Travis Morgan - Texas Scorecard Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, I guess not to Leah Cornelio. It considers herself
not just a judge, but also a jury, and in
this case, she's not the least been interested in being
an executioner. She's trying to help a Texas Death Row
inmate by lying in order to help him in his
particular case. She's been reprimanded now by the state, but

(00:23):
all that really is is a slap on the wrist.
And like they used to say in school, we're going
to put this on your permanent record. Right, it goes
on her permanent record, I guess, But will that make
any difference from reelection time? Let's talk to Travis Morgan.
He wrote a story about this for Texas Scorecard. Welcome
to the show, Travis. I have to wonder how often

(00:45):
this happens. Is this an unusual event, do you think?
Or does this happen more often than we usually find
out about because if it weren't for the family members
in this case, the state would have never known this happen. Right.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Well, in regard to judges actually making fake court dates
transfer prisoners, I don't know about that. That's it's the
first time I've heard of this. But she did blame
her staffers for using a general template form that they
fill out as if it's standard procedure, and now she's
gonna make sure she oversees the process better to ensure

(01:17):
this never happens again, which does concern people that maybe
this is something that has happened before. But in regards
to the State Commission on Judicial Conduct, just publicly reprimanding
judges who have done terrible things, that is very common.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
Yeah, and very very common, in particular here in Harris County.
She's by far not the only judge who's who's doing
things like this. In fact, there are some judges that
are much more in your face than she is when
you get right down to it that you know, we
have the no cash bail problem. It's such a big
problem in Harris County. We had we had to get to,
you know, something on the ballot and that we're all

(01:54):
going to vote on on Tuesday, right.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yeah, and judged Italia Cornelio. So she is very political.
She is just one of many activist judges that is
something that really needs to be looked out for during
election season. Even on her website from her election, it
civil rights attorney who is specifically representing families separated at
the US Mexico border under former President Trump's zero tolerance

(02:21):
family separation policy. That's straight from her website and representing
specifically communities of color disproportionately impacted by our justice system.
It is just very typical Democrat political talking points and
her election bid, and so it shouldn't be particularly surprising
that she's taking such a criminal justice stance in the courtroom.

(02:43):
But here she's clearly breaking the law and undermining trust
in the state judiciary.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
Well, like I said, the state is giving her a
reprimand that's not going to make a whole heck of
a lot of difference. Most people voting won't even know
that she got to reprimand they won't bother to investigate that.
I don't know how many people bother to investigate what
her track record is, what she stands for as far
as voting forward to begin with. But when is she
up for reelection?

Speaker 2 (03:06):
That would be twenty twenty eight, And I guess the
bigger picture here, what's supposed to come of such public
reprimands is that an opponent can bring it up during
a campaign. The public may not be aware of it, certainly,
and less that happens, but I guess our goal in
the media is to let people know when such actions

(03:26):
are taken, so hopefully it is in the public psyche
at least a little bit.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
Well. As crime continues to be a problem, I remain
hopeful that people will put more attention and more detail
into who they're voting for for judges, so that we
can get this problem behind us, because until we start
making changes in our voting patterns on who we're putting
on the bench, this will continue.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
Absolutely. And something people like to say in the legal
community is that you really only get one chance in court. Right.
We vote on these politicians, we can re elect them,
and they can change policies. But if you're brought into
the courtroom, you're in the crisis, you're sitting before a judge,
you really only get one shot. So whoever is the
judge at that time, that's all you get.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
That's true. Travis Morgan, thank you, appreciate it. That's Travis
Morgan from Texas Scorecard.