Attorney Hilda Valadez. Photo by Lisa Krantz.
By Brian Chasnoff
November 2010
Local courts for years have ignored a state law requiring judges to appoint lawyers for poor defendants using a rotating list of attorneys. They instead have used erratic methods that funneled a large percentage of cases and taxpayer money to a small percentage of lawyers.
By Brian Chasnoff
October 2010
A day after Diego Morin was arrested in Del Rio and charged with killing his baby stepdaughter, the 22-year-old construction worker requested a court-appointed attorney because he could not afford to hire one.
Morin then sat in Val Verde County Jail more than eight months before a judge appointed him a lawyer.
His wait violated the state’s Fair Defense Act, a law passed nearly a decade ago when Gov. Rick Perry vowed to correct widespread inequities in how poor criminal defendants are represented in Texas.
A Bexar County Jail inmate in the mental health unit. Photo by Jerry Lara.
By Brian Chasnoff and Melissa Fletcher-Stoeltje
August 2010
Bexar County is breaking a state law requiring the swift examination of every mentally ill prisoner in jail, leaving an untold number of inmates languishing without proper psychiatric care.
"Nigger Troll," center, and other assorted Internet trolls. Photo by Bob Owen.
By Brian Chasnoff
February 2010
When the photograph of someone holding a severed dog’s head surfaced online last month, it unleashed some of the Internet’s most absurd and nihilistic tendencies.
Wolfie Blackheart. Photo by Bob Owen.
By Brian Chasnoff
January 2010
Wolfie Blackheart is not an ordinary 18-year-old.
She believes she is a wolf – technically, a werewolf – and so she wears a tail. She also wears a harness in case someone special wants to drag her around.
And last week, she used a pocketknife in her kitchen to decapitate a dog – already dead, according to Wolfie – that had been missing since Jan. 5.
“I severed the head, boiled the head,” Wolfie said. “People make the mistake of hacking the spine, which will fracture the skull.”
She added, “You also have to put (the head) outside for the brains to leak out.”
Chief Broken Eagle. Photo by Jerry Lara.
By Brian Chasnoff
November 2009
Ray Hernandez was checking for oil at a pump jack this summer on a vast stretch of ranchland in Menard County when his cell phone rang.
It was a well worker at a pipe yard on the property, insisting he’d seen a bear.
“I said, ‘No, you didn’t, you seen a stump,’” Hernandez said. “And actually, there’s a stump there that looks just like a bear.”
In fact, the worker had seen a bear. And the June 23 sighting escalated swiftly into a bear hunt.
By Brian Chasnoff
September 2009
The San Antonio Police Department has misplaced more than 2,000 police reports ranging from thefts and car wrecks to more serious offenses of rapes and assaults, according to internal police documents obtained by the San Antonio Express-News.
Brian Chasnoff
April 2009
The bank workers called him Garlic Boy.
He always stank of garlic. He always acted rude. Thirty years ago, on April 26, 1979, he walked reeking of garlic into Bexar Savings in McCreless Mall, one day before a Battle of Flowers Parade that would turn bad.
Crystal Mercado. Photo by Kin Man Hui.
By Brian Chasnoff
March 2009
The call was alarming: A woman was beating her child with a crowbar.
Sheriff’s deputies raced to the home in South Bexar County, where Michelle McDonald was sitting down with her children to eat pizza. The mother had not hit any of her kids with a crowbar, as she explained to the deputies at the door. But she wasn’t surprised someone had accused her of doing something so terrible.
By Brian Chasnoff
Blue Knights at Big Bend National Park. Photo by Billy Calzada.
April 2008
Things did not go well the first time Wild Bill tried to fly. At 8, he tied a towel across his shoulders, jumped from a second-story balcony and landed on his head.
A few years after he awoke from the coma, Wild Bill found a more expedient way of rocketing across the earth. At 13, he climbed astride a motorcycle, revved the engine and truly flew.
