Judith Kenney, 65, had been charged with unlawful carrying of a weapon in a place where weapons are prohibited.

The panel’s members did not find probable cause for prosecutors to take the case to court, according to a news release from the Tarrant County district attorney’s office.

On Jan. 18, screening officers in Terminal D detected a “questionable item” as several carry-on bags passed through the scanner. Before they could determine which bag the item was in and who owned it, a passenger had picked it up and walked away, a Transportation Security Administration spokesman said.

Officials searched for more than an hour using a security photo. They found Kenney already on board her American Airlines flight. She told authorities that she had forgotten the gun was in her bag.

On Friday, Kenney’s attorney, David Finn of Dallas, said: “She is still mortified and very remorseful and feels terrible about the trouble she caused passengers and security officials. The grand jury certainly took its time and was methodical and deliberate.”

Read more here

“A public apology would appear to be in order, for starters,” said David Finn, attorney for the Carpenter family in Dallas. He would not rule out legal action.

On Wednesday, Fort Worth police released a warrant for an Austin W. Carpenter, 26, accusing him of selling drugs to an undercover narcotics investigator in November. The warrant also featured a black-and-white picture of the man, which quickly made its way online through news websites.

Carpenter is the great-grandson of famed Dallas businessman John W. Carpenter, who has a local freeway named after him.

Carpenter was not arrested. When his family saw his picture on news sites Wednesday, they called Fort Worth police for answers. After several phone calls, the department acknowledged the error to them, apologized, and later Wednesday, alerted local media about the error.

Unexplained

Police said they are still seeking an Austin Carpenter in connection with the drug investigation, but as of Thursday they had not explained how the wrong man’s picture ended up on the publicly available warrant.

The flawed document was one of 19 arrest warrant affidavits released Wednesday.

In it, Fort Worth narcotics investigator J.C. Williams wrote that on Nov. 3, he got a tip that a man named Austin was selling drugs to TCU students. A confidential informant arranged a meeting between Williams and Austin in the parking lot of a Fort Worth pharmacy that same day. Austin drove to the rendezvous in a maroon Ford pickup.

After buying $100 of Xanax and hydrocodone pills from the man, Williams noted the suspect’s license plate. Later that day, he wrote, he found that it was registered to a woman with the last name Carpenter from Missouri City.

Database search

Williams typed “Austin Carpenter” into his databases to try to identify his suspect, according to the warrant. He found an Austin W. Carpenter born in 1985.

“I looked up this [driver’s license] from this subject and confirmed that this was the same person from whom your affiant purchased [the drugs],” Williams wrote.

While the affidavit does not mention this, Austin W. Carpenter’s driver’s license information, accessed by The Dallas Morning News through a paid commercial database, shows a Highland Park address.

A search for “Austin Carpenter” on Facebook yields a profile of a TCU student from Missouri City. It also features pictures of his new maroon Ford pickup. Based on his middle name, his driver’s license shows him to be 19.

Reached on Thursday, the man’s father said he was unaware that a pickup like his son’s was mentioned as the suspect vehicle in the TCU drug investigation. He said that his son was in Houston and he would call him to inquire. The father did not answer subsequent calls.

Not commenting

Meanwhile, Finn said that the Carpenters in Dallas were not commenting Thursday so they wouldn’t “perpetuate” the story. But Wednesday, John Carpenter, the Dallas man’s father, was frantic to clear his son’s name, which was all over the news and Internet.

“His name and his picture are on MSNBC right now!” an irate elder Carpenter told The News on Wednesday. “My son never went to TCU.”

By JASON TRAHAN Staff Writer
Dallas Morning News
Published: 16 February 2012 10:44 PM

Prosecutors began a grand jury investigation of Hayes and subpoenaed her after she held a prosecutor in contempt for not following a court order last week. The district attorney’s office this week also subpoenaed the judge’s court coordinator, Teresa Pigg-Curry, and Criminal Court Judge Angela King.

Attorneys for Hayes, Pigg-Curry and King on Wednesday questioned the actions of District Attorney Craig Watkins in launching the grand jury investigation and subpoenaing the women. The judges, like Watkins, are Democrats.

“This whole thing is, at best, bizarre. At worst, despicable,” David Finn, who represents Pigg-Curry, said Wednesday. “Somebody is giving District Attorney Craig Watkins some very bad advice.”

All of the women’s attorneys — including J. Michael Price II, representing Hayes, and Clint Broden, representing King — say Watkins is retaliating against Hayes for issuing orders his office didn’t like.

Hayes held prosecutor Keena Miller in contempt last week after she refused a court order to hand over the criminal records of police officers who were going to testify in a misdemeanor domestic violence case in Hayes’ court. Hayes wanted to review the records to see if any information on the officers’ pasts should be shared with the defense.

Watkins said Wednesday he could not confirm whether there is a grand jury investigation. Prosecutors typically do not comment on ongoing investigations. Earlier this week, Watkins called it “unfortunate that an officer of the court would characterize anything that we do with this administration, in this office, as retaliation.”

Bennett Gershman, a professor at Pace University in New York who studies prosecutorial misconduct, said the subpoenas by Watkins’ office are unusual and “outrageous.” He said appealing a judge’s orders — as the district attorney’s office has also done in the contempt ruling by Hayes — is the proper way to handle such disagreements.

“This is a kind of abuse of power that you hope you don’t see,” said Gershman, a former New York prosecutor. “This can destroy a judge’s impartiality by threatening them with a subpoena and criminal charges.”

Last Thursday, Hayes held Miller in contempt and ordered her to remain in the courtroom. The district attorney’s office objected to handing over the criminal histories of police officers, saying they are not required to do so and that federal law prohibits giving the information to defense attorneys. Defense attorneys argue the records can be released for a criminal justice purpose such as a court proceeding.

Later that day, Hayes suspended her decision to hold Miller in contempt after meeting with Watkins. She agreed to hold a hearing about the matter the next day.

Just before that hearing was to begin, the district attorney’s office gave Hayes a subpoena and a letter saying she was the target of an official-oppression investigation.

Prosecutors also told Hayes they had petitioned an appellate court regarding the order to turn over the criminal histories. The hearing on the contempt order was indefinitely postponed until the appellate court rules.

The Texas Penal Code defines official oppression as public servants using their offices to “intentionally subject another to mistreatment or to arrest, detention.” Official oppression is a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to one year in the county jail and a $4,000 fine.

State District Judge Carter Thompson, a felony court judge, quashed the subpoena of Pigg-Curry on Wednesday and of Hayes last week, their attorneys said. Thompson has agreed to hold a hearing to reconsider the quashing of Hayes’ subpoena, possibly as soon as Friday. It is not clear what else could be addressed at that hearing.

Broden, who represents King, said he plans to file a motion Thursday asking a judge to quash King’s subpoena. He said he did not know why King was subpoenaed. Broden said if prosecutors are seeking testimony about conversations about legal issues between judges, that information is confidential.

The district attorney’s office requested that all records of the proceedings in Thompson’s court be sealed from public view because they relate to grand jury proceedings, which are typically secret. Broden said he has told the court he objects to holding the hearing behind closed doors. It is not clear if the hearing will be held in private.

By JENNIFER EMILY
Staff Writer
Dallas Morning News
Published: 08 February 2012 10:13 PM

A 65-year-old Little Elm woman was arrested Wednesday morning after carrying a revolver aboard a plane at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.

Transportation Security Administration officials notified police about 6 a.m. that the woman had grabbed her belongings off a checkpoint conveyor belt and walked away before TSA agents spotted the .38-caliber handgun.

Judith Kenney’s lawyer, David Finn, said she had simply forgotten the gun was in her computer bag.

An attorney herself, based in Addison, Kenney regularly carried the weapon for protection, Finn said. She had been working late hours lately and let her concealed handgun license expire several weeks ago, Finn said.

Kenney boarded her American Airlines flight to Houston on Wednesday, Finn said, oblivious that police officers were sweeping the entire airport for her.

About 8 a.m., officers learned which plane Kenney was on, ordered it back to its gate and took her into custody.

She called her lawyer crying, Finn said, “mortified, apologetic and contrite” for the trouble she caused. Ten flights were delayed up to half an hour during the incident, according to airport officials.

Kenney bonded out of jail the same day and expects to face a third-degree felony firearms charge. Finn said he hopes to persuade a grand jury to drop it.

“She’s not a criminal, not a terrorist,” the lawyer said. “It was an honest mistake.”

Original story posted at The The Dallas Morning News
By AVI SELK and MATT PETERSON
Staff Writers
Published: 18 January 2012 10:14 PM:

The jury of eight women and four men began deliberations about 2 p.m. Wednesday and stopped about 4:30 p.m.

Chancellor Jay Hutcheson is charged with second-degree felony aggravated assault and faces up to 20 years in prison. But because he doesn’t have a prior felony conviction, Hutcheson is eligible for probation.

Hutcheson is accused of hitting 22-year-old Jeffrey Fleming at Fair Park after a Rascal Flatts concert on June 13, 2009. Fleming fell to the ground, slamming his head against the pavement.

J.T. Thomas, who was with Hutcheson the night of the concert, testified that Hutcheson punched Fleming during a confrontation between both of their groups of friends.

The defense argues that Hutcheson acted in self-defense, while the prosecution told jurors that he made a clear choice to strike Fleming.

Thomas, 20, said Hutcheson punched Fleming in self-defense.
“I saw [Fleming] throw a big round-house hook” toward Hutcheson, Thomas said. “And then Chance hit him.”

But during cross-examination, prosecutor Justin Lord said that during an interview with Dallas police, Thomas said Fleming could have hit either Hutcheson or his friend Keaton Standridge.

“Which one is it?” Lord asked of his swing.

“It had the potential to hit either one of them,” Thomas said and later added, “Chance would have gotten hit first.”

Clara Davis, who worked as a security officer at the Superpages.com Center the night of the incident, also testified. She recalled speaking to a girl who told her that Fleming had drunk about 12 beers that night.

During Tuesday’s testimony, one of Hutcheson’s defense attorneys, David Finn, presented a report showing that Fleming’s blood-alcohol level the night he was hospitalized was .214 — almost three times the legal limit.

“It’s clear that [Fleming] was extremely intoxicated,” Finn said during closing arguments. He said Fleming’s behavior made it so Hutcheson had no choice but to act.

By LAURA C. MOREL
Staff Writer
Dallas Morning News
Published: 13 July 2011 11:33 AM

A grand jury indicted George David Ringer, 58, on two charges of theft and misappropriation of funds. In a bankruptcy filing last year, Ringer admitted owing Solar $900,000 — a debt he wanted a federal judge to cancel.

“What is particularly unfortunate about this is that a good portion of the money that was embezzled or stolen came off the backs of hardworking parents and kids working concession stands at various soccer venues,” said David Finn, a member of the Solar board whose son has played for the club for five years.

Reached at his office Wednesday, Ringer declined to comment.
Ringer, a lawyer, headed Solar Soccer from 1996 until early last year when club officials started questioning his handling of the association’s finances.

“We asked him, ‘Where is the money? Where did it go? Where was the authorization?’” Finn said.

After Ringer was unable to come up with the money or answers to satisfy club officials, he filed for bankruptcy in November. In addition to his debt to Solar, he admitted owing $487,000 to the IRS and $304,000 for what was described as an “oil and gas investment from the 1980s.”
Ringer claimed $1.9 million in total debt against $491,953 in assets. The assets included his $410,000 home, two decade-old cars and an “11-year-old mixed breed dog” Ringer said was worth $50.

Ringer filed for Chapter 7, which could have wiped out the debt. But Solar got wind of the plan, counterfiled to block it and gave information to Dallas prosecutors.

It takes a lot of soda sales to add up to $800,000. But Solar is a large outfit, with more than 65 boys and girls teams that include about 1,000 kids. In addition to other fundraising, players pay about $3,000 in annual fees.

The club has developed at least one professional soccer player: Corben Bone of the Chicago Fire . And in 2009, Solar coaching director Kevin Smith was named NSCAA/Adidas National Coach of the Year.
According to the indictment report, Ringer is accused of dipping into club funds starting five years ago, issuing lump sum checks to his law firm. The report said he started taking out loans to cover the growing deficit. The club’s books also indicate that he had the club “borrow” money from his law firm that was subsequently repaid — even though Solar has been unable to find any documents confirming that the loans existed.

According to a report by WFAA-TV (Channel in April, Ringer was confronted by parents and told them he had been paying himself for legal work done for the club over the years. He later produced a schedule of itemized charges that included hours billed for “attending games,” “rescheduling games” and “fundraising issues,” according to WFAA.

Ringer told the station at the time that the allegations were “defamatory” as well as “unfounded, unwarranted … and in dispute.”
The club is left to figure out what it won’t be able to do because of the missing money. The club’s plans to buy its own soccer field will be much harder to achieve, Finn said.

But the biggest loss, he said, may be the loss of trust.
“Everybody trusted David,” Finn said. “Everybody.”

By JEFFREY WEISS
Staff Writer
Dallas Morning News
DallasNews.com
Published: 08 June 2011 03:07 PM
Staff writer Ian McCann contributed to this report.

HOUSTON — R. Allen Stanford’s relationship with the chief regulator of his Antigua bank was closer than most.

At a meeting in 2003, they became blood brothers, cutting their wrists and mixing their blood in a “brotherhood ceremony�? that Mr. Stanford’s chief financial officer said promoted an elaborate scheme to hide a multibillion-dollar fraud from American and other regulators.

The assertion that the two took a “blood oath�? was laid out in a plea agreement signed by the officer, James M. Davis, and filed Thursday. After the pact, Leroy King, Antigua’s chief banking supervisor, called Mr. Stanford “Big Brother.�? He received Super Bowl tickets, valued at thousands of dollars, for himself and his girlfriend. And he accepted regular bribe payments from a secret Swiss bank account that Mr. Davis said he was told to handle by Mr. Stanford.

The unusual twist to the case, in which Mr. Stanford is accused of operating a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme, was disclosed by Mr. Davis as he pleaded guilty on Thursday to fraud and conspiracy in Federal District Court in Houston. Mr. Davis, who oversaw the movement of vast sums of money at Stanford International Bank, also said in a plea agreement that Mr. Stanford ordered him to report false revenue and false investment portfolio balances to banking regulators as far back as 1988, when Mr. Stanford ran an offshore bank on the Caribbean island of Montserrat.

“I did wrong. I’m sorry. I apologize. And I take responsibility for my actions,�? Mr. Davis said after the hearing.

Mr. Stanford was also supposed to appear in court on Thursday, but he was hospitalized in the morning after his pulse rate soared, his lawyer said.

While he has repeatedly denied accusations that he ran a Ponzi scheme involving certificates of deposit issued by Stanford International Bank, he has also insisted that if anything illegal did happen, it must have been Mr. Davis’s fault.

Mr. Davis, who had been a friend of Mr. Stanford’s since they were roommates at Baylor University in Waco, Tex., started his own church in Mississippi and led prayers before bank business meetings. His lawyer, David Finn, said Mr. Davis was now working on a family farm in Michigan doing manual labor for $10 an hour as an expression of penance. He now faces up to 30 years in prison.

“He had a very heavy heart,�? Mr. Finn said. “He was very contrite, and not all of my clients are.�?

The plea agreement and a court presentation on Thursday by prosecutors repeated many facts that were outlined in June in an indictment of Mr. Stanford, several Stanford aides and Mr. King. Mr. Stanford and others are accused of defrauding 30,000 investors of $7 billion, filing false reports to regulators and investors, diverting more than $1.6 billion into undisclosed personal loans to Mr. Stanford, and conspiring to obstruct an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

But the plea agreement offered an assortment of new details, particularly about the relationship between Mr. Stanford and Mr. King, who ran Antigua’s Financial Services Regulatory Commission for much of the last decade. He has been arrested in Antigua and is awaiting extradition to the United States.

Shortly after their 2003 blood-brother ceremony, which also included a second, unnamed Antiguan regulator, Mr. Stanford complained that two Antiguan regulators who worked for Mr. King were “becoming aggressive and suspicious in their examination�? of the Stanford bank on the island, the plea agreement said. Both employees “soon thereafter were reassigned or replaced,�? Mr. Davis said in the plea agreement.

To show appreciation for Mr. King’s services, Mr. Stanford paid $8,000 for tickets to the 2004 Super Bowl game in Houston so the regulator could take his girlfriend to the event. The next year, in June, Mr. King showed Mr. Stanford a confidential letter he had received from the S.E.C. seeking information about the Stanford bank’s certificates of deposit investment portfolio, stating that the agency had evidence to suggest the bank was engaged in a “possible Ponzi scheme.�? Mr. Stanford and an unnamed aide then drafted “a false and misleading response�? to the S.E.C., according to the plea agreement.

In September 2006, Mr. King tipped Mr. Stanford off to another letter from the S.E.C. Mr. Stanford, Mr. Davis and others proposed various responses designed to mislead the American regulators, which Mr. King was expected to transmit back to the S.E.C.

Mr. King also helped mislead regulators of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank when they began raising questions about Mr. Stanford’s bank, the plea agreement said. He faxed a proposed response to the Caribbean regulators to an unnamed lawyer working for Mr. Stanford. In it, Mr. King joked in a handwritten note: “Please do not bill me (laugh), Thanks a million, Lee.�? The note was taken as an oblique reference to bribes already paid, according to the agreement.

Mr. King, who holds American and Antiguan passports, is reviewing legal documents and has not yet publicly responded to the charges against him, according to Attorney General Justin Simon of Antigua and Barbuda. In an interview in February, just after Mr. Stanford’s offices in Houston were raided by federal authorities, Mr. King said, “I am absolutely sure that my banking system is clean.�?

Times Topics: Robert Allen StanfordMr. Simon said in an interview that he had become aware of the blood-brotherhood ceremony from his own sources. “It is believable,�? he said. “As far as how many people are involved, we are still investigating.�?

By the middle of 2008, the agreement asserts, Mr. Stanford, Mr. Davis and others were scrambling “desperately�? to hide the details of their fraud by inflating the value of their assets on the books with “bogus real estate.�? The conspirators “designed a real estate transaction wherein they would falsely inflate and convert an approximate $65 million real estate transaction in Antigua into a purported $3.2 billion dollar asset,�? according to the agreement. But by January the S.E.C. was moving in fast, and when Mr. Davis met with Mr. King, “King appeared very stressed�? and wondered if they could still hide their secrets. Mr. Davis tried to reassure him.

In an interview in April, Mr. Stanford said he gave Mr. Davis broad responsibilities to oversee investments. “If bad things were happening, he never brought them to my attention,�? Mr. Stanford said. “He did his job and I stayed out of his hair.�?

Mr. Finn acknowledged after Thursday’s plea hearing that Mr. Stanford would attempt to discredit his client during a future trial. “The only way he walks is if he can convince a jury that my client is the mastermind,�? he said. “Allen Stanford uses people. Did my client allow himself to be used? Absolutely.�?

Mr. Finn said it would be strange for his client to have run a fraudulent scheme to pay for Mr. Stanford’s lavish lifestyle when he was getting paid relatively little for his efforts. He said Mr. Davis had earned between $5 million and $6 million after taxes over the last decade, and was now virtually penniless.

Mr. Stanford’s lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, has asked for court permission to quit the case because his client can not assure that he will be paid. Mr. Stanford was supposed to appear in court for a hearing on whether he could retain a new legal team. Mr. Stanford has asked to be represented by two other lawyers, but they also have said they need assurances that they will be paid.

Mr. Stanford’s assets and his companies’ assets have been frozen.