Lawyer Vanessa A. Gonzalez decided the embarrassment of getting arrested for drunk driving should exempt a prosecutor from publicity
Austin – The Office of the Texas Attorney General issued the opinion that though an attorney retained by the General Counsel of Baylor University reads the pubic information act a certain way, they are still obliged to release the basic information on the arrest for drunk driving of a prosecutor who handles numerous DWI cases.
An opinion issued in June states that certain information that would interfere with the detection of crime is indeed excepted, as well as highly personal information that would embarrass a defendant accused of a crime. However, the basic information about an alleged crime and the person arrested for that crime is a matter of public record.
Ms. Gonzalez, who is representing the Baylor Police Department for the Austin firm of Bickerstaff, Heath, Delgado, Acosta, LLP, stalled until August.
One wonders what they teach the students at the School of Journalism at Baylor University.
Now, kiddies, this is called the headline, and this is the picture, and what you write under it is called the cutline because back in the old days, pictures were produced from half-tone engravings cut into sheets of lead and antimony, and what you wrote underneath…etc.
But if an alumnus of our law school who sends folks to the pen for drunk driving gets busted on campus for the same thing, well, that’s EMBARRASSING and we don’t have to air our dirty linen in public because, after all, if it weren’t for this august bastion of education, Waco would basically consist of a truck stop, and…Well, you know the drill.
As you know, Kristen Parker of the McLennan Criminal District Attorney’s Office got busted for driving drunk, and it’s a very, very big deal.
Oh, yeah.