Things to like about Rick Perry for a criminal justice reformer

Since Dave Jennings didn't like my commentary on Rick Perry and the death penalty, let me identify some of the issues covered on this blog where Rick Perry got it right over the years:

2001: Signed bill requiring local law enforcement to gather racial profiling data, including information on stops and searches. Authority was later given to a state agency to gather them all and publish them online.

2001: Signed the Tulia legislation requiring corroboration for informants in undercover drug stings.

2001: Signed legislation creating Chapter 64 of the Code of Criminal Procedure that facilitated post-conviction DNA testing.

2001: Signed the Texas Fair Defense Act improving county indigent defense systems, establishing minimum qualifications for attorneys.

2001: Became the first governor to sign the DREAM Act allowing children of illegal immigrants to attend college at in-state rates.

2003: Signed legislation mandating probation on the first offense for drug offenders caught with less than a gram of cocaine, heroin or other hard drugs - diverted 3,000 or more offenders from state jails annually.

2003: Issued pardons to 35 people convicted in the notorious "Tulia drug stings" and others from the Dallas fake drug scandal, contributing to a high water mark of 73 grants of clemency from Gov. Perry in 2003.

2005: Signed legislation to bring Tulia-style drug task forces under Department of Public Safety rules.

2005: Signed legislation establishing the Forensic Science Commission, requiring accreditation of state and local crime labs.

2006: De-funded dozens of regional narcotics task forces around the state, shifting federal block grant funds mostly to border security and diversion programming. Of the latter, a special emphasis was placed on drug courts and other specialty courts which grew in number from 7 to more than 70 statewide under Rick Perry, mostly launched with grant money from the governor's Criminal Justice Division.

2007: Signed widely praised, bipartisan probation reform legislation credited with abating the need for 17,000 new prison beds.

2007: Signed legislation allowing police officers to issue citations instead of making arrests for certain Class B and A misdemeanors, including marijuana possession.

2009: Signed the nation's most generous compensation package for exonerees: $80,000 per year incarcerated in a lump sum and a like amount distributed via a lifetime annuity.

2009: Signed into law a requirement for corroboration of jailhouse informants, presaging California's much-more publicized decision to do so this year.

2009: Vetoed legislation allowing seizure of children by CPS without notifying parents, a bill which was an overreaction to the fiasco surrounding the Great Eldorado Polygamist Roundup.

2010: Issued a posthumous pardon for Timothy Cole, who died in prison of an asthma attack after a false conviction later disproven by DNA.

2011: Signed legislation requiring local police departments to develop policies on eyewitness identification based on best practices; mandates promulgation of a (forthcoming) model policy on eyewitness IDs.

2011: Signed legislation limiting objections prosecutors could make to post-conviction DNA testing under Chapter 64.

2011: Signed a budget closing an adult prison unit for the first time in the state's history, as well as three youth prisons in a consolidation of state juvenile justice systems (probation, prison and parole) into a single new department, an effort growing out of bipartisan reforms.

That said, there are many counterexamples, notably on Fourth Amendment topics. Until his endorsement this summer of a bill to limit TSA groping and his veto of a texting-while-driving ban in June, Governor Perry had been notably hostile toward legislation to limit unnecessary searches and seizures - especially at traffic stops. In 2001, just months after Perry's ascension to Governor, the US Supreme Court ruled in Atwater v. Lago Vista that Texas law-enforcement officers could arrest people alleged to have committed only Class C misdemeanors, which are fine-only offenses for which jail time is not even a possible punishment. In response, that spring the Legislature approved legislation banning arrests for most Class C misdemeanors, but Gov. Perry vetoed it. The following session in 2003, a more moderate bill passed requiring police departments to have written policies on when their officers could arrest for Class C misdemeanors. Gov. Perry vetoed that bill, too. (Texas jails would be a lot less overcrowded today if he'd kept his pen in his pocket.)

Then in 2005, stinging from the Atwater vetoes, the legislature approved a bill to require departments to have written policies regarding when and how consent searches at traffic stops would be performed, a bill which the Governor also promptly vetoed. The following session, Perry's renewed veto threat kept a similar bill from even getting a hearing, though several dozen departments statewide enacted policies of their own accord.

There are plenty of other areas where I differ with the Governor: He vetoed an earlier round of probation reform in 2005 before supporting similar legislation in 2007. I consider most of his so-called "border security" pork to have been a big waste. And Perry's clemency record borders on pitiful. (Naturally, President Obama's isn't any better.)

And of course, Perry's appointment of John Bradley to chair the Forensic Science Commission was its own sordid, bizarre episode, and I do personally believe the Governor's intent was to stall and/or kill off the Todd Willingham arson investigation. (Otherwise, it should be mentioned, Perry's other appointments to the FSC have been exemplary.)

So I don't agree with Perry on every subject, by a longshot, and he's probably used the threat of the veto to scuttle as much good legislation as actually passed during his time in office. But Perry's record on criminal justice is more moderate and complex than his fire breathing pronouncements on the death penalty might lead one to expect. If you're reading this from another state, there's a good chance your Governor can't match Perry's record on criminal-justice reform.

UPDATE: Grits should have added at least two more reform bills bearing Perry's signature: Eliminating life sentences for juveniles (maxxing them out at 40 years) in 2009, and creating the option of life without parole in capital murder cases in 2005. There's no denying the latter change has caused the number of new death sentences to plunge to modern lows (eight in FY '10). AND MORE: A right-wing site points out that Perry also signed Texas "hate crimes" law into being in 2001. I'd forgotten about that one. (Note: I personally opposed the hate crimes legislation, just as I personally disliked the bill creating the life without parole option, but most people would put those bills in the "reform" category.)

RELATED: From Brandi Grissom at the Texas Tribune, "Willingham aside, executions under Perry raise questions."