► Attorney Verla Holland of Plano, TX; ethical gremlin |
Attorney Verla Holland of Plano, TX; ethical gremlin The state of Verla’s misconduct arose while she was sitting as a Collins County District Court judge. The murder case of Charles Dean Hood was assigned to Verla. Prosecutor Tom O’Connell was assigned to prosecute the murder case. During the time Verla and Tommy were assigned to the Hood murder case, they were involved in a sexual relationship. Despite this fact, Verla never offered to remove herself from the case even though this love affair constituted an egregious “conflict of interest.” Apparently, the University of Kentucky Law School didn’t offer instructions on “conflicts of interest” when Verla attended in the mid 1960s. It took nearly twenty years for Mr. Hood to discover the sexual relationship between Verla and Tommy and when he did he appealed his case to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. As expected, the court couldn’t find that the sexual affair rose to the level of a conflict of interest requiring Verla to remove herself from hearing the case. There were three judges who dissented from this asinine ruling. One plus for the Verla and her lover is that as upstanding Christians, they only had sex in the missionary style. Praise the Lord! As we speak (ca. July 2014), Verla practices at
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