Criminal Law

Can Governor Rick Perry pardon Anthony Graves?

Posted on February 18, 2011
Perhaps the Governor's office spoke too soon about their authority to pardon Anthony Graves. Over at Pardon Power, clemency expert PS Ruckman is "baffled" that "the Governor's office says Rick Perry cannot pardon [Anthony] Graves because 'a federal appeals court had thrown out the original conviction, and a governor could only pardon a convicted criminal...

Innocence Man: Gallego propels raft of innocence bills to front of Criminal Jurisprudence line

Posted on February 18, 2011
The House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee has posted an agenda which includes three important pieces of innocence legislation carried by Chairman Pete Gallego:HB 215 Relating to photograph and live lineup identification procedures in criminal cases.HB 219 Relating to the electronic recording and admissibility of certain custodial interrogations...

Bittersweet exoneration stories

Posted on February 17, 2011
Coupla notable, if troubled, innocence-related stories:Tony Hall, the East Texas man whose false conviction for child molestation was discussed in this Grits post,  was formally exonerated by the Court of Criminal Appeals this week. These lines from the Lufkin Daily News, though, broke my heart:While Wednesday should have been a happy day for Hall, it was a day of mixed emotions, as he unexpectedly lost his half-brother, Sammy Fuentes, Sunday morning...

Drug courts are OK, and other stories

Posted on February 17, 2011
Here are a several stories that may interest Grits readers, starting off with items from couple of Houston criminal defense blawggers doing some heavy lifting:Monday morning quarterbacking decision on police officer indictmentsPaul Kennedy rounds up coverage from a town hall meeting in Houston where he sat on the dais, and critiques the District Attorney's decision not to seek felony charges against police officers whose beating of a 15-year old boy was incidentally caught on a nearby business' security video...

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Lege briefing: 'Thinking Outside the Cell'

Posted on February 16, 2011
Yesterday, the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) and the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition presented a briefing to roughly 120 legislative staffers and other notables on policy and budget issues related to adult corrections in 2011 legislative session...

Juvenile Justice Roundup

Posted on February 16, 2011
Here are a few juvenile justice stories which caught my eye recently that may interest Grits readers: Ex-TYC Auditor: Lack of policy allowed abuseA Lubbock TV station has this interview with a former TYC auditor who discusses how cases like that of John Paul Hernandez, the former TYC administrator currently on trial in Lubbock for sex abuse, might have been prevented if, in the 1990s, the agency had followed recommendations to enact a policy regarding staff being alone with students behind closed doors...

Draft budgets reduce prison healthcare reimbursements to match Medicaid rates

Posted on February 16, 2011
In the wake of a recent audit alleging that the University of Texas Medical Branch overcharged for prison health services, I was interested to note that both the House and Senate budgets would university medical providers to get written permission from LBB to charge TDCJ more for services than would be allowable under Medicaid...

Reduce inmate population to cut prisons budget

Posted on February 16, 2011
Mike Ward at the Austin Statesman has a story today ("State looking at release of foreign, or sick inmates") in which legislators finally acknowledge the elephant in the room: Cutting as much at the Department of Criminal Justice as proposed in the draft House an Senate budgets will require policy changes to reduce the real number of human beings locked up, beyond just cutting the budget...

'Budget crunch forces a new approach to prisons'

Posted on February 15, 2011
The title of this post is the headline to a notable NPR story today about the metamorphosis of debates over incarceration in light of state and federal budget shortfalls. Even so, the Obama Administration has requested a 10% budget hike for federal prisons...

Damning testimony at TYC sex abuse trial

Posted on February 15, 2011
Given what's been coming out in the John Paul Hernandez trial, I'm fairly shocked that the former Texas Youth Commission administrator didn't take a plea regarding the sex-abuse allegations against him. (See here, here, and here.) Perhaps he was overconfident that the local District Attorney and judge in Ward County where the offenses were committed would protect him, and indeed they did for many years (as is fairly common, sadly, though after TYC's 2009 Sunset bill, going forward, crimes by TYC staff can be prosecuted in Travis County if locals won't pursue them)...

Innocence roundup

Posted on February 15, 2011
Here are several innocence-related stories I don't have time to discuss this a.m., but which merit Grits readers attention:No compensation for Anthony GravesThe Comptroller refused compensation to Anthony Graves, who was exonerated 16 years after a capital murder conviction, because his case was overturned on direct appeal instead of through a habeas corpus writ based on actual innocence claims...

Jail deaths implicate state oversight, competency restoration funding

Posted on February 14, 2011
Having referenced recent media coverage of an untimely in-custody death in Longview of a woman jailed for traffic tickets, I should mention several notable stories about jail deaths out of Dallas, Houston and Corpus Christi. In Dallas, a homeless man died after he:became increasingly sick behind bars and was mostly cared for by inmates, according to a Sheriff's Department investigation...

Investigating neglect in Lonview death of mother jailed for traffic warrants, denied seizure medication

Posted on February 12, 2011
Brandi Grissom has a feature at the Texas Tribune on the disturbing number of recent inmates deaths at the Gregg County Jail in Longview - nine since 2005 in the smallish East Texas county - focusing particularly on the most recent instance, where a young mother locked up for traffic warrants died after her seizure medication was denied to her...

Norquist on 'Conservative Principles and Prison'

Posted on February 11, 2011
Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, writing in yesterday's National Review Online, argues that "the 'lock ?em up and throw away the key' mentality forces conservatives to ignore [their] fundamental principles," encouraging reduced incarceration rates and citing Texas' recent example:Consider Texas, a state legendary for being ?tough on crime...

The Jail that Ate Tyler, and other stories

Posted on February 11, 2011
Just a few items for y'all this morning while I'm focused elsewhwere:House crimjust committee assignments boring but significantFirst, I should belatedly mention that Texas House committee chairs on criminal justice yielded no surprises but set the stage for a session where reform bills will have a serious chance of passage in the lower chamber...

LBB lays out recidivism study, adult and juvie corrections population, cost projections

Posted on February 10, 2011
I turned on the House Appropriations Committee hearing first thing this morning to listen to exceedingly brief presentations from the Legislative Budget Board and TDCJ chief Brad Livingston about the prison system. LBB presented the committee with several important new reports, including updated adult and juvenile inmate cost and population projections and three-year recidivism rates...

'Blue Wall of Silence' alive and well at Houston PD

Posted on February 10, 2011
There's a classic "Blue Wall of Silence" episode playing out at Houston PD after a officers beat up a 15-year old boy in front of several compatriots and all of them failed the report the incident until an employee of a nearby business came forward with video footage...

You tell 'em, Jerry! Cuts to probation would boost prison costs

Posted on February 09, 2011
Check out an article published this morning in USA Today, subtitled, "Cuts in probation and parole programs to reconcile state budget deficits could undermine recent successes in shrinking bloated prison populations, criminal justice officials say...

Governor endorses radical cuts to prison agency

Posted on February 09, 2011
Regular readers know that the Texas House and Senate have already released draft budgets that suggested massive cuts to state agencies across the board, including at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. At TDCJ, the House suggested cutting $786.4 million from the total budget, and the Senate recommended cutting $583...

Second prison closure planned this fiscal year

Posted on February 09, 2011
This is a good sign, via the Statesman's Mike Ward:State prison officials, their initial budget-cutting plans rejected by legislative leaders, have shuffled the deck and come up with a new proposal to cut more administrative jobs and close two prisons earlier than planned as a way to save $50 million...

Texas' "Secret Death Penalty": Inadequate prison healthcare

Posted on February 09, 2011
A new report (pdf) from the Texas Civil Rights Project (TCRP) argues that "Texas has created a 'secret death penalty': poor medical care can turn temporary imprisonment for relatively minor offenses into a death sentence." Timothy Cole's family might agree...

You can't make this stuff up: The increasingly thin line between fact and fiction

Posted on February 08, 2011
Here are a few items I don't have time to focus on in detail but which merit Grits readers' attention:'Reasonable suspicion' includes acts that are 'not overtly criminal' but merely 'bizarre'The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has (once again) lowered the standard for reasonable suspicion, Paul Kennedy informs us...

Prisons as water hogs: Private facility in Waco would use 2.5 million gallons per month when full

Posted on February 08, 2011
A helpful reader sent me a public notice recently from the Waco Tribune Herald announcing that "The US Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Prisons (Bureau) is preparing an Environmental Assessment (EA) ... to assess the potential environmental impacts of contracting with a private contractor to house approximately 1,000 federal, low-security, adult male, non-US citizen, criminal aliens at a contractor-owned, contractor operated facility...

TDCJ belatedly contemplates real-world implications of massive budget cuts

Posted on February 08, 2011
As legislators vet proposals for the next biennium's budget, officials at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice haven't yet figured out how to implement cuts ordered last year, reports Mike Ward at the Austin Statesman ("Prison agency proposed 1,000 layoffs, less drug treatment, fewer convict meals," Feb...

'Bout damn time

Posted on February 07, 2011
Six years after the alleged offenses, jury selection begins today for former TYC administrator John Paul Hernandez. Following Ray Brookins' conviction last year, this trial will hopefully place a final, if ugly coda on the saga that began in January 2007 with publication of Nate Blakeslee's exposé in the Texas Observer...

Deregistration for first-time, low-level sex offenders may become reality in 2011

Posted on February 07, 2011
James Cannon at the Midland Reporter-Telegram has a nice little scoop on proposed protocols to be considered later this month by the state Council on Sex Offender Treatment to facilitate deregistration of low-risk offenders from the list ("Texas in final stages to allow some sex offenders to deregister from list," Feb...

Responding to unanswered questions on Rodney Ellis' innocence legislation: "How much of an innocence problem do we really have in this state?"

Posted on February 06, 2011
The Houston Chronicle published a feature on Friday ("Ellis works to halt false convictions," Feb. 4) discussing legislation in state Sen. Rodney Ellis' "Innocence Protection Package": "Ellis' bills include many of the [Timothy Cole Advisory] panel's suggestions, including uniform procedures for eyewitness identification, requiring investigators to record interrogations in serious felonies, streamlining defendants' appeals for DNA testing, and reorganizing Texas' indigent defense task force...

TPPF: Legislators' Guide to Criminal Justice Issues

Posted on February 04, 2011
Check out the Texas Public Policy Foundation's "Legislators? Guide to the Issues" on Criminal Justice:Corrections Budget & Prison Operations Adult Probation Empowering & Restoring Crime Victims Juvenile Justice Overcriminalization School Discipline & Delinquency Prevention Parole & Reentry

Audit: UTMB overcharged state while claiming massive deficit

Posted on February 03, 2011
The State Auditor's Office will be releasing an analysis today, reports the Austin Statesman ("UTMB prisoner health costs, raises scrutinized," Feb. 3), critical of UTMB's provision of healthcare at state prison facilities, accusing the agency of overcharging and giving large, unwarranted raises to dozens of employees...

Junk science v. Mom

Posted on February 03, 2011
With this blog's interest in junk science, Grits should point out two recent stories regarding women convicted of killing children based on questionable forensics: One so-called "shaken baby" case, which is a highly questionable medical diagnosis created for the sole purpose of prosecution, and another case here in Austin where an expert hired by the defense was so unprofessional he did more harm than good:"Shaken baby syndrome faces new questions in court," New York Times, Feb...

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