Getting Stoney Burns

The law in Dallas, from all appearances, had been bent on getting Stoney Burns for years. His real name is Brent Stein, but under his nom de plume he was the publisher of an underground paper, Dallas Notes. In the late '60s his weekly hassled civic leaders. The authorities reciprocated in kind. First police busted Burns on obscenity charges because of some earthy expletives in the paper. A jury acquitted him. Next, a disturbance at a 1970 rock concert led to charges of inciting resistance to police officers. A jury convicted, but an appeals court reversed. Then the cops got serious. They stopped Stoney's car late one night in 1972 and found in the glove compartment a tiny stash of marijuana. It was barely enough for one or two joints, but under Texas law at that time, it was also enough for life in prison.

Convicted, Burns was given a nastily precise sentence: ten years and one day. That meant he would not be eligible for early probation. Last week a court rejected a final motion for appeal. Meanwhile, a campaign by Burns' supporters urging Governor Dolph Briscoe to exercise his executive prerogative and reduce the sentence has brought no action. So this week, after his motion for appeal was rejected, Burns, 31, is scheduled to go behind the walls to start doing his ten and a day.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.