Criminal Law

Dallas chief resigns; Manley remains: WTF?

Posted on September 14, 2020
Grits should have mentioned Dallas police Chief Renee Hall's resignation in yesterday's post about the Dallas budget, but it seemed like a separate topic. She wasn't resigning over budget cuts, like the chief in Seattle. Rather, she left after a half dozen city council members declared they'd lost confidence in her leadership, largely as a result of a tone-deaf after action report that seemed to pre-exonerate officers for misconduct while overstating protester "violence...

In Dallas, #DefundThePolice becomes epithet to describe any cut, even amidst COVID revenue shortfalls

Posted on September 13, 2020
Debates over "defunding the police" became even sillier this week with Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson trotting out the phrase to oppose a $7 million cut to police overtime that's almost trivial in the scheme of a) the overall Dallas police budget and b) COVID-driven revenue shortfalls...

Police complaints and the politics of public-safety budgets

Posted on September 12, 2020
Just to see what was there, yesterday Grits went through recent, formal complaints against Austin police officers from protests last month, as compiled by the Office of Police Oversight. For highlights with links to the complaints, see this Twitter thread...

Podcast: Update from the March on Washington, slave patrols and Texas policing, the politics of police budgets, and other stories

Posted on September 08, 2020
In the September 2020 episode of Just Liberty's Reasonably Suspicious podcast, the Austin Justice Coalition's Chas Moore substitutes for Mandy to co-host with Scott Henson. This month, we discuss:The March on Washington and protesters' theory of change (0:45)Slave patrols and the history of Texas policing (9:15)The politics of Austin's police budget cuts (31:46)In the Last Hurrah segment (42:25), Chas and I took up:Austin PD's 911 call data analyzedDallas Chief under fire in protest aftermathTexas' George Floyd ActFind a transcript below the jump...

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Harris County bail trends belie demagoguery from police, DA

Posted on September 08, 2020
When it comes to crime, trends trump anecdotes for managers but anecdotes trump trends for the press.That's Grits' takeaway from the report from federal monitors analyzing reforms generated by Harris County's misdemeanor bail litigation. For the last year we've seen Houston's police chief and the local police union engaging in near-continuous demagoguery over bail reform, claiming it had caused a rampant crime spree...

Amidst many proposals, police reform in Houston seems stalled out

Posted on September 03, 2020
So, here are the basics regarding police reform in Houston so far as I understand them.The Mayor has created a task force to suggest reforms but no one expects much of it.Five council members this week came out with a letter demanding 25 reforms, some big (eliminate the 180-day rule and the 48-hour rule), some small (video recording walk-throughs at the scene of police shootings), and some perhaps deviating from the spirit of recent protests ("Mandatory community engagement hours in predominately minority areas for all patrol officers...

Early Texans couldn't get enough slave patrols, but didn't want to pay for them.

Posted on September 02, 2020
A bit more on slave patrols, which county commissioners courts were authorized to enact in the 1st Texas Legislature in 1846, the year after Texas became a state. We've discussed these antebellum slave-catcher patrol operations briefly: Created by county commissioners courts, comprised of local districts, sometimes many of them, with 4-6 officers in each...

Republic of Texas passed law against being free and black

Posted on September 02, 2020
Even before slave patrols, the Republic of Texas approved a statute in 1840 dictating that free black people who emigrated to Texas would be given ten days notice, then arrested and forcibly removed from the state. if any free persons of color shall emigrate to this Republic, it shall be the duty of the sheriff, or any one of the constables of the county to which such emigration shall be made, to arrest such free person of color, after giving him ten day's notice, and bring him before the Chief Justice of the county, or Judge of the district; and it shall be the duty of the Chief Justice, or Judge of the district, before whom such free person of color may be brought, to receive the bond of such free person of color in the sum of one thousand dollars, with the security of a citizen, to be approved by him, conditioned for the removal of such free person of color out of the limits of the Republic...

Houston's early police chiefs: The Thief, the Chief Who Wouldn't Be Fired (sound familiar?), and the Mysterious Disappearance of John Proudfoot

Posted on August 31, 2020
Here's an update on my search for the history of early Texas police chiefs. As it turns out, there is a book-length history of the Houston Police Department, a high-end vanity piece commissioned by the Houston Police Officers Union, written by Mitchel Roth and Tom Kennedy...

Tinkering with parole release could result in nine-figure budget savings

Posted on April 01, 2011
For the first time this week, legislators began publicly considering legislation that would actually, signficantly reduce the prison population, though by tinkering with parole mechanisms on the back end instead of tackling the overall sentencing structure...

Why not allow youth, adult inmates to earn money for victim restitution, child support?

Posted on April 01, 2011
I'd commented the other day that prisoners could pay more of their own freight if they are allowed to earn, so I'm particularly disappointed at the reaction of some legislators to news of a program that they themselves authorized. Reports the Statesman's Mike Ward ("Texas youth inmates paid for work," March 31):Adults locked in Texas prisons work for free, helping in the kitchen and doing maintenance around the lockup...

'We were not orphans: Stories from the Waco State School'

Posted on April 01, 2011
I heard a fascinating if disturbing interview on NPR this morning with the author of a  new book out on the history the Waco State School - a reformatory created by the Legislature in 1923 and closed in the late '70s - with the same title as this post, including allegations of extremist brutality (e...

Privatizing state jails no budget panacea

Posted on April 01, 2011
One of the amendments proposed to the House budget that's up today would mandate privatization of all Texas state jails. However, according to the indefatigable Brandi Grissom at the Texas Tribune, state Rep. Erwin Cain said "that he would rescind his amendment because of technical concerns about the language...

House approves eyewitness ID reform

Posted on March 31, 2011
The Texas House yesterday approved eyewitness ID reform legislation carried by House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee Chairman Pete Gallego. Now the bill goes to the Senate, which itself has already approved similar legislation. See initial MSM coverage:Austin ChronicleAssociated PressDallas Morning NewsTexas TribuneSan Antonio Express-NewsSeveral of the stories emphasize that the legislation has no "teeth" for enforcement purposes, which is true enough, and certainly it would be a mistake to assume this will "solve" the problem of misidentifications...

Scaled-back Big Brother bill still pushes license plate readers, GPS tracking w/o warrants

Posted on March 31, 2011
Besides a brief update to a blog post from Karen Brooks at the Dallas News, Forrest Wilder at the Texas Observer seems to be the only journalist who covered yesterday afternoon's hearing in the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security on SB 9 - Chairman Tommy Williams' Big-Brotherish, prosecutor-wish list legislation couched as a border security effort - reporting that the bill became "(Somehwat) Less Big-Brotherish" over the course of the hearing...

TDCJ secured death-house drugs under long-expired license

Posted on March 31, 2011
Though from a public-policy perspective I could care less by what method executions are carried out, one has to be impressed with the investigation that allowed death penalty opponents to make this argument, as Jordan Smith reported in the Austin Chronicle:According to lawyers for condemned inmate Cleve Foster, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has been illegally purchasing lethal injection drugs...

More boondoggle than bonanza: Southbound checkpoints face Fourth Amendment challenges

Posted on March 30, 2011
Interesting testimony this morning on southbound checkpoints (SBs 288 and 294), an idea which was first suggested by senators on the Finance Committee as a possible revenue generator, aiming to tap into cartel profits heading south to fill their short-term budget hole...

Prosecutor wanted Willie to sing as part of pot plea

Posted on March 30, 2011
I almost felt bad about cracking jokes after Willie Nelson's marijuana bust in Hudspeth County last year, but it turns out the prosecutor in the case is the biggest joke of all. Sentencing Law & Policy points to a story from Fox News declaring:The prosecutor in Willie Nelson's marijuana possession case said the country music legend could get off with just a fine if he agrees to sing one of his songs in court, TMZ reported Monday...

Privatization of prison healthcare pushed in secret meetings

Posted on March 30, 2011
At the beginning of the session, Gov. Rick Perry tossed out the idea of privatizing prison healthcare, but after the House and Senate budgets slashed reimbursement rates to the same, low levels as the Medicaid program, in my own mind I'd set aside the possibility as a non-starter...

Reducing the role of ticketing in school discipline

Posted on March 29, 2011
Another good bill up today from Sens. Whitmire and Juan Hinojosa, SB 1116, aims to reduce the number of tickets written by police on school campuses for Class C misdemeanors. He cited examples from Houston ISD where 9 and 10 year olds were given tickets, which he thinks isn't a response that kids that age will understand or respond to well...

Whitmire: Save hundreds of millions by giving credit for time supervised on parole

Posted on March 29, 2011
Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire has a bill up today in his committee, SB 883, that would save the state hundreds of millions of dollars over the next several years.The bill would give parolees "time credit for the period of time spent on parole ...

TDCJ units with most cell phone contraband discovered

Posted on March 29, 2011
The website Texas Watchdog asked the Department of Criminal Justice for a unit-by-unit breakdown of contraband cell phones found, and published the results in a spreadsheet here. The ten TDCJ units with the most contraband cell phone discovered, reports the site, are:NEALCOFFIELDMCCONNELLSTILESFERGUSONTELFORDCLEMENSCLEMENTSRAMSEYESTELLE

Prison guards take budget hits on pay, retirement, health insurance

Posted on March 29, 2011
At BurkaBlog, R.G. Ratcliffe has a column about state employee health benefit cuts, where suggestions for savings include increasing deductibles up to $11,900 per year. Ratcliffe offers this specific example:For a prison guard  with a take-home pay of $1,825...

Programming cuts v. prison closures: The inevitable tradeoff

Posted on March 29, 2011
Prison closures were abated and some of the probation and treatment funds scheduled for cuts were restored in the state budget on the Senate side yesterday, as well as shifting money from road funds to the Texas Department of Public Safety, while the House and the Governor continue to back deeper cuts...

'Private prison promises leave Texas towns in trouble'

Posted on March 28, 2011
You don't get something for nothingYou can't have freedom for freeYou won't get wiseWith the sleep still in your eyesNo matter what your dreams might be.- "Something for Nothing," Geddy Lee, Neil Pearl, Rush, 1978 NPR's John Burnett has a terrific story this morning with the same, alliterative title as this post that focuses on a subject familiar to regular Grits readers, but which definitely deserve national attention: Private prison companies that convince local governments to construct more jail space than they need then abandon them when there's no income to cover the debt...

Dallas DNA exonerations expose evidence retention flaws

Posted on March 28, 2011
If the Dallas crime lab hadn't kept evidence from Cornelius DuPree's case 30 years ago, he wouldn't be a free man working as a legislative intern this session for state Sen. Rodney Ellis. But evidence retention issues are too often relegated to the back burner, even in the innocence reform movement...

Because in this economy, why wouldn't you want to shut down five functioning local businesses?

Posted on March 28, 2011
Corpus Christi wants to shut down its head shops, reports the Caller Times:A district judge is expected to decide next week whether it is legal for Corpus Christi to ban pipes for smoking. Five smoke shop owners have sued Corpus Christi to stop a city ordinance passed Feb...

Big Brother on steroids: License-plate readers, checkpoints, and tracking cars w/o a court order, up Wednesday

Posted on March 28, 2011
There are a ton of nasty-sounding bills up in the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee hearing on Wedesday morning at 7:30 a.m. (see their agenda), but I think SB 9 by Sen. Williams has definitely made it to the short list so far among candidates for my own, personal, "Most Despised Bill of the Session...

Tulia-style mass drug bust in Wichita Falls perpetuates cycle instead of breaking it

Posted on March 27, 2011
Whenever I see reports of large drug stings like the one described this week in the Wichita Falls Times-Record News ("Sheriff expects more arrests," March 25), where 44 people so far have been arrested in a roundup following a long-term undercover operation, I always think of the infamous drug busts in Tulia and Hearne, where innocent people were caught up in similar drug stings netting dozens of convictions based on testimony from a lying cop and a coerced, mentally ill informant, respectively...

Nueces officials: Cuts to probation will end specialized courts, force group reporting, increase prison costs

Posted on March 27, 2011
The Corpus Christi Caller Times has an article ("Nueces County probation department bracing for cuts," March 27) localizing the story about proposed budget cuts to probation departments, detailing what they would mean in particular to Nueces County:One proposal in the House would have cut about 22 percent from the department's budget during the next two years...

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