Criminal Law

Topline interim budget cuts released

Posted on May 18, 2010
Interim budget cuts are out. See the press release from the Governor, and here is the topline list (pdf) of interim cuts that must be made during this fiscal year.The Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the Youth Commission and the Juvenile Probation Commission all received partial exemptions...

Austin roundtable developing vision for prisoner reentry

Posted on May 18, 2010
Via email, on Thursday evening, Austin's Reentry Roundtable will host:A Forum to Listen to Community Voices: Reintegrating People with Criminal Histories How do we promote successful reentry of former offenders to advance public safety? What can our community do to promote the successful reintegration of people with criminal histories? How can we inform our community about reentry? This is a very important policy meeting...

Back to the Drawing Board: DPS rewriting Driver Responsibility rules

Posted on May 18, 2010
Thanks to Paul Watkins and Rebekah Hibbs for allowing me to participate yesterday in the DPS working group on the Driver Responsibility rules regarding indigency, amnesty and incentive programs. The discussion centered mostly on concepts; they didn't get down to drafting language...

Does Houston lawyer have worst capital record in America?

Posted on May 18, 2010
Here's a remarkable story from Adam Liptak at the New York Times:A good way to end up on death row in Texas is to be accused of a capital crime and have Jerry Guerinot represent you. Twenty of Mr. Guerinot?s clients have been sentenced to death...

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State Sen.Dan Patrick dips toe in prison ministry waters

Posted on May 17, 2010
Here's something I didn't know:Last year, [state] Senator [Dan] Patrick began a prison ministry in Texas through the showing of his documentary film, ?The Heart of Texas.? The movie, which documents the powerful effect of forgiveness on a Texas community is a compelling and life-changing message for incarcerated inmates...

Contested battle for presidency of criminal defense bar

Posted on May 17, 2010
Democratic Texas Court of Criminal Appeals candidate Keith Hampton, oddly enough, is running in a second contested election this year: For President of the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association. Not everybody, however, thinks that's a good idea. Writes Mark Bennett:Keith Hampton was TCDLA Secretary, then Treasurer, then Second VP and so forth...

For once, Texas Lege ahead of SCOTUS curve: Juvie LWOP abolished

Posted on May 17, 2010
Several people have forwarded me stories about the US Supreme Court banning life without parole sentences for juveniles in non-murder cases. I might have more to add except that Texas already eliminated juvie LWOP last year in legislation carried by state Sen...

'Criminal Justice Policy: An Unlikely Bipartisan Consensus'

Posted on May 17, 2010
The title of this post is the headline to an article by former House Corrections Chairman Ray Allen featuring interviews with current Chair Jim McReynolds and immediate past Chair Jerry Madden.Both McReynolds and Madden said it was too early to say if prison units might be closed, declaring they could not identify possible cuts without more information...

Commissary Economics: Who Profits?

Posted on May 17, 2010
Matt Stiles at the Texas Tribune recently focused on "Buyers Behind Bars," creating an excellent interactive graphic showing what Texas prison inmates spend their money on.Adding to that dataset on commissaries, I was interested to stumble onto a report at the Comptroller's www...

Judge won't let AG dismiss charges for want of evidence

Posted on May 16, 2010
"What happens when the Texas Attorney General?s Office tries to drop the charges against a defendant for want of evidence and the presiding judge denies the motion?" asks Rev. Alan Bean at the Friends of Justice blog, commenting on a case out of Paris, TX...

Exit Through the Gift Shop

Posted on May 16, 2010
For those like this writer with an interest in the graffiti movement of the last couple of decades, let me recommend the movie, "Exit Through the Gift Shop," which is one of the funniest films - certainly the most entertaining documentary - I've seen in a long time...

Extradited and Innocent

Posted on May 16, 2010
DNA testing isn't the only way to prove actual innocence. According to Kevin Krause at the Dallas News: A 30-year-old man mistaken for a Dallas County fugitive spent nearly four months in an Alabama jail for crimes he didn't commit because sheriff's officials did not make routine fingerprint checks...

$2 million settlement in Cowtown Taser-death case

Posted on May 16, 2010
Reports the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:The city of Fort Worth has offered a record $2 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the family of a man who was killed with a Taser during a confrontation with police last year.The City Council is scheduled to vote on the settlement Tuesday, according to an agenda posted online Friday...

Class C violators soaking up Corsicana jail beds

Posted on May 16, 2010
Corsicana's not a big place, but residents of that East Texas town sat in jail last year for more than 3,000 person-days after being arrested for Class C misdemeanor violations, according to the Corsicana Sun:Kathy Hollomon, county auditor, shared figures Friday indicating jailing city prisoners cost the county $186,385 in 2009...

Austin red-light camera results minimal, overhyped

Posted on May 15, 2010
Whenever you see someone claiming dramatic decreases in accidents due to red light cameras - a result which contradicts the experience of most jurisdictions - it's always worth examining the data closely. In Austin, reports the Statesman:cameras were phased in at nine intersections ? with more than one camera at some ? beginning in May 2008...

Droning On

Posted on May 15, 2010
There are Big Brotherish initiatives I worry about and some that bother me less, not because I don't resent the government intrusion but because I doubt the competence of the government to successfully act on the information to ever meaningfully infringe on personal liberties...

Texas prisoners can't read Texas prison history

Posted on May 15, 2010
The Statesman's Eric Dexheimer reports on the latest dustup over banned books at TDCJ:The New York Times called it "an important reckoning." "A gripping history lesson," an Associated Press book reviewer declared."Anyone interested in America's prison system should read it," concluded The Dallas Morning News assessment of "Texas Tough," a new book covering the history of the state's corrections system...

News Flash: Drug war a colossal failure. You're shocked, right?

Posted on May 14, 2010
In a surprisingly frank story, AP points out that the Drug War Emperor wears no clothes:After 40 years, the United States' war on drugs has cost $1 trillion and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread...

Long-ago concessions by city contract negotiators delayed release of report on police shooting

Posted on May 14, 2010
In Austin, the report (large pdf) from an independent investigation into a controversial police shooting a year ago was finally made public yesterday. Portions of the report which had been previously released did not include allegations of "reckless" behavior...

Airport-style security to be installed at capitol entrances

Posted on May 14, 2010
(Ed. note: This version corrects an erroneous headline and misinterpretation in the original post.) I couldn't be happier to learn that state officials reversed course and decided to allow visitors to the capitol to use all four entrances, but it's regrettable the Lege is still moving forward with airport-style security at each of them...

Issues surrounding Lubbock case could fill a law school seminar

Posted on May 14, 2010
Knowing there were implications regarding federal sentencing litigation over the last few years, I forwarded Doug Berman at Sentencing Law & Policy a link to a remarkable Lubbock case where a jury yesterday sentenced a defendant to life for assault on an elderly man, based largely on alleged crimes raised in the punishment phase (including child molestation) for which he'd never been found guilty...

Capital public defender office may go statewide

Posted on May 14, 2010
There could be big changes coming on the capital defense front across Texas, according to a story out of the Lubbock Avalanche Journal last month ("Defender office could see expansion," April 27). County Commissioners in Hub City:submitted an application for a $7...

Interim budget cuts announced tomorrow

Posted on May 13, 2010
Interim budget cuts for state agencies including the Texas Department of Criminal Justice will be released tomorrow, reports Mike Ward at the Austin Statesman ("Prison health care could be cut with budget," May 13):state agencies are awaiting word on just how much they will have to cut from their current budgets to make up for expected shortfalls this year ? around $1...

UTMB threatens to cancel TX prison health contract

Posted on May 13, 2010
Here's a startling punch in the gut for state budget writers and prison managers, as reported by Mike Ward at the Austin Statesman ("Prison health care could be cut with budget," May 13):An early casualty of impending state budget cuts could be the health care contract that serves most of Texas' 154,000 prison convicts...

Piling On: 'Nuther misconduct complaint against Sharon Keller

Posted on May 13, 2010
Whether it's adding insult to injury, or injury to insult, I cannot tell anymore, but the Texas Civil Rights Project this week filed a complaint with the State Commission on Judicial Conduct in the wake of Judge Sharon Keller's record fine from the Texas Ethics Commission last week, which found 13 separate violations of misdemeanor statutes...

The relative value of torts according to Harris County commissioners court

Posted on May 13, 2010
From the Houston Chronicle:Harris County will pay $400,000 to a sheriff's deputy for transferring him to less desirable duty because he would not shave, while it will pay $167,500 to the family of a woman who died in the county jail. Commissioners Court approved the payments Tuesday to settle lawsuits against the Harris County Sheriff's Office...

As Texas' prison health system falters, will California follow suit?

Posted on May 13, 2010
Stuart Bussey at California Weekly has picked up on the fact that Texas' approach to prison healthcare isn't all it's cracked up to be:It came from out of nowhere: a? too-good-to-be-true? proposal that would purportedly slash costs for California?s prison healthcare system through the expanded use of telemedicine...

Cornyn: Judicial background both essential and unnecessary for SCOTUS nominees

Posted on May 12, 2010
In recent years I've shared concerns of those who say all the sitting US Supreme Court Justices' biographies look too much alike. My own preference for a new Justice would have been to select someone outside the judiciary who came from outside the Ivy League: Somebody in the Sandra Day O'Connor mold, perhaps (she was a Stanford graduate and a state senator from Arizona before her appointment to SCOTUS)...

$18 billion budget shortfall means prison closures must be on table

Posted on May 12, 2010
Texas' Legislative Budget Board announced yesterday that the revenue shortfall faced by the state in 2011 will be in the $15-18 billion range, according to the Texas Tribune.If that's accurate, I don't believe there's a remote chance that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice will be exempted from spending cuts, which means it's time now for legislators to be discussing how to do that safely...

Working group on Driver Responsibility rules loaded with hospital voices

Posted on May 12, 2010
After the Public Safety Commission told the agency to revisit rules on the Driver Responsibility surcharge to consider amnesty programs and other fixes authorized by the Legislature, the Texas Department of Public Safety this week created a working group on the subject...

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