New Year Open Thread

So long, 2008: At a minimum you gave us no shortage of blogging material and for that I am grateful.

I'm going to take another day off and climb back into the blogging saddle tomorrow. Until then, use this as an open thread to discuss the most important criminal justice topics of the past year. Here's my ad hoc stab at a top ten list of the year's most important criminal justice stories:

1. Historic malfeasance: The Charles Dean Hood case exposed a judge-DA tryst from a 1991 capital murder trial. The judge, Verla Sue Holland, was later appointed by Gov. Bush to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
   
2. The cartel wars in Juarez (El Paso's sister city) claimed more than 1,500 victims while corruption increased on the US side and a Texas Sheriff who received millions in drug-war grants was discovered on a cartel's payroll.
   
3. The Great Eldorado Polygamist Roundup
4. TYC Turmoil: Conservators come and go, then finally a new commissioner
   
5. Harris County DA Chuck Rosenthal's unlikely fall from grace
6. Commissary corruption among Sheriffs
7. Prison staff shortages force closure of wings on two units and contribute to contraband smuggling, including more than 20 different cell phones found on death row
8. Hurricane Ike destroyed Galveston including the state's main prison hospital which has not been re-opened. UTMB, which ran the hospital, laid off thousands of employees.
9. DNA-based exonerations continue in Dallas and elsewhere, though the Innocence Project of Texas which provided attorneys in many of these cases was hit hard in the pocketbook by Wall Street fraud.
10. Big cities going D: Harris County judicial races flip Democratic following a similar shift in Dallas County in 2006, which solidified this year with Sheriff Lupe Valdez's re-election.

The order here is decidedly arbitrary, but those, I think are certainly among the biggest Texas criminal justice stories from 2008. Let me know what you think is missing from the list.

Also, what will be the big issues in 2009? A couple of big ones at the Legislature will surely be:

• The Sunset Commission's proposal to merge TYC and the Juvenile Probation Commission
• Prison security: Contraband smuggling, staffing shortages and guard pay.

Perhaps readers can suggest other important issues and trends to watch.

I'm spending the rest of the day with family and friends, so y'all talk among yourselves, thanks for stopping by, and have a happy and fulfilling New Year.

RELATED: See the Austin Chronicle's top ten public safety stories.