The Texas Lawbook

Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury

Bruce Tomaso

Bruce Tomaso spent more than 30 years as a writer and editor at The Dallas Morning News. When asked what positions he held there, he usually says it’s easier to list those he didn’t.

As enterprise editor on The News’s breaking news desk in the summer of 2016, he played a key role in covering the downtown shooting spree that left five police officers dead. For its coverage, The News was a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News Reporting.

He spent most of 1997 in Denver covering the federal criminal trials of Oklahoma City bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Four years later, he covered McVeigh’s execution.

His first major reporting assignment for The Texas Lawbook was a retrospective on the 20th anniversary of the $119.6 million verdict for 10 young men who’d been molested as children by Rudy Kos, a priest in the Catholic Diocese of Dallas. The stories earned Bruce and his Lawbook editor, Allen Pusey, the Dallas Bar Association’s 2018 Stephen Philbin Award for Feature Writing.

In 2019, he covered the seven-week medical fraud trial of nine physicians, healthcare executives and others associated with Forest Park Medical Center, a now-defunct Dallas surgical hospital.

He’s a member of the Alumni Hall of Fame at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. He and his wife, Dallas attorney Patricia A. Nolan, have one grown son, who is smarter than either of them.

He will drop everything, including preposterous sums of money, to see Lady Gaga, Notre Dame football, or the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team.

You can reach Bruce at bruce.tomaso@texaslawbook.net.

‘You’ve given my life back’

Surgeon Nick Nicholson was one of 22 Forest Park Medical officials indicted in one of the largest and most complex healthcare bribery and kickback schemes in Texas history. But Dr. Nick was the only one a jury found not guilty. In an exclusive, in-depth interview, Nicholson and his lawyer, Tom Melsheimer, take readers inside the confidential sanctuary of the attorney-client relationship to discuss in vivid detail every aspect of the case and the decisions they made that led to the dramatic acquittal earlier this year. This is their story.

Bruce Tomaso

On the Record: Nick Nicholson and Tom Melsheimer

Melsheimer and his legal team worked more than 4,000 hours defending Forest Park Medical Center Surgeon Nick Nicholson against allegations of bribery and kickbacks. In a joint interview, the pair provide The Texas Lawbook insights into their relationship, how the use of mock juries helped them develop a successful legal strategy, the decision whether to quote from the King James Version or a modern Bible translation and their opinions of the prosecutors, judge and other defendants. Here they are in their own words.

Bruce Tomaso

The Forest Park Surgeon & His Lawyer: Inside the Attorney-Client Relationship and the Anatomy of an Acquittal

Twenty-two medical professionals, including nine surgeons, were indicted by federal prosecutors in Texas in a bribery/kickback scheme that rocked the health care community. Nine went to trial. Only one person, Dr. Nick Nicholson, was found not guilty. On Monday, Texas Lawbook correspondent Bruce Tomaso gives readers an exclusive, in-depth look into the groundbreaking case and trial through the eyes of Dr. Nicholson and Tom Melsheimer, the lawyer who defended him. Click here for a video preview.

Bruce Tomaso

Now, Tuesday Morning…

Jurors in the Forest Park Medical Center bribery trial headed home late Monday. They will resume Tuesday after 19 hours of deliberation. Like last week, the jurors had questions. But unlike last week, those questions were answered via telephone from Toledo. Bruce Tomaso explains.

Bruce Tomaso

Sylvia Demarest’s Gift of Disturbing Data

Dallas lawyer Sylvian Demarest could have spent another lifetime representing the victims of pedophile priests. Instead, she decided to bequeath her years of research on the matter to help protect future generations of potential victims.

Bruce Tomaso

‘Wake Up the Pope’ – The Historic Jury Verdict Against a Priestly Pedophile that Shook the Catholic Church

Twenty years ago this month, an extraordinary trial took place in a Dallas County court. It pitted 10 young men and the family of another against the Dallas Catholic Diocese. The issue was serial sexual abuse by Rudy Kos, a priest and pedophile whose transgressions had been ignored for years. The resulting verdict of $119 million was a record for its time; but the dramatic 14-week trial helped expose to international public scrutiny the clear and present danger of a pedophile population within the priesthood that had been protected for decades, both by the church bureaucracy and the public trust. This special Texas Lawbook report by Bruce Tomaso tells the story of the trial of Rudy Kos, a remarkable and historic tale of courtroom justice.

Bruce Tomaso

© Copyright 2026 The Texas Lawbook
The content on this website is protected under federal Copyright laws. Any use without the consent of The Texas Lawbook is prohibited.