Criminal Law

On the usefulness and limits of federal habeas petitions

Posted on October 21, 2010
Before the raft of DNA exonerations in recent years, I didn't know much about habeas corpus petitions, certainly outside of capital punishment cases (where federal habeas reviews are mandatory). Since then, I've come to realize that habeas petitions, while relatively rare and even more rarely successful, remain one of the most important legal remedies available for flaws in or mistakes by the justice system...

Political grandstanding drives GPS tracking grant

Posted on October 20, 2010
Using federal grant money, Texas is putting GPS monitors on several hundred additional parolees who the Governor says are dangerous sexual predators. But some of them have never been convicted of a sex offense, aren't on the sex offender registry and have been out of prison for many years...

Time for annual Halloween sex offender hype

Posted on October 20, 2010
The Houston Press' Hairballs blog recently ran a post called "The Five Best Halloween Warnings Forwarded By Frantic Moms," and I'm somewhat surprised overblown fears about sex offenders giving out candy didn't make the list. (See prior, related Grits posts...

New TYC Ombudsman appointed

Posted on October 20, 2010
Perhaps the fourth time will be the charm. Via a letter from the executive director on TYC's website, we learn that a new Ombudsman has been appointed at the agency: Debbie Unruh, a jail administrator from Amarillo. Here's the text of the letter:TYC Staff:I am happy to inform you that Texas Governor Rick Perry has appointed Debbie Unruh of Amarillo as the new Independent Ombudsman for the Texas Youth Commission (TYC)...

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Justifying BS traffic stops

Posted on October 20, 2010
There's a telling discussion string at the Texas District and County Attorneys Association user forum in which an assistant DA from Snyder, TX is seeking to justify a traffic stop where a driver was pulled over for not having mud flaps on their truck...

Latest Harris County exoneration

Posted on October 20, 2010
I got to meet Michael Green last week at the annual meeting of the Innocence Project of Texas, so I'm especially pleased to learn he's been formally exonerated today by the Court of Criminal Appeals. Green spent 27 years in prison based on faulty eyewitness identification and told me he plans to show up at the Legislature next spring to argue for innocence-related reforms...

'Where should inmates be counted for redistricting?

Posted on October 19, 2010
In August, the House Research Organization published a pro and con style article by Tom Howe titled "Where should inmates be counted for redistricting?" (pdf), from which I thought I'd excerpt a few choice tidbits:The Maryland, Delaware, and New York legislatures recently approved laws that, for redistricting purposes, will count inmates at their most recent permanent home addresses before they were incarcerated, rather than at the institution where they are housed...

A rare beast and a self serving excuse

Posted on October 19, 2010
There's been a remarkable sighting: That rarest of beasts, a Texas prosecutor convicted on misconduct charges! A divided Texas Court of Criminal Appeals upheld a conviction for improper influence by a prosecutor after the Kleberg County Attorney attempted to intervene to avoid charges against his aunt, reports Liberty and Justice for Y'all...

Tuesday Morning Roundup

Posted on October 19, 2010
Several items caught my attention this morning that may interest Grits readers:Via Stateline, "The deficit Texas didn't see coming." Sharon Keller feels "vindicated" over dismissed misconduct charges. A raid on a bathhouse in Dallas has gay activists upset...

State's first regional public defender shut down following DA opposition

Posted on October 18, 2010
Somehow I'd missed this item from the San Antonio Express News ("Indigent often left in legal limbo," 10/10/10) documenting the little-discussed demise of Texas' first regional public defender office, formerly based in Del Rio, despite seven-figure cost savings and success reducing the jail population...

Criminal-justice related elections to watch

Posted on October 18, 2010
As early voting begins today, I thought it'd be a good time to review criminal-justice related races around the state worth watching. Here are a few which are on my radar screen; what am I missing?Statewide JudgesCharles Kuffner and I have a bet: I think Texas' top vote-getting judicial candidates will outpoll gubernatorial candidate Bill White, while he insists White will outpoll them...

Top Ten List: Forensic Sciences That Aren't Science

Posted on October 17, 2010
At the recent Texas Forensics Science Seminar sponsored by the Criminal Justice Integrity Unit of the Court of Criminal Appeals, I attended presentations by DPS crime lab experts on ballistics, toolmarks, hair (and other trace) evidence, and fingerprint examination...

The politics of reexamining flawed arson forensics

Posted on October 16, 2010
While I was away from the blog for a day or so (in Dallas for the Innocence Project of Texas' annual meeting), several items cropped up which deserve Grits readers attention regarding the Todd Willingham case and parallel inquiries into arson science at the Forensic Science Commission and a court of inquiry in Austin...

CCA upholds death sentence but shoddy forensic psychiatry takes a hit

Posted on October 16, 2010
Having been focused a great deal lately on flawed forensics, I should point out the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals' decision (pdf), authored by Judge Cathy Cochran, upholding the death sentence of Billie Wayne Coble, but declaring that psychiatrist Dr...

Reader poll: Time to Abolish TYC?

Posted on October 14, 2010
I'm working much of the day on other projects so I thought it'd be a good opportunity to post a reader poll regarding Sen. John Whitmire's suggestion to abolish the Texas Youth Commission, expanding on the so-far successful strategy of giving grants to county juvenile probation programs to manage those kids in the community or pay for residential care (i...

Corpus Christi will begin insurance checkpoints, auction off uninsured vehicles

Posted on October 14, 2010
It sounds like a Soviet-era cliche - "Show me your papers, comrade, or we'll seize your property" - but Corpus Christi will begin setting up "insurance checkpoints" aimed at towing and ultimately auctioning off vehicles of the one in four divers in the city who don't carry auto insurance, reports the Caller-Times:The police department got the green light from City Council on Tuesday to step up enforcement against uninsured drivers...

Amnesty, Indigence rules for Driver Responsibility Program up for vote next week

Posted on October 14, 2010
Mike Ward at the Austin Statesman reports that the Public Safety Commission is expected to approve new Indigence and Amnesty rules for the Driver Responsibility Program at their next meeting October 22. Writes Ward:Facing more than $1.1 billion in uncollected fines from errant Texas motorists who are driving illegally without licenses, state officials are poised to approve an amnesty program to try to get some of them legal again...

Say 'Howdy' to Stockycat

Posted on October 13, 2010
I recently quipped that celebration of the Fourth Amendment is "rather like wearing a Kurt Cobain t-shirt, commemorating something that's dead and anachronistic, however laudable or memorable for those of a certain age who could still recall when it was relevant...

Odds and ends

Posted on October 13, 2010
Here are several stories I won't get to but which may interest Grits readers: Should ethical constraints keep DAs from advising counties on civil matters? Is it ethical for a District Attorney to give legal advice to members of a governing body when he has the authority to prosecute them if they don't follow it? Robert Wechsler at CityEthics...

Keller warning overturned

Posted on October 12, 2010
The three-judge panel in Sharon Keller's case overturned her public warning and ended the case because the State Judicial Conduct Commission applied an improperly lenient sentence. Reports the Austin Statesman:A special court of review Monday threw out an ethics rebuke given to Presiding Judge Sharon Keller for closing the Court of Criminal Appeals at 5 p...

Balko: Abolish DWI laws to focus on impaired driving

Posted on October 12, 2010
Reacting to Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo's call for a new DWI-lite charge in Texas' statutes, Reason magazine's Radley Balko makes the case for eliminating DWI laws based on blood alcohol content and focusing on impaired driving of all types. The crux of his argument:The right solution, however, is not to push the artificial line back farther...

Jury verdict favors TYC whistleblower

Posted on October 12, 2010
A wrongful termination complaint against TYC resulted in a jury verdict in favor of an administrative law judge after he complained about tainted parole practices and was fired in 2008, the Dallas News reports ("Jury sides with ex-TYC Judge Koustoubardis, saying he was fired for reporting misconduct," Oct...

'Wasteful and Ineffective'

Posted on October 12, 2010
According to a memo forwarded me by his staff, State Sen. John Whitmire forwarded a New York Times editorial about the Empire State's dysfunctional juvenile corrections system titled "Two Words: Wasteful and Ineffective" to Members of the Texas Legislature and the board of the Texas Youth Commission with the following addenda:Please see the attached editorial from the New York Times...

Cynical Jessica's Law attack ignores unconstitutionality, reality

Posted on October 12, 2010
For the second election cycle in a row, House District 47 Rep. Valinda Bolton from Austin is facing TV ads from her opponent Paul Workman attacking her for voting against "Jessica's Law" - I saw the ad for the first time last night, insinuating something to the effect that she sided with criminals instead of her conservative district...

Challenging red-light cameras at the ballot box

Posted on October 11, 2010
The Dallas News reports on the "public backlash against lucrative red-light cameras," suggesting that plebiscites on the November ballot may be a predictor of the cameras' fate statewide: Citizens in three Texas cities who are angry about the devices have forced a public vote to ban the cameras...

Mental health resources, not new laws, best way to respond to bullying deaths

Posted on October 11, 2010
Several Democrats think bullies at Texas schools can be deterred, reports the Houston Chronicle, by new state laws requiring expanded training and incident reporting. To me, the idea that more legislation will limit school bullying amounts to hubris intermixed with folly...

Top this, Texas cops!

Posted on October 10, 2010
Texas and Arizona routinely compete for the Douchebag Cop of the Year Award, and via CrimProf Blog we find the Grand Canyon State's 2010 submission in this YouTube video, in which an officer repeatedly threatens a pastor, with gun drawn, because he won't answer personal questions at a traffic stop over a burned out license plate bulb...

Divided court merges 'legal,' 'factual' sufficiency standards of appellate review

Posted on October 10, 2010
Liberty and Justice for Y'all informs us of a potentially important and disappointing (sharply divided) decision in Brooks v. State from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals which merges the standards for "factual" and "legal" sufficiency of evidence because, in the words of opinion author Judge Barbara Hervey, the two terms have become ?barely distinguishable...

Hundreds of cell phones still used by Texas inmates

Posted on October 10, 2010
I can't tell what, exactly, is the newshook for this story by Mike Ward at the Austin Statesman about cell phones smuggled into Texas prisons, but here are the data for smuggled cell phones two years after the Texas Department of Criminal Justice declared a "zero tolerance" policy on contraband: "This year, Texas investigators estimate that more than 800 cell phones have been confiscated from inside state prisons, compared with more than 900 during the same period last year...

Peerwani: Arson testimony in Willingham case flawed

Posted on October 09, 2010
Regardless of the outcome of delayed court of inquiry proceedings, one of Gov. Perry's recent appointees to the Texas Forensic Science Commission says that the arson science used to convict Todd Willingham was flawed, reports the Fort Worth Star-Telegram ("Willingham inquiry was flawed, Peerwani says," Oct...

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