Criminal Law

Police use of unmanned spy drones won't expand beyond Houston, yet

Posted on June 17, 2009
Here's a curious little story out of Collin County about the Sheriff's Department being turned down by the Federal Aviation Administration to use federal stimulus money to purchase "unmanned drones," for heaven knows what purpose. According to the McKinney Courier-Gazette (June 16), Sheriffs Office "officials said the department withdrew their request application from the Collin County Commissioner's Court to seek a federal stimulus grant to purchase the devices because FAA regulations have listed the majority of Collin County's skies as restricted airspace...

Codifying journalists' privilege

Posted on June 16, 2009
One piece of hotly debated legislation I did not track this session (but which particularly concerned many of our prosecutor friends), was HB 670 by Martinez-Fischer creating a qualified privilege for journalists not to testify in criminal cases. The bill was signed by the Governor last month and took effect immediately...

Austin PD traffic stops up 30% last year, more than 1 in 20 result in arrest

Posted on June 16, 2009
How can a one-year, 30% increase in traffic stops by Austin police be justified?I could scarcely believe my eyes when I examined the City of Austin's most recent racial profiling report (pdf, published 3-2-09), and read that the number of traffic stops increased to 230,949 in 2008 from only 178,087 in 2007...

Tazing Great Grandma

Posted on June 15, 2009
I'm a little late to the party on this one, but a Travis County Constable's deputy made headlines by tazing a 72-year old great grandmother last month after she dared him to - essentially for non-compliance. A flurry of media attention accompanied the release last week of the dashcam video...

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Hays County will use expanded citation authority to relieve jail overcrowding

Posted on June 15, 2009
After the Legislature approved new authority in 2007 to give citations instead of arresting for petty misdemeanors - a move aimed at giving counties new tools to react to rising costs of jail overcrowding - only a handful of agencies initially embraced the idea...

Interview on innocence with Dallas public defender

Posted on June 14, 2009
At the Dallas News, check out Jennifer Emily's interview with "Dallas County public defender Michelle Moore [who] has represented seven of the 20 people proven innocent by DNA testing after they had been unjustly convicted and served time in prison." I worked with Moore for a time when she was a boardmember of the Innocence Project of Texas, a position she left when she was assigned to handle post-conviction DNA testing cases for the Dallas Public Defender office...

Might threat of punishment reduce drug dealing more than punishment itself?

Posted on June 14, 2009
The Wall Street Journal reports that 30 US cities on Monday will announce participation in an anti-crime strategy that IMO has a ton of promise ("Cities join unorthodox crime program," June 13):The initiative, run by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, targets violent crime and open-air drug markets that are the scourge of some communities...

Feds assess market for illicit drugs, treatment trends

Posted on June 13, 2009
Via this Houston Chronicle story, I learned that the National Drug Intelligence Center this week issued its annual "market analyses" on illicit drug seizures, arrests, and trends in so-called High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTAs). Here are the Texas assessments:North Texas HIDTA (DFW)South Texas HIDTA (San Antonio to the border)Houston-area HIDTA (16 counties around Houston and along the coast)West Texas HIDTA (El Paso, Midland, Odessa, and Big Bend-area counites)One item that stood out in the charts and tables about each jurisdiction: In all four areas, according to the market analyses, adult admissions to publicly funded drug treatment facilities declined between 2006 and 2008, especially for harder drugs...

Early education and crime

Posted on June 12, 2009
While this blog mostly focuses on the mechanics of the criminal justice system, the truth is we must look outside the framework of police, courts and prisons to discover the real causes of crime and identify the full range of possible solutions.At this point in US history, additional spending on incarceration probably isn't worth the crime fighting bang for the buck compared to other ways that money could be spent - particularly investments in education and mental health care...

Meyers, Keasler, should be Dems' CCA electoral targets

Posted on June 12, 2009
The Dallas News' Michael Landauer writes that "Lawrence Meyers, the longest-serving member of the Court of Criminal Appeals, says he's running for re-election. In doing so, he cites the court's reputation for fairness. Try not to laugh." The other two Texas CCA judges up in 2010 are Michael Keasler and Cheryl Johnson, all Republicans...

Conservative veto call for expanded CPS powers growing louder

Posted on June 11, 2009
The outcry is growing against last minute amendments to SB 1440 expanding CPS authority to act without "good cause," the Fort Worth Star Telegram reported yesterday ("Groups urging Perry to veto bill that would increase CPS' power") in a story that incidentally quoted this Grits post on the topic...

Terri Hodge bribery trial begins this month

Posted on June 11, 2009
Embattled state Rep. Terri Hodge, a long-time criminal-justice reform advocate, drew a primary opponent this week, Dallas lawyer Eric Johnson, who announced his candidacy anticipating her forthcoming trial for bribery, scheduled to begin later this month, reports Gromer Jeffers at the Dallas News:The June 22 public corruption trial of former Dallas City Council member Don Hill, state Rep...

Governor should add eyewitness ID, not voter ID, to special session call

Posted on June 11, 2009
Governor Perry finally admitted this week that a special session would be necessary to keep agencies open whose Sunset bills didn't pass, though he didn't say when he would call it.Whenever he brings them back - whether this summer or next spring after the GOP primary in March - if the Governor decides to expand the "call" for the special session beyond keeping the Sunsetted agencies alive (they can only bring up legislation for consideration with his pre-approval), the first item on the list should be eyewitness ID, not voter ID, as some have suggested...

DOJ: Harris County Jail fails to meet minimum constitutional standards

Posted on June 10, 2009
A new findings letter from the US Justice Department criticizing the Harris County Jail dramatically ups the ante regarding the overcrowded facility's continuing problems.The letter from DOJ's Civil Rights Division hit all the high points, declaring straight-up that the jail "fails to provide detainees with adequate: (1) medical care; (2) mental health care; (3) protection from serious physical harm; and (4) protection from life safety hazards...

Market blurring line between graffiti and art

Posted on June 10, 2009
This story from the New York Times confronts the question, "Is graffiti Art?", and answers, "It is, this year":PARIS ? Like a slow-burning fuse, graffiti has smoldered in the contemporary art world for decades: omnipresent in the streets yet not quite hot enough to catch fire in the market...

Burka v Riddle on prison diversion funding

Posted on June 09, 2009
Texas Monthly named state Rep. Debbie Riddle to its Ten Worst Legislators list, in part because of her performance as chair of the Criminal Justice Subcommittee Appropriations, and in part because Paul Burka apparently just doesn't like her. Riddle responded, and the ensuing debate casts more light on some of the Appropriations battles in the House this session over prison diversion funding...

Measuring public attitudes on criminal justice

Posted on June 08, 2009
Via The Crime Report, I was surprised to see the results of this Zogby Survey done on behalf of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. Among the highlights:? A majority of US adults believe that some crimes, for which offenders are currently incarcerated, do not demand time behind bars...

Toward a crime-focused immigration policy

Posted on June 08, 2009
Over at Threats Watch, Jay Fraser considers it an "interesting policy contradiction" to find that Texas will begin screening prison inmates' fingerprints to identify and deport illegal immigrants who commit serious crimes, while "The City of Oakland plans to issue photo-ID cards to illegals to enable them to ease their "access to services, improve their civic participation and encourage them to report crimes" (emphasis in original)...

Econometric support for cutting prison populations

Posted on June 08, 2009
When Texas Monthly editor Jake Silverstein asked me to contribute a "Big Idea" for the magazine's May issue on the subject, I'd offered them this provocation, crafted from material in past Grits posts:Texas should dramatically slash its prison population and eliminate a majority of felony crimes...

Harris County dominating stats on certifying juvies as adults

Posted on June 07, 2009
Earlier this year there was a sharp debate over whether removing 19-20 year olds from TYC caused more juveniles to be certified as adults. But it turns out the biggest factor in adult certifications may be geographic: Kids are much more likely to be certified to stand trial as adults if they live in Harris County...

Picking Sonia

Posted on June 06, 2009
I've held off discussing President Barack Obama's Supreme Court pick, Sonia Sontomayor, because I know little about her and much of the public debate so far about identity politics, etc., has been uninformative. Thankfully, via SCOTUSBlog, there's a lot of information now available about her that I'll be perusing over the coming weeks:Judge Sotomayor?s completed Senate Judiciary questionnaire is available for download here...

Obama appointees offer more of the same on drug interdiction

Posted on June 06, 2009
I was critical during the campaign of Barack Obama's drug policy stances, so even though I'm disappointed at the contents of his administration's new "National Southwest Border Counternarcotics Strategy," released yesterday at a press conference by Obama's drug czar, Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano, I'm not surprised to see them proposing more of the same...

Bad CPS bill deserves a good veto

Posted on June 05, 2009
Jerri Lynn Ward alerts me to a bad amendment approved in the legislative session's waning hours heaping new authority on CPS to allow them to undertake child seizures and interrogations without first notifying parents. The Parent Guidance Center issued this press release calling for a gubernatorial veto...

Junk arson science helped secure capital murder conviction

Posted on June 04, 2009
Walter Reaves, an attorney out of Waco (see his blog here), is becoming the go-to defense lawyer in Texas on arson cases involving antiquated junk science, taking the issue on at a very high level after his client Cameron Todd Willingham was executed based on bad arson science...

My Blogroll is Lame

Posted on June 04, 2009
When I switched awhile back to the current template on the free Blogger software I use to run Grits, the by-hand html in which I'd previously coded all my links didn't transfer easily into the new template's format, and as a result it's become a pain in the butt to manage the blogroll; over the last year or so I've virtually quit doing it...

DNA exoneration indicts Rover in the witness box

Posted on June 03, 2009
Another civil suit has been filed over questionable forensic practices involving Fort Bend Sheriff's Deputy Keith Pikett's bloodhound "scent lineups." According to FortBendNow.com, the suit:alleges that the scent line-up was ?rigged to be result-oriented, that is, to maliciously and intentionally implicate? [Calvin] Miller...

Impeachment News and Notes

Posted on June 03, 2009
Federal District Judge Samuel Kent out of Galveston showed a lot of chutzpah submitting a resignation letter that doesn't become effective until a full year from now after he was convicted and sentenced to 33 months in prison for engaging in "non-consensual sexual contact with employees...

What was in the final TYC-JPC Sunset bill?

Posted on June 03, 2009
The Texas Legislature didn't accomplish much in 2009, but one of its few tangible achievements was to pass the "sunset" bill for the Texas Youth Commission and the Juvenile Probation Commission. Here's the conference committee report (pdf). Let's run through the highlights real quick to see what was finally done...

CCA orders Yogurt Shop retrial based on possibility of false confessions

Posted on June 02, 2009
In grudging deference to the US Supreme Court's decision in Crawford requiring that defendants have the right to confront witnesses against them in court, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has thrown out one of the disputed convictions in Austin's infamous 1991 "Yogurt shop murders," a horrific case involving the murder of four teenage girls...

Embarrassing: Lege ensures more false convictions with 81st session failures

Posted on June 01, 2009
After all the fawning over Timothy Cole's family and public declarations throughout the 81st Texas Legislature that the state would act to prevent false convictions, all the major innocence-related policy reforms proposed this year died in the session's waning hours with the exception of one bill requiring corroboration for jailhouse informants...

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