Gary Edwards' attorney, now Sen. D-Dallas
Q: When the prison sentences were announced in Sept. 1989, you criticized them as overly harsh and sarcastically wondered if the Dallas County aggravated robbery rate would drop because of it. How do you think it played out?
A: I can only look at Gary. I can only base it on what I've seen happen to him. Gary for certain has scars of being incarcerated, but has done the best he could at readjusting, from the vantage point of full-time employment and things of that nature. I helped him get employment and also to get him get into school after he was released from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
And I see him working out (at the gym) almost every morning.
Q: I understand you also wrote the Afterward for his book. I would imagine you wouldn't be doing that if he had not taken the right path since prison.
A: The reality is that he has. I'm pretty certain most of those young boys at that time, now being men, regret their involvement in those robberies back then. Being convicted of a crime impacts your life, regardless of whom you are. I would be willing bet that most of them have tried to make the best of a bad situation.
Q: Some people might say they started behind the eight-ball due to their own doing. But I also recall some belief in the community that the prison sentences seemed overly harsh, you being among them.
A: It did. The perspective I had, you've got to understand that when Carter High was going through the court case to stay in the playoffs, I was in the middle of that.
When they won the championship, I was there. Unfortunately, I was there when many of the players were sentenced, but I was also there when Gary got out of the penitentiary – not as a client, but more so as a friend now.
In terms of the sentences they received, I believe they were harsh, given the circumstances. But I can tell you that once Gary was confined, we did everything we could to get the sentence reduced as much as we could. We were able to get him out after he served the minimum, which also speaks to him because he went down there and did what he was supposed to.
Q: Gary mentioned that he found out somewhat recently that Judge Kendall had signed papers to further reduce his time, and that Anne Richards wouldn't sign off on it.
A: What ended up happening is the district attorney, the sheriff and the judge signed off on him getting out early, and also the board of pardons and paroles. But Anne Richards chose not to do it.
Q: Do you know how much earlier he would have gotten out?
A: Maybe as much as two years.
Q: What factors were you citing in getting that paperwork signed?
A: I really just appealed to their sense of justice to ask them to consider signing off.
Q: Taking a step back from this, does it seem like 20 years have passed?
A: It really doesn't. When I first got your call and was told you wanted to do a story, it doesn't seem like 20 years have passed. Since that time, I've had sons grow up and they're in college now. They were babies at the time.
I'm proud of Gary. I see him every morning. Just this morning, he was on the treadmill. Instead of going forward like all of us do, he was going backwards. I said, 'Son, what are you trying to do, become a defensive back?'
Those were good times and needless to say they were bad times, also.
Q: As a community leader, could you put into perspective how you think the community feels about it 20 years later?
A: I think that first of all, those that were around and are still around, feels they got a raw deal, that, yes, they should have been made to pay for what they did, but the justice system extracted more than a pound of flesh from them. That the sentences were out of proportion.
Q: I'm also referring to the overall picture, how people feel about the stripping of the state title.
A: The thing is, I think the Dallas Independent School district kind of took the air out of that. It's my belief, just as we had won in the district courtroom and ultimately on the field, that if the school district had continued the appeal, we would have been able to win the appeal and it would not be an asterisk by Carter's name in the history books.
It was a talented team with very talented individuals, many of which went on without blemishes on their records and are productive citizens in our community.
Needless to say, some of the players' and other students' involvement in these robberies is in fact a blemish on the community. Because the Carter Cowboys were, in fact, the Cowboy team. (laughing) Frankly, I believe the Carter Cowboys could have beaten Dallas Cowboys that year, they were so good.
Q: From talking to the players involved in the robberies, they realize many in the community felt especially let-down because many of those same fans had rallied behind the team as the playoffs unfolded it was fighting the courts and everything else.
A: It was an amazing chapter. There was no one in the state of Texas who followed football who didn't know about the Carter Cowboys.
It wasn't just about Carter or DISD. It was the total Dallas community. You had the issues of no-pass, no-play. You had the black-white issue. You had the issue of students being involved in criminal activity. All those subplots played out.
You've got to understand, you had some significant UIL realignment that went on, with inner-city schools playing suburban schools at that time. There was a shift of power, so you had those issues going on.
And when you look back over 20 years, and listening to you and knowing at least Gary's story, there's a reason for everything. Even though Gary had to go through that, I think it in all probability made him a better man from the vantage point that he did go through that process, being confined for those many years, but was able to get through it.
And even though he still has scars from it, he hasn't allowed those scars to dictate the rest of his life. He's gone on with his life.
