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Bexar County
Courthouse
©2007 Bill Morgan. All
rights reserved
BEXAR COUNTY - There are almost as many stories
about Bexar County courthouses through the years as there are about that
building at the other end of downtown San Antonio, the Alamo.
A
forerunner of what would later be called the courthouse, Casas Reales (Council
House), was invaded by Santa Ana's No. 1 general, Alexander Woll. His troops
captured 56 people attending a trial and forced them on a three-month march to
prison in Mexico. A later courthouse was so ugly that it got the name "The Bat
Cave."
A high-school civics class was sitting in on a criminal trial
in the current courthouse when a student recognized the woman in the witness
chair. The girl, Melissa McElroy, later told her teacher that the woman wasn't
telling the truth. The girl was positive because she and the witness were
working at the same store on the day that the witness claimed she had been out
of town with the defendant. The teacher talked to the district attorney, who
called the girl to the stand that afternoon and got his conviction. How's that
for class participation?
Another year, another surprise: A judge
taking a lunch break ran across another crime against the courthouse. District
Judge Carlton Spears glanced up from his pastrami on rye at a deli across the
street and was shocked to see the portraits of three former judges staring back
at him from the restaurant walls. "I realized where I had seen them before,"
Judge Spears later explained. "They were from my dad's (Judge Franklin Spears)
old courtroom." A quick investigation by the sheriff's department revealed that
a janitor had found the portraits in a storage room and given them to the deli
owner. The paintings were retrieved by the county and the janitor was relieved
of his job.
Buy A Print
11x17 prints
on sturdy stock of the Bexar County Courthouse are available on my ordering
page. The cost is $20 for the first print and $16 for additional prints of
this, or any of the other 11 courthouses, purchased at the same time. (Add $3
for shipping) |
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