Roundup: Lightning strikes, news flashes, and principle ducks for cover

A few odds and ends for your holiday reading pleasure:

When lightning strikes
Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley told the Dallas News that the Michael Morton DNA test results hit him like a "lightning bolt." Though they didn't invoke the road to Damascus, they did say the Williamson County DA now "testifies to a conversion." Declaring, “We need to leave the window open a little bit more,” Bradley says he hopes speaking up will influence how other prosecutors approach post-conviction DNA cases: “I finally decided that it was more important that I overcome my concerns about people’s opinions about my shifting of my personal opinions, because I saw that it has public value in helping other prosecutors, I hope, adjust their point of view.” Abel Reyna, are you listening?

Police, distracted driving and civil liability
Austin PD accounts for the largest proportion of payouts in civil suits of any city-owned department in the capital, including the electric utility and the airport. Chief Art Acevedo blamed distracted driving on a significant number of settlements related to automobile accidents involving police officers: “They're in the patrol car environment where there is a lot of things going on. You've got the computer going on, you've got the radio going on. They're looking where they're at. They're looking for violations, they're looking for risks.”

Spillover violence documented in Valley
Law enforcement reports the first, documented example of "spillover" cartel violence in the Rio Grande Valley, if you don't count gang members from the Texas side spilling over to commit violence in Mexico. This event is an important marker, but still a far cry from the absurdist, politicized claims made recently on behalf of Texas DPS and the Ag Department.

Drug violence in Puerto Rico
Lots of interesting detail in this story about which I wasn't aware; you never hear PR violence discussed in any of the "spillover" discussions.

News flash: Prison-industrial complex exists
Conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg offers a "small apology" to his ideological foes, admitting to the existence of "a prison-industrial complex" he'd "long thought" didn't exist. He sees it as dominated by public-employees unions rather than private-prison companies and other such corporate-welfare recipients. For my part, I consider both special interests to be partially culpable for the situation, and many other elements besides. These are not mutually exclusive factors.

MSM scorns principle in criminal-justice debates
A frequent theme on this blog is that, despite how they're framed in the mainstream media, criminal-justice issues seldom fall along partisan nor strictly ideological lines. Nowhere can that be seen more clearly than in the LA Times headline, "Criminal defendants find an unlikely friend in Justice Scalia." The story by David Savage is fairly typical of modern MSM criminal-justice coverage, demonstrating many of its shortcomings all in one place. Notice how, for example, a judgment in favor of the defense (e.g., on Confrontation Clause issues) makes US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia a "friend" to criminals. All nuance is lost: You're either for criminals or against them, though bizarrely the headline complains of Scalia, "For him, there are no shades of gray." That's the pot calling the kettle black, indeed. The newspaper quotes a law professor explaining, "This is not a left-right split. This is principle versus pragmatism" (though Grits would argue that some of Scalia's most controversial assertions on criminal justice have been profoundly pragmatic). But the issue is presented as though judges basing decisions on principle - as opposed to the convenience of government bureaucrats or the structural biases of the press - is somehow a bad thing. Perhaps, in light of the string of modern DNA exonerations and the lessons learned by John Bradley mentioned above in the top item, 21st-century journalists shouldn't be so quick to dismiss every effort to instill fairness or adhere to principle in the justice system as somehow coddling criminals? Just a thought.