Criminal Law

Largest Texas counties now receive more inmates from TDCJ than they send

Posted on April 02, 2010
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice's new annual statistical report (pdf) is out and Melody McDonald at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram has an overview with some of the highlights.Here are a few items I noticed that she didn't mention:Importantly, the largest counties appear to have reached a tipping point (as a result of shipping so many people off to prison over the years) and now receive more inmates back into their communities than they send to TDCJ: Harris County sent 14,943 people to TDCJ in 2009, and saw 15,287 come back...

500 guns missing from TX police evidence room in 'illegal firearms trafficking scheme'

Posted on April 02, 2010
Having written several posts about sloppy practices and corruption in police evidence rooms, color me unsurprised and unamused to discover another SNAFU out of Cleveland in Liberty County (in southeast Texas), recorded by AP Feb 24: A federal investigation is under way to determine whether some 500 weapons missing from a police department's evidence room are part of an illegal firearms-trafficking scheme...

'When DAs Attack!'

Posted on April 02, 2010
You don't often see District Attorneys criticize one another, reporter Michael Hall says in the April issue of Texas Monthly in a story called "When DAs Attack!," but:In the continuing saga of the Mineola child sex cases (which I wrote about in ?Across the Line,? April 2009), the DA from Wood County has publicly and officially attacked the cases of a DA from Smith County, right next door...

Now is time for Craig Watkins to hand corruption cases to AG

Posted on April 01, 2010
Dallas DA Craig Watkins is making a big political mistake if he fails to pass off two corruption cases involving local constables to the state Attorney General. He declined assistance last year and hasn't responded to a second offer by the AG more than a month ago, but now would be an excellent time to announce a change of heart and give those cases to somebody else...

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SA drug cop resigns, putting dozens of cases in jeopardy

Posted on April 01, 2010
Following up on allegations of systemic misconduct at the Bexar County Sheriff's narcotics unit, the SA Express News reported this week ("Deputy fired in drug case," March 30):The Bexar County Sheriff's Office on Friday fired Deputy Charles Flores, whose actions in a drug case nearly two years ago might have put dozens of drug cases in peril, his lawyer, Jimmy Parks Jr...

Unusually stiff sentence for contraband smuggling in small-town Panhandle jail

Posted on April 01, 2010
What's unusual about this story is not that a small-town Panhandle jailer traded oral sex with female inmates for contraband, but that the local prosecutor pursued the case vigorously and secured a plea bargain for a four-year sentence. He wanted to go for a longer sentence, the DA said, but "he agreed to a plea deal in the case because victims and other witnesses are scattered throughout the state...

50 guards accused of conspiring in Matamoros prison break

Posted on April 01, 2010
It was suspected from the get-go that guards helped pull off a mass prison break recently in the border town of Matamoros, but according to TV news coverage in the Valley:Mexican authorities have filed criminal charges against 50 jail guards at a state prison just outside Matamoros...

Cornyn among sponsors of federal Criminal Justice Reinvestment Act

Posted on March 31, 2010
I don't closely track federal legislation, so I'd failed to notice that Texas Sen. John Cornyn is among the sponsors of the Criminal Justice Reinvestment Act, which was approved by the US Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this month. See a "lobby packet" (pdf) supporting the bill from the Council of State Governments' Justice Center...

Dallas launching latest TX veterans court

Posted on March 31, 2010
Following Houston's lead, Texas' second most populous county will experiment with the veterans court model authorized by the Texas Legislature last year, reports Christy Hoppe at the Dallas News ("Dallas County creating court for veterans with combat trauma," March 31):Soldiers who survive combat only to fall into addiction and depression could face a different kind of justice in Dallas County starting next month...

No consequences whatsoever for deputy constable tazing great-grandma

Posted on March 31, 2010
Tony Plohetski at the Austin Statesman reports: A Travis County grand jury has declined to indict Deputy Constable Christopher Bieze on a charge of injury to an elderly person after he used his Taser stun gun on a 72-year-old woman last year. The incident, which was captured on a patrol car video camera, generated national attention...

CA considers medical parole as solution to rising prison health costs

Posted on March 30, 2010
Over at Sentencing Law & Policy, Doc Berman notices that California is considering medical parole to reduce health care costs, excerpting an article that holds up Texas' example: "36 other states have a version of medical parole, including Texas, which is putting about 100 to 170 inmates a year into that status," says a Golden State legislator pushing the idea...

Tuesday Morning Roundup

Posted on March 30, 2010
Here are a few items that would merit full blog posts if I had more time to focus on them:Who gets an appointed lawyer?The Abilene Reporter News had a story over the weekend about the process of evaluating defendants for eligibility to receive court-appointed lawyers...

Driver surcharge boosting Texas joblessness

Posted on March 30, 2010
As the Public Safety Commission prepares to set the public hearing date for the Driver Responsibility surcharge rules at their meeting Wednesday, it's worth pointing out once again that the economic harm from this program far outdistances the revenue it generates...

Garland drug cop had informants sign blank payment forms

Posted on March 29, 2010
Tanya Eiserer at the Dallas News had another story last week about Officer Dennis Morrow, once considered the "quarterback" of the Garland PD narcotics unit, who's been accused in court by fellow officers of lying in drug cases ("Garland police officer admits to questionable practice with informant," March 26): Garland police Officer Dennis Morrow admitted during a hearing Thursday that he sometimes had informants sign pay sheets without immediately filling in the amount he paid them ? a practice deemed questionable by law enforcement experts ? but he denied ever stealing any money...

Science answers raise public policy questions on addiction

Posted on March 29, 2010
I've wondered in recent years if research by neuroscientists may eventually result in the conceptual uncoupling of addiction from criminality, forcing society to view it as a public health problem instead of reason for arrest and imprisonment. After all, nobody calls the cops when some tub of lard buys a grocery-cart full of junk food at the supermarket, but as it turns out a new study shows that:high-fat, high-calorie foods affect the brain in much the same way as cocaine and heroin...

Texas "more liberal" than Massachusetts?

Posted on March 28, 2010
By one measure, Massachussetts criminal justice columnist James Alan Fox thinks Texas is more "liberal" than the home of Ted Kennedy and Michael Dukakis: What a shocker! And for Massachusetts liberals like me who are proud of our state's tradition of social progressiveness, what an embarrassment! When it comes to punishing juveniles, Texas is apparently more enlightened than Massachusetts--Austin more liberal than Boston...

Should California pursue Texas-style university-based model for prison healthcare?

Posted on March 28, 2010
Here's a little more detail on California's deliberations about shifting prison health care to the state university system, modeled after Texas' example and promoted by a company affiliated with UTMB, from the Associated Press:The University of California will form a special committee to study whether it should take over inmate health care for the state's troubled prison system, the chairman of the university system's Board of Regents said this week...

The first rule of Prison Fight Club: Guards, don't get your ass kicked by the inmate forced to fight you

Posted on March 27, 2010
KOSA-TV reports:The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has answered CBS 7?s open records request regarding a fight between a Fort Stockton correctional officer and an inmate.The report states Officer Edgar Acosta and offender Lee James Clark were involved in a minor scuffle in the hallway...

Statewide abuse and neglect data from juvie detention

Posted on March 26, 2010
The Texas Juvenile Probation Commission meets this morning, though prior obligations later today mean I won't attend. Here's the agenda, though, and the backup packet for boardmembers including minutes from their last meeting. One interesting item in the packet was this chart depicting reported allegations of abuse, neglect, exploitation and other serious incidents:Abuse, Neglect, Exploitation & Serious Incidents, FY 2005 - February 2010It's hard not to notice the massive jump in the numbers from 2007 to 2008...

Time to test Skinner DNA evidence

Posted on March 25, 2010
Karl Keys at Capital Defense Weekly sums up the news of the Supreme Court's stay in the Hank Skinner case aptly: "As always, Rob Owen rocks. My suggestion to the Texas AG?s office, test the material now & moot the issue if Mr. Owen & crew are wrong...

Private jail contractor dumps Johnson County: Promised immigration beds never materialized

Posted on March 25, 2010
As the Webb County Sheriff pushes construction of a massive new jail for the purpose of housing federal immigration prisoners, their commissioners court should look to Johnson County to understand how that might not pan out like they hope. According to a story in the Cleburne Times-Review ("CEC bailing out," March 24): Johnson County Law Enforcement Center should have a new private subcontractor no later than Sept...

Excellent coverage of Travis County specialty courts

Posted on March 25, 2010
From Jordan Smith at the Austin Chronicle, check out this must-read series of stories on Travis County specialty courts:Niche Justice: Travis County specialty courts try to break the cycle of crimeAnd Now Veterans: 'We Owe Them'Recovery Projects: Alcoholism and Mental HealthFamily Violence Court: 'Homicide Prevention'A key criticism of specialty courts from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers was voiced in the first bulleted article: "'Judges make poor social workers...

Execution looms with DNA evidence untested: Will SCOTUS, Governor intervene on Hank Skinner?

Posted on March 24, 2010
Today is the deadline. One of three things will happen today in the Hank Skinner case: He will be executed later tonight, the US Supreme Court will stay his case and order DNA testing on potentially exculpatory evidence, or Governor Rick Perry will commute the sentence for 30 days to allow the evidence to be tested...

Most Huntsville school board members work(ed) for TDCJ

Posted on March 24, 2010
I'd not realized until reading this post from the Medill Innocence Project on the Hank Skinner case that Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles Chair Rissie Owens is also an elected member of the Huntsville school board. Upon further review, though, she's definitely among their trustees according to their website, which somewhat oddly lists her occupation as "Protective Servicesman...

Petitions vs Dallas constable, Hockley Sheriff highlight obscure civil removal process for county pols

Posted on March 24, 2010
After I wrote in support of Dallas county prosecutors filing a civil removal petition in Dallas against Constable Jaime Cortes, a Grits commenter opined that it "would be interesting to read a post about that obscure recall process." I agreed, I just knew nothing about it and had never heard of it being used before...

'The Rights of Minors in the American Criminal Justice System'

Posted on March 24, 2010
The title of this post is the subject of an upcoming one-day symposium at the UT law school in Austin about which I received notice from several different sources this week, but my favorite was from a juvenile probation director who instructed me, "get your ass down there and listen then report to we great unwashed folk out here in the boondocks...

Webb County Sheriff's speculative jail scheme ignores risks

Posted on March 24, 2010
The Laredo Sun, in an article that reads mysteriously like a badly written press release, reports that the Webb County Sheriff is pushing county commissioners to build a speculative new jail in hopes of turning a profit by housing federal immigration prisoners:If the county government built a new prison, the project would practically get paid on its own because the current jail could generate several million dollars if federal prisoners are housed in it...

Concerns about 'spillover' from Mexican drug fighting belated, naive

Posted on March 23, 2010
It's becoming hard to know what to think about news out of Mexico about crime and the drug war. What few reports we get from northern Mexico sound goddawful, and we know we're not getting the whole story, by a longshot. But friends who've traveled recently in Mexico reported few concerns for safety, and thousands of spring breakers just returned without incident...

UTMB-linked consultant advising California on prison healthcare

Posted on March 23, 2010
Here's a development that may interest our pals at the blog California Corrections Crisis: George Reamy, who is a UTMB-based candidate for the Texas Faculty Association executive board, has several recent posts up about a Texas telemedicine company linked to UTMB that is now advising California on its troubled prison system...

Comments due soon on Driver Responsibility rules

Posted on March 23, 2010
Decision time is drawing close. There's an item on the Public Safety Commission's just-released March 31 agenda (pdf) to set a public hearing for proposed revisions to the Driver Responsibility rules.For those who'd like to share their views with the PSC on the rules, the public comment period for the proposed rules ends April 4, but that's a Sunday so presumably that will be extended to April 5...

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