Criminal Law

TYC Tidbits

Posted on December 17, 2008
Two items related to the Texas Youth Commission deserve attention from Grits readers interested in juvenile justice: A guest column in the Abilene Reporter-News asks, "a href="http://www.reporternews.com/news/2008/dec/16/is-troubled-agency-worth-saving/"Is TYC Worth Saving?/a," while the Waco Tribune Herald reports that authorities are a href="http://www...

"Fast, Bold, and Lethal": Cartel assassins getting good at their jobs

Posted on December 16, 2008
The Washingon Post has a feature describing the squads of assassins working for multinational drug cartels, some of them former military and counter-drug personnel trained by American special forces, who have turned murder nearly into assembly-line duty in Juarez and other contested drug trafficking battlegrounds...

Senate Dean promotes treatment options for nonviolent offenders

Posted on December 16, 2008
The Longview News-Journal has excerpts from a graduation speech given by Texas state Sen. John Whitmire to offenders who've completed the state's new DWI treatment program in Henderson ("Whitmire: Programs needed for nonviolent offenders," Dec. 16):The chairman of the Texas Senate Criminal Justice Committee, said Monday that the state needs to be more proactive in creating programs for nonviolent offenders within the prison system...

AG stops TDCJ conspiracy to commit federal crime: Cell phone jammer test canceled

Posted on December 16, 2008
The Texas prison system was planning to commit a federal crime on Thursday at the Austin state jail, but Attorney General Greg Abbott intervened - not with an arrest for conspiracy but with a polite note saying, basically, "Uh ... please don't violate federal law...

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Most speakers at Sunset hearing oppose TYC, TJPC merger

Posted on December 15, 2008
I spent all afternoon at the Texas Youth Commission Sunset hearing mentioned here - including offering oral testimony myself - and it was hard to not leave with the impression that the proposal to merge TYC and the Juvenile Probation Commission faces a steep, uphill climb...

Jail Standards Commission may prioritize riskiest jails

Posted on December 15, 2008
The Sunset Commission recommended that the Texas Commission on Jail Standards evaluate county jails by risk factors and focus more regulatory attention on counties with higher risks.I'd like to see TCJS more engaged with counties which have overcrowding problems to develop diversion strategies and solutions that reduce unnecessary incarceration...

Is county jail the right answer for teen suicide?

Posted on December 15, 2008
When an 18-year old girl attempts suicide, is county jail the right place to treat her?Paul Knight at The Houston Press has an excellent story examining in detail a case where that's exactly what happened and closely tracks the young lady's struggles with depression since then and her journey through the justice system.

Sunset public hearing today: Merger won't solve all TYC's problems, may create some

Posted on December 15, 2008
Today the Sunset Advisory Commission will receive public testimony regarding several agencies including the Texas Jail Standards Commission, the Youth Commission, and the Juvenile Probation Commission, among others (see the agenda). A live broadcast of the hearing will be available online here beginning at 9 a...

Prosecutor, defense counsel jobs substantially differ

Posted on December 14, 2008
Dallas Criminal Defense Lawyer Robert Guest has worked as both a prosecutor and a criminal defense attorney and says there are more dissimilarities between the jobs than you might imagine. "Does my prosecution experience help my current clients?," he writes...

Texas Voices profiled; broad sex offender registry criticized

Posted on December 14, 2008
Doc Berman points to an article ("Texas group fights sex crime's stigma," Dec. 14) by the Houston Chronicle's Lisa Sandberg about the group Texas Voices, made up of sex offenders, their families, and others who believe thatcommunity notification laws fail to protect the public, because they don't distinguish dangerous predators from otherwise harmless men and women who foolishly had sex with underage lovers, served their sentences and don't need a lifetime of public scrutiny...

Why is the solution to every social problem more cops, courts and punishments?

Posted on December 14, 2008
Our buddy Charles Kuffner has a couple of posts up at Off the Kuff that, following up on our discussion of Rep. Solomon Ortiz Jr.'s graffiti enhancement bill, made me think this morning about how Democrats (really both parties, but I'm picking on Kuff today) need to revamp their methods to stop using the justice system to address social problems...

5th Harris County DNA exoneration an indictment of eyewitness IDs

Posted on December 13, 2008
Dallas has witnessed so many DNA exonerations (more than most states) mainly because the courts kept old biological evidence from rape cases for much longer than other jurisdictions so investigators could re-examine old cases. In Houston, all that old evidence was mostly destroyed or contaminated in the state's possession, so only a relative handful of more recent cases still have biological evidence available for testing...

End of the Week Roundup

Posted on December 12, 2008
I thought I'd take a moment to point Grits readers to several fascinating stories I might blog about if I had more time:By the Numbers. Doc Berman provides links to loads of fresh data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics about prisons, probation and parole...

Explaining the decline in Harris County death sentences

Posted on December 12, 2008
A good discussion broke out over at Doc Berman's Sentencing Law & Policy blog about data from the new report by the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty which shows the death penalty on decline in Texas, at least regarding overall totals. Most notably, Harris County sent no one to death row in 2008, though they've sent as many as 15 people per year in the past...

Boosting penalties wrong approach on graffiti

Posted on December 11, 2008
Given this blog's past focus municipal graffiti policies (see below), I was interested to receive a copy of a press release from Rep. Solomon Ortiz, Jr.'s office about HB 385 proposing penalty enhancements for certain graffiti crimes. From the release: "The graffiti problem is completely out of hand in Corpus Christi ," Ortiz said...

Contraband prosecutions

Posted on December 11, 2008
After all the hubbub about contraband smuggling in state prisons, it's ironic that the only recent example we've seen of indictments against prison staff for contraband comes from a privately run federal facility. AP reports that: A former correctional officer at the Ector County Correctional Center faces a federal bribery charge for allegedly supplying an inmate with three bags of marijuana and a cell phone in exchange for about $450, the U...

Will Lege revisit Family Code after the Great Eldorado Polygamist Roundup?

Posted on December 11, 2008
This post from Kurt Schulzke over at Contraries (formerly I Perceive) questions whether the Texas Family Code may allow authorities to too easily remove children without cause, as happened in the Great Eldorado Polygamist Roundup.The fact that appellate courts threw out most of those cases might lead one to think the law was fairly plain, but instead it was state agency actors and local jurists who engaged in such sweeping overreach...

US Attorney pitches reentry programs for gangs on his way out

Posted on December 11, 2008
Bob Ray Sanders recently interviewed Richard Roper, the outgoing US Attorney for Texas' Northern federal judicial district, who surprised the Startlegram columnist by pitching:a gang prevention and intervention program that he hopes doesn?t disappear once he is gone...

Mexico debates how to stem police corruption; America's hour for not comprehending

Posted on December 11, 2008
The MexFiles clues us in to a public policy debate in Mexico over the structure of police and how best to fight corruption:There is a legislative battle right now between PAN and the Calderon Administration on one side, and PRI, PRD and the legislative left on the other over police reforms...

Texas not adequately monitoring SAFP program

Posted on December 11, 2008
The Austin Chronicle says criticisms of the state's Substance Abuse Felony Punishment (SAFP) program are falling on deaf legislative ears, airing complaints that female SAFP inmates are routinely called misogynist names and allegedly subject to tortuous treatment methods, citing a Nov...

Sunset: TYC's treatment programs failing miserably

Posted on December 10, 2008
Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series analyzing highlights from the Texas Youth Commission/Juvenile Probation Comission "Sunset" staff report released last month. The Sunset Commission will meet on Monday, Dec. 15 in Austin to receive public comments regarding the report...

Houston appellate courts may be next to turn blue

Posted on December 09, 2008
Analyzing recent election returns, Kuff looks toward 2010 and speculates that Houston's First and Fourteenth Courts of Appeal could see Democratic sweeps in two years similar to the raft of new Dem judges elected in Harris County last month and in Dallas in 2006.

New President means new 4 new US Attorneys in Texas

Posted on December 09, 2008
With a new president about to assume power, Texas will soon see four new US Attorneys as Bush's appointments are replaced by Obama's in the early days of his tenure. The Dallas News has a story describing the jockeying among four possible candidates for US Attorney in the Northern District:Three ? Larry Jarrett, Terri Moore and Mike Snipes ? are former assistant U...

Searching for snitches in the want ads?

Posted on December 09, 2008
Police in Albuquerque, N.M. have become so reliant on snitches to solve cases that when they couldn't generate enough informants organically they began to advertise in the local paper, we learn from USA Today:The Albuquerque Police Department put a want ad in the city's weekly newspaper for "people that hang out with crooks to do part-time work...

"Baffling" harmless error ruling from Houston Court of Appeals

Posted on December 08, 2008
Colin Miller at EvidenceProf Blog says the Houston Court of Appeals issued a correct evidentiary ruling in favor of a criminal defendant, but coupled it with a "baffling" conclusion of "harmless error" - perhaps the favorite pet phrase of Texas appellate courts...

Time for new US, Mexican anti-drug strategies

Posted on December 08, 2008
If the 81st Texas Legislature weren't nearly upon us, it'd be easy and timely to devote much more attention on Grits to criminal justice topics south of the border. That issue could take up an entire blog and then some, and Grits just doesn't have time or resources to tackle the story properly...

Texas murder, execution and crime rates all declining

Posted on December 07, 2008
Crime and Consequences informs us that this year we've seen:Fewer Death Sentences in Texas: A story in the Houston Chronicle by Michael Graczyk reports that significantly fewer Texas murderers received a death sentence this year. The annual review from the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty noted that 18 executions were carried [out] this year compared with 26 in 2007...

"Crime Doesn't Pay(back)"

Posted on December 07, 2008
The Houston Press this week examined the important issue of victim restitution and discovered that:Across the entire state, 90.3 percent of offenders who were successfully discharged from 2003 to 2008 still owe their victims restitution. Fewer than 10 percent paid off all their restitution...

Pew urges community supervision strategies to improve public safety

Posted on December 06, 2008
Doc Berman informs us of a new publication from the Pew Center on the States titled "Putting Public Safety First," which suggests "13 Strategies for Successful Supervision and Reentry." Berman quotes from the email announcement:A new policy brief from the Pew Public Safety Performance Project highlights community corrections strategies that can help policy makers and practitioners improve public safety and make better use of scarce public funds...

Why no prosecution of false child abuse report in the Great Eldorado Polygamist Roundup?

Posted on December 05, 2008
A former supervisor with Texas Child Protective Services (CPS) was fired from the agency in May and now has been indicted for "making a false report of abuse," the Corpus Christi Caller Times reports, which leads me to ponder why we haven't seen similar charges lodged against Rozita Swinton, the prank phone caller whose false accusations of abuse launched the Great Eldorado Polygamist Roundup in West Texas last spring?Why have they waited so long to pursue criminal charges against a hoaxter whose actions gave CPS (not to mention the legal system in San Angelo) an enormous black eye? Was what this woman allegedly did any worse than Swinton's offense?We still haven't learned, by a longshot, the complete backstory to what happened during the days and hours leading up to the YFZ Ranch raid, and I'm betting a desire by authorities to keep it that way lies at the root of the failure by officialdom to extradite Swinton from Colorado and hold her accountable for reports that were clearly as false as any made by this supervisor.

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