Criminal Law

The Two-Millionth Grits Reader

Posted on September 10, 2009
It took almost five years to get there, but this afternoon Grits for Breakfast surpassed the two-million visitor mark, according to SiteMeter. Lately the blog's been averaging about 1,800-2,000 unique visitors per weekday. Thanks to everyone for reading!Grits' five-year anniversary will be October 6; maybe between these two milestones there needs to be some sort of celebratory fiesta, whaddya think?

CLEAT will sue to delay Grayson Jail vote

Posted on September 10, 2009
The Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas (CLEAT) will sue to halt thevote in November on expanding the Grayson County Jail because the announcement for the commissioners court meeting where the date was set was posted one minute late, reports the Sherman Herald-Democrat...

Why 'carrots trump sticks,' or, why 'winners don't punish'

Posted on September 10, 2009
Does punishment or reward work better at influencing human behavior? It's a question that's seemingly fundamental to what goes on in the justice system, but one that's seldom subjected to empirical analysis. So I found this discussion of public-goods games by Ed Yong at Not Exactly Rocket Science a fascinating train of thought...

Hiring Bubba in Bandera

Posted on September 09, 2009
Bandera County is hiring new jailers to staff an expanded detention center, but according to Judith Pannebaker at the Bandera County Courier:In Bandera County at least, it appears the best hedge against a still-failing economy is to have a relative or friend already hard at work for the county...

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Cameron Todd Willingham: Required Reading

Posted on September 09, 2009
I thought it'd be useful to round up some commentary on the Willingham case, which has drawn a huge amount of interest.The recent flurry of attention began thanks to a new report from an expert commissioned by the Texas Forensic Science Commission and an extensive article in the New Yorker by David Gann, which vetted the arson testimony and other evidence in the case...

New TYC Ombudsman

Posted on September 09, 2009
From AP: Gov. Rick Perry has named Catherine Evans of Dallas to be the Texas Youth Commission independent ombudsman. Evans is a past chair of the TYC Advisory Board, a former state district judge and former commissioner of the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission...

Catfight between Dallas DA, Commissioners presages 2010 elections

Posted on September 08, 2009
Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins will draw a Republican opponent in 2010, the Dallas News reports, with the news coming at a time when the state's first African American DA is under more serious fire than ever in his brief political career.It's hard to imagine those two facts are unrelated, but there's also an extent to which Watkins brought some of the extra misery onto himself...

TCJC brings news on probation, parole, juvie justice and the drug war

Posted on September 08, 2009
These interesting items were mentioned in an email received this morning from the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition: JJ Report Released TodayCoalition for Juvenile Justice (CJJ) released its first-ever national report on state compliance with the federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA)...

New threats to Whtimire's family punctuate failed TDCJ contraband crackdown; Might cell phone locators work better than jammers?

Posted on September 08, 2009
The death row inmate who called state Sen. John Whtimre and set off last year's scandal about cell phones on prisons didn't get convicted of capital murder because he's a really smart guy.Somebody has been posting Richard Tabler's letters from prison online and in one of them written in June (no longer on the site), amidst complaints that his mother and sister are being prosecuted for helping him get a cell phone, he issued yet another veiled threat to the family of the Senate Dean, wondering ominously about the wellbeing of Whitmire's ex-wife...

Breakout! Burnet jail escape ill-timed for Grayson jail builders

Posted on September 08, 2009
In love and in politics, timing is often everything, and for jail builders in Grayson County, the timing of last week's jail break in Burnet County couldn't be worse.The Burnet County Jail is the only one in Texas currently operated by Southwestern Correctional LLC, which is based in Louisiana and operates eight facilities there (mostly for the state prison system) under the name La Salle Corrections...

Data on Texas' inmates access to the courts

Posted on September 08, 2009
I thought these 2008 data from TDCJ about prisoners' access to the courts were interesting, supplying metrics for broadly comparing in-prison writ writing activity to the level of outside legal representation for prisoners. In 2008 at TDCJ, there were:608,053 offender visits to law library sessions247,819 items of legal research material were delivered17,035 notary signatures were provided1,456 offender/offender legal visits were conducted1,314 attorney/offender phone calls were conducted527 court teleconference inquiries via phone were conducted81 court teleconference inquiries via video conference were conducted4,083 attorney visits were conducted969 attorney representative visits were conducted54,310 court forms were issued4,377 court certificates of impoverishmentPresumably the State Counsel for Offenders accounts for some of those attorney visits...

Dallas 'juking' crime statistics

Posted on September 07, 2009
After taking heat for many years about Dallas having the highest per-capita crime rate in the nation, the Dallas Police Department took decisive action: They changed the reporting procedures so some crimes aren't included in the totals.The result: "This year, Dallas shed its distinction as having the highest crime rate of U...

'Round the blogs

Posted on September 06, 2009
While I'm focused elsewhere, check out what's going on at these blogs, which all have excellent recent posts related to topics Grits covers:Dallas News Crime BlogDrug War RantSentencing Law and PolicySimple JusticeStand Down TexasWhite Collar Crime ProfHope you're enjoying your Labor Day weekend!

Some states actually shutting down prison units

Posted on September 05, 2009
According to this Wall Street Journal story ("Lights Out at the Penitentiary," Sept. 5) and accompanying graphics, Michigan will close eight prison units because of budget cuts, paroling some prisoners early and moving the rest to other units. The Journal views this as part of a larger trend:For three decades, state and local governments built and filled jails to make good on promises to get tough on crime...

Violence explodes as Perry skips Border Governors' Conference

Posted on September 04, 2009
Governor Rick Perry this week skipped out on the binational Border Governors' Conference in Monterrey, sending Deputy Chief of Staff Kathy Walt in his stead. But surely there can't be many other priorities more important than Texas' border for the Governor to be focused on? Rather than go to Monterrey to discuss security and economic issues critical to the state, on Wednesday the Governor was in Lubbock to criticize President Obama's health care plan...

Texas DNA exonerees will soon receive compensation

Posted on September 04, 2009
I was pleased to notice this AP report about Texas' new law improving compensation for falsely convicted men who've been proven innocence by DNA evidence. This was an issue I spent alot of time on this spring at the Lege on behalf of the Innocence Project of Texas...

New Youth Commission board named

Posted on September 03, 2009
Governor Perry has named the new board of the Texas Youth Commisison, which met on Tuesday for the first time and whose first act was to permanently hire Cherie Townsend as executive director.Here's the press release announcing the appointments. The new board chair and another member are ministers...

Grits chosen among 'Best of Austin'

Posted on September 03, 2009
Thanks to the Austin Chronicle for selecting Grits as one of their "Critics' Picks" in their annual Best of Austin awards. Here's the relevant entry:Best Tales of Jailhouse Blues: Grits for Breakfast Next time someone tells you that the Texas courts are bastions of blind justice and the penal system works perfectly, tell ?em to go read what Scott Henson wrote...

California's partisan prison meltdown: Why Texas didn't go there

Posted on September 02, 2009
It's been fascinating to watch from afar California's "perfect storm" regarding its prison system. They face massive overcrowding, with double the number of prisoners their facilities were designed for. A federal court has ordered them to release 40,000 prisoners or spend billion more on prisoner healthcare, a case they're appealing to the US Supreme Court...

Older offenders driving TDCJ healthcare costs

Posted on September 02, 2009
Texas' Correctional Managed Health Care Committee meets in Dallas next week and they've posted the backup material related to their agenda online. (Large file - 169-page pdf.) Here are a few highlights that jumped out at me from that lengthy document:Correctional managed care in Texas lost a total of $24...

CPS raid on Houston's underage moms would dwarf Great Eldorado Polygamist Roundup

Posted on September 01, 2009
Here are a few disparate items to chew on this morning:Get ready for the CPS raid on HoustonLast year Texas' CPS accompanied by dozens of armed police raided the YFZ Ranch and seized more than 400 children on the sole basis that some of the children had allegedly been married and impregnated as young as 14 (a practice that was legal in Texas with parental consent until 2005)...

Central repository created at TCLEOSE for racial profiling data

Posted on September 01, 2009
Here's a happy tidbit I'd missed that the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition's Ana Yañez Correa tells me was amended to the TCLEOSE Sunset bill (HB 3389) in the final days of the session:Texas finally created a central repository for compiling and comparing local racial profiling data gathered by police officers at traffic stops...

Cameron Todd Willingham: Debating his 'innocence'

Posted on August 31, 2009
The Cameron Willingham case promises to become one of the most hotly debated capital cases in Texas history, being hailed as it is as the first example of a demonstrably innocent person being executed.Others, like the judge in the case, insist Willingham was guilty even if the forensics were flawed...

Jail Standards Commission altered needs assessment for Grayson County Jail

Posted on August 31, 2009
According to Kathy Williams at the Sherman Herald Democrat ("How many beds needed at Grayson County Jail?," Aug. 30), the Texas Commission on Jail Standards increased its estimates for how many jail beds Grayson County would need in the near future after prodding by a private contractor...

Truth in Sentencing Budgets: How the Lege boosts prison expenses without paying for it

Posted on August 31, 2009
At the Dallas News, Terrence Stutz provides that paper's biennial recounting of new criminal penalty increases passed by the Texas Legislature that go into effect tomorrow ("In Texas, penalties rise for senior fraud, graffiti, drive by shootings," Aug...

Sam Sparks v. Rissie Owens: Federal judge may unmask secretive parole process

Posted on August 31, 2009
The Austin Statesman's Mike Ward brings word ("Court cases forcing change at parole agency," Aug. 31) of a clash this week between US District Judge Sam Sparks and an attorney from the Board of Pardons and Parole:U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks had heard enough...

TDCJ dips into line staff raises for higher supervisor pay

Posted on August 29, 2009
There's little doubt the Texas Legislature primarily intended upcoming pay raises for Texas prison guards primarily for the rank and file. That was clear both before and during the time the Lege was in session. But now Mike Ward at the Statesman reports TDCJ is shifting that money around to give larger raises to supervisors ("Prison guards say pay raise not as much as promised," Aug...

Drug war runs on oceans of cash: A big fish swims free

Posted on August 29, 2009
I was amazed in 2007 when the Mexican police found more than $200 million in US currency linked to a drug cartel stacked up in the suburban Mexico City residece owned by a Chinese businessman living in New York, but I'm even more astonished to learn that American prosecutors don't want to pursue the case...

North Carolina Supreme Court finds ex-felons have gun rights; Texas Constitution has stronger language, could it happen here?

Posted on August 29, 2009
Eugene Volokh at the Volokh Conspiracy and Doug Berman at Sentencing Law and Policy bring word of an opinion issued yesterday in Britt v. State (available here) by the North Carolina Supreme Court finding that some felons have a "right to bear arms." The case involved a man with a felony drug conviction from 1979 with a clean history thereafter...

"Just keep grinnin' - We're winnin'!": Prosecutors debate the drug war

Posted on August 28, 2009
Texas prosecutors on a comment string titled "Just keep grinnin' - We're winnnin'!" have been engaged in one of the more frank discussions I've seen among working law enforcement types about the efficacy of the war on drugs. The string was begun with just a couple of comments in 2004, but then updated recently (new comments bring a thread up to the top of their user system) when Mexico acted recently to decriminalize small amounts of drugs...

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