Criminal Law

False confessions "a systematic feature of American criminal justice"

Posted on February 27, 2008
Reacting to this item about the fate of Christopher Ochoa and Richard Danziger, two Austin men wrongfully convicted because Ochoa confessed, even though innocent, in the face of intense police questioning, Anne Reed at the blog Deliberations points to a new, relevant book shedding further light on false confessions titled Police Interrogation And American Justice, by University of San Francisco law professor Richard Leo, soon to be published by Harvard University Press...

Newsweek alleges racial slurs used in Harris DA's office

Posted on February 26, 2008
Not content with allowing Houstonians to wallow in their District Attorney's disgrace as they prepare to select his replacement, a national newsmagazine today published a feature critical of defrocked Harris County DA Chuck Rosenthal, providing a few juicy tidbits that I'd not seen previously published...

Byrne task forces account for huge portion of drug arrests in other states

Posted on February 26, 2008
In Oregon, I was astonished to read, 85% of drug arrests are made by regional narcotics task forces funded by the federal Byrne grant program, an overwhelming proportion. That statistic came out in the debate over the Bush Administration's proposal to slash the fund by 2/3...

Liberals try scare tactics touting "impending crime wave"

Posted on February 26, 2008
Washington Post pundit David Broder says crime may be lurking as an issue more powerful with the electorate than foreign affairs, discussing a national survey by a liberal think tank called Third Way. I'd not heard of the organization but I found a copy of the poll (pdf) online...

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Lubbock discontinues red light cameras after accidents increase 52% at intersections with cameras

Posted on February 24, 2008
I've not been closely tracking the issue of red light cameras since I left the ACLU, but I was interested to see this comment over at ConchoInfo:Lubbock is giving us some interesting insights on how many cities view red light cameras. They recently received a report on the first 6 months of operation...

Would you confess to a crime you didn't commit to save your life?

Posted on February 24, 2008
Christopher Ochoa did in 1988 in Austin, and accused an innocent friend of being an accomplice after long bouts of questioning and threats of the death penalty. (The man who he accused of being an accomplice, Richard Danziger, was tragically beaten in prison to the point that he suffered brain damage and today is in his family's guardianship...

Wall Street thinks economic downturn will boost private prison fortunes

Posted on February 24, 2008
Sometimes it may seem like I'm picking on this or that county when they pursue jail overcrowding solutions that aren't in the taxpayers interests, but the truth is these issues aren't really local or even statewide, but are national in scope. After he left a note in the comments, I put in a call to Grayson County Judge Drue Bynum's office, though I haven't heard back yet...

Nuther lawsuit vs. TYC filed alleging staff on youth brutality at Evins unit

Posted on February 22, 2008
As a legislative oversight committee grilled TYC administrators in Austin this afternoon, another civil rights suit was filed by a former inmate against the Evins unit in the Rio Grande Valley, which was already the subject of federal litigation and a recent Agreed Order...

TYC still suffering backlog processing youth grievances

Posted on February 22, 2008
UPDATE: Here's the link to archived video from today's hearing.Rep. Jerry Madden calculates that TYC receives 66 grievances from youth per day, or around 10,000 per year (the average daily inmate population is around 2,400). The oversight committee had a good discussion today about the Youth Rights division and backlogs in processing youth complaints...

Whitmire: "If you don't want to get sprayed, do what they tell you"

Posted on February 22, 2008
UPDATE: Here's the link to archived video from today's hearing.Perhaps the most contentious moment so far from today's oversight hearing on the Texas Youth Commission involved the agency's contentious pepper spray policy, when Sen. Whitmire complained that critics of TYC's pepper spray use had "demagogued the issue to death," declaring that "the people who I listen to and I trust" tell him it was important to keep pepper spray in the "arsenal...

Dallas PD will use citations for B misdemeanors

Posted on February 22, 2008
After initially rejecting the idea, the Dallas Police Department has decided to use new discretion for police officers approved by the 80th Texas Legislature to give citations in lieu of arrest for certain low-level misdemeanors. Reported the Dallas News ("Dallas police program would allow tickets instead of jail for minor offenses," Feb...

Watch TYC oversight hearing this a.m.

Posted on February 22, 2008
For those hoping to listen in to the TYC oversight hearing this morning, it begins at 10 a.m. and you can listen in at this link. There will be no public testimony, and only conservator Richard Nedelkoff and Ombudsman Will Harrell have been invited to testify...

Grayson County Judge pushing irresponsible jail building scheme

Posted on February 21, 2008
Grayson County Judge Drue Bynum has been promoting a bizarre solution to local jail overcrowding, trying to convince the public that the county can expand the jail without paying for it ("it's free, trust me") by partnering with a private contractor. He's even trying to get Grayson County College to give away land to a contractor to build the private facility...

Add 'surname profiling' to jail overcrowding as reason to oppose ICE in Travis Jail

Posted on February 21, 2008
I'd said earlier that arguments to limit jail overcrowding were stronger criticisms than racial profiling of the Travis County Sheriff's new policy to allow federal immigration agents to set up shop in the jail. But Jamie Spencer makes a credible case that the policy could lead to more frequent "surname profiling," potentially capturing US citizen for hours or days based on wrongful supspicions...

Brooklyn informant SNAFU inspires transparency legislation

Posted on February 21, 2008
Speaking of New York, the implications of a case involving police corruption and drug informants in Brooklyn keeps spinning more and more widely out of control, and exhibits many of the problems with overuse of informants frequently criticized on this blog...

A home remedy for juvenile corrections?

Posted on February 21, 2008
As we head toward tomorrow's oversight hearing involving the Texas Youth Commission, everyone who's concerned with juvenile justice reform should be sure to read the article in the New York Times yesterday ("A home remedy for juvenile offenders, Feb. 20) describing the Big Apple's new approach to juvenile crime: Intensive in-home services for offending youth in lieu of incarceration...

Nuts and bolts of citations for low-level misdemeanors explained by Travis Sheriff's Office

Posted on February 20, 2008
For those who couldn't attend the event, handouts from presenters at the Bexar County symposium on jail overcrowding a couple of weeks ago in San Antonio have been posted online (see here).A couple of different speakers in SA focused on the new authority granted to Texas police officers in 2007 to give citations instead of making arrests for certain low-level, non-violent misdemeanors - that was HB 2391, for those keeping score at home...

Back Gate Back to Regular, Excellent Publishing Regimen

Posted on February 20, 2008
Though their remodeled site does not have permalinks, making it impossible to link to individual stories (please guys, fix this and you'll get a lot more traffic from me, at the very least!), The Back Gate, a blog operated by Texas prison guards, has published some excellent, informative posts in the last couple of weeks, including an item by a Sergeant who was accidentally pricked with a prison tattoo needle (pictured) during a cell search...

National Guard corruption highlights border security challenges

Posted on February 20, 2008
Two of the National Guard troops deployed in 2006 by Gov. Perry as part of Operation Linebacker have been convicted of helping smuggle illegal immigrants across the border, further evidence that it's the checkpoints, not the empty spaces in between, serving as primary entry points for illegal smugglers...

As oversight hearing approaches, TYC conservator releases 60 day report

Posted on February 20, 2008
For those tracking the minutae, TYC conservator Richard Nedelkoff has posted his 60 day report on the agency's website, just in time for the joint House-Senate oversight committee on Friday. (See his report; thanks to Howard Hickman for pointing it out to me...

Voluntary guidelines don't "ensure" Ex-Im Bank won't give more loans to drug cartels

Posted on February 19, 2008
According to the Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Journal, the Ex-Im Bank's new "Know Your Customer" initiative - which Grits readers will recall was created after WFAA-TV reporter Byron Harris in Dallas revealed the agency had given loans to figures associated with drug cartels - will be "ensuring that Ex-Im Bank supports creditworthy and legitimate transactions...

Who's on TV?

Posted on February 19, 2008
Early voting starts today, so I'm curious, who has commercials on TV in the major criminal justice races where you live?In recent elections, about half of voters cast their ballots early, and most of those are cast during the first three days or the last three days of the early voting period...

Support resolutions at precinct conventions to reform adult and youth corrections: A Grits mini-campaign

Posted on February 19, 2008
In Texas' Democratic primary this year, voters get to "vote twice," meaning they can vote once at the ballot box and, for the very committed, they can go to local precinct conventions on election night and vote again in party caucuses.For many people, these caucuses will be their first experience with their political party's internal machinery (on the GOP side, precinct-level battles have been more common over the last two decades)...

The Cost of Closure: How much did Texas spend to fail to execute John Paul Penry?

Posted on February 18, 2008
Doug Berman over at Sentencing Law & Policy has been wondering about the cost of the death penalty in Texas, estimating (perhaps inflatedly) that the John Paul Penry case - where the defendant received life without parole after nearly 30 years of litigating his case in the appellate courts, including three trials and two trips to the US Supreme Court - cost Texas $1 billion when it was all said and done...

Jail Sucks! Unless You're a Bail Bondsman

Posted on February 18, 2008
Yesterday at the grocery store, I was taken aback to see a tall, blond-haired man wearing a t-shirt with big black letters on the front declaring simply, "Jail Sucks!"What can I say? The t-shirt made me grin. I thought maybe Diana Claitor at the Texas Jail Project had come out with a new apparel line...

Immigration laws prevent police from solving crime

Posted on February 18, 2008
The most important public safety argument for expanding legal immigration and legalizing undocumented immigrants, to me, is the fact that immigrants tend not to cooperate with law enforcement as either a victim or a witness, even in cases of domestic abuse...

Congresswoman still spreading Tulia's lessons in Washington

Posted on February 17, 2008
The battle to get rid of Texas' network of drug task forces in the wake of the Tulia scandal contained a bipartisan (or rather non-partisan) "strange bedfellows" aspect that appears to be replicating itself in Washington, D.C.. President Bush, who for many years supported eliminating the "Byrne grant" fund entirely, has settled for slashing the budget by 2/3 in his final year...

Whitmire still angry over D'Pope's dismissal but the deed is done

Posted on February 17, 2008
The Dallas News this morning has a long feature on Texas Youth Commission woes that indicates Sen. John Whitmire is still on the warpath against the new conservator, Richard Nedelkoff. Whitmire intends to use a hearing scheduled on Friday to call Mr. N on the carpet for his decision to fire Dimitria Pope, the senator's long-time close friend...

Does the Texas GOP need judges who think being Latino makes you a "continuing danger"?

Posted on February 16, 2008
Texas Monthly and many others consider them "Texas' Worst Court," and in this writer's opinion, everyone should seize every available opportunity to vote against incumbent members of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. If you're voting in the GOP primary on March 4, you'll get that chance in in one of the three races...

What's the appropriate sentence for official corruption?

Posted on February 16, 2008
Rooting out corrupt law enforcement would do more IMO to stymie drug cartel smuggling activity than all the interdiction tactics we can muster, so on one hand I'm glad to see the prosecution of a DPS crime lab technician and his cohorts this week in Houston for stealing 26 kilos of cocaine from the evidence locker...

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