Grits for Breakfast

• TYC Ombudsman indicted, resigns

  If you'd predicted this when Governor Perry appointed Judge Catherine Evans TYC Ombudsman earlier this year, I'd have said you were nuts. See Mike Ward's coverage at the Austin Statesman. [...]
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  Posted: November 30, 2009, 7:27pm EST
  

• Coming to grips with unscientific forensic practices

  The Fort Worth Start Telegram yesterday published a lengthy, remarkable piece from Yamil Berard titled "Stakes are high as doubt is cast on forensic lab techniques." The article is one of the first published in the MSM in Texas to fully explore the implications of conclusions published earlier this [...]
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  Posted: November 30, 2009, 4:26pm EST
  

• Mama Tried

  Gary Scharrar had a feature over the weekend in the San Antonio Express News on Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley, his political siblings and their liberal mom who disagrees with much of their politics. The story opens:
  Hard-nosed Texas prosecutor John “Marty” Bradley supports the death penalty. His [...]
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  Posted: November 30, 2009, 2:34pm EST
  

• House releases 'interim charges': What criminal justice topics on the agenda?

  Speaker Joe Straus last week issued the "Interim Charges" for standing committees in the Texas House. Since the Texas Lege meets only 140 days every two years, in the interim committees study lingering problems or emerging issues with an eye toward developing legislation in the next session. So issues studied [...]
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  Posted: November 30, 2009, 9:38am EST
  

• Dallas fake-drug informant shows how 'cooperation' benefits can promote crime

  The main informant involved in the Dallas fake-drug scandal, Enrique Martinez Alonso, served five years for his role collaborating with Dallas narcotics officers to set up two-dozen innocent people, then was deported in 2007. Now, reports Jason Trahan in the Dallas News ("Police informant in Dallas' fake-drug scandal faces'" [...]
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  Posted: November 29, 2009, 12:26pm EST
  

• Statesman plugs "D.A. Confidential"

  The Austin Statesman published a feature today on a new blog by a Travis County prosecutor, D.A. Confidential. According to courts reporter Steven Kreytak:
  

  Mark Pryor said that friends, neighbors and fellow lawyers regularly ask him about his job as a felony prosecutor in Travis County.

  And [...]

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  Posted: November 29, 2009, 10:33am EST
  

• Most Houston police suicides received no treatment

  According to the Houston Chronicle (Nov. 28), 90% of HPD police officers who commit suicide had not previously received counseling, even though a psych unit was created at the department in 1979 after six officer committed suicide in two years. Four HPD officers have committed suicide in 2009.
  
  [...]
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  Posted: November 28, 2009, 12:42pm EST
  

• Colorado may reduce drug-possession sentences to lower costs; should Texas?

  Colorado is considering reducing drug sentences as part of an effort to reduce prison costs, reports the Colorado Springs Gazette ("Prison Crowding: $700 million is too much; release nonviolent offenders early, panel says," Nov. 22):
  

  Colorado prisons are overflowing with inmates, at a cost of nearly $700 million a [...]

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  Posted: November 28, 2009, 11:15am EST
  

• NY Times sees new bipartisan consensus on criminal justice, ignores old one

  A story by Adam Liptak published on the front page of the New York Times Tuesday has been getting a lot of attention: "Right and Left Join Forces on Criminal Justice." It described growing "signs of an emerging consensus on the right that the criminal justice system is an" [...]
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  Posted: November 27, 2009, 11:55am EST
  

• 'Chairman of Texas forensic science panel oversteps his authority'

  The title of this post is the headline of a Fort Worth Star Telegram editorial today chastising Williamson County DA and Forensic Science Commission Chairman John Bradley for an array of recent moves aimed at clouding the commission's work in secrecy. Bradley wants to make meetings closed, records secret, [...]
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  Posted: November 27, 2009, 9:58am EST
  

• Data on TDCJ Unit Age and Cost

  Yesterday I suggested that Texas should consider closing one or more of its older, more expensive-to-run prison units in the face of bleak budget estimates heading into the 2011 legislative session. I asked Michelle Lyons, the public information officer at TDCJ, for data referenced by Sen. John Whitmire on [...]
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  Posted: November 25, 2009, 4:56pm EST
  

• Peeking in on the feds: Texas' Western District prosecutors less generous than Southern

  I've been meaning to revisit some of the testimony from last week's US Sentencing Commission hearing here in Austin, and thought I'd point out some interesting data from federal probation chiefs here in Texas and some new (to me) data on federal prison overcrowding.
  
  According to [...]
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  Posted: November 25, 2009, 2:24pm EST
  

• Avoiding the issues

  A reader points out that the Houston Chronicle has an editorial this morning which appears to obliquely reference Grits' criticism of the proposed Harris County jail expansion (I assume I'm among the "judicial issue bloggers" to whom they're reacting, though they offered no reciprocal linkage). The Chron thinks building more' [...]
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  Posted: November 24, 2009, 10:22am EST
  

• As 2011 budget crisis looms, should most expensive prison units be closed?

  It's always good to recognize when it's time to leave, and given the economic headaches facing the state, I think I understand why Texas Senate Finance Chairman Steve Ogden decided this was a good time to call it quits and let somebody else drive the car over the cliff in [...]
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  Posted: November 24, 2009, 10:03am EST
  

• Arkansas turns to early parole after prison budget slashed

  Because Texas legislators were proactive about preventing prison crowding on the front end, so far we haven't had to release prisoners all at once in crisis mode. But that's been happening in other states, most recently with our neighbor to the northeast.
  
  According to this brief' [...]
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  Posted: November 24, 2009, 8:53am EST
  

• Parsing Post-Conviction Writs

  Via Stand Down, the Fall issue of the American Bar Association's Criminal Justice magazine features a series of articles on Postconviction Practices. Here's the table of contents:
  

  Priming Postconviction Representation
  By Andrew E. Taslitz
  Issue editor for the symposium on postconviction practices, Prof. Andrew Taslitz, Howard University [...]

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  Posted: November 24, 2009, 8:01am EST
  

• 'Did US law spur Mexican meth sales?'

  Well, of course it did!
  
  The title of this post is the headline to a Christian Science Monitor story (11/22) describing an outcome that was not only predictable but, at the time, predicted, at least on this blog. The article opens:
  The goal was to curb production of [...]
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  Posted: November 23, 2009, 7:08pm EST
  

• New Harris County jail would cost nearly $10 million annually to staff

  It's already staggering to think that a proposed expansion of the Harris County jail would cost $256 million, or just more than a quarter-billion dollars. But that's really only the beginning because the agency would also have to staff the jail over and above basic construction costs.
  
  How much [...]
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  Posted: November 23, 2009, 12:58pm EST
  

• Harris County Sheriff's response to Grits jail building critique

  Reacting to this Grits post proposing alternative solutions to jail building in Harris County, the Sheriff's Public Affairs director, former Houston Chronicle reporter Alan Bernstein, left these comments in rebuttal:
  So much misinformation!
  
  The new Central Processing Center would not add 2,500 beds. It would add about [...]
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  Posted: November 23, 2009, 10:42am EST
  

• Odds and Ends

  Here are several items from around the state this week that I've not found time to blog on but which deserve Grits readers' attention:
  State Rep. Rafael Anchia says Texas' DNA exonerees collectively deserve to be named "Texan of the Year."John Bradley wants Texas Forensic Science Commission members to' [...]
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  Posted: November 22, 2009, 10:43am EST
  

• Harris County should reject expensive new jails until officials use available tools to reduce overcrowding

  Ignoring voters' 2007 rejection of a proposed jail expansion, Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia has proposed spending a quarter-billion dollars to build 2,500 2,193 more jail beds ("Harris County Sheriff renews call for new jail," Nov. 21).
  
  Really, though, an expanded jail would cost much more than that' [...]
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  Posted: November 22, 2009, 8:52am EST
  

• Jennifer Skeem on Sentencing and Mental Health

  Yesterday morning I heard a provocative and informative talk at the Texas Judicial Advisory Council's biennial sentencing conference from Dr. Jennifer Skeem, who is a member of the MacArthur Research Network on Mandated Community Treatment, and Centers for Psychology and Law and Evidence-Based Corrections, on the subject of "Mental" [...]
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  Posted: November 21, 2009, 10:43am EST
  

• US Sentencing Commission hears testimony on alternatives to incarceration, reentry

  Yesterday morning I attended a portion of the regional hearing in Austin of the US Sentencing Commission, in particular a panel on "Alternatives to Incarceration, Reentry, and Community Impact."
  Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins was one of the panelists, and his comments were featured in coverage by [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 8:44am EST
  

• Out for the morning: Sentencing coverage to come

  This morning I'm headed up to the UT Law School to hear a couple of panels presenting to the US Sentencing Commission, then after lunch out to a Sentencing Conference held biennially for judges, prosecutors and probation officials by TDCJ's Community Justice Assistance Division. (See their agenda [pdf].)' [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 10:52am EST
  

• Should prosectuors, public defenders, cops be required to 'resign to run'?

  Should county employees be required to resign before they run for public office? Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins initiated the debate by implementing a resign-to-run policy in his office six months ago, reports Kevin Krause at the Dallas News ("Dallas County public defender's proposed 'resign to run' policy has'" [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 8:08am EST
  

• Medication lapse for Harris jail inmates especially long for patients with HIV

  Randall Patterson has a compelling story at the Houston Press ("Jail misery," Nov. 19) that demonstrates in human form what the US Justice Department said were unconstitutional flaws in the Harris County jail's healthcare system. He highlights the case of Monte Killian, who became extremely ill after the jail' [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 7:11am EST
  

• ACLU: CCA ignored evidence of false confession in capital case

  Here's the text of a press release published today by the ACLU regarding a Court of Criminal Appeals decision in the Max Soffar case. I offer it FWIW, I have no personal knowledge of the details of the case:
  Texas Appeals Court Rejects Appeal Of Innocent Man On Death [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 6:09pm EST
  

• Florida looking to Texas for overincarceration solutions

  Just a few years ago it was unimaginable that anyone would look to Texas for solutions to overincarceration pressures in state prisons. But beginning in 2007, Texas embarked on a remarkable bipartisan effort spearheaded by Sen. John Whitmire and Rep. Jerry Madden to avoid new prison building by expanding diversion [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 5:53pm EST
  

• Nueces looks to GPS for supervising work-release offenders

  Nueces County plans to try using GPS ankle monitors and house arrest in lieu of incarcerating offenders in the county's work-release program. Reports the Corpus Christi Caller Times ("Commissioners approve ankle monitoring to relieve jail overcrowding," Nov. 18):
  

  County Commissioners approved a program Wednesday that gives judges the option [...]

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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 1:56pm EST
  

• Federal Sentencing Commission to hold regional hearing this week in Austin

  Via Sentencing Law and Policy I discover that the US Sentencing Commission will be meeting in Austin this week. Here's the press release announcing the event and an agenda with a list of speakers.
  
  According to the release, "The public and the media are invited to" [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 2:19pm EST
  

• DPS to parents: Your kid could become a Mexican cartel assassin if you don't watch out

  I have to wonder what was the purpose behind the timing of a DPS press release (pdf) issued today? Here's the text:
  DPS warns parents:
  Mexican cartels and gangs recruiting in Texas schools
  
  The Texas Department of Public Safety is warning parents across the state to be aware' [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 12:35pm EST
  

• Does rise in white-collar prosecutions stem from too-weak business regulation?

  I've suggested before that white-collar crime prosecutions shouldn't be used as alternatives to industry regulation, but given how white-collar cases frequently play out in the real world, I can understand why that approach is politically and, to an extent, even practically justified.
  
  Take the instance yesterday in which [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 10:44am EST
  

• TDCJ on recording death row visits: Policy? What policy?

  Yesterday I got back a response to my public information act request to TDCJ (following another one, under separate cover, from the Office of Inspector General), stating that, "Pursuant to a diligent search of agency records, we have determined that no responsive information is maintained by the TDCJ in" [...]
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  Posted: November 15, 2009, 11:05am EST
  

• Appleseed rightly sues to make police use-of-force policies public

  I'm pleased to learn that Texas Appleseed has filed suit challenging the Texas Attorney General's rulings on keeping use of force policies closed for police stationed at schools. (I'd encouraged Appleseed to go to court over this in a prior blog post.) Reports the San Antonio Express News:[...]
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  Posted: November 15, 2009, 8:21am EST
  

• Judge Sam Sparks: Parole chief Rissie Owens is "indecisive, insensitive, inattentive, incompetent, stupid, (or) weak-kneed"

  US District Judge Sam Sparks refused to hold parole board chair Rissie Owens personally liable, as a jury verdict would have him do, for applying sex-offender registration to Texas parolees without even minimalist due process. But he called her out for violating parolees' civil rights in just about the harshest' [...]
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  Posted: November 13, 2009, 11:57am EST
  

• A very important distinction

  The New York Times clarified an important distinction in a correction to a recent story about the Innocence Project at Northwestern University:
  

  Correction: November 1, 2009
  An article last Sunday about the Medill Innocence Project, in which students at Northwestern University’s journalism school scrutinize the work of prosecutors [...]
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  Posted: November 13, 2009, 11:41am EST
  

• Buddhism in Texas prisons

  One usually thinks of prison ministries as a Christian or perhaps an Islamic calling, but according to an informative article by Zen Zheng in the Houston Chronicle ("Cultivating her faith," Nov. 12) "Buddhist volunteers work in eight of 113 state prisons." Buddhist prison ministries are spearheaded by Myokei Caine-Barrett, [...]
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  Posted: November 13, 2009, 11:12am EST
  

• New rehab beds coming on line, but TDCJ still struggles with contraband

  After the segment of Tuesday's Senate Criminal Justice Committee on the Forensic Science Commission, I left along with the entire press corps to attend Rodney Ellis' press conference with Barry Scheck of the national Innocence Project. The rest of the senate committee and a few interested House members, however, [...]
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  Posted: November 13, 2009, 10:11am EST
  

• Why do Americans murder?

  A New Yorker book review by Jill Lepore explores the question "Why is American history so murderous?" Fascinating stuff. Here's her comparison (based on information in several books reviewed together) of US homicide rates with European nations:
  In Europe, homicide rates, conventionally represented as the number of murder victims' [...]
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  Posted: November 13, 2009, 8:18am EST
  

• 'Constables Gone Wild'

  The title of this post is the headline to a Dallas News editorial about evidence that two Dallas constables misled investigators when they claimed not to have contracts with a particular towing company. An attorney for the towing company was able to produce the contracts with the constables' own' [...]
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  Posted: November 13, 2009, 7:21am EST
  

• Petty cash to informants: Routine investigative technique or inducement to perjury?

  One of the ways I keep Grits a (relatively) manageable project is by remaining geographically limited, so I haven't followed in more than a cursory fashion the efforts by Illinois prosecutors to legally harass Northwestern University students working with that university's innocence clinic. But given this blog's interest in' [...]
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  Posted: November 12, 2009, 6:13pm EST
  

• Restorative Justice in Schools

  Via The Crime Report:
  A new publication by the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority provides suggestions for how schools can address behavioral issues and rule-breaking from a restorative, rather than punitive, standpoint. “Implementing Restorative Justice: A Guide for Schools,” finds that “there is no evidence that zero tolerance [...]
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  Posted: November 12, 2009, 7:06am EST
  

• 'Unanalyzed evidence held by law enforcement agencies'

  As questions continue to arise about the quality of modern forensic sciences, the National Institute of Justice in a new report (pdf) about "Unanalyzed evidence held by law enforcement agencies" raises questions about when and how forensics are used. According to the NIJ executive summary:

  More than 2,000 state [...]

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  Posted: November 11, 2009, 3:13pm EST
  

• Defiant John Bradley rebuffed on secrecy pleas

  Blogs play different roles in different types of news stories. Frequently Grits covers topics that receive very little attention from the press, in which case simply reporting what goes on provides a meaningful service. But some stories, like Gov. Rick Perry's replacement of the Texas' Forensic Science Commission chairman with [...]
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  Posted: November 11, 2009, 1:21pm EST
  

• When bringing Christianity into the jury box, bring all of it

  I've ignored until now a Texas case receiving international notoriety in which jurors consulted some of the more punitive verses in the Christian Bible during deliberations in a death penalty case. It's been getting wide play elsewhere because it hits on two culture-war touchstones - the death penalty and church-state [...]
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  Posted: November 11, 2009, 8:24am EST
  

• Reducing forensic backlogs source of rare agreement at hearing

  At the Texas Senate Criminal Justice Committee hearing today on the Forensic Science Commission, the only reform that new commission chair John Bradley truly sounded enthusiastic about was reducing backlogs at crime labs, so I was interested to see this report out today from CBS News analyzing backlogs in [...]
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  Posted: November 10, 2009, 7:57pm EST
  

• Secrecy at forensic commission not justified based on weak investigative powers

  I'm headed up to the capitol a little later this morning to watch the Texas Senate Criminal Justice Committee hearing on the Forensic Science Commission at 10 a.m., where new commission chairman and Williamson County DA John Bradley will explain to the committee why he shut down all' [...]
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  Posted: November 10, 2009, 8:26am EST
  

• Texas Association of Counties says constables still needed

  Here's a dissenting institutional view on constables, received via email:
  Scott Henson
  Grits for Breakfast
  
  Sent by e-mail
  
  Dear Scott:
  
  Consider this an old-fashioned letter to the editor, regarding your recent on-line question about the abolition of constables in Texas. You should first understand that Texas’ 254' [...]
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  Posted: November 09, 2009, 2:25pm EST
  

• Hampton challenging Keasler for CCA slot in 2010

  Keith Hampton, a veteran appellate lawyer and chair of the legislative committee for the Texas Criminal Defense Laywers Association, has announced his candidacy for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, lining up to run against Michael Keasler. Here's Hampton's campaign website.
  
  I've had my differences with Keith but' [...]
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  Posted: November 09, 2009, 2:03pm EST
  

• Death penalty deterrent evanescent, symbolic

  A couple of readers asked my opinion of a column over the weekend in the Houston Chronicle by Rick Casey ("A murder mystery by the numbers," Nov. 7) analyzing estimates of the death penalty's deterrence value. Here's the bottom line regarding the results of the latest, greatest academic study [...]
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  Posted: November 09, 2009, 11:11am EST