Criminal Law

Jailed on Principle: Officers need authority for dispute resolution in field

Posted on October 31, 2008
A Texas man went to jail on principle in Georgia this week, but it wasn't some latter-day civil rights protest:Fulton County authorities arrested 40-year-old Dan Linscomb of Texas City, Texas, last week for refusing to pay his tab at the all-you-can-eat Iron Skillet buffet in northwest Atlanta...

Corroborating informant testimony, reporting crimes by snitches among ACLU recommendations

Posted on October 30, 2008
On Monday, ACLU's Texas affiliate and the group's Drug Law Reform Project held a press conference to release a briefing paper (pdf) recommending changes to how testimony from confidential informants is gathered and used. While I haven't seen any press coverage, many of their proposals, for long-time readers, will have a familiar ring:1...

Roundup of think tank's criminal justice work product

Posted on October 30, 2008
The latest e-newsletter from the Texas Public Policy Foundation's Center for Effective Justice featured links to much of director Marc Levin's excellent work over the last several months which I'm certain will interest Grits readers: 1) Recent Publications Measuring Performance in the Juvenile Justice System As the Texas Youth Commission (TYC) and Texas Juvenile Probation Commission (TJPC) undergo sunset review, their performance measures should be enhanced to focus more on outcomes such as restitution to victims, recidivism, educational progress, and administrative costs...

County Commissioners key to jail decisions

Posted on October 30, 2008
I'm always pleased to see policy debates about public safety make it into electoral campaigns, but the back and forth in Dallas this election cycle between the incumbent Sheriff and challenger over the jail have confirmed my sense that County Commissioners Court races are where jail problems and solutions really need to be discussed...

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Gov. Perry wants his own version of Clinton's COPS program ... to fight Los Zetas?

Posted on October 29, 2008
Readers may recall that in 2007, the Texas Legislature backed Governor Rick Perry's much-ballyhooed plan to give more than $100 million in pork barrel grants to border Sheriffs, splitting the funds equally (more than $6 million apiece) among sheriffs in the 16 counties along the border to pay for extra equipment and overtime for patrols...

Open Thread

Posted on October 28, 2008
I'll be away from the blog because of a death in the family for the next day or so. Use this as an open thread to let me know what's going on in your neck of the woods.In particular, I'm interested in hearing about any local criminal justice-related elections (Sheriff, DA, judges, jail bonds, etc...

Back to the future: California showdown recalls Ruiz in Texas

Posted on October 28, 2008
When state prison systems and federal judges collide, typically the guys in the black robes come out on top - ask Judge William Wayne Justice and everyone involved in Texas' Ruiz case.California has chosen to test that truism, defying a federal court order to expand prison hospital capacity or reduce the inmate population...

Contraband Update

Posted on October 27, 2008
The Texas prison system remains on lockdown searching for contraband; here are a few interesting details from recent MSM coverage.For starters, the Austin Statesman reports that searches have been expanded to staff leaving prisons as well as those entering them:At first, everyone going into Texas prisons was being searched as part of a massive contraband sweep...

Dallas police reexamining 'showup' policy

Posted on October 27, 2008
Grits has frequently discussed faulty eyewitness ID procedures used by police, and few such tactics are more problematic than use of the "showup," where police bring a single suspect in custody to see a witness or victim and simply ask, "is this the guy...

An 'I Really Really Like You Crime'?

Posted on October 27, 2008
In new TV cop show Life on Mars, the main character (played by Jason O'Mara) is a modern-day officer who inexplicably time travels back to 1973 where he finds himself working in the NYPD homicide unit. In the most recent episode, while investigating the killing of a veteran back from Vietnam who turned out to be gay, the time traveling cop declared to his boss, played by Harvey Keitel, "See, I told you it was a hate crime...

Why jail people you're not going to charge?

Posted on October 26, 2008
Counties can save big bucks by eliminating jail time for people who're never charged with a crime if District and County Attorneys implement a "direct filing" system on the front end.El Paso DA Jaime Esparza gave a presentation this week at a conference of the Texas Task Force on Indigent Defense about his county's upgraded information management system (DIMS), which allows police to immediately file cases with the DA instead of having prosecutors wait to evaluate the case until after the defendant sees a judge...

Around the web

Posted on October 25, 2008
Here are several stories I'd blog about if I had more time:State Sen. Rodney Ellis has a column in the Dallas News announcing he plans to introduce legislation next spring to improve eyewitness ID procedures and require videotaping custodial interrogations...

Smart policies can boost police coverage even in a bad economy

Posted on October 25, 2008
CNN had a story this week that I'm sure we'll be seeing much more frequently titled, "Police face cuts as economy falters." According to CNN:U.S. police departments are streamlining patrols, reducing training and cutting back on some preventative programs as their budgets fall victim to the struggling economy...

Did you visit your client in jail, yet?

Posted on October 25, 2008
At a truly excellent conference this week sponsored by the Texas Task Force on Indigent Defense, the indigent defense coordinator in Taylor County gave a description of the processes they use to ensure attorneys are promptly appointed for people in jail...

Fronting for bail bondsmen? Tyler jail debates getting weird

Posted on October 24, 2008
An attorney representing Smith County in an open records lawsuit, in which jail opponents are seeking access to proposed facility plans developed in secret meetings earlier this year, is making some bizarre allegations about the requestors:[Robert] Davis said Mr...

TYC stops paying for empty private prison

Posted on October 24, 2008
The Texas Youth Commission continues to take a step and a half back for every one step forward. TYC's new Executive Commissoner Cheri Townsend canceled their contract with a private prison company out of Florida to operate a facility in Eagle Lake west of Houston in Colorado County, the Dallas News reported, after the agency had already paid the company more than $1...

Fraud by DPS tech in DWI cases

Posted on October 24, 2008
Reports the Dallas News:At least 2,600 Houston-area DWI arrests are now in question, after a Department of Public Safety contractor failed to inspect breath analysis equipment ? and faked records to show that she had

Informants focus of media briefing, CLE

Posted on October 24, 2008
For attorneys in Austin, a reader notified me of a continuing legal education (CLE) event on Monday sponsored by ACLU focused on the use of confidential informants in the drug war:Continuing Legal Education Seminar ?Confidential Informants: Problems, Issues and Strategies? presented by University of Texas law professor Gerry Morris and [Jay] Rorty {Deputy Director of the ACLU National Drug Law Reform Project]...

Many Texas counties not complying with SCOTUS' Rothgery ruling

Posted on October 24, 2008
Many Texas counties have yet to update their indigent defense plans to accommodate the US Supreme Court's Rothgery decision this spring, according to presentations at a statewide conference of the Texas Task Force on Indigent Defense this week. If local officials aren't careful, such omissions could lead to confessions and other evidence being thrown out of court, the group was told...

Open Thread

Posted on October 23, 2008
I'm out today to attend this conference by the Task Force on Indigent Defense. Consider this an open thread to discuss whatever criminal justice topics are on your mind.

More on Halloween sex offender hype

Posted on October 23, 2008
The San Antonio Express News today quoted this Grits piece about law enforcement grandstanding over sex offenders at Halloween ("Roundup targets sex offenders," Oct. 23), in which I'd pointed out that extra monitoring of sex offenders who are unlikely to cause problems "mis-targets resources on a night with one of the year's highest youth crime rates...

Overcrowding means Burnet jail won't accept Class C arrests

Posted on October 22, 2008
More and more Texas law enforcement agencies are embracing the tactic of reducing their number of arrests for petty offenses in order to stave off costly jail overcrowding. KXAN-TV out of Austin reports that:Due to overcrowding and lack of manpower, Friday, the Burnet County Sheriff relayed the message that the Burnet County will no longer be accepting most class C misdemeanor suspects...

FCC has no authority to approve cell phone jammers

Posted on October 22, 2008
At yesterday's Senate Criminal Justice Committee hearing, legislators demanded that the Department of Criminal Justice seek Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approval to install cell phone jammers at Texas prison units. According to this AP article, though, the FCC has no such authority:"We have no authority to even grant it if we thought it was worthwhile or something that was warranted," said Robert Kenny, a spokesman for the FCC...

Long booking times a strong argument for police using citation authority

Posted on October 22, 2008
Keeping more officers on the street for longer periods of time is perhaps the best argument for police to use their new authority granted by the Legislature last year to issue citations for low-level misdemeanors, followed as a close second by the fact that doing so reduces jail overcrowding...

Staff bristling at TDCJ lockdown restrictions

Posted on October 22, 2008
An Amarillo TV station broadcast this report on how TDCJ staff are reacting (mostly negatively) to the system-wide lockdown ordered by Governor Perry in response to widespread contraband smuggling:It is not only the prisoners under scrutiny but prison employees as well, the TDCJ is not allowing food or any outside contraband into the prison system...

Pay hike for guards needed to reduce contraband smuggling

Posted on October 21, 2008
At a Senate committee meeting today Texas legislators were told that understaffing and low guard pay were primary causes of the flood of contraband in Texas prisons, combined with a lack of phone access for inmates to keep in touch with their families...

Senate committee examines reasons for contraband smuggling

Posted on October 21, 2008
An emergency meeting of the Texas Senate Criminal Justice Committee today focused on how contraband gets into Texas prisons. Not many solutions were identified but the hearing underlined the scope of the problem.The most common disciplinary action against prisoners in TDCJ is for possessing contraband, said Sen...

Attorney General should stop DPS' end-run around the Lege on roadblocks

Posted on October 21, 2008
The fight over using traffic roadblocks without probable cause to check for drunk drivers has become a biennial affair at the Texas Legislature, and interest groups were already sharpening their knives over the coming roadblock fight in 2009. But the Department of Public Safety has asked Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott's permission to circumvent the Legislature's will on roadblocks and allow the procedure on the agency's own authority, we learn from TheNewspaper...

Texas' example cited as way to smartly reduce prison costs

Posted on October 20, 2008
Texas' recent shift toward strengthened probation, expanded treatment and especially the proliferation of drug courts was given credit by an editorial in the Christian Science Monitor ("One way to cut prison costs," Oct. 20) for pioneering ways to cut prison costs without harming public safety, an approach now under consideration by the US Sentencing Commission...

Tyler paper editorializing for jail in news pages

Posted on October 20, 2008
A bizarre triplet of articles from the Tyler Morning Telegraph awaited me on my news feeds when I got back to the blog this morning after being away from the computer most of the weekend - bizarre because they all seem to overtly promote the jail the way an editorialist or blogger would, though they were portrayed to readers as news stories...

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