Odds and ends: Successes, failures, and general weirdness

Here are a few items that caught my attention this week but haven't made it into individual posts:

Constitutional challenge to 'improper photography' statute
Reported KDFW TV in Dallas, "An appeals court in San Antonio ruled the improper photography statute unconstitutional because it is overly broad and that violates our First Amendment rights.  The case is now before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals waiting for a final ruling." See prior Grits coverage.

Crappy, unaccountable judges a 'fact of life' in Texas
Reported the Houston Chronicle:

Court reformers say bad judges are a fact of life in Texas, one of only eight states that uses partisan elections to pick its arbiters of justice. They say it is a system that results in unqualified candidates getting swept into office with political cycles and in qualified judges getting booted out for no good reason ­- or not wanting to run in the first place. 

Lawyers also are critical of how rarely Texas judges are publicly disciplined or removed from office once they get there, while some legal scholars note how loosely courts are administered here.

There are some good ones, too, but it's hard to argue with that assessment.

Man with most to lose: Change nothing
A Travis County lawyer who averages 615 appointed indigent criminal cases per year - the most of any attorney and well above the American Bar Association's recommended caseloads - says he sees no need to overhaul the indigent defense system, naturally.

'Bernie' released into custody of movie director
Bernie Tiede, the East Texas murderer who was the subject of an eponymous, dark comedic feature film by Austin-based director Richard Linklater, has been released on bond on the condition that he live at Linklater's house. Surreal, huh?

Gambling, what gambling?
A pair of Johnson County Sheriff's deputies were providing security for a racetrack busted by DPS for illegal gambling. Initial news reports say they didn't know what was going on, but then that calls into question their law enforcement acumen, doesn't it?

No more proxy marriages in prison
A new law inadvertently ended the practice of "proxy" marriages by prisoners, some of which involve women they met as pen pals while serving time. I've known ex-prisoners who've enjoyed long, loving marriages with women married by proxy, while other situations don't work out as well, to put it mildly. It's a strange aspect of prison subculture that receives little attention, so I'm not surprised lawmakers never considered it when the Lege passed a statute last spring requiring both parties to be present during a marriage ceremony. "'We didn't realize we were going to open up a can of worms,' said Scott Riling, chief of staff for Rep. Trent Ashby, the Lufkin Republican who authored the bill to prohibit proxy marriages."

Focus on veterans
The Defense and Veterans Affairs and County Affairs committees next week will hold a hearing in San Antonio related to veterans courts and peer-to-peer veterans mental health counseling for justice-involved veterans with mental health issues, PTSD, and traumatic brain injury.

Bexar County jail population edging up, but down from last fall's peak
So says this TV news report.

Hearne cop shot 93-year old woman
Reported the Waco Tribune Herald, "Authorities are investigating the shooting of a 93-year-old woman by a Hearne police officer who was involved in the fatal shooting of a Hearne man in December 2012."

The CIA's Lone Star weapons cache
The CIA has allegedly used a secret weapons depot in Boerne, TX to ship weapons around the world in secret wars dating back to the Bay of Pigs.

Forensic Fails
Business Insider published a good overview of problems facing America's forensic experts and crime labs that illuminate many of the issues facing Texas on the topic.

The fallacy of prohibition: Gambling edition

An Austin Statesman story today by Patrick George quotes police decrying "light penalties" for business operating eight-liner gambling machines, calling for harsher punishments and stricter city ordinances aiming to drive them further underground. However, an earlier Statesman story (Sept. 8) pointed out how Duval County in South Texas received 9% of its annual budget from fees paid by eight-liner operations. Wrote Eric Dexheimer:

It could be the local government success story of the year: Confronted with a struggling economy and stagnant tax revenues, entrepreneurial officials in a county perhaps best known for its rich history of graft and political corruption uncover a lucrative new source of revenue.

But there's a small catch.

"Of course the machines are illegal, as I understand it," said Jo Ann Ehmann, the part-time bookkeeper for the tiny city of Gregory.

Just northeast of Corpus Christi, Gregory — population 2,000 — has collected about $800,000 in the 18 months since it started enforcing its $1,000-per-machine game room ordinance. The city's annual budget is about $1 million.

Together, a half-dozen or so rural counties and municipalities have earned millions of dollars from recently enacted fees levied on the gaming machines.

Grits considers bans on these devices counterproductive, ensuring they'll be operated mainly by a criminal element instead of in a regulated environment. The traditional mafia in the northeast was vanquished not so much by successful law enforcement efforts to lock up mobsters as by the creation of legal (often state operated) lotteries that eliminated illegal numbers running. Similarly, legalizing eight-liners - which are essentially slot machines - would reduce crime, generate revenue and allow their regulation and taxation, as so many small towns have discovered.

Harsher penalties won't eliminate illegal gambling - they never have, after all - but merely drive the activity further into the shadows of society. They also eliminate substantial revenue streams from government, relegating the activity, and income, to the black market. Regrettably, such observations were absent in today's Statesman article, which followed the tired, traditional format of articulating a problem then voicing police calls for harsher punishment as seemingly the sole solution. The issue, though, is more complicated than that. "Light penalties" aren't the real problem: Prohibition is.

Blast from the past: SWAT raid shuts down Dallas VFW over veterans' poker night

This is a little dated but new to me, so consider it a Veterans Day Special. Via Radley Balko, check out this video from Reason.TV about a raid by SWAT personnel during poker night at a Dallas VFW hall, narrated by the comedian Drew Carey back in 2007:


I wonder if this heroic endeavor ever made it onto an episode of Dallas SWAT?

Further Down the Rabbit Hole: Bastrop Sheriff accepted bribe from man accused of illegal gambling operation

The string of recent corruption stories coming out of Texas cities and law enforcement around the state makes me think the topic nearly deserves its own independent blog: No doubt you could productively focus on the topic full time. Part of me feels good that these cases are being prosecuted, since we're now seeing them with so much greater frequency. On the other hand, they just keep coming, and part of me is beginning to wonder exactly how deep this rabbit hole goes?

Last week, former Bastrop County Sheriff Richard Hernandez added his name to the ignoble list of corrupt Sheriffs, chiefs, and other law enforcement officials who've pled guilty to corruption charges in the recent past. Reported the Austin Statesman ("Former Bastrop County Sheriff, Commissioner plea guilty to corruption charges," Jan. 23):

Former Bastrop County Sheriff Richard Hernandez and County Commissioner David Goertz, both accused of misusing public money, pleaded guilty Tuesday to corruption charges under plea deals that require Hernandez to serve jail time and Goertz to resign from office.

Both men admitted to using taxpayer resources, including county equipment, vehicles, materials, inmate labor, facilities and credit accounts, for their personal benefit, under the plea arrangements, which were negotiated with the Texas attorney general's office. ...

According to his plea agreement, Hernandez will spend 90 days in jail, will be on probation for 10 years, will forfeit his peace officer's license and will pay the county $16,000 in restitution. The county will also receive $3,750 that Hernandez deposited in a court restitution account after his indictment. The money was intended to repay the county for materials used to build barbecue pits that Hernandez was accused of selling for personal profit.

Hernandez, 52, served as sheriff from January 1997 until he resigned in May after his indictment.

The most serious allegations against Hernandez involved a scheme to pay for a new pickup for his personal use that he arranged with a convicted drug dealer who is accused of running an illegal gambling operation in Bastrop County.

Once may be an isolated incident, but twice is a pattern and I'll bet this won't be the last case we hear in Texas of local officials exacting las mordidas from local gambling outfits. Taking bribes to protect a gambling operation is what recently brought down the Laredo police chief and several of his officers.

Gaming room black market contributes to police corruption

More corruption among border law enforcement has surfaced that threatens to undermine the proposed "surge" along the Texas Mexico border ("Laredo cop cuts plea deal in corruption case," Aug 16).

Lately I've started to track Texas bribery and official corruption cases on Grits more closely, hoping that accumulating anecdotes will enable me to identify patterns that don't appear when viewing each case atomically. One hypothesis I want to explore in greater detail is the idea that black markets encourage official corruption. That certainly appears to be the case here:

Sgt. Alfonso Santos, 51, admitted receiving almost-weekly bribes from an illegal gambling operation in exchange for protection from police raids.

He received $37,040 in payoffs between April 2003 and November 2006, the U.S. attorney's office said.

A second officer, Lt. Eloy Rodriguez, faces the same charges, in addition to several counts of cocaine possession and distribution.

Laredo has more than 50 licensed "game rooms" featuring eight-liners — electronic games of chance that look like slot machines. Such game rooms are not illegal, but under Texas law it is illegal for operators to pay out anything other than prizes valued at $5 or less.

A San Antonio Express-News investigation last year showed that many game rooms in Laredo dole out illegal cash awards.

As part of the plea agreement, Santos agreed to cooperate fully with federal authorities in exchange for prosecutors not opposing his expected request for a smaller sentence.

Currently, Santos faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The plea agreement stipulates that the government will request that Santos' sentencing be deferred "until all co-defendants indicted or unindicted have pled guilty."

That stipulation revives the likelihood of identifying and charging a third co-conspirator, so far unnamed, mentioned repeatedly in the original indictment.

The indictment states that on two occasions, the unnamed co-conspirator received $5,000 payments from the game room operator. At other times, Santos and Rodriguez picked up payments on the third person's behalf.

The plea agreement adds that prosecutors possess recorded conversations of Santos and Rodriguez claiming to have collected money for the unindicted co-conspirator.

I wrote recently about the growing black market statewide that illegal gaming rooms cater to, and how difficult it is for police to shut them down. The problem becomes worse when an officer charged with enforcing the law turns out to be on the weekly take. The same problem occurs with narcotics enforcement. Not even the FBI is immune.

That's why I think new border security funds should go first to bolster Internal Affairs divisions and to investigate and prosecute official corruption. Until that problem can be reined in, it will be difficult to achieve other security goals at the border, no matter now well-intentioned or lavishly funded.

Make it illegal: Watch the black market expand

Here's an example of irrationally punitive criminal justice policies actually making us less safe.

According to the Houston Chronicle ("Law enforcement losing big on local gambling," Aug. 5), there are 300-400 game rooms operating allegedly illegal gambling operations in Houston! That's really a big number of underground gaming and party rooms, don't you think? It's like a revival of the whole speakeasy concept from prohibition days, only this time based on prohibition of gambling.

Police target the businesses for petty code violations instead of for illegal gambling because they must prove the entity is not just providing entertainment. I'd think they could resolve that by just interviewing folks as they come out, but officers told the reporter it requires someone to go undercover to make a case.

The irony to me: Anyone can drive up to Shreveport or I'm sure lots of other places in Louisiana and drop quarters into slot machines until the cows come home. Who cares?

Police say they do because violent criminals target game rooms where "operators handle large amounts of cash and most patrons are female or elderly." But I think there's another reason game rooms are targeted: Because they're illegal. "In the past year, sheriff's deputies responded to 12 robberies and four shootings — three of them fatal — at gaming rooms," but anecdotal evidence indicates most crimes at gaming rooms are never reported, say police.

By comparison, there's hardly anyplace safer in America than inside a casino, there's so much security at most of them. But because Texas outlawed these machines for gambling purposes, a black market formed. So what should be a safe, consensual business relationship for gamblers becomes a dangerous and shady one.

On the other hand, if you want to buy a state-funded lottery ticket, Texas not only condones but avidly encourages people to scratch their gambling itch through expensive ad campaigns. Not only is the hypocrisy mind-boggling, but I bet the eight liners pay off better.