Details on Judge Walther’s insolent exit from court Friday

Oh, the arrogance of power! The Devil and his angels are busy preparing a special place in Hell for Barbara Walther. More details now emerge on Walther’s callous exit from the courtroom yesterday afternoon.

Where is a champion among all of you lawyers there in Texas? Are there no standards of judicial bad faith or misconduct in Texas? And where are the big, strong Texas Rangers to drag this venomous jurist out of her bed at 1:00 in the morning to sign an order freeing people they took captive on her orders in the wee hours 57 days ago?

Excerpts from Brooke Adams:

It all looked simple at first.

Attorneys came to court with a workable plan. The mothers’ lawyers agreed. The state attorneys agreed. Other attorneys seemed to find it workable. . .

That was it. Simple. Workable. Agreed upon, even more than called for, an attorney with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid told me.

Then things fell apart.

Judge Barbara Walther called a brief recess to let all the other attorneys look over the plan. There were dozens in the courtroom.

Another 56 lawyers were listening in on a telephone conference call. Copies were emailed to them. A buzz filled Courtroom A as attorneys conferred.

All a waste of time, as it turned out.

An hour later, the judge with back with her own ”tweaked” version of the plan.

Just conforming to Texas Family Code, the judge said. Don’t want any confusion about what’s expected.

She added words that clarified she was vacating a ”portion” of her order keeping the FLDS children in custody.

Parents, the judge said, would have to agree to:

Let CPS have 24/7 access to their homes if they lived at the YFZ Ranch

Keep their children in Texas indefinitely

Take parenting classes but removed language allowing them to negotiate with the state about providers

Give written notice to the state seven days before changing addresses

Notify the state 48 hours before traveling more than 60 miles from home

Allow their children, themselves or any other adults in the home to be given medical and psychological evaluations if requested by the state

She called another recess so attorneys could look it over.

Many did not like it.

Attorneys for Texas RioGrande Legal Aid objected one after another. Their clients had not signed off on this plan, they said. It went beyond setting reasonable conditions that would allow the state to continue its abuse investigation.

Worse, it again made a presumption the mothers were guilty of wrongdoing which the two higher courts had agreed was unproven.

Why should a mother who has not committed any abuse have to let state agents into her home at any hour of the day or night? Or take a psychological test?, they asked.

Send the children home and let the state’s investigation continue, they said. If evidence surfaces against specific parents, the state can haul them back to court.

Presumption of innocence kind of stuff.

The lawyers began speaking out.

John Kennedy said some of the children in state custody are not even residents of Texas but happened to be visiting the YFZ Ranch when the raid occurred. A 90-day travel ban was OK, he said, but an open-ended restriction was a problem.

Kennedy is an attorney with Legal Aid of North Texas, which also got a favorable appeals court ruling for three FLDS mothers.

He asked that parents be allowed to collect their children immediately. Fifty-seven days have passed since the children were removed from their homes.

”Another weekend seems like it would be forever for these people,” he said.

Other attorneys asked Walther to allow parents to begin signing affidavits and picking up their children immediately. Some were visiting children that evening. They could leave together.

That would be especially helpful for parents whose children are in several locations in Texas hundreds of miles apart, they said.

Even the state seemed agreeable to that. ”We don’t want to hold these children up any longer than we need to,” said Gary Banks, an attorney for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.

Gary said adult mothers with their nursing infants might be the first and easiest to process and send home.

And what about women the state considered minors but whom it now recognizes as adults? They are with their children already. Always have been. No confusion there about who their mothers are.

Why do they have to wait, asked Dallas attorney Laura Shockley.

Walther demurred. By then it was 4:30 p.m. and the work day was running out. Most shelters are not open on the weekend and there would be no state staff available to oversee the process.

Besides, there was still no agreed upon order.

”I don’t want to create an order that causes more chaos for these children than has already occurred,” Walther said at one point.

At that point, more lawyers had had time to read through her proposal.

They did not like it.

The changes, they said, made it appear the mothers had been abusive when there was no such evidence — the problem the Texas Supreme Court and Third Court of Appeals tried to cure by overturning Walther.

Let the children go home, they said. Let the investigation continue, they said. And if specific evidence surfaces against any individual, the state can haul them back to court.

Nah, said the judge.

This would be the order, she said, and if the attorneys did not like it, they had legal remedies.

Julie Balovich of TRLA, listening in on the telephone, tried again.

With all due respect, she told Walther, the higher court rulings were specific: Vacate the order. Set reasonable conditions for an ongoing investigation. That’s it. Period.

Walther took another recess to think it over. It was short. She did not agree with Balovich. And she was apparently tired of the wrangling.

Get an agreement, get every mother to sign it, bring it back and she’d sign it, the judge said.

But which plan? Hers? Theirs? A new one somewhere in the middle?

Walther did not take time to explain. She got up and left so swiftly attorneys listening on the telephone did not realize it was over, that she was gone, as they carried on a one-sided conversation.

What West Texas barn yard was Barbara Walther raised in? Is this what southern hospitality looks like in Texas?

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Note:

This commentary assumes the accuracy of the underlying reportage on which it is based.  Happy to correct the record for any errors that are brought to my attention.