Reasonably Suspicious podcast back from hiatus: Austin police chief under fire, COVID in TX prisons and jails, Harris DA calls to overturn shady drug convictions, and other stories

After a three-month hiatus while your correspondent underwent throat-cancer treatment, here's the May 2020 episode of Just Liberty's Reasonably Suspicious podcast, co-hosted as always by me and Mandy Marzullo. Grits must admit, until I was editing all this together, I hadn't realized how much the radiation treatment had affected my vocal chords: I sound like a different person, decidedly heading in the raspy, Tom-Waits-ish direction. (Really that's wishful thinking; my singing voice is completely shot.) Regardless, it was good to see Mandy again and climb back into the podcasting saddle.

We went a little longer this time because the segment on Austin PD includes a half-dozen excerpts from a community forum held last week by the Austin Justice Coalition. Lots of good stuff there. Thanks to Chas Moore for getting me the audio. As always, the podcast is available on Soundcloud, iTunes, and Google podcasts, or you can listen to it here:

Here's what we discussed this month, with time stamps in case you want to jump to an individual segment:

Top Stories

• Community groups call for Austin police chief's ouster (1:46)
• Coronavirus in Texas jails and prisons (32:40)

Fill in the Blank

• Ransomware attack on Texas courts (44:40)
• The Texas AG and Rosa Jimenez (48:15)
• Editor of Palestine paper wins Pulitzer for series on jail oversight (51:30)

The Last Hurrah (53:25)

• Harris County DA calls to overturn shady drug convictions
• San Marcos mandates citations instead of arrests for petty crimes
• Joe Bryan gets parole

Find a transcript of the podcast below the jump. Enjoy!

The high cost of hubris: Ransomware attack sidelines online presence of Texas courts

Somebody successfully launched a ransomware attack on the Texas appellate court system. State officials decided not to pay, so now it's impossible to access hand-down lists, opinions, orders, etc., online for the Court of Criminal Appeals, the Texas Supreme Court, or any of the 14 intermediate appellate courts. The OCA also operates computer systems for a slew of smaller agencies like the Texas Indigent Defense Commission, the Office of Capital and Forensic Writs, the Forensic Science Commission, and the State Prosecuting Attorney.

Readers will recall that, last year, Potter County (Amarillo) was struck with a ransomware attack. They also refused to pay and as of last fall, it was unclear if they would ever be able to cover many records from their courts and law-enforcement systems. As in this case, they called in "law enforcement and the Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR) to investigate the breach," but the perpetrators were never caught. This created huge disruptions that are still reverberating.

Grits understands the defiant impulse to not pay ransom. But Amarillo's experience shows that decision can end up cutting of one's nose to spite one's face. Potter County would have been better off paying and calling it the cost of an education, and I suspect, when all is said and done, the same will turn out to be true for the Texas Office of Court Administration.