Criminal Law

Deadly riot at federal prison in South Texas could have been prevented with adequate staffing

Posted on March 29, 2008
Was understaffing at a federal prison in South Texas responsible for yesterday's prison riot? It seems likely.Only 13 guards were on duty to oversee 1,160 inmates at a medium security federal prison in Three Rivers when a riot broke out yesterday, leaving one inmate dead and 22 injured...

Federal dollars from immigrant detainees aren't worth intangible costs at Travis County Jail

Posted on March 28, 2008
I'd somehow missed news of this recent protest at the local jail, but here in Travis County, reported The Daily Texan ("Workers rights group pickets Travis County Jail," March 19), Sheriff Greg Hamilton faces increasing political pressure to scale back his department's expanded collaboration with the federal Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) service"We are presenting a letter today to the Travis County Jail signed by a broad base of community organizations, churches and immigration organizations to let them know there is large support for this cause" ...

Dallas officers fired for ticket scandal believed end justified the means

Posted on March 28, 2008
The firing of two Dallas police officers and the suspension of a third highlight abusive ticket writing practices that apparently have gone on at the agency for years. Reported Tanya Eiserer in the Dallas News ("2 Dallas police officers fired, 1 suspeded, after investigation of tickets," March 28): Senior Cpl...

Blackburn succeeds in Amarillo with medical necessity defense for marijuana defendant

Posted on March 27, 2008
Reason's Hit and Run blog brings the news that our buddy Jeff Blackburn - the civil rights attorney who runs the Texas Tech law school Innocence Project and was the main lawyer representing defendants in the Tulia drug sting case - has just won a major victory in an Amarillo courtroom, convincing juries that his client used marijuana out of medical necessity...

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Questions about snitch busted in Austin undercover operation

Posted on March 27, 2008
Bully for the Travis County Sheriff's Office: When an informant showed up for an undercover operation, they searched his vehicle before proceeding and found an ounce of coke in the trunk of his Porsche. Rather than ignore the crime and proceed with the undercover operation, they arrested the guy and took him to jail...

DOJ forums in Houston focus on prison rape

Posted on March 27, 2008
A guest column in today's Houston Chronicle informs us of hearings today and tomorrow in Houston focusing on prison rape ("For the sake of all Texans, stop rape in our prisons," March 27): According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice runs five of the 10 prisons with the highest rates of sexual victimization in the country...

10% pay hike for Texas prison guards approved - will TYC follow suit?

Posted on March 27, 2008
The Texas Board of Criminal Justice approved a 10% pay hike for new prison guard hires at its meeting today in Austin, reports AP, boosting starting pay and eliminating what is currently the third salary step for COs, meaning guards will get pay increases faster:The changes, effective May 1, will boost salary of a starting officer from $23,046 to $25,416 and compress seniority requirements to allow new officers to achieve higher pay grades in fewer months...

Honest to God "snake oil salesman" charged for selling venomous, vodka-based elixir

Posted on March 27, 2008
Just pointing this story out for its "don't you love this state?" humor value.I'm not surprised someone would make such a concoction, but it cracks me up that the vendor, named "Bayou Bob," no less, developed a significant customer base selling what amounts to rattlesnakes brined in vodka, which sold as a natural medicinal remedy, he (naturally) insists...

Ignition interlocks a good idea for DWIs, but vendors should be more transparent

Posted on March 27, 2008
I'm a fan of ignition interlock devices for DWI probationers, and think that empirically they're a better solution than incarceration, for many drunk drivers, if the goal is to reduce fatalities. But like Elvez1975 over at You Don't Make Friends With Salad, it gives me pause if the makers of such devices aren't being transparent about their products...

Texas prisoner entrepreneurs, pioneering program, garner international attention for economic success and low recidivism outcomes

Posted on March 27, 2008
Thanks to the reader who forwarded this article from The Economist ("A new deal: Rehabilitating prisoners," March 19) profiling Texas' nonprofit Prison Entrepreneurship Program (PEP). The article focuses on PEP graduate Sam Amaya, a repeat offender who committed a series of gun offenses beginning at age six (!), but who will soon:graduate from the Prison Entrepreneurship Programme (PEP), a remarkable effort to prepare some of Texas's harder cases for their transition back to freedom...

Memo to SCOTUS: If a defendant is spouting "gibberish" at trial, maybe they weren't really "competent" to begin with

Posted on March 27, 2008
If a mentally ill person chooses to represent themselves at trial and can't put on a coherent defense that rises above the level of babbling, I'd think that calls into question the quality of the court's decision that the person was "competent" to stand trial in the first place...

Rockwall DA sentenced for corruption

Posted on March 26, 2008
Named statewide "Prosecutor of the Year" in 2001, the Rockwall County DA will now join those he sent to prison after a conviction for theft by a public servant, including using government funds to purchase a high-end video gaming computer for personal use...

Are Wire writers promoting jury nullification guilty of aggravated perjury?

Posted on March 26, 2008
Reacting to writers from the brilliant TV series, The Wire, promoting jury nullification in drug cases in Time magazine, a Texas prosecutor submitted a guest piece over at Defending People to express his view that the writers, had they made the statements, in Texas, would be guilty of aggravated perjury by virtue of suggesting that others violate their jurors oath...

UK web activism on dyslexia includes focus on prisons

Posted on March 26, 2008
Having written previously about Texas' failure to target the link between illiteracy and crime, particularly for children with dyslexia, I was especially pleased to find the Dyslexia Online Magazine, a British site whose contents made me think this issue has taken hold more strongly on the political front in the UK than in America...

Begging your pardon: President's use of pardon power parsimonious compared to predecessors

Posted on March 26, 2008
Mary Flood over at the Chronicle's Legal Trade blog has the raw list of presidential pardons and provides excellent information in the comments on the scope of pardon power.Hardly Reaganesque, President Bush has pardoned fewer than half as many people as either Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton, the last two-term presidents, did in their tenures, AP reports - 157 so far...

Foundation report criticizes Harris County DA for unnecessary detention, prosecution of juveniles

Posted on March 25, 2008
With a District Attorney's GOP runoff in full swing, here's an issue I hope both candidates address before Harris County voters go back to the polls -Decision making in Texas' largest county about juvenile cases is haphazard and ill-focused, with frequent misdemeanor referrals by the District Attorney's office clogging the system with low-level cases that detract from more serious offenders, according to a new study by the Annie Casey Foundation...

Number arrested with no charges filed closer to 2% than half, as claimed in Rothgery case

Posted on March 25, 2008
Well, I've got a little more clarity and some data on the question of how many Texans are jailed without charges being filed, but it doesn't seem to be as high as attorney Greg Coleman claimed last week arguing before SCOTUS in the Rothgery case. Coleman told the court "it may happen in half of the cases, where an individual is arrested, magistrated, released, and no official charges are ever brought...

National innocence data understated by excluding drug war exonerations

Posted on March 25, 2008
Adam Liptak has an article in the New York Times ("Consensus on counting the innocent: We can't," March 25) making a statistical point nationally about exonerations that I'd made previously for Dallas County, Texas' exoneration capital: The total exonerations routinely counted only include cases overturned through DNA evidence, but a lot more innocent people are exonerated than that...

Drug task force case at SCOTUS would deputize informants to override Fourth Amendment warrant requirement

Posted on March 25, 2008
The threshold for police securing search warrants, or searching without them, has been chipped away in recent years to absurdist points, where Fourth Amendment law now has a "through the looking glass" feel that frequently seems to ignore the plain language in the Bill of Rights...

Dallas News: "Texas actually predestines some children for a life of crime"

Posted on March 24, 2008
A get tough approach to juvenile corrections has "inadvertently constructed a pipeline to youth prison," declared an editorial this morning in the Dallas News, discussing research presented at a recent Children's Defense Fund conference in Houston making the case that "Texas actually predestines some children for a life of crime...

Bully says she didn't pick Bexar needle exchange fight

Posted on March 24, 2008
Those tracking the saga of Bexar County DA Susan Reed's efforts to stop a legislatively approved needle exchange pilot should be sure to read Karen Brooks' story this morning in the Dallas News. I was shocked to see the brazenly false declaration, "We did not go out looking for this," First Assistant District Attorney Crag Herberg said...

Some may choose a 'stop snitching' code, but others acquiesce in it

Posted on March 24, 2008
Here's a first-hand narrative that illustrates why police criticisms of the "Stop Snitching" meme over the last couple of years sometimes receive a mixed reception from people who live in crime-ridden neighborhoods. Anyone interested in the subject of snitches vs...

Easter celebrates rebuke of an unfair justice system, but too few Christians seem to notice

Posted on March 23, 2008
Today, all of Christendom celebrates the victory over the grave of a man who was wrongfully convicted and executed, but I'm not sure most Christians ever think of the Passion story in terms of those criminal justice implications.I wonder how many preachers in their Easter sermons this morning will ask parishioners to remember innocent people who've been convicted, or remind them that Jesus, were he convicted in modern times, might well be sitting on death row waiting for his appeals to be processed? Will any suggest that the Passion story may question the wisdom of the death penalty, since innocent people from Christ's time to the present day have been sentenced to death?Will ministers suggest to their flocks that if Jesus Christ, perfection's own embodiment, could be wrongly sentenced for a crime, it could happen to them or to anyone so they should show compassion for the accused? Will any link Christ's own criminal conviction in the Passion story with his demand that Christians visit those in prison and provide them comfort?And finally, when voices from the pulpit proclaim that Christ's victory over death "paid for the sins of all," will any religious leaders go on in the next breath to explain how Christians can then justify imprisoning 1 in 99 American adults, punishing them for sins already paid for by the blood and sacrifice of the Son of God?Let me know if any of these themes cropped up in the Easter services you attend today...

Another "holding pen for wetbacks"

Posted on March 22, 2008
Another immigration detention facility to house children and families like the one in Williamson County may be coming to Central Texas, except that government officials don't all call it an "immigration detention facility." In a public agenda for the Creedmoor Water Supply Corporation, a public entity with an elected board providing water service to the proposed facility, they called it a "holding pen for wetbacks...

Federal bill backing mental health courts a teaspoon of remedy for an oceanic problem

Posted on March 22, 2008
Good news and bad news coming from the federal level regarding mental health and crime, reports Kristin Houle over at Prevention and Punishment. The good news is that the President and a bipartisan coalition support legislation currently moving in the US Senate to expand resources and focus on "mentally ill offender treatment and crime reduction":On March 6, 2008, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee passed S...

Drug offenders dominate new prisoners from probation revocation

Posted on March 21, 2008
What types of offenders are being revoked from probation to Texas prisons? I took this data from a fact sheet created by TDCJ-CJAD discussing research on the impact of probation revocations, both for technical violations and for new offenses, on Texas' prison population:Perhaps the most critical stat here: 37% of all probationers revoked to prison in Texas in 2006 were sentenced for a drug offense, more than any other category of offender...

End-of-Week Roundup

Posted on March 21, 2008
Here are a few short items that deserve Grits readers' attention:Jail 'em now, accuse 'em laterFort Worth Star Telegram editorial writer Linda Campbell offered up an excellent editorial about the Kafka-esque implications of the Rothgery case argued this week before the Supreme Court, discussed by Grits here and here...

First Texans released thanks to retroactive reduction of federal crack cocaine penalites

Posted on March 20, 2008
Since the Rothgery case has me thinking about the federal courts this week - not my usual terrain, to be sure - I was pleased to notice an AP article localizing a federal story for Texas ("Inmates seeking shorter sentences on crack cocaine crime," March 16), via Crime and Consequences, detailing the results of retroactive changes in federal sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine:Since last week, more than 250 inmates in the Dallas-Fort Worth area have filed requests for shorter sentences, according to federal probation officials...

Collin County's push toward stronger probation not as flawed as earlier, reported data implied

Posted on March 20, 2008
Earlier today I published data from a TDCJ-CJAD (adult probation) report (pdf) in December, citing the results from several counties that received state grants aimed at reducing probation revocations. I mentioned how surprised I was to find one county - Collin, where Plano is the county seat - had not only more probation revocations after getting its grant, but 48...

Whitmire coauthors Washpost op ed on "Cutting the prison rate safely"

Posted on March 20, 2008
Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chair John Whitmire co-authored an op-ed piece in the Washington Post today along with another state senator from Kansas on the topic of "Cutting the Prison Rate Safely." While opining that mass incarceration "has undoubtedly helped reduce the nation's crime rate," they write that high numbers of nonviolent, lower-risk criminals have been swept up in the prison boom...

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