Criminal Law

Judge seeking employment options for felony probationers

Posted on August 13, 2008
Austin District Judge Charlie Baird believes probation works better than prison for many offenders, but says the key for their success is getting and keeping a job. Reports Steven Kreytak at the Austin Statesman ("Judge takes active role in lives of probationers," Aug...

Fort Worth seeks to reduce homelessness while Austin just wants to cover it up

Posted on August 12, 2008
Cities spend a lot of money because of homelessness, whether it's to lend a helping hand or to sweep the problem under the rug.Two Texas cities - Fort Worth and Austin - are taking decidedly different approaches to the problem. In Fort Worth they're pursuing long-term strategies...

Schools vs. Jails on Smith County ballot this November

Posted on August 12, 2008
The Tyler Independent School District voted today to put nearly $125 million in school bonds on the November ballot, reported the Tyler Morning Telegraph, while Smith County commissioners on Thursday are expected propose yet another jail bond on the same ballot after jail proposals overwhelmingly failed in each of the last two years...

Do Limestone and McLennan Counties need three jails apiece?

Posted on August 12, 2008
Counties currently looking to build speculative jails to generate revenue should look to Limestone County to see the Catch-22 that decision places them in. Reported the Mexia Daily News on July 22 (pronounced "Ma-Hay-Uh' for you foreigners): ?The Limestone County jail population continues to soar...

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Private Prison Tents in West Texas?

Posted on August 11, 2008
Bob Libal at Texas Prison Bidness has several excellent recent posts up that deserve Grits readers attention:More Private Prison Tents in West Texas?Questions Remain About Conditions for Texas Detainees Evacuated After Hurricane DollyNo New Private Jail in McLennan County: Will County Take Back CEC/Civigenics JailWaco Tribune Editorializes Against New JailRelatedly, a couple of readers emailed to ask what happened to the links to other blogs in Grits sidebar...

Prosecution of "replaceable" cartel smugglers fail to reduce I-35 drug trafficking

Posted on August 11, 2008
Guilty pleas last week by drug traffickers working for Los Zetas, the enforcement arm of the Gulf Cartel drug trafficking organization, offer rare insight into the mechanics of drug smuggling up and down the I-35 corridor, the Dallas News reports ("Traffickers used I-35 buses to get drugs to Dallas, court records show," Aug...

Barry Scheck on eyewitness ID best practices

Posted on August 11, 2008
In its coverage of last week's initial meeting of the Court of Criminal Appeals' Criminal Justice Integrity Unit, Mary Alice Robbins at Texas Lawyer described a presentation by national Innocence Project co-director Barry Scheck regarding best practices for eyewitness ID procedures:The meeting also featured a presentation by Barry Scheck, co-director of New York's Innocence Project, on the use of a computerized photo lineup program...

Christian activist encouraging re-entry success through Prison Entrepreneurship Program

Posted on August 11, 2008
My brother, who is a Baptist pastor in Shreveport, emailed over the weekend to tell me how impressed he was with Prison Entrepreneurship Program (PEP) founder Catherine Rohr, whom he'd heard speaking at a Christian leadership conference in Illinois. The Texas-based nonprofit trains convicts to become entrepreneurs when they re-enter the free world, posting astonishingly positive success rates...

Make schools pay full freight for JJAEP placements

Posted on August 11, 2008
Last week the New York Times opined that Texas schools as well as the Youth Commission bore responsibility for educational failures of kids in the juvenile justice system, declaring too many schools were "dumping" their problems via the disciplinary process into so-called "alternative education programs" (JJAEPs)...

'Charter member' of Dallas DNA exoneree club still struggling to fit in

Posted on August 11, 2008
The Dallas News yesterday published the sad and telling story of David Pope, the "charter member" among Dallas' DNA exonerees who was released from prison in 2001 after spending 15 years inside for a rape he did not commit. Like many exonerees, he's struggled to reintegrate and still suffers from the damage done by his wrongful conviction.

Evidence retention failures thwart pursuit of innocence claims

Posted on August 10, 2008
On Tuesday, Texas witnessed its 34th DNA-based exoneration since 2001, this time again from Dallas County which is one of the only jurisdictions in Texas that saved old biological evidence. Such evidence only exists in about 10% of violent crime cases anyway, so DNA alone won't help most innocent offenders...

NY Times: Texas not providing federally guaranteed education to disabled kids in TYC

Posted on August 09, 2008
"Texas has both a moral and legal obligation to remake a system that is crippling, then writing off, the state?s most vulnerable children," the New York Times editorialized yesterday in reaction to the recent Ombudsman's report (pdf) on carceral education at the Texas Youth Commission, analyzed earlier by Grits here...

Sex toys, guns walked away from Houston police evidence room

Posted on August 08, 2008
After more than 30 guns went missing from the Houston PD property room, General Counsel Craig Ferrell said this spring that ""We feel all the holes in security have been closed and the property room is safe."Unfortunately, Mr. Ferrell spoke too soon. Now we learn that $50,000 worth of sex toys seized from an adult video store also went missing from the property room...

DNA overturns another bad conviction in Dallas based on faulty eyewitness testimony

Posted on August 07, 2008
Texas 34th DNA exoneree, Stephen Phillips walked out of a Dallas courtroom Monday completely cleared in the ten rapes for which he'd been convicted. His case arguably provides the most compelling example yet regarding flaws with historic eyewitness identification techniques and police tunnel vision...

Legislators critique TYC restructuring plan, demand new spending audit

Posted on August 07, 2008
State Senator John Whitmire and Rep. Jerry Madden want the state auditor to take another crack at analyzing the agency's problems, the Austin Statesman reports ("Audit demanded, Nedelkoff off," Aug. 7):A day after blasting the Texas Youth Commission for continued financial mismanagement, two key legislative leaders this afternoon requested a full state audit of all spending by the still-troubled agency...

State troopers would need 52% pay raise to match Austin police

Posted on August 07, 2008
Texas state troopers would require a 52% pay hike to put them on par with Austin, whose police are the highest paid in the nation taking into account cost of living. The state auditor has proposed boosting trooper pay 9-14% to keep them competitive with big-city departments...

Rothgery Ramifications: 'Investigate your defendant before arresting him'

Posted on August 07, 2008
The Rothgery case decided by SCOTUS this spring established that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel attaches for defendants at their bail hearing, but the full implications of that change have yet to be realized or even fully understood.Though bar exams were last week, this question from the Texas District and County Attorneys Association message board would have made a good exam question:Ok, here is the problem...

Activists offer 'Sunset' recommendations for Commission on Jail Standards

Posted on August 07, 2008
Read recommendations regarding the Texas Commission on Jail Standards to the Sunset Advisory Commission from Bob Libal at Texas Prison Business and from the Texas Jail Project. In particular, I couldn't agree more with this suggestion from Libal:Substantially enhance the ability of the Commission to successfully oversee jail facilities by adding at least two inspectors to Commission staff, and ehancing oversight of medical and mental health issues in jail facilities ? possibly by dedicating one inspector to exclusively oversee mental health and health-related issues in jail facilities.

New CCA "Integrity Unit" shows shift in establishment opinion about innocence reforms

Posted on August 07, 2008
There was a time not so long ago when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals didn't think too highly of post-conviction DNA evidence, but not anymore. Yesterday, on the heels of Texas' 34th DNA exoneration since 2001, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals held the first meeting of a new "Criminal Justice Integrity Unit" created to identify and promote reforms aimed at preventing false convictions identified through DNA exonerations...

Open Thread

Posted on August 06, 2008
I'm off this morning to spend most of day at the first meeting of Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Barbara Hervey's newly created Criminal Justice Integrity Unit, discussed earlier by Grits here and here. Until I return, use this as an open thread to let me know what criminal justice topics your tracking that deserve Grits readers attention.

Waco won't privatize local jail

Posted on August 06, 2008
Just to update a topic Grits has been tracking recently, the McLennan County Commissioners voted against privatizing their local jail.UPDATE: The Texas Commission on Jail Standards meets in Austin tomorrow (Thursday, Aug. 7 - here's the agenda) and will hear an update on McLennan's appeal of a TCJS remedial order that's driving commissioners' push for expanding jail capacity...

Medellin postscript

Posted on August 06, 2008
By a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court allowed Jose Medellin's execution to move forward last night despite opposition from the World Court and the Bush administration.I hope Medellin's death will bring the victims' family closure - whatever that means. But since his execution cannot bring back their lost loved ones, I doubt seriously those painful memories are "closed" for the victims' family and friends any more this morning than at this time yesterday...

Proposed Court of Criminal Appeals rule change would punish last-minute appeals as "untimely"

Posted on August 05, 2008
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has proposed a rule change that would move up the deadline for last-minute habeas appeals in death penalty appeals to 48 hours before the execution date. Here's the full text (pdf) of the proposed rule change:MISCELLANEOUS RULE 08-101Procedures in Death Penalty Cases Involving Requests for Stay of Execution and Related Filings in Texas State Trial Courts and the Court of Criminal Appeals1...

1 in 4 Texas drivers lack insurance: Using criminal penalties to require coverage simply doesn't work

Posted on August 05, 2008
In the national healthcare debate during the Democratic primary this spring, a key difference between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton's health plans emerged. She favored requiring citizens to purchase health insurance themselves, providing penalties if they did not comply...

Dumping Debra and Donna: Counties should reduce pretrial incarceration if they can't afford health costs

Posted on August 04, 2008
Over the last decade or so, even as crime has declined, most Texas jails have gotten fuller mostly because of a dramatic expansion in pretrial detention - in particular requiring bail instead of releasing offenders on personal recognizance bonds. Indeed, for reasons I cannot explain, this pattern constitutes a statewide trend even though the decisions behind it are all made by local judges...

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, R.I.P.

Posted on August 04, 2008
The greatest and most effective prison reform advocate on the planet died yesterday at the ripe old age of 89. Russian novelist Alexandr Solzhenitsyn was perhaps best known for his literally and literarily awesome nonfiction tome, "The Gulag Archipelago," described in an early obituary as: a monumental account of the Soviet labor camp system, a chain of prisons that by Solzhenitsyn's calculation some 60 million people had entered during the 20th century...

Jose Medellin and the rule of law

Posted on August 04, 2008
The question of whether to execute convicted killer and Mexican national Jose Medellin has generated many false arguments in recent weeks regarding the rule of law, frequently IMO turning the idea on its head.Barring an unlikely last-minute intervention by the Board of Pardons and Parole and the Governor, Texas will execute Medellin this evening for the double murder of two Houston teenagers...

TDCJ's 'meanest day'

Posted on August 03, 2008
TDC Director W. J. Estelle Jr. called Aug. 3, 1974 the ?meanest day in the history of our agency.? That's an awfully mean day. The Huntsville Item published a column this morning by Lyndol Richardson commemorating the lingering trauma to the town caused by a deadly, 11-day hostage episode 34 years ago stemming from an escape attempt gone bad:the siege ended with the deaths of two Windham School District employees, two of the hostage-takers and two hostages...

One of these days these boots are going to walk all over your attorney-client privilege

Posted on August 03, 2008
Bill Baumbach at the Collin County Observer has the scoop on the story of the Judge who issued a search warrant for a defense attorney's files in a high profile murder case. Most alarming is news that officers removed documents from the attorney's files that do not correspond to any item the warrant ordered them to seize...

Darrington guard collaborated with ex-inmate smuggling blow into Bayou State

Posted on August 03, 2008
Yikes! From the "What was she thinking?" department, here's a story of prison guard corruption I didn't read in the Texas papers, via Drug War Chronicle:In Lake Charles, Louisiana, a Texas prison guard was arrested Monday night after Louisiana state troopers found 1...

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