Kangaroo Court
The Judge over Waller County courts should do the public a favor and replace the visiting judge he appointed to hear a multi-million-dollar divorce case playing out in secret. We’ve been an eyewitness to this KANGAROO COURT.
Kangaroo Court
You’ve seen Judge Robert Kern on the bench in Hempstead, Texas, and he wasn’t happy at all. He forbids a camera in his courtroom, but his power against the media ends at the courtroom door.
“We can’t shoot through the window here? We’ve always been able to shoot for the window,” Reporter Andrea Palacio said.
“Why is the case sealed? Why can’t the public find out what’s going on with the case?” Palacio asked Jay Sears.
There’s absolutely no law against standing outside the courtroom and shooting video through, like, the glass doors in a public space like we did.
A Waller County deputy tries to block our view, then tells me, if we don’t stop, she’ll arrest us.
We don’t stop and she doesn’t make a mistake we’d make her pay for.
“I think they figured out that I would love to go to jail to make this a big case, so they didn’t do it,” Wayne Dolcefino said in an interview.
Remember I’m the guy that’s been falsely arrested by a judge before. It made the local news. I kind of look good in an orange jumpsuit, don’t you think?
As kids, my generation was simply in love with Captain Kangaroo.
For thirty years, he was the host of a famous kids show. And no offense, but 82-year-old Judge Robert Kern kind of reminded me of him.
But that’s not the only reason we start this story about injustice in Waller County with a beloved figure for decades of children.
What we witnessed in recent days in Waller County should be called a kangaroo court instead. The folks in Waller County deserve better.
“After being in court, watching him, I have growing concerns about this guy’s competency,” Dolcefino said.
Kern is a visiting judge. He wasn’t elected by the folks in Waller County.
And he’s told them that he will only show up now, once every two months to even sit on the bench.
The reason now, in part, he doesn’t want to. The county says they can’t afford to pay him more while they’re spending tens of millions of dollars on fancy new county buildings.
Kern rarely has a jury trial in Waller County, but he’s announced he’s having one in late July. He did it in front of us. He’s apparently realized that we actually have a constitution in Texas.
“Miss McLeod, do you want to say anything about what happened today in the court? You got a jury trial?” Palacio asked.
“Yeah, I got a jury trial, but it shouldn’t have been that hard,” Debra McLeod answered.
Deborah McLeod is right. We travel all over the country to expose courthouse injustice, but this fast-growing county northwest of Houston has a lot of tentacles to explore in a divorce case in a courtroom that we say has wrongly been kept secret from the public.
“It was denied for two years, I think,” McLeod went on to say.
McLeod was married to this guy for almost 43 years before he filed for divorce.
Divorces happen, but not the way this one has been playing out in secret.
Judge Kern declared Debra was divorced years ago without even notice of a hearing.
That’s been stopped.
And it looks worse because the guy involved—Jay Sears—is co-founder of likely the biggest developer in Waller County.
NewQuest Properties is a billion-dollar real estate company.
They are spending millions to fight McLeod in this Texas courtroom.
When we watched, it was like the lawyer full employment act in action.
Judge Kern was complaining about the legal fees being run up by the lawyers. But Judge, a lot of your decisions have forced McLeod to challenge your rulings. That costs a lot of money, too.
There are actually two cases, we learned.
There are allegations Sears only moved to Waller County for a couple of months just to play the system, filing for divorce in Waller County where his company has political power.
To have his multi-million-dollar divorce case heard before a County Court-at-Law judge, not a district judge in Harris County where Sears lived before and after—and where he lives now.
Neither party in this big divorce case even lives in Waller County.
“It screams and it stinks. I would say that much. It stinks like someone is trying to get an advantage over their wife using the power that they have inside of Waller County,” attorney Nick Kacal said.
The mix of political power and complaints about the judge’s erratic rulings and alleged bias against women led us to file a motion to intervene in the divorce case, just to unseal the secret divorce filings so the media, and thus the public, can see this politically charged divorce case play out.
Within a few hours after our old injustice video had aired on social media, Mr. Sears’ lawyer—Randy Wilhite of the Fullenweider Wilhite law firm—subpoenaed Dolcefino Media records.
It was pages of lawyer stuff, wanting to know who hired us to investigate this family injustice case.
And he wanted the answers that day in court.
“That wasn’t going to happen,” Dolcefino told the camera.
“May I ask a question, sir?” Palacio asked.
“That is a question, but no I don’t want to talk about anything,” Randy Wilhite answered.
Randy Wilhite is apparently a funny guy, but pretty thorough in asking for things he’ll never get from us in this lifetime, like our raw video footage, transcripts, or any notes I’ve taken.
“Likely aimed at trying to discover confidential informants into his investigations,” Kacal said.
“I don’t want to talk. I think there’s rules of ethics that govern what lawyers can say and cannot say to the media, assuming you’re media,” Wilhite said.
“Wilhite could have just asked me, because I would have told them that none of the stuff he wants he’s ever going to get,” Dolcefino told the camera.
Before we showed up in court in Hempstead, Dolcefino Media had filed a motion to throw the subpoena out.
And it was all on the plate of Judge Kern to decide during his rare visit to the Waller County courthouse.
He wouldn’t come back until right before the trial started.
For the record, it wasn’t always this elderly judge presiding over what appears to be the most expensive divorce case underway in Texas.
This multi-year legal fight playing out with a ton of lawyers in secret was first handled by the elected county judge in Waller County—Carol Chaney. She won’t call me back.
Chaney quickly recused herself in the case and asked the area administrative judge—Robert Trapp—to appoint Judge Kern instead.
Before Chaney did that, she sealed all the court records in this case.
That motion is public record.
But now, this monstrous divorce case is totally in Judge Kern’s lap.
He’s going to spend at least a week in July on the trial.
So, we were shocked at what we heard come out of his mouth that day.
“But before we give you the scoop, let me talk about some other funny business that Waller County is pulling in this secretive divorce case,” Dolcefino told the camera.
When our lawyer went to file our newest legal papers in the county’s online filing system the night before the hearing, we had suddenly been locked out by the Waller County clerk.
“I’ve never had a district clerk or a county clerk tell me that I was unable to file into a case before,” Kacal said.
That’s weird.
Before it was our turn to argue for transparency in Kern’s courtroom, Kern threw everyone out of the court because lawyers for NewQuest wanted to talk about the arbitration on the value of Jay Sears’ holdings in the company.
“Not exactly a harbinger of a good news for us,” Dolcefino told the camera.
That’s when we had our dust-up with a scary Waller County deputy.
“The deputy came out and said someone’s going to jail and I told her it was a public space. I don’t care whether this judge likes us shooting in a public place, that’s why they call it a public space,” Dolcefino said.
Back in court, when they started talking about our motion to unseal records, the judge told our lawyer to step away from the bench, to sit down and say nothing.
We watched as lawyers for NewQuest were in front of the judge arguing why our motion should be denied instead, why the case should remain a secret.
They’ve got a lot to lose here, a lot of money, that is.
We were still not welcome as part of the conversation about us.
Our lawyer stood back up to politely say, “What the hell, Judge?”
That’s when this happened.
“Well, it seems Judge Kern has decided that he does not have jurisdiction to hear a motion to unseal records in the case that he presides over,” Kacal said.
“It didn’t just stink, it was stupid, ridiculous. It’s his case. How can the judge presiding over a case not be able to rule on a motion to make it public instead of secret?” Dolcefino asked the camera.
“Excuse the crap out of me, but I don’t understand what the hell that means,” Dolcefino said.
Judge Kern flat out ignored the whole subpoena issue and dismissed us all.
“Actually, it was a wasted day in front of a judge that, quite frankly, should be replaced immediately in the interest of family justice. There have been complaints for years, we’re told by lawyers about his erratic rulings,” Dolcefino told the camera.
“Look, after watching this judge today, I have growing concerns. And I don’t know who the heck we go to, to get this case unsealed, but we’re going to figure it out and we’re going to do it,” Dolcefino said.
Actually, our lawyer thinks the records are public now by default.
“The idea that he doesn’t have jurisdiction to rule on those types of motions would logically lead to the idea that the original seal order is void for lack of jurisdiction and that there should be no seal on the court records at all,” Kacal said.
Jay Sears could lose a lot of money in this divorce case.
“Are you hiding something?” Palacio asked Sears.
But, NewQuest may have even more to lose.
Legal observers say they could face fraud allegations for trying to hide the true value of the company.
So far, Judge Kern is letting them hide it.
Will Debra have to go to trial not even knowing how much money her longtime husband of four decades is hiding from her?
Another co-founder, Steve Alvis, appointed by the governor to the State Transportation Commission, still has his divorce pending with the same judge.
But let’s face it, NewQuest isn’t just worried about publicity because of the sordid affairs of their founders. Investors don’t like dealing with the dirty laundry of their business partners. It could affect business.
And NewQuest is investing hundreds of millions of dollars in Waller County.
The perfect morning to befriend another Texas judge.
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