Capital cases called into question

Allegations of police and prosecutor misconduct highlight a pair of capital cases that were the subject of recent high-profile MSM coverage.

First, consider the latest appeal of Linda Carty, who was "convicted of plotting the murder of her neighbor, Joana Rodriguez, in order to steal Rodriguez's newborn baby in 2001." Reported the Houston Chronicle (Feb. 13), "Her previous appeals have all failed - despite international protests over the fact that her Harris County-appointed attorneys spent only two weeks preparing for her capital trial." However, Carty:

gained support for a new appeal from two unlikely sources: the DEA agent for whom she was once a confidential informant and a star prosecution witness who has now recanted.

In affidavits separately supplied to Carty's current defense team in 2014, the agent and two of Carty's co-defendants allege that Harris County prosecutors crossed ethical boundaries and threatened them to ensure Carty's conviction.

Retired DEA Special Agent Charles Mathis, in his affidavit, specifically accused Connie Spence, the lead prosecutor on the case, with threatening to cross-examine him in open court about "an invented affair that I was supposed to have had with Linda." Mathis insists that allegation was false, but worried that it could have clouded his law enforcement career if Spence had carried out her threat in a capital murder trial that generated considerable publicity.

See Mathis' affidavit. Further, reported the Chron's Lise Olsen:

The affidavits from two of Carty's co-defendants accuse Spence and another prosecutor of threatening them with a death sentence and of feeding them stories designed to "nail" Carty.

The allegations of prosecutorial misconduct have been presented as "new evidence" in support of Carty's effort to win a hearing, a request now pending in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals that was filed by Michael Goldberg, a Baker Botts civil attorney who has stuck with the case for more than a decade pro bono.

Pretty explosive stuff, if it can be proven. And harder to discredit Carty's DEA handler than some jailhouse snitch. Definitely one to watch.

In other capital news, investigators on a true crime TV show this week announced they believe Rodney Reed, a Bastrop man sentenced to die soon for the 1996 murder of Stacey Stites, was falsely convicted. Reported the SA Express-News (Feb. 18):

The TV investigators found that the evidence points blame toward Stites’ fiancée at the time, Jimmy Fennell Jr., who provided a timeline of his whereabouts that at the time ruled him out as a suspect.

“For me, it’s obvious,” [retired NYPD detective sergeant Kevin] Gannon said. “As far as I’m concerned, the murderer is Jimmy Fennell… I can’t see it being anybody else.”

The investigators also sourced evidence that shows Fennell has a violent past, and that he is currently serving time in prison for kidnapping and sexually assaulting a woman while on duty and in uniform as a police officer.

See parts one and two of the A&E feature on Rodney Reed's case.

Video visitation in jails: Despicable new funding stream makes jails less safe

When video visitation was first introduced in county jails, Grits supported it. It was pitched as a supplement to face to face visitation, a way someone could communicate with a loved one (or client) from a distance when for whatever reason they couldn't come visit them in person. Proponents insisted face to face visitation would still be possible.

Now, that do-gooder pretense has been abandoned. Increasingly, county jails shifting to video visitation are eliminating face to face visits entirely - as is happening in Bastrop County this month and Travis County did last year - so a private vendor can charge families for the privilege of communicating with jail inmates. With 20/20 hindsight, it's clear I wasn't cynical enough, failing to foresee that counties and companies would seek to monetize families' visits with incarcerated loved ones the same way that they gouged them on phone calls before the FCC reined them in.

Here's a brief fact sheet on video visitation from the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition adapted from a longer report (pdf) they published last month along with the group Grassroots Leadership. (I'd linked to coverage from the Texas Observer when the report first came out, but apparently not the underlying document.) Check out TCJC's observations concerning Travis County's video visitation program below the jump.