Good Old Boy Justice
We’ve got our hands on some really damaging surveillance video. It not only exposes out of control cops, but raises questions about the new State District Judge in Henderson county up in Northeast Texas. Get ready to watch some GOOD OLE BOY JUSTICE.
Good Old Boy Justice
Here’s video the public’s never seen before.
A guy getting the crap beat out of him by two guys outside a restaurant in Athens, Texas.
Two on one.
The guy in the blue shirt gets kneed in the face before he’s pushed to the ground.
Athens Police arrive and find out the men doing the beat down are cops, one of them the Police Chief of the tiny town of Trinidad, Texas.
Looks like a slam dunk case of assault, right?
But no one was ever prosecuted.
And this is the guy who made sure that little beat down went away, Clint Davis, until Halloween he was the County Attorney in Henderson County up in Northeast Texas.
“And while we were fighting to expose what sure looks like a case of good old boy justice, Governor Abbott made it a bigger story,” Wayne Dolcefino told the camera.
He just gave Clint Davis a job as a State District Judge.
“They didn’t just throw him down, they beat the hell out of him. And you can’t do that.”
Cops tend to stick up for one another.
But at Wawa’s Seafood Shack last May these Athens cops knew something didn’t look right.
“Why am I putting cuffs on? For what?” Joshua Davis said.
“Because he’s intoxicated.” Brian Myers said.
“I’m not intoxicated,” Jason Jones said.
“You’re just detained. You’re not under arrest right now,” Joshua Davis said.
Trinidad Police Chief Bryan Miers and his son were customers at the bar and called Athens Police at 6:30 that night to arrest a guy sitting at the bar near them.
Miers told the bartender to cut the guy off then he pulled him outside the restaurant.
And he had help from his son Rowdy Miers, an officer with the Freestone County Sheriff’s Department at the time.
Chief Miers apparently didn’t want anyone to see what was going to happen next.
“They said he told them to say the fuck out of his way, he’s got this, and then slammed the door, and that’s when they heard some banging against the building,” Matthew Halbert said.
But there was a witness, an outside security camera that captured all of this.
“So all you see is Rowdy and two others grabbing by the arms and forcing him behind his back. And Rowdy has the back of his head and leans it down and knees him right in the forehead,” Davis said.
And Athens cops were hearing a much different story from folks inside the bar, the guy beaten up was a regular there.
Had been there all afternoon with friends.
In 5 hours he only had 3 drinks and a chicken salad.
“Was he being any kind of a problem?” Matthew Halbert said.
“Not at all.”
“And do you know if he was banging on doors or walls?” Matthew Halbert said.
“Not at all.”
Chief Miers and his son Rowdy, well they were the only ones saying Jason Jones was really causing a scene.
“Things aren’t lining up based upon 20 people in here versus two stories,” Officer Matthew Halbert said.
Jason Jones told officers Miers had a personal vendetta against him, because he had a run-in with Miers’ brother in the past. Don’t you just love small towns?
“And based on the video, he’s not doing anything wrong,” Matthew Halbert said.
“And Chief Miers, well he had a bit of a reputation already,” Dolcefino told the camera.
“This isn’t the first time. They were at another establishment in Trinidad. Same thing happened, and this guy said it was one of his buddies that came with him that Miers beat the hell out of. They had to call the ambulance,” Matthew Halbert said.
Jason Jones wasn’t arrested that night, instead the cops were ready to charge the chief with a crime.
“Are you interested or did you want to press charges?” Matthew Halbert said.
“Oh, I absolutely do,” Jason Jones said.
“Okay, at any point during that night, did he ever identify himself, show you a badge or ID card?” Robert Poteet said,
“Not to me,” Jason Jones said.
“It pisses me off now, but at the time I was like, I already knew what it was probably about. My opinion is because of me and his brother,” Jason Jones said.
Two months later a judge signed arrest warrants for Bryan Miers and Rowdy Miers.
Both were charged with assault causing bodily injury, unlawful restraint, and official oppression.
“But was the fix in, because Miers had a friend in the county attorney’s office, they would decide if the police chief was prosecuted. That friend, the county attorney himself, Clint Davis,” Dolcefino told the camera.
“Brian Myers and I have not been close personal friends. We’re not friends at any time,” Clint Davis said.
That’s funny, we found a court case from way back in 2010 where that very same Clint Davis recused himself from a civil case against Brian Myers, saying they were personal friends and he had a working relationship with Miers when he was a cop in Henderson County.
“I’m sure you’ve had friends that maybe you were friends with 10 years ago that you don’t ever see or are not acquainted with today,” Clint Davis said.
But Athens Police Chief Chad Allen apparently wasn’t buying it, he expected Davis to recuse himself from the case.
In an email he asked Davis, “When will you meet with the judge to request a special prosecutor for the case?”
Davis followed up saying he would have another prosecutor assigned, but he never did that.
Instead, the day after, Davis wrote the letter demanding the chief withdraw these arrest warrants, claiming there was insufficient evidence.
Despite some pretty compelling videotape that surely Davis has seen.
“And that’s why this appointment has become controversial, because instead of waiting four months to let folks decide who will be the new judge, Abbott decided he’d be the one to pick, right in the middle of the campaign,” Dolcefino told the camera.
We asked former County Attorney James Owen to react to the videotape, and the good old boy justice it seems to portray.
And he says a jury should have been allowed to decide whether those cops had broken the law they are sworn to uphold.
He’s the other Republican in the race for that judge job.
“You’re out of your jurisdiction, you’re in plain clothes, and you’re throwing people on the ground,” James Owen said.
When we first asked now Judge Davis about the Miers situation, he claimed he didn’t even remember it.
“I don’t know which case you’re referring to,” Clint Davis said.
But he clearly did remember it.
“I stand by the decision. I don’t have any regrets about it. I think we made the right decision. I don’t make those decisions. Sometimes I make the final decision,” Clint Davis said.
But all those lawyers work for Davis, that’s why a recusal here was a no-brainer.
“Now our corruption investigation merges with this political campaign,” Dolcefino told the camera.
Questions about Davis’ judgment that are emerging from this case, and will be a campaign issue, we’re told.
“He caters to his personal relationships in his decision making. In some very serious matters, that’s one reason he shouldn’t be a judge,” James Owen said.
In fact, Owens believes Davis stayed involved in this second Miers case because in 2019 the law about appointing special prosecutors had changed.
“You can’t pick someone with prosecution experience like you could in 2010. And elected prosecutors are serious about crime. He would have lost control, and he would have lost the ability to protect his childhood friend from these charges,” James Owen said.
And Brian Miers, well, he denies the fix was in too, that Davis really didn’t bail him out even though they were longtime friends.
“I’ve known him for a long time, and the County Attorney’s office, everybody, you know, they were, I didn’t have any conversations with anybody about it,” Brian Miers said.
But Davis had also ignored a chance to stop what sure sounds like a bad cop.
Before Miers was police chief in Trinidad, he was the police chief in Kerens in Navarro County.
He was arrested in 2019 for failing to appear in court on a subpoena, that quickly got excused as an oversight.
But three months later he was placed on administrative leave over allegations of workplace misconduct,
that prompted the Navarro County DA to go on Facebook and say that he doubted Miers’ integrity and moral character.
The D.A., William Dixon, wrote he would no longer call Chief to the witness stand.
Later that month, Chief Miers resigned from Kerens.
But he was still hired on in Trinidad.
He fired there too, after this beating incident caught on video, but that’s not the only reason.
Miers’ named in a lawsuit now against Henderson County for his treatment of a guy with muscular dystrophy. Miers saw his muscular jerking and apparently thought he was a gay drug addict, “trying to get his AIDS on him,” and allegedly pepper-sprayed the guy.
“Chief Myers is a bad cop, a dirty cop. That’s not what we should be looking at,” Clint Davis said.
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