Criminal Law

Arlington returning to foot patrols

Posted on September 29, 2008
The City of Arlington reports success in crime reduction after reinstating foot patrols, especially around crime-ridden apartment complexes. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram says that since they:started their foot patrol, Arlington Police Department statistics show a slight drop in crime...

Snitch who walked for his testimony turned out to be real killer, rapist; prosecutor became judge, and soon elected DA

Posted on September 28, 2008
As DNA evidence sorts out errors made in old cases, sometimes it also reveals examples of official misconduct from decades past, in this case by a lawyer who's about to become elected District Attorney in Cooke County, a rural county along the Oklahoma border (Gainesville is the county seat)...

Let the Chips Fall

Posted on September 28, 2008
Where They May.The Dallas News presents speculation pro and con on the $64 Question that arises now that former Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Verla Sue Holland and former Collin County District Attorney Tom O'Connell admitted engaging in a long-term romantic affair while she was a district judge, during which time the DA's office prosecuted hundreds of defendants before her court: What will happen to all the other cases besides Hood's which may also be ethically compromised?Reports Diane Jennings ("Former prosecutor, judge intimacy may affect more than a single death row case," Sept...

DPS boosts sex offender ostracization without reason

Posted on September 28, 2008
Via Crime and Consequences:Texas Registry Posts Sex Offenders' Jobs: In addition to a sex offenders' name, home address, photograph and criminal record, the Texas Department of Public Safety is now posting their employers, according to the story by Brian Collister, of WOAL TV in San Antonio...

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Why should snitches' testimony get extra scrutiny?

Posted on September 26, 2008
One of the CCA "Integrity Unit" members, Texas House Corrections Chairman Jerry Madden, posed a question to Justice Project President John Terzano regarding snitches during his presentation yesterday that inspired me to (perhaps rudely?) interject from the audience a response to his concerns...

Lab personnel rarely collect crime scene evidence directly

Posted on September 26, 2008
Another few tidbits from yesterday's meeting of the Criminal Justice Integrity Unit created by the Court of Criminal Appeals; this time let's highlight some comments from the event about Texas forensic labs:Pat Johnson, who's the field supervisor for DPS' state-run crime labs and a member of the Integrity Unit panel, performed an informal survey of non-DPS crime labs in Texas operated by local jurisdictions...

Police evidence rooms are 'red-headed stepchidren' of law enforcement, Integrity Unit told

Posted on September 26, 2008
At yesterday's meeting of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals' Criminal Justice Integrity Unit, created earlier this summer to examine proposed innocence-related reforms, John Vasquez from the Texas Association of Property and Evidence Inventory Technicians (TAPEIT) gave an interesting presentation about evidence preservation failures and the need for greater professionalism and implementation of best practices by police department property rooms...

CCA gets another chance to probe ethics of their former colleague in Charles Hood case

Posted on September 26, 2008
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals will get another chance to do the right thing and evaluate whether their former colleague Judge Verla Sue Holland's extramarital exploits tainted the 1990 Charles Hood capital murder trial. Hood's attorneys filed another habeas appeal yesterday, even though the CCA previously made it clear they had no intention of reviewing Judge Holland's alleged misconduct before Hood's execution...

Open Thread

Posted on September 25, 2008
I'll be out most of the day to attend the second meeting of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals' Criminal Justice Integrity Unit, so check out the blogs in Grits' sidebar while I'm gone and use this post as an open thread to let us know what Texas criminal justice issues you're paying attention to that the rest of us should be watching...

When DNA evidence accuses after the statute of limitations runs out

Posted on September 24, 2008
The preservation of biological evidence has not only led to a remarkable string of DNA-based exonerations in Dallas, it's also helping police solve cold cases in violent crimes, even where the statute of limitations has run out. Reports the Dallas News: ("DNA links rapes to men where statutes of limitations have expired," Sept...

Innocent until reported guilty

Posted on September 24, 2008
I've spent a great deal of time on Grits discussing a panoply of possible innocence reforms, from improving eyewitness ID procedures to requiring corroboration and reliability tests for informants to improving forensic labs and recording police interrogations...

Waco jail affairs clouded in controversy

Posted on September 24, 2008
Having earlier covered debates in Waco over new jail construction and privatization, I should point readers to several recent articles on the McLennan County jail that show those topics haven't yet fully resolved themselves.First, departing House Urban Affairs Committee Chairman Kevin Bailey "has asked the state attorney general to determine whether it is legal for a sheriff to accept a fee for work with a private detention company that contracts with his county to operate a county jail," reported the Waco Tribune Herald...

Ombudsman: TYC closed abuse cases without proper investigation

Posted on September 24, 2008
SB 103 required the Texas Youth Commission's Ombudsman to report to the Governor, the Lt. Governor and the Speaker of the House whenever he discovers "particularly serious or flagrant" problems or abuses, and Ombudsman Will Harrell issued his first such report today to say TYC closed more than 500 cases of alleged mistreatment without making a final determination or forwarding information about criminal allegations to the Inspector General...

Harris County needs an independent Public Defender office

Posted on September 23, 2008
Even as Dallas County commissioners' new caseload quotas and heightened bureaucracy gutted their Public Defender office (I learned over the weekend a 6th felony attorney turned in their resignation on top of the five mentioned earlier on Grits), in Harris County the commissioners court today will hear the details of a preliminary plan on how to create a PD office in Houston...

California prison reform package implodes amidst partisan bickering

Posted on September 23, 2008
Regular readers know that the Texas Legislature in the last two sessions successfully forged remarkable bipartisan agreements supporing key first steps toward reforming the criminal justice system in ways that reduce the number of new inmates entering Texas prisons, though we still have a long way to go...

Jerry Madden on TYC, prison diversion

Posted on September 22, 2008
Dallas Blog has an interview with House Corrections Committee Chairman Jerry Madden about the Texas Youth Commission, prison diversion programs, and what to expect in the 2009 legislative session. Give it a read.

Emotional pair of DNA exonerations argue for changing eyewitness ID procedures

Posted on September 22, 2008
This weekend in Fort Worth at a training event sponsored by the Innocence Project of Texas (for whom I'm employed as a consultant) and the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, I had the privilege of meeting some of the people whose stories were highlighted in recent Grits posts about DNA exoneration cases...

The stench of justice

Posted on September 22, 2008
Here's a Hurricane Ike tidbit from the Harris County courthouse that wasn't widely reported, from Life at the Harris County Criminal Justice Center:After Ike came through over the weekend, one of the biggest problems it created within the Harris County Criminal Justice Center was a back up of raw sewage that pretty much permeated the first floor of the building...

Private prison news

Posted on September 22, 2008
These notable private prison stories showed up in the news over the weekend:Laredo 'Superjail' launched.Texas Prison Bidness informs us that the so-called Laredo Superjail - a controversial 1,500 bed facility that earlier drew staunch opposition - finally opened last week...

Pro-jail bond committee created in Tyler

Posted on September 21, 2008
In Tyler, a pro-jail committee will announce itself Monday in support of Smith County's third jail bond ballot in three years, reports the Morning Telegraph: The "Finally! A Jail Plan We Can Afford Committee" will hold a news conference announcing the formation of its action group in support of the Smith County Jail Bond proposed Nov...

Rape victim seeks court to clear the name of now-deceased man she misidentified

Posted on September 19, 2008
A Texas rape victim is working to clear the name of the man convicted of attacking her. Michele Mallin of Baytown is traveling to Fort Worth today to meet with the family of Timothy Cole, a Lubbock man convicted of raping her who was posthumously cleared by DNA...

Hurricane News

Posted on September 19, 2008
TCJS heads to Galveston. Texas Commission on Jail Standards Chief Adan Munoz is headed down to Galveston today to check on the deputies and inmates who've been stranded in the county jail after Hurricane Ike without electricity, working toilets or running water...

Another Dallas DNA Exoneree

Posted on September 19, 2008
Yet another Dallas exoneree will walk free this morning after spending 26 years in a Texas prison on a false rape conviction thanks to newly tested DNA evidence that cleared him.This is another terrible case of misidentification by an eyewitness. Believe it or not, a witness actually picked Johnnie Lindsey out of a photo lineup that was mailed to her a year after the incident! Lindsey's "was one of two pictures that showed a shirtless man, a description given by the victim immediately after the attack," according to a summary of the case issued by the Innocence Project of Texas which represented Lindsey at his findings hearing...

Around the blogs

Posted on September 19, 2008
Several recent posts from other blogs deserve Grits readers attention, starting with Texas Prison Bidness which has these private prison-related nuggets:More opposition to MTC's Nacogdoches prisonGrayson County moving ahead with private jail plans despite oppositionMajor incident at Cornell's Big Spring unitAt Dallas Sidebar, Proximo wonders why the Dallas County Commissioners Court thinks they get to micromanage activities of other elected officials...

'Move along, nothing to see here,' says FBI on anthrax attacks

Posted on September 18, 2008
Pat Leahy, one of the US senators targeted in the 2001 anthrax attacks, made this shocking declaration yesterday that he doesn't believe Bruce Ivins, the scientist blamed for the attacks who committed suicide earlier this year, acted alone:"If he is the one who sent the letter, I do not believe in any way, shape or manner that he is the only person involved in this attack on Congress and the American people," Leahy told FBI Director Robert S...

Blogger wants Collin County to follow Dallas in reviewing capital cases

Posted on September 18, 2008
Upon observing that Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins this week told the press he wanted to re-examine about 40 death penalty cases from Dallas County, Bill Baumbach at the Collin County Observer said the Charles Hood and Michael Blair cases show a similar review is needed in his county, offering this blog-cry in the wilderness about the damage recent incidents have caused to pubic confidence in the courts:Collin County is well known for its no-nonsense harsh sentences and vigorous prosecution of evil doers...

Missing ATF laptops bigger concern than stolen guns

Posted on September 18, 2008
Federal ATF agents misplaced 76 firearms and hundreds of laptops in the last five years according to a recent audit, AP reports. While we see weapons at police agencies show up missing rather frequently, I'm especially interested in what's becoming an even more widespread problem of lost or stolen law enforcement laptops, in this case at ATF...

Exoneration shows sex offender registration based on faulty premise

Posted on September 18, 2008
During the legislative process when it first passed, Texas' sex offender registration statute was dubbed "Ashley's Law," named after 7-year old Ashley Estell who was raped and murdered in Collin County in 1993. Authorities at the time decided a man named Michael Blair committed the crime, targeting him in part because he'd been convicted previously of a sex offense...

Dallas nixes verified response for commercial burglar alarms

Posted on September 17, 2008
The Dallas City Council earlier this month foolishly rejected Police Chief David Kunkle's highly successful initiative to require verification for commercial burglar alarms before sending police to respond. Mayor Tom Leppert pushed the council to vote 10-4 to overturn the nearly two-year old policy, despite the fact that it saved the department money, reduced fines on local businesses and enabled DPD to improve other services, all while burglaries declined...

Major Gulf Cartel Bust

Posted on September 17, 2008
The Dallas News Crime Blog brings welcome news that:A 15-month investigation cracking down on one of Mexico's largest drug cartels resulted in the arrests of 175 suspects yesterday and today, 22 of them in North Texas. So far, Project Reckoning has led to more than 500 arrests and the seizure of $60 million and more than 40 tons of drugs, U...

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