Ex-lawyer's error reduces prison sentence 20 years for murder-for-hire
SonnyP...@ken.dfw.nul
have cooled so much THIS last time as a Deadbeat Daddy scum.
Ex-lawyer's error reduces prison sentence 20 years
By MELODY McDONALD and TRACI SHURLEY
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITERS
SIMPSONFORT WORTH -- When Rebecca Simpson woke up Friday morning, she
was on the front end of a 25-year prison sentence for hiring a hit man
to kill the wife of a former lover.
By midafternoon -- because of a mistake by her former defense attorney
-- Simpson's prison sentence was 20 years shorter.
State District Judge Bob Gill ruled Friday that Simpson's former
attorney, Ray Bass, failed to tell Simpson that prosecutors had
offered her five years in prison in exchange for pleading guilty
before her trial.
Gill granted Simpson a new trial and ruled that the plea offer still
stood.
Simpson and her new attorney, Jerry Loftin, wasted no time. Simpson
pleaded guilty to solicitation of capital murder and took the
five-year deal. Officials said she could be out in less than a year.
"Nobody could have created this bizarre story," Loftin said after the
hearing.
Bass did not return phone calls from his Austin office Friday
afternoon.
Prosecutor Christy Jack said it's unclear whether Bass will be
reprimanded for his conduct.
In June, a jury found Simpson, 44, guilty of trying to hire a hit man
to kill Shemane Watts, the wife of her former lover. The jury
sentenced her to 25 years in prison.
During the trial, Danny Watts, Simpson's former lover, testified that
he and Simpson began having an affair in 2000, shortly after she
started going to his Bridgeport gym.
He married Shemane Watts in 2003, but the affair with Simpson did not
end.
Jack and prosecutor Kim D'Avignon told jurors that Simpson went
looking for someone to harm Shemane Watts after she stood up to
Simpson at Danny Watts' gym. A small-town newspaper article about
their confrontation on a downtown sidewalk fed Simpson's rage.
Jurors saw a videotape of meetings between Simpson and an undercover
Texas Department of Public Safety officer in late October 2004. She
can be seen giving the officer $2,000 and telling him to slit Shemane
Watts' wrists to make her murder look like a suicide.
After the trial, Simpson claimed ineffective assistance of counsel,
saying Bass never told her that prosecutors had offered her five years
as a plea bargain. Simpson said she would have taken the deal.
Jack said Friday that she offered Simpson the deal after a meeting a
week before the trial with Simpson's teenage daughter. Jack said she
wanted to spare the girl from having to tell the jury what she knew
about her mother's affair and that her mother was planning to divorce
her father.
The girl's father, Ross Simpson, is a prominent Bridgeport attorney
whose office was a few doors down from Danny Watts' gym. He filed for
divorce soon after Simpson's arrest.
Jack said that Bass never told her Simpson would be willing to take a
prison sentence and that, on at least three occasions -- including
after she testified in her trial -- Bass asked Jack whether she would
consider offering Simpson probation.
"I don't believe for a moment that she would have ever entertained any
plea offer that would have involved a prison sentence," Jack said.
"She signed a contract on a house, paid for a $83,000 Mercedes in full
six weeks before the trial, and was planning to get married in Hawaii
after the trial was over.
"These are not the actions of someone preparing to go to prison."
Nevertheless, prosecutors were compelled by law to re-offer the deal
after the judge threw out the verdict because of Bass' "ineffective
assistance of counsel," Jack said.
Loftin, who was hired by Simpson after her trial, called the
prosecutors "honorable."
"Christy Jack and her associates are top-flight prosecutors," Loftin
said. "This happened to be an error by the defense attorney. The error
was committed by him -- not me and not them [the prosecutors].
"The results are exactly what should have happened. The judge followed
the law. A five-year prison sentence is no piece of cake in 106-degree
Texas. But we're very thankful."
Dana
SonnyP...@Ken.DFW.nul wrote:
> If only Dana shad hired her first defense attorney, his ass wouldn't
> have cooled so much THIS last time as a Deadbeat Daddy scum.
Lunatic ravings again from Ken.
Why don't you post up my record and show the studio audience just what
the fuck you're talking about hmmm? Go on, you know how to find
publicdata.com .... Go pull up some proof you jackass.
You have a lot in common with that guy Bates who got his ass kicked
last night.
SonnyP...@ken.dfw.nul
You have a lot in common with a wet dream.
Dana
So.... no proof of the allegations?
Typical
SonnyP...@ken.dfw.nul
A fool who throws death threats about like his son's underwear gets
the shakes all itchy and starts to sweat for some ... reasons.
Still, it's a good cork to use when your piehole gets too uppity, eh?
Sure shut you up for a couple of days running your fly trap. Too bad
this is a non-binary group, huh, Karla? You know exactly what I mean.
I didn't expect this would work like a choker collar on a mad dog.
:-)
Dana
Dude you make no sense at all, but that's nothing new.
But keep on with this shit about my son and see what happens. Nobody
has threatened you with death to my knowledge, but I promise you that
once I get ahold of you, you'll wish for it.
SonnyP...@ken.dfw.nul
Any time you want to eat your teeth as a last meal, drop on by pussy.
Dana
SonnyProB...@Ken.DFW.nul wrote:
> >Dude you make no sense at all, but that's nothing new.
> >But keep on with this shit about my son and see what happens. Nobody
> >has threatened you with death to my knowledge, but I promise you that
> >once I get ahold of you, you'll wish for it.
> Any time you want to eat your teeth as a last meal, drop on by pussy.
Where would you like to meet this time hmm?
Let's go
SonnyP...@ken.dfw.nul
Drop on by and step one toe inside. Step into the light.
SonnyP...@ken.dfw.nul
wrote:
>I am with you here. NO ONE gets my respect who brings people's
>family, especially kids into the discussion in a derogatory way.
>
>Sonny, don't act like Steve on this one.
>
>Ron
Don't forget, he is the one who makes death threats, celebrates when
others die of cancer. He's a two bit punk. If he didn't want
nothing, he wouldn't be starting something. Ron, while I've been all
nice, your pal hasn't been able to go one day for two or three weeks
without obsessing about me, accusing others of being me, acting like a
fucking smart ass. He can't flap his piehole AND want sympathy when
he gets his own medicine. My advise for him would be a hot cup of
STFU. You ignore his BS and give him sympathy when he gets his own
medicine. If you can't see that, you're the one acting like Steve.
SonnyP...@ken.dfw.nul
wrote:
>You two have been pushing each other's buttons so long, no one even
>knows where it really began.
>
>Dana came to this newsgroup as a complete ASS. That is history.
>
>Maybe you got jumped on when you came here unfairly. I didn't see it
>happen, because Dana had pushed me to the point where I had to leave
>more I was literally going to kill him.
>
>So don't tell me about Dana. Which of you is going to be man enough
>to quit back off?
>
>If you want to beat the man at something, here is your chance.
>
>You need to look at what has happened since the original skirmishes.
>
>He has changed a heck of a lot.
>
>You too, have become a lot better. I happen to enjoy a lot of what
>both of you are saying write now in the group.
>
>But this bull shit about each others wives and his kids has got to go.
>
>If you are going to fight a battle, at least have some sort of decent,
>self enforced ground rules.
>
>Ron
The fool makes death threats like you shift truck gears. As far as
reasoning with Dana, you don't reason with a terrorist. He's a bottom
feeder coward and you don't play fair with that kind of shit. Like
John Wayne said, "You send 'em to Hell." He wants what's coming to
release him from his pain of being him. I'll make him a deal with you
as referee: if he promises to shut up and never mention me by name or
indirectly either ever again, I'll let him go. If he keeps running
his mouth, you can cajole him to be Mr. Happy.
Fair enough? Now, either he shakes on it or he must lose respect in
your eyes.
I await your reply in the a.m.
Dana
SonnyP...@Ken.DFW.nul wrote:
> The fool makes death threats like you shift truck gears. As far as
> reasoning with Dana, you don't reason with a terrorist. He's a bottom
> feeder coward and you don't play fair with that kind of shit. Like
> John Wayne said, "You send 'em to Hell." He wants what's coming to
> release him from his pain of being him. I'll make him a deal with you
> as referee: if he promises to shut up and never mention me by name or
> indirectly either ever again, I'll let him go. If he keeps running
> his mouth, you can cajole him to be Mr. Happy.
You are so fucking full of shit, it must pour out of your ears.
Classic Ken crap, every word. In fact all these sentiments were
leveled at you in recent weeks almost word for word. That's how you
"debate" you fucking moron... twist and turn things around 180 degrees
and pray nobody notices.
Post proof of just one death threat from me to you. Just one.
You can't, because there were none, just as there was no promise by
Chris to post a map link to his front door. That shit was concocted in
your diseased mind. A psychology professor would have a field day
trying to figure you out, watchiing you run through your cycles and
personalities.
You were never addressed in ANY of these threads dating back for months
and months, I fucking DEFY you to post one where you were jumped first.
No no no, it's the other way around you blithering idiot. You'll use
someone's name in a subject line, or x-post endlessly using a forged
email like LordSnow777, you jump in on threads and say something shitty
then whine like a bitch about how unfairly you've been treated. You
talk all kinds of shit in other newsgroups that the regulars here don't
frequent but I do.
I guess you're hoping people here are stupid and won't see through your
bullshit.
You want to send me to hell, then step outside of your hidey hole and
go for it. But I'm advising you now to think it over long and hard,
because once you cross that Rubicon, there would be no backing off from
me again. No mercy for the fat fuck.
**********
And Ron, stop with the peacemaker routine please. It's never going to
work and the only thing that will shut Ken up is a bloody face. He
knows it, I know it, and everyone else knows it. By your own admission
you don't follow the group closely enough to see the origins of this
stuff any more, so that sorta counts you out as arbitrator. And I don't
think 10 posts go by where you don't mention our own past differences
and baseball bats, etc. so you too are obsessing on shit and need to
stop. Every time you mention the past it comes out as boasting... like
you're saying I'm lucky it didn't get that far. Perhaps it's you that
lucked out in that sense. At any rate, it doesn't make you the best
candidate for peace advocate, so please stop trying to intervene okay?
I appreciate the effort, but Ken is a brain damaged individual with
deeply disturbing psychological issues, and there's no escaping that
fact.
SonnyP...@ken.dfw.nul
wrote:
>On Mon, 21 Aug 2006 23:31:13 -0500, SonnyP...@Ken.DFW.nul wrote:
>
>>On Mon, 21 Aug 2006 23:20:51 -0500, Ron Johnson <bug...@airmail.net>
>>wrote:
>>
>>>On Mon, 21 Aug 2006 23:08:17 -0500, SonnyP...@Ken.DFW.nul wrote:>
>
><snip>
>
>>> If you can't see that, you're the one acting like Steve.
>
>
>My reference about Steve was the way he baited me by referring to
>raping my daughter to try to make one of his sick points. You just
>don't drag people's kids into something. You keep pushing that button
>and I won't care if he (Dana, does go to pounding on you again.
>>>
><snipped my own stuff>
That would be a very fatal mistake on his part but he is too much of a
coward to ever show up for a fight on his own on equal footing. He
has so much confidence in his Rambo self, he always has to cheat and
have a cheater's edge.
>
>>>If you are going to fight a battle, at least have some sort of decent,
>>>self enforced ground rules.
>>>
>>>Ron
>>
>>The fool makes death threats like you shift truck gears. As far as
>>reasoning with Dana, you don't reason with a terrorist. He's a bottom
>>feeder coward and you don't play fair with that kind of shit. Like
>>John Wayne said, "You send 'em to Hell." He wants what's coming to
>>release him from his pain of being him. I'll make him a deal with you
>>as referee: if he promises to shut up and never mention me by name or
>>indirectly either ever again, I'll let him go. If he keeps running
>>his mouth, you can cajole him to be Mr. Happy.
>>
>>Fair enough? Now, either he shakes on it or he must lose respect in
>>your eyes.
>>
>>I await your reply in the a.m.
>>
>
>This is not MY deal. What do you expect him to do? What can he
>expect YOU to do?
>
>Geeze! Why not just ignore each other?
>
>Ron
You know Ron, when I read a roaring Jackass like Dana braying all
kinds of shit, maybe I should do like 99% of everyone else does on the
Internet and in real life: simply ignore him. What the fuck?
SonnyP...@ken.dfw.nul
wrote:
>I didn't mean it to come across as some personal victory over you,
>sorry.
>
>Anyway, screw it. You two are going to fight as long as there are
>Israelis and Islamics, Republicans and Democrats, George Bush, and
>Character.
>
>Good luck though, from my heart, whatever happens.
>
>Ron
Nothing will happen because Dana would have to have his official
driver, official photographer, official audience, and reams of
computer printout to blubber his lower lip about.
SonnyP...@ken.dfw.nul
Show up here or shut up you pussy. You don't have the balls.
Dana
Ron Johnson wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Aug 2006 04:00:17 -0500, SonnyP...@Ken.DFW.nul wrote:
>
> >On Mon, 21 Aug 2006 23:47:34 -0500, Ron Johnson <bug...@airmail.net>
> >wrote:
> >
> >>On Mon, 21 Aug 2006 23:31:13 -0500, SonnyP...@Ken.DFW.nul wrote:
> >>
> >>>On Mon, 21 Aug 2006 23:20:51 -0500, Ron Johnson <bug...@airmail.net>
> >>>wrote:
> >>>
> >>>>On Mon, 21 Aug 2006 23:08:17 -0500, SonnyP...@Ken.DFW.nul wrote:>
> >>
> >><snip>
> >>
> >>>> If you can't see that, you're the one acting like Steve.
> >>
> >>
> >>My reference about Steve was the way he baited me by referring to
> >>raping my daughter to try to make one of his sick points. You just
> >>don't drag people's kids into something. You keep pushing that button
> >>and I won't care if he (Dana, does go to pounding on you again.
> >>>>
> >><snipped my own stuff>
> >
> >That would be a very fatal mistake on his part but he is too much of a
> >coward to ever show up for a fight on his own on equal footing. He
> >has so much confidence in his Rambo self, he always has to cheat and
> >have a cheater's edge.
> Hard to say. I have pondered who the guy really is many times and if
> he really has what it takes to carry on like that away from the
> keyboard.
Really? Hate to break it to ya but none of you cross my mind when away
from the newsgroup. I don't obsess over you or Erica or Ric or Dash
Ron or Jerry or Ken or anyone. The fact that you do says something I
think.
One of the things that used to crack Debi up was the misconceptions
built up around me based on my postings. She used to catch me doing
something fatherly or whatever and grin and say "Big bad Dana.. if they
only knew you"
> But it doesn't matter. I no longer have the anger to want to play
> that game. He lost all of the respect of the group between that, and
> just basically continuing to cheer for a team that everyone knows is
> corrupt and Un American.
When I post, I'm not neccessarily looking for respect. I'm just
chatting in a really slow format.
> He is beaten. That is why I compare discussions with him to pulling
> the wings off of flies.
Say what?
Nevermind the ridiculous "beaten" comment, but this comment suggests
that you feel that you are somehow superior either in humor,
information, politics, intellect, or argument/debate skills. Sorry but
I don't see you as superior in any of those areas.
In fact, I often find your reading comprehension ability to be slightly
lacking, as was the case with the infamous question posed by Steve. And
here you are placating a lunatic with numerous responses to only his
posts last night, which again, taints your ability to act as a neutral
3rd party peacemaker.
> >You know Ron, when I read a roaring Jackass like Dana braying all
> >kinds of shit, maybe I should do like 99% of everyone else does on the
> >Internet and in real life: simply ignore him. What the fuck?
> 99999999999999999999999999999.99999999 percent of the people online
> ignore me too. This is good, I don't have time to communicate with
> them all.
Nobody ignores me here on this newsgroup, that's a fallacy. The fact
that not everyone responds to discussions I participate in doesn't mean
they are ignoring it. Some are just more selective about where and
when they chime in. Ken Conner for example. Ric for example. And
just today, Patrick gives another fine example.
But in oh-so-typical projection style, I have a feeling that many many
many of Ken Martin's posts are ignored by a great number of people.
Look at how many single posts he's made in the last 3 months with ZERO
responses.
Dana
Ron Johnson wrote:
> Sorry
"Shit negro, that's all you had to say!" - Jules "Pulp Fiction"
Dana
Ron Johnson wrote:
> Right there, above, that should have been snipped too. Then it would
> have made sense. I must remember to have coffee before net.
> My bad, for real.
Understood.
Dana
Ron Johnson wrote:
> other day as you are about to say when I tell you I haven't seen that
> movie.
Umm... that movie is over 11 years old : )
Back when it came out, computers were "high speed" if you had a 486
DX266 processor or one of the newfangled Pentium P90s and 16 megs of
EDO RAM, a 4 meg video card, 4x CDROM drive, 1GB hard drive, and a 28.8
baud modem.