Category: OKLAHOMA

OK DHS Threatens to Seize Five Children Unless Dad Leaves Home [Bryan County, OK][Dismissed]

Posted by lawoffice on September 1, 2026 with 0 Comment

Charge: OK DHS claim of child abuse
Case: WHC-25-2
Court: Bryan County [Durant, OK]
Result: Dismissed, family reunified

This OK Department of Human Services [no longer DHS, now OHS] tried its latest bad faith ploy in this case involving two parents and their 5 children: they threatened to seize all 5 kids unless the minister father left the home. This may sound common enough, but the wrinkle here is they refused to file a report with the local prosecutor detailing their actions and requesting a juvenile deprived petition alleging abuse or neglect. This increasingly common tactic is so bad because it permits DHS to avoid judicial oversight of its actions: without an approved, filed petition, there can be no evidentiary hearing where caseworkers have to prove their claims, yet they hold the threat of seizing ALL the kids if the family obeys its orders. In fact, during Haslam’s initial investigation, he recorded the caseworker saying they never intended to permit the minister father to return home. Ever.

Haslam challenged this action with a novel use of OK’s writ of habeas corpus law – a powerful tool that obligates a district court to prioritize judicial review – followed by his own investigation yielding insanely bad faith conduct by DHS. While the 10 yo girl the family had recently received as a foster child from these same DHS caseworkers made a claim against the dad of inappropriate touching, Haslam discovered the girl had been removed from her family of origin for making an identical but ultimately unfounded claim. Moreover, the first two families she’d been placed with returned her to DHS within days because she was masturbating in front of other family members. Still worse, when this family received her as her third fosters, DHS lied in its paperwork: it expressly denied any history of sexual acting out. Incomprehensibly, Haslam learned the caseworker knew the girl had recanted her claim against this father numerous times to therapists! And finally, DHS fought tooth and nail to prevent disclosing the videotaped “forensic interview’ it conducted of this girl during which they claimed she made the allegation – and Judge Campbell refused to order them to do it….

The story got worse. The Bryan County D. Ct. lingered for months over Haslam’s routine requests for other DHS records on the girl’s history. The DA’s office failed to tell Haslam it had rejected the DHS request for a deprived petition it finally presented to the Bryan County DA after he filed his habeas petition and started rattling cages. Finally, five months after the habeas petition and many motions detailing this history of misconduct, Haslam forced the judge to schedule the hearing that the habeas statutes obligate him to conduct. The family showed up armed to the teeth with well-prepped witnesses. Rather than risking the complete exposure of DHS misconduct, Judge Campbell simply ordered the family reunified. No testimony, no witnesses, no exposure: the judge simply ruled that Haslam’s motions justified the reunification.

America’s Most Wanted – and Acquitted! [Tulsa]

Posted by lawoffice on September 5, 2023

Criminal Charge: Child Abuse
Case: State v. Earnest Jackson CF-02-5279
Court: [CF-02-5279, Tulsa County]
Result: Acquittal

For more details on this case, open the Docket View.

Summary:

A harbinger of the career to follow, Haslam’s first jury trial was a court appointment to defend a dad featured numerous times on the television show “America’s Most Wanted”. Compounding this challenge, the prosecutor, Dana Bogie Kuehn, had 75 jury trials under her belt as Chief of the Crimes Against Children Unit, moved on to be Presiding Judge of the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, and now sits on the Oklahoma Supreme Court.

Tulsa County arrested Earnest and Kaia Jackson amid great publicity in their Tulsa home, living with their four kids. The 1988 New Jersey arrest warrants alleged they physically abused a fifth child fifteen years earlier.

After charging both Jacksons with abusing one of the four Tulsa kids, Jonathan, authorities returned them to New Jersey to stand trial on the 1988 charges – where each took a conviction. Thereafter, each returned to Tulsa to stand trial on the new Oklahoma charges involving Jonathan. In September 2002, a Tulsa County jury sentenced Kaia to thirty-five years in the Oklahoma penitentiary to be served AFTER she discharged her New Jersey sentence.

The Tulsa County District Court appointed Haslam to defend Earnest. The State offered Earnest – a 55-year-old man – 35 years to avoid trial. With little to lose, it was easy for Earnest to believe in his young lawyer, plead not guilty and take his story to a jury. After five days of trial and eight hours of deliberation, his first jury hung up. A single, brave juror refused to cave during hours of shouting and table pounding that could be heard in the hall outside the jury room.

At the retrial, the State listed DHS caseworker Joyce Porter as a witness. Despite Haslam having uncovered an in-the-record lie by Ms. Porter in another child abuse trial he second-chaired a year earlier, Porter mounted the stand to testify. Haslam confronted Porter – sitting 4 feet from the jury box – with this documented lie. In a true Perry Mason Moment, Porter locked up – and the prosecutor left her there, locked up for 60 seconds, silent – until she asked for “a brief recess”. When Porter returned to the stand, Haslam cemented the impeachment. This was the beginning of the end of this jury trial.

After seven days of retrial, THE SECOND JURY NEEDED 45 MINUTES TO RETURN A VERDICT OF NOT GUILTY.

State Offers 20 Years – Client Does 1 Month [Choctaw County, OK]

Posted by lawoffice on August 24, 2023

Criminal Charge:
Case: State of Oklahoma v. Brandon Clark Self
Court: [Cf-14-78, CF-14-105][Choctaw]
Result: Judge Rejects State’s 20-Year Sentence for 1 Month and Probation

For more details on this case, open the Docket View.

Perhaps because of his history of felony convictions, law enforcement was after Brandon. They thought they finally got him with a traffic stop made after Brandon had been almost run off the road. Claiming a gun and drugs recovered from his car, the State of Oklahoma charged Brandon with five serious felony counts and sought to put him away for decades. Haslam filed motions to suppress the bad traffic stop and searches on which these cases were founded, slowly chipping away at the “evidence” until pleas were negotiated that required a hearing – and a judge that would determine the sentences.

At the hearing, Haslam presented evidence of the bogus traffic stop, the mischaracterization of the recovered “drugs” as contraband when they were actually prescription meds, and – most importantly – some of the most emotionally moving testimony in my 25 years of trial practice by Brandon’s two young daughters. The Court sentenced Brandon to ten years in OK DOC with all but one month suspended.

Afterwards, the State intercepted tax refunds to collect $13,000 in court costs and fines. Haslam successfully defended these efforts as well. The Court waived almost every dollar. Brandon is now a successful business owner and has never violated probation.