Chapter 11

Earl Cabell of Kaufman County?

EVERYTHING THE SHERIFF had said to me came from the heart. I was touched by his sincerity and moved by his concerns. Ironically, not less than an hour later, Judge Tygrett wanted to discuss the District Attorney position with me.

“Judge?” Katie asked, as she placed her phone in the receiver. “That was Kelly.”

Kelly Blaine was Judge Tygrett’s Court Coordinator, who had the same functions as Katie. She also handled making most of his appointments.

I could hear Katie standing up in her office. Whatever she wanted to say, she didn’t want to be overheard by our informal system of yelling back and forth to each other. She popped her head into my chambers.

“Judge Tygrett wants to know if you are available this morning,” she said, smiling. “He only needs a few minutes.”

We both knew lawyers and judges never talked for a few minutes. Katie was good, I thought again for the hundredth time. We had been together long enough that she knew what to assume and what not to. She wasn’t sure if I wanted to get into a long conversation with Judge Tygrett.

I understood why.

My relationship with Judge Tygrett had always been friendly, but guarded. I suspected that he wanted to talk to me about seeking the governor’s appointment for district attorney, which was something I hadn’t yet shared with my staff. If I became the appointed DA, I unfortunately wouldn’t take Katie with me to the DA’s office because the office manager/administrative supervisor position was already filled. Firing people and bringing in your own staff under these circumstances would not be a good idea. Ideally, the new judge appointed after I vacated the position as judge would keep Katie on as the court coordinator. It would be the smart move.

I glanced at my watch. It was now 10:45.

“Don’t I have a couple of trial announcements set at 11?” I inquired, glancing up at Katie.

“You have exactly two trial announcements,” she said. “You had a contested motion to suppress, but they called in and asked to be taken off the docket. They worked out a plea.”

She knew cancelled hearings were a pet peeve of mine. Attorneys liked setting hearings, then cancelling them over the phone. Without a court managing the cases, the matters wouldn’t get rescheduled and then cases languished without a new setting. This resulted in court delays, clogged dockets, and general inefficiency.

“Judge, they are coming in this afternoon and signing the pass slip,” Katie smoothly interjected. “They are set in May on a Thursday court docket. And the defendant will have all his court costs and fine the day of the plea.”

She had that smug look. Her expression said, I got this.

“Well, tell Judge Tygrett I’ve got time after the docket,” I said. “It should go quick. About 11:30.”

“I could always tell him you have a contested motion to suppress, if you want me to—” Katie said, with a devilish smile.

“I’m fine,” I said. “No reason to put him off. I’m sure he has something he wants to tell me.”

I pushed back from my desk and headed into the courtroom to finish up my morning court docket.

“HEAR ME OUT, Judge,” Judge Tygrett began.

He sat in my office, across the desk from me, with his legs stretched out. He clasped his hands around his generous midsection.

I looked up at him. Although he was a few months younger than the sheriff, he could not be more different. Sheriff was slim and walked upright, always seemingly with purpose. Judge Tygrett’s hair was totally white and even though he worked on reducing his girth, he was still portly and slow gaited.

I fought the urge to check my phone or glance at the notes on my desk. As he began speaking, I gave him my full attention.

“When President Kennedy was killed …” he said.

I’m sure my eyes widened a bit because I had no idea where this conversation was going. President Kennedy was killed in 1963 in Dallas. It was a fateful point in history and the year I was born, but it had nothing to do with the events happening in Kaufman County in 2013.

“Were you born yet?” he said, interrupting himself.

“Yes sir,” I said. ”I was about six months old.”

Because of its historical significance, it was a question Baby Boomers often asked younger people when they recounted where they were when they received the news of President Kennedy’s assassination. My friends’ answers were much like mine—either we were not born yet or were only months old. We had no memory besides what we had read in our history books and had learned from our elders.

Now that I was more mature, I could relate to my Baby Boomer friends. Generation X had a similar disconnect with the younger generation of Millennials, with more recent events of national significance, like the Challenger explosion, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the terrorist attacks of September 11.

Judge Tygrett circled back to his original point, moving his clasped hands from his midsection to behind his head, but keeping my gaze.

“My point”—he paused, his mind traveling more than fifty years back to those fateful events—“is that when President Kennedy was killed—for those of us that remember,” he said, “I remember: I was clerking for Judge Estes.”

Judge Estes was a US Federal Judge who served in the Northern District of Texas actively from 1955 to 1972. Howard Tygrett had been a law clerk for Judge Estes upon graduation from SMU Law School, an experience he fondly recalled from fifty years before. The Judge had been Howard Tygrett’s hero and mentor.

“It was a terrible time for the citizens of the City of Dallas,” Judge Tygrett said. “People were stunned. The national attention was overwhelming, but after the media left, we were left with our shame.”

He lowered his voice.

It was hard to imagine that almost fifty years later, his voice still shook as he recounted those terrible days. Remarkably, he still felt the pain of a fifty-year-old wound.

“Do you know who Earl Cabell is?” he asked, interrupting my reverie.

“No, I don’t,” I said.

My mind was beginning to wander and I was starting to get annoyed with the Q&A session, along with the history lesson, that to me was going nowhere. I glanced at my watch. It was 11:45 and my stomach was rumbling. In the midst of my frustration, I realized that Judge Tygrett was waiting for my answer. I focused on his question, and it suddenly came to me. The Earl Cabell building was the name of the federal courthouse where my husband worked.

“The federal building,” I mumbled. “It’s named the Earl Cabell Federal Building.”

“Exactly!” he said, warming to his subject. “Earl Cabell was the mayor of Dallas during the Kennedy assassination. It was dark days for us. It didn’t matter if you were Republican or Democrat. The president was assassinated here in our hometown, but Earl Cabell led us through that time as mayor.”

Now I understood.

Judge Tygrett was drawing a comparison between what happened in Dallas fifty years ago and the assassinations of Mark, Mike, and Cynthia.

He leaned forward, never dropping his gaze. He was serious.

“We need an Earl Cabell right now in Kaufman County,” he said. “You could be that person.”

I had never taken Judge Tygrett’s urging seriously about seeking the appointment for district attorney. I always thought his motivation was personal, not professional.

After all, he had certainly heard the rumor circulating around the courthouse that I was intending on running against him to be judge of the 86th District Court. In truth, it wasn’t a rumor. It was fact. It had been a hard choice. Running against an incumbent and a colleague is never an easy decision, even if I thought I could do a better job.

We also all knew that Judge Tygrett would be seventy-four years old in 2014, turning seventy-five soon after the 2015 term began. The Texas Legislature caps the age for judges at seventy-five years old, unless the judge is already on the bench. In that case, someone of that age or older could finish out an existing term.

In the past, I had known a handful of good judges who’d turned seventy-five in the middle of their elected terms and were ousted before the term was complete. I didn’t believe that the intent of the Legislature was to have a judge reach his or her seventy-fifth birthday after they began their terms, but like all good legislation, there were always loopholes.

If I received the District Attorney appointment, I would have to run for reelection in 2014 for that position, not for judge of the 86th District Court. If he had his way, my new best friend and self-proclaimed historian who sat opposite my desk would hold tight to his current position, but I began to wonder—did it really matter anymore? Today we had a new set of facts, and political fortunes were like that. A day could be a lifetime. And the political landscape had changed.

“I didn’t know Earl Cabell’s story,” I said. “I had always assumed he had been some famous federal judge from back in the day.”

I stood up to end the meeting. It was almost noon. I extended my hand.

“Thank you for sharing that story, Howard” I said, feeling generous. “I appreciate it and your kind comparison, but I don’t think I’m deserving of it. That’s quite a compliment.”

He returned the smile, again asked me to truly consider the appointment, and then left my chambers.

Certainly I didn’t know Judge Tygrett’s true motivation, but he was totally sincere in how he felt about the past and the present in Kaufman County. After speaking to him, my notion of his motivations felt petty because I knew that what he had recounted about Earl Cabell was heartfelt. Being compared to a mayor that helped bring Dallas out of the “dark day of shame” was flattering. I had to admit that Judge Tygrett had just done one of his best closing arguments.