Criminal Law

Corruption, 'cartel' violence rampant in Mexico as drug policy debated in El Paso

Posted on September 23, 2009
Here are several stories related to Mexico and the drug war that recently caught my eye. First, check out this coverage from the El Paso Times of a conference on the drug war currently going on in Sun City:Juárez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz: U.S. drug policies need to changeOfficial: Drug routes moved from Colombia to MexicoDrug conference continues todayUTEP drug conference: New cartel methods widen drug war's tollWar on Drugs conference: Legalize marijuana, participants sayMeanwile, the Mexican army has found more evidence of widespread corruption in Nuevo Leon state among police and the press, reports AP:Four people were arrested and $5 million in U...

Texas Innocence Project report discredits unscientific dog 'scent lineups'

Posted on September 22, 2009
Yesterday the Innocence Project of Texas released its report criticizing "scent lineups" used by Fort Bend County Sheriff's Deputy Keith Pikett, who as regular readers know has seen his dogs' identification of suspects debunked in several recent, high-profile cases, including two capital murders...

A conservative case for reducing incarceration

Posted on September 21, 2009
Via Think Outside the Cage, I was pleased to discover this remarkable editorial from the right-leaning Colorado Springs Gazette analyzing partisan debates over corrections spending in that state ("The case for early prison release plan: We can't afford lock 'em up politics," Sept...

State prisons are Abilene's biggest water user

Posted on September 21, 2009
This summer's drought elevated water-usage issues to the fore throughout Texas. Given current population growth and the fact that we're already facing shortages, it's not difficult to predict the crisis will only worsen in the next few years.So I was interested to see this story from the Abilene Reporter News ("Water use likely to rise this year," Sept...

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Sex offender registration applies scarlet letter to juveniles

Posted on September 21, 2009
The Houston Chronicle today has a feature on the issue of juveniles in the state sex offender registry. Juvenile sex offenders must remain on the registry 10 years after the end of their sentence. Reports the Chron ("A long wait to get past crime," Sept...

Time magazine profiles Texas crimjust reforms

Posted on September 21, 2009
Time magazine this week has a feature calling Texas the "kinder, gentler hang 'em high state" thanks to the passage of the Tim Cole compensation act for those convicted and exonerated and legislation to create a new office of capital writs. Here's how the story opens:Tim Cole couldn't tell his own story and so his family recounted the saga to the hard-bitten Texas legislators last spring...

Public views on actual innocence driven by perceptions, not data

Posted on September 20, 2009
Here's a particularly interesting result from last week's reader poll regarding how many actually innocent people are currently residing in Texas prisons: 70% of readers chose answers outside the range of the various statistical estimates of innocence...

TYC's football season underway

Posted on September 19, 2009
Last year's story about the Grapevine high school that put on a heart-warming reception for the Gainseville Tornadoes football team - one of two made up of students from Texas Youth Commission juvenile detention facilities - will be made into a movie called One Heart, featured on this promo web site...

In the news and around the blogosphere

Posted on September 18, 2009
Just a few quick hits before I focus elsewhere this afternoon:Say "Howdy" to The Crime Analyst's Blog out of Bell County, TX. Good stuff there, particularly the ongoing 60 Steps series.Also I just noticed the Vera Institute of Justice has begun its own blog - well worth watching since it appears to be regularly updated...

Bexar seeking probation director's replacement

Posted on September 18, 2009
Embattled Bexar County probation Director Bill Fitzgerald may be taking his own sweet time about leaving his post after judges expressed "no confidence" in his services, but FWIW the county is moving forward to find his replacement. I noticed this job posting on the website of the Texas Probation Association:Chief Adult Probation Officer for Bexar CountyThe district and statutory county court judges trying criminal cases in Bexar County are soliciting applications for Chief of the Community Supervision and Corrections Department, responsible for the operation of the county adult probation department and supervision of 400+ employees...

Austin Chief Acevedo takes on the city's real public safety threat: Anonymous internet commenters

Posted on September 18, 2009
Apparently all the crime in Texas' capital has been solved, so now, with so much free time on his hands, Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo can pursue the really important public safety issues like going after people who criticize him or the department in anonymous blog comments...

Texas Innocence Project report to take on dog scent lineups

Posted on September 18, 2009
Looks like we'll learn more next week on the subject of Fort Bend County Sheriff's Deputy Keith Pikett and the "scent lineups" his dogs have performed in some 2,000 criminal cases. From a press release received today via email from my former employers:Innocence Project of Texas to Release Report on Use of Dog Scent Lineups in TexasOn Monday, September 21 the Innocence Project of Texas (IPOT) will be releasing a report on the use of dog-scent lineups in Texas and the career of Fort Bend County Sheriff?s Deputy Keith Pikett, whose work has led to wrongful arrests and the conviction of potentially hundreds of individuals in the state...

Mentally ill prisoners, homeless the focus of media report but not national healthcare debate

Posted on September 17, 2009
Josh Rushing from Al Jazeera's English-language news has produced a quite well done, two-part video report on the mentally ill in US prisons, focusing particularly on Texas prisons and the Harris County jail (which is the largest mental institution in Texas, according to the report)...

Time to improve procedures on police lineups

Posted on September 17, 2009
Because the Texas Legislature left eyewitness ID reforms hanging this year during the partisan meltdown at the end of session, for now it's up to local Texas police and sheriffs departments to address the problem, as Dallas PD did earlier this year.For those who won't, there's a high probability Texas will pass legislation in 2011 mandating improved eyewitness ID reforms...

Lockdown at max-security units aimed at contraband; TDCJ seeks bids on cell phone locators

Posted on September 17, 2009
In yet another effort to combat contraband smuggling, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice instituted a lockdown yesterday at 14 maximum security units, reports Mike Ward at the Austin Statesman:More than 35,000 convicts at 14 of Texas? toughest prisons have been placed on lockdown status in a new crackdown on contraband smuggling ? the largest in months, officials just confirmed...

Shaken baby diagnosis from biased medical examiner unsubstantiated, new autopsy says

Posted on September 16, 2009
This blog focuses frequently on the subject of dubious forensics like that used in many older arson cases and so-called "scent lineups" performed by dogs. The Houston Chronicle this week published a story on another branch of questionable forensic science: The diagnosis by medical examiners of so called "shaken-baby syndrome," which has resulted in several recent exonerations in Harris County after former associate medical examiner Patricia Moore's work on the subject was discredited...

Disgrace! CCA lets stand egregious official misconduct in capital murder case

Posted on September 16, 2009
Let's face it: The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has become a flat-out embarrassment.Most recently, the CCA decided not to rule whether a judge and prosecutor having an affair during a capital murder trial tainted the process in the Charles Dean Hood case, the Dallas News reports today...

Amber Alert announcement on TV a pointless exercise

Posted on September 15, 2009
Last night watching television, several times an announcement flashed across the screen for a so-called Amber Alert informing us that a young girl from somewhere in Texas was missing and listing counties far and wide across the state where she might be with her abductor...

TX Civil Rights Project Publishes Jail Stories from Hurricane Ike

Posted on September 15, 2009
On the anniversary of Hurricane Ike, the Texas Civil Rights Project yesterday released this 34-page report (pdf) on the staff and more than 1,000 inmates who remained in the Galveston County Jail throughout the storm despite a mandatory evacuation order...

Police have dangerous jobs but some occupations more fatal

Posted on September 15, 2009
The latest federal Census of Fatal Occupational Industries came out last month, and I was interested to learn that the fatality rate among police officers and sheriff's deputies declined more than 20% in 2008 from 2007 - from 19.8 deaths per 100,000 full-time equivalent jobs down to a rate of 15...

Prosecutor who helped convict capital murderer would now trust him as next-door neighbor

Posted on September 14, 2009
Michael Eubanks was convicted of capital murder 31 years ago but recently received parole and was profiled in the Houston Chronicle yesterday. Eubanks was convicted before Texas law changed to require life without parole as the only alternative to death in capital cases...

'Texas criminal justice system has major flaws': Estimating innocent people in prison

Posted on September 14, 2009
The title of this post is the headline to a Corpus Christi Caller Times editorial reacting to the slew of recent DNA exonerations in Texas as well as the Cameron Willingham case. The sentiments expressed, it seem to me, represent a growing consensus that Texas justice continues to suffer from serious problems...

Open records reveal Grayson Sheriff's disdain for private jail plans

Posted on September 14, 2009
Kathy Williams at the Sherman Herald-Democrat is doing an excellent job covering the roller coaster ride over building a new Grayson County Jail after police unions scuttled a November election with threatened open meetings litigation. Williams has been especially adept using the open records act to dig deeper into the local controversy...

Recommended Blog Reading

Posted on September 13, 2009
A few must-read blog offerings from other writers:Defending People: Harris County Jail Hell. When inmates and the Justice Department agree, Mark Bennett takes their word over Harris County's.Drug War Rant: Pete Guither revisits the Supreme Court's Caballes case...

Arson cases a 'tangle between science and supposition'

Posted on September 13, 2009
Christy Hoppe at the Dallas News today has a feature on innocence claims involving faulty arson science, focusing on five specific cases including Cameron Willingham's. Writes Hoppe:Scrutiny of arson cases highlights a tangle between science and supposition...

'Ex-cons having a tough time finding jobs'

Posted on September 13, 2009
The title of this post is the headline to a Fort Worth Star Telegram piece from their business section published today. Here's a notable excerpt:The job hunt, tough by any measure, is worse for ex-offenders.About 6,000 people are released from state and federal prisons back to Tarrant County each year, not counting people emerging from county jail or ones who get deferred adjudication...

Fending off attacks on open government

Posted on September 11, 2009
I wanted to mention a couple of notable open government cases that merit readers attention.First, updating the case discussed in this post, the 5th Circuit ruled that two city councilmembers who'd challenged Texas' open meetings act no longer had standing to do so because they're not in office anymore...

Did chaplain smuggle threatening letter out of death row?

Posted on September 11, 2009
A TDCJ chaplain admitted to smuggling letters out of death row on behalf of inmates, possibly including one that containing a veiled against a member of state Sen. John Whitmire's family. He will likely be fired, AP reports :A death-row chaplain has acknowledged helping a condemned inmate smuggle out letters...

Travis County sponsors in-jail job fair

Posted on September 10, 2009
I'm particularly pleased to see this story about an in-jail job fair sponsored by a religious nonprofit in cooperation with Travis County Sheriff Greg Hamilton. What an excellent idea! Reported the Statesman ("In the county jail, inmates look for a job," Sept...

Two Tarrant capital cases tainted by prosecutor misconduct

Posted on September 10, 2009
A former Tarrant County prosecutor who retired amidst misconduct allegations last year committed so-called "Brady" violations (i.e., withholding exculpatory evidence from the defense) in two different capital murder cases, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports...

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