Criminal Law

Most new prison diversion programs at local probation departments demonstrate success

Posted on March 20, 2008
About half of new entrants to Texas prisons every year result from probation or parole revocations, so new programs aimed at reducing revocations have contributed greatly to resolving Texas' immediate prison overcrowding crisis.With news of a new probation facility opening in Texarkana, I spent a little more time checking around the TDCJ website this morning for more information about new probation funding...

Dallas will inactivate some red light cameras that worked "too well"

Posted on March 19, 2008
One of the things that makes me skeptical about red light cameras are the dramatic success rates touted by vendors. Since the companies make their profits off of each ticket, if they really worked as well as proponents, say, they quickly would not be cost effective to operate...

Message received: PR valued more than justice by Williamson DA

Posted on March 19, 2008
Good public policy is about outcomes. Bad public policy is frequently about grandstanding.If you want to "send a message," rent a billboard. That's not the purpose of legislation, prosecution powers, parole decisions, or other functions of the justice system, which must be judged instead IMO by public safety outcomes...

New treatment facility for probationers opens in Texarkana

Posted on March 19, 2008
It looks like some of the new treatment options and incarceration alternatives funded by the Texas Legislature last year are starting to come online. A TV news station in Texarkana reports on a new women's facility:The program is taking place at the Bowie Red River Recovery Center...

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Federal judge rejects TYC settlement on Evins unit in South Texas

Posted on March 18, 2008
The settlement agreement proposed between the Texas Youth Commission and the US Department of Justice didn't pass muster with the federal judge in charge of the case, reports the McAllen Monitor ("Judge refuses to accept settlement in Evins youth prison's civil rights case," March 18):The state and federal governments are set to head back to the negotiating table, after a federal judge refused Monday to accept a settlement agreement over civil rights abuses at the Evins juvenile detention center...

Oral arguments at SCOTUS in Texas right to counsel case reveal new insights about murky systems

Posted on March 18, 2008
I earlier mentioned an important Texas case argued before the US Supreme Court yesterday, and have just finished reading the transcripts (pdf) from the oral arguments in Rothgery v. Gillespie County, Texas.Mr. Rothgery who was arrested and refused an appointed attorney on what turned out to be wrongful gun charge, appears to me likely to prevail in the case, judging purely from Justices' comments...

Against Journalistic "Balance": Grits reaches one million visitor, 3,000 post milestones

Posted on March 18, 2008
I want to take a minute to thank everybody who reads this blog, which celebrates two landmarks with this post. Sometime today, barring an unforeseen traffic interruption, Grits for Breakfast will receive its one millionth visitor, according to SiteMeter...

RateMyCop.com shut down, but this good idea should really be a government function

Posted on March 17, 2008
Via Stephen Gustitis I learn about "a new website called RateMyCop.com, that apparently was shut down last week after a flurry of controversy. Gustitis refers us to "Robert Guest at the new Dallas Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog [who] started the hoopla here...

Do they really have to appoint you a lawyer when you ask for one? SCOTUS to decide today in Texas case

Posted on March 17, 2008
For years, Texas counties have struggled to adequately meet the constitutional mandate that accused, indigent defendants have a right to legal counsel. Things improved, at significant additional expense, with the passage of the Fair Defense Act in 2001, which resulted in more frequent access to attorneys for many defendants but also much higher costs for counties, who'd been operating on the cheap for years...

Who says you can never go home again? Tijuana cartel leader returns to Mexico after surprisingly short US prison stint

Posted on March 16, 2008
After a guilty plea earned him a 6-year federal sentence just last October, a top leader from the notorious "Tijuana Cartel" was cut loose last week, crossing back into Mexico from El Paso after spending less than six months in a federal prison in Texas...

Paroling murderers to make room for druggies?

Posted on March 16, 2008
Here's an excellent, real-world example of how expending scarce incarceration resources on low-level, nonviolent offenders takes up prison space that should be housing more dangerous people - a Texan paroled in 2006 after receiving a life sentence for murder in 1987 robbed two elderly men in Florida on Friday and is now back in custody...

What if they held a prostitution sting and nobody in the media reported it?

Posted on March 14, 2008
In the process of tracking Travis County's new immigration detainer policy, Jamie Spencer happened to notice at the Travis County jail the results from a recent Austin prostitution sting that received no local publicity. He makes a good point and asks a legitimate question: It used to be that I?d see these things publicized in the local paper ? not the names of the arrestees, but the fact that the police department had run a sting, and how proud they were that they had arrested so many people, etc...

The View from Prosecutorlandia

Posted on March 14, 2008
The last post about prosecutor attitudes inevitably led me to visit the Texas District and County Attorney Association's user forums, where I've unintentionally neglected to check in for a while. Here are several recent, noteworthy items:Parolees = Murderers?Though 70,000 people leave Texas' prisons each year, most of them on parole, to read this discussion string you'd think they were every one murderers, particularly in the comments responding to the initial "horror story...

Harris DA's Office Seeks Justice For Some

Posted on March 14, 2008
Mark Bennett shares a recent email exchange with an ADA from the Harris County District Attorney's Office (now under new management), where Bennett opined:Our next DA needs to know that he or she is not part of a dynasty, is only temporary, is human and fallible, and answers ultimately to the families of the accused, who greatly outnumber the families of the victims...

Does rise in TDCJ discipline for absences and poor job performance stem from chronic understaffing?

Posted on March 14, 2008
Research about disciplinary actions against Texas correctional officers, generated by The Back Gate, a prison guards' blog, made its way into the Huntsville Item recently. TBG republished the piece, and since they have no permalinks on their otherwise excellent site, I'll just reproduce it here:Statistics from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice reported nearly 8,000 disciplinary actions against employees of the system over a 12-month period, mostly for failing to perform their duties and unexcused absences...

Rodney Ellis stumping for Harris County public defender office

Posted on March 13, 2008
If state Senator Rodney Ellis gets his way, Harris County will have a public defender office in the near future, reports Lisa Falkenberg at the Houston Chronicle ("An idea whose time has come?" March 12):The time is ripe, Ellis believes, to begin the first real push for a public defender office in Harris County...

Perry to name Assistant US Attorney Ken Magidson interim Harris County DA

Posted on March 13, 2008
I'd speculated that the Governor would just wait and appoint the GOP winner in the runoff to be the interim Harris County District Attorney, but Rick Perry must not have liked the remaining two options - Pat Lykos and Kelly Siegler - because the Houston Chronicle reports that he's appointing Assistant US Attorney Ken Magidson Harris County DA, a position he'll hold for the next nine months before returning to the federal prosecutor's office...

Melee at federal detention center possibly caused by mixing pretrial, convicted inmates

Posted on March 13, 2008
After a large-scale fistfight on Tuesday night in which 9 inmates and three staff were injured at the federal detention facility in downtown Houston, one attorney "said that housing inmates awaiting transfer to federal prison for serious crimes under the same roof with pretrial defendants is a 'a recipe for disaster,'" reported the Houston Chronicle...

Sheriff threatens reporters with jail for writing about son's arrest

Posted on March 13, 2008
As public relations strategies go, this seems a little heavy handed, but then Duval County (home of disgraced Democratic kingmaker Clinton Manges, the famed "Duke of Duval") has always been known for its iron-fisted pols. Reported AP ("Sheriff threatens reporters with jail," March 13):When the Duval County sheriff said he would lock up reporters from local newspapers if they kept "interfering" in his business, no one took the threat lightly...

Immigration enforcement interfering with other US Marshals' duties

Posted on March 13, 2008
Stricter enforcement of immigration laws is harming the effectiveness of federal fugitive apprehension and other critical public safety initiatives, a US Marshal's supervisor declared, particularly where the feds have implemented a pilot 'zero-tolerance' policy along the stretch of border near Del Rio...

Second Chance Act passes Senate, headed to Bush's desk

Posted on March 12, 2008
Here's some terrific news out of D.C.: At long last Congress has passed the Second Chance Act. Since the Senate passed the same version as did the House last fall, there's no need for a conference committee and the bill now heads straight to President Bush, who is widely expected to sign it...

Study: 3% of tricks by sex workers without pimps are 'freebies given to police'

Posted on March 12, 2008
The national hoo-ha over New York Governor Elliot Spitzer's prostitution scandal has inevitably generated renewed debate in the blogosphere regarding the oldest profession. Doc Berman points to an academic paper studying prostitution in Chicago (pdf) that found:There is a surprisingly high prevalence of police officers demanding sex from prostitutes in return for avoiding arrest...

Drug War still dominates US foreign policy challenges south of the border

Posted on March 11, 2008
Since Grits so far this week has focused mostly on the drug war, let's stick with that theme and turn our attention south of the border, calling readers' attention to several recent items demonstrating how US drug policy and Latin American foreign policy have become inextricably intertwined:Washington to Mexico: Do as we say, not as we doAccording to the UK Financial Times (March 1), the US has criticisms of how Mexico, Venezuela, and other countries are pursuing drug enforcement, but ironically heroin production from Afghanistan under US occupation is at an all-time high:Washington yesterday warned that the security of Mexico and the US were at stake in the battle against Mexico's booming drugs trade, acknowledging that the increasingly violent fight is far from being won...

Binge drinking among Texans far outpaces illicit drug use

Posted on March 11, 2008
This chart surprised me in a recent federal survey showing that the prevalence of illicit drug use is lower among all age categories than most other states. I was also surprised by the wide variation among states regarding illicit drug use. Vermont had the highest rate of past month illicit drug use among young adults aged 18 to 25 (31...

'Operation Byrne Blitz' makes explicit arrests-for-dollars link

Posted on March 11, 2008
Should law enforcement time arrests to generate media coverage aimed at supporting approval of pork barrel funds in the political process?That's what's happening nationwide right now with drug task forces funded by the federal Byrne grant program. We got rid of ours in Texas, thank heavens, but other states' task forces are participating in Operation Byrne Blitz, a national campaign to publicize arrests last week in order to influence debate in Congress over their money...

Editorial: Citations for low-level pot busts make safety sense

Posted on March 10, 2008
The Dallas News today has an editorial with which I wholeheartedly concur, congratulating authorities on agreeing to a pilot program allowing police to issue citations instead of arresting certain low level misdemeanants ("Citations vs. Jail Time," March 10)...

How do you define success in drug enforcement?

Posted on March 10, 2008
If you're a drug enforcement officer, how do you judge if your efforts have been a success?According to the head of the HIDTA (High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area) task force in Atlanta, you know you're doing the job right when you see an increase in burglaries, armed robberies and murders! Reported the Atlanta Journal Constitution ("Federal vice agents tout successes," March 9):He credits last year's spike in area burglaries, robberies and car thefts in part to criminals forced to pay more for their illicit drugs...

Sixty year sentence for low-level drug possession fills prison space needed for dangerous offenders

Posted on March 10, 2008
There are two primary causes for Texas prison overcrowding, and the Legislature's reforms last year only really addressed one of them: Too many probation and parole revocations, and too-long sentences for non-violent crimes, especially drug offenses.For an example of the latter, look no further than a recent edition of the Tyler Morning Telegraph, where we read the story of a man who received a 60 year sentence for possession of 1...

Byrne task force funds mainly financing low-grade drug enforcement

Posted on March 10, 2008
Having reviewed the new Tulia, Texas documentary yesterday, it's fitting to find quite a bit of recent drug task force related news to add context to the discussion.Off the bat, around the country the backlash is growing among drug enforcers against proposed cuts to the Byrne grant program in Congress...

Sheriff real, unintentional star of 'Tulia' film

Posted on March 09, 2008
The slew of drug arrests in Tulia in 1999 set off a wave of legal wrangling and political action that turned the state's criminal justice establishment on its ear, and ultimately resulted in the pardoning of dozens of wrongfully convicted people and the dismantling of Texas 50+ Byrne-grant funded drug task forces...

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