Grits for Breakfast

• Report: Bexar probation department poorly managed

  A staffer for the Bexar County Judge forwarded me a power-point presentation (pdf) from a new report by Dr. Tony Fabelo at the Council on State Government's Justice Center analyzing the Bexar County probation department. I thought I'd run through a few highlights before Fabelo makes a formal [...]
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  Posted: December 07, 2009, 10:46am EST
  

• DNA could solve burglaries if crime labs were bigger, better, more trustworthy

  DNA evidence is still mostly used in violent crimes, and even for that purpose crime labs have large backlogs. San Antonio, for example, has more than 5,000 untested rape kits in storage regarding unsolved sexual assaults. But DNA potentially could be used in many other types of offenses. [...]
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  Posted: December 07, 2009, 9:27am EST
  

• Los Zetas investing drug profits in legitimate businesses

  Ever since the original founders of Los Zetas were trained by US Special Forces personnel at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, GA, they've been upping the ante and redefining the very model of a modern major drug cartel. Reports Alfredo Corchado of the Dallas News ("Mexico's" [...]
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  Posted: December 06, 2009, 8:13am EST
  

• Revocations down, crime down, county caseloads up after probation reform legislation

  Texas has received a lot of credit recently in the national press for efforts to reduce incarceration rates and stave off new prison spending. Here's an update describing which parts of those reforms are doing the most to reduce incarceration pressures, as well as where [...]
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  Posted: December 05, 2009, 9:40am EST
  

• Cold weather odds and ends

  Here are a number of recent stories that deserve Grits readers attention as we all hunker down and wait for the cold weather to blow in:
  
  Fire and Innocence
  At the Texas Observer, read David Mann's essay on arson, innocence, and 72-year old, Cambridge educated arson expert Gerald [...]
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  Posted: December 04, 2009, 8:26am EST
  

• Test possible innocence cases among Bexar DNA cache

  I'd neglected to mention a remarkable story out of San Antonio last month ("SAPD to review previously untested rape kits," Express-News, Nov. 17), with the discovery of thousands of untested rape kits in unsolved cases which were retained but never tested:
  

  The San Antonio Police Department announced Monday it' [...]

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  Posted: December 03, 2009, 4:53pm EST
  

• Juvie diversion funds rolling out

  The Houston Chronicle recently published an early update on how county juvenile probation departments are spending new diversion money aimed at keeping more youthful offenders out of the Texas Youth Commission ("Breaking the cycle of youth crime," Nov. 28):
  

  State lawmakers this year approved $50 million over the next [...]

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  Posted: December 03, 2009, 12:29pm EST
  

• Craig Watkins talks innocence with Stephen Colbert

  Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins got some pretty sweet national press last night as a guest on Comedy Central's Colbert Report. He was there to brag on his office's Conviction Integrity Unit and their work getting innocent people out of prison. Here's the video (prefaced by a short ad) and [...]
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  Posted: December 03, 2009, 11:16am EST
  

• Houston fingerprint lab plagued with errors, two-year backlog

  Stunning news this week out of Houston PD about errors and possible misconduct in their fingerprint analysis unit: First an audit showed errors and problems in more than half of 548 randomly selected cases, now the Houston Chronicle is reporting that the fingerprint unit is the focus of [...]
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  Posted: December 03, 2009, 9:19am EST
  

• Remembering Timothy Cole

  Timothy Cole's half-brother Cory Session had an op ed in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram yesterday on the 10th anniversary of his sibling's death. Timothy was falsely convicted of a rape based on victim eyewitness testimony, but DNA evidence (and the real perpetrator's confession) later proved his innocence - unfortunately [...]
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  Posted: December 02, 2009, 5:04pm EST
  

• Parole Board: Texas created 59 new felonies this year

  According to the "Offense Severity List" from the Board of Pardons and Parole, as a result of new laws passed by the 81st legislature, Texas now has 2,383 separate felonies on the books - an increase of 59 compared to the 2,324 they counted in 2007. (See the [...]
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  Posted: December 02, 2009, 11:58am EST
  

• 'To really fight crime, raise number of investigators'

  The title of this post is the headline of a Nov. 28 op-ed in the Houston Chronicle by Bill King argued that spending more on patrol officers won't reduce crime but redeploying them from patrol to investigations might:
  there is one recurring theme I have encountered in my research' [...]
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  Posted: December 02, 2009, 11:33am EST
  

• Sprint: 50 million customers, 8 million law enforcement requests for GPS data last year

  Check out this must-read blog post from a grad student out of Indiana University about law enforcement's growing, everyday use of personal data held by companies and the disturbing lack of documentation that makes it all hard to track. The author demonstrates convincingly that "publicly available law enforcement surveillance" [...]
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  Posted: December 02, 2009, 10:34am EST
  

• Whitmire: Latest escape shows TDCJ needs 'shakeup' over contraband

  After spending the last year trying to get the Texas prison system to reduce contraband flows, I'll bet state Sen. John Whitmire's head nearly exploded when he learned of yesterday's escape using a gun smuggled to an inmate. In an article by Peggy O'Hare in the Houston Chronicle, he [...]
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  Posted: December 02, 2009, 8:24am EST
  

• Will Dems put up 2010 CCA candidates?

  Kirsten Gray of the Texas Democratic Party reminds me that "The candidate filing period starts this Thursday, Dec. 3rd and ends Jan. 4th, 2010," which makes me wonder if any Democrats besides Keith Hampton will sign up to run for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals? I'd like to' [...]
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  Posted: December 01, 2009, 5:23pm EST
  

• Schiraldi tapped to run NYC probation

  Congrats to Vincent Schiraldi, the juvie probation chief in Washington D.C. who was just tapped to head the probation department in New York City. See this Washington Post story on his new job.
  
  I got to know Vinnie a little when he ran the Justice Policy Institute out [...]
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  Posted: December 01, 2009, 2:49pm EST
  

• CCA calls David Dow on carpet for tardy capital habeas submissions

  Tomorrow attorney David Dow and the Texas Defender Service, a noprofit which handles post-conviction appeals in death penalty litigation, will be called to account at the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for filing a habeas brief for a death-row defendant past the 48-hour-before-execution deadline. The new rule was [...]
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  Posted: December 01, 2009, 1:48pm EST
  

• More on the fallibility of eyewitness testimony

  Mark Pryor over at the new blog DA Confidential supplies this example from personal experience demonstrating the fallibility of eyewitness testimony and the risks of making a case based primarily on eyewitness evidence:
  In a recent trial, our main witness was a self-confessed drug addict, a man aged about [...]
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  Posted: December 01, 2009, 11:59am EST
  

• How Cameron County's entrepreneurial jail scheme costs taxpayers

  I've written before about the folly of counties building extra jail space in hopes of engaging in entrepreneurial incarceration, either taking in federal prisoners or inmates from other counties. The blog Texas Prison Bidness points out a terrific example out of Cameron County at the state's southeastern tip of [...]
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  Posted: December 01, 2009, 9:31am EST
  

• 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, 6:27pm 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, 3:26pm 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, 1:34pm 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, 8:38am 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, 11:26am 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, 9:33am 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, 11:42am 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, 10:15am 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, 10:55am 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, 8:58am 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, 3:56pm 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, 1:24pm 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, 9:22am 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, 9:03am 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, 7:53am 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, 7:01am 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, 6:08pm 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, 11:58am 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, 9:42am 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, 9:43am 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, 7:52am 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, 9:43am 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, 7:44am 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, 9:52am 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, 7:08am 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, 6:11am 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, 5:09pm 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, 4:53pm 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, 12:56pm 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, 1:19pm 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, 11:35am 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, 9:44am 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, 10:05am 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, 7:21am 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, 10:57am 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, 10:41am 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, 10:12am 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, 9:11am 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, 7:18am 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, 6:21am 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, 5:13pm 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, 6:06am 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, 2:13pm 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, 12:21pm 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, 7:24am 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, 6:57pm 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, 7:26am 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, 1:25pm 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, 1:03pm 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, 10:11am EST
  

• Most Grits readers say get rid of constables

  Last week Grits posed this question in a reader poll: "Does Texas still need constables in the 21st century? A whopping 67% of you said "No." Another 22% wanted to keep them and 9% weren't sure.
  
  Count me among those who believe constables should and ultimately will go the'" [...]
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  Posted: November 08, 2009, 3:41pm EST
  

• Stephen Colbert on prison privatization

  In case y'all missed it last week, here's Stephen Colbert's recent take on prison privatization:
  
  The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30cThe Word - The Green Milewww.colbertnation.comColbert Report Full EpisodesPolitical HumorU.S. Speedskating
  
  Just to have said it, the preposterous notion of' [...]
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  Posted: November 08, 2009, 7:16am EST
  

• Bradley seeks closed meetings, records for Forensic Science Commission

  I know, gentle readers, you will all be shocked to learn what Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley thinks Forensic Science Commission investigations should be secret and closed to the public. That suggestion tops the list of things he'll propose next week to the Texas Senate Criminal Justice Committee, according' [...]
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  Posted: November 06, 2009, 10:27am EST
  

• A "perverse" position on prosecutors fabricating evidence ... by the Obama Administration

  Wednesday the US Supreme Court held oral arguments on an important case regarding prosecutorial misconduct, where prosecutors sought absolute immunity when they fabricate evidence to frame a defendant if the information is used at trial.
  
  In looking at the transcript (pdf) from Pottawatamie County v. McGhee, it was [...]
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  Posted: November 06, 2009, 8:53am EST
  

• More detail on scent lineup case headed to Texas CCA

  A helpful reader points to a December 2007 article from the San Jacinto County Times about the case of Richard Lynn Winfrey, Sr., which was accepted this week by the Court of Criminal Appeals for purposes of evaluating scent lineup evidence. Here's the description of the case against' [...]
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  Posted: November 06, 2009, 6:29am EST
  

• Travis County jail expansion results in few new beds

  Travis County opened a massive new jail wing last week with 1,336 beds, though those will mostly replace so-called "variance" beds that the state Commission on Jail Standards previously authorized with temporary waivers to accommodate of jail overcrowding. (The daily newspaper didn't cover the story, though it got some play' [...]
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  Posted: November 05, 2009, 1:15pm EST
  

• Texas Court of Criminal Appeals will hear arguments on dog-scent evidence

  Thanks to an attentive commenter, I learned that just yesterday the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals agreed to hear a case out of San Jacinto County that calls into question the validity of dog scent lineups.
  

  09-0987 WINFREY, RICHARD LYNN, SR., SAN JACINTO, MURDER

  1. An important question implicating the [...]

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  Posted: November 05, 2009, 6:51am EST
  

• Reduce pretrial detention to stave off jail overcrowding

  I had a conversation with someone today at the Travis County Sheriff's Office who was surprised to learn that Travis County has one of the highest rates of jailed pretrial detainees among large counties, so I thought I'd gather up the relevant data for comparison.
  
  As described on this [...]
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  Posted: November 04, 2009, 4:26pm EST
  

• Prison Legal News sues TDCJ over book censorship

  I just received this press release via email:
  Prison Legal News – For Immediate Release
  
  November 4, 2009
  
  PUBLISHER SUES TEXAS DEPT. OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE FOR CENSORING BOOKS
  
  Corpus Christi, TX – Prison Legal News (PLN), a non-profit monthly publication that reports on criminal justice-related issues, filed [...]
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  Posted: November 04, 2009, 12:27pm EST
  

• Hump Day Roundup

  Here are several criminal-justice related items from the news that merit Grits readers' attention:
  Fort Worth may begin jury trials for red light camera tickets.TDCJ: Prisoner can't review books on sailing for pay.TYC employee accused of sex with 14-year old.Family says Sheriff shouldn't perform investigation of' [...]
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  Posted: November 04, 2009, 8:59am EST
  

• Ramshaw, Tribune tackle TYC mental illness discharges, restraint of disabled kids at school

  Yesterday I neglected to offer a bloggerly "Howdy" to our friends over at the just-launched Texas Tribune, but this morning Emily Ramshaw forces the new site onto our radar screen with coverage of TYC's policies regarding mental health discharge, focusing on a recent case in Tyler where a [...]
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  Posted: November 04, 2009, 7:14am EST
  

• More litigation, disapprobation for dog 'scent lineups'

  Yet another lawsuit will be filed today in federal court over false arrest and imprisonment based on dog "scent lineup" evidence from Fort Bend County Sheriff's Deputy Keith Pikett. Reports AP:
  

  Three men who spent months in jail after dogs linked their scents to evidence from crimes they did [...]

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  Posted: November 04, 2009, 6:42am EST
  

• Montgomery County spending juvie diversion funds on mental health

  I haven't heard much so far about how local juvenile probation departments are spending diversion money given them last spring by the Legislature to help keep kids out of the Texas Youth Commission, but here's a story out of Montgomery County ("New mental health program aimed at helping juveniles,"' [...]
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  Posted: November 03, 2009, 3:29pm EST
  

• Do prosecutors "hate new crimes"?

  Our pal Shannon Edmonds of the Texas District and County Attorneys Association forwards a link to this short law review article provocatively titled, "Why prosecutors hate new crimes" (pdf). Give it a read, the fellow makes an interesting argument - one I partially (but not entirely) agree with. I [...]
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  Posted: November 03, 2009, 2:42pm EST
  

• Should prostitutes be protected or prosecuted?

  Are prostitutes criminals or victims? Or might the correct answer be "both"? And if it's "both," what should be the relationship of law enforcement to workers in the sex trade - should they seek to prosecute or protect them? Those questions are raised by an interesting program established by the [...]
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  Posted: November 03, 2009, 9:25am EST
  

• Cross-examination by teleconference?

  Robert Guest at Dallas Criminal Defense Lawyer has a post on a case out of the Dallas court of appeals which approved remote testimony via teleconference in a capital murder trial (see the opinion) because a witness who lived in Chicago was pregnant. The witness claimed hers was [...]
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  Posted: November 03, 2009, 7:08am EST
  

• Prosecutorial hubris, entitlement on display in recent cases

  The National Law Journal published an op ed today by Bennett Gershman criticizing the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and Collin County prosecutors for using procedural excuses to avoid addressing egregious judicial and prosecutorial conduct in the Charles Dean Hood case, where the judge and prosecutor were engaged in [...]
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  Posted: November 02, 2009, 10:22am EST
  

• AG thwarting transparency on justice matters

  I'm incredibly disappointed at recent trends developing over at the Texas Attorney General's Open Records division. For the first several years after Greg Abbott became Texas AG, he was a staunch open government advocate - much better, frankly, than either John Cornyn or Dan Morales before him. Lately though, on' [...]
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  Posted: November 02, 2009, 8:41am EST
  

• Bizarro allegations against TYC Ombudsman center on contraband smuggling

  Many readers have asked what I think about the bizarre story regarding Texas Youth Commission Ombudman Catherine Evans, a former juvenile court judge from Dallas who is under fire for smuggling contraband - allegedly including weapons, cash, a cell phone, and prescription drugs - onto TYC [...]
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  Posted: November 01, 2009, 7:30am EST
  

• Harris County judges vote next week on creating new mental health court

  An editorial in the Houston Chronicle supporting creation of a Harris County mental health court mentions that on Wednesday, November 4: [Harris County] criminal district court judges will vote whether to approve a detailed plan for a new “mental-health court,” a program that promises to cut crime, take a [...]
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  Posted: October 31, 2009, 6:30pm EDT
  

• Prosecutorial Misconduct Roundup

  Here are several recent stories related to prosecutorial misconduct that merit Grits readers' attention:
  Joe Palazzolo, Main Justice: Justice Department Opposes Expanded Brady RuleRadley Balko, Reason: No Accountability: Why are bad prosecutors so rarely punished?Brian Rogers, Houston Chronicle: Harris County prosecutor accused of hiding evidenceChuck Lindell, Austin' [...]
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  Posted: October 30, 2009, 7:53am EDT
  

• Training tomorrows narcos on the US taxpayers' dime: Importing Plan Colombia to Mexico

  Seeing the USA Today story, "US training bolsters Mexico's war on drugs" (10/28), I couldn't help but think the headline writer perhaps failed to grasp the irony.
  

  Since July, a total of 81 U.S. law enforcement officers have come here on three-week shifts to teach such basic police skills' [...]

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  Posted: October 29, 2009, 12:36pm EDT
  

• Fort Worth seeks non-punitive alternatives on graffiti

  Fort Worth police have been fighting graffiti for years, but despite their best efforts, graff has exploded since 2005, reports the Star-Telegram. The "city cleaned up more graffiti last year than it has in the previous five years." The volume of graff simply outpaces law enforcement's ability to arrest [...]
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  Posted: October 29, 2009, 10:26am EDT
  

• Maggie Lee for Good: One day, one deed

  Today would have been Maggie Lee Henson's 13th birthday, and I still can hardly believe she won't see any more. At left, see a picture from her 12th birthday.
  
  Regular readers will recall that over the summer, my niece Maggie Lee was tragically killed' [...]
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  Posted: October 29, 2009, 9:02am EDT
  

• Media spin prevents flu vaccines for high-risk prisoners, cost taxpayers' $$$

  Headline writers had a field day this week touting the supposedly alarming notion that "Some Texas convicts may get H1N1 vaccines before you." To this I responded first with a yawn, then with a "Duh," then with a "so what?" But I've been surprised how widely the story has' [...]
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  Posted: October 28, 2009, 3:30pm EDT
  

• Charges against Yogurt Shop defendants dismissed

  One of the state's more notorious examples of apparent false confessions was finally resolved this afternoon when charges against defendants in Austin's Yogurt Shop murders were dismissed. This decision was long overdue, IMO. It was definitely past time to fish or cut bait on this one.
  
  The conviction [...]
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  Posted: October 28, 2009, 2:40pm EDT
  

• How many Dallas cops gave tickets to non-English speakers?

  I couldn't make this stuff up; from the Dallas News:
  Since 2007, at least 20 Dallas police officers from five patrol divisions have wrongly cited motorists for not speaking English, according to records.
  
  The number of officers tied to the tickets is greater than police initially estimated. And' [...]
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  Posted: October 27, 2009, 2:44pm EDT
  

• Does Texas need constables in the 21st century?

  Here's a pair of must-read articles from Ed Timms and Kevin Krause at the Dallas News on the evolving role of constables over the last 15 years and whether they've seen too much mission creep:
  Dallas County constables' growing ticketing said to boost safety - and county coffersWith [...]
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  Posted: October 27, 2009, 1:42pm EDT
  

• Did Todd Willingham confess or did Stacy Kuykendall lie?

  "We're not calling [Stacy] Kuykendall a liar," said the Dallas News editorial board, after she released a written statement to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram claiming Todd Willingham secretly confessed his guilt to her in her last visit with him on death row before he was executed.
  
  I' [...]
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  Posted: October 27, 2009, 11:53am EDT
  

• Grits to readers: Cut me some slack

  Before launching back into Grits' usual topics, I wanted to say a word about some comments and emails received over the last few days while I was away from the blog, particularly regarding three stories some people were offended I haven't covered yet: Possible criminal charges against the TYC Ombudsman, [...]
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  Posted: October 27, 2009, 8:32am EDT
  

• Traveling Day Open Thread

  I'm headed out of town today, so use this as an open thread to discuss whatever you want until I return in a couple of days. In the meantime, here are several recent items that merit Grits readers' attention:
  
  Free Standing Innocence
  Several good items are up at the [...]
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  Posted: October 23, 2009, 7:27am EDT