Criminal Law

Layoffs at TYC

Posted on January 15, 2009
Texas Youth Commission Executive Commissioner Cherie Townsend sent out this email today to TYC employees announcing significant layoffs: I am certain most of you are aware that the Sunset Advisory Commission met yesterday and voted 6-5 to abolish the Texas Youth Commission and the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission and to establish the Texas Juvenile Justice Department by September 1, 2010...

Bexar, Collin probation departments thumb noses at state diversion goals

Posted on January 14, 2009
The main reason Texas does not currently face a prison overcrowding crisis right now has been the implementation over the last two sessions of new diversion programs at local probation departments aimed at reducing felony revocations.Most local probation departments that received new diversion funding have seen their felony revocation rates decline significantly, according to an analysis by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (pdf), but three counties receiving grants saw increases in revocations (p...

Nonprofit seeks juvie justice volunteer

Posted on January 14, 2009
The Texas Criminal Justice Coalition is looking for volunteer help on juvenile justice issues during the 81st Texas Legislature, so I wanted to pass on their request for an Austin-based "research assistant" in case any readers are interested: TCJC Seeks VolunteersIf you live in Austin and want to participate on the front lines to help reform the criminal justice system, you couldn't do much better than to hook up with the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition , which is looking for research assistants for the 2009 Legislative Session...

Exclusionary rule takes a gut shot

Posted on January 14, 2009
Before I had a chance to post on a SCOTUS decision issued today (see the New York Times coverage) that eliminates the exclusionary rule when civil liberties are violated accidentally because of database errors, Texas State Trooper Association attorney Don Dickson left a comment on a related Grits post that essentially sums up my concerns:by a 5-4 vote, the SCOTUS ruled today that an erroneous crime record - in this case, a warrant which had been recalled but still showed up on someone's records - was not sufficient to trigger the exclusionary rule after a search incident to arrest on that warrant revealed that the subject, a convicted felon, was carrying a firearm and drugs...

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Dallas eyewitness study delayed

Posted on January 14, 2009
This is a disappointment: The Dallas Police Department waited so long to begin a study on its eyewitness ID procedures that the Urban Institute, which was supposed to conduct the study, had its grant expire and cannot now fund the long-awaited research...

TYC merger compromise?

Posted on January 13, 2009
Reports Mike Ward at the Austin Statesman:A compromise has emerged in the back-room fight over merging Texas? juvenile-justice agencies ? the embattled Texas Youth Commission and the smoothly run Juvenile Probation Commission. The idea: leave the agencies separate, but put them under one governing board that could oversee both...

Austin PD failed to report FBI crime data

Posted on January 13, 2009
According to the AP:Austin is the only major Texas city which does not have statistics included in an FBI midyear report because police officials did not submit the data, citing a lack of personnel. Austin police spokeswoman Anna Sabana said Monday that departments are only required to submit crime data ? the information is sent to the FBI through the Texas Department of Public Safety ? for the annual report, which is generally made public each June...

Expert: Yogurt Shop Case a Prime Example of False Confessions

Posted on January 13, 2009
At a meeting this morning of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals' Criminal Justice Integrity Unit, University of San Francisco academic Richard Leo expounded on his research into police interrogations and the causes of false confessions. (See Grits' prior discussions of Leo's work here, here, here, and here...

Obama's DOJ may refocus on prosecuting crime instead of immigration

Posted on January 12, 2009
I'll be pleased if the Obama Administration reverses recent trends at the Justice Department prioritizing prosecution of petty immigration crimes over more serious felonies, as predicted by members of his transition team. The New York Times' Solomon Moore lays out the issue in stark detail:Federal prosecutions of immigration crimes nearly doubled in the last fiscal year, reaching more than 70,000 immigration cases in the 2008 fiscal year, according to federal data compiled by a Syracuse University research group...

Tight state budget, minimal results may doom HS steroid testing

Posted on January 12, 2009
AP's Jim Vertuno says that de minimus results and the looming budget crisis may combine to eliminate Texas' $6 million per year steroid testing program for high school athletes:The results so far have found little to confirm fears that steroid use is a rampant problem...

Dallas PD finally launching study of sequential, blind photo lineups

Posted on January 12, 2009
I'd somehow missed a story published in the Dallas News on New Year's Day announcing that the Dallas Police Department is finally beginning its long-awaited study of "sequential, blind" eyewitness ID practices ("After 2 years of delays, study of photo lineups set to start," Jan...

State revenue will plummet, says Comptroller

Posted on January 12, 2009
The state of Texas will have $9 billion less to spend than in the last biennium, reports the Dallas News ("Texas revenue estimate down by $9 billion," Jan. 12):Comptroller Susan Combs today estimated that Texas has about $9 billion less to spend ? $77 billion ? than it did two years ago...

Levin: Juvie probation grants proposed by Sunset deserve equal attention to merging agencies

Posted on January 11, 2009
As news of more youth on youth sex assaults at the Texas Youth Commission spawns reclassification and segmentation of inmates and more calls to merge the agency with the Juvenile Probation Commission, Marc Levin of the Texas Public Policy Foundation rightly argues in a Houston Chronicle column ("Consider competition in efforts to reform juvenile justice system," Jan...

States reducing inmate numbers to save money: Should Texas?

Posted on January 11, 2009
AP reports that states are beginning to look at sacred budget cows because of the fiscal crisis and may actually reduce inmate populations to stave off rising costs. ("States look to prisons to save money, including letting some inmates go," Jan. 10):"Prior to this fiscal crisis, legislators could tinker around the edges ? but we're now well past the tinkering stage," said Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, which advocates alternatives to incarceration...

TV show depicts deception detection science as too exact

Posted on January 10, 2009
FOX TV is heavily running previews for a new mid-season drama called "Lie to Me" that purports to portray a scientist with perpetual five o'clock shadow and his hotter-than-thou research team who are experts in the "science of deception detection" - i...

Senate should question Obama's DOJ appointees about using anonymous witnesses

Posted on January 09, 2009
While President-elect Barack Obama's initial picks for key Justice Department posts indicate a likely departure from the more radical counterterrorism tactics undertaken in recent years by the Bush Administration, one recent Texas case raises an issue I'd like to see his nominees questioned about during Senate confirmation hearings: Do they support the use of anonymous expert witnesses in criminal court cases?That's what happened during the prosecution of five fundraisers for the Richardson-based Holy Land Foundation who were convicted last fall based largely on critical evidence given by an anonymous Israeli intelligence officer...

El Paso city council says Juarez violence argues for national conversation about pot legalization

Posted on January 09, 2009
No American city has a closer front-row seat to the bloodshed in the Mexican drug cartel wars than El Paso, which sits across the Rio Grande from the Mexican city of Juarez, where more than 1,600 people died in drug-related violence last year. So it comes as little surprise that the birthplace of marijuana prohibition in America wants to start a national conversation on whether to legalize pot as a mean to de-fund the gangsters who've all but taken over their sister city across the river...

Some judge somewhere declared this guy competent to stand trial

Posted on January 09, 2009
Andre Thomas, condemned to death row after he killed his wife and children and carved their hearts out, in 2004, then plucked out his own eye while he was awaiting his own capital murder trial. Even so, the judge declared him competent and this fall the Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed his death sentence...

A Suggestion for Reducing Life Threatening Risks to Officers

Posted on January 08, 2009
Over the holidays came the good news that the number of police officer deaths in the line of duty declined last year, both in Texas and nationally (though Texas still led all states with 14 deaths). So I was interested to see the Senate Criminal Justice Committee Report's Fifth Interim Charge articulate the problem in more detail...

Mental health court primer

Posted on January 08, 2009
The Council on State Government's Justice Center has produced a series of public policy primers on creating and operating mental health courts, an increasingly common phenomenon in Texas:Mental Health Courts: A Primer for Policymakers and Practitioners Provides a general overview of this program model and discusses the emergence of mental health courts, their objectives and procedures, how they differ from drug courts, and a number of other key issues...

Opportunities arise when tight budgets run up against campaign promises

Posted on January 08, 2009
New Harris County Democratic Sheriff Adrian Garcia is looking for ways to make good on his promise to boost the number of deputies on patrol while safely running an already understaffed jail during an economic downturn. The Houston Chronicle reports ("Sheriff is facing complex recruiting, staffing issues," Jan...

Tight budgets and corrections priorities

Posted on January 07, 2009
Federal budget numbers are always flabbergasting to me and I can only react with awe to the news that the 2009 federal deficit totaled $1.2 TRILLION, with a big, fat, capital "T."Most state budgets including Texas, OTOH, must balance themselves or else request specific debt approval from voters in bond elections, so state budgets by far are hit harder when tax revenues level off or decline in tough times...

DOJ: Austin PD should improve use-of-force oversight

Posted on January 06, 2009
While Austin police chief Art Acevedo has been downplaying a new report on APD use of force by the US Department of Justice, the 50 page document (pdf) identifies many shortcomings in both the department's use of force policies and its systems for supervisory review...

Stealing pets a felony? Must we?

Posted on January 06, 2009
Valley Democrat Eddie Lucio filed HB 435 which proposes making it a state jail felony to steal a "pet."Must we, really? Is this a big problem? Has there been a rash of pet-nappings and I wasn't informed?I can think of two incidents in my adult personal life involving allegations of "stolen pets...

Suggestive ID practices hard to exclude in court

Posted on January 06, 2009
Houston criminal defense lawyer and blogger John T. Floyd has an excellent piece up on DNA exonerations and eyewitness identification in which he lays out in detail the almost impossible burden of proof required in Texas to exclude eyewitness identifications based on suggestive photo lineups.

Peace treaty among Mexican cartels?

Posted on January 05, 2009
Two articles by Albert Corchada published yesterday in the Dallas News provide contradictory predictions regarding drug violence in Mexico in 2009:Mexican drug cartels negotiating a peace agreementMexico's drug violence expected to intensify in '09The news of a possible peace treaty between warring drug cartels is particularly welcome because I seriously doubt whether either the Mexican or US governments can stop the violence on their own.

Justice-related interim committee reports begin to arrive

Posted on January 05, 2009
Two interim committee reports are out related to topics covered on this blog (warning - large pdf files):Senate Criminal Justice Committee Interim ReportSenate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee Interim ReportI've not had a chance yet to read these documents - I'll be examining bits and pieces of both on Grits over the next couple of weeks - but they should give us a sense of what topics these committees will focus on during the 81st session and the legislative solutions committee members are currently inclined to embrace.

Breaking News: Craddick is out

Posted on January 04, 2009
It looks like Tom Craddick has stepped down and San Antonio's Joe Straus will be the next Speaker of the Texas House. Straus today released a list of 85 House members supporting his candidacy.No telling what this will mean in terms of committee chairmanships, Calendars and Appropriations Committee membership, and other key leadership positions, but one thing's for sure: Change is afoot.

Alonzo bill would let judges pare sex offender rolls

Posted on January 04, 2009
Reacting to concerns that the sex offender registry includes too many low-level offenders and may increase recidivism, a Dallas state rep wants to give judges discretion to shorten sex offender registration periods for certain first-time offenders.Declaring "Some offenses don't rise to the level" of needing registration, Rep...

Montague jail flooded with contraband, closed after FBI raid

Posted on January 04, 2009
Yikes! And we thought there was a contraband problem on Texas' death row!AP reports that in Montague County, the brand spanking new Sheriff's first official act was to move out all the inmates and close down the county jail in the wake of an FBI raid and apparent, rampant misconduct under his predecessor:A jail in northern Texas has been closed and its nearly 60 inmates transferred as authorities investigate what they call dangerous conditions for jailers and those behind bars ? including cells that locked from the inside or contained recliners...

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