Criminal Law

Settlement prevents SCOTUS opinion on limits of prosecutorial immunity

Posted on January 05, 2010
SCOTUS won't issue a decision in a case questioning whether prosecutors have absolute immunity for fabricating evidence because the parties entered a $12 million settlement, according to SCOTUSBlog:A case testing the immunity of prosecutors to damage lawsuits for obtaining and using false testimony ended in the Supreme Court Monday, with the two sides agreeing to dismiss it, without specifying reasons...

Public transit can prevent DWIs

Posted on January 05, 2010
On New Year's Eve, Clayton McLeskey at the Dallas News Opinion Blog offered this astute observation about the Dallas transit system:Did you hear the news?! The DART trains are running until 2 a.m. tonight! I hate to break it to the friendly folks over at DART, but 2 a...

Dallas News: Keystone Kops don't need SWAT teams

Posted on January 05, 2010
Over the holidays, I'd missed a notable Dallas News editorial published Christmas Day criticizing Metroplex-area constables for wasting resources on redundant, unnecessary and inadequate SWAT teams instead of focusing on their core duties. Opined the News:: Those who would compare our local "constables gone wild" with the Keystone Kops risk the grave disservice of insulting real Keystone Kops everywhere...

TX House Committees to begin work on interim charges

Posted on January 05, 2010
A couple of Texas House legislative committees will hold hearings in the next couple of weeks on criminal-justice related topics. The House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee will meet Monday, January 11:The Committee will meet to discuss appropriate procedures for presenting scientific evidence during the trial of criminal cases...

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No "absolute immunity" for County Attorney who participated in illegal search

Posted on January 05, 2010
SCOTUS may not get the chance to decide on the limits of prosecutorial immunity, but the 5th Circuit recently ruled in a case out of Seguin that prosecutors' immunity for trial activities does not apply to investigative work or to "the prosecutorial function of giving advice to police...

Large backlogs for DPS forensic testing

Posted on January 05, 2010
A local story from the Wilson County News highlights how backlogged Texas state crime labs have become in processing evidence from violent crimes ("Clark murder probe stalls in DPS crime-lab backlog," Jan. 5):On Jan. 19, six months will have passed since 50-year-old Sylvia Perez Clark was found dead in her home on Twin Oaks Drive south of here...

Years later, victim of Dallas fake drug scandal comes home

Posted on January 05, 2010
Here's another strange, sad postscript to the Dallas fake drug scandal: Until recently, one of the innocent people set up by lying cops and informants couldn't get back into the United States after being deported because of the (false, overturned) drug conviction on his record...

'Indigent Defense Summit' coming in February

Posted on January 04, 2010
Those interested should plan on attending an interesting looking "Indigent Defense Summit" at the Texas capitol in Austin on Feb. 24. Here's the agenda (pdf), and here's the registration information (pdf).The event is being organized jointly by the Texas Fair Defense Project, the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, the Texas Task Force on Indigent Defense, and the Travis County Mental Health Public Defender's Office.

Texas counties can unlock kids and savings

Posted on January 04, 2010
The headline of this post is the title of a new policy brief (pdf) from Marc Levin at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Here's a notable excerpt:A Dallas County detention bed costs $54,955 a year to operate. Nationally, two-thirds of youths in detention are held on allegations of non-violent offenses...

Two different views, both accurate, of Texas' overincarceration woes

Posted on January 04, 2010
Two recent editorials from the Houston Chronicle and the Austin Statesman look at the same set of facts regarding incarceration in Texas, with the Chron declaring the glass half-full while the Statesman sees it as half empty.Houston Chronicle: "Unlikely role model: Tough on crime Texas leads the way in prison reforms"Austin Statesman: "Tough on crime? Check...

Dallas County to settle lawsuit with whistleblower from fake drug case

Posted on January 04, 2010
At the Dallas News Crime Blog last week, Kevin Krause had a postscript to the Dallas fake-drug scandal, describing the 5-year legal saga over a DA's office investigator fired for blowing the whistle on lying cops who falsified evidence:[William] Hughes told the feds in 2002 that prosecutors failed to do anything about cops lying under oath in felony drug cases...

Despite high unemployment rate, law enforcement slots hard to fill

Posted on January 04, 2010
A couple of seemingly related recent stories about law-enforcement recruitment caught my eye:First, in Dallas, the Sheriff's Office had 200 people take the test to become deputies, but only 50 passed the written test and just 16 of those met the physical requirements, reported Kevin Krause at the Dallas News Crime Blog...

Federal judges don't do much judging when it comes to misconduct among their peers

Posted on January 03, 2010
I've never paid close attention to how federal judges police misconduct among their ranks, but a Houston Chronicle story by Lise Olsen published on New Year's Eve gave an excellent account of the process and problems related to secrecy and an apparent lack of accountability ("Judging the judges: Veil of secrecy stirring calls for change," Dec...

Texas' 2009 judiciary by the numbers

Posted on January 02, 2010
The FY 2009 annual report on the Texas Judiciary (pdf) from the Office of Court Administration came out last month and included a number of notable tidbits related to criminal cases that deserve Grits readers attention.Trials extremely rareIn district courts, "Less than 2 percent of all cases (excluding transfers and motions to revoke probation) went to trial in 2009...

Biggest Texas criminal justice stories of 2009

Posted on January 01, 2010
At the beginning of the new year, it's worth taking a moment to recall some of the biggest Texas criminal justice stories of 2009. It's a partial list, cut short by babysitting duties this morning, so let me know in the comments what I missed.Sharon Keller on the dock: The Commission on Judicial Conduct ordered a fact finding hearing to determine whether Presiding Judge Sharon Keller deserves to be removed from the bench for rejecting a last-minute death penalty appeal on bureaucratic grounds ("We close at 5") without notifying the duty judge whose job it was to evaluate it...

Dallas data definititions changed to acknowledge more car burglaries

Posted on December 30, 2009
After the Dallas News called them on juking their stats, the Dallas Police Department changed its protocols for how it classifies car burglaries so that documentation is required before a complaint is deemed "not credible." Prior practices caused the department to underreport car burglaries by about 2%, according to the News...

'TYC launches youth reading program'

Posted on December 30, 2009
The title of this post is the headline to a Corsicana Sun story published today which informs us that:An innovative new teaching curriculum designed to significantly improve the reading ability of youth in the Texas Youth Commission (TYC) was recently launched in all TYC facilities...

Texas progressive sanctions manual for judges now online

Posted on December 30, 2009
Via the state prosecutors' association:The Texas Department of Criminal Justice-Community Justice Assistance Division (TDCJ-CJAD) authorized the publication of the Texas Progressive Interventions and Sanctions Bench Manual in response to requests from the Texas trial judiciary concerning community corrections sanctioning options and resources in Texas...

Feds remove needle exchange funding ban; when will Texas get its act together?

Posted on December 29, 2009
Earlier this month Congress approved legislation that removed the federal funding ban on needle exchange programs. According to the San Francisco Chronicle (Dec. 18):The federal ban, sponsored by the now-deceased Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., was enacted by Congress in 1988 and has been renewed annually...

Chron: Harris DA's new crack pipe policy 'good for justice'

Posted on December 29, 2009
A Houston Chronicle editorial today praises Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos for her decision to join the rest of the state's large jurisdictions and cease filing state-jail felony cases on defendants found with crack pipes where labs detect traces of drugs...

Coryell County seeks overbuilt jail to attract private vendor

Posted on December 29, 2009
In Coryell County (Gatesville), commissioners want to build a jail twice the size the Commission on Jail Standards says they need because they want to contract with a private prison contractor to lease out extra beds. Reports the Killeen Daily Herald (Dec...

2010 criminal justice elections to watch

Posted on December 29, 2009
Looking forward to the 2010 elections, most Texas media and politicos' focus has been on the Governor's race and a handful of open seats and competitive races at the Lege. But as the January 4 filing deadline approaches, what criminal-justice related races out there merit watching?At the Court of Criminal Appeals, Keith Hampton has announced he will seek Judge Michael Keasler's spot...

An odd appointment to the Juvenile Probation Commission

Posted on December 28, 2009
Just before the holiday, Governor Rick Perry appointed three new members to the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission. Two of them seem routine enough: A lawyer who serves on a county juvenile board and a county commissioner with connections to CASA. But this description of the third appointee caught my eye:Scott O?Grady of Dallas is a self-employed motivational speaker...

Governor's Christmas pardons an odd mix, short list

Posted on December 28, 2009
Having earlier mentioned Gov. Rick Perry's relative historical indifference to clemency petitions, I should point out that the Governor issued eight Christmastime pardons this year granting clemency to:Cory Gibson Brazeal, 31, of Fort Worth, was convicted in 1998 of resisting arrest at the age of 19...

Comprehensive anti-recidivism legislation out of New Jersey

Posted on December 28, 2009
A New York Times editorial published on Christmas Eve titled "Smart Answers to Recidivism" highlights pending reentry legislation out of New Jersey that the Grey Lady suggests should be a national model:New Jersey lawmakers heard some depressing testimony in hearings leading up to the legislation...

NIJ: Solutions to cell phone contraband mostly "expensive and labor intenstive"

Posted on December 28, 2009
Via the Crime Report:A new paper by the National Institute of Justice examines the challenges that the new generation of cell phones poses to the corrections community. Now smaller than ever and with both audio, video and data capacity, the NIJ reports that cell phones have been used to conduct illegal activity...

Harris 'fallen behind' in macabre competition: LWOP led to fewer Texas death sentences

Posted on December 28, 2009
There's something odd about a news story bemoaning the fact that Houston has "fallen behind" other large Texas cities in the number of death sentences given out by its juries. I admit it's remarkable, given the town's long-time reputation as the Death Penalty Capital of the United States, but it seems off-putting to view capital punishment as some sort of score in a macabre competition...

The coming fight over independent crime labs

Posted on December 27, 2009
There's a behind-the-scenes tussle going on in Washington D.C. between the mayor and the police chief over whether their troubled crime lab will be independent from the police department, reports the Washington Examiner ("Top DNA doctor transferred out of D...

Wall Street Journal suggests raising white flag on marijuana prohibition to de-fund Mexican cartels

Posted on December 26, 2009
It's quite astonishing to see this subhed in today's Wall Street Journal story titled "Saving Mexico": "To weaken the cartels, some argue the U.S. should legalize marijuana, let cocaine pass through the Caribbean and take the profit motive out of the drug trade...

Creating 'task force' won't automatically solve communications issues on big-rig theft

Posted on December 26, 2009
The Texas Tribune's Reeve Hamilton recently published a feature reporting that:Texas has the worst rates of cargo and heavy equipment theft ? thieves rolling away with anything from semi-trailer trucks full of electronics to a backhoe on a flatbed ? in the country...

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