HOUSTON CHRONICLE
March 10, 1991
Feazell tips lance at Dallas TV report
Ex-Waco DA back in court for libel suit
WACO – Flamboyant, theatrical Vic Feazell – the ex-prosecutor who gained national fame debunking a serial killer’s confessions and then beat a federal racketeering – has kept a low profile for 2 ½ years.
Now he’s back.
In a trial that starts here Monday, jurors will hear Feazell’s claims that a series of reports broadcast on a Dallas television station in June 1985 defamed him.
He’s seeking $36 million in damages from WFAA, its parent company, A.H. Belo corp. and reporter Charles Duncan.
The station, which was trying as late as last week to have the lawsuit thrown out of court, says it stands by the stories, which alleged kickbacks, questionable bookkeeping practices, preferential prosecution and petty animosity in Feazell’s office.
Feazell, 39, who resigned as McLennan County’s district attorney in 1988 after five stormy years in office, says the news reports misstated facts and were biased.
He denies all of the allegations in the stories.
Most of the principals in the trial were involved last week in preparations for jury selection and testimony or out of town, WFAA declined comment and none of the others – parties to the lawsuit and their attorneys – returned repeated calls to their offices.
Instead, the case can be gleaned from thousands of motions, letters, interrogatories, depositions, answers, petitions and writs on file here. It’s a long, convoluted paper trail that’s something of a legend in the district clerk’s office.
Documents with headings such as “Third Supplemental Answers to Plaintiff’s First Set of Interrogatories to Defendant A.H. Belo Corp.” make up most of the 2-foot-thick file, which fills 23 folders in the cramped records section.
The complicated lawsuit opens a window on the unorthodox world of Feazell.
The son of a Baptist preacher, Feazell took to the pulpit himself at age 12. His interest in religion continued as the family moved from his native Louisiana to New Mexico and finally to Leander, northwest of Austin, in the late 1960s.
He graduated from high school there in 1968 and worked a year as an Austin police officer. Then Feazell quit to go to Mary Hardin-Baylor College, working his way through school as a preacher at several area churches.
At Baylor Law School and upon graduation, Feazell was known to other students as a maverick. When he was picked for the mock jury litigation team – and honor to most students – he declined to join. And after he earned his law degree, he chose to open his own office rather than join an established law firm.
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