FOLLOW-UP

Last November, we featured a story about the life and crimes of Pee Wee Griffin (“Last Roundup at the DKG”), a former race driver and convicted Miami narcotics smuggler who had settled down as an Aubrey horse rancher-he thought. As we reported, the U. S. government seized control of Griffin’s DKG Ranch, an appaloosa-breeding ranch valued at $8 million to $10 million, while Griffin maneuvered from his jail cell to block the government’s permanent takeover of his Ill-acre pride and joy.

Since then, a federal jury in Sherman has ruled that the ranch belongs to Griffin and that the government has no right to foreclosure, as outlined in federal organized crime statutes. It looks as though Griffin will soon be gazing once again over the back forty.

Government attorneys, however, claim the fight is far from over. Wes Rivers, a Beaumontbased assistant U. S. attorney, says an appeal of the jury ruling is currently under consideration. “It’s a big case as far as the Justice Department is concerned, ” he says. “We’re trying to be careful and judicious about the way we handle it. But as Yogi Berra used to say: ’It ain’t over till it’s over. ’”



In our September 1984 cover story on Dallas bookies (“Wanna Bet?”) we took a look at 27 individuals who were arrested on bookmaking charges. Our story concluded that Dallas bookies, even when they’re convicted, seldom go to jail for a crime that is listed as a felony in the Texas penal code.



We recently learned that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has dismissed the indictment and three-year probated sentence of one of the convicted bookies featured in our story, Ronald Gerald Adley, a 37-year-old East Dallas barber nabbed in a police undercover operation. More importantly, the court also ruled in the Adley case that a portion of the state bookmaking law is unconstitutional.

Adley’s attorney, Dallas appellate attorney Melvyn Binder, claims the court’s opinion essentially says the current state law (in effect since 1974) fails to legally distinguish between placing a bet (technically a misdemeanor crime) and receiving the bet (a felony). “Since police officers usually prosecute bookmakers the easiest way they know how-by having an undercover officer place a bet with a bookie-the court’s ruling effectively will stop the prosecution of bookmaking in Dallas, ” says Bruder.

“We’re in a state of nobody really knowing what the effect is, ” says Lt. Jim Valentine, head of the Greater Dallas County Organized Crime Task Force, the primary police agency that works gambling cases in Dallas. “But we really haven’t worked any bookmaking cases this year anyway. “