Confronting racism at Austin PD, ↓ TX solitary numbers may be an illusion, driver license suspensions not enhancing collections, Big-D bail reform collapses into confusion, and other stories

Here are a few odd and ends that merit Grits readers' attention:

Racial bias and disparities at Austin PD
A new report from the Austin Police Monitor's office demonstrated that black Austinites are disproportionately affected by police stops, searches, and arrests. The disparities are quite large, but Austin PD doesn't provide the data needed to drill down and discover particular officers engaging in discriminatory practices. The report comes in the wake of an assistant chief stepping down in December after a whistleblower revealed racist texts and emails sent to other departmental brass over many years. The city council ordered a review of internal officer communications in response that may reveal more racist officer communication, which has the police union mad as a wet hen. The Police Monitor's report provides a less personal, more systemic assessment of racism in the department, looking beyond individuals' points of view to the impact of departmental practices. Good for the Austin city council for taking this on.

Austin police chief orders arrests for crimes cops can't prove
In other Austin PD news, Grits finds bizarre Chief Bryan Manley's position that the department will continue to arrest and cite people for marijuana possession after the City Council forbade them from doing the lab testing to prove THC levels were above .3% and the substance could be distinguished from hemp. Isn't this the police chief openly saying he has ordered his officers to arrest people when they cannot prove the elements of the crime? To my attorney readers: What legal mechanisms exist to restrain police who openly choose to make wrongful arrests that prosecutors universally dismiss? IANAL, but it seems to me police don't have authority to arrest when there's no probable cause to believe a crime was committed. And since marijuana and hemp come from the same plant, they're indistinguishable without the test.

It's also worth mentioning, bringing the subject back around to the prior item, that marijuana enforcement generates even higher racial disparities than other Austin PD activities, reported the Austin Chronicle:

Data from APD shows that in 2019, a total of 432 citations were issued for marijuana offenses. Of those, 364 went to Black or Latinx Austinites, while just 64 went to white residents – despite similar levels of marijuana use among all three populations. So stopping enforcement of low-level cannabis offenses (see "Council Unani­mous­ly Votes to End Low-Level Pot Enforcement," Jan. 24) could reduce the disproportionate impact arrests and citations have on Austin's Black and brown residents. 

"It's outrageous for APD to be pointlessly writing these worthless pieces of paper," Emily Gerrick, an attorney with the Texas Fair Defense Project and an architect of the POM resolution, told us on Monday, Jan. 27. "Resources could be much better spent trying to address those types of racial disparities in the first place, such as with anti-implicit-bias training."

Competitive DA primaries in Texas
The Appeal compiled a list of competitive DA primaries in Texas. Harris, Travis, and El Paso counties are the big prizes. See a related spreadsheet.

Revenue collection not enhanced through driver license suspensions
The suspension of drivers licenses for nonpayment of traffic fines through the OmniBase program does not correlate with higher payment rates, found an analysis by Texas Appleseed and the Texas Fair Defense Project. The program "has a profound negative impact on people already struggling financially, driving them into a cycle of debt and poverty by taking away their ability to legally drive." The groups encouraged cities and counties to stop using OmniBase altogether, suggesting payment rates may be unaffected.

↓ Texas ad seg numbers may be an illusion
The Texas Observer's Michael Barajas took a deep dive into solitary confinement issues. Texas' numbers of prisoners in solitary, dubbed "ad seg" in TDCJ parlance, has declined by more than half, according to official figures. But Barajas' reporting raises the possibility that some of that reduction stems from reclassifying prisoners, not changing the conditions they live under:

as the Texas Tribune reported last year, some of TDCJ’s new programs may actually mask the extent to which the state has reformed its solitary confinement practices. Inmates moved out of solitary and into a mental health diversion program still live in conditions that seem indistinguishable from solitary; prisoners continue to be confined in small spaces and have limited time outside their cells. Regardless of these similarities, Texas doesn’t count its participants as being in isolated housing.

Dallas bail reform collapses into confusion
In Dallas, D Magazine has the story of how bail-reform their has collapsed into confusion. Was glad to see the article critique the same, ill-conceived op eds from the Dallas News at which Grits lashed out in this post. Here's  how the author, Shawn Shinneman, summarized the flaws in the DMN editorial board's analysis:

That editorial is inaccurate. It suggests we have true bail reform in Dallas County. We don’t. It insinuates Creuzot’s wish-list reforms are in place. For the most part, they aren’t. It also conflates a violent offender with the type of defendant bail reform is targeted at: poor people who are accused of a nonviolent offense, whose lives are upended because they don’t have money to post bond.

Long-time ex-San-Angelo police chief indicted for bribery

Timothy Ray Vasquez, who was police chief in San Angelo from 2004-2016, has been indicted in federal court for allegedly taking bribes related to the purchase of an $11 million radio system. Most of the alleged bribes were funneled through a wedding band called "Funky Munky" the chief played in on the side.

Reentry travails in Tyler
In The Tyler Loop, Jennifer Toon has an excellent essay on the travails of reentry given limited treatment resources and lack of halfway houses outside of the big population centers.

Economists economisting on crime
See the lineup for the Texas Economics of Crime Workship at Texas A&M, organized by Prof. Jennifer Doleac. As regular readers know, I consider economists' analyses of crime generally flawed and harmful. But thankfully, as in this workshop, most economists analyzing criminal-justice issues aren't utilizing economic principles, they're just doing applied math.

Flawed forensics chronicled
Recent coverage of flawed forensics deserves readers' attention:

• New York Review of Books: Jailed by Bad Science
• GQ: Evidence on Trial: Why the forensic evidence is less reliable than we think
• The Outline: The dangerous shortcomings of forensic science
• Science and Justice (academic): Cognitive Biases in the Peer Review of Bullet and Cartridge Case Comparison Casework: A Field Study

1994 Crime Bill revisionism

Doug Berman says the 1994 Crime Bill wasn't as bad as you think and maybe even did some good, from the vantage point of 20/20 hindsight. But it still "fostered and reinforced tough-on-crime attitudes in Washington and among state and local criminal justice officials that contributed to historic growth in national prison populations." That's the most important takeaway, IMO. These revisionist analyses are fine, but here's the thing: Federal crimes are a small part of the system, so the biggest impact of the 1994 Crime Bill was political: It galvanized bipartisan support for mass incarceration that led to so-called liberal Democrats running political ads like this one:

Gifts or Bribes? Prosecutor took donations from defendants who received leniency

This is a rather stunning story out of Brown County, and affirms why it was never a good idea to allow prosecutors to accept bribes gifts from people in their jurisdiction.

Most prosecutors in Texas are barred by state law from taking gifts from people in their jurisdiction. Among the ethical questions such arrangements could raise, the most basic is that a defendant could simply buy his way out of punishment for a crime. Yet for nearly a decade, the Brown County Attorney’s Office has arguably done something similar. [County Attorney Shane] Britton has made “donations” from defendants the foundation of a pretrial diversion program that lets people avoid prosecution for drunk driving, driving without a license, shoplifting and other misdemeanors. In this way, hundreds of defendants have paid a combined $250,000 since 2008 to cover travel to conferences, cellphones for Britton and his staff, and advertisements in the Brownwood High School cheer calendar, according to county records. By covering other office costs with donations, Britton was even able to convince county leaders to boost salaries for himself and his staff.

In Texas, paying for cops, courts and prosecutors with fees from defendants has gotten more and more popular over the years. But what happens when the drive to do justice on the cheap collides with a rogue prosecutor? 

Only in the last year has Britton’s office started to get critical attention from the county’s legal community. And in the tight-knit courthouse, it’s hard to miss the Texas Rangers collecting records regarding his office, or the rumors of an FBI investigation into whether donations were accepted off the books. When county leaders commissioned a forensic audit of the fund, they found huge gaps in record-keeping that suggested, at best, a casual approach to taking money from defendants. At worst, his critics allege, he ran an illegal collection scheme for over a decade that blurred the lines between fees, donations and bribes.

Read the whole thing, and kudos to Patrick Michels of the Texas Observer. He did a great job with this story.

Are Texas Rangers incompetent to confront corruption, or just disincentivized?

Does corruption flourish in Texas because of incompetent state-level law enforcement? A San Antonio Express News story documenting South Texas corruption (March 12) opened thusly:

After he lost his City Council seat four years ago, Richard Diaz outlined his concerns about local corruption in a detailed three-page complaint to the Zavala County district attorney.

“It was about the misuse of public property, and then, of course, they were (gassing) up their private vehicles from the city yard, and there were other violations of the charter,” Diaz said, referring to city officials.

“They talked to a lot of people who knew about this, and verified what I was saying, but for some reason they just dropped the investigation. They never told me anything,” he recalled.

District Attorney Roberto Serna, a Crystal City native, said he asked the Texas Rangers to investigate. In the end, however, after “a very diligent investigation, no prosecutable cases resulted,” he said.

The FBI, which later got the complaint, dug deeper and eventually hit pay dirt.

The DA said the Texas Rangers' investigation was "diligent," but it wasn't diligent enough to uncover wrongdoing. So how is it that the feds could get the job done? They found a "truckload of documents" they considered incriminating enough to seize as evidence and made numerous arrests.

Observing the slew of corruption cases in Texas, Grits has been struck by the fact that they typically are only ever prosecuted when the federal government steps in. Is this because the Texas Rangers are incompetent to the task? Clearly they blew it in Crystal City.

Reported the Express-News, "The FBI in San Antonio also has seen a sharp increase in corruption cases, rising threefold to 64 open cases, between 2012 and 2014." But corruption is illegal under state law, too, and these are local officials, for the most part, catching these cases.

Why isn't Texas law enforcement able to identify and prosecute corruption? Is it because Texas DPS's enforcement and spending priorities are focused on patrolling the border region, which ironically is the safest area in the state, instead of on officials who violate the public trust? Or might Texas fail to confront corruption even without competing priorities, simply leaving the task to the feds because it's easier, and you get to blame Obama if things go bad? It's not like state and local law enforcement were pursuing these cases before the border buildup.

It's embarrassing that the feds keep finding and prosecuting serious corruption, especially in South Texas but also elsewhere, while state and local law enforcement can't or won't get the job done. Too bad some of that misspent border security money allocated by the Lege last session wasn't designated for this purpose. Corruption is a greater threat to security than the next landscape worker or nanny who may cross the border illegally.

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: Of drones, drugs, and DA elections

Here are several items that merit Grits readers attention but haven't made it into individual posts:

Craig Watkins' fumbling Dallas DA campaign
Grits mentioned earlier that the Dallas, Harris and Bexar County DA's races interested me as potentially close, competitive toss-up races, in Bexar because a single donor dropped $600K on the Democratic challenger. In Dallas, where I'd already thought the race would be close, Gromer Jeffers at the Dallas News reported that challenger Susan Hawk has out-fundraised Craig Watkins roughly 5-1 and is running TV ads, which are "a rarity for a countywide race, and will be following up with direct mail and other contacts to nudge voters to go to the polls. She’s actively trying to peel Democratic voters away from the incumbent." Meanwhile, Watkins team "lacks a professional campaign manager and field director, perhaps because there is no money to pay them." In 2010, Watkins raised $750K and won by about 5,000 votes. He appears more vulnerable now and I wouldn't be surprised to see Hawk upset the favored incumbent.

Corrupt cop escorted drug loads in Houston
A former Houston police officer, Marcos Carrion, pled guilty to escorting drug shipments through town on behalf of a drug cartel, the Houston Chronicle reported. See an FBI press release and the plea agreement.

Montgomery Sheriff will drone again
The Montgomery County Sheriff's Office will replace the quarter-million dollar drone they sank in Lake Conroe with insurance money. This was the second time they'd crashed the thing in as many years.

Listen to Texas Tribune crimjust panels
I'd neglected to link to the Texas Tribune's online postings of two criminal justice related panels at their recent festival on criminal justice reform and the death penalty (because we don't talk about that enough!). Go here to listen.

5th Circuit Judge: Innocents executed analogous to collateral damage from drone strikes
A complaint against 5th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Edith Jones for alleged has been dismissed by her fellow 5th D.C. Circuit jurists, which doesn't seem like the most impartial group to evaluate the challenge to one of their peers. Reported the Houston Chronicle:

the dismissal order released this week says Jones herself admitted to describing mental disability as a "red herring" in death penalty appeals, though it is a defense approved by the U.S. Supreme Court.

She admitted she used an analogy to drone strikes in rebuttal to the argument "that the death penalty kills innocents."

She agreed she'd said something about how Mexican nationals might prefer American death row to prison in their own country, even though Mexico does not have capital punishment, and that she said both blacks and Hispanics sadly "seem to commit more heinous crimes."

But none of those comments were considered misconduct by the investigating judges.

Private foundations fund police surveillance tech
Police departments are looking to private foundations to pay for Stingray surveillance devices and other equipment they don't want to have to justify through the formal budgeting process, reported ProPublica. 

Roundup: Expensive jails, paid-for pols, broken grand juries, and flawed forensics

Here are a few odds and ends that haven't made it into full, individual posts since my return from Mexico City but which still deserve Grits readers attention:

This week in Cow Town: Hair microscopy and other forensic conundrums
The Forensic Science Commission will hold meetings of its hair and fiber microscopy panel (2 p.m.) and the Complaint Screening Committee (4:30 p.m.) in Fort Worth this afternoon, with its main, full committee meeting tomorrow morning. Go here for the agendas and a livestream of each event.

Contract jail scheme failed to turn profit because of high jailer pay
El Paso county commissioners say they have the most expensive jail in the state because of high jailers salaries that start at $37K and rise to $60K after eleven years, which is certainly the highest I've heard of in Texas. The county takes in $10-11 million per year in revenue for federal prisoners they house but can't turn a profit (I know Grits readers are surprised) because of high overhead costs.

John Wiley Price: Federal defendant
So much to say ... so little of it fit for polite company. In Dallas, county commissioner John Wiley Price has been arrested on federal corruption charges and hauled away in irons. He has been "indicted on 11 bribery- and conspiracy-related charges that allege that he took things of value to influence his vote on business matters," reported Texas Lawyer. Price for years acted as a self-appointed czar of the Dallas County Jail as well as the county bail bond board, so there's a particular irony in his present situation. I don't know much about the specifics of the feds' case against Price beyond published newspaper reports, but it'd be hard for any allegation to surprise me. The feds and Price have been dancing around the issue for years, so I'd be surprised if the US Attorney failed to come loaded for bear. If this fiasco ends with Price rising from the political grave, vampire-like - or worse, Messiah-like, stronger than before - it will balkanize and poison Dallas politics for years. So if they've got him, I hope it's dead to rights.

'Is the grand jury system broken?'

At Texas Monthly, Dan Solomon followed up on Lisa Falkenberg's reporting about grand jury misconduct with a short essay titled, "Is the grand jury system broken?" Good question. IMO the answer is, "There's no way to tell." Last session, state Rep. Bryan Hughes filed an unsuccessful bill to require recording of witness testimony in addition to suspects. That'd be a start, and even better would be for those proceedings to be recorded and turned over to the defense prior to trial, just like Brady material. At a minimum, the information should become public after conviction, like other materials in police and prosecutors' possession that becomes public under Sec. 552.108 of the Government Code when a conviction is final.

Rising law enforcement costs in Montgomery County
The Sheriff's office accounted for the bulk of a recent budget increase in Montgomery County.

Make death-in-custody reports more easily available
I wish the Attorney General would link copies of death in custody reports to the names on their macro list published on their website. It's all public record and doing so would make them a lot easier to use without wasting everyone's time with pointless bureaucracy. According to the list, there have 1,736 deaths in custody at TDCJ between 2005 and so far in 2014.

Consensus on privacy of cell-phone location records?
I agree we are approaching a national consensus that cell-phone location records should be private, but unlike this author I'm not sure all the evidence so far blows that direction. If the Texas and California Legislatures pass warrant requirements, it would be hard for SCOTUS to deny there's a significant national trend. The array of less populous states whose legislatures have so far acted may not yet count as a consensus, particularly when federal circuit courts are split on the question and mine in particular (the 5th) is on the wrong side of history.

A big advocate for bail reform
Times have changed when New Jersey Gov. and presidential hopeful Chris Christie feels politically comfortable getting out in front of bail reform. He wants to give judges discretion to deny bail based on dangerousness and to have most release decisions governed by risk assessments instead of the ability to pay a bondsman.

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.)"

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!

SA judicial bribery case unfolding

The SA Express-News reported today that:

A San Antonio lawyer pleaded guilty Monday to bribing a state district judge in exchange for favorable rulings on cases.

Alberto “Al” Acevedo Jr., 60, admitted he bribed then-144th District Judge Angus McGinty with less than $10,000.

Corruption allegations vs. San Antonio judge

Reported the SA Express-News today:

Republican state District Judge Angus McGinty is expected to resign as soon as Friday amid allegations he reduced bail on defendants who appeared before him in exchange for auto repairs on his personal vehicles, federal and courthouse sources confirmed.

McGinty's expected resignation is related to an FBI investigation centered on defense lawyer Al Acevedo, who confirmed last month to the Express-News that he was under investigation related to allegations of bribery of judges and others in the criminal justice system over purported favors on his cases.

Among those the FBI has looked at are certain prosecutors in the Bexar County district attorney's office who have been seen with Acevedo at swanky restaurants in San Antonio, where Acevedo picked up large tabs, several sources revealed.

“We're talking hundreds of dollars,” one federal source said. “But I don't know that the fibs (FBI) have enough to pursue that. It could just be seen as courthouse friends going to lunch.”

The probe also extends beyond the Bexar County Courthouse to other areas in the state where Acevedo has had clients, and it includes current and former jurists, federal sources confirmed.

“They're leaving no stone unturned,” another source said.

Jarrell police chief engaged in fraud, and other police misconduct news

This is one of the more crass examples of law-enforcement fraud I've run across recently. Reported the Austin Statesman:

The former police chief of Jarrell pleaded guilty Friday to federal fraud charges, admitting he accepted bribes from undocumented workers to help them obtain temporary immigration status.

Appearing before a U.S. magistrate judge in Austin, Andres Tomas Gutierrez answered a series of mostly yes-or-no questions during the 40-minute hearing. The former small-town police chief admitted to a single charge of wire fraud/theft of honest services stemming from a federal investigation that alleged he took payments from several people to give them immigration benefits for helping with bogus police investigations. ...

As for the undocumented workers caught in the scam, [US Attorney Robert] Pitman said those victims “at no point presented a public safety threat,” and they will remain in the country for the time being. They now legitimately qualify for the temporary immigration status available to people cooperating with a criminal investigation, he said.

An earlier story gave more detail about the scheme:

Court records say Gutierrez collected the payments from the fall of 2011 to November 2013. Two other people, who weren’t named in the court documents and didn’t work for the city of Jarrell, introduced Gutierrez to undocumented workers who had money to pay for immigration benefits, the documents said.

Gutierrez and the two people working with him told the illegal immigrants they would be working as informants for the Jarrell Police Department, the documents said. As they asked for the payment, they “lied to the (undocumented residents), telling them that the Jarrell Police Department would receive the money and use it to pay expenses related to official business,” the documents said. In fact, authorities said, Gutierrez and his accomplices kept “the money for their own personal use,” the documents said.

Then Gutierrez emailed applications to U.S. government officials in Austin, seeking a special type of immigration status for those individuals by claiming they were helping the Jarrell Police Department with narcotics and human trafficking investigations, authorities said. The “Significant Public Benefit Parole” — available to foreigners who assist local, state and federal law enforcement agencies — allows them to remain in the United States for one year. It can be renewed by a law enforcement agency.

RELATED POLICE MISCONDUCT NEWS: Last month, an East Texas police chief was sentenced to five years in prison for running a license plate check on behalf of a suspected meth dealer. ALSO: Reported the Austin Statesman, "A former Austin police officer has pleaded guilty to giving false information to federal authorities during a credit card fraud investigation, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office." AND: A now-former Tarrant County Sheriff's Deputy was sentenced to 30 years in prison for impregnating a 16-year old relative. AND: Reported AP, "Federal prosecutors say a former sheriff's deputy in West Texas has been sentenced to four years in prison for distributing cocaine."

Texas among states where former red-light camera exec says company gave illicit gifts, bribes

Reported the Chicago Tribune last week, "A fired executive of Chicago's beleaguered red light camera company alleges in a lawsuit that Redflex Traffic Systems doled out bribes and gifts at 'dozens of municipalities' in 13 other states and says he is cooperating in an ongoing federal investigation." Former sales executive Aaron Rosenberg told the paper "that during his tenure Redflex 'bestowed gifts and bribes on company officials in dozens of municipalities within, but not limited to the following states: California, Washington, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Florida, New Jersey, Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia.'"

Among Texas municipalities contracting with Redflex are Austin, El Paso, Plano, Corpus Christi, Grand Prairie, North Richland Hills, Hurst, Port Lavaca, League City, Carrollton, Killeen, Mesquite, and Longview - or at least those are the ones Grits could uncover via a quick online search. This 2008 press release said Redflex operated cameras in "39 communities" across the state. It will be interesting to learn in which ones the former executive alleges the company "bestowed gifts and bribes" to local officials to secure their contracts. This simmering issue could quickly heat up once the fellow starts naming names to the feds.

Judge: Cameron County corruption beggars belief

On New Year's Day, the Valley Morning Star published an extensive account of judicial and prosecutorial corruption in a story tiled "Judge: Hard to believe depths of Cameron County corruption." The story began:

An extensive federal investigation found corruption in the Cameron County’s legal system and judiciary to be so pervasive that most people probably wouldn’t believe it — “unless they heard it themselves,” U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen said in 2013.

Hanen made his statement on Dec. 3, as he sentenced Austin attorney Marc G. Rosenthal to 20 years in jail and ordered him to make restitution of more than $13 million for bribing former 404th state District Judge Abel C. Limas.

The jury found Rosenthal paid Limas for favorable court rulings in civil cases, bribed witnesses, filed false personal injury cases, directed ex-state Rep. Jim Solis and others to pay funeral home directors and ex-Brownsville Navigation District police Chief George Gavito to refer cases. It also found he arranged to manipulate case assignments at the Cameron County District Clerk’s Office, and paid persons to pose as witnesses and to provide false statements, and testimony.

On that same day that the jury returned its verdict on Rosenthal, attorney Ray R. Marchan was supposed to report to federal prison in Fort Worth, following his June 18, 2012 conviction on six counts of racketeering, conspiracy to commit racketeering, aiding and abetting extortion and mail fraud. He was sentenced to 3.5 years in jail.

Instead, Marchan jumped to his death from the Queen Isabella Memorial Bridge.

This month, the same judge is expected to sentence former Cameron County DA Armando Villalobos as part of the same web of corruption. Judge Hanen ordered that numerous ethical violations exposed in these cases be reported to the state bar and other authorities. Here's how the article concluded:

Hanen said that the court had heard witnesses and seen exhibits that show uncharged illegal acts and violations of disciplinary rules.

“Some of this evidence was presented to the jury and some of it was not,” Hanen also said. “In fact, defense counsel requested, and this court felt duty-bound by law to give an instruction to the jury to disregard these ethical violations in reaching its verdict,” Hanen stated.

“The U.S. Attorneys and federal agents involved in the trial of this case are hereby ordered to provide the appropriate authorities at the State Bar of Texas, Chief Judge Ricardo Hinojosa of the Southern District of Texas and the Chief Judge of the Fifth Circuit or his designee a copy of this order and, if they so request, the evidence of the multiple ethical violations committed by multiple attorneys involved in this case.

“This includes the evidence not presented at trial and covers all attorneys involved, not just the defendant,” Hanen ordered.

He continued: “This court has great admiration for the trial bar and the benefits that trial lawyers (both prosecution and defense) provide to society. It is their vigilance, among others, that ensures that the system of justice works and that the rights of all Americans are protected.”

“That being said, nothing can do more harm to society than an individual, (or a group of individuals) armed with a law license (or working for someone armed with a law license) that has no moral compass, no respect for the rules governing ethical conduct and no respect for the truth. Some of the acts or omissions may be considered minor; some may have been inadvertent,” Hanen wrote.

“Nevertheless, there were some acts that were neither minor nor accidental mistakes, and the individuals that committed these acts, in this Court’s opinion, should not be allowed to practice law anywhere.”

Justice for Sale: Cameron judge took bags of cash to influence court outcomes

Via AP (Aug. 21), here's the denouement of an  extraordinarily ugly story of South Texas corruption:

A former judge who turned his South Texas courtroom into a money-making operation was sentenced Wednesday to six years in prison followed by three years of supervised release.

U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen sentenced former state district Judge Abel Limas, 59, on one count of racketeering in Brownsville, on the border with Mexico. He also ordered Limas to pay almost $6.8 million in restitution. ...

Limas drew the FBI's attention in late 2007 as he neared the end of his second term in office. Investigators intercepted some 40,000 phone calls and collected surveillance photos documenting how Limas had converted his courtroom into a criminal enterprise, collecting bribes and kickbacks totaling $257,000.

Limas pleaded guilty in 2011 and became the government's star witness in four related trials that shook Cameron County's justice system. He could have faced up to 20 years in prison but received credit for cooperation.  ...

Racketeering is a charge typically associated with organized crime. But in Limas' case, prosecutors said his courtroom was the criminal enterprise where he generated cash.

Limas took kickbacks from friends, accepting thousands of dollars for favorable rulings. In one case, he accepted $5,000 in cash handed to him in a McDonald's bag by then Cameron County District Attorney Armando Villalobos, just to keep his mouth shut. ...

In March 2010, Limas was summoned to by the FBI. A year later, he pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering and agreed to cooperate with authorities.

Limas talked to the FBI more than three-dozen times and became federal prosecutors' star witness at all four trials that followed. He helped take down the sitting district attorney and a former state lawmaker [ed. note: this was Jim Solis], and cast doubt on a large chunk of the Cameron County bar.

Even beyond the dozen people charged in the investigation, Limas implicated many more attorneys in his testimony for practices that were at a minimum unethical.

See coverage from the McAllen Monitor of related civil litigation published recently while Grits was out of town. Here's more background on the former DA's role.

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.

TX parole officers allegedly taxed parolee drug dealers, Evins JCOs arrested for official oppression

Depressing story of corruption out of the Houston parole office from the Austin Statesman's Mike Ward, whose story ("Parole officers, youth prison workers busted in separate crackdowns," July 1) opened:

Four Texas parole officers were jailed in Houston on Monday as authorities began the first arrests in a continuing, year-long federal and state investigation into allegations that the officers took payoffs to ignore drug-trafficking and other illegal activity by recently freed convicts. ...

In Houston, U.S. Attorney Ken Magidson said the indictments allege that the four arrested parole officers took took bribes averaging $1,000 to allow them to continue dealing drugs. On one occasion, the payoff was $3,000.

The arrested officers — identified as April L. Carson, 35, of Missouri City, and Crystal M. Washington, 52; Darlene J. Muhammad, 42, and Ernie Rogers, 56, all of Houston — were to be arraigned on federal charges, according to authorities. They said bond was not immediately set.

Officials said the investigation is continuing, hinting that other arrests are likely.

Federal authorities said the four officers worked at two Houston parole offices, where allegations of bribery and exchange of sexual favors had been under investigation for some time.

Though the timeline and precise chain of events underlying this episode remain unclear, Ward wrote that the investigation was initiated after state Sen. John Whitmire's office "was tipped by an inmate who said he was being shaken down for money and sex "

Separately, reported Ward, juvenile correctional officers from the Evins unit in South Texas face allegations of excessive force, official oppression and covering up misconduct:

In a separate case, juvenile-justice system director Mike Griffiths [Monday] announced the arrests of three employees at the Evins lockup, including security director Pete Martinez. The other two employees were identified as Juan Tamez and Julian Fuentes, both correctional officers.

The Evins lockup has been plagued by gang violence and assaults by youths on staff and other youths for nearly two years.

Griffiths said Tamez and Fuentes, both alleged to have used excessive force on teen-aged lawbreakers incarcerated at the lockup, face official oppression charges, and Martinez is accused of falsifying records concerning the abuse.

He said that three youths who were identified as victims did not sustain serious injuries.

In addition to the three employees who face criminal charges, seven other Evins staff members have been suspended for having knowledge of the alleged abuse but failing to report it, according to Griffiths.

 Ugly, disturbing allegations.

MORE: See more detail on the situation at TJJD's Evins unit from the McAllen Monitor, July 2:

Three employees at an Hidalgo County juvenile detention facility were arrested last week for allegedly using excessive force against inmates.

Officers from the Texas Juvenile Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General arrested Evins Regional Juvenile Center correctional officers Juan Tamez and Julian Fuentes, along with Evins Director of Security Pete Martinez between June 21 and 27.

Tamez and Fuentes were charged with official oppression, a Class A misdemeanor, and Martinez was charged with tampering or fabricating physical evidence, a third-degree felony. ...

A probable cause affidavit against Martinez charges him with deleting a video that showed Fuentes mistreating an inmate.

On April 8, an inmate who had been in Evins for almost two years was ordered to a special detention area for being disruptive, the affidavit said. Fuentes escorted the handcuffed inmate, and while doing so twisted the inmate’s arm, slammed him against a concrete cell wall and his bunk. Then, after the teenager told Fuentes to stop, the jailer slammed the youth hard against the cell floor and fell on top of him.

The youth was being cooperative at the time of his mistreatment, the affidavit said. Fuentes admitted to investigators that he intentionally physically mistreated the youth.

After the incident, Fuentes’ direct supervisor told him that the violence had been recorded on camera, but that Martinez had deleted the video.

Details of Tamez’s arrest were not available at press time Tuesday. His charges are identical to Fuentes’. The probable cause against Martinez does not mention any incident involving Tamez.

Former Cameron DA convicted of bribery

Reported the Houston Chronicle ("Former DA convicted in corruption trial," May 24), "A jury on Friday night found former Cameron County District Attorney Armando R. Villalobos guilty on all but two corruption charges after two weeks of testimony that he took bribes to influence cases before him." The case is part of a broader ongoing corruption prosecution in South Texas.:

Villalobos, who took the stand in his own defense, was charged in a wide-ranging corruption scheme in Cameron County that has resulted in guilty pleas by eight people, including former state Rep. Jose Santiago “Jim” Solis as well as [former state District Judge Abel] Limas.

Former Austin attorney Marc Rosenthal and Port Isabel attorney Ray Marchan were convicted by juries of extortion and racketeering. Marchan took his life when he jumped from the Queen Isabella Causeway in Port Isabel earlier this year on the same day he was to report to prison.

One notices it took the feds stepping in to hold a local DA criminally liable. State-level accountability mechanisms from the state bar to the court system as a general rule aren't up to the task.

TCLEOSE licensed felon who allegedly took cartel bribes, LE agencies faked training

If you've never heard of the Texas Commission of Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education, with its awkward acronym TCLEOSE, you couldn't be blamed. They're the licensing agency in Texas for state and local cops and enforce police training criteria, but their activities rarely enter the public eye. Lately, though, the agency's oversight or lack thereof has been getting more attention.

Bell County
In February it was reported that the Bell County Sheriff's Office had allegedly faked test results from its training program on a wide scale. TCLEOSE's own inspectors hadn't caught the discrepancy and the agency only took action after receiving an independent report.

Bexar County
The previous month, a former deputy constable from Bexar County Precinct Four was extradited from New Hampshire, charged with "allegedly reporting state mandated training credit for individuals who did not attend the training." The episode received little publicity: A San Antonio TV station covered it but the Express-News did not. WOAI reported that, Parrish "allegedly charged for the courses, and pocketed the cash, while working as a reserve deputy constable with the Precinct 4 Constable's office."

Freestone County
Then last month, reported the Corsicana Sun (March 28) Freestone County Sheriff Thomas Don Anderson and a captain in their department face charges after they allegedly "routinely submitted falsified documents to TCLEOSE claiming that Deputies received law enforcement training when they actually had not attended the training." Said the Sun:

Sheriff Anderson was elected in the 2012 general election and took office in January of 2013, after the previous sheriff, Ralph Billings, retired. At the time of the offenses alleged in the indictments, Anderson was the department's Training Coordinator responsible for the administration of all training at the Freestone County Sheriff’s Office and Travis Robertson was the primary instructor for most of the training given by the Freestone County Sheriff’s Office.

See a TCLEOSE press release about the Freestone County officials who will be prosecute by the Travis County Public Integrity Unit in Austin.

Starr County
Just as disturbing, though unrelated to training, in March Starr County Sheriff's Capt. Romeo Javier “Compadre Nacho” Ramirez pled guilty to accepting $30,000 in bribes from the Gulf Cartel in exchange for transmitting sensitive law enforcement information, reported the McAllen Monitor. But there's also a TCLEOSE angle: It turned out he had a prior felony conviction from the '90s that should have barred him from ever receiving a peace officer's license. Notably, this is the same jurisdiction where former Starr County Sheriff Reymundo Guerra was convicted in 2009 of assisting drug traffickers. Ramirez at the time was in charge of running the Starr County Jail. See a copy of his federal indictment (pdf).

* * *

The training episodes follow a common theme: Training was reported that officers never received. Intentional fraud like that would be hard to catch via after-the-fact auditing procedures, particularly at smaller agencies. In some ways, such oversight lapses are understandable. Delivery of training is highly decentralized, there are more than 2,600 law enforcement agencies in the state of Texas, and TCLEOSE doesn't remotely have the staff or resources to provide comprehensive oversight. The failure to catch Ramirez's felony conviction in his background check, though, is harder to justify.

Looking at legislation filed related to the agency, no bills pending at the Texas Legislature would address the questions raised by these episodes, though both the House and Senate budgets include six more FTEs (full-time equivalent staff) than the agency had in the last biennium, bringing the total number of employees to 43.6. Perhaps the additional hands on deck will help TCLEOSE get in front of some of these problems.

MORE: A commenter points out that the Panola County Sheriff, a former TABC agent elected last year, was arrested in March for allegedly using money from a confidential informant fund to pay for his attendance at a new sheriffs school after the county refused to pay for the expenditure. Not exactly a TCLEOSE oversight issue, but related enough to mention.

AND MORE/CLARIFICATION: On Tuesday, TCLEOSE executive director Kim Vickers offered clarification regarding two of these cases. Grits commenters had asked why the Freestone Sheriff was indicted but the Bell County Sheriff was not. Vickers said the allegations in Bell County involved administrative violations stemming from the training coordinator allowing officers to do take-home tests instead of proctored exams. In Freestone, though, TCLEOSE has alleged straight up fraud, asserting that the Sheriff added names to lists of trainees who never participated in training at all. That's why the cases were handled differently, he said.

On Capt. Ramirez out of Starr County, the McAllen Monitor reported that TCLEOSE had improperly granted him a license despite a prior felony for which he'd received deferred adjudication. But Ramirez was licensed in 1999, said Vickers, and until 2001 when the law changed, officers could be licensed with a deferred felony conviction on their record. He said he'd seen other instances where he'd scratched his head and wondered how an officer was licensed but in this case there would have been no bar to making Ramirez a peace officer at the time he was commissioned. (Either way, given his guilty plea for taking drug-cartel bribes, his badge-wearing days are now over.)

Vickers also mentioned another case out of Alpine last year where a training coordinator based at Sul Ross University had allegedly assisted officers with exams, resulting in five currently pending felony indictments. He said that episode taught the agency that training coordinators should not also be proctors during testing.

Criminal corporations: Prof argues 'corporate criminal liability is a question of corporate power'

The US Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, famously echoed by GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, held that corporations are people (and thus possess free speech rights). But that hasn't stopped some in academic and corporate circles from maintaining that corporations should be exempt from criminal law. This author, for example, in 2009 compared criminal punishment of corporations to punishing animals or inanimate objects (likening it to a biblical practice archaically referred to as "deodand"). Others argue criminal law should focus on the individuals engaged in misconduct instead of punishing a "legal fiction." But the Corporate Crime Reporter alerts us to a rebuttal to such views in a story which opens:

The question of corporate criminal liability is a question of corporate power.

That’s according to Charles R.P. Pouncy, a professor of law at Florida International School of Law in Miami. Pouncy is author of, most recently, Reevaluating Corporate Criminal Responsibility: It’s All About Corporate Power (Stetson Law Review, 2012).

Pouncy tackles head on the increasingly popular idea that we should eliminate corporate criminal liability.

“The notion that corporations, and derivatively, capital, should be exempt from punishment under the criminal law — which expresses societal standards and expectations — is inconsistent with the expectations of most members of the communities that corporations inhabit,” he writes.

“This challenge against using the criminal law to control corporate behavior is a component of a larger struggle . . .to determine which forces will control the shape of future society,” he writes. “It is a struggle about which institutions will structure the nature of the world we live in.”

“Will human societies be controlled by the institutions that have structured their existence for the last few thousand years —  kinship, community, religion/philosophy, and social provisioning?” Pouncy asks. “Or will economic institutions, specifically the institutions of the corporation and capital, dominate society and subordinate its human members to the interests of its artificial citizens and their advocates?”

“The question of the corporation’s and capital’s accountability to the criminal law is one of the frontlines in determining whether the . . . principles organizing human societies are designed to serve the interest of corporations or of people. Therefore, this question is central to whether human power will be supplanted by the power of artificial entities.”

I recall a humorous sign from one of the Occupy Wall Street rallies that declared, "I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one."

In truth, though corporations theoretically may be held criminally liable, in practice that itself a legal fiction. When companies are caught engaging in bribery or money laundering, for example, they're inevitably allowed to squeeze out from under criminal charges via civil penalties and financial settlements under "deferred plea agreements." Rarely if ever are the companies themselves or corporate officials who made such decisions held criminally responsible for such behavior. If corporations are people, though, why shouldn't they be subject to criminal sanctions?

Prof. Pouncy contends that, "money alone does not satisfy society’s need to condemn the behaviors it finds damaging to its interests," arguing that "the prospect of having to endure moral condemnation" under criminal law supplies greater deterrent. For my part, I think a) that the idea that corporations are people is BS and b) symbolic condemnation matters much less to corporations than financial liability. I'd rather see individual corporate decision makers held criminally responsible, with corporations punished through regulatory sanctions and civil liability. But in the wake of Citizens United, the personhood of corporations, however absurd, now has been enshrined as the law of the land. And if corporations are people, it follows they can be criminals.

Head of UTEP Criminal Justice Program resigns amidst corruption scandal

The head of the University of Texas at El Paso's Criminal Justice Program recently resigned amidst allegations of impropriety and corruption, reported the El Paso Times this week ("UTEP's embattled professor to resign," July 27):

Fernando Rodriguez, the former head of UTEP's Criminal Justice Program who has ties to El Paso's public-corruption scandal, will resign effective Aug. 31, UTEP Executive Vice President Richard Adauto said Thursday.

Rodriguez, the target of an FBI investigation, was suspended in February after the El Paso Times reported that he had received more than $914,000 in outside employment between 2001 and 2009 without reporting it as required by University of Texas at El Paso rules. Additional documents showed that Rodriguez was paid an additional $233,000 by Aliviane Inc. in 2010, bringing his total pay by the nonprofit to more than $1.1 million.

Several projects evaluated by Rodriguez have led to federal investigations and so far resulted in two corruption convictions, including former County Judge Dolores Briones. The CEO of Alviane will go to trial this fall. See much more detail in the Times story.

Another questionable project Rodriguez worked on was a so-called "open sourced crime lab" which never quite lived up to its billing. The Times reported earlier this year ("UTEP: Agencies say university's Open Sourced Crime Lab hasn't given pledged help," March 25) that area law enforcement agencies had never heard of the project and few if any deliverables could be identified.