Committee to consider recording interrogations, regulating graffiti, Texas' insane insanity defense and more

Let's point out a few items of interest on the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence agenda tomorrow.

Record police interrogations
Rep. Terry Canales has a bill on the agenda, HB 1096, which would require police to record custodial interrogations in serious offenses. This is one of a handful of recommendation from the Tim Cole Advisory Panel on Wrongful Convictions that has not yet been implemented. (See this Grits post and the links at the bottom for more background.)

Regulating graff: Two approaches
There are a pair of graffiti-related bills up on Tuesday. One, HB 36 by Menendez, is a straight up enhancement bill as though harsher penalties have ever reduced graffiti in the past. (Naturally, the LBB assumes locking up more people for longer periods will cost no additional tax dollars). The other graffiti bill, HB 3494, is a much more interesting piece of legislation. It would raise the damage thresholds for graffiti punishments and establish a pretrial diversion program requiring community service, restitution, and, with the consent of the property owner, that the defendant clean up the sites they'd despoiled. Menendez's bill amounts to pointless grandstanding that wouldn't affect graffiti levels at all. Moody's bill is on the right track - making both the punishments and penalty categories fit the crime while focusing on restitution and cleanup. But the state should also offer up free spots - say on highway pillars, drainage ditches, concrete berms and the backs of street signs - where graffiti would be allowed. Like other forms of expression, it's appropriate to regulate the time, place and manner but a complete ban is as wrong-headed as it is unenforceable.

Wiping records clean for low-level alcohol and drug offenders
Rep. Alma Allen has proposed HB 1070 which would allow expunction for certain alcohol and drug offenses upon successful completion of probation. I'm for just about anything that facilitates employment upon reentry and provides incentives for good behavior instead of only punishing probationers' missteps.

Reduce penalties for petty drug crimes
Rep. Sylvester Turner has a bill on the dock (HB 2044) which would reduce penalties for less than a gram drug possession from a state jail felony to a Class A misdemeanor, similar to legislation heard last week in this committee by state Rep. Senfronia Thompson (see this discussion). I'm a bit surprised the bill wasn't heard along with Thompson's legislation.

Banning (more) native plants
Rep. Doc Anderson has yet again proposed legislation (HB 124) to ban salvia divinorum, a native Texas plant with moderate psychedelic properties which has emerged as a (mostly unsatisfactory) substitute for more common, illicit substances, but with sickening side effects. Anderson and state Sen. Craig Estes have been trying to pass this same bill since 2007, but with surprisingly little success.

The insanity of Texas insanity defense
Rep. Garnet Coleman will present HB 3765 revisiting the insanity defense in light of difficult and terrible cases like that of Andre Thomas who murdered his family then ripped his own eyes out, eating one of them. If the insanity defense doesn't cover Mr. Thomas' situation then IMO the law is just as deranged as he is. See prior, related Grits coverage. Society has only just begun to think honestly about the implications of major schizophrena and people who hear voices - until now medication or incarceration have been the only two approaches and neither "solution" amounts to much more than a band aid. There are a small minority of dangerous mentally ill people who need to be institutionalized for their own protection and others'. But most people who hear voices will never succumb to such extreme impulses and for those who do there are almost always warning signs. The worst-case scenario arises with people like Thomas who fall through the cracks, never receive meaningful treatment, then are subjected to the harshest possible punishments when tragedy occurs, an outcome that satisfies no justifiable punishment goal save vengeance. (See Brandi Grissom's six-part series at the Texas Tribune on the Andre Thomas case.) Whether or not Coleman's bill provides a meaningful solution, there must be a better way to handle such cases than the way we do things now.

Enhancements here, there and yon
As usual in this committee, the bulk of the rest of the bills involve enhancements, not just for graffiti and salvia but there are also a pair of bills boosting penalties for hit-and-runs, one boosting the charge for assaulting emergency room personnel, another mandating LWOP for repeat sex offenders and restricting their employment (as though that's necessary!), another reducing access to probation for burglary with intent to commit a sex offense and one punishing registered sex offenders for misrepresenting their identity. Honestly, if this committee decided for just a session not to hear any bills creating new crimes or "enhancing" penalties, it would surely reduce their workload by more than half.