5th Circuit benchslapped! All about the money, Tx bodycam law a boon to bad cops, and other stories

Here are a few odds and ends which merit Grits' readers interest while my own is focused elsewhere:

Benchslapped!
The US Supreme Court issued a unanimous benchslapping to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Ayestas v. Davis for denying funds for a defense investigator to develop a record about the defendant's mental health and family history. Mandy Marzullo and I had discussed the case on the Reasonably Suspicious podcast in November.

All about the money
The Texas House Appropriations subcommittee that covers criminal-justice will hear testimony next month regarding two interim charges which may interest Grits readers: Adult and juvenile probation funding formulas, and whether to establish a fee-for-service model at DPS crime labs to cover the looming shortfall.

The former is important because adult probation directors are the most vocal and strident opponents of sentencing reform, fearing that reducing drug-possession charges to a misdemeanor, for example, would result in a large, immediate drop in revenue. So debates over their funding formula are central to whether the Legislature can muster the political will to continue decarceration reforms. As for the crime labs, the Legislature only gave them enough general revenue funding to cover part of the biennium, then the Governor eliminated new fees created to cover the rest of their budget. As of now, they're expected run out of money completely a few months (maybe we'll learn how many at this hearing) after the new fiscal year begins in September.

Texas bodycam law a boon to bad cops
Grits readers are well aware of Texas' crappy bodycam law, but now thanks to a new Attorney General opinion, even Republican District Attorneys are learning just how far this bad law goes to protect cops who cross the line. Dallas DA Faith Johnson had asked the Attorney General whether, under the law, an officer was entitled to review only his own bodycam footage, or all bodycam footage from the scene. After all, that would mean the officer had LOTS more information to which he would not have had access at the time before he's required to make a statement, creating a risk that he or she might embellish or alter their story to fit a narrative instead of just testifying truthfully. Indeed, in her letter Johnson feared that, even if an officer didn't alter his or her story, it would be difficult to combat a public perception that that had happened. But Paxton said officers get to see everything. See coverage from Michael Barajas at the Texas Observer.

Prosecutor's song choice may connote misconduct
Texas' first death sentence of 2018 involved a case from a small town featuring alleged prosecutor misconduct, including Brady violations and, at closing, playing "an emotional song from the hit 2012 movie Pitch Perfect in a bid to allude to evidence the judge had already ruled inadmissible." (Cue NFL hall-of-famer Chis Carter declaring, "C'mon, man!") Wrote Lauren Gill at InJustice Today, "in 2017, nearly half of the stays of execution granted in the state involved cases that 'may have been tainted by false or unreliable evidence,' according to the website The Open File, which tracks prosecutorial misconduct."

Police 'testilying'
When Grits stopped working professionally on police accountability topics after leaving the ACLU of Texas in the mid-aughts, my focus on mendacious informants and testilying police officers waned. But it remains a significant problem, and the New York Times recently published a feature on police perjury that's well worth reading. They're citing New York examples, but it's by no means only a New York problem.

Texas should act to improve criminal-justice data
Now that we have a different governor, isn't it time for Texas to consider the re-creation of the Criminal Justice Policy Council or something similar? The New York Times just published a feature on "missing" criminal justice data and how much policy is made on the topic flying more or less blind thanks to the lack of it. It's a fair point. After Rick Perry fired Tony Fabelo and line-item vetoed the Criminal Justice Policy Council back in 2003, Texas has had various agencies and actors pick up these functions piecemeal. But the left hand seldom sees what the right is doing and often it's left to outlets like this blog or various nonprofits to connect the dots. But that should be somebody's job in the government. Now (or rather, 2019) would be a good time to bring back that sort of capacity.