There IS Life Outside the Lege!

Obviously I've been awfully focused on the Texas Legislature, and will return to that focus shortly, but looking around at the press this morning I notice quite a few stories that might normally turn into full-blown Grits blog posts if our 181 friends at the capitol weren't so busy. So I thought I'd at least point some of those stories out:

• Just five? Kerry Max Cook, an innocent man who spent 22 years on Texas' death row before DNA evidence exonerated him, spoke at a UT Law School symposium this week and said there are five principle flaws with the American justice system. Read what they are. I wish I'd know about the event or I might have attended.
  

• Guns? What guns? Doh! The Nueces County Sheriff's Department has lost 48 firearms, including rifles, shotguns and handguns, reports the Corpus Christi Caller Times. They've now been officially reported stolen to a national FBI database.

• Jailcam catches brutal guards. In Beaumont two deputies were suspended after a videotape caught them beating an inmate while he was handcuffed. "This assault shows to be unprovoked ... and not in defense of any unjust action attempted by (the inmate)," an affidavit said.

• Implementing the dumbest idea in the history of the nation-state. The first section of the proposed border fence will be built on 2.5 miles on each side of eight bridges in the Rio Grande Valley, but permission has not been garnered from landowners and eminent domain may be necessary to make it possible. "Landowners and others along the border have complained that it will do little to control immigration and will cut off water access for people, agriculture, livestock and wildlife along the border." Said an astute landowner, ''You're going to have a fence, you're going to have a locked gate. Who's going to have the key?'' I've said it before - the United States must be the first nation in the world stupid enough to build a fence along a major river and leave the river on the other side!

• Dallas Jail still bad for your health. Kevin Krause at the Dallas News has a feature profiling two cases at the Dallas jail where poor access to healthcare has left inmates fighting for their lives.

• TDEX not the only secret database. The Governor's TDEX database has gotten a lot of media lately, but the folks at Wired remind us that there are a lot of databases and watch lists where one might be included without their knowledge.

• A database I can support. UT Austin's Tarlton Law Library has begun to compile what it's calling an Actual Innocence Awareness database that includes links and references on topics from eyewitness identification to jailhouse informants, false confessions, and police and prosecutor misconduct. See what they've got available already.