Un-tested drug evidence likely conceals false drug convictions in Hidalgo County

Houston PD has stopped using flawed field tests responsible for hundreds of false convictions, but in most other Texas jurisdictions, nobody has even checked similarly situated cases for possible errors. (Only five counties have Conviction Integrity Units in the District Attorney's office, and of those only Harris County's has focused on drug cases.)

That's why Grits was interested in this article from July 28 in the McAllen Monitor on the Texas Department of Public Safety's retraction of a legislatively mandated decision to begin charging for crime lab services. Hidalgo County Sheriff J.E. "Eddie" Guerra told the paper that "HCSO frequently uses field testing on suspected controlled substances and only sends samples to DPS for analysis when an individual does not plead guilty to possession."

That's exactly the circumstance under which they found so many false convictions in Harris County!

More than 300 false convictions based on faulty field tests have been uncovered so far in Houston, and nobody thinks that's all of them. The typical situation involved field tests falsely accusing someone, then that person couldn't make bail and so would plead guilty to a crime they didn't commit in order to get out of jail on a sentence of "time served."

The only reason these false convictions were discovered was that, eventually, the now-independent crime lab in Houston would test the evidence, anyway. But in Hidalgo County, that doesn't happen. The samples are never sent to DPS, meaning false convictions remain concealed.

Which brings us to the meat of the issue: In the interests of justice, somebody needs to be testing this evidence when it's going to be used to justify depriving someone of their liberty. Whether it's the state or the county that pays for it, who knows? If the government doesn't pay for testing, it should be done on a defense motion. And if nobody wants to pay, perhaps those cases shouldn't be prosecuted at all, plea bargain or no.

* * *

On a tangentially related topic, in the same article, state Rep. Oscar Longoria made the case for charging local governments for crime lab services, making him to my knowledge the only legislator from the budget conference committee to do so:

“You’re going to have an issue when everyone sends stuff (to the lab) — you’re naturally going to have a backlog,” Longoria said. 

DPS averaged 87,642 testing requests from 2,310 law enforcement agencies in 2013 and 2014, according to a January Legislative Budget Board Staff Report. 

“(The DPS lab) should really only be used for major crimes like murder, homicide and aggravated robbery,” Longoria said. “But when we send Class A and Class B misdemeanors, we’re overburdening the (lab) technicians.”

That's a provocative position to many in Texas law enforcement, some of whom feel particularly entitled to get these services for free, even though most larger jurisdictions pay for their own. Lubbock PD is the biggest DPS crime lab customer, if "customer" is the right word for somebody getting freebies.

South Texas corruption scandal deepens, prison warden arrested, state rep implicated

Yikes! A private prison warden has been arrested in South Texas as part of an ongoing federal corruption scandal for allegedly bribing a corrupt JP to reduce bond in a case where state Rep. Terry Canales was the defense attorney. How's that for a pie in the face the first week of session? From the McAllen Monitor:

Federal agents arrested a former East Hidalgo Detention Center warden who they say had ties to a bond reduction scheme involving convicted former Hidalgo County Justice of the Peace Ismael “Melo” Ochoa.

Homeland Security Investigations agents arrested Elberto Esiquiel Bravo on Friday, as part of an investigation that claims he was an accessory after the fact in a bond reduction scheme involving Ochoa and defense attorney Terry Canales, a Democratic state representative from Edinburg, federal authorities said Tuesday.

Canales last week said he was the defense attorney for Luis Martinez-Gallegos, who was named in the criminal complaint against Sylvia San Juanita Vasquez as a defendant who had his $2.5 million bond reduced to $50,000, which allowed him to be released from the Hidalgo County Jail and deported to Mexico, allowing him to escape prosecution in the U.S.

Criminal complaints against Bravo and Vasquez — the first defendant charged federally in the case last week — do not identify Canales as being involved in the scheme. Rather, the complaints only say that a “local attorney” received a bribe alongside Ochoa, leading to his bond reduction and deportation.

Canales denies all guilt and said he only filed a routine motion for bond reduction. (See the full story for more detail from the warden's indictment.) Maybe that's the case. As Grits opined in the comments over at Breitbart News, whose editors regard this as the only topic in the world on which they find Eric Holder and the Obama Administration 100% credible, this is a "Bad look, but if he's not been charged by now he may not be. The feds have been at this for years, I doubt they'd have moved on Bravo unless a) they really had the goods, or b) their purpose is to squeeze him to implicate Canales, in which case by implication they presently have no evidence against the state rep."

Who knows? The feds could move on Canales tomorrow or their case could never make, though it's clear he's been under intense investigation. Probably the only thing that may be safely assumed at the moment is that Canales, a second-term Democrat who last session served on the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee, enters the session politically wounded and personally distracted. The folks running that South Texas federal corruption probe are serious people who already sport quite a few politicians' heads on their trophy wall. Lord knows, guilty or innocent, if I were him I'd be nervous.

Roundup: Rogue cops and DWI news

Here are a few items that merit Grits readers' attention but haven't made it into independent posts this week:

Dallas settles another six-figure police lawsuit
This time for a no-knock raid resulting in excessive force. DPD thought the plaintiff was trafficking cocaine for a Mexican drug cartel, but all they found was .1 grams of cocaine and a sawed off shotgun; the defendant was never charged with a crime. This makes eleven six-figure lawsuits settled by DPD since 2011 totaling more than $6 million.

Ex-trooper, sheriff's deputy, constable candidate worked more than a decade as drug courier
In McAllen, "A former Texas state trooper and [Hidalgo County] sheriff's deputy pleaded guilty to money laundering Monday, two years after a traffic stop revealed more than $1 million in the trunk of his car." According to AP, "Robert "Bobby" Maldonado, who was running for constable in Hidalgo County at the time of his February 2012 arrest in Victoria County, spent about 12 years working as a courier bringing drug proceeds back to the Texas-Mexico border from the U.S. interior, according to prosecutors."

Man paralyzed after alleged excessive force by Round Rock PD
Reported the Killeen Daily Herald, "On March 21, a Florence resident was sitting in his car charging his phone when six Round Rock police officers tried to arrest him, according to court documents. Intoxicated and outside of Rick’s Cabaret in Round Rock, William Slade Sullivan, 44, now is a quadriplegic after the officers’ “extremely aggressive use of force,” one of his lawyers said."

'Fracking and the flow of drugs'
National Journal reports that the South Texas fracking boom has created new opportunities for drug smugglers thanks to massive, increased truck traffic north-bound from Mexico.

DWI dominates Harris County probation rolls
Reported the Houston Chronicle (May 11), "In 2013, about 13,000 people - half of all Harris County probationers - were on supervision for a misdemeanor driving-while-intoxicated conviction. Thousands more crowd county jails." Despite that, "A 2009 report found that 60 percent of traffic deaths in Harris County were alcohol related - twice the national average." Further, "Harris County has the highest rate of alcohol-related traffic fatalities among large counties in Texas and, some years, the nation." Grits believes that's because they're focused on an enforcement-only approach and have utterly failed to confront potential structural solutions to DWI that would get more bang for the buck.

The Fourth Amendment and mandatory blood draws
After the US Supreme Court imposed Fourth Amendment warrant requirements on mandatory blood draws in McNeely v. Missouri, writes Houston attorney Paul Kennedy, Texas' implied consent laws related to mandatory blood draws were called into question "when the Supreme Court overturned a conviction in Aviles v. State and sent the case back down to Texas for a new trial in line with the holding in McNeely." The San Antonio Court of Appeals "held that neither the implied consent law, the mandatory blood draw provision of the Transportation Code nor the dissipation of alcohol justified a warrantless blood draw without a showing that an established exception to the warrant requirement existed."

In April, Texas' Seventh Court of Appeals, agreed in a case called Sutherland v. State, which according to the prosecutors' association held that, "By vacating and remanding a case from the San Antonio court of appeals, Aviles v. State, 385 S.W.3d 110, the United States Supreme Court has rejected any position that would treat Transportation Code §724.012(b)(3)(B) as an exception to the Fourth Amendment. To the extent that §724.012(b)(3)(B) can be read to permit a warrantless seizure of a suspect’s blood without exigent circumstances or consent, it violates the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement." Though TDCAA notes that the legal status of Texas' mandatory blood draws remains in doubt and "the State may ultimately lose the implied-consent argument under application or extension of Missouri v. McNeely," they advised prosecutors, "Do not spend too much time worrying about this decision. The dispute will be decided soon enough by a higher court (probably the Court of Criminal Appeals), and that court will take longer than one paragraph to analyze the issue."

'Putting cameras on police officers is an idea whose time has come'
A Washington Post editorial with the same title as this subhed lays out the central conundrum facing policymakers who want to install bodycams as a standard part of police officer gear: "Some thorny details need to be clarified before D.C. police go ahead with a pilot project. Chief among them is how and when the cameras are activated. If individual officers are allowed complete discretion, the cameras will be of little use; but if the cameras are rolling for an officer’s entire shift, problems will arise involving privacy and good policing. (Some informants will get cold feet if they know they’re being filmed, and victims of some crimes may be inhibited from providing testimony.)"

Corrupt South Texas drug cops sentenced

A team of corrupt Hidalgo County deputies and the son of the former Hidalgo Sheriff were sentenced to federal prison this week, concluding a disgraceful episode in which they protected drug shipments, robbed drug couriers and engaged in other crimes under the color of law enforcement. Here's a notable excerpt from the McAllen Monitor (April 30):

The Panama Unit corruption scandal started and ended with Jonathan Treviño.

On Wednesday afternoon, U.S. District Judge Randy Crane sentenced former Mission police Investigator Jonathan Treviño — the youngest son of Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño, who himself resigned and pleaded guilty to laundering drug money— to 17 years behind bars.

The corruption scandal started with the Panama Unit, an anti-narcotics squad that went rogue, stealing drugs and cash from criminals. Investigators eventually indicted nine Hidalgo County lawmen and three drug traffickers connected with the Panama Unit.

“What you all have done is disgrace us,” Crane said, concluding the nearly five-hour hearing Wednesday on the ninth floor of Bentsen Tower. “And sentencing you to prison isn’t ever going to bring back the damage that has been done to our community, and what people think of the Sheriff’s Office and law enforcement.”

Jonathan Treviño, who turned 30 on Friday, received the harshest sentence. Assistant U.S. Attorney James Sturgis described him as the ringleader, saying he approved all the Panama Unit’s illegal activity and negotiated drug transactions through an intermediary. ...

While technically a partnership between the Mission Police Department and Sheriff’s Office, the only person assigned to the Panama Unit who didn’t ultimately report to Sheriff Treviño was Jonathan Treviño — the sheriff’s son. They gradually went bad, according to court testimony, with small thefts escalating to major narcotics transactions and armed robbery.

Federal agents started making arrests on Dec. 12, 2012, starting with Jonathan Treviño and three other lawmen. The Panama Unit investigation and a related corruption indictment eventually resulted in criminal cases against Sheriff Treviño, the county’s three-term sheriff; Cmdr. Jose Padilla, a top-ranking lawman who helped run the sheriff’s re-election campaigns; and Chief of Staff Pat Medina, the sheriff’s longtime assistant and campaign treasurer.

On Wednesday, the two-day Panama Unit sentencing hearing concluded where the investigation started — with Jonathan Treviño. Along with him, four other disgraced lawmen and a drug trafficker appeared Wednesday in federal court.

Crane handed down prison sentences ranging from 10 to 14 years.

Hidalgo Sheriff, associates plead guilty to money laundering, bribery related to drug trafficker

You know, the Sheriff's got his problems too.

He will surely take them out on you.

- Warren Zevon, Mohammed's Radio

Reported the Texas Tribune last week (April 17): "Former Hidalgo County Sheriff Guadalupe 'Lupe' Treviño, a nine-year veteran of the office and a fixture of the region’s Democratic Party, pleaded guilty on Monday to federal charges of money laundering. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas said the former lawman 'received cash contributions for his election campaign from alleged drug trafficker Tomas 'El Gallo' Gonzalez.'”

Over the weekend (April 20), the McAllen Monitor followed up with a discussion of the implications of the Sheriff's plea for related civil litigation alleging that a former political opponent of the Sheriff is entitled to receive twice the amount of the alleged bribes from Treviño as compensation:

[On] Jan. 30, former candidate for sheriff Robert Caples sued then-Sheriff Lupe Treviño alleging that in the 2012 election, the incumbent received cash donations from Weslaco drug trafficker Tomas “El Gallo” Gonzalez.

Gonzalez gave the cash to sheriff’s Cmdr. Jose Padilla, who took it to Treviño, who then consulted with District Attorney Rene Guerra and deposited the money into his campaign bank account, from which the sheriff wrote a check to Gonzalez that was never cashed, according to the lawsuit.

The allegations in the lawsuit mirror the facts of a case in which Treviño pleaded guilty to the charge of money laundering this past Monday before U.S. District Judge Micaela Alvarez.

Three days before Treviño’s plea, his chief of staff, Maria Patricia Medina, went before Chief U.S. District Judge Ricardo Hinojosa and entered a similar plea to the charge of failing to report a felony. During the hearing she admitted to doctoring the campaign reports.

Most recently Padilla went before U.S. District Judge Randy Crane and pleaded guilty to the charge of bribery, admitting to having taken approximately $90,000 from Gonzalez in exchange for law enforcement information and protection.

“He admitted in federal court to the same facts that are listed in our lawsuit,” said Javier Peña, the attorney representing Caples. “If you look at the Election Code, not reporting the contributions is a violation and my client is entitled to twice the amount of the violation.”

So the Hidalgo County Sheriff, his campaign manager and a top commander in the office have all pled guilty to bribery or money laundering charges related to laundering campaign contributions from an alleged drug runner, doctoring campaign reports to cover up the transactions. What a friggin' mess!

Overcrowding at S. Texas detention center forces juvie offenders to sleep on floor

In Hidalgo County, the recently expanded juvenile detention facility is already full, mostly with misdemeanor offenders, primarily because of paperwork delays by the local PD and the inexplicable failure of Judge Jesse Contreras to show up for work and stay there long enough to move his cases, reported the McAllen Monitor (Nov. 16). "During the past three months, The Monitor observed Contreras routinely arrive late or delay hearings for hours without explanation. On Aug. 30, Contreras suddenly announced a brief recess, left the building and didn’t return for about two hours." Judge Contreras says the only solution is to build more jail space, but clearly there's a lot more that can be done on his end to move cases along. These are issues of process, not capacity.

Return to Sender: McAllen scuttles private jail bid without opening it

The McAllen Monitor reported Monday ("McAllen City Commission rejects sole bid for private jail," Sept. 23) that the City of McAllen will not move forward with a private prison project hatched in secret with the collusion of the local newspaper to keep things mum. Once the public found out about it, opposition quickly grew and the city commission now has backed off. Reported the Monitor:

The City Commission effectively killed McAllen’s private jail project Monday night, unanimously voting to reject GEO Group’s proposal without opening the hefty FedEx box.

McAllen started soliciting proposals for a privately operated jail, which would hold inmates under the city’s contract with the U.S. Marshals Service, during July. Two months later, only Boca Raton, Fla.-based GEO Group replied.

Police Chief Victor Rodriguez advised against opening the lone proposal.

“Given the discussion and debate we’ve had over the last few weeks on this, it’s my recommendation that we reject the single offer,” Rodriguez said, adding that if the Commission desired, the city could explore alternatives and seek new proposals later. That reversed an earlier recommendation from the city Purchasing Department.

If opened, the proposal would have become public, which weighed on the Commission’s decision. The Monitor and others had requested the document.

That last paragraph cracked me up! It's one thing to decline GEO's offer, but what might have been in the RFP response so embarrassing to city government that they don't even open their mail? Alas, we'll never know. Glad the project went down the tubes, though.

Even so, this may not be the last we hear of the idea. A local TV station reported that McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez "told Action 4 News that he is for the prison and just wants more options."

MORE: From Texas Prison Bidness.

Probation revocations down, but not by much; re-arrest rates among DWI probationers plummets

More evidence that Texas' 2007 probation reforms perhaps contributed less than has been previously estimated to recent prison population declines. The main strategy of the 2007 reforms was to reduce probation and parole revocations to prison by incentivizing diversion and progressive sanctions programs. That's worked better on the parole side than for probation (aka "community supervision"). From the Dec. 2012 "Report to the Governor and Legislative Budget Board on the Monitoring of Community Supervision Diversion Funds" (pdf):

Felony revocations to TDCJ in FY2012 represent a 2.8% decrease from FY2005 (677 fewer felony revocations) and a 1.8% decrease from FY2011 (432 fewer felony revocations). However, the percentage of revocations to TDCJ for a technical violation of community supervision conditions increased from 48.5% in FY2011 to 49.0% in FY2012.

Those are essentially insignificant reductions given the scope of the decline in state prison populations witnessed over the last half decade.* Felony technical revocations among probationers declined 10.9% from 2005 to 2012, TDCJ reported, but they're still awfully high and that small decline was far out-paced by two factors on the parole side: Dramatically reduced parole revocations and marginally increased approval rates by the parole board. Both may be viewed as an expression of legislative policy. Reduced parole revocations stem from greater use of intermediate sanctions facilities (ISFs) and other diversion programs created after 2007. And higher approval rates, particularly for low-risk offenders, resulted in large part from the board finally edging closer to targets under non-binding release guidelines that the Lege mandated they create.

County-level probation revocation trends
By contrast, reducing probation revocations has been a tougher nut to crack, in part because of decentralized local control over the process among various counties and judges. Here are the relative increases and decreases for probation revocations among Texas' largest departments since just before Texas' much-vaunted probation reforms took effect:

Change in Felony Revocations to 

TDCJ among largest counties, 2005-2012

CSCD	Percent change in revocations
Dallas	-22.8%
Harris	-17.8%
Bexar	94.0%
Tarrant	-4.3%
Hidalgo	-5.3%
El Paso	-39.6%
Travis	32.1%
Cameron	22.4%
Nueces	1.8%

**See note below on Collin Co.

.

Travis County's increase in revocations surprised me given their department's reputation for reliance on progressive sanctions, etc.. Cameron County attributes their increase to "more aggressive absconder apprehension and increased monitoring of compliance with community supervision conditions." Otherwise, Bexar County is the most prominent, chronic outlier among large counties, as has been the case since these reports began coming out.

2012 probation revocations compared

to supervised population, large counties

CSCD	% 2012 statewide probation pop	% 2012 statewide felony revocations
Dallas	13.6%	10.5%
Harris	11.5%	12.4%
Bexar	6.7%	6.8%
Tarrant	4.9%	7.1%
Hidalgo	4.0%	2.8%
El Paso	3.7%	1.5%
Travis	3.4%	3.0%
Cameron	2.3%	1.9%
Nueces	1.7%	2.2%
Collin	1.7%	1.9%

This chart perhaps provides a better sense of relative county practices than the previous one. It compares probation populations and revocations among large counties as a proportion of their statewide total. (See this data for all counties in Appendix C to the report.) Counties in which the right-side number is significantly greater than the left-hand column may be considered more aggressive at revoking probationers than their peers. That differential is especially significant in massive Harris County because of the sheer volume they process. Tarrant's numbers here are especially striking, putting their paltry 4.3% decline from the earlier chart in context. Meanwhile, Travis, Hidalgo, and even Bexar don't appear nearly as problematic on this chart as they did in the first table.

Recidivism among probationers declining, especially DWI
According to the Dec. 2012 report, 71.7% of felony probationers revoked back to prison in FY2012 were convicted of nonviolent crimes - drug offenses (32.2%), property offenses (30.4%), and DWI (9.1%), with the rest coming from violent (17.9%) and other (10.4%) felony offenses.

Remarkably, and for the most part unheralded, recidivism rates for felony probationers have been declining. "The overall two-year re-arrest rate for the FY2005 sample was 34.4% (8,914 offenders). The overall two-year re-arrest rate for the FY2010 sample was 31.8% (8,811 offenders), which was a decrease from the FY2005 sample."

The drop in re-arrest rates for DWI offenders in those two studies was especially striking: 16.9% of the 2005 cohort was re-arrested compared to 11.5% of the 2010 cohort - a 32% drop! That's a success story nobody tells much. Re-arrest rates for probationers convicted of drug offenses declined 13% over this period; 10.6% for property offenders. But DWI stands out. Perhaps new treatment resources aimed at that group are helping.

Roundup: Top stories cropping up during Grits' recent absence

Grits is still poking around at news stories that cropped up while this blog was on a brief hiatus and thought I'd share a few that may not make it into independent posts.

Houston police union balks at mandatory DWI blood draws
The Harris County DA now requires blood tests in every DWI case where drivers refuse a breath test. The police union, reported the Houston Chronicle (July 28) objects because it takes police off the street and makes them unavailable for other routine tasks. "'They're not going to be as savvy on how to do these warrants, so it's going to take them six to eight hours, and that means the officer is off the street for that entire time,' [HPOU President Ray] Hunt said. 'It's a major issue.'" Grits' take: The new DA is willing to sacrifice police coverage to make securing DWI convictions easier, an option available to him because police and prosecutors' funding come from different pots (city vs. county). Whether that's a wise public policy choice depends on whether you think maximizing police coverage or misdemeanor convictions improves safety more. IMO the strongest evidence argues for the former, but reasonable folks may disagree.

Bribery investigation targets Denton Sheriff
Reported the Dallas Morning News (Aug. 9), "The Denton County sheriff (William Travis) is under investigation over allegations that he tried to bribe a political opponent to quit an election and also tried to bribe a former deputy into abandoning a lawsuit against the department." All involved deny the allegations. Here's a link to the affidavit written by Texas Ranger James Holland to seize the cell phone of Constable Jesse Flores as part of the investigation into Sheriff Travis. As an aside, readers in the comments pointed out that a Denton County Sheriff was convicted of bribery 25 years ago, also based on offering a political opponent a job to drop out of the race.

Light sentence for cop who stole from crime scene
A Houston police officer pled guilty for stealing cash from a crime scene. He received deferred adjudication with two years of probation and could ultimately have the conviction wiped from his record. After all, one supposes, he was only stealing from criminals.

GOP critic blasts Montgomery County private prison maneuvers
A blogger at GOP Vote complains that the Montgomery County Commissioners Court has launched into a seemingly never-ending jail building spree without consulting voters.

Opposition mounting to McAllen's private jail scheme
Fifty groups have signed onto a letter opposing a speculative jail privatization scheme in McAllen, the McAllen Monitor reported. Here's a copy of the letter. Notably, the Monitor knew about the proposed deal and intentionally failed to report it for more than a year. If they hadn't, the opposition might have a better chance of influencing the process.

News flash: Parole board must follow laws
This story from ABC's Good Morning America about Texas parole laws is possibly the most ignorant thing I've seen written by a professional reporter in 2013, which is saying something. The writer complains of a "loophole" requiring murderers (or anyone else) convicted between 1977 and 1987 to be released via a since-eliminated "mandatory supervision" law, under which they're let go when time served plus good time equals their sentence. What a crock! Since when is it a "loophole" to apply the law as written? Anyway, that hasn't been the case for years but it would be unconstitutional (in spades) to apply ex post facto rules to sentences issued under the old regime. This story was a) 26 years old, so not "news," b) utterly ignorant of the law and reality, and c) blatant demagoguery. Pathetic that this garbage passes for journalism at a major national news outlet.

Pot busts lowered to Class Cs in Hudspeth County to save jail space
Hudspeth County has no room at the inn jail for drivers caught with marijuana at the Border Patrol checkpoint in Sierra Blanca so the Sheriff gives folks Class C paraphernalia tickets and sends them on their way. Said Sheriff Arvin West, "The last thing in this world I want to be is a pothead hero, but the laws we’ve got now don’t work. Something’s gotta change."

Did Texas DPS unwittingly conspire in using NSA spy intel for drug cases?
Despite my intense interest, Grits hasn't written much about the NSA metadata collection scandal because it's being intensively covered at the national level and isn't a Texas-specific issue. But the revelation that the DEA uses that intel then lies about its sources in court, pretending probable cause was generated at traffic stops, almost certainly has implications for cases in Texas, and our Department of Public Safety may have been an unwitting accomplice to this fraud. Reported Reuters:

two senior DEA officials defended the program, and said trying to "recreate" an investigative trail is not only legal but a technique that is used almost daily. (Emphasis added.)

A former federal agent in the northeastern United States who received such tips from SOD described the process. "You'd be told only, ‘Be at a certain truck stop at a certain time and look for a certain vehicle.' And so we'd alert the state police to find an excuse to stop that vehicle, and then have a drug dog search it," the agent said.

DPS wouldn't have known about the NSA angle. From their perspective, the state police just received and acted on tips from the DEA. But if they then conspired to pretend the stop was based solely on a traffic violation and failed to disclose the DEA intel to defense counsel, that would be a significant breach of trust. Though not Texas-specific, Gideon at A Public  Defender lays out the implications of this revelation as well as anyone I've seen.

New Holder policy either 'conservative,' 'lawless,' or (most likely) just pro-prosecutor
Conservatives are split over US Attorney General Eric Holder's announcement that the USDOJ will no longer pursue charges with mandatory minimums in drug possession cases. Marc Levin and Vikrant Reddy from the Texas Public Policy Foundation wrote in The National Review that Holder had adopted "conservative sentencing reforms" while columnist Charles Krauthammer bloviated that the decision amounted to "lawlessness." Our old pal Vanita Gupta had a column in the New York Times framing the issue of drug-war based overincarceration in terms of Texas' Tulia episode and suggesting more effective ways to reduce it. Ken at Popehat provided a good explanation of what Holder's new policy will mean in practice and the drawbacks of relying on prosecutorial discretion to limit mass incarceration. At Forbes, Jacob Sullum reminds us that the Obama Administration's record on the drug war has been generally atrocious. He points out that if Holder's "criteria identify people who do not deserve mandatory minimums, they also identify people who deserve the president’s mercy" via the pardon process. Don't hold your breath.

Drug cases dropped from misconduct, and other stories

A few, disparate items that caught my eye:

J. Salvador fiasco impacts first case beyond Galveston
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has granted relief (pdf) for the first time in one of the Jonathon Salvador drug cases originating outside Galveston, where the District Attorney has been facilitating them most quickly. Not only that, in this case out of Harris County, unlike in Galveston, the DA's office attempted to contest the findings on behalf of the defendant but were rebuffed both by the trial court and now the CCA, which used the same boilerplate language they used to grant 18 prior cases. By Grits' count, the 19 cases overturned so far have totaled 151.5 years, for an average of eight years per case. There could easily be thousands of cases overturned based on this one lab analyst's misconduct by the time we're done. UPDATE: See more from the Houston Chronicle.

Deja vu on drug task force misconduct
As many as 75 drug cases may be dismissed in Hidalgo County because of recent misconduct charges against key members of their multi-agency drug task force. Multi-county task forces were put under DPS supervision in 2005 and those have all closed up shop rather than comply with more strict DPS policies than their loosey-goosey, oversight-free status had afforded them. But some counties simply scaled back to multi-agency drug task forces among agencies in the same county - which are not regulated by DPS - and those continue to crop up as sources of corruption and ineptitude.

Understaffing and jail suicides
See a must-read piece by Michael Barajas at the SA Current titled "Dead in Seven Hours: When overdosed meets overworked, Bexar County Jail's fatal flaws come to light."

Texas groups excoriate 5th Circuit judge over recent speech
Judge Edith Jones of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has drawn a formal complaint from a variety of organizations in response to a recent, public exhibition of foot and mouth disease, reported the Austin Chronicle. Read the whole thing, a brief summary can't do it justice. See also more from the Texas Tribune, and a blog post from Paul Kennedy.

Private prison news
Several good, interesting posts over at Texas Prison Bidness if you haven't visited recently.

More media on warrants-for-email
The warrants for email legislation continues to get good coverage. There was a nice item from KVUE in Austin. See others here, here, and here. And prior press roundups. (Whether readers are sick of it or not, I need to keep tabs on the press it gets.)

Youth crime reductions leading recent crime drops
The latest drop in crime nationally is being led by a substantial reduction in youth crime, found the Research and Evaluation Center at the John Jay College of Justice in New York. Grits readers, of course, are aware of my own favorite theory why that's the case: Young people spend a great deal of time engaged with technology like the internet, video games and cell phones that didn't exist 25 years ago. These activities occupy time of teens and young adults who are the most likely to commit crimes. The kid perfecting his skills at Grand Theft Auto V may not be preparing himself for the job market, but he isn't out stealing my car. There's even some formal research to back up that notion. Obviously, though, there are many factors contributing to 21st century crime reductions.

Hidalgo Sheriff claims expanded jail would be profit center

Stop me if you've heard this before:

"Since 2003 we have paid out 11.2 million dollars to outsource our inmates to the private corrections corporations, we are making millionaires out of them," said [Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe] Trevino.

And money to pay that bill comes directly out of tax payers wallets. But Trevino said he knows a way to end this never ending money pit.

"The solution I believe to our overcrowding is expansion. and that is really about the only way we can do it. We can expand this current facility to 2,000 beds, which is an addition 768 beds," said Trevino.

Expansion comes at a price, fortunately Trevino has a solution for that too.

"We could work out a contract with the U.S. Marshals where I could lease them 500 beds at about 52 to 57 dollars a day per bed depending on the negotiation. And we could probably raise, generate $10 million a year," said Trevino.

How many Texas counties have issued bonds to build oversized jails only to look up afterward and find that the contracts for prisoners weren't forthcoming? Here's a short, probably incomplete list. Jails are never free and incarceration is seldom a profit center for counties. Even if they strike a deal, their client can pull out in the future when they don't need the beds, while the county is stuck paying on the bonds no matter what.

Private contractor trained DPS helicopter sniper

Via Craft International

The Texas Observer identified a contractor - Craft International - which trained the Department of Public Safety aerial sniper unit who accidentally gunned down two undocumented immigrants while trying to shoot out the tires of a moving pickup. The company features DPS officers receiving sniper training from helicopters in a promotional video on its home page. The Observer's Melissa del Bosque opined that, "Craft’s video glorifies Texas’ DPS sniper program, and makes it look like the troopers are training for a foray into Fallujah instead of keeping the peace in Texas." Their company motto is "Despite what your momma told you ... violence does solve problems." It had been reported earlier this year that DPS had outsourced significant aspects of its border security operation to private contractors, but I hadn't realized before now that extended to sniper training.

RELATED: See a story from Nov. 2010 from the SA Express News and the Texas Tribune analyzing DPS pursuit policies along the border and beyond. "Statewide, DPS chases resulted in 1,300 wrecks, 780 injuries to troopers, other officers, suspects and bystanders, 28 deaths and an estimated $8.4 million in property damage in the past five years." One police pursuit expert concluded of DPS pursuit tactics: "They're crazy." The Express-News/Tribune analysis found that "troopers use aggressive pursuit tactics - including firing guns and setting up roadblocks - that many other law enforcement agencies prohibit." Even so, DPS' pursuit outcomes aren't all that great. "Statewide, more than 30 percent of all DPS chases ended with the suspect eluding officers on foot. Fewer than a quarter of all suspects - both statewide and in Hidalgo County - stopped and surrendered." Foreshadowing the most recent episode, the Express-News/Trib analysis mentioned that, "Troopers also can shoot out a suspect's tires if other methods, such as deploying spike strips, fail to stop the pursuit. Troopers fired their guns during chases nearly 90 times over the past five years, and 14 of those incidents occurred during pursuits in urban areas."

The sharpshooter who wasn't

A DPS sharpshooter in a helicopter aiming to take out the tires of a fleeing pickup truck missed and killed two undocumented immigrants in Hidalgo County, causing the local DA to request that DPS quit shooting at fleeing cars from helicopters. The term "sharpshooter" seems misplaced in describing such an episode; mere "shooter" would be more accurate. Notably, the Houston Chronicle reported, "a nationally known use-of-force expert has said he had never heard of a U.S. law enforcement agency with a similar policy." Compare this episode to an Austin case where an officer was recently fired for shooting at a fleeing vehicle. After the US Supreme Court issued Tennessee v. Garner back in the '80s, most local law enforcement agencies changed their policies on shooting at fleeing vehicles and DPS' approach seems like an odd, outdated throwback.

MORE (11/03): DPS now says the agency employed this tactic for fear that the speeding truck would soon enter an area with schools where children might be endangered. The audio from the chase was released to the media, and it cuts both ways. To DPS' credit, it contradicted earlier reports that DPS troopers were able to tell that people were in the back of the truck. The troopers involved in the chase declared, mistakenly, that "bundles" (i.e., drugss) were under the tarp. OTOH, I just listened to the audio clip up to point of the shooting and nobody ever mentioned schools or children. If that was part of the decision making process, as DPS now asserts, it wasn't discussed by any of the DPS personnel actively involved in the chase.

DPS has asked the FBI to investigate the incident, so stay tuned. This ain't over. 

AND MORE: One more notable aspect to the audio file keeps nagging at me. Dispatchers asked repeatedly right after the shooting whether there were any injuries, whether they should send an ambulance, etc., to which personnel at the scene responded with six minutes of radio silence on the subject. After someone on the ground finally answered, yes there were injuries, the dispatcher sarcastically asked if in the future "can we call him on the phone if he's not going to answer the radio?" Can you imagine those intense six minutes? What goes through a trooper, game warden or police officer's mind as the dispatcher's question rings out, unanswered over the radio - "Are there any injuries?" "Do you need an ambulance?"- all the while with the bodies of two sniper victims laying in the back of the truck? The living vehicle occupants had bailed at the 9:30 mark on the audio, and at least one had already been caught before the eleven minute mark; on-the-scene personnel confirmed the injuries at the 17:12 mark. Were there officers at the scene - troopers or perhaps from the game warden or other agencies - who could or should have seen these injured folks but delayed responding, perhaps panicked at their mistake over the cargo? There were 10 to 12 units at the scene, one officer estimated. Wouldn't somebody have looked in the truck bed that minutes earlier they thought was carrying a dope load? Those are the sorts of questions, one supposes, the FBI will be burrowing into soon.

Police unions finding renewed opposition after years of bipartisan kowtowing

In a local story from the Valley about a change of leadership at the police union in the McAllen police department ("Police officers union to move forward under new leadership," Jan. 7), I was interested to see a reference to the union's losses in their recent contract negotiations. Reported the McAllen Monitor:

Sgt. Joe Garcia, the union’s president since 2009, will be replaced by his vice president, Officer David Alvarado.

They helped negotiate the union’s four-year collective bargaining agreement, which runs until Sept. 30, 2015.

The agreement, inked July 18 after negotiations failed and the union unsuccessfully sued McAllen, was widely seen as a victory for City Hall.

“One thing I’ve learned is you’ve got to pick your fights with the city,” Garcia said, referencing the contentious negotiations.

The contract phased out a health insurance subsidy for some retired officers and eliminated a union information session for police cadets, an important recruiting opportunity. Union officials had pushed for an across-the-board raise and permission to work security at downtown bars while off duty, but city officials rejected those proposals.

With the contract behind them, Garcia decided to step down, and Alvarado ran unopposed to succeed him. Alvarado will be officially sworn in later this month.

While the union doesn’t attract much attention when there isn’t a contract to be negotiated, it’s a major player within the Rio Grande Valley’s largest police department, which has 275 certified police positions. The union’s contract sets pay and benefits, and the union provides work-related legal services to members.

In the wake of the contract losses, the new union president "said he wants to build closer ties between the police union and the public, in part to improve the image of public employee unions, which have been under attack nationwide." McAllen snubbing the union in contract negotiations is a notable contrast to the way elected officials from both parties in recent years have kowtowed to police unions in larger cities. Being a "right to work" state, Texas has few strong unions anymore in the private sector and our public-sector unions are incredibly weak compared to those in other large states. (E.g., our prison guards are virtually unorganized and unconsidered compared to their powerhouse counterparts in California.) As a result, police unions in Texas elections often are the only union interest with significant political muscle, money to spend, etc..

These unions - particularly those under the CLEAT umbrella - historically in Texas have tended to garner bipartisan fealty among politicians at all levels. I understand why Democrats strongly support unions; less so why Rick Perry does, except to associate himself generally with law enforcement. In Austin, then-Mayor Kirk Watson's extravagant handouts to the police union were the driver for a decade and counting of continuous property-tax growth since the turn of the century, with more of the same projected in the foreseeable future. From the 30,000 foot level, there's a growing resistance by taxpayers to paying - usually through local property tax hikes - for the kind of lucrative pay and benefit packages they themselves lost to corporate restructuring and the recession.

Like the new McAllen police-union president, ever since the budget fights in Wisconsin Grits has been wondering if and when anti-public employee sentiment within the conservative movement might bubble up as feuding with local police associations. To hear CLEAT Executive Director John Burpo tell it, the fight is already here, and the barbarians are at the gates:

A little background is in order. From the 1960’s to just a few years ago, law enforcement pensions were improved significantly and then maintained. Law enforcement officers and their unions advanced and state legislators pushed the proposition that policing is a tough, dangerous job that deserves decent retirement benefits greater than other public employees.

Unfortunately, private sector unions have declined significantly over the last 20 years, and with that decline there has been an attendant decline in private sector defined pension benefits. The majority of private sector employees no longer have retirement plans – they are now fortunate to even have a 401(k) and a meager contribution by the employer. Sadly, most folks in the law enforcement world did not pay attention to this development because it was their problem, not ours.

In the past 2 years public sector pension plans have come under attack, including law enforcement retirements. These attacks have taken place in other states so once again, it was their problem and Texas law enforcement officers didn’t worry.

But it is definitely now our problem as antiretirement forces are on the march right here in Texas. A cabal of anti-union, anti-public employee businessmen out of Houston are leading the charge to take away your long held and much deserved retirement rights. This cabal doesn’t care that each one of you lays your life on the line every day; or that the Memorial Wall on the State Capitol grounds is filled with the names of heroic law enforcement officers who have sacrificed their lives protecting Texas citizens.

CLEAT will lead the fight to take on these Forces of Darkness. We have a battle plan that is eloquently outlined in Todd Harrison’s article on page 2 of this edition of The Police Star (pdf). Please take the time to read this important article so that you understand what we will be doing over the course of the next 2 years.

I find Burpo's language wonderfully hyperbolic, if sadly typical of much internal police-union rhetoric: Anyone with a different opinion on something they care about is generally considered by CLEAT to be part of the "Forces of Darkness," which in this case includes a "cabal of anti-union, anti-public employee businessmen out of Houston." Who knew? A shadowy cabal! Throw in a few references to the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group and he could write for Alex Jones.

The schtick about dangerous jobs will only get them so far when garbage collectors, whose jobs are statistically far more dangerous, are paid much less and get no comparable memorial on the capitol grounds. (In 2009, according to the most recent Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (pdf), "refuse and recyclable materials collectors" died on the job at a rate of 26.5 per 100,000, compared to 12.9 for "Police and Sheriff's patrol officers.")

CLEAT's plan includes backing electoral opponents to run against incumbents who support restructuring retirement benefits (through their PAC), extensive polling to craft messages that will sell with the public, creating a "Truth Squad" to quickly attack critics who question the viability of large police pensions, fundraising for their PAC (surprise, surprise!), and engaging union locals in their message delivery. The plan, or at least its public, fundraising-letter version, notably does not contemplate any path to compromise on the kinds of issues (ethics, accountability, public information) that might demonstrate the union's commitment to the sort of professionalism expected of government workers who make more money and have better pensions than the average voter. Instead, the plan is to attack anyone who questions them.

In McAllen, the city manager said part of the union's trouble was a simlar us-against-the-world mentality:

City Manager Mike Perez said the relationship between the police union and city leaders has been “rough at best.”

“I think the approach they take is: City Hall is the enemy,” Perez said. “The fact that they’ve gotten involved in politics and supported candidates hasn’t helped the relationship.”

Perez said he’s heard second- and third-hand reports that officers thought Garcia wasn’t tough enough on City Hall, and backed Alvarado because he’d take a harder stance.

When the GOP took over Texas state politics, police-union interests never missed a beat and continued to wield significant power, thanks in large part to their influence with Rick Perry and the advisers surrounding him (as well as a few, key, senior legislators, many of whom have now departed). Will that continue to be the case as a radicalized GOP base sends more Tea-Party types - Burpo's "Forces of Darkness" - to the legislature and city councils? Or will the police unions, perhaps for the first time in a generation, finally be forced to learn the art of compromise, both at the capitol and at city hall? Time will tell.

Hidalgo County tries house arrest to reduce jail overcrowding

Jared Janes at the McAllen Monitor reports ("New program to supervise inmates outside county jail," Aug. 21) that Hidalgo County will try a version of house arrest for selected offenders and pretrial detainees to reduce chronic jail overcrowding. The story opens:

An Hidalgo County pilot program promises to save the cost of housing prisoners outside of the county’s overcrowded jail by placing the low-risk, non-violent offenders into a house arrest environment.

The alternative incarceration program projects to save the county more than $766,000 in its first year — based on a pilot group of about 50 inmates. The pilot program will help to alleviate the jail overcrowding that forces the county to pay a daily rate of $42 to house up to 200 inmates at the La Villa Detention Center.

But Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño, whose office will participate in the program, said it also offers a better alternative than jail for first-time offenders who will be allowed to work and support their families under the supervision of a probation officer.

“Not only is it going to help our overflow problem, but it’s going to give these individuals a second opportunity — like a ‘scared straight’ program,” Treviño said. “You’ve been arrested and you’ve seen what a cell looks like, but I’m going to give you this opportunity to live at home with a productive life and abide by our society rules.”

Administered by the Hidalgo County Adult Probation Department, the alternative incarceration program will place offenders who would normally be incarcerated at the Hidalgo County Jail into a house arrest program that provides service and treatment options to the inmates.

The alternative incarceration program costs little to operate but can make a big dent in inmate housing costs, said Arnold Patrick, the county’s adult probation executive director.

Under the program, the county jail list will be reviewed daily to identify offenders who appear to be candidates for the program. Candidates will be selected based on their offense — the program is off-limits to those charged with violent offenses or felonies — and their prior criminal history.

In an attempt to lower the county’s jail population, the program will target low-risk offenders sentenced to county jail, those awaiting probation hearings or those not eligible for personal recognizance bonds.

I've heard of house arrest being used in sentencing before, but I'm not sure I've seen it suggested as an alternative for pretrial defendants who are "not eligible for personal recognizance bonds," who of course make up the bulk of the jail population. The story conflates pretrial detainees and defendants convicted and sentenced, but those are substantively different categories of folks. How does pretrial "house arrest" jibe with the presumption of innocence? After all, if these folks could afford bail, they'd just be out on their own without supervision. One wonders: Is house arrest really a better or cheaper option than just reducing their bail?

Also, one wonders who will do the selecting for this program - judges or prosecutors - and if it's the latter, will they be willing as a practical matter to reduce the leverage given them by pretrial incarceration in plea negotiations?

That said, I'm pleased to see more counties seeking alternatives to incarceration. The trend seems to reflect a growing view among jurists, prosecutors and corrections officials that jail is not a universal solution, and that the threat of incarceration is a greater deterrent than the reality of it. Except for its use on pretrial detainees, this sounds to me in practice like another version of strong probation. Jail space is a limited resource so "incapacitation" cannot be the primary approach to crime because it's fiscally impossible to lock up everyone arrested ad infinitum. And anyway, only misdemeanor defendants are sentenced to jail time for a max of one year (as opposed to felons who're sent to prison for much longer periods), so in terms of sentencing there are real, temporal limits to using county jails as an incapacitation strategy.

To the extent punishment deters crime, it does so by changing how potential offenders think about their actions and the consequences. As a parent, I learned that often punishing a child for misbehavior punishes the adults as much as the kid (e.g., when she's grounded, I had to stay home too; punishments must be implemented, and doing so is the suckiest part of parenting). Usually the threat of immediate punishment is a greater deterrent than actually punishing. (For every time my daughter was punished, there were many more times when the threat of punishment altered behavior.) Jail time is relatively easy to endure, in practice - three hots and a cot, after all - but in the mind's eye it looms large as a negative experience for all but the most jaded frequent flyers. So community supervision strategies utilizing the threat of jail, for most offenders, work better than using jail as a one-size-fits all approach. It's good to see more counties beginning to realize it..

Redundant equipment unneeded for Valley SWAT units

Using asset forfeiture funds, the McAllen Police Department has purchased the armored vehicle pictured above on the grounds that, "With 11 gun ports, a rotating turret and room for 10 officers, the modified Ford F-550 will help city police handle high-risk calls." (Aside: 10 officers and 11 gun ports? Do they imagine somebody will be firing pistols with both hands?) Apparently the Hidalgo County Sheriff's similar vehicle, depicted below, was deemed too bulky for in-city use:

The city bought theirs slightly used for $150,000, while the county spent $346,000 in federal funds on their vehicle in 2009. When the county purchased their vehicle, they declared that it "will be available for any law enforcement agency in South Texas to use in hostile situations — should the need arise. We’ll even pay for the gas.” But the city of McAllen had asset forfeiture money burning a hole in their pocket and couldn't resist the redundant capacity.

For whatever reason, virtually every police chief and Sheriff seems to think they need their own independent tactical unit, to the point where even community college PDs are getting into the act. IMO every jurisdiction doesn't need its own SWAT unit and it'd make a lot more sense to staff and equip these units on a regional basis, an idea the McAllen chief has poo-poohed.

Graff writer beaten by inmates at TYC's Evins Unit: Chooses isolation

Jeremy Roebuck at the McAllen Monitor has the sad story of a teen convicted of a felony graffiti offense who was sent to TYC then victimized by inmates with more serious criminal histories ("DOJ: Youth prison continues to improve conditions for inmates," May 21). The story opens:

Andrea Rogers barely recognized the sullen teen sitting across from her as her 17-year-old son Brandon.

With eyes swollen shut, teeth chipped and a constant migraine, the boy — an inmate at the Evins Regional Juvenile Facility in Edinburg — worried about his mother’s reaction to his altered appearance.

A September 2009 beating by fellow inmates left Brandon so doubtful of correctional officers’ ability to protect him that he voluntarily secluded himself in the facility’s isolated security ward. He has refused to rejoin the general population for more than seven months.

“He’s all broken out. He’s super-duper skinny. He looks unhealthy,” said Rogers, his mother, after a recent visit with her son. “He begs me not to come see him. He doesn’t want me to see him like that.”

While Evins has taken substantial steps toward improving its record of protecting inmates’ civil rights in the past four years, problems still persist at the facility, a recent federal audit shows. ...

Investigators with the Texas Youth Commission — the agency charged with oversight of Evins and the state’s nine other juvenile lockups — eventually determined that guards failed to provide adequate supervision on the day Brandon was assaulted.

The correctional officer monitoring his dorm walked away for eight minutes, allowing a group of teens all the time they needed to enter his room unnoticed and beat him, according to a Feb. 2 letter sent to his mother outlining the incident.

This narrative brings to mind several topics that Grits has focused on regularly. First, it points to the absurdity of making graffiti a felony in many circumstances including when performed at schools, churches and community centers - the places youth spend the most time. (Only felons can be sent to TYC.)

This youth had no business being sent to prison with more violent offenders who wound up victimizing him; that's a counterproductive punishment for graff writing. He's been exposed to more serious criminality in TYC than he ever would have participated in wandering the streets of his hometown with a paint can. This example reinforces why so much research on effective community supervision emphasizes keeping lower risk offenders away from more serious criminals instead of putting them all in the same environment. When that happens, low-risk offenders pick up both knowledge, criminal connections, and sometimes, as in this case, risk being victimized themselves. Graffiti is a local problem that should be handled locally. Making the offense prison eligible in so many circumstances was a big mistake.

Second, one unfortunate aspect of all the TYC reforms after the sex-scandal broke in 2007 was how few changes specifically targeted the Evins Unit in Edinburg. I say that because, if you were to rank the agency's biggest problem units before the scandal broke in the media, Evins would have been at the top of anybody's list (which is why it's presently under federal oversight). Brandon's case is not the first time failure to provide adequate staffing at Evins left inmates unsupervised and resulted in violence, something that clearly hasn't been resolved by ongoing federal litigation.

Finally, the story also reports on dramatic changes at Evins in the last couple of years which are themselves worth noting:

Evins has come a long way since [2007], and the facility is almost unrecognizable, said Superintendent Billy Hollis.

The old barracks-style housing, which monitors said contributed to the escalation of violence, has been entirely replaced by mostly single-cell pods.

A new incentive-based behavior management program offering television time, board games and sketch paper for good behavior has begun to catch on with most inmates.

Periodically shifting guards to different duty posts has largely eliminated the opportunity for specific staff members to develop unhealthy relationships with individual teens.

And for the first time since the Justice Department began its twice-yearly audits of the facility, reports of abuse and misconduct dropped during the first quarter of the 2010 fiscal year, which ended in November.

On a recent tour, Hollis pointed to one of the 900 surveillance cameras that have been installed across the facility as the primary factor in stopping the violence. With almost every minute of life recorded, administrators can better investigate incidents when they occur.

“Cameras are a part of everyday life here,” Hollis said. “They’re everywhere. They see everything.”

To say the least, the incident described in the article's lede seems to contradict superintendent's claims of improvement, or at least complicate them. Many of those structural changes - the installation of cameras, moving away from barracks-style dorms - were implemented at other TYC units as well.

However, changing the culture among staff is a separate problem that the Justice Department clearly thinks still hasn't been solved. "Stories like Brandon’s, coupled with reports of inmate-on-inmate extortion, gaps in guard supervision and continued staff frustration with new policies and procedures prompted U.S. Justice Department auditors to urge continued court-ordered monitoring in a report released earlier this month," wrote Roebuck.

RELATED: See Evins' agreed order (pdf) with the feds.