Criminal Law

Christmas behind bars

Posted on December 24, 2009
The title of this post is the headline of a story from the Odessa American interviewing inmates and family members about the emotional strain placed on them during the holiday season.

Sleazy telemarketers capitalize on public sympathy for fallen police

Posted on December 24, 2009
I agree with Charley Wilkison on this one:Nonprofit groups with ties to law enforcement have your number and they're dialing it this Christmas.A review by The Dallas Morning News found that several charities have spent up to 89 percent of the money they collect on telemarketers, cutting deeply into what they can spend on programs...

Fingerprint examiner: 'They put pressure on you shamelessly'

Posted on December 24, 2009
Having recently seen Houston PD release a majority of its fingerprint examiners for errors and possible misconduct, I was interested to see this story from Missouri Lawyers Media describing how police sometimes pressure forensic fingerprint examiners to match prints to their suspects:A police officer rushes up to the fingerprint examiner and pleads for help...

Clemency in the Rick Perry era

Posted on December 23, 2009
Digging around this morning in the Board of Pardons and Paroles recent annual reports, I compiled this table regarding recent gubernatorial clemency decisions. These data reflect the number of full pardons considered by the board and the number approved by Governor Rick Perry:In my own mind, I probably hadn't given the parole board enough credit for how many clemency recommendations they make compared to the meager number Governor Perry ultimately signs off on...

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(Slightly) higher Texas parole rates helping reduce overincarceration

Posted on December 23, 2009
Via Sentencing Law & Policy, I noticed this AP article predicting the United States' overall prison population may decline in 2009 for the first time in decades. The article contained this Texas tidbit:the economic crisis forced states to reconsider who they put behind bars and how long they kept them there, said Kim English, research director for the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice...

Can Dewhurst's budget cut goals be met by closing TDCJ prison units?

Posted on December 23, 2009
To meet Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst's budget-cut goals for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, reports Jason Embry at the Austin Statesman, "the state?s criminal justice division would need to trim $218 million. Where are the smart cuts there as the agency is still struggling to properly staff many state prisons?,? he recently asked...

What solutions exist for witness intimidation on both sides in criminal cases?

Posted on December 22, 2009
Catching up on my newspaper and blog reading this morning, I ran across two high-profile stories from outside of Texas on the subject of witness intimidation that deserve Grits readers attention:By Criminals: From the Philadelphia Inquirer, there's a must-read series titled "Witnesses fear reprisal and cases crumble...

SCOTUS will revisit crime lab confrontation decision

Posted on December 21, 2009
Over the weekend the New York Times ran a story by Adam Liptak previewing a US Supreme Court case ("Justices revisit rule requiring lab testimony," Dec. 19) called Briscoe v. Virginia that prosecutors hope will overturn the Melendez-Diaz case from last term requiring confrontation for testimony by crime lab workers...

I know, you're shocked: Texas fines, fees, court costs went up in 2009

Posted on December 21, 2009
Just in from the Comptroller:Court Costs, Fees and Fines for Justice, County, and District Courts: Summary of legislative changes made by the 81st Texas Legislature, Regular Session, 2009 (pdf)Let's run through a few highlights from this rather dry document:As usual, what we see here is for the most part a one-way ratchet: Only new fees are created and costs only ever go up...

2011 Budget Blues: Close prison units to shave 2.5% at TDCJ

Posted on December 20, 2009
Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst says Texas state agencies must reduce their budgets by 2.5% in each of the next four years to account for declining tax revenues, Jason Embry at the Austin Statesman reports ("Legislative leaders eye spending cuts to deal with looming budget hole," Dec...

Do small police agencies need redundant SWAT capacity? Budget crisis changing the debate

Posted on December 20, 2009
With the TV show Dallas SWAT, the Dallas PD's SWAT team gained national fame, but less attention has been paid to the fact that, according to Ed Timms at the Dallas News ("Dallas County constables, others keep little-used tactical units," Dec. 20):Over the years, several law enforcement agencies in Dallas County have formed tactical teams, including municipal police departments, the Dallas County Sheriff's Department, the Dallas Independent School District's police force and local constables...

Austin chief can't bypass officer for promotion who visited brothel on vacation

Posted on December 19, 2009
Police accountability in this state is seriously hindered by the state civil service code, which governs police discipline, promotions and other departmental employment practices for the 70 or so cities which have opted in (including all of the big ones except Dallas and El Paso)...

'Strategies for Hiring the Hidden Worforce'

Posted on December 18, 2009
The headline of this post is the title of an education workshop for employers sponsored yesterday by the local chamber of commerce in Waco, as reported in today's Tribune-Herald:Dennis Brooks said he?s always looking to hire diesel mechanics, and he would gladly hire a disabled person or an ex-convict if he or she can get the job done...

Evidence-based practices described to judges at state sentencing conference

Posted on December 17, 2009
I wasn't able to take notes during Ed Latessa's lively lecture to the recent state sentencing conference for judges, DAs and probation officials sponsored by TDCJ's probation division, so I'm pleased to see they put his presentation online regarding the current state of evidence-based supervision practices:What Works and What Doesn?t in Reducing Recidivism: Applying the Principles of Effective Supervision, by Dr...

Can Dallas really trust declining crime statistics?

Posted on December 17, 2009
Falling crime statistics in Dallas are great, editorialized the Morning News ("Crime statistics must be accurate," Dec. 16), but only if the public may have confidence that police aren't cooking the books: Specifically, there's reason to suspect that reporting procedures adopted by the department in 2007 undercount violent crime...

Prossecutors' performance hard to measure: Excellent reporting out of Waco shows gaps in DA data

Posted on December 16, 2009
The McLennan County District Attorney is facing his first serious electoral challenge in a generation next year, and the Waco Tribune-Herald offered up excellent coverage this week that are must-reads for anyone concerned with how prosecutors operate or what issues voters should care about in elections:"Data offer clues on McLennan County district attorney's performance""Voters often underinformed in DA contests"I may need to change up my Google News alert keywords because if it weren't for Doug Berman pointing them out at Sentencing Law & Policy, I wouldn't have seen these stories...

Radnofsky responds defending open records stance

Posted on December 16, 2009
After Charles Kiker forwarded her this morning's Grits post and my addendum in the comments that discussed her open records stance, I received the following response from Democratic Attorney General candidate Barbara Ann Radnofsky, printed here in its entirety with my initial reaction below: From Barbara Ann Radnofsky:Scholarship and leading from the top, emphasizing fairness and due process, do indeed make a difference...

Travis County planning to launch veterans court

Posted on December 15, 2009
Having written over the weekend about the rise of Texas veterans courts, I was pleased to see Travis County announce they'd also create one in addition to their existing mental health court ("Travis County looking to set up court for veterans," Dec. 16):Travis County officials say not enough is being done locally to identify veterans in need of mental health treatment...

Forensic Science commissioner resigns to avoid revealing public info

Posted on December 15, 2009
Somehow I'd missed that one of Governor Perry's recent appointees to the Texas Forensic Science Commission - Bexar County Medical Examiner Randall Frost - had resigned in October just weeks after his appointment because he wouldn't reveal immediate family members' names or assets required on state ethics disclosures...

AG Greg Abbott presiding over dark hour for Texas open records

Posted on December 15, 2009
Over the years I've sometimes praised Attorney General Greg Abbot for being reasonably good on his open records decisions, but data published by the Corpus Christi Caller Times suggests Abbot's watch has not been an especially happy period for open records overall ("Increase in requests to withhold public data worries advocates," Dec...

Eyewitnesses miss big changes in their environment, like the person in front of them

Posted on December 15, 2009
An alert reader points to this remarkable video of an experiment regarding "change blindness" to judge how observant (or not) average people are in casual settings, via Boing Boing:If 75% of people in the experiment don't notice they're all of a sudden speaking with a different person, how likely do you think most eyewitnesses would be to identify the correct person later in a police lineup or photo array?More and more, studies like this have convinced me that eyewitness testimony should always require corroboration unless it can be established that the witness knew the defendant before the offense...

Elections, Judicial Conduct Commission, provide too little accountability for judges

Posted on December 14, 2009
In the Dallas News, Diane Jennings has an article on the state Commission on Judicial Conduct ("State Commission on Judicial Conduct has the job of judging Texas judges," Dec. 14) which normally receives little attention but was cast into the state spotlight this year when it initiated a fact-finding hearing to decide whether Court of Criminal Appeals Presiding Judge Sharon Keller should be removed...

Duncanville's million dollar camera: Tribune expose' details red-light ticket revenue

Posted on December 14, 2009
I mostly quit tracking minutiae regarding red-light cameras after I left the ACLU of Texas and nobody was paying me to follow what had become a hydra-headed, locally-driven mass expansion of surveillance cameras and electronically generated tickets. Since then, the number of red-light cameras throughout the state has exploded, as has the revenue local governments derive from them...

US Department of Agriculture needs to stay out of jail building business

Posted on December 14, 2009
I make an effort on this blog to track as comprehensively as possible all the various sources of expansion in incarceration capacity in Texas, from halfway houses and treatment centers to county jails, state prisons, federal lockups, immigration detention centers and privately run facilities...

Rumor of the Day: Shanda Perkins for TYC Ombudsman?

Posted on December 14, 2009
This is probably idle speculation and I ignored it as highly unlikely when I first heard the rumor (which is all it is right now), but no fewer than three normally knowledgeable sources on juvie justice topics have suggested to me in the last week that the Governor's office is considering Shanda Perkins - the anti-sex toy activist who was rejected 27-4 by the Texas state Senate for a slot on the adult parole board - to replace the indicted ex-judge who was recently forced out of the Texas Youth Commission Ombudsman's slot...

Mixed messages on graffiti in Nueces County: Will 8 year sentence solve anything?

Posted on December 13, 2009
I'm sure the judge who gave this sentence did so believing it would "send a message," but the message it sends to me is that the judge has no sense of proportion:A south Texas district judge has sentenced an 18-year-old man to eight years in prison for habitually vandalizing property with graffiti...

Texas veterans courts an aggressive version of problem-solving jurisprudence

Posted on December 12, 2009
During the 81st Texas Legislature a little-noticed amendment to SB 1940 may have launched the most comprehensive, aggressive brand of "problem solving court" I've yet seen in the Lone Star State: "Veterans courts."The bipartisan amendment authorizing them, which was essentially similar to SB 112 by Rodney Ellis, was proposed by Reps Frank Corte and Allen Vaught on third reading, accepted by bill sponsor Solomon Ortiz, then approved by the House 146-0...

Exonerees, lawyers fees and innocence compensation: A personal perspective on an ugly dispute

Posted on December 11, 2009
I'm going to speak out of school a bit to offer a personal perspective on a dispute covered today in the Dallas News involving my former employers. I've not spoken to anyone involved about the lawsuit described below. I claim no direct line to the truth on this and only offer my own impressions...

Commissioner proposes inmate labor to reduce Harris jail crowding

Posted on December 10, 2009
I'm glad to see folks in Houston finally getting serious - really for the first time in years - about finding solutions to jail overcrowding besides building more cells and hiring more guards. Via Kuff, I was pleased to learn from the Houston Chronicle ("Inmate labor plan on the table," Dec...

Tactics to reduce Nueces County jail crowding not so different from elsewhere

Posted on December 10, 2009
The Corpus Christi Caller Times this week editorialized ("Jail population reduction should be a priority," Dec. 8) that Nueces County officials should focus more closely on reducing the jail population to avoid new jail construction:Over the past 17 years, only 36 beds have been added to the county jail, while its inmate population has expanded by 14 percent since 2000...

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