Criminal Law

Dallas Sheriff: Deputies were right to allow armed robbery by snitch

Posted on April 30, 2008
Dallas Sheriff Lupe Valdez says she hasn't read a report about one of her deputies assigned to the auto theft task force who knew ahead of time his informant planned to commit a robbery in Waxahachie. Reported the Dallas News yesterday ("Dallas County Sheriffs department task force criticized for truck heist," April 29): When several men broke into a Waxahachie truck terminal last October, tied up a security guard at gun point and crashed a semi-trailer loaded with $1 million in cigarettes through the front gate, they didn?t know one of them was a snitch for the Dallas County Sheriff?s Department...

Dallas sees 17th DNA exoneration

Posted on April 29, 2008
Dallas County saw its 17th DNA exoneration today, with the release of James Lee Woodward, who was wrongly convicted after prosecutors withheld exculpatory evidence from his lawyers and police failed to investigate it. Woodard's was a case where nobody needed DNA evidence to tell Woodard didn't get a fair trial, reported the News:James Lee Woodard was seeking a new trial at the 1981 hearing, alleging that prosecutors did not fully disclose information about Ms...

Lies and Statistics

Posted on April 29, 2008
Headlines today are trumpeting that 31 of 53 underage girls seized at the YFZ Ranch are either pregnant or have had children. Let's examine this claim just a moment.In court at the mass 14-day hearing, the Department of Family and Protective Services claimed five girls between 16 and 19 were either pregnant or had kids...

Beyond the Iceberg's Tip: Dallas to extend innocence investigations beyond DNA cases

Posted on April 29, 2008
Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins will extend his department's efforts to identify innocent people who've been wrongfully convicted beyond just DNA cases, the Dallas News reported yesterday ("Dallas DA's scrutiny of non-DNA cases may alter view of inmates' innocence claims," April 28):Mr...

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Juvenile probation departments may lose federal funds for administrative costs

Posted on April 28, 2008
I'd mentioned last week that the Texas juvenile probation system received a boost of $57.9 million in its state budget for this biennium, and legislators were surprised their caseload hadn't risen as anticipated.I wanted to follow up on that, because it severely misstated matters to imply juvie probation budgets went up by that amount...

Statesman late to the 'stop snitching' party; Pravda ahead of the game

Posted on April 28, 2008
In the Austin Statesman today, Joshunda Sanders has a story informing us, "'Stop Snitching' sentiment spreads to Austin," and I'll expand here on comments I left under her story on the newspaper's site.First, three years ago after I began writing about this topic, a friend bought me a "Stop Snitching" t-shirt from a vendor here in Austin...

Dallas courts slowed down after adding two new judges

Posted on April 28, 2008
I've had this story sitting in an open tab on my browser for a week meaning to mention an example of first-rate reporting on the local court system from Kevin Krause at the Dallas News ("Dallas County felony courts face rising case backlog," April 20), in which we learn that Dallas criminal courts are processing cases more slowly despite the addition of two new criminal courts...

Washington Post explores frontiers of forensic DNA science

Posted on April 28, 2008
Via Cursor.org:In a series of articles on the expanded use of DNA in the criminal justice system, the Washington Post looks at U.S. government plans to collect samples from those arrested but not convicted, the use of family DNA to make arrests, and the potential for 'deeper examination' of the accused, as genetic screening of newborns raises privacy concerns...

Lubbock wants "private defender" office for mentally ill

Posted on April 28, 2008
Lubbock County Commissioners appear to have embraced the idea of a specialized defender offices reducing indigent defense costs, particularly for targeted, high cost populations. First they spearheaded Texas' first multi-county capital public defender program, and now commissioners hope to create a "private defender" for mentally ill defendants...

Who's to blame for the Eldorado mess? How about the Apostle Paul?

Posted on April 27, 2008
The Washington Post today called the Eldorado case an "unusual prosecution of a way of life." The story focuses on the crux of my own discomfort with all this - that past the bogus headlines about abuse, this case (we still need to settle on a name for this quagmire) is really about a national discomfort with a culture in which a girl's highest calling is to start bearing children early and often...

Prosecutors blogging

Posted on April 26, 2008
Jamie Spencer alerts us to the existence of the da blog, apparently based in Harris County and writing from a prosecutor's perspective. Adjust your blogrolls accordingly.And speaking of prosecutor blogs (which for whatever reason are relatively few and far between) the da blog joins the anonymous bloggers at Dallas Sidebar and Life at the Harris County Criminal Justice Center in Texas blogging from a prosecutorial perspective...

What's in a name? What should we call the gigantic mess emanating from Eldorado?

Posted on April 26, 2008
Salt Lake City Tribune reporter Brooke Adams rightly declares this picture of a FLDS child waving goodbye to her mother is "worth a thousand words." Just heartwrenching. Can what's happening really be in the best interests of this little girl? Is this really the only option the state has to protect her from possible abuse ten years from now?Adams has rightly suggested recently that the Texas raid on the YFZ polygamist ranch in Eldorado needs a name...

Prison ministry group thanks TYC staff

Posted on April 26, 2008
Thanks to the reader who sent me a link to the website of the Juvenile Justice Ministries of Texas, which is "a Christ-centered association whose mission is to strengthen individuals, organizations, and churches who work with juvenile offenders and their families...

Juvie crime in Texas IS declining, but "why" is a mystery

Posted on April 25, 2008
Okay, back to the question: Is juvenile crime declining in Texas?I'd posed the query upon learning that, contrary to official projections, the total youth on probation in Texas remained flat after changes in the law last year redirected repeat juvenile misdemeanants away from the Youth Commission...

Not to say I told you so, but ... FLDS search warrants now called "shaky"

Posted on April 24, 2008
These two headlines, though eerily similar, came two weeks apart:Grits for Breakfast, April 9: Search warrants for polygamist compound may be invalidSan Angelo Standard Times, April 24: Confidence in FLDS search warrants shaky, authorities sayIf me and readers of the Salt Lake City Tribune knew this two weeks ago, why did it take Texas authorities so long to figure it out? Two words explain it: Willful neglect...

Is juvenile crime in Texas declining?

Posted on April 24, 2008
Is juvenile crime declining in Texas despite a dramatic reduction in inmate population at the Youth Commission? That appears to be the implication of data presented to the Legislature by Angela Isaac at the Legislative Budget Board recently about juvenile probation caseloads...

GAO criticizes boot camp fraud and abuse

Posted on April 24, 2008
Thanks to several readers for pointing me to coverage of an analysis of juvenile boot camp programs that's in the national press this week.The Government Accountability Office came out with a followup report to its study of juvenile boot camps and wilderness programs that Grits discussed last fall...

Searching for principled voices on the Eldorado raid

Posted on April 23, 2008
Once the government launches a wave of persecution against a religious minority based on popular animosity, there's no telling which ugly direction it will turn, as evidenced by a the vandalism of a Mormon couple's house in Placedo, near Victoria, which they believe is related to Eldorado raid (though the victims are mainstream, not fundamentalist Mormons)...

Bexar County starting to plan for possible post-TYC future

Posted on April 23, 2008
The Bexar County Commissioners Court has begun to come to grips with what it would mean if the state of Texas were to "abolish" the Texas Youth Commission (TYC) and shift responsibility for housing youth incarcerated from the county in county-owned facilities, reports Elizabeth Allen of the San Antonio Express News ("Commissioners' Chorus: Juvies's Comin'," April 23):County Budget Officer David Smith said his staff's initial estimates showed the potential costs are "huge" - construction could be $74 million for a county facility (280 beds) and $111 million for a regional one (420 beds)...

Proposal to "ban the box" passed by Travis Commissioners

Posted on April 22, 2008
Today the Travis County Commissioners Court officially approved a proposal to eliminate questions about past criminal history on initial employment screenings, reports the Austin Statesman ("County takes crime question off job applications," April 22):That question will be asked later in the application process for jobs unsuitable for people with a criminal past ? such as handling county funds or records ? in what the commissioners and some public safety officials said was a step to help make Travis County safer...

Cheaper, not just safer, to fully staff local lockups

Posted on April 22, 2008
I've been harping for a while on the fact that failing to adequately staff prisons and jails makes it less safe for both those incarcerated and those keeping them locked up.Another aspect of the short-staffing crisis that gets less attention is that it's cheaper, as well as safer, to run an adequately staffed jail that doesn't rely on overtime for core staffing...

BTW Judge, we found an extra 21 kids: now CPS says 437 FLDS youngsters in custody

Posted on April 22, 2008
Until yesterday, Texas Child Protective Services thought it had seized 21 fewer kids from a West Texas polygamist compound than were actually in its custody. The new total of seized children is 437. In other words, CPS lost these children for the last two weeks, and only just now figured out they were in custody...

Texas still waiting to kill

Posted on April 22, 2008
Though the headlines shouted that the US Supreme Court approved lethal injection by a 7-2 margin, allowing executions to resume, when and how they will do so still must be decided on a state by state basis. Doc Berman points to a helpful column by Michael Dorf at Findlaw, declaring in part:Last week, in Baze v...

TDCJ unit in Fort Stockton only 59% staffed

Posted on April 21, 2008
Imagine you're a female prison guard with 13 years on the job. You're supposed to have two other Correctional Officers (COs) with you to guard between 80 and 100 adult male prisoners. But you're alone. And scared to the point that your knees shake. How much would you need to get paid to take that job?That's the scenario described in the lede to a Houston Chronicle story yesterday ("State prison guard shortage 'critical,'" April 21) on Texas' chronic shortage of prison staff...

Critics of Harris County public defender remain in the shadows

Posted on April 21, 2008
The Houston Chronicle published a rather odd article on Sunday (April 20) regarding public defender systems titled "Public defender system has its critics," by Sara Viren - I say odd because, upon rereading it several times, I still can't tell who those critics are!For example, we're told that "critics of public defender systems call them bureaucratic catastrophes...

Reducing Dallas jail's "debtor prison" function would save money, reduce overcrowding

Posted on April 20, 2008
Debtors prisons have been outlawed in the United States in every circumstance but one: When the government is the Creditor.But the economics of debtors prisons don't work well on a large scale, particularly when operated and paid for by said sole Creditor...

Eldorado Reflections

Posted on April 20, 2008
Having already written a dozen posts regarding the seizure of 416 kids from the YFZ polygamist ranch in West Texas, I've begun asking myself what it is about this incident I've found so compelling.Mostly immediately, I empathize with the children involved at an almost gut level, but not in the way of the hand wringing CPS types who fear they're being sexually or physically harmed...

Proving innocence, solving cold cases, frequently depend on DNA collection and preservation

Posted on April 19, 2008
Much of the focus at the 3rd annual "Actual Innocence" conference I attended last week centered on DNA testing which has led to more than 200 recent exonerations nationwide, so I thought I'd share with readers a few items of interest from my notes on the topic...

Okie Sheriff running "sex-slave operation" with female trusties

Posted on April 18, 2008
I'd questioned earlier whether Sheriffs' use of inmate labor should be audited after two Texas Sheriffs departments were found to be using trusty labor for private businesses. Then I saw the lede to an AP story from Oklahoma, declaring:Authorities have charged a western Oklahoma sheriff with coercing and bribing female inmates so he could use them in a sex-slave operation run out of his jail...

DNA evidence may clear accused Yogurt Shop Murders defendant

Posted on April 18, 2008
Defendants in Austin's famed 1991 "Yogurt Shop Murders" may wind up having their names added to Texans exonerated through retesting old DNA evidence, over strenuous prosecution objections, reports the Austin Chronicle:A lawyer for yogurt shop defendant Robert Springsteen says that retested DNA evidence proves his client is not guilty and should be released from prison...

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