Criminal Law

DOJ: Lower prison growth rate due to reduced incarceration of black people for drug crimes

Posted on December 09, 2009
Texas ranks among national leaders at reducing state incarceration rates and probation rolls, according to the latest federal data summarizing state and federal corrections data.Here are two new reports (forwarded by a helpful reader) from the Bureau of Justice Statistics at USDOJ comparing state prison, probation and parole populations:Prisoners in 2008Probation and Parole in the United States 2008Let's run through a few highlights, with an emphasis on Texas' standing:According to BJS, the massive growth in state prison populations witnessed in recent decades is finally beginning to retard, though trends vary widely from state to state...

Harris District Clerk lets public search cases by attorney name

Posted on December 09, 2009
Mark Bennett at Defending People directs readers to new online tools making it easy to identify what cases an individual attorney has worked on in Harris County. Basically you can find the lawyer's bar card number at the State Bar of Texas website, then use this search function from the Harris County District Clerk to tell what clients they've represented...

Harris DA's drug-policy change will improve equity, jail crowding

Posted on December 09, 2009
Pretty big news out of Houston today on the drug-policy front. Harris County DA Pat Lykos announced a change in her office's charging policy on low-level drug offenses that will put Houston in line with other Texas jurisdictions, but has the police union seething ("DA's crack pipe policy stirs storm," Dec...

Women's theater in jail

Posted on December 08, 2009
Here's an interesting sounding women's theater project in Austin sponsoring a program at the Travis County jail:Conspire Theatre is a sponsored project of the Austin Circle of Theaters, a 501(c)3 nonprofit. Our first project was a five week theatre workshop in Travis County Correctional Facility (Del Valle, Texas) with women inmates...

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Texas jurors sent only 8 murderers to death row in 2009

Posted on December 08, 2009
An Austin Statesman report about Travis County DA Rosemary Lehmberg's decision to seek the death penalty in the sexual assault and murder of an LBJ High School student included this analysis of the Travis DA's track record on capital cases over the last ten years:Prosecutors in Travis County have announced their intent to seek the death penalty 15 times in the past decade...

2,383 and Counting: Felonies have come a long way, baby

Posted on December 08, 2009
I've marveled frequently about the exploding number of crimes and particularly felonies in Texas statutes. After every biennial legislative session, the Board of Pardons and Parole must identify all new felonies created by the Texas Legislature and assign each offense a "severity" level for purposes of inmate classification and to guide future release decisions...

Report: Bexar probation department poorly managed

Posted on December 07, 2009
A staffer for the Bexar County Judge forwarded me a power-point presentation (pdf) from a new report by Dr. Tony Fabelo at the Council on State Government's Justice Center analyzing the Bexar County probation department. I thought I'd run through a few highlights before Fabelo makes a formal presentation to the Bexar Commissioners Court on December 15:The presentation paints an unflattering portrait of a sloppy, turf-driven hodge-podge of an agency that is "not keeping up with growth and modern accountability practices...

DNA could solve burglaries if crime labs were bigger, better, more trustworthy

Posted on December 07, 2009
DNA evidence is still mostly used in violent crimes, and even for that purpose crime labs have large backlogs. San Antonio, for example, has more than 5,000 untested rape kits in storage regarding unsolved sexual assaults. But DNA potentially could be used in many other types of offenses...

Los Zetas investing drug profits in legitimate businesses

Posted on December 06, 2009
Ever since the original founders of Los Zetas were trained by US Special Forces personnel at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, GA, they've been upping the ante and redefining the very model of a modern major drug cartel. Reports Alfredo Corchado of the Dallas News ("Mexico's Zetas gang buys businesses along the border in move to increase legitimacy," Dec...

Revocations down, crime down, county caseloads up after probation reform legislation

Posted on December 05, 2009
Texas has received a lot of credit recently in the national press for efforts to reduce incarceration rates and stave off new prison spending. Here's an update describing which parts of those reforms are doing the most to reduce incarceration pressures, as well as where and how those reforms aren't quite playing out as state leaders hoped...

Cold weather odds and ends

Posted on December 04, 2009
Here are a number of recent stories that deserve Grits readers attention as we all hunker down and wait for the cold weather to blow in:Fire and InnocenceAt the Texas Observer, read David Mann's essay on arson, innocence, and 72-year old, Cambridge educated arson expert Gerald Hurst, who has been thrust into recent controversies because he was the first of many experts to question the fire marshal's arson findings in the Todd Willingham case - before Willingham was executed...

Test possible innocence cases among Bexar DNA cache

Posted on December 03, 2009
I'd neglected to mention a remarkable story out of San Antonio last month ("SAPD to review previously untested rape kits," Express-News, Nov. 17), with the discovery of thousands of untested rape kits in unsolved cases which were retained but never tested:The San Antonio Police Department announced Monday it will begin sifting through nearly 150 of about 5,200 rape kits that were never tested over the past two decades, reversing a long-held policy not to analyze kits if the assailant was unknown and the victim didn't want to pursue prosecution...

Juvie diversion funds rolling out

Posted on December 03, 2009
The Houston Chronicle recently published an early update on how county juvenile probation departments are spending new diversion money aimed at keeping more youthful offenders out of the Texas Youth Commission ("Breaking the cycle of youth crime," Nov...

Craig Watkins talks innocence with Stephen Colbert

Posted on December 03, 2009
Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins got some pretty sweet national press last night as a guest on Comedy Central's Colbert Report. He was there to brag on his office's Conviction Integrity Unit and their work getting innocent people out of prison. Here's the video (prefaced by a short ad) and a couple of notable excerpts:The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30cCraig Watkinswww...

Houston fingerprint lab plagued with errors, two-year backlog

Posted on December 03, 2009
Stunning news this week out of Houston PD about errors and possible misconduct in their fingerprint analysis unit: First an audit showed errors and problems in more than half of 548 randomly selected cases, now the Houston Chronicle is reporting that the fingerprint unit is the focus of a criminal probe; two of the three analysts on the hot seat have been with the department since the '70s...

Remembering Timothy Cole

Posted on December 02, 2009
Timothy Cole's half-brother Cory Session had an op ed in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram yesterday on the 10th anniversary of his sibling's death. Timothy was falsely convicted of a rape based on victim eyewitness testimony, but DNA evidence (and the real perpetrator's confession) later proved his innocence - unfortunately not until years after after he'd died in prison of untreated asthma complications...

Parole Board: Texas created 59 new felonies this year

Posted on December 02, 2009
According to the "Offense Severity List" from the Board of Pardons and Parole, as a result of new laws passed by the 81st legislature, Texas now has 2,383 separate felonies on the books - an increase of 59 compared to the 2,324 they counted in 2007. (See the full list -pdf...

'To really fight crime, raise number of investigators'

Posted on December 02, 2009
The title of this post is the headline of a Nov. 28 op-ed in the Houston Chronicle by Bill King argued that spending more on patrol officers won't reduce crime but redeploying them from patrol to investigations might:there is one recurring theme I have encountered in my research on this subject, and that is the size of a department's investigative force...

Sprint: 50 million customers, 8 million law enforcement requests for GPS data last year

Posted on December 02, 2009
Check out this must-read blog post from a grad student out of Indiana University about law enforcement's growing, everyday use of personal data held by companies and the disturbing lack of documentation that makes it all hard to track. The author demonstrates convincingly that "publicly available law enforcement surveillance statistics are, at best misleading, and at worst, deceptive...

Whitmire: Latest escape shows TDCJ needs 'shakeup' over contraband

Posted on December 02, 2009
After spending the last year trying to get the Texas prison system to reduce contraband flows, I'll bet state Sen. John Whitmire's head nearly exploded when he learned of yesterday's escape using a gun smuggled to an inmate. In an article by Peggy O'Hare in the Houston Chronicle, he openly called for Governor Perry to replace the board and top administrators at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice:After facing serious questions about how 900 prohibited cell phones were smuggled into Texas prisons this year along with drugs and weapons, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice found itself on the defensive again Tuesday while trying to find an inmate who escaped despite being shackled to a wheelchair...

Will Dems put up 2010 CCA candidates?

Posted on December 01, 2009
Kirsten Gray of the Texas Democratic Party reminds me that "The candidate filing period starts this Thursday, Dec. 3rd and ends Jan. 4th, 2010," which makes me wonder if any Democrats besides Keith Hampton will sign up to run for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals? I'd like to see somebody sign up to run against Judge Meyers as well...

Schiraldi tapped to run NYC probation

Posted on December 01, 2009
Congrats to Vincent Schiraldi, the juvie probation chief in Washington D.C. who was just tapped to head the probation department in New York City. See this Washington Post story on his new job.I got to know Vinnie a little when he ran the Justice Policy Institute out of D...

CCA calls David Dow on carpet for tardy capital habeas submissions

Posted on December 01, 2009
Tomorrow attorney David Dow and the Texas Defender Service, a noprofit which handles post-conviction appeals in death penalty litigation, will be called to account at the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for filing a habeas brief for a death-row defendant past the 48-hour-before-execution deadline...

More on the fallibility of eyewitness testimony

Posted on December 01, 2009
Mark Pryor over at the new blog DA Confidential supplies this example from personal experience demonstrating the fallibility of eyewitness testimony and the risks of making a case based primarily on eyewitness evidence:In a recent trial, our main witness was a self-confessed drug addict, a man aged about 50 with (it turns out) poor eyesight...

How Cameron County's entrepreneurial jail scheme costs taxpayers

Posted on December 01, 2009
I've written before about the folly of counties building extra jail space in hopes of engaging in entrepreneurial incarceration, either taking in federal prisoners or inmates from other counties. The blog Texas Prison Bidness points out a terrific example out of Cameron County at the state's southeastern tip of how that strategy can backfire...

TYC Ombudsman indicted, resigns

Posted on November 30, 2009
If you'd predicted this when Governor Perry appointed Judge Catherine Evans TYC Ombudsman earlier this year, I'd have said you were nuts. See Mike Ward's coverage at the Austin Statesman.

Coming to grips with unscientific forensic practices

Posted on November 30, 2009
The Fort Worth Start Telegram yesterday published a lengthy, remarkable piece from Yamil Berard titled "Stakes are high as doubt is cast on forensic lab techniques." The article is one of the first published in the MSM in Texas to fully explore the implications of conclusions published earlier this year by the National Academies of Science (NAS) that many common forensic techniques had no scientific basis and their validity had never been tested - particularly comparative disciplines where individual technicians seek to match patterns in everything from fingerprints to tire tracks to ballistics to bite marks...

Mama Tried

Posted on November 30, 2009
Gary Scharrar had a feature over the weekend in the San Antonio Express News on Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley, his political siblings and their liberal mom who disagrees with much of their politics. The story opens:Hard-nosed Texas prosecutor John ?Marty? Bradley supports the death penalty...

House releases 'interim charges': What criminal justice topics on the agenda?

Posted on November 30, 2009
Speaker Joe Straus last week issued the "Interim Charges" for standing committees in the Texas House. Since the Texas Lege meets only 140 days every two years, in the interim committees study lingering problems or emerging issues with an eye toward developing legislation in the next session...

Dallas fake-drug informant shows how 'cooperation' benefits can promote crime

Posted on November 29, 2009
The main informant involved in the Dallas fake-drug scandal, Enrique Martinez Alonso, served five years for his role collaborating with Dallas narcotics officers to set up two-dozen innocent people, then was deported in 2007. Now, reports Jason Trahan in the Dallas News ("Police informant in Dallas' fake-drug scandal faces prison time for counterfeiting," Nov...

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