Man Overboard

* Turner, as the investigator for the administrator of the probate case told Dolcefino before his broadcast, was "up to his eyeballs" in it. If that's the case, then Sylvester Turner is more than just the liar he had proven himself to be before the trial: he's a sociopath, willing to carry a lie into a highly public forum and walk it through in hopes of a big payday.

* He was willfully ignorant: that perhaps Turner saw but didn't see, and went right on doing his lawyerly duty; that maybe the Sylvester Turner doing the talking figured there was no way the Sylvester Turner being talked about could have a role, wittingly or unwittingly, in an insurance swindle. I can accept that explanation on a gut level, if not an intellectual one, because it's apparent the same admirable and fierce powers of determination and invention it took to fashion a Harvard lawyer from the sixth of nine children from Acres Homes also have been employed to keep any outside reality from intruding on Sylvester Turner's conception of Sylvester Turner.

How else to explain this comment, which Turner offered after the verdict: "I have always said that people will respond to you the way you respond to yourself ..."?

But by now it really doesn't matter what the truth is about what Sylvester Turner knew and when he knew it. What is true is this: most Houstonians wouldn't have Sylvester Turner as their lawyer, much less their mayor.

Turner will run for mayor again, waving the jury verdict as proof of his vindication, but "mayor" is an entry that will never appear on his resume. Some other African-American will be the first black mayor of Houston, and all another Turner candidacy will do is delay that day.

That being mayor is no longer his destiny is good for Houston: it's good for you, me, Ron Franklin and the jurors who awarded Turner $5.5 million in damages last week. And as hard as it is for some people to acknowledge, that salutary development is due in large part to Wayne Dolcefino.

In the meantime, on the off-chance that Sylvester Turner ever collects any of that judgment, I hope Sylvester Turner pays his taxes on it.