Let Her Decorate A Cell

Jurors in the trial of former Texas Southern University president Priscilla Slade said they could not decide if she misspent school funds to lavishly decorate her homes, resulting in a mistrial. Way to go, dumbasses.

The jury deliberated for four days before telling state District Judge Brock Thomas in a note Friday that "to continue deliberating would be of no benefit." And if you think that's overly dramatic, get a load of the rest.

"We have agonized over this. We have re-examined the evidence, some parts over and over, some parts line by line, in more detail than we ever expected or cared to, to thoroughly fulfill our duty. However, we cannot arrive at a unanimous verdict without doing violence to our consciences." Yet for all that serious hand-wringing, they couldn't pull it together and go for the guilty finding.

Slade, former president of TSU, could have been sentenced to life in prison if convicted. The charge - misapplication of fiduciary property with a value over $200,000. And who says crime isn't sexy?

Prosecutors accuse Slade of misspending more than $138,000 in TSU funds on landscaping for her homes, more than $100,000 in furniture and other home decorations and about $60,000 on a high-tech security system. They say she also illegally used school funds to pay for bar tabs, manicures, spa treatments and exercise classes. Slade's own defense attorney says the spending was done to improve the school's status and recruit donors. Not seeing anything that would have confused the jurors about innocence here.

Quintin Wiggins, described as Slade's "yes man" and accomplice, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in May for his part in the misspending and a trial is pending for one of two other TSU workers were indicted in the spending scandal.

The allegations against Slade coincided with reports that revealed a pattern of financial mismanagement at TSU and prompted Gov. Rick Perry to call for a state takeover of the university that was later put on hold. The nine-member board of regents resigned at Perry's request.

I can understand a half dozen ballots and almost two weeks of deliberating to get a hung jury and mistrial in the Phil Spector case, but this? Complicated blood splatter explanation, nearly a hundred testifying witnesses, and six times that many pieces of evidence make sense to me, but this is a simple fraud case with a simple outcome. Just on the info from the report on the trial alone I’m satisfied. Everybody involved has shown some degree of guilt, but miraculously Slade has emerged unscathed.

The only thing that could have made this more preposterous is if Atticus Finch and the Scopes Monkey Trial team helped the defense to personally give back massages to the jury. There’s just no goddamn way you can think that a jury trial is going to be just after this – if you can’t get simple trials like this right, forget the rest. That’s how I know there is no jury that is my peer.