Friday, June 28, 2013

Looking back as dust settles on 83rd TX Legislature

A few retrospective criminal justice items now that the 83rd Texas Legislature has ended

TCJC Lege Wrap Up
See the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition's legislative wrap-up on all the criminal-justice topics that group was tracking.

TPPF: Prison closures mean TX on right track
So wrote Arlene Wohlgemuth in an essay that first appeared in the Austin Statesman.

Travis County to keep juvenile felons from state lockups
See a story by Brandi Grissom published both in the Texas Tribune and the New York Times on Travis County's experiment handling serious juvenile offenders in-house instead of sending them to the Texas Juvenile Justice Department. Legislation this session authorized the pilot, which the prosecutors' association is derisively calling the "Shadow TYC."

Bill on juvie capital sentences collateral damage in abortion debate
The bill creating options for sentencing 17-year old capital offenders died along with everything else in the abortion driven brouhaha on the final night of the session. The Texas Tribune rounded up all the casualties. Perry has called  another special session beginning July 1st on the same topics. Versions of the bill have been re-filed as SB 2 by Huffman, HB 4 by Kolkhorst and HB 7 by Moody.

Private Prison Roundup
Lots of good recent posts up over at Texas Prison Bidness, including a thirty-year retrospective on Corrections Corporation of America.

4 comments:

  1. In the terms of numbers, Harris County reached the status
    of the most productive conviction pipeline in the history of
    human race.

    1) Case A. Michael Peters, German, lifelong taxeater, was on the bench during
    John Holmes tenure as DA. Fat and ugly physical appearance,
    was characterized as "schmuck", lazy and unscrupulous. 60,000
    cases for 15 county judges any given year. Consequently, he
    figured he had to rubberstamp 4,000 cases a year, 16 criminal
    (!) cases a day (no trials generally) to be employed. He also
    had an option to quit because with such high caseload, minutes
    of consideration per case, it is statistically inevitable to
    convict innocents on daily basis. Nowhere, except being
    employed as judge, he could safely get high salary and wait
    until getting high pension. Despite the conflict of interest
    between his stable salary and perks, and impossibility to
    provide high standard of justice for innocents, he makes a
    dirty decision to stay and execute the following methods to
    move cases as swiftly as possible that is to make 'em plead as
    fast as possible:

    a1) Torture of innocents that included: up to a dozen of
    reschedules (each time strip search with opposite sex
    always present, chain-gang, butthole searches, denigrating
    treatment, insults, urine-smelling 25 square-feet-rooms,
    feces here and there, with a dozen of accused in each etc).
    a2) Punitive, and life-threatening or extreme conditions in
    jail for innocents: no natural light, one cell with
    self-declared murderers, and lifers. (This is by design
    of extreme conditions in cooperation with lifelong taxeater
    Thomas Thomas, the former sheriff, German).
    a3) Sensory deprivation. Maximizing harsh conditions, accused
    are chain-ganged to courts early at night leaving a few
    hours to sleep.
    b) Public defenders acting as prosecutors so innocents could
    not possibly trust that any justice is possible. "Plea
    barganing". Seconds, a minute, few minutes if lucky for a
    single communication with "public defender" who invariably
    accusative and sure that every innocent is guilty. Judge
    doesn't allow any decent defender to handle cases because
    they would be objectively unable to move cases (decent
    defenders seek truth that almost always requires much more
    time).
    c) Prosecutors don't see accused, so that "feelings" of
    prosecutor are protected from the suffering he or she
    imposes on innocent. The same is for the judge.
    d) Accused don't see judge neither, lucky might be able to
    exchange a few words with "public defender". The room--
    dirty old-painted walls with feces, where accused are
    placed--is filled with urine smells, stinking & dirty
    lavatory. These conditions are by design (as harsh as
    possible, "plead 'em fast").
    e) Zero physical evidence, nothing except blunt lies of
    sheriffs. Prosecutors act as crazy with creative lying
    as possible, leveraging offence to new and new highs so
    that the innocent must feel that he is risking
    being trapped by the system for the rest of his life
    while being factually innocent and having a relatively
    small misdemeanor charge initially. This is by far the
    most important criminal practice, threats and leveraging,
    used by prosecutors whom judge consciously selects. With
    such caseload, a prosecutor seeking truth would not be
    able to move cases.
    f) A wish for trial must mean that accused must stay in
    jail for the next 6-12 months, "judge" voluntarily
    dismisses any reasonable idea about constitutional
    protections such as speedy trial. Frequently, waiting
    time exceeds maximum possible penalty for an accused
    innocent. Then, prosecutor conveniently comes in and
    leverages accusations to the next level.

    End of the part IV of indictments.

    ReplyDelete
  2. In no other jurisdiction in Texas incarceration
    numbers match those in Harris County, Texas dwarfs other
    states, and the US, with its 25% of world incarcerated
    population, leaves behind the rest of the world, where
    incarceration rates are typically at least 10 times lower.

    1) What is the number of innocents that Harris County
    conviction pipeline outputs as convicts in misdemeanor and
    felony (non-capital) cases? While it's hard to think about,
    it is also certain that the minimum percentage can be
    obtained from the number of exonerations for the most serious
    crimes, where legal standards are higher. The number in Texas
    is approaching 10%.

    One estimate is that the percentage of innocents is at least
    30%, and at least 50% could have been cleared with strong
    defense, let's however take 3.3% as the minimum number that
    comes from exonerations in cases involving DNA.

    Former Judge Peters rubberstamped 4,000 cases a year, or
    40,000 for 10 years. With 3.3% at the very minimum, he convicted
    at least 1,333 innocents. When one 5,332 innocent lives affected
    by decisions of a judge who wanted to draw his paycheck,
    and who voluntarily kept his perception anomaly (criminal
    negligence) regarding basic constitutional human rights such
    as speedy trial, protections from torture, and right for just
    consideration.

    It means mostly he consciously wiped out their lives,
    irreversibly damaged the lives of their families in the most
    brutal ways. In some cases it resulted in deaths of family
    members.

    There were at least 1,333 single acts of serious crimes
    mindfully committed by former judge Michael Peters, deserving
    10 years of punishment at least per case. Consequently, he
    must be convicted and stay in prison doing manual work under
    close supervision for 13,333 years. All his accounts must be
    frozen, possession seized. He must pay at least $10M per
    case to his innocent victims that is $13 billion in total.

    2) The plea-bargain system is a relatively new invention
    of legal cabal that has radically increased--up to 20-50x--
    the production outputs of Harris County conviction pipeline.
    It works almost all the time against interests of innocents,
    but helps those who actually committed crimes.

    dges linked to bail companies.

    3) Harris County businesses affiliated with judicial system
    are masking the profits that come from bonding business. While
    misdemeanors generate $100M and felonies generate $100M at
    minimum, bonds posted, the "bank" does not report how much
    income comes from those where bond set at >$20,000. These
    cases evidently a special category for the number of bonds
    posted is 5,000 every year, this gives $100M at the very
    minimum, and at could be $1 billion.

    4) Operation Greylord was conducted in the 1980s in
    connection with corruption in the judicial system of Cook
    County (Chicago jurisdiction). A total of 92 people were
    indicted, including 17 judges, 48 lawyers, ten deputy sheriffs,
    eight policemen, eight court officials, and a state legislator.
    Out of the 17 judges indicted in the trials, 15 judges were
    convicted, and sentenced to prison terms.

    End of the part V of indictments.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Where can I find all part of the post on indictments in Harris County?

    ReplyDelete
  4. The Anon. posting the above info regarding Harris County is 100% spot on. Some might say it has nothing to do with the posting. While that could be true at first glimps, it hasn't stopped Anons from posting off topic shit or others from commenting about it with some even chimming in about spelling and grammer under nicknames.

    I chose to read it all (you don't have to) and can promise you that it has everything to do with Texas and the Texas Legislature and the outline goes to show that 'had' they addressed the points listed 'decades' ago, we wouldn't be seeing the same ol dusty crap settle in 2013. Two years from now, we'll rinse & repeat.

    I can also tell you that without a doubt, he or she has deffinately been there and done that. I hope to see this Anon's work published in future postings here regarding (on topic issues) the state of Texas's ass-hole aka: Harris County.

    ReplyDelete