As noted in earlier posts here and here, U.S. District Judge Vanessa Gilmore of Houston is currently presiding over a rather ugly criminal case in Houston against against three people accused in the deaths of 19 illegal immigrants who were being smuggled into this country in the back of a blistering hot trailer.
As noted in the earlier posts, Judge Gilmore and the prosecution have not been getting along very well during the course of this prosecution. After Judge Gilmore’s earlier threat to hold the prosecutors in contempt of court for failing to divulge internal Justice Department deliberations regarding the decision to seek the death penalty against one of the defendants, the prosecution filed a writ of mandamus (that’s like suing the judge) with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals requesting the appellate court to order Judge Gilmore, in effect, to quit jacking with the prosecution over communications that are clearly privileged. The Fifth Circuit agreed with the prosecution, and issued this pointy-edged 22 page opinion that, among other things, is clearly a rather sharp rebuke of Judge Gilmore’s treatment of the prosecution in the case.
On the heels of that dust-up, the Houston Chronicle ran this editorial last week on the matter that contains so many errors and misleading statements that it is questionable whether the author had even bothered reading the Fifth Circuit’s decision before writing the editorial. Kevin Whited over at blogHouston.net dissects the Chron editorial and, in so doing, establishes that the Chron editorial page is certainly not going to allow facts to get in the way of its political agenda.