conn’s court in Kingman, Arizona, as well as the anticipated review of Judge Walther’s decision when appeals are filed in Texas, makes the testimony and proceedings at this earlier hearing very relevant to current events.

 

In the Suppression Hearing considerable testimony was introduced to show that both Ranger Long and Sheriff Doran failed to apply even minimum standards of investigation to establish the veracity of the “Sarah” calls before Ranger Long sought a search warrant to enter the Ranch. Near the end of the hearing, defense attorneys had intended to solidify this position by using the expert testimony of Professor Gerald S. Reamey to address the question of “whether a reasonably well trained officer would have known that the search was illegal.”[1] Such testimony was the last thing desired either by Judge Walther or by Deputy Attorney General Eric Nichols.

 

It would be difficult to find a person in Texas better qualified to testify on this issue than Gerald Reamey, who has been intimately involved in the training of law-enforcement officers for almost thirty years. After graduating cum laude from Southern Methodist University in 1977, Mr. Reamey received basic peace officer certification from the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officers Standards and Education (T-CLEOSE) and worked for three years for the City of Irving, Texas, as legal advisor for the Police Department and simultaneously as adjunct professor at the University of Dallas Graduate School of Management until 1982, when he took his current position as Professor-of-Law at St. Mary’s University School of Law. He is the only living honorary life member of the Texas Police Association and is also a member of the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the Texas Association of Police Attorneys, having served as chair of the latter organization. He has been the director, co-director, and associate director of the Institute of World Legal Problems at the University of Insbrook, Austria. For almost twenty-six years, he has prepared for the Texas Police Journal a monthly police legal digest known as the blue pages, which is considered the Bible for peace officers regarding the current state of the law. He has also prepared the semi-annual peace officer’s guide to Texas law, published by the Texas Police Association, and has published numerous articles regarding police work in law-enforcement magazines. He is the author of Criminal Offenses and Defenses in Texas and the co-author of Texas Criminal Procedure, a casebook used in law schools throughout Texas.[2]

 

Mr. Nichols attempted to disparage the Professor’s credentials by getting him to admit that he had not previously testified in a like hearing and expressing astonishment at his answer:

 

 

Judge Walther reacted to the proffered testimony of this well-qualified legal expert as a personal affront, as though he would be treading on her own sacred territory rather than giving information that would assist her in rendering her decision. This was apparent in several interchanges with defense attorney Gerald Goldstein:

 

 

 

 

In his first objection to allowing Professor Reamey to testify, Mr.  Nichols appealed to Judge Walther’s pride and also found fault with the fact that although the Professor had been involved for years in training officers he had not served as a patrol officer himself:

 

 

Mr. Goldstein cited as a precedent a case where a court’s refusal to suppress was reversed on appeal because statements in an affidavit based on an anonymous informant had not been corroborated. Judge Walther questioned the relevance of this case because the caller in the YFZ case had given a name:

 

 

Immediately following this discussion, Judge Walther made her most outrageous argument when she implied that any consideration of whether or not law enforcement conducted a minimal investigation to corroborate the “Sarah” story was immaterial since the caller identified herself by name. Such an interpretation could explain Judge Walther’s later ruling, in which she ignored the other evidence introduced at the Suppression Hearing to show the inadequacy of the investigation by law enforcement. She cited as her authority Belton v. State (900 Southwest 2^nd, 886, Court of Appeals, El Paso, 1995), a case in which one of the survivors of a homicide identified the murderer:

 

 

 

Mr. Nichols supported the Judge in her analysis of this situation, but Mr. Goldstein distinguished between the Belton case and the YFZ case and discussed at some length how unreasonable it would be to think that police have no obligation to investigate the veracity of a phone call if the caller merely supplies a name. Were warrants to be issued on the basis of such a flimsy pretext, we would all be at the mercy of any prankster who made wild allegations of criminal activity.

 

 

 

In a final appeal to the Judge’s vanity, Mr. Nichols reminded her that she could refuse to allow a witness to testify from the mere fact that she didn’t feel the testimony would be helpful to her in reaching her decision:

 

 

This was a very convenient way to avoid having embarrassing testimony in the court record when the judge already knew the decision she intended to render.

 

When Mr. Goldstein proffered the witness, Judge Walther ruled, “For the reasons proffered, the Court will not allow him to testify.”[14]

 

Although the Texas courts will not be bound by Judge Conn’s decision in Arizona, it is refreshing to know that this case is about to be considered in an impartial court where all of the evidence will be evaluated and the judge does not have a vested interest in justifying his own prior conduct.

 

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