Tribune-Herald
April 17, 1991
Feazell had reputation as dishonest, judge says
By Tommy Witherspoon
Tribune-Herald staff writer
Even before former television reporter Charles Duncan came to Waco, Vic Feazell had a reputation for being a “DA who was on the take,” a federal judge said Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge Walter S. Smith Jr. of Waco testified at Feazell’s multimillion-dollar libel trial that rumors of the former McLennan County district attorney taking bribes to dismiss cases were circulating through legal circles in late 1984.
Duncan’s 10-part series on Feazell began airing on WFAA-TV, Channel 8 in Dallas in June 1985. Feazell is suing Duncan and the Belo Broadcasting Co., which owns Channel 8. He claims Duncan’s series was maliciously filled with inaccuracies.
Belo attorneys John McElhaney and Tom Leatherbury rested their case Tuesday afternoon after calling Smith, reading deposition excerpts from McLennan County court-at-law judges David Hodges and Mike Gassaway, and playing more Waco television news coverage about Feazell’s 1987 federal bribery trial in Austin.
Feazell’s attorney, Gary Richardson, rested his case after briefly recalling Duncan and Feazell as rebuttal witnesses and playing a December 1985 episode of “60 Minutes” that featured Feazell and Henry Lee Lucas.
The 19th State District Court jurors, who have heard almost six weeks of testimony in the suit, were told they probably will report back to court Thursday for closing statements from attorneys. The attorneys and visiting Judge James Meyers, who is presiding over the case, plan to spend most of today hammering out the court’s charge to the jury.
Feazell testified that he is seeking $63.5 million in the case, but he does not plan to seek damages for episode four and for an editorial commentary by Channel 8 anchorman Tracy Rowlett. The changes in trial strategy will decrease his damage claim by several million dollars.
In testimony Tuesday, Smith testified that Hodges told him in late September or early October 1984 of courthouse rumblings that certain lawyers were charging high fees and getting an unusually high number of cases dismissed.
He said he directed him to the FBI office and sent a memo to then-Assistant U.S. Attorney Jan Patterson, who eventually spearheaded the initial federal investigation into the allegations.
Smith said his note to Patterson told her of the allegations and instructed her to listen to what local lawyers could tell about the reports because “they were not kooks.”
When asked by McElhaney if Duncan’s broadcasts made Feazell’s reputation worse, “It didn’t make it any better.”
“It caused a lot more people to talk about what was going on. It is hard to quantify. It may have.
Channel 8 was reporting on what everybody was already talking about, essentially,” Smith said.
Feazell has claimed that bribery rumors did not begin to catch fire until after Duncan came to Waco in April 1985 to begin research for his series. Feazell contends that Duncan worked with Federal and state investigators out to get him for leading a McLennan County grand jury session that began to discredit the hundreds of murder confessions Lucas made.
FBI documents introduced into evidence by Richardson and the testimony of Department of Public Safety Investigator Ron Boyter, who investigated Feazell, indicated that the federal investigation of Feazell did not begin until after April 1985.
Smith testified that Hodges told the judge that he met with Boyter and FBI agent Bob Zane in 1984 to discuss Feazell’s case.
“Boyter testified in this case that his first meeting with the FBI was April 26, 1985,” Richardson told Smith. “That would make it kind of tough to put Boyter and Zane together doing the investigation in 1984, wouldn’t it?”
Smith said he is certain Hodges met with them in 1984,
Richardson tried to discredit Smith’s testimony by showing that the judge, who filed a state bar grievance against Feazell in 1988, has a “fairly hostile attitude” toward Feazell.
“I don’t know if those are the words I would use,” Smith said. “I don’t have any respect for him.”
Richardson asked Smith if he blamed Feazell because the judge’s ex-wife got an anonymous letter in 1985 revealing Smith’s “sexual escapades?”
The judge said he never “took the position that Vic Feazell was behind the letter” but said he gave it to FBI agents. The agents told him Feazell’s wife, Berni, was probably responsible for it, he said.
When Feazell was arrested in September 1986, FBI agents also took his wife’s fingerprints and a typewriter from their home, Richardson said, but they could not link the letter to Feazell or his wife.
The letter ended up in Feazell’s FBI file, Richardson said, along with an FBI report of their investigation into someone shooting at Smith wile he was jogging several years ago.
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