Inadmissible

When Texas music legend Willie Nelson gets arrested for possessing his favorite weed, he usually turns to Austin solo Joe Turner for help. So when Nelson, a well-known advocate of legalizing marijuana, was arrested by U.S. Border Patrol Agents at a highway stop in Hudspeth County for allegedly possessing 6 ounces of the sticky stuff last year, he again called Turner for help. “You certainly wouldn’t need to be much of a detective would you? These border stops are not designed to stop tour buses with Willie Nelson and small amounts of marijuana. They are designed to enforce our immigration laws and smuggling and customs violations. And even they realized they have bigger problems to worry about,” Turner says of Nelson’s arrest. Nelson’s case was turned over to the Hudspeth County Attorney’s Office for prosecution, Turner says. And last week, Turner helped negotiate a plea deal for Nelson in which he will receive deferred adjudication, meaning that if Nelson keeps a clean criminal record for one month, the case will not go on his record. Nelson will also pay a $500 fine and $278 in court costs, Turner says. Hudspeth County Attorney C.R. “Kit” Bramblett did not return a telephone call seeking comment. Turner has been down this road with Nelson before. In the 1990s, Turner represented Nelson after he was arrested in Hewitt after a policeman allegedly found a joint in his car. Turner says he got the case dismissed by arguing that Nelson was arrested as the result of an illegal search. After it was all over, Turner says Nelson told him, “Don’t do it in Hewitt.”

Not Leaving UT

Just before Sarah Weddington , the lawyer who argued Roe v. Wade, was set to leave her faculty job after her contract was not renewed at the University of Texas at Austin, the telephone rang, announcing a happy ending. “The dean called and said he would like for me to teach again this year, and I readily accepted,” Weddington says about the May 16 telephone call. This fall, Weddington will teach gender-based discrimination, a pre-law course for undergraduate seniors. She is still formulating plans for another possible class in the spring. Randy Diehl, dean of UT-Austin’s College of Liberal Arts, says budget cuts led him to tell the college’s research centers to each slash 25 percent in operating expenses. That’s when the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies decided not to renew Weddington’s contract, Diehl says. Center director Susan Heinzelman says, “I hope everybody understands that our hands were tied, and we simply did not have any money in the budget.” She adds about Weddington’s return, “Of course, we’re absolutely thrilled and delighted. We had been really distressed over our budget cuts and what that meant to the hiring of our adjuncts. We had worked really hard to make sure Sarah was hired back.” Diehl says when he heard that Weddington was leaving, he felt compelled to do something. “My feeling was Sarah Weddington is too important a figure simply to say, ‘Your services are no longer required.’ I felt very badly about the situation,” Diehl says. “Sarah Weddington is an incredibly important figure in the history of legal aspects of women’s rights. It was an enormously positive thing when we were able to recruit her in the first place.” After winning Roe, Weddington served in the Texas House, the U.S. House of Representatives, as general counsel of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and as an adviser to President Jimmy Carter. Funding for her salary will come from the UT College of Liberal Arts’ Department of Government, Diehl says. Weddington says she loves teaching and she devotes herself to the success of her students. Maybe that’s why former students — many of whom are lawyers — wrote letters to the dean and published letters to the editor in a campus newspaper arguing the college should not cut her job, Weddington says. Diehl says, “I did get a lot of letters — thoughtful, persuasive letters. What that did is confirm my own judgment. I had already made up my mind I wanted to do this, but it confirmed my view this is the right decision.”