Crime lab misconduct, sex-offender residency, parole successses, and other stories

Hope you enjoyed a Happy Independence Day, Grits readers. Here are several items that didn't make it into independent posts last week but merit your attention:

Houston crime lab misconduct not caught by internal procedures
The Houston Chronicle reported (June 25) that Peter Lentz, the Houston crime lab tech accused of lying, improper procedure and tampering with an official record, was not identified by internal protocols but because, in February, he admitted the wrongdoing to two coworkers over drinks in a bar. MORE: From Paul Kennedy.

Texas civil commitment program melting down
The state's civil commitment program for sex offenders is imploding. The state plans to begin housing sex offenders in secure lockups because a halfway-house vendor is dropping its contract, citing public stigma and inadequate compensation. An attorney at the Harris County public defender told the Houston Chronicle that housing civil-commitment offenders in secure lockups is "clearly illegal." After all, they've already served their criminal sentences and are legally supposed to be undergoing outpatient treatment. Look for significant action on this topic next session, probably led by Sen. John Whitmire and Rep. Sylvester Turner.

'Getting Life': Michael Morton Memoir
Michael Morton has just published a memoir about his false conviction and imprisonment for the murder of his wife and the dramatic events surrounding his nationally publicized exoneration. See the Statesman's coverage.

Higher parole rate, fewer revocations account for leveling of Texas' prison pop
Insiders know that, despite the attention paid to Texas' 2007 probation reforms, the parole side has been the main reason Texas' prison population has leveled off and even modestly declined in recent years. Why? Via YourHouston News, Texas parole commissioner Lynn Ruzicka said new programming has facilitated higher parole rates for eligible inmates and lower revocation rates for parolees. For example, "Out of the inmates up for parole, 27-28 percent were released in 2001 while the current release rate hovers around 35 percent ... A 2 percent increase in approvals translates into approximately 1,500 additional parole releases per year and an annual savings of almost $26 million, a 2010 report by the Center for Effective Justice showed." Ruzicka specifically said, “The release rate is going up because of the programs we have.” Further, "parole revocation rates for parolees with active cases fell from 12.2 percent in 2001 to 8.2 percent in 2010, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice."

A lawyerly protest: Handing out cards
You don't see this every day:

More than a dozen of the city's best criminal defense lawyers converged Friday on the 11th floor of Houston's criminal courthouse to meet defendants and hand out bright yellow 3-by-5 cards explaining their constitutional rights.

It was part of a protest by the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association against the way Michael Fields, a misdemeanor judge, handles initial appearances in his court.

"What he's doing is unethical, it's unconstitutional and it's illegal," HCCLA president Carmen Roe said after passing out several fliers. "When he starts trampling on the rights of defendants, that's when we get involved." ...

"We believe he's coercing defendants to either waive their right to a lawyer or enter a plea of guilty without their lawyer being present," said JoAnne Musick, a past president of HCCLA who was handing out fliers. "We've had complaints from people who asked for a lawyer and instead he handed them plea papers and had them enter a plea of guilty."

The judge, who denied any improprieties, said he changed his arraignment procedure earlier this year, a move that has generated the controversy. The Republican jurist has held the bench since being elected in 1998.

Paul Kennedy has called Judge Fields a "bully in a robe." Scott Greenfield provides more suitably outraged commentary.

Are compromised Van Zandt locks in other jails?
The Tyler Morning Telegraph posed the same question Grits asked in the wake of news about inmates compromising the locks at the Van Zandt County Jail: "Are the faulty locks in the Van Zandt County Jail in other jails?" For now, claims the paper, the surprising answer appears to be "no." "Executive Director of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards Brandon Wood said that as of now, the manufacturer does not seem to have that lock model in any other Texas jails, but they are still taking more time to confirm that, and see about locks in other states."

Wood said there are about three main manufacturers that make lock systems for jails in the state, but the company that made the flawed locks was not one of them.

“The type of lock that was installed, although it is comparable according to the manufacturers specifications to locks that are typically seen in Texas county jails, this was the first time we’d seen this manufacturer in the state,” Wood said.

Wood said even though the company was new, the locks it made met state standards.

For security reasons, Ray requested not to reveal the lock manufacturer’s name. Keeping that information away from inmates could stop them from trying to manipulate similar locks.

However, the locks with the faulty pieces seem to only be in one batch of one specific model. It doesn’t look like the manufacturer has locks from that bad batch anywhere else.

“We do not believe that any of those locks are in any other county jails, however we have issued a technical assistance memorandum and notification to the sheriffs to conduct a walkthrough of their own facilities and determine if they have any of those locks,” Wood said.

As every jail in Texas investigates its own locking system, the manufacturer in question is looking into any locks it has installed in other states.

They ought to publish the manufacturer's name. It's going to eventually come out, anyway.

Alleged civil service cheats indicted in Cameron County
Reported AP, "Eleven former and potential South Texas sheriff's deputies have been indicted in a civil service exam cheating scandal involving a cellphone image of the test."

Private prison focus: Immigration
The blog Texas Prison Bidness highlights documented troubles at five "criminal alien requirement" prisons in Texas covered in an ACLU report released earlier this month:

• Reeves County Detention Center
• Eden Detention Center
• Willacy County Correctional Center
• Big Spring Correctional Center
• Giles W. Dalby Correctional Facility

Forensics a 'decades-long experiment' sans scientific method
At Slate, Mark Joseph Stern picks up the meme that much forensic science isn't actually science, an uncomfortable fact made irrefutable by the 2009 National Academy of Sciences report calling for the application of the scientific method in forensic fields. He argues that, "Far from an infallible science, forensics is a decades-long experiment in which undertrained lab workers jettison the scientific method in favor of speedy results that fit prosecutors’ hunches."

Inmates compromise jail locks in Van Zandt County

English jail cell door, UT Tarlton Law Library collection

Dozens of inmates were removed from the Van Zandt County Jail after "inmates figured out a way to compromise the locking systems." KLTV reported (July 2) that "one of the inmates figured out how to compromise the locks and started teaching others his tricks." Added the Tyler Morning Telegraph (July 1):

Following an inspection of the facility, it was determined that although the locks were functioning as designed, an engineering flaw existed with the mechanisms enabling a simple process to defeat the security of the lock.

This issue effected confinement cells in high security sections of the facility as well as ingress and egress access to the building.

State and County Officials were immediately notified of the situation and the Sheriff’s Emergency Action Plan was put in action.

Because the separate, newer constructed Minimum Security Confinement Facility was not equipped with the same locking systems, of the currently incarcerated 161 inmates, 90 were required to be transported to the Henderson County Jail and 35 to the Kaufman County Jail and the remaining female inmates were transported to the Upshur County Jail for the safety and the security of the inmates and the jail staff.

One wonders how many other secure lockups this same vendor has sold these locks to?
Surely tiny Van Zandt County can't be their only client. See this essay for more background on how locks in detention facilities can be defeated by enterprising inmates.

Cuts to state mental hospitals would be massive unfunded mandate for county jails

Brandi Grissom at The Texas Tribune reports that "sheriffs across Texas are increasingly frustrated and worried about the ever-decreasing amount of bed space available at state mental hospitals." She writes:

Too often, when mentally ill offenders come to their jails, sheriffs who are required to provide appropriate care for their inmates say they are forced to either drive hundreds of miles, wait for days in hospital emergency rooms guarding patients or try to make do in their local jails until a mental health bed becomes available. The looming budget shortfall  that legislators will be grappling with in 2011 has sheriffs concerned that the problem will mutate into a crisis. “We’ve cut way too far, and it’s just not working,” [Van Zandt County Sheriff Pat] Burnett says.

The number of beds at Texas’ state mental hospitals has gradually declined from 2,800 in 1996 to about 2,400 now. As the number of beds shrinks, treatment waiting lists expand. That means treatment delays for both law-abiding Texans and criminal offenders with mental illness.

Sheriffs are reacting to concerns, expressed frequently in the past here on Grits, that cuts to the Department of State Health Services could strand inmates in county jails for months awaiting competency restoration services. As part of its budget cut suggestions reacting to recent demands from state leaders, Grissom reports, "One of the options the agency proposed is eliminating even more beds — more than 190 of them — from five of the state’s 10 mental hospitals." Half of beds at state hospitals are designated as "forensic beds" used by the criminal justice system to restore competency when courts declare a defendant incompetent to stand trial. Such defendants can't even plead guilty until the services are rendered; they just sit in jail, often for months on end, waiting for space to open up.

As a practical matter, the state already is at risk of expensive litigation if they can't find a way to reduce waiting lists for forensic beds at state mental hospitals. This is a bit of a sleeper issue, but cuts to state mental hospitals would be a massive unfunded mandate for counties.

See prior, related Grits posts:

• Lubbock considers in-house competency restoration for mentally ill defendants
• Mentally ill languish in Bexar jail awaiting assessment, competency restoration
• Cuts to state mental health treatment would shift costs to local jails
• Competency restoration often best performed on outpatient basis
• Cutting state psych hospital budgets could backfire
• Geo Group secretly snagged forensic psych hospital contract in budget conference committee
• Outpatient centers better solutions than jail for competency restoration 
• Legislature's underspending on competency restoration beds creates havoc
• Priorities: Mentally incompetent inmates languishing in Texas county jails
• 75-year old mentally incompetent grandmother stranded in Lufkin jail most of 2006
• Legislature should prioritize mental health funding that relieves local jails
• Chincy state hospital funding leaves mentally incompetent defendants stranded
• Unfunded mandate: Counties struggle to pay for mentally incompetent defendants' care
• More counties grumbling at backlog of incompetent defendants in county jails
• When I was sick, did you imprison me?

Constables' roles debated in context of budget crisis

County-level budget crises are raising long-simmering questions about the proper role of constables and whether they should act as mini-Sheriff's departments or stick to serving civil papers and acting as court bailiffs. In Van Zandt County in East Texas:

Precinct 4 Constable Pat Jordan spoke earlier this week about the history of the office of constable in Texas.

"The first form of law enforcement in Texas, as it was being settled, was the constable," Jordan said.

"The state constitution gives us the rights and duties of any other peace officer," he continued. "Really, the only difference between a constable and the county sheriff is that a constable is given the duties of bailiffing the precinct (justice of the peace) court and serving civil process papers, and the sheriff is the keeper of the jail."

Van Zandt County Sheriff Pat Burnett sees things differently, and it underscores a longstanding tension between he and Jordan, a former Van Zandt County Sheriff.

Returning from a statewide sheriff’s convention in Fort Worth on Tuesday, Burnett said the issue of whether a constable should go beyond court bailiff and civil paper serving duties is not unique to Van Zandt County.

"It’s a statewide problem.," he said. "A constable’s constitutional duties are acting as bailiff for the justice of the peace in their precinct, and to serve civil process papers.

"When you have a constable or one of his reserves getting out of those realms and wanting to be a sheriff’s office, that is when things start getting off track," Burnett added.

It is a sentiment that was echoed Tuesday by comments from Precinct 2 Commissioner Virgil Melton Jr., one of three members of the commissioners’ court who voted to reduce the reserve deputy constable program to one position in each of the four precincts.

With Jordan sitting adjacent to him at the table, Melton Jr. criticized the constable for "running a mini-sheriff’s office" in Precinct 4 and interfering with investigations being handled by Sheriff Burnett’s staff.

Similarly, in Corsicana Navarro County officials rejected a request to increase constable pay so that constables could perform policing duties in addition to bailiff work and process serving:

[Constable David] Foreman appeared before county commissioners Tuesday requesting a salary of $35,000 on top of expenses, even though his salary is budgeted at $12,651. He made a similar request of commissioners in the 2009 budget discussions, as did two of the other three county constables, including Precinct 4’s Tommy Grant and Precinct 1’s Mike Davis. Brad Butler, Precinct 3 constable, did not request a salary increase.

Foreman argued that he carries out more than his standard duties and should be paid in the same way as other elected county officials.

“I have never spent my budget in wages because it is just sitting there,” said Foreman. “You are stewards of the tax payers money and I am as well. I don’t agree that I am part time. I spend a lot of time patrolling and answering calls.”

County budget figures show that there could now be a budget deficit approaching the $1.5 million mark, and [County Judge H.M.] Davenport defended fending off further expenses.

“The statutes say you should serve the papers and bailiff duties,” replied Davenport. “It doesn’t say anything about patrols or anything else. Honestly, I don’t think that it is fair to tax payers who would pay the money for work only carried out every now and again. With this economy it is best to just hang on to what we have got.”

This blog has long held that it's extremely problematic for constables to take on everyday policing duties, in both big counties and small. So I was pleased to see, for example, that in Dallas this week the commissioners court supported:

creating more stringent hiring requirements for deputy constables, a response to corruption allegations surrounding certain constable offices.

Applicants currently don't have to take a written test, physical assessment or polygraph test – all of which are required to be hired as a sheriff's deputy. Commissioners said they favor adding those tests for constable deputies.

They had asked the county human resources department to study the job qualifications and hiring process of deputy constables earlier this year after a Dallas Morning News investigation in February. ...

A recent state audit of the personnel files of several Dallas County deputy constables in Precinct 5 revealed that the files didn't contain required documentation, such as criminal background checks and confirmation of previous employment.

Indeed, Dallas is also likely to scale back constables' office budgets in the face of declining tax revenues:

Also Tuesday, during a budget discussion, county budget director Ryan Brown said that eliminating 30 of the 40 constable warrant deputy positions would save about $3 million. Each constable precinct has eight warrant deputies.

Brown is trying to close a $23 million budget shortfall. The constable traffic units are also among the items facing elimination.

Perhaps the budget crisis will succeed in scaling back constables' roles where good judgment and common sense could not prevail. At the end of the day, though, what's IMO needed is a new law or constitutional amendment expressly limiting constables to process serving and bailiff's duties and flat-out removing them from the list of officers exercising a full range of police powers.