[Newspaper Clipping: No lewdness cases sent to Judge Miller by DA] Part: 1 of 2
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No lewdness cases sent
to Judge Miller by DA
By PATTI KILDAY dismssed because the comply
legally faulty.
Staff Writer The district attorney's off
The Dall misdemeartr cases on a gi
with a particular judge, rota
ney's Office has filed no new public cases among the seven misdi
lewdness cases with County Criminal court judges on a daily basis.
< Court Judge Chuck Miller since the Wade and his staff have
begirning of May, when a dispute that discriminatory practices
br,.a htt Miller and Dis. Att. r dnv idi ersn the eaint was
ice files
yen day
ting the
demeanor
denied
are em-ruse between i .rau t-ray.
ihnry Wade concerning Miller's ac-
'ittals of two defendants in public
lewdness cases, courthouse sources
said Thursday.
Of all the misdemeanor cases filed
in Miller's court from May 1 to the
present, none were public lewdness
cases, the sources said, except for one
that had been refiled after it had
been assigned to his court earlier andHenry W ad
pruyeu at sp i gri cas s.
Dallas police, however, say they
have filed 79 public lewdness cases
since May 1, and one county criminal
court has received nine of them dur-
ing that time span.
Wade and Miller had a disagree-
ment last May after Miller acquitted
two men of public lewdness for alleg-
edly fondling each other in a local bar
See JUDGE on Page 12sctVefa si o in
Wade's staff accused of forum shoppigJUDGE - From Page One
frequented by homosexuals, the Vil-
lage Station. Wade accused Miller of
bias against the police officers and
transferred six related public lewd-
ness cases to another court.
Miller responded by accusing
Wade's staff of forum shopping; how-
ever, Miller Thursday refused com-
ment on claims that he has not been
assigned public lewdness cases since
May.
Forum shopping, or judge shop-
ping, is legal jargon for the practice of
trying to get a particular case in thecourt of a "friendly" judge, or one
who is known to have a particular
bias.
Thursday, Wade was vacationing
and unavailable for comment. Asst.
Dist. Atty. Winfield Scott, when
asked if Miller was not receiving pub-
lic lewdness cases because of policies
of the district attorney's office, said
only, "I'll have to refer you to Mr.
Wade."
The filing system for misdemeanor
cases has been questioned by a crimi-
nal justice committee of the Dallas
Bar Association and the county crimi-
nal court judges, who say they fearsuch a system allows for potential fo-
rum shopping.
This week, the criminal justice
committee found after a two-month
study that a wide disparity endsted in
the number of cases sent to each of
the judges.
For instance, the study showed that
Judge Ben Ellis has received 552 cases
below what should be the average
this year for the seven judges, while
Judge Harold Entz has received 593
cases above the average.
Entz Thursday addressed the board
of directors of the Dallas Bar Associ-
ation about the need to go to a ran-dom, computerized system for filing
cases so forum shopping could not oc-
cur.
The board of directors passed a res-
olution favoring the new system,
which Entz said he hoped would en-
courage county computer program-
mers to make the new system "a top
priority."
But Entz said he favored going im-
mediately to a random system of
drawing marked ping-pong balls from
a basket to assign cases until the
county's computer programmers can
develop the capacity for assigning
misdemeanor cases.- -
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Kilday, Patti. [Newspaper Clipping: No lewdness cases sent to Judge Miller by DA], clipping, July 25, 1980; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc965273/m1/1/: accessed June 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.