Being told that the Supreme Court will reverse a jury verdict/trial court’s judgment is not equivalent to what Watt’s stated in his letter. Had Watt’s merely noted the orientation of the Corpus Christi Court of Appeals or the results one might expect from that court on appeal, his comments would be unobjectionable. What makes his comments objectionable is that he implied that the outcome in the appeals court would be swayed by campaign contributions made by his firm.

“Given this well-known history, it’s astonishing that so many on the left are complaining that the Texas Supreme Court reverses a majority of cases brought by civil defendant appeals, even to the point of bringing a bogus recusal motion on those grounds.”

I have no idea what Ted means by this statement. It’s fairly obvious now that most of Texas (and therefore our juries) are Republican (I think that would be a given since we haven’t had a Democrat elected in any statewide election in years). And, with the exception of Corpus and El Paso, I think the courts of appeals are now Republican dominated. What is astonishing is that the Supreme Court can rule for Defendants over 80% of the time even after many cases have gone through conservative juries and conservative appellate courts. (And I think there’s a difference between saying the Supreme Court rules for defendants a “majority of the time,” as Ted says, versus the actual 80% sucess rate).

But with a letter making such threats, to actually leave written eveidence of such things: could you give Mr. Watts a poke from something beyond the (in Texas, completely useless, see previous post) disciplinary comittee? Is there no “judge tampering” equivalent of the jury tampering charge?