Sherman Roberts, who pleaded guilty to bribing council members, now says he’s an innocent man.
And this is how The City Hall Corruption Story ends. Not with a clang. But with probation and applause.
Sherman Roberts, the low-income housing developer who in 2024 pleaded guilty to bribing former Dallas City Council members Dwaine Caraway and the late Carolyn Davis, will not spend a second in prison. Instead, on Wednesday morning, in a downtown courtroom lined with jampacked pews, U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade sentenced the 72-year-old Roberts to four years of probation and a $10,000 fine to be paid over the next year.
Federal prosecutors were asking for five years in prison for the man who, despite his 2020 indictment and 2024 guilty plea — to the charge of Conspiracy to Commit Bribery Concerning Programs Receiving Federal Funds — remains the president and CEO of low-income housing development company City Wide Community Development Corp.
As prosecutor Chad Meacham told the judge, developer Devin Hall got a year in prison — and he pleaded guilty to bribing only Davis, the former chair of the council’s Housing Committee. Davis was killed in a horrific 2019 car crash that also claimed her daughter Melissa.
“Mr. Roberts has to get more than that,” Meacham said.
But Kinkeade seemed reluctant to dole out even that generous of a sentence to Roberts, who, during his brief remarks to the judge, said he was sorry to be in this situation and that “you grow up trying to do the right thing and don’t know what’s going to cross your path.”
But he never apologized, as Caraway did during his 2019 sentencing that resulted in a lengthy stay in a few federal prisons. That’s because Roberts now maintains his innocence, insisting in court documents filed last year that he pleaded guilty only because he was ill, scared and acting upon the advice of very bad counsel.
Kinkeade said he had no choice but to punish Roberts, who had pleaded guilty to offering Davis and Caraway cash in exchange for supporting three City Wide projects. Meacham told the judge there was a recurring theme in the investigation into Carolyn Davis, who died before her sentencing: “If you run the money through a 501(c)(3), they can’t touch you.”
One project involving the nonprofit City Wide CDC was Serenity Place Apartments at East Kiest Boulevard and South Lancaster Road, on six acres of land once owned by the city. In 2015 the City Council voted to kick in around $1.9 million toward the low-income housing tax credit project — at the insistence of Davis, prosecutors have long alleged.
Another was in the nearby Runyon Springs subdivision, where the city awarded City Wide CDC $1.5 million to build single-family homes on foreclosed lots.
The third involved the infamous Patriot’s Crossing project, a three-time loser that returned to council in recent weeks under a new moniker, Veterans Community Project Village.
During Wednesday’s hearing, Roberts’ Fort Worth attorneys, Michael Heiskell and Nate Washington, walked Kinkeade through the funding of Serenity Place, specifically, and maintained that it was “not profitable.” They said Roberts never made a cent on the project outside of his annual City Wide salary of $150,000.
The gallery included Roberts’ family, including his wife and two sons; Concord Church Senior Pastor Bryan Carter and members of his flock; political and civic leaders; and other low-income housing developers. They erupted with cheers and applause upon the judge’s ruling. Probation, then the ovation.
Roberts’ indictment and guilty plea were headlines in every media outlet in this town way back when, more seemingly sordid dispatches from the bottomless corruption case that threatened to swallow City Hall. But aside from Elite News publisher and editor Darryl Blair, a friend of Roberts’ and a true believer in his innocence, I saw no other media present.
Roberts, the last man standing in the sinkhole, has fallen from the front page to the footnotes to the forgotten. Which is what happens in this town, where the arms are long and the memories are short.
“You’ll be fine,” Kinkeade told him. “Do something good so I can read about it in the paper.” Before Roberts was free to go, the judge told him, “No reason to send you to jail at this point.”
Maybe because it was one year ago this month that developer Ruel Hamilton was found not guilty of paying Caraway and Davis for their support. Hamilton walked out the Earle Cabell Federal Building on June 12, 2025, an innocent man — four years after he was initially convicted, and three years after the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals said, look, sometimes, what looks like a bribe is really just a “gratuity.”
Hamilton’s name was only mentioned once Wednesday, by the prosecution. But Kinkeade is the son of a pastor and a jurist in these parts for nearly 50 years. He knows this town. He knows its history. Why Kinkeade gave Roberts probation instead of prison time, I do not know beyond what he said in court. I do know this: Putting a Black man behind bars a year after the white developer walked in the same case would have sent a terrible message.
Kinkeade also knows that Roberts has spent almost a year trying to take back his guilty plea in the hopes he could stand trial after all.
In August, two months after Hamilton was acquitted, Heiskell and Washington filed a motion to withdraw Roberts’ guilty plea before sentencing.
The attorney said Roberts pleaded guilty because he was severely ill with numerous maladies, including a bum gall bladder and irritable bowels. And because it was all so stressful on him and his wife. And because he initially had lousy attorneys who gave him bad advice, like cooperating with the feds in their case against Hamilton in return for probation.
Roberts said in a declaration filed with his motion to withdraw that he only pleaded guilty because he was “tired, stressed and anxious” about a case that had lingered for years.
“As the pressure built on a potential trial date I took into account my health, and the health of my wife,” he wrote, “and decided to plead guilty since I felt probation was assured.” Which it was not.
In December, Kinkeade denied the motion to withdraw, which Roberts’ attorneys say they may still appeal. But when I saw Heiskell before sentencing, he said he would be asking for probation, “hopeful that the court would look at his age, health and clean, pristine history.”
Meacham declined comment after the hearing. So did Roberts. “You don’t write right,” he told me between hugs and handshakes.
“This is what we asked for,” Heiskell said. “This is what we hoped for. And this is what we prayed for.”
Editorial Columnist
Robert Wilonsky is Dallas Morning News editorial columnist.
