2 day jury trial for code viiolations

[BSSTG]

Greetings all,

Well, we made history last week. Not only has our town never had a jury trial for building/fire/local ordinance violations, addtionally there had never been a trial lasting more than one day in municipal court. And it's not over yet as the dude has appealed his conviction to county court.

Oct. 2010. dude comes in for a demo permit which is granted. No big deal. type V buildings are demoed and dozed to the back of the property which is problem #1. Rear 1/3 of the property is a designated floodway on our FEMA maps. Can't put anything in a floodway. zip zero nada. Fortunately we have a drought! Problem #2 same dude uses front portion of property (roughrly 1/2 acre) as a junkyard. Junkyards are allowed but with restrictions. So we have a junkyard and floodway encroachment. Over the next several months of wrangling, getting cussed out, threatened with civil rights violations yada yada yada multiple citations are written. Hearings come and go without the dude showing up which presents problem #3 "failure to appear". This all goes on an on so we get to a point where the powers that be are going to arrest the dude and drag him back to town when he decides to show up and asks for a jury trial.

Without going into a huge amount of detail here is the end result. He was cited for: no certificate of occupancy, no operational permit under the fire code for a junkyard, floodway encrouchment, public nuisance, no local permit for recycling (local ordinance), failure to appear, and another charge I can't rememeber.

no c/o- not guilty

no fire permit- not guilty

no local permit0-not guilty

failure to appear- guilty fine $500

floodway encroachement- guilty fine $100

charge I can't recall- not guilty

public nuisance- guilty $25,000 fine

Now I expected a total fines in the 25 to 30K range. Potentially the fines could of been several hundred thousand dollars. In Tx Class C misdemeanors are 500 a day unless they are health and safety violations which can be 2000 a day.

What I didn't expect was for him to get off on the bldg code violations expecially since one of our firefighters was on the jury.

Geez you talk about a learning experience. Oh yea, this dude acted as his own attorney too. That said he has to put up a 50K appeal bond so we will get our money unless it's all overturned. We shall see.

Yall have a great evening

BS

 

[fatboy]

WOW, can't believe the building/fire violations were let go. Dang, a jury trial for code violations.....sure glad my stuff is administrative.

 

[Mule]

Sounds like the jury was full of citizens that didn't like the government telling them what they can and can't do! Very wrong in the verdicts though.

At least the judge saw what was going on and slammed him with a hefty fine.

If he appeals to a higher court can the court find him guilty on the other charges????

 

[Keystone]

Jury trial, the solicitor learned a valuable lesson on this one go, agree toward a more likely Jury, hearing in absensia, administrative forum or anything else for that matter.

 

[BSSTG]

Greetings

Actually the fines were determined by the jury. I'm no way a legal beagle but it's my understanding that this is the procedure from here on.

The one thing good that's happened is that he wants to appeal to county court. His problem is that he has to come up with a bond twice the amount of the fines. He's already tried to put up a bond guaranteed by his family trust and the judge said no way. In the event that he does come up with the proper acceptable bond then the appeal goes to county court. Also, he has to come up with the proper bond with in 10 days of conviction. If the appeal is upheld then the city gets their money out of the bond that's already in place. Now when the case is tried in county court it's a whole new ball game and the fines could be bigger, maybe smaller or he could be acquitted of course. What I'm not clear on is what happens if the county doesn't want to try the case which could happen.

My personal opinion is that the case had too many charges and was somewhat complicated by that. Now it wouldn't be complicated to probably anybody that posts here on this message board and was certainly not complicated to me. That said we are dealing with the average lay persons off the street as jurors. By the way, the jury was 5 women and one dude. As I said previously one of the jurors was one of our firefighters. We need to talk to her to find out what insight she can give as to what went wrong. I hope to talk to her in the next day or 2 and will post up with what I find.

later

BS

 

[tmurray]

What I'm not clear on is what happens if the county doesn't want to try the case which could happen.

If the higher court agrees that the verdict was correct given the court documents they will uphold the lower court's decision. Just remember that if they agree to hear the case he could be found guilty of the non-guilty charges. He doesn't get a do-over of just the charges he was found guilty on.

 

[BSSTG]

Greetings all,

Well the update is that the guy failed to post an acceptable bond within the required 10 days. Another letter went out on Tues requiring him to pay the fines etc or arrange to make payments all within another 10 days. If he doesn't make arrangements. a warrant will be issued for his arrest.

Kind of reminds me of the old Arlo Guthrie tune "Alice's Restaurant" when the dudes in jail say "Kid, what ya in for?" His answer "Litterin"

BS