Criminal Law

Texas Monthly previews upcoming Sharon Keller ethics trial

Posted on July 23, 2009
In preparation for her upcoming trial beginning August 17 in San Antonio, Texas Monthly has put Michael Hall's August profile of Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Presiding Judge Sharon Keller on its public web site, featuring an indepth look at the circumstances surrounding what he calls "the most infamous phone call in recent Texas history"and the backlash that arose in response...

Expanding ranks of Texas lifers part of national trend

Posted on July 23, 2009
There's been lots of good discussion, some of it rounded up by Doc Berman here, of a new report from the Sentencing Project titled "No Exit: The Expanding Use of Life Sentences in America" (pdf), so I thought I'd pull out a few highlights and Texas specifics:Texas has both life sentences which are eligible for parole (most of them) and also life without parole (LWOP)...

Officers behaved "stupidly" but may have been trained that way

Posted on July 23, 2009
You know when the President of the United States calls a police officer's decision "stupid" in a primetime press conference that your department has had a particularly bad day, one that's going to reverberate in the national conversation about racial politics for quite a long time...

Texas Tech will stop performing autopsies

Posted on July 23, 2009
Dozens of West Texas counties face a transition and possible vacuum regarding who will provide autopsy services for the region, with the Texas Tech Health Science Center backing out of the arrangement, according to a report in the Abilene Reporter-News ("Texas Tech to stop performing autopsies, July 22")...

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Forensic Science Commission to review Willingham, Moon cases

Posted on July 23, 2009
If this blog were a paid gig, I'd be headed off to Houston to attend the Texas Forensic Science Commission meeting first thing tomorrow morning, but after hemming and hawing over the cost I think I have to pass. Looks like an interesting agenda, though (see the opening meetings page at the Texas Register)...

California will release older inmates to save medical costs

Posted on July 22, 2009
Via Doc Berman, the LA Times gives more detail about the final deal cut by lawmakers on slashing the California corrections budget, and I was interested to see they'd included an idea which drew a lively discussion on Grits yesterday about releasing older inmates to save money on medical expenses: The prison plan would give state corrections officials authority to allow any inmate with 12 months or less on his or her sentence to serve the remaining time on home detention with electronic monitoring...

Texas' chief court administrator launches new blog

Posted on July 22, 2009
Let me refer readers to a new blog called "CourTex" authored by Carl Reynolds, head of the Texas state Office of Court Administration, a former Department of Criminal Justice General Counsel, and a truly knowledgeable insider on the politics and policy of the subjects he works on...

New Rule: Nobody making arrests for overdue library books gets to complain about jail overcrowding

Posted on July 22, 2009
In Wichita Falls, economic distress is boosting incarceration rates in the local jail because so many more petty defendants can't afford to post bond. According to the W-F Times-Record News ("Room scarce at jail," July 22)The number of people coming into the jail every day essentially hasn?t changed, [Chief Deputy Derek] Meador said...

Lubbock taxpayers eating costs for overbuilt jail

Posted on July 22, 2009
In Lubbock County, a new jail that the commissioners court claimed would generate revenue and reduce burdens on taxpayers is gobbling up the county budget and squeezing out other priorities, the Lubbock Avalanche Journal reported ("County budget jailed," July 22):With commissioners still days away from knowing how much tax revenue they may expect, employee raises, new hires to handle growth and long-planned projects seemed set to wait until next year...

Proposed DPS rule would create new Indigence program for 'Driver Responsibility' surcharge

Posted on July 22, 2009
As I mentioned last week, the missus and I have been working on a little side project to propose changes to agency rules to the Public Safety Commission to establish an indigence program for Texas' Driver Responsibility surcharge. Today I sent out this letter to friends and allies among criminal justice reformers who may have an interest in supporting this proposal...

Deputies allegedly in pocket of 'outlaw motorcycle gang'

Posted on July 21, 2009
Having yesterday highlighted the case of a federal probation officer allegedly providing intelligence to smugglers from a drug cartel, I should mention another case identified by Drug War Chronicle out of the Texas South Plains featuring similar allegations:In Lubbock, Texas, two Hockley County sheriff's deputies were arrested last Friday as part of a 110-count federal indictment aimed at the Aces and Eights outlaw motorcycle gang for a methamphetamine trafficking conspiracy...

TDCJ: Paroling older offenders could save Texas $49 million per year

Posted on July 21, 2009
Thanks to the addition of billions in federal stimulus funds and a now-vanished revenue infusion from high oil prices last year, Texas was able to stave off the kind of serious state budget crunch in 2009 that's crippled California and put the pinch on dozens of other states...

Texas Tribune will compete with public policy coverage, original reporting

Posted on July 21, 2009
Congrats to Texas Monthly publisher Evan Smith who recently announced he'll leave his current position to launch a nonprofit media venture, The Texas Tribune, as an online, state-level news organization competing for coverage with the dailies from an entirely Internet-based platform...

Probation officer screened job applicants for drug cartel

Posted on July 20, 2009
Yet another bribery case has cropped up involving a criminal justice worker on the Texas border with the arrest of federal probation officer Armando Mora last week in McAllen. Reports the American Chronicle ("Federal probation officer charged with drug trafficking and bribery," July 20):According to allegations in the criminal complaint, Mora received bribe payments from members of a drug trafficking organization to provide sensitive and confidential information from government records...

Tulia Ten Years Later

Posted on July 19, 2009
The Amarillo Globe-News today has a feature commemorating the tenth anniversary of the Tulia drug stings ("Tulia drug busts: 10 years later," July 19), which informs us that, to this day: Many Tulia residents and those associated with the July 23, 1999, raid by numerous law enforcement agencies shy away from talking publicly about the incident that catapulted the Swisher County town of about 5,000 into the spotlight and brought the discussion of small-town racism to the forefront...

Texas sex offender registry includes kids as young as ten

Posted on July 19, 2009
In the Dallas News this morning, Diane Jennings has a story on Texas' policy of allowing judges to place juveniles as young as 10 years old on the sex offender registry ("Some say sex offender registry ruins a juvenile's 2nd chance," July 19). Here's how the article opens:The faces of child sex offenders are startling ? chubby cheeks, big eyes, a mop of hair, or wispy strands held back with barrettes...

Fallible Fingerprints: The Dustup over Cognitive Bias

Posted on July 18, 2009
I just ran across a lengthy, excellent article on the sources and frequency of error in fingerprint forensics, published in the online magazine MillerMcCune.com last month: "Bias and the Big Fingerprint Dustup" (by Sue Russell, June 18). Here's how the story opens:In 2004, cognitive neuroscientist Itiel Dror and Dave Charlton, a veteran fingerprint examiner and doctoral candidate, chatted over coffee in a Brighton hotel suite after a gala dinner at the U...

Is budget crisis at Bexar probation real or an excuse to fire Bill Fitzgerald's enemies?

Posted on July 17, 2009
A story published yesterday in the San Antonio Express News announced that Bexar County's controversial probation director, Bill Fitzgerald, plans to fire nine employees ostensibly because of a reduction in their budget ("Bexar probation office eyes layoffs, furloughs," July 16):Aimee Sharp, finance director of community supervision and corrections, said the department has seen a 28 percent drop in court fees since Bexar County courts-at-law judges restructured in May the way court fees are allocated...

New DPS Director

Posted on July 17, 2009
Will be Rick Perry's Homeland Security current chief Steve McCraw, reports the Statesman's Mike Ward.

Public Safety Commission plans to cancel contract with Driver Responsibility fee collections vendor

Posted on July 17, 2009
At a Texas Public Safety Commission meeting today, the vendor in charge of collections for the Orwellian-named "Driver Responsibility" surcharge faced a brutal reaction from commission members, who questioned the company's "ethics" and openly called for their contract to be terminated as soon as feasible...

Jamming cell phones in prison debated at US Senate committee

Posted on July 16, 2009
A US Senate Committee yesterday heard testimony from Texas state Sen. John Whitmire, TDCJ Inspector General John Moriarty, and others regarding a proposed bill by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison that would change federal law to allow states to jam cell phones in prison...

New report on prison nurseries

Posted on July 15, 2009
Via Corrections.com:The Women?s Prison Association (WPA) has released the first-ever national report on prison nursery programs. The report examines the expansion of prison nursery programs across the U.S. These programs allow incarcerated women to keep their newborns with them in prison for a finite period of time...

Melendez-Diaz not as scary as the Washington Post thinks

Posted on July 15, 2009
The Washington Post today published a "sky is falling" critique of the Supreme Court's decision in Melendez-Diaz that the Confrontation Clause in the Sixth Amendment requires an opportunity to cross-examine crime lab workers who prepare reports for trial...

DPS wrong to delay indigency program for 'driver responsibility' surcharge

Posted on July 15, 2009
The General Counsel over at the Texas Department of Public Safety believes the agency isn't required to implement an "Indigency program" for the "Driver Responsibility" surcharge collected by the agency until September 1, 2011, according to their Public Information Officer Tela Mange...

Texas praised for prison pop reduction efforts

Posted on July 14, 2009
Texas' efforts to reduce prison population growth through drug diversion programs and probation reforms were highlighted in a Washington Post feature yesterday titled, "States seek less costly substitutes for prison" (July 13). According to reporter Keith Richburg:what is striking, experts say, is how some states with reputations for being tough on crime are most rapidly embracing these policies, which might have once been dismissed as the product of liberal think tanks and soft-on-crime leniency...

Jefferson recalls liberation of Bastille prisoners

Posted on July 14, 2009
Today France celebrates the 220th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, perhaps the only national holiday I'm aware of in any country celebrating a prison break. (Really, the mob was after gunpowder stored in the garrison and releasing the prisoners was an afterthought, but that's the popular portrayal...

TCJC issues legislative wrapup

Posted on July 14, 2009
The Texas Criminal Justice Coalition has published its summer newsletter (pdf) including a wrap-up detailing criminal justice bills from the 81st Texas Legislature and a description of TCJC's work plans for the interim. Supplementing the newsletter, on its website TCJC has posted these issue-by-issue updates from the 81st session:Protect Youth and Communities by Improving Juvenile JusticeRebuild Confidence in the Criminal Justice System & Ensure Innocent Individuals Are Not Sent to PrisonSave Money by Providing Alternatives to Incarceration & Increase Public Safety Through Policy ReformStrengthen Criminal Justice PracticesEncourage Economic and Workforce Development by Reducing Re-Entry BarriersAppropriationsSpecial Mention: Honoring Individuals Who Pursued Smart-On-Crime Policies

Scent lineups by dogs don't pass the smell test

Posted on July 13, 2009
In the wake of a report this spring by the National Academy of Sciences, more scrutiny than ever has been focused on untested and unproven forensic techniques. In that vein, yesterday, the Victoria Advocate ran a terrific story by reporter Leslie Wilber ("Does it pass the smell test," July 12) about the use of "scent lineups," a highly dubious forensic technique which, in Texas, is performed by just one man - Fort Bend Sheriff's Deputy Keith Pikett and his three bloodhounds...

Odds and Ends

Posted on July 13, 2009
While I'm distracted today by a family tragedy piled on top of other scheduled duties, I wanted to point out a few recent news stories that deserve Grits readers' attention which might merit further commentary if I had more time or ability to focus:Harris County Jail commentaryThe Harris County Sheriff has a column in the Houston Chronicle today that's filled with catch phrases and feel-good commentary, but for the life of me I can't tell what position Sheriff Adrian Garcia is trying to take...

Hutchison seeks cell phone jamming authorization

Posted on July 13, 2009
The US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation this week is taking up a bill by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison to allow cell phone jamming in state prisons, according to a press release received via email from state Sen. John Whitmire's office: At the request of U...

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