Criminal Law

Deitch on Texas corrections

Posted on January 04, 2011
The Texas Tribune has published an interview with prison expert Michele Deitch from UT's LBJ School on subjects ranging from TYC to closing adult prisons, diversion programming and county jail oversight. Go here for both video and transcript. In addition to advocating to preserve diversion programming, I was particularly pleased to see Deitch's answer to the Trib's final question about challenges facing lawmakers in 2011; I hope legislators are reading it too: In addition to seeking to close facilities where they can be closed and investing more heavily in substance abuse programs and other community-based programs, mental health programs and such, there should be policy changes put in place to ensure that fewer inmates are going to prison and fewer offenders are staying there as long as they?re staying...

What exactly is so great about a plain grey wall?

Posted on January 04, 2011
Nancy Visser at the Dallas News' East Dallas Blog writes about a municipal response to graffiiti that looks worse than the blight it's covering up: The city responded quickly last week to a 311 note about graffiti on a retaining wall for the Central/I-45 overpass exit ramp to Bryan Street...

First Texas DNA exoneration of 2011: Cornelius Dupree Jr.

Posted on January 03, 2011
Texas will apparently see another old conviction overturned tomorrow in Dallas based on latter-day DNA testing, AP's Jeff Carlton reports, after the wrongly convicted defendant in question actually made parole this July following a 30 year stint.A Texas man who spent more time in prison than any other DNA exoneree in the state is expected to have a court overturn his conviction at an exoneration hearing Tuesday...

Budget cuts threaten new office for capital habeas writs

Posted on January 03, 2011
Because it's in its startup phase, Texas' new Office of Capital Writs created in 2009 is in danger of falling victim to the budget crunch because its caseload appears small compared to its budget - mostly because its been in business such a short time, but also because of the declining number of death sentences statewide, the Austin Statesman's Chuck Lindell reports...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

'Outlawed, cell phones are thriving in prison'

Posted on January 03, 2011
The New York Times takes on one of state Sen. John Whitmire's favorite topics with a feature on cell phones in prison with the same title as this post. The article takes a different twist toward the end, however, suggesting that one solution might be to embrace the trend instead of fighting an expensive, losing battle...

Chief Justice John Roberts: Fill vacant federal judge slots. Are you listening, John Cornyn?

Posted on January 03, 2011
I'd complained the other day, after the US Senate Judiciary Committee rejected two judicial nominees for Texas' Southern federal judicial district, that the region's federal courts were overburdened, the Southern District's case backlog is becoming overwhelmed, and that rejecting two perfectly qualified judges in a district which had been designated with "emergency" status since the Bush administration was irresponsible and short-sighted, short changing Texans - particularly, and ironically, those concerned with maximizing immigration enforcement, which is the main task the still-leaderless US Attorney's office in the Southern District has been engaged in for the last several years...

'Harris County jail not the place to treat mental illness'

Posted on January 02, 2011
An joint op ed from the Harris County Sheriff and the Houston Police Chief with the same title as this post reminds us that the Harris County Jail, by a wide margin, is the state's single largest mental health services provider. They fear that cuts by the Legislature to mental health services will further shift costs to Harris County (and by extension, all counties), citing a similar outcome after budget cuts in 2003:A prime example of cost shifting has occurred within the Harris County Jail, now the largest mental health facility in Texas...

Judicial activism by TX Supreme Court creates new right to privacy, but only for government workers

Posted on January 02, 2011
The Corpus Christi Caller Times today published an excellent op ed from the director of Texas' Freedom of Information Foundation on the ill-considered judicial activism by the Texas' Supreme Court to create, based on no statute or precedent, a new privacy right which applies solely to government employees...

Grits 2010 traffic data

Posted on January 01, 2011
Since we're looking back at 2010, here's some data on Grits' traffic over the last year:That's an average of 51,861 visitors per month. Much more important, though, than how many people came to this blog is WHO visited Grits: You. Thanks for dropping by...

Top Texas Criminal Justice Stories of 2010

Posted on January 01, 2011
It's difficult to designate a group of "top" Texas criminal justice stories for 2010, in what overall felt like a transitional year. Cities, counties and the state began for the first time to recognize the magnitude of the fiscal crisis facing government budgets at all levels...

Happy New Year/Criticizing Christmas Clemency

Posted on December 31, 2010
Happy New Year everybody. Use this as an open thread to help me finish a list of the biggest Texas criminal justice stories of 2010 that I started for today but procrastinated. Sharon Keller's acquittal? John Bradley's bullying of the Forensic Science Commission? The exonerations of Anthony Graves and Michael Green? Speculative jails going bust for lack of inmates? Appellate courts shutting down hearings on the Todd Willingham case and the constitutionality of the death penalty? What else happened this year: What do you think were the biggest stories?  Also, for those interested, and I realize it's not the hottest topic I cover on this blog, the Dallas News today published an op ed I wrote criticizing Christmastime clemency for treating pardons like Christmas gifts instead of the pivotal and neglected check and balance on abuses in the justice system anticipated by the Founding Fathers...

Austin PD: Arrests down, use of force reports up, new police monitor named

Posted on December 31, 2010
I wanted to point out a few links regarding police oversight in Austin that may interest Grits readers. First, the City of Austin hired former Travis County Sheriff Margo Frasier as the new Police Monitor, which is a civilian police oversight position created around the turn of the century...

No federal judges, US Attorneys for Texas

Posted on December 30, 2010
The federal Senate Judiciary Committee sent back a couple of President Barack Obama's federal judicial appointees in Texas' Southern District, contributing to already growing immigration case backlogs there, with Texas Sen. John Cornyn opposing them along party lines...

Perry granted 3.5% of total clemency requests

Posted on December 30, 2010
Just to put a final coda on Grits' recent series regarding gubernatorial clemency under Rick Perry, I got back the results of an open records request to discover a piece of data that was inconsistently (and apparently incorrectly) reported in the last decade of annual reports from the Board of Pardons and Paroles: How many total clemency applications does the agency receive each year? The reports gave clear data about the number of cases considered each year by the board, but not always the larger number of clemency requests including those the board didn't hear...

New DA in Waco off to rocky start: Announces new hire who's then indicted

Posted on December 30, 2010
Getting the most possible use of the day pass I bought yesterday to the subscription-only Waco Tribune Herald, I should mention recent news from their District Attorneys office, where 38-year old GOP challenger Abel Reyna defeated longtime Dem DA John Segrest, and wants to model himself on Williamson County DA John Bradley...

Grayson County abandoned speculative jail building scheme

Posted on December 30, 2010
After a majority of the commissioners court spent 2008 and 2009 pushing to build an unneeded, 1,500 bed jail, Grayson County has wisely scaled back their jail building ambitions, approving a contract this week to add 96 beds to their current facility...

Double dipping not cause for firing, says civil service examiner

Posted on December 29, 2010
A Waco police detective was reinstated by a civil service examiner after being fired along with nine others for "double dipping," or working a second job during periods when he should have been on duty at Waco PD. This is the third officer reinstated through the civil service process over the incident...

'Prison Pays'

Posted on December 29, 2010
The Houston Press has published an extensive feature by Craig Malisow on the Geo Group in Texas titled "Prison Pays," in which yours truly is briefly quoted. The story is subtitled, "Despite a history of abuse and bad conditions, private prison corporation GEO keeps getting contracts from the state...

McLennan County cuts jail pharmacy spending as doomsday deal devolves

Posted on December 29, 2010
The McLennan County Jail claims to have saved $1 million this year by prescribing fewer antipsychotic medications and other pharmacy costs. Reports KWTX.com, "In February 2010, pharmacy costs at the jail were $54,619. In September 2010, expenditures were down to $17,372...

News and Views from the Land of Dairy Queen

Posted on December 29, 2010
After he'd commented on the last Grits post, I checked in for the first time in a while at Wise County lawyer Barry Green's blog, Liberally Lean in the Land of Dairy Queen, and noticed these interesting tidbits:"Years ago I was doing an oral argument in front of the Fort Worth Court of Appeals when Justice Dauphinot suddenly interrupted me and tersely asked, "Who wrote this brief?" I paused and meekly said, "I did...

Defense bar critiques suggestion for deferred adjudication on DWIs

Posted on December 29, 2010
Now that the defense bar has had a chance to review state Rep. Todd Smith's HB 189 - a MADD-endorsed bill that would allow deferred adjudication for first-time offenders (see earlier Grits coverage here) - several prominent attorneys are expressing serious reservations...

Cuts to mental health will drive up county jail expenses

Posted on December 29, 2010
The Houston Chronicle editorial board joins the chorus criticizing plans to cut mental health services in a way that would strand mentally ill inmates and associated expenses in local jails. The editorial opens:What's wrong with this picture? The largest administrator of mental health services in Harris County is the county jail...

Federal legislation would implement NAS forensic science recommendations

Posted on December 28, 2010
At the federal level,  Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) has released a preliminary draft of a bill called the Criminal Justice and Forensic Science Reform Act which would implement many of the recommendation from the National Academy of Sciences report on the forensic sciences...

'It's Time to Close Prisons in Texas'

Posted on December 28, 2010
Reacting to this Grits post, Matt Kelley at Change.org's Criminal Justice blog has created an online petition titled "It's Time to Close Prisons in Texas," asking Texas Department of Criminal Justice chief Brad Livingston to consider prison closures in budget cutting plans being prepared for the legislative session next spring...

The making of an unfunded mandate: Cuts to mental health would dump costs on county jails

Posted on December 28, 2010
Around the state, reporters and local officials are waking up to a sleeper issue that this blog has been sounding the alarm about for years: The danger posed to county budgets, especially local jails, by cuts in the number of state mental hospital beds and mental health care generally - an issue likely to reach a critical stage if state hospitals are cut further next spring by the 82nd Texas Legislature...

MADD endorses deferred adjudication for first-offense DWI

Posted on December 28, 2010
I'm incredibly pleased to see Mothers Against Drunk Driving backing off some of its more draconian policies in recent months. First they declared they wouldn't oppose abolition of Texas' Orwellian-named "Driver Responsibility" surcharge, and now Paul Kennedy points to an Austin Statesman article in which MADD endorsed allowing deferred adjudication for drunk driving offenses, in part to boost conviction rates and to avoid having DWI cases plead down to non-alcohol-related offenses...

Privatization and the fallacy of zero fiscal notes on criminal penalty enhancements

Posted on December 28, 2010
This story out of Maine included an interesting chart depicting what proportion of each state's prison population is housed in privately-run facilities:FWIW, Texas reliance on private prisons - where the state pays contractors by the head to lock up inmates -  puts the lie to statements in "fiscal notes" from the Legislative Budget Board (LBB) that criminal penalty increases generate no significant costs...

Todd Willingham documentary

Posted on December 28, 2010
The Texas Tribune has posted excerpts from an upcoming documentary on the Todd Willingham arson case, and published an interview with the filmmakers. Check it out. The Tribune's Evan Smith declares that:the breakout performance is that of Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley, who was appointed by Rick Perry to chair the Texas Forensic Science Commission  just as the commission and its previous chair were inconveniently set to weigh in on the Willingham case during the gubernatorial campaign...

The rest of the story

Posted on December 27, 2010
A commenter on Grits' Christmas Day open thread left this back-handed complement:I would like to commend Scott for his passion for justice. He has done well, some would suppose, to view one-half of the equation and champion a cause based on that half view...

Mentally ill Tyler teen who murdered teacher lingering in legal limbo for incompetence

Posted on December 26, 2010
The mentally ill Tyler teen who killed his teacher at John Tyler High School remains in legal limbo, the Dallas News reports, because he's too sick to be declared competent to stand trial. The story by Lee Hancock ("Teen suspect in legal limbo more than a year after teacher's slaying," Dec...

Bloggers, promote your law blog by nominating your blog for inclusion in USLaw.com's Law Blog Directory and RSS Reader. Benefits described.