This tip comes from a reader.
Rusk, TX:
The local newspapers will not report the probation violation of a registered sex offender caught out of state. Another homegrown Rusk, TX pedophile recommended for probation by the Cherokee County district attorney’s office has traveled out of the county and again placed people at risk. According to a reader's tip, James Christopher Schlater, 53, was captured by authorities in Santa Clara County, California and transferred back to the Rusk jail where he quietly awaits his recommencing in Cherokee County, Texas. The victim of his original probated sex offense in Rusk is verified as a 6-year old female according to the Online TXDPS Sex Offender Registry.
James Schlater is currently incarcerated in the Rusk, TX jail where his probation violation is being whitewashed and ignored by the local media for the simple fact that Schlater’s re-offense makes Cherokee County’s ingrained corrupt criminal justice system look bad. They also won't report how in-laws of the District Attorney’s staff work side-by-side while relatives are placed directly on jury panels.
James C. Schlater, courtesy Homefacts.com/TXDPS
Texas Penal Code, Section 21.02- Continuous Sexual Abuse of a Young Child or Children (h) An offense under this section is a felony of the first degree, punishable by imprisonment in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for life, or for any term of not more than 99 years or less than 25 years.
Cherokee County jury trials are for show. They are an opportunity to have local newspapers publish quotes of deliberate lies spun about existing legal statutes and to grandstand the corruption of all participants. The Tyler Paper and Jacksonville Daily Progress report Timothy Ray Hill, Sr. , 50, was recently convicted of molesting a 13-year old female over a 3 year period and sentenced to only 15 years in TDCJ.
Corrupt little Cherokee County gets to have it both ways and they are going to report it as such. There is a decades old criminal mentality that permeates the county’s justice system and local media’s reporting protocol.
Sec. 12.33. SECOND DEGREE FELONY PUNISHMENT. (a) An individual adjudged guilty of a felony of the second degree shall be punished by imprisonment in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for any term of not more than 20 years or less than 2 years. (b) In addition to imprisonment, an individual adjudged guilty of a felony of the second degree may be punished by a fine not to exceed $10,000. (Source: Texas Penal Code, Title 3, Chapter 12, Subchapter A)
There is no statute of limitations for sexual assault crimes under the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure Title 1 Chapter 12. However, if the Penal Code had been properly applied (and reported) in the Timothy Hill, Sr. case, the predator would have been sentenced to no less than 25 years concurrent for the continuous sexual abuse of a child. What is the efficacy of lying in print and misleading the public on Penal Codes and Statutes that are easily accessible other than to promote a corrupt solidarity between the Rusk, TX courthouse and local newspapers? Timothy Ray Hill, Sr. was convicted under ‘Apples’ but sentenced under ‘Oranges.’
If the facts don’t fit the story, change the facts.
Cherokee County newspapers have been spin doctoring their reports for decades. Take the recent Alto, Texas high school coach who recently pleaded to 10 years probation for having an improper teacher/student relationship with a female high schooler in the Elementary School gymnasium - a second degree felony in Texas. Kith and kin at the Cherokeean newspaper quickly came to the rescue by deliberately reporting the age of the convicted Alto ISD faculty member to be 29, instead of his actual age of 39. That’s the story they want printed, that the victim was of the age of consent and that their local coach was 10 years younger than he really is. No retraction and no corrections are necessary for the same old blue-haired biddies assigned to endear the county by publishing ‘their version of events’ to soften the blow of outside scrutiny. They take their cues directly from a district attorney’s office who offers slap on the wrist plea bargains to child rapists and who openly perjures all the way to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
Cherokee County media deliberately bury unsavory stories that make the county look bad. Especially those events and arrests of family members connected to the Rusk, TX courthouse. Whether it is the recidivate former Rusk, TX jailer facing parole revocation hearings after multiple DUIs or the arrests of the Rusk, TX dentist for escalating domestic violence involving a gun, the biddies quickly disconnect themselves from their incarcerated social network buddies after word spreads outside the county. Family-connected reporters conveniently misspell their jailed allies' names to throw everyone off the trail.
Cherokee County is safe haven for recidivists directly connected to the Sheriff’s Department and District Attorney. Those familial bums arrested outside of the county quickly return to hometown Cherokee County for their Adult Probation and Supervision. They are given free rein to roam around and re-offend in order to snitch for the D.A. and Sheriff’s offices. For playing the jailhouse stoolie, they can be arrested once, twice, three and four times; up to the point they kill someone, as drug informant Michael Harris (who eventually murdered his ex-wife after multiple arrests and bail violations). With one phone call to neighboring counties, these entities can have their confidential informants released, Blue Warrants pulled and charges reduced if not entirely dropped. There will be a few uncooperative sacrificial lambs sentenced to TDCJ for the newspapers to periodically report. As stated earlier, usually the statute of limitations have either run out OR the sentencing does not meet the Texas Penal Code. To make matters worse, the Cherokee County courts will release known drug users such as Michael Harris and Brandon Robertson who corroborate information from law enforcements’ illegal telephone taps. Deputies listen to and record phone conversations 24/7 for the district attorney’s office in collaboration with these rapists and murderers.
They will set free a parole violator caught with a gun and crystal meth such as Brandon Robertson (who killed a DPS trooper two weeks later) who brings drug money into the county. They will completely fabricate stories and court hearings to cover up their appointed Precinct 3 Constable Randall Thompson driving to the Mexican border to purchase methamphetamines for distribution throughout the county. Yet the same corrupt court will incarcerate the likes of harmless Robert Fox for 9 months in solitary confinement before his pre-trial, simply because he filed a Federal Civil Rights complaint against them. The Tyler TV station that covers Thompson’s stomping grounds in Jacksonville interviewed the convicted constable on his way to work. Not to mention the certified mail Randall Thompson picked up and signed for as agent of the district court.
The local media jumps on the D.A.’s bandwagon when innocent citizens are falsely accused, but they can’t stand it when readers see in print the criminal activity of their elected officials’ family members. They have formed a symbiotic bond from decades of cronyism and they believe it is their duty to repeat the lies. It impresses them that the District Attorney and his cronies can violate the US Constitution at will, and nothing is done about it. In their minds it is not illegal if the district attorney’s office is doing it. And the District Attorney makes sure they feel as if they are contributing to the greater good, by enforcing the propaganda.
They also believe if it is in writing in the paper or printed in the court record, then that’s the story they're sticking with. For example, the Daily Progress has never retracted any story or lie that Constable Randall Thompson was a complete no-show for his district court duties, prior to his federal drug indictment. All it would take is a one sentence correction buried in the classified section; however they stick to their collective story no matter how ludicrous. Like clockwork before pretrial (and Black History month), Randall Thompson’s replacement in the Confederate district court has the Rusk and Jacksonville newspapers print the Civil War Revisited for Dummies. Luckily for readers outside the region, the Tyler Morning Telegraph has on their staff new reporters who challenge the cultist pre-Reconstruction mentality of the Cherokee County newspapers.
A recent Texas Monthly article “When DAs Attack!” highlights the corrupt mentality permeating the East Texas judicial system. Smith County is the target of the critical exposé but the same is applicable to neighboring Cherokee County. In the now overturned Smith County “Mineola Sex Ring” case and Patrick Kelly conviction, the Houston Court of Appeals found that:
Other defendants in the "Mineola Sex Ring" have been found guilty and face retrial because of the way the cases have been handled by Smith County authorities (Source: KCEN). The Kerry Max Cook fiasco is another well-published example of East Texas prosecutorial misconduct. Cook was framed by Smith County officials and sat on death row for 20 years until exonerated with the help of DNA evidence. After multiple retrials, Smith County prosecutors offered Cook a never before “No-Contest” plea bargain for murder.
If these reported egregious acts of judicial misconduct are happening in large East Texas cities such as Tyler, TX, imagine what goes on in the small towns where news is buried to protect the area’s ability to make money. And local reporters are afraid of the consequences of printing anything critical of their elected officials. To the unreported south, Cherokee County’s versions of unethical acts and judicial bias occur during the plea bargain process. Indigent defendants are railroaded by the district attorney’s office, working in tandem with court appointed attorneys, to blindly accept an undisclosed sentence for pleading Guilty in front of the judge. If they don’t waste the court’s time and roll the dice, defendants may get a slap-on-the-wrist 'Sweetheart of a Deal'. If the county is in desperate need of a sacrificial lamb, the court will violate the letter of the law and impose over-the-top prison terms with the hopes the Tyler Court of Appeals will rubberstamp the sentence.
Cherokee County court officials get to play God in their corrupt little world where their buddies in the newspapers shunt their activities from outside scrutiny. In the outside world, prosecutors and bonafide defense attorneys present written and agreed upon plea bargains to the judge, who then either accepts or denies the reduced sentence. Honorable court officials do not risk having wasteful mistrials and remands from higher courts. Cherokee County turns the judicial process into an egotistical crap game.
With every report of sentenced sex offenders and drug users in Cherokee County newspapers, there are multitudes more local probationers whose supervision fees enrich county coffers. This backwoods ego game in turn bolsters the D.A.’s primary motivation for recommending probation for heinous crimes, instead of prison. Cherokee County reporters know if those ignored offenders are jailed, those lawbreakers don’t pay into the county treasury. Those families and businesses out of the region contemplating moving into the Den of Iniquity should understand the sadistic satisfaction these cliques get in promulgating their takedown wolfpack mentality against the likes of Robert Fox, et al while harboring criminals in their midst.
Rusk, TX:
The local newspapers will not report the probation violation of a registered sex offender caught out of state. Another homegrown Rusk, TX pedophile recommended for probation by the Cherokee County district attorney’s office has traveled out of the county and again placed people at risk. According to a reader's tip, James Christopher Schlater, 53, was captured by authorities in Santa Clara County, California and transferred back to the Rusk jail where he quietly awaits his recommencing in Cherokee County, Texas. The victim of his original probated sex offense in Rusk is verified as a 6-year old female according to the Online TXDPS Sex Offender Registry.
James Schlater is currently incarcerated in the Rusk, TX jail where his probation violation is being whitewashed and ignored by the local media for the simple fact that Schlater’s re-offense makes Cherokee County’s ingrained corrupt criminal justice system look bad. They also won't report how in-laws of the District Attorney’s staff work side-by-side while relatives are placed directly on jury panels.
James C. Schlater, courtesy Homefacts.com/TXDPS
Texas Penal Code, Section 21.02- Continuous Sexual Abuse of a Young Child or Children (h) An offense under this section is a felony of the first degree, punishable by imprisonment in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for life, or for any term of not more than 99 years or less than 25 years.
Cherokee County jury trials are for show. They are an opportunity to have local newspapers publish quotes of deliberate lies spun about existing legal statutes and to grandstand the corruption of all participants. The Tyler Paper and Jacksonville Daily Progress report Timothy Ray Hill, Sr. , 50, was recently convicted of molesting a 13-year old female over a 3 year period and sentenced to only 15 years in TDCJ.
Timothy Ray Hill, Sr. courtesy Tyler Paper The Jacksonville Daily Progress reports the Hill sentencing:
According to Cherokee County First Assistant District Attorney Rachel Patton, sexual assault and indecency with a child by sexual contact are punishable by two to 20 years in prison and a fine not to exceed $10,000. (Source: Jacksonville Daily Progress, Feb. 28, 2011)Apparently the Jacksonville-based reporter is content being cited the punishment for Second Degree felonies, which Timothy Ray Hill, Sr. was sentenced under. However, Hill is reported to have committed a First Degree felony and only one case of sexual assault was filed by prosecutors in June 2010 (Source: Criminal Docket Case 17818, SEXUAL ASSAULT CHILD; THE STATE OF TEXAS vs HILL, TIMOTHY RAY, Filed 06/28/2010 - Disposition: 02/25/2011; 2nd District Court, District Clerk, Cherokee County, TX).
Corrupt little Cherokee County gets to have it both ways and they are going to report it as such. There is a decades old criminal mentality that permeates the county’s justice system and local media’s reporting protocol.
Sec. 12.33. SECOND DEGREE FELONY PUNISHMENT. (a) An individual adjudged guilty of a felony of the second degree shall be punished by imprisonment in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for any term of not more than 20 years or less than 2 years. (b) In addition to imprisonment, an individual adjudged guilty of a felony of the second degree may be punished by a fine not to exceed $10,000. (Source: Texas Penal Code, Title 3, Chapter 12, Subchapter A)
There is no statute of limitations for sexual assault crimes under the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure Title 1 Chapter 12. However, if the Penal Code had been properly applied (and reported) in the Timothy Hill, Sr. case, the predator would have been sentenced to no less than 25 years concurrent for the continuous sexual abuse of a child. What is the efficacy of lying in print and misleading the public on Penal Codes and Statutes that are easily accessible other than to promote a corrupt solidarity between the Rusk, TX courthouse and local newspapers? Timothy Ray Hill, Sr. was convicted under ‘Apples’ but sentenced under ‘Oranges.’
If the facts don’t fit the story, change the facts.
Cherokee County newspapers have been spin doctoring their reports for decades. Take the recent Alto, Texas high school coach who recently pleaded to 10 years probation for having an improper teacher/student relationship with a female high schooler in the Elementary School gymnasium - a second degree felony in Texas. Kith and kin at the Cherokeean newspaper quickly came to the rescue by deliberately reporting the age of the convicted Alto ISD faculty member to be 29, instead of his actual age of 39. That’s the story they want printed, that the victim was of the age of consent and that their local coach was 10 years younger than he really is. No retraction and no corrections are necessary for the same old blue-haired biddies assigned to endear the county by publishing ‘their version of events’ to soften the blow of outside scrutiny. They take their cues directly from a district attorney’s office who offers slap on the wrist plea bargains to child rapists and who openly perjures all the way to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
Cherokee County media deliberately bury unsavory stories that make the county look bad. Especially those events and arrests of family members connected to the Rusk, TX courthouse. Whether it is the recidivate former Rusk, TX jailer facing parole revocation hearings after multiple DUIs or the arrests of the Rusk, TX dentist for escalating domestic violence involving a gun, the biddies quickly disconnect themselves from their incarcerated social network buddies after word spreads outside the county. Family-connected reporters conveniently misspell their jailed allies' names to throw everyone off the trail.
Cherokee County is safe haven for recidivists directly connected to the Sheriff’s Department and District Attorney. Those familial bums arrested outside of the county quickly return to hometown Cherokee County for their Adult Probation and Supervision. They are given free rein to roam around and re-offend in order to snitch for the D.A. and Sheriff’s offices. For playing the jailhouse stoolie, they can be arrested once, twice, three and four times; up to the point they kill someone, as drug informant Michael Harris (who eventually murdered his ex-wife after multiple arrests and bail violations). With one phone call to neighboring counties, these entities can have their confidential informants released, Blue Warrants pulled and charges reduced if not entirely dropped. There will be a few uncooperative sacrificial lambs sentenced to TDCJ for the newspapers to periodically report. As stated earlier, usually the statute of limitations have either run out OR the sentencing does not meet the Texas Penal Code. To make matters worse, the Cherokee County courts will release known drug users such as Michael Harris and Brandon Robertson who corroborate information from law enforcements’ illegal telephone taps. Deputies listen to and record phone conversations 24/7 for the district attorney’s office in collaboration with these rapists and murderers.
They will set free a parole violator caught with a gun and crystal meth such as Brandon Robertson (who killed a DPS trooper two weeks later) who brings drug money into the county. They will completely fabricate stories and court hearings to cover up their appointed Precinct 3 Constable Randall Thompson driving to the Mexican border to purchase methamphetamines for distribution throughout the county. Yet the same corrupt court will incarcerate the likes of harmless Robert Fox for 9 months in solitary confinement before his pre-trial, simply because he filed a Federal Civil Rights complaint against them. The Tyler TV station that covers Thompson’s stomping grounds in Jacksonville interviewed the convicted constable on his way to work. Not to mention the certified mail Randall Thompson picked up and signed for as agent of the district court.
The local media jumps on the D.A.’s bandwagon when innocent citizens are falsely accused, but they can’t stand it when readers see in print the criminal activity of their elected officials’ family members. They have formed a symbiotic bond from decades of cronyism and they believe it is their duty to repeat the lies. It impresses them that the District Attorney and his cronies can violate the US Constitution at will, and nothing is done about it. In their minds it is not illegal if the district attorney’s office is doing it. And the District Attorney makes sure they feel as if they are contributing to the greater good, by enforcing the propaganda.
They also believe if it is in writing in the paper or printed in the court record, then that’s the story they're sticking with. For example, the Daily Progress has never retracted any story or lie that Constable Randall Thompson was a complete no-show for his district court duties, prior to his federal drug indictment. All it would take is a one sentence correction buried in the classified section; however they stick to their collective story no matter how ludicrous. Like clockwork before pretrial (and Black History month), Randall Thompson’s replacement in the Confederate district court has the Rusk and Jacksonville newspapers print the Civil War Revisited for Dummies. Luckily for readers outside the region, the Tyler Morning Telegraph has on their staff new reporters who challenge the cultist pre-Reconstruction mentality of the Cherokee County newspapers.
A recent Texas Monthly article “When DAs Attack!” highlights the corrupt mentality permeating the East Texas judicial system. Smith County is the target of the critical exposé but the same is applicable to neighboring Cherokee County. In the now overturned Smith County “Mineola Sex Ring” case and Patrick Kelly conviction, the Houston Court of Appeals found that:
“The record is rife with error … the trial court adopted ad hoc evidentiary rules that operated to assist the State in proving its case, while impeding appellant’s ability to defend himself.”As the Houston Court of Appeals said, “The trial court clearly abused its discretion,” i.e. the district judge in the case was not only openly supporting the district attorney’s weak and circumstantial case in front of the jury throughout the trial, the judge was making up judicial rules and ignoring evidentiary standards that proved the defense’s case. The Patrick Kelly case was remanded to Smith County and the original trial judge facing the complaints will preside over the retrial (Source: KLTV and Tyler Paper).
Other defendants in the "Mineola Sex Ring" have been found guilty and face retrial because of the way the cases have been handled by Smith County authorities (Source: KCEN). The Kerry Max Cook fiasco is another well-published example of East Texas prosecutorial misconduct. Cook was framed by Smith County officials and sat on death row for 20 years until exonerated with the help of DNA evidence. After multiple retrials, Smith County prosecutors offered Cook a never before “No-Contest” plea bargain for murder.
If these reported egregious acts of judicial misconduct are happening in large East Texas cities such as Tyler, TX, imagine what goes on in the small towns where news is buried to protect the area’s ability to make money. And local reporters are afraid of the consequences of printing anything critical of their elected officials. To the unreported south, Cherokee County’s versions of unethical acts and judicial bias occur during the plea bargain process. Indigent defendants are railroaded by the district attorney’s office, working in tandem with court appointed attorneys, to blindly accept an undisclosed sentence for pleading Guilty in front of the judge. If they don’t waste the court’s time and roll the dice, defendants may get a slap-on-the-wrist 'Sweetheart of a Deal'. If the county is in desperate need of a sacrificial lamb, the court will violate the letter of the law and impose over-the-top prison terms with the hopes the Tyler Court of Appeals will rubberstamp the sentence.
Cherokee County court officials get to play God in their corrupt little world where their buddies in the newspapers shunt their activities from outside scrutiny. In the outside world, prosecutors and bonafide defense attorneys present written and agreed upon plea bargains to the judge, who then either accepts or denies the reduced sentence. Honorable court officials do not risk having wasteful mistrials and remands from higher courts. Cherokee County turns the judicial process into an egotistical crap game.
With every report of sentenced sex offenders and drug users in Cherokee County newspapers, there are multitudes more local probationers whose supervision fees enrich county coffers. This backwoods ego game in turn bolsters the D.A.’s primary motivation for recommending probation for heinous crimes, instead of prison. Cherokee County reporters know if those ignored offenders are jailed, those lawbreakers don’t pay into the county treasury. Those families and businesses out of the region contemplating moving into the Den of Iniquity should understand the sadistic satisfaction these cliques get in promulgating their takedown wolfpack mentality against the likes of Robert Fox, et al while harboring criminals in their midst.
