Criminal Law

Texas helps lead first decline in number of state prisoners since 1972

Posted on June 24, 2010
Via Sentencing Law and Policy, I'm fascinated to see this new federal report (pdf) documenting that state prison populations declined in 2009 for the first time since 1972. Notably: "About three-fourths (71.7%) of this decrease resulted from declines reported in six states reporting decreases of more than 1,000 prisoners: Michigan (down 3,260), California (down 2,395), New York (down 1,660), Mississippi (down 1,272), Texas (down 1,257), and Maryland (down 1,069)...

Demoralizing tales from Houston law enforcement

Posted on June 24, 2010
Coupla stories out of Houston PD bear watching:First, four officers have been indicted, seven fired, and 12 disciplined after the brutal beating of a handcuffed suspect who'd run from police was captured on videotape.Second, Moises Mendoza and James Pinkerton continue their excellent reporting on Houston PD's fingerprint lab, describing the results they got back from a recent public information act request...

Remembering Sputnik

Posted on June 24, 2010
I just received word that one of the most eclectic but effective public interest lobbyists in the state - Sputnik, founder and state chair of the Texas Motorcycle Rights Association - passed away at 5:30 am this morning."Please remember his wife, Gwen, their family, friends and the biker community in prayer in the loss of this man who served bikers tirelessly in the fight for our rights and freedoms," said the brief email notice...

TX Supreme Court: Prostitution charges for 13 year old criminalize victimhood

Posted on June 23, 2010
Rick Casey at the Houston Chronicle describes a fascinating appellate case ("When the victim is the 'criminal,'" June 23):In a decision fought by the Harris County District Attorney's Office, the Texas Supreme Court ruled last week that a 13-year-old girl who had made an offer to an undercover vice cop could not be charged with prostitution...

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UPDATE: No jail expansion in Houston, for now

Posted on June 23, 2010
Yesterday the Harris County Commissioners Court bypassed the opportunity to put jail bonds on the ballot as Sheriff Adrian Garcia requested, instead criticizing Garcia for his unilateral decision to take prisoners contracted to a Lousiana jail and move them to Texas counties which charge more money...

Cutting police costs? 'Verified response' for alarms gets more benefit from same number of officers

Posted on June 22, 2010
The City of Austin has put up a page asking citizens to prioritize budget reductions, and reducing overtime and police pay were the top suggestions for the police department. Via their feedback mechanism, I replied:If you're talking about cutting officers or eliminating overtime, here's a suggestion to put more officers on the street essentially for free: Implement verified response for burglar alarms...

Indigent Defense Roundup

Posted on June 22, 2010
I don't have time to analyze each of them, but several different items related to indigent defense and public defender offices caught my attention recently:Justice Lite: Harris County should beef up its pilot public defender program, Houston Chronicle, editorial, June 20Congress must rewrite the law governing lawyers for poor death row inmates, Washington Post, June 21 Harris County's request for public defender grant in trouble, Houston Chronicle, June 9 Chief hired for state capital defender office, Houston Chronicle, June 22Report: Representing the mentally ill offender: An evaluation of advocacy alternatives, Task Force on Indigent Defense/Office of Court Administration, April 2010 June newsletter, Texas Task Force on Indigent DefenseSee a video describing the work of the Travis County mental health public defenderSee recent remarks by US Attorney General Eric Holder arguing to expand the role of public defenders.

Push for expanded jail by Harris Sheriff ill-conceived

Posted on June 21, 2010
Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia wants to reframe the debate over jail bulding - hoping to succeed where his GOP predecessor failed - by portraying an expanded booking center and extra beds as providing services for the mentally ill. However, Marc Levin and Ana Yañez Correa rightly suggested to the Houston Chronicle that "The costs of running a new building - utilities, staffing, maintenance - will compete for tight budget dollars with reforms that would divert more mentally ill arrestees into treatment instead of cells...

Three options in Keller case for Judicial Conduct Commission

Posted on June 21, 2010
Austin Statesman courts reporter Chuck Lindell emails with a correction regarding possible options for the Sharon Keller Commission on Judicial Conduct proceedings:So you know, the SCJC chairman misspoke during the hearing about their options.He said they could issue a censure, reprimand, warning or admonition ...

Vampire cops train on mentally ill TDCJ inmates

Posted on June 21, 2010
The UT Medical Branch at Galveston, which provides health care at most Texas prison units, has been in the news recently for making a little money on the side. First it was a UTMB doc sanctioned for allegedly prescribing drugs to addicts outside his prison practice...

No one could ever be convicted based on false eyewitness testimony in Lubbock, except for those who are

Posted on June 20, 2010
The Lubbock Police Department thinks cases like Timothy Cole's false identification that led to his wrongful conviction and death in prison don't imply the department needs to change their policies, reports the Lubbock Avalanche Journal ("Experts question LPD's new eyewitness process," June 20):The department resisted what a spokesman called "knee-jerk reactions" to exonerations and new research that changed laws in three states and eyewitness procedures in at least five major departments including Dallas...

Fingerprint mismatch led to false homicide accusation

Posted on June 19, 2010
Here's a remarkable story casting light both on a) the power of fingerprint evidence and b) its higher-than-expected error rate, from the Houston Chronicle ("Fingerprint error led to 4 months in jail," June 19):Authorities on Friday identified an ironworker with no criminal record as the suspect held in jail for four months in 1996 after the Houston Police Department's troubled fingerprint analysis unit wrongly tied his fingerprint to a homicide, records show...

Is Sharon Keller's influence waning on CCA?

Posted on June 19, 2010
Having been focused on Judge Sharon Keller's removal proceedings yesterday, it's worth taking a moment to point out that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals appears to be in a period of transition, with the hardline faction led by Keller and Barbara Hervey more frequently finding itself on the losing side of cases where they'd probably have prevailed handily a few years ago...

Oral arguments in Sharon Keller removal proceedings this morning

Posted on June 18, 2010
I'm headed up to the State Commission on Judicial Conduct this morning to hear oral arguments in Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Presiding Judge Sharon Keller's removal proceedings. Go here for all the filings in the case. See also AP's preview that's in several papers around the state this morning.

Can UTMB provide constitutional levels of healthcare after prison staffing cuts?

Posted on June 17, 2010
KUT ran a report this week (audio here) focused on recent layoffs at UTMB's Correctional Managed Care program titled "Paying for Healthcare in Texas Prisons," in which yours truly was quoted declaring ?In some ways, it?s a game of chicken because the feds can always come in and do what they did in California and say, you know you can?t scale back that much...

An overt case of profiling

Posted on June 17, 2010
I'm flattered that Matthew Stewart at the blog LoneStarters chose to publish a profile of Grits for Breakfast, declaring "this blog hits some of the more controversial topics you?ll see from an Austin-based blog ... combining tough analysis with eminently readable prose," adding " if you haven?t yet given Grits a look, you should for the writing alone...

New trials in Mineola Swingers Club cases

Posted on June 17, 2010
Judge Jack Skeen out of Tyler received a sharp-tongued benchslapping from the 14th Court of Appeals out of Houston, ordering new trials in two of the Mineola Swingers Club cases. Here's how Michael Hall from Texas Monthly described the ruling:the court ultimately based its decision on the ?numerous evidentiary errors? it found were committed by trial judge Jack Skeen...

A/C bills one more reason to close Dawson state jail

Posted on June 17, 2010
There are quite a few reasons to close the Dawson State Jail in Dallas. One we haven't discussed is to reduce TDCJ's A/C bill. A drawback of having a prison in an urban highrise instead of a more traditional design is that it requires A/C, which otherwise is mostly only available at a handful of medical units...

More TDCJ employees injured by unsafe conditions than aggressive inmate behavior

Posted on June 16, 2010
TDCJ publishes topline monthly "risk management" data on its website regarding employee and offender injuries from which I compiled this chart:* "Aggressive behavior" includes all physical attacks by offenders as well as "self mutilation" and assaults by other employees...

No greater returns from counties jailing deadbeat dads

Posted on June 16, 2010
A feature from the San Antonio Express-News ("Don't pay child support, go directly to jail," June 15) offered data from Texas' largest counties regarding jailing for non-payment of child support. The story focused on Bexar County jailing more frequently in aggregate than other counties, but as a percentage of total cases in 2008, Travis County roughly doubled Bexar County's rate...

Ruh Roh: Posthumous DNA testing could exonerate already executed convict

Posted on June 16, 2010
From Matt Kelley at Change.org's Criminal Justice blog:Did Texas execute an innocent man 10 years ago? We may be about to find out. A state judge has granted a go-ahead for DNA testing on a strand of hair from the case of Claude Jones, who was executed in Texas in 2000 for allegedly shooting a liquor store clerk in (no joke) Point Blank, Texas...

Bilking Crimestoppers, the Invisible Informant, Constables Gone Wild, and Book 'em Horns

Posted on June 15, 2010
A few disparate items that deserve Grits readers attention:'Forgiving My Daughter's Killer'From the Washington Post, see "Forgiving My Daughter's Killer," which offers praise for a victim-offender mediation program at TDCJ based on restorative justice principles...

Texas sees solitary confinment numbers decline

Posted on June 14, 2010
Reporter Kevin Johnson at USA Today has a story titled "States start reducing solitary confinement to help budgets," June 13) which opens:State prison officials are reducing the number of offenders in solitary confinement ? once among the fastest-growing conditions of detention ? as budget pressures, legal challenges and concerns about the punishment's effectiveness mount...

Living in the 'Age of Prohibitions'

Posted on June 14, 2010
Today I watched a short talk on YouTube from Lawrence Lessig, and agreed particularly with this observation from the end of his discussion:[Our kids] are different from us ... We made mixed tapes, they remix music. We watched TV, they make TV. It is technology that made them different...

Capitol website should keep pace with transparency innovations

Posted on June 13, 2010
I've said before the Texas Legislature's web presence is an extraordinary boon to democratic input, allowing average citizens to access hearing videos and bill records from outside Austin and giving the public nearly the level of tracking tools available to the professional lobby...

Youth prison closures offer policy, budget model for TDCJ cuts

Posted on June 13, 2010
Proposals to cut the budget by closing adult prisons have been met with caution by state leaders, with state Sen. John Whitmire insisting that Texas should immunize TDCJ's budget from any reduction. Texas should only consider prison closures, he has said, if inmate numbers organically decline...

Fired UTMB police chief still drawing a paycheck

Posted on June 12, 2010
At Texas Watchdog, Steve Miller has an excellent report on a UTMB Police Chief Charles Brown, who was fired in February but who continues to be paid by the university - more than $7K per month.I can't find any public report stating the reason for Mr. Brown's "firing," if you can call it that when he's still getting paid, though he was asked to gather his belongings and sent home before a new, interim chief was appointed...

Expert: Bexar jail exhibits 'unexplained tolerance for potentially suicidal behavior'

Posted on June 12, 2010
According to Greg Harman at the San Antonio Current's QueBlog ("Heroin bust at jail a distraction from blistering suicide review," June 11), the recent arrest of a Bexar County jail guard for smuggling drugs into the jail is overshadowing more serious, chronic concerns about the jail's treatment of suicidal inmates:Nationally recognized suicide-prevention expert Lindsey Hayes delivered his report to Sheriff Amadeo Ortiz back on April 8...

What are best practices for telemedicine, and do they change in and out of prison?

Posted on June 11, 2010
Interestingly, I learn from the Texas Public Policy Foundation that the Texas Medical Board has proposed new rules restricting out of state telemedicine providers. The rule that's got telemedicine providers kicking up a fuss reads:A distant site provider may treat an established patient's new symptoms that are unrelated to a patient's preexisting condition provided the patient is requested to be seen in a face-to-face visit by a physician within 72 hours...

Spriggs won't take OJJDP gig

Posted on June 11, 2010
Vicki Spriggs of the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission has withdrawn her name from consideration for Director of the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). Here's the relevant portion of an email she sent out to TJPC staff earlier this week:In recent weeks I have shared with audiences at various conferences I've addressed and with TJPC staff that I was approached by the White House Office of Personnel to determine my level of interest in appointment to the position of Director of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP)...

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