War on Drugs Hits the Geriatric Crowd

In Appalachian Kentucky. Why? "When a person is on Social Security, drawing $500 a month, and they can sell their pain pills for $10 apiece, they'll take half of them for themselves and sell the other half to pay their electric bills or buy groceries," Floyd County jailer Roger Webb said.

Sickening. Some days you wonder if this country has completely lost its collective mind. Don't help her buy food or subsidize her electric bill. Arrest her and toss her in jail, where the taxpayers can pay for all of that, plus her healthcare costs. We're talking about an 87-year old defendant.

Texas Monthly: Why can't Steven Phillips get a DNA test?

Thanks to Texas Monthly editor Evan Smith for letting Grits have a free media preview link to Michael Hall's excellent story in the upcoming issue: "Why can't Steven Phillips get a DNA test?" Steven Phillips was convicted of a 1982 rape based on eyewitness testimony, but no physical evidence. A tiny bit of semen evidence was preserved from the rape, though, and Phillips believes a DNA test would prove that his three alibi witnesses weren't lying years ago when they said he was home asleep at the time of the incident. The problem isn't Texas' statute, but elected DAs and judges who want to prove they're tough on crime. Wrote Hall:

Phillips isn’t the only Texas inmate who has been denied a DNA test. Over the past five years, an estimated 800 convicts have made a request, but only 83 have seen it granted. “It’s harder to get DNA testing in Texas than any other state,” says Nina Morrison, a lawyer at the New York–based nonprofit Innocence Project. “The Texas statutory language is generous; it strikes an appropriate balance between granting testing in cases where DNA is relevant to the identity of the perpetrator and not granting it in cases where there are no doubts.” The problem, says Morrison and other lawyers, is that many Texas prosecutors aggressively fight DNA motions no matter what the merits of the request, and many judges apply a strict interpretation of Chapter 64, one that can make it almost impossible to get a test.

Be sure to check out the rest. Hall explains the ins and outs of DNA testing, takes a look at the troubled Houston crime lab, and discusses the role of Texan and former FBI director William Sessions promoting DNA testing in old cases. Good stuff, Michael. And thanks again, TM, for the preview!

RELATED: The Washington Post reports today on two more defendants exonerated by post-conviction DNA tests in Virginia. Both were convicted of rape more than 20 years ago.

Immigrants need to trust law enforcement

If you need a reason why it's a bad idea for state and local cops to enforce immigration laws -- like the bill Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison proposed in October, or what City Councilman Mark Ellis wants to do in Houston -- look no further than the new initiative by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott aimed at fighting international wire fraud, especially fraud committed against people sending money to Mexico. It's an example of important crime-fighting work that can't happen if immigrants can't report crimes to authorities.

The Texas AG is publicizing a complaint line where "consumers" can call to complain about wire fraud. Obviously, a good number of those folks victimized by such fraud entered this country illegally. Texas is working with Profeco, Mexico's consumer protection agency, to investigate and prosecute these cases. "The money that hardworking families in Texas send abroad is essential to those who receive it," [Abbott] says. "It makes a significant impact in improving the quality of life for millions of people around the world, and I want to make sure that consumers are not the targets of unfair treatment or scams."

That's how I want the state's top law enforcement officer to look at the matter. To allow criminality to flourish because its victims fear to speak up -- in nearly all cases victims who have jobs and families they're supporting, since we're talking about people sending money home -- contributes generally to lawlessness and chaos. This is a situation when we have to make a distinction: Who are the REAL bad guys? Somebody who entered the country illegally but who works, pays taxes, commits no crimes and keeps to himself, or an actual criminal committing wire fraud against lots of people?

In the big picture, as Abbott's comments imply, lots of businesses and families benefit from immigration, legal or not, which is why a lot of Latin American immigrants come here. There's no benefit I can see to letting a crook build a wealthy criminal empire just because he's picked the politically correct victims. That's the biggest risk to localizing immigration enforcement. When Sen. Hutchison proposed her federal legislation, I wrote:

If immigrants think contacting local law enforcement will get them deported, witnesses won't come forward. Worse, victims of crime won't report criminal acts perpetrated against them. Abused wives will fear to call for help. Even children would understandably refrain from reporting incidents of pedophilia or abuse.

The new AG initiative offers a perfect example of that. Obviously, if immigrants believe Gen. Abbott will hand over their information to la migra, nobody's going to call his complaint line. But I wonder if a lot of Minuteman-sympathizing immigration opponents don't think he should do just that?

RELATED: Texas Appleseed has resources online in English and Spanish regarding financial laws and services for immigrants. ALSO: Via Immigration Law Blog, see this NY Times story describing the plight of battered immigrant women who return to their abusers because they can't access victims' services.

Natapoff on 'snitching' in Slate

Former federal public defender turned Loyola CA law prof Alexandra "Sasha" Natapoff has a new, link-filled piece on Slate today (Dec. 12) called "Bait and Snitch."

I'd written last spring about Natapoff's excellent academic research on the topic.

The Lessons Tulia Teaches

is the title of an article in the Dec. 19 issue of Newsweek by Ellis Cose. NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorney Vanita Gupta expresses my own view, that "what happened in Tulia happens every day."

"That is not a comforting thought," writes Cose, "but until the war on drugs takes a radical new direction, it will remain an unpleasant reality."

See Grits' past Tulia coverage. UPDATE: A commenter points to this interview with Nate Blakeslee about the Tulia case in The American Prospect.

Tarrant County Bail Politics Keeps Jail Full

On a Monday, I was arrested.
On Tuesday, they locked me in the jail.
On Wednesday, my trial was attested.
On Thursday they said "guilty"
and the judge's gavel fell.

- Johnny Cash, Stripes Around My Shoulders

Today people sit around awaiting trial for so long in Texas county jails that if the Man in Black had written that song in 2005, the days of the week would have to be changed to names of months. I've argued previously that requiring high bail from low-flight-risk defendants who can't afford it is the main reason Texas' jails are too full. Nowhere is that more true than in Tarrant County (Fort Worth is the county seat), where just 16% of arrestees get out on personal bond, and local bail bondsmen have hired former Texas House Speaker Gib Lewis to pressure county officials to keep it that way.

In the current edition of the Fort Worth Weekly, ("Jailhouse Blues: Who benefits from Tarrant County's flawed pretrial release system?" Dec. 7) reporter Dan McGraw examines this favorite Grits subject. McGraw turned onto the story after spending three days himself in the county jail until he could borrow $5,000 for bail for lapsed child support. He found that many inmates were there because they couldn't make bond for for low-level misdemeanors and non-violent offenses. Most could have been freed, he discovered, if Tarrant County had a more robust system for assigning "personal bonds," which is a promise to the court to appear instead of paying cash to a bonding agent at a private business. Wrote McGraw:

I kept thinking one thing: If Tarrant County is so squeezed for jail beds — in fact, is considering spending $100 million or more on a new jail — then why are all these non-scary guys staying in here so long? Especially since — as I later learned — there is a county program specifically aimed at getting non-violent, low-flight-risk inmates out of jail?

It’s a question that keeps raising its ugly head among judges, elected county officials, criminal defense lawyers, and the bail bond industry in Tarrant County. The program called Tarrant County PreTrial Services (TCPS) uses personal recognizance bonds — which cost $20 or 3 percent of the bond — to get those non-violent misdemeanor and felony inmates out of the jail and off the county room-and-board bill. But even while the county is debating where to build and how much to spend on a new jail, the idea of making better use of the beds doesn’t seem to be part of the discussion.

The failure to use this program has human costs, McGraw noted, as well as financial ones. At the facility where McGraw was incarcerated,

most of the inmates were there on misdemeanor or lower-level felony charges. Actually, those are the things they got arrested for. The reason that most of them, days or weeks or months after the arrest, were still in jail is that they couldn’t make bond. Like the college kid who was in for possession of less than a gram of pot, but because it was his second offense, had had his bond set at $4,000. The bonding companies wanted $1,000 cash in order to put up the $4,000; because he couldn’t swing that, he’d had to drop out of the University of North Texas and had been in the joint for three weeks.

So in this case, a kid had to drop out of school because he couldn't post bond for a tiny amount of pot. Are Tarrant County citizens safer or less safe as a result? Did that help or hurt the economy? (If he doesn't go back to school, the young man's lifelong earning potential, statistically, will be lower.) That's just bad public policy on its face -- requiring high bail ruined this kid's life in a way that's totally out of proportion with the alleged offense.

What's more, there's no evidence that increasing use of personal bonds in Tarrant County would reduce public safety. The failure-to-appear rate for people who pay a bail bondsman in Tarrant is about 16%, McGraw noted, while only 4.5% of those on personal bond failed to show up in court in 2005. The director of Tarrant's pretrial services program, Michelle Brown, said, "Part of the reason for that low number is that we make them come into our offices once a month, or even weekly, depending on the case. Give us a few more staff members and the ability to release a few more people, and the failure-to-appear [rate] won’t change.”

The Tarrant County Commissioners Court, ultimately, is responsible for understaffing the pretrial services division and restricting the agency's access to inmates. "Brown said the Tarrant program is one of the most restrictive in the state. For example, other counties do not limit their program only to their own residents, and many make it available to people with minor prior records," which Tarrant does not.

McGraw's sources also pointed out how excessive use of bonding agents cost the county even more money in indigent defense costs, which have exploded recently in Tarrant compared to other large counties.

Fort Worth criminal defense lawyer Mark Daniel ... said the way pre-trial services is used here wastes millions of dollars in public money. “What we are doing is setting high bonds for people with minor offenses, and then they spend all the money they have to get out,” Daniel said. “The public then has to pay for indigent defense lawyers.” ...

“The absurdity of this situation is more than apparent,” Daniel wrote in a letter to commissioners in May. “Under this system, a person charged with a criminal offense pays a bail bondsman to secure release from jail and then is often left without sufficient resources to retain counsel. The citizens of Tarrant County are then left to foot the bill for court-appointed counsel.”

I was gratified to see Tarrant judges speaking up to support more aggressive use of pretrial services and personal bonds, since as I've argued before, most solutions to jail overcrowding require their cooperation, or at least their acquiescence.

District Judge Daryl Coffey, who handles misdemeanor cases, figures that about 70 percent of the defendants who come before him have gotten bonds from the private sector. “If you have a job and live here, and it is a non-violent offense, and you have ties to the community, you should be out immediately in most cases,” he said. “These people should never even be booked into a jail, but a lot of them are. By the time they get into my court, some have already bonded out, but some haven’t been able to. Those jail beds need to be used efficiently and effectively for people who need to be in jail. The violent offenders need to be in jail with high bonds, because the community needs to be protected. But the rapist costs the same to incarcerate as a hot-check writer.”

District Judge Robert Gill, who handles mostly felony cases, also feels the pre-trial services program needs to be expanded. “We should be using [the program] in a more aggressive way,” Gill said. “I think staffing levels might need to be brought up higher, so that more people can be found who qualify.”

When the judge overseeing these low-level cases thinks most defendants he sees should never have been booked into the jail, it's hard to see the argument for spening $100 million on a new one. So why not at least try expanding pre-trial services instead of saddling taxpayers with all that new debt? McGraw was told the answer is the political clout of the bail bonding agents.

one judge who didn’t want his name used said the power of the bond business is a major part of the problem. “When you are running for office here, and you are perceived as someone who either wants bond reduction or more personal recognizance releases, the bond companies come up with money and force against you,” he said.

“But we need to have a lot of programs that allow people out without bail,” the judge continued. “If we have a DUI case, maybe we can have that person enroll in an alcohol prevention program before they come to trial. That can be part of the pre-trial services release at a low cost. We can have lower-level personal cash bonds — maybe $100 to $250 for a misdemeanor — that the defendants get back when they go to trial. How it works now is that a defendant has to come up with a large amount of bond money to get out, and that is the only thing on their mind at that time. We’re causing hardships for people who don’t deserve it, overcrowding the jails, and the only people making money off this are the bonding agents.” (emphasis added)

That last bit, coming from a judge who is afraid to speak out publicly, tells volumes about the political environment in which these decisions are being made. I hope McGraw's next step is to examine bonding agents' campaign contributions to judges and county officials, including the ones most aggressively shilling for the bondsmen's interests, and to file open records requests to document communications between the bonding agents' lobbyist Gib Lewis and local officials.

Tarrant is still a Republican county, for the most part, but this isn't a partisan issue -- there's nothing conservative about using government institutions to service the bottom line of special interests who make big campaign contributions. Thankfully, some Tarrant County officials are more committed to doing justice and protecting the taxpayer than to carrying political water for the bail bond industry.

Judge Coffey likens the criminal booking process to a hospital emergency room. “If you have one person with a cut finger and another patient suffering from a serious heart attack, the hospital treats them very differently,” Coffey said. “The person with the cut finger gets a bandage and instructions for follow-up care and is sent home. The heart attack patient has to stay in the hospital for his own good.

“So many times in our court system here, we are treating the inmates with minor charges very similarly to the ones with serious charges,” he said. “We have to get better at doing criminal justice triage. I am not for letting serious offenders out. But I am pro-taxpayer on this one. Because of the way this system works right now, we have people being confined to the jail — some for just a few days, others for weeks and months — who are not dangerous and pose no threat to the community. These people show up at a very high rate for their court appearances. We have new ways to monitor them. We need to make the system work, so that people who do not need to be confined are not.”

Thank heavens for Judge Coffey and his judicial brethren quoted in the article -- most politicians (and they're elected judges, after all) would rather take the bail bondsmen's money and go along instead admitting to the public that the emperor wears no clothes. It takes guts for somene who works in the criminal justice system to speak up and say, putting this person in jail won't make us any safer. I'm glad this debate is starting to occur in Tarrant County, or rather, that it's starting to occur in public.

For more on the subject, see these related Grits posts:

• Bail policies juice Tarrant jail overcrowding
• Does Tarrant County need a public defender?
• Bail blunders boost bulging Harris jail population
• Should county government subsidize bail bond companies?
• Pretrial services = Erath County's overincarceration solution
• Why are Texas county jails overcrowded? Pretrial detention
• Grits' best practices to reduce county jail overcrowding

Big Busts At The San Antonio Airport

The Smoking Gun has the story of two Playboy models who were baaaaad girls. Via Public Defender Investigator.

Sunday Quick Criminal Justice Hits

These items caught my attention in the last few days, and may interest Grits readers, too:

Texas jails struggle with mentally ill
In San Antonio, "An estimated 15 percent of inmates in the Bexar County Jail have a persistent mental illness," Sheriff Ralph Lopez told the Express-News. "Local officials took a step toward mending part of Bexar County's broken mental health system with the opening of a 24-hour crisis care facility aimed at getting nonviolent detainees psychiatric help quickly while keeping them from clogging emergency rooms and jails." ("Crisis care center aids cops, detainees," Dec. 9) That's a smart and welcome move, one I wish other counties would emulate. "A jail is not a place for a person suffering from a mental health episode," Sheriff Lopez said. "This should speed up the process of getting people help and keeping them from going to jail unnecessarily."

By contrast, in Dallas it may take federal intervention to get the county to improve jail mental health services, and as of last week it's coming ("Jail faces federal inquiry," Dallas News, Dec. 10). Dallas County hired consultants to examine the subject earlier this year. They issued a report citing "a litany of problems. Among them: Jail guards without medical training conduct medical screening as inmates check in, missing at least 35 percent of detainees with health problems; inmates with chronic physical or mental illness often go weeks or months without medication; the medical team is severely understaffed," the News reported. Now the feds are stepping in to see for themselves.

UPDATE: An expert testified this week in a lawsuit that the level of professional psychiatric care in the Williamson County jail is "unacceptable," reported the Statesman.

Inmates in isolation
The Statesman's Mike Ward reports ("Inmates isolated for fear of gangs," Dec. 11) that nearly 7,500 inmates -- about 5% of Texas' prison population -- are isolated in "lockdown" cells for fear they'll instigate or be targeted by gang violence. In the past these isolation cells were used for a few days or weeks, but hundreds of inmates, Ward reports, have been there more than a year. Said David Fathi, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's National Prison Project in Washington, "This is unmistakable sign of a failure of the prison administration to manage their system, that they can't maintain control without keeping inmates locked up all the time."

Dallas Bus Gestapo
Talk Left points to this grim Dallas Observer story about a man who had the crap beat out of him in front of his son by Dallas transit cops then spent 11 days in jail, all over a jaywalking charge. (Wanna bet Samuel Alito would think it's okay?)

'Nuther paper says TX drug task forces may be on their way out
On Friday, Governor Perry announced what could be the last round of Byrne grants to Texas' drug task forces, the San Antonio Express News reports ("Anti-drug coalitions' future dim," Dec. 11), keeping the controversial agencies funded through the end of March 2006. The Express-News notes, as Grits reported earlier, money previously spent on drug task forces will now pay to staff South Texas sheriffs' departments. Attentive readers will notice I was quoted in the story urging diversion of Byrne funds to more productive uses: "It's just time to spend the money on more important priorities," [Henson] said, such as drug treatment programs, drug courts and strengthening of probation services as opposed to "failed strategies."

Reentry.net
Thanks to Doc Berman I was glad to learn about this Bronx, NYC-based site, Reentry.net, which looks like a promising resource on the subject of prisoner reintegration, especially their Reentry Clearinghouse.

Sniffer dogs unreliable
Tom Angell at DARE Generation Diary rightly wonders why drug sniffing dogs' "alerts" count as reasonable suspicion justifying searches since they're wrong much of the time.

Bill of Rights protects immigrants, too
The Immigration Law Blog brings the welcome news that the Fourth Amendment (or what's left of it) still protects the rights of undocumented immigrants to the same extent as citizens.

Is Grits Pro-Snitch?

A commenter thought my criticisms of the whosarat database amounted to personal support for snitching: "I'm guessing you want this country to become another Nazi Germany? The Nazi's were good at getting their public to rat and snitch out people."

The reason I consider the "stop snitching" meme on t-shirts an ill advised message isn't that I think criminals should tell on others for reduced sentences -- it's that gangbangers and drug dealers are busy equating "snitches" with all witnesses in popular culture, as that particular commenter did when he announced that a "real" snitch was "someone who selflessly observes others wrong doings and reports them to authority for the sake of obeying the law." Well, if you'd call that person a "snitch," then I don't support a message of "stop snitching." I never would tell someone who witnessed a violent crime, for example, not to report it. That's why the guys wearing Stop Snitching t-shirts into court to intimidate witnesses deserve little sympathy, IMO.

But I do think that snitching, as its own, shady, little-discussed, institutionalized system underlying many of law enforcement's most abusive practices, should be dramatically scaled back by orders of magnitude. It's not the Nazis but the East German Stasi -- Cold War Communists -- that the American snitch system, to me, most closely resembles, particularly in poor minority neighborhoods.

Finally, I've examined enough of these cases to know that snitches can be victims, too. Look at the case of Derrick Megress in Hearne, a mentally ill repeat offender well known to the DA since his youth who was coerced and manipulated into targeting innocent people. Nothing excuses his role, but to focus only on him would have let the DA and the cops off the hook. That's why ACLU sued in Hearne -- so that wouldn't happen. See the video about Megress and the Hearne case linked here.

Would I think less of a friend who snitched or who informed on our personal dealings? No question I'd be disappointed, probably angry. But if they did so to avoid years of prison time, I'd also blame a legal system designed to coerce my friend to betray me. Intimidating defendants one at a time is a doomed and misguided strategy, IMO. Snitches, as Christ said of the poor, will always be with us. What's needed are solutions that limit abuses and infuse some integrity into the process.

See Grits' prior writing on the subject of confidential informants:

• Here a snitch, there a snitch
• Snitch reforms in other states cited
• Requiring corroboration for eyewitness testimony might have saved Ruben Cantu
• What can happen when you snitch?
• Snitching undermines justice institutions
• Interesting links about snitches
• Failed 2005 Texas snitch reform
• Snitch rules protect apparently mendacious DEA agent
• A prison guard's aversion to snitches
  
• DEA snitch data lost
• FBI violates snitch rules
  
• Wichita Falls snitch makes false accusation
• Self-serving snitch at center of John Dillinger capture

When you know the whole informant thing has gotten out of hand

Others have discussed this, but Cicero at To the People made the point about snitches best:

I can live with the fact that the person I buy drugs from could be an undercover officer or informant waiting to bust me. I can also live with the fact that the hooker I pick up could be an undercover officer. I've even become comfortable with the fact that any number of my friends, family members, and co-workers could be forced to dig up dirt on others to get out of going to jail themselves. Let's face it, we've become a country of spies. And with tens of thousands of laws, almost everyone is guilty of violating something. But, I never thought I would see the day when a candidate for elected office was an FBI informant running a fake campaign to dig up dirt on crooked campaign workers.

Who's A Rat?

In response to yesterday's post on snitching, a commenter points me to the controversial website Who's a Rat?.

I think the whosarat database of informants and drug agents, like the stop snitching t-shirt phenomenon, is a disturbing bellwether cultural reaction to the negative influence of police use and abuse of confidential informants. Snitching has turned into its own weird, but well-funded sub-industry, a shadowy, corrosive, virtually unregulated but officially sanctioned collaboration by police with known lawbreakers, especially in drug enforcement. What's not to dislike?

Still, as political strategies or statements, neither the t-shirts nor the database, to me, seem wise, especially to the extent that they are aimed at intimidating witnesses en masse. (The t-shirts I view as a more generalized, certainly less dangerous expression of discontent -- e.g., I received one as a gift not long ago from a friend with no drug dealing motivations.) Despite its stated aim to be a resource for defendants and attorneys, the whosarat database has the effect of intimidating people and creating fear that if you do snitch your photo will go on the web and your life may be in danger. Whatever the intent, the tactic risks becoming a stalking horse for thuggery -- protected by the First Amendment and existing case law, to be sure, but irresponsible, I think, to say the least. Bottom line, I think we shouldn't stop snitching, but reform it.

Awhile back in the comments to this Grits item, I wrote the following about the whosarat database, which still reflects my views:

"I don't actually question their right to do what they're doing at all, and where CI's names have been made public in court or through the media, I don't think it's improper to publicize snitches' identity or their activities in any individual case. I just don't think gathering such a database of informants and making it public on the web is a wise activist strategy, which is an entirely different criticism. Mostly that's because I think it misplaces the blame on the snitch, instead of on the prosecutors and cops who coerce and condone their problematic behavior. The former are criminals and will not respond to the details of legislation. It's the public officials who we can properly hold accountable by requiring disclosure of witness statements and deals before trial, requiring corroboration for snitch testimony, etc."

Here a snitch, there a snitch, everywhere a snitch snitch

Ever since I read Professor Natapoff's great article on confidential informants last spring, I've begun collecting bad snitch stories the way that others collect curios from tourist attractions they've visited. I've noticed a few more recently that merit note:

Dallas Fake Drug Update: Often, where there's a bad CI, there's a bad cop.
Defrocked Dallas narcotics officer Mark Delapaz has been indicted on three counts of defrauding the agency's confidential informant fund. Newspaper reports had stated the informant in that case made up to $200,000 per year working for DPD (more, even, than the police chief!) but now it looks like much of that was skimmed by police investigators. As of this summer, the agency still hadn't fixed its broken informant system.

While nearly everyone's heard of the Tulia cases, I find most folks still haven't heard about the Dallas fake drug scandal, but it turned out that 50% of the coke and a quarter of the meth supposedly seized by the Dallas PD in 2001 was actually fake drugs used to set up innocent people. Eight officers in the DPD narcotics unit performed "field tests" allegedly verifying the fake substances were drugs, and since the targeted defendants were mostly Mexican immigrants, most were deported or plea bargained instead of the evidence ever being vetted at trial. In many ways, I find this even more disgraceful than Tulia. Tom Coleman was convicted of perjury, but most of those eight cops are still on the force, and Delapaz, while obviously deserving of prosecution, has been made the scapegoat for a much broader problem that's being swept under the rug. Every officer who said their field test found real drugs when they were really fake should have been fired and prosecuted, IMO.

OK Audit Finds 'Questionable' Transactions In Sallisaw PD Informant Fund.
In Oklahoma we find a similar case of police allegedly filching cash that's supposed to pay their snitches. The current Sallisaw PD chief has announced he'll investigate his predecessor for allegedly dipping into the confidential informant fund ("State Audit Recommends Legal Review," Sequoyah County Times, Dec. 7). Here's the most damaging of the audit's findings:

* Concern: Receipts and expenditure of drug funds by the former police chief.

* Findings: Receipts provided by the former chief were questionable. Two receipts with the same number indicated different dates and amounts. One confidential informant provided a statement to the Sallisaw Police Department indicating some of the receipts were falsified.

Receipts appear to have been numbered as an afterthought. "We are unable to find corresponding evidence submitted for evidence purchases," [state auditor Jeff A.] McMahan wrote.

Receipts provided by the former chief reflect that he expended $24,520 to confidential informants for the purchase of evidence, information or services.

In one instance, the audit revealed that there were two receipts, totaling $450, for the purchase of evidence and information from a confidential informant.

The informant named on the receipts provided a witness statement to the police department indicating that these receipts were falsified.

"I signed the papers that he asked me to sign saying that I had received (sic) money for giving information to him, but I never gave him any information on anyone but myself," the confidential informant said in his statement. The statement goes on to state that after leaving office the former chief allegedly paid the informant $200.

The former chief's records reflected 185 purchases of evidence totaling $7,305.

"We contacted the OSBI and obtained a listing of evidence submitted by the police department," McMahan wrote. "The submittal list indicates that the former chief submitted evidence on one occasion. We contacted the evidence custodian for Sallisaw Police Department to determine if any of the purchased evidence had been turned in to the Sallisaw Police Department evidence room.

"According to the current and former evidence custodians, the former chief had turned in, on one occasion, a 'green leafy substance.'

"While we were unable to find corresponding evidence submittals for the evidence purchases reflected on the former chief's records, this does not preclude the possibility that some or all of the evidence may have been submitted by another officer, submitted for destruction without a suspect's name or secured in a location other than the Sallisaw Police Department evidence room," the audit indicates.

Of the $24,520 in expenditures documented by receipts, $17,215 (70 percent) indicated expenditures for information or services.

"Validating these receipts would require us to locate and interview confidential informants used by the department. Performing this type of investigation would place auditors, who are not law enforcement personnel, in a potentially hazardous endeavor. Additionally this activity may have a direct impact on past, as well as pending, investigations being conducted by the Sallisaw Police Department," the audit reported.

McMahan recommended that any further investigation into the validity of the receipts submitted by [Chief Gary] Philpot should be performed by a law enforcement agency.

I've seen plenty of receipts from CI funds in Texas departments as part of ACLU of Texas open records requests, and since they all use pseudonyms for the informants, they'd be damn easy to fake. Obviously, they sometimes are. The police chief in Sallisaw, incidentally, is an elected position.

Web of Nastiness Around Snitch Abuses by Chief in Preston, Idaho.
In Idaho, a former snitch named Bart Pitcher was released from prison after two and one half years after he was allegedly chewed up and spit back into the prison system by officials who abused the confidential informant process, apparently, in the very worst way. Pitcher has filed a civil suit alleging wrongful prosecution ("Web of Preston Power Abuse Claimed," Logan Herald-Journal, Dec. 4).

Court records in the Bart Pitcher wrongful-prosecution case reveal a number of previously unreported accusations against former Preston Police Chief Scott Shaw and other city and county officials.

These include that Shaw illegally used Pitcher, who was on probation for methamphetamine use, as a confidential informant, busted him for drugs used in a police-sanctioned “controlled buy,” then seized property unrelated to the drug bust — even property belonging to his parents.

Court depositions in the case also accuse the police chief and Pitcher’s probation officer, former Preston Mayor Jay Heusser, of using their positions to gain sexual favors from Pitcher’s girlfriend and coercing Pitcher into pleading guilty.

It turns out Pitcher's informant deal violated a rule that I think should be in place everywhere: In Idaho, law enforcment officials can't use probationers as snitches without a judges approval. (I think they shouldn't be able to do so at all.) Pitcher alleged that:

Heusser threatened to send Pitcher to jail if he didn’t agree to work as a confidential drug informant.

Pitcher had violated his probation in the spring of 2002. His lawyer claims Heusser permitted Pitcher to work as a confidential informant with Shaw and the Idaho State Police, despite a Department ... directive which “specifically forbids the use of a probationer as a confidential informant without a written agreement between the law enforcement agency and the sentencing judge.”

That's a really good rule to add to the list -- I know some Texas district judges who impose that dictum in their own courts, but to my knowledge we don't have similar safeguards here across the board. The ability to revoke probation over nearly anything these days gives law enforcement too much coercive leverage -- it's a situation ripe for abuse.

Cops Prosecute Theft, Still Waiting to Inhale
Libby has the story of a case in Pennsylvania where a 19-year old alleged dealer "took the informant's cash but never returned with any of the herb. The cops finally had to call the suspect on his cell and tell him he was holding their money in order to get it back." Reports the Penn State Collegian, "He was not charged with drug-related counts because investigators never found that he was in possession of drugs."

UPDATE -- Good Editorial on Snitching and Hip Hop: A reader emails to point me to this interesting op-ed by "illseed" on AllHipHop.com, "To Snitch Or Not To Snitch," who expresses personal discomfort with the "Stop Snitching" meme promoted by Hip Hop artists, but also notes, "There is a no snitching policy that permeates the very fabric of our culture ... Lets start with the police. Aside from Rodney King’s beating at the hands of police (which was on video tape), name a criminal case where police officer turned in another one. Didn’t think so. With this thick 'Wall of Silence,' the cops should be the ones wearing the 'Stop Snitching' shirts."

It's Always Christmastime for Visa

My wife Kathy is a friggin genius, in my entirely impartial opinion. She runs the national e-mail advocacy system for Consumers Union, the non-profit publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, and this year has begun producing song animations that go along with their various issue campaigns to promote viral email marketing.

Now she's got her first Christmas song, featuring terrific Texas talent -- the Austin Lounge Lizards coupled with south Austin's own Animation Farm. "It's always Christmastime for Visa." And ain't it the truth? I think it's hilarious. Go here to check it out, take the action to support credit card reform in Congress, then forward it to all your friends. And I'd appreciate any help from my fellow bloggers spreading the word.

Merry Christmas to all! (Even the damned credit card companies.)

Seeds Of A New Centrism?

Via Kuff, I was fascinated to read about attorney and Quinlan school board member John Cornuaud who is switching parties, from Republican to Democrat, to run for District 2 in the Texas House. Hadn't heard of anybody doing that in a while, huh? Given the heavily GOP bent of the Northeast Texas district covering Van Zandt, Hunt and Rains counties -- 70-30 in '04, Kuff reports -- that seems like a potential suicide run, but Cornuaud said the decision was based on his concern over two issues: education and meth.

A recent study showed it costs about $7,100 to educate a student each year, he said, juxtaposing the figure against the $16,000 per person, per year that it costs to incarcerate a non-violent criminal.

"I think our priorities are screwed up," he said of Republican leadership.

Kuff's right, that's an incredibly powerful and potentially contagious meme. Not only does the public seem to blame the GOP leadership for the school finance debacle, but Governor Perry's veto of legislation to strengthen Texas' probation system boosted incarceration costs and worsened Texas' overincarceration crisis.

Does that put the seat at risk? Unlikely, unless Cornuaud's a helluva candidate. But as Kuff put it, "the process he went through to arrive as a Democratic candidate is exactly the sort of thing the Dems will need to happen with voters if they're going to climb back out of the hole. It's the same process that created a lot of the current crop of Republicans, just in reverse." That's the real, long-term risk for Republicans -- when local public officials start switching parties it could signal a tipping point in public sentiment. While a lot of Republicans did stake out sensible views -- Carter Casteel comes to mind on education, Jerry Madden and Ray Allen on promoting treatment and stronger probation for drug offenders -- Cornuaud's opponent Dan Flynn wasn't one of them.

I found a somewhat more extensive statement in the Rains County Leader outlining the candidate's views on incarcerating low-level drug offenders:

"We also need to focus on the increasing drug problem in our community that is destroying lives and tearing apart families. According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, for each person incarcerated in the state of Texas, we pay $44.01 per day, or $16,063 per year (not including prison costs). Most of these persons are non-violent offenders. On the other hand, for our children's education in Texas we only spend an average of about $6,500 a year per student. We need to create viable alternatives to spending $16,063 per year, per person, for non-violent offenders.

"We need to focus on establishing solutions that accomplish our goals of punishing the illegal activity, while reducing the astronomical cost of incarceration, and work on actually deterring future criminal behavior in the process. Work programs, community service, lower cost minimum security facilities, halfway houses, increased fines as a form of punishment, and effective community supervision are some possibilities that need to be explored. Illegal drug use is draining our society of needed resources, and it is destroying families. The money saved can be used to educate our children on how drugs affect families, reduce our property taxes, provide effective and competent police protection, and put money back into our community, while actually reducing drug activity in our district."

He's not alone in the Piney Woods looking for real solutions to meth instead of easy "tough on crime" rhetoric. I'd like to think Cornuaud's reasoning could be a bellwether signalling a breach in the public's willingness to accept simplistic answers to difficult problems like drug abuse, crime, and the impact on families. At the end of the day, I wouldn't think most centrist Texans would prioritize incarcerating non-violent drug offenders over paying for public schools. Too often, voters just haven't been given another option.

Are Texas courts one big plea mill?

The Texas Office of Court Administration has produced its 2005 annual statistical report (pdf) on the Texas court system. Among the highlights, it turns out all these Jack McCoy wannabees in the prosecutors' offices aren't performing many jury enthralling orations -- less than one percent of Texas criminal cases are finally decided at trial. The rest are plea bargained. (p. 33).

Drug offenses made up 33% of all Texas state criminal prosecutions in 2005 the report said (p. 34).

Also, here's a good flow chart (pdf) from the report explaining the confusing Texas court system's structure -- with separate highest courts for criminal and civil cases, but combined jurisdictions for appellate, district and county courts.

See also this report by the same agency (pdf) on the 2005 activities of Texas judicial support agencies, boards and commissions. More on this later.

Former assistant: Denton DA's office traded lenient sentences for cash and prizes

More allegations that the Denton County District Attorney's office traded lenient sentences in exchange for uncontested asset forfeiture cases against drug dealers, this time by a former assistant, Paul Johnson, who just announced his opposition to incumbent Bruce Isaacks in the upcoming GOP primary. ("Johnson plans to take on Isaacks in DA primary," Denton Record Chronicle, Dec. 4)

Johnson said that when he worked at the district attorney’s office, no one was supposed to get probation for delivery of a controlled substance. But there were instances in which drug dealers gave up boats, cars and more to the state, and then received probation, he said. Another former prosecutor has said publicly that such deals were struck with a half-dozen defendants over two years.

“In essence, you just bought leniency,” Johnson said. “The mere fact that they have cars, jewelry, et cetera, will not get them a probation offer.”

But Isaacks said that such deals do not happen.

“I can assure you that your chances of going to prison for narcotics delivery are a hell of a lot higher here than it is anywhere else in the state,” Isaacks said.

Isaacks said police from Dallas County arrange drug buys in Lewisville because they know drug dealers will go to prison if prosecuted in Denton County.

Johnson's charges that Isaack's office exchanged leniency for asset forfeiture opportunities echo those by the Dallas Morning News in 2003, which reported that another of Isaacks' assistants exchanged leniency in drug sentences in order to finance the county's matching fund obligations under the federal Byrne grant program for the now-defunct North Central Texas Drug Task Force. After that, Issacks and Sheriff Weldon Lucas pulled their support for the task force. Ironically, though, Johnson blames Isaacks for that, too:

Johnson also accused Isaacks of failing to fill a prosecutor’s position on the North Central Texas Drug Task Force, allowing grants to lapse.

Isaacks said he purposely didn’t fill the position because he felt the task force “had lost its focus.

“I decided I did not want an employee assigned to that,” Isaacks said. “During that period of time, there was a lot of consolidation going on. The state decided they wanted fewer task forces, because there were problems with them. We just didn’t need those sorts of issues here.”

Yup, in my book prosecutors exchanging lenient sentences for cash to make their budgets amounts to a loss of focus. But regular readers know I think getting rid of the task forces was the right decision, anyway, and if they hadn't done it the money still might have gone away. Yesterday I mentioned that the Governor right now is shifting big chunks of that same federal Byrne grant money away from such task forces toward border security.

But Johnson's obviously pulling out all the stops, knowing he has to go negative, hard, to beat an incumbent in a primary. Look for more such lurid details to emerge as the mudslinging gets underway in earnest in this hotly contested race. It's one of several important DA's races next year. To the south, Dallas County DA Bill Hill recently stepped down, leaving an open seat in an emerging Democratic county, and in Huntsville, an opponent has emerged for Walker County DA David Weeks. UPDATE: The Lubbock DA also has a challenger.

RELATED: Reacting to this post, Catonya tells about her own unhappy encounter with Texas' asset forfeiture laws.

Drug task force money goes to border security

Texas continues to shift federal drug war funding toward other law enforcement priorities, especially along the Mexican border.

Governor Rick Perry's Criminal Justice Division announced today it would divert $6 million from Texas drug task forces funded by the federal Byrne Justice Assistance Grant program to pay for the Guv's new border security plan, dubbed Operation Linebacker. Most of the funds will pay for a temporary increase in sheriff-department personnel in border counties and extra overtime for deputies.

The move comes at a time when the federal government is slashing the Byrne grant budget. This year the Legislature required Byrne drug task forces in Texas to comply with Department of Public Safety rules or give up their asset forfeiture funds, and many have chosen to close down rather than comply.

The money will be evenly distributed among border counties, which doesn't make much sense to me. It sounds more like throwing money at the problem (or the loudest complainers about the problem) instead of actually funding a coherent plan.

On a related note, I thought this idea was funny, but I'd hate for satirists to unwittingly give Texas politicians any more big ideas. :-)

Mexican border wars: "The only leaders who can contain the violence are the ones who are in jail"

Today's New York Times offers the best who's-who explanation I've seen of the violence in Nuevo Laredo between competing Mexican drug cartels ("Rival drug gangs turn streets of Nuevo Laredo into war zone," Dec. 4).

The main players are the "Gulf Cartel," which for years controlled most of the drug traffic along the Texas-Mexico border, and the "Sinaloa Cartel" which launched a campaign to seize control of their rival's distribution routes after several of the Gulf Cartel's leaders were captured by authorities in 2003. According to the Times, the Sinaloa Cartel bribed Mexican officials to get the federales to do their dirty work:

Mr. [Edgar] Valdéz [Villareal] and another lieutenant, Arturo Beltrán Leyva, went to Mexico City in March 2003 with a $1.5-million bribe for Domíngo Gonzalez Díaz, a commander in the Federal Investigations Agency, Mexico's F.B.I., Mexican authorities said. In exchange for the money, the authorities said, Mr. Gonzalez sent a close confidant to command federal forces here, with instructions to provide protection to the Sinaloa Cartel and to help it fight its rivals.

They underestimated the resilience of the Gulf Cartel, though, which allegedly controls much of local law enforcement on the border. The Gulf Cartel has also fielded a team of US-trained Mexican special forces deserters known as Los Zetas to up the ante, and the violence. Reported the Times,

[Osiel] Cárdenas, the leader of the Gulf Cartel, managed to keep control of his gang from inside Mexico's main maximum-security prison, La Palma. The Nuevo Laredo police department served almost entirely at his pleasure, federal law authorities said, helping not only protect the Gulf Cartel, but also kidnapping and killing suspected rivals. And a group of special forces officers, known as Los Zetas, who had deserted from the military and served as Mr. Cárdenas's personal security detail when he was out of prison, were deployed to protect the Gulf Cartel's turf - especially Nuevo Laredo.

So, in essence, the two main cartels have enlisted federal and local police as stalking horses against their rivals. Indeed, it's hard to know who to fear more, the cops or the drug gangs. Mexican law enforcement officials sound almost nostalgic for the days when the Gulf Cartel ran the whole show, given the brutality of the Sinaloa group and the open warfare now occurring between the cartels. Reported the Times,

The prize is the lucrative land drug routes that carry more than 77 percent of all the cocaine and about 70 percent of all the methamphetamines sold in the United States.

The more experienced drug kingpins, Mexican prosecutors said, were more willing to reach peace among themselves, to respect one another's territories and to stay out of sight in order not to cause trouble for local authorities.

New operatives like Mr. [Edgar] Valdéz [Villareal], however, fight for all or nothing, Mr. Vasconcelos said. And they seem willing to keep up their fight, no matter what the cost.

"Why are we in this situation?" Mr. Vasconcelos said. "Because the only leaders who can contain the violence are the ones who are in jail."

"The structures they used to maintain - of corruption and obstruction of justice - when we took those away, they were forced to use violence," he said. "It's a beast."

With so many local and federal cops working in the interest of the cartel factions, and even elite special forces troops fighting for the drug lords instead of the government, it's hard to envision a solution to this mess that involves stopping the flow of illegal drugs. So long as the United States indulges in its astronomical level of demand for narcotics, somebody will figure out how to supply them. A more likely way to end the violence would probably be a behind-the-scenes political agreement between the cartels and the government , greased with bribe money, that decides WHO will get to smuggle drugs and where. Given the alternatives, I don't know that that would be worse than the status quo.

You can almost hear Porfirio Diaz sighing, "Poor Mexico. So far from God, so close to the United States."

Research needed to tell if fewer arrests increase crime

Would arresting fewer low-level offenders increase crime? In the wake of Hurricane Rita, researchers have a chance to empirically measure that notion -- I'd love to see somebody in academia take up the project.

Rita's aftermath affords an almost unique chance to research the impact of reducing low-level arrests on crime rates. The Beaumont Enterprise reports that the Orange County jail failed inspection and still cannot re-open ("Orange County jail fails inspection, "Dec. 2). "Since the jail has been closed, law enforcement officers have had few spots to house criminals so arrests are way down," the paper reported. Grits earlier noted that officials in Gregg and Chambers Counties are in the same boat, making fewer arrests, especially of non-violent offenders, because of jail overcrowding.

So, during the period when those jurisdictions have reduced arrests, did the number of crimes reported increase, decrease, or stay about the same? I don't know the answer to that, though I haven't heard of any new crime wave reported in those areas. Local officials don't seem to think crime has worsened as a result: “In no way are the lives and safety of the citizens of Chambers County being put at risk,” [Chambers Sheriff Joe] LaRive said. “We’re still doing our job — we’re still protecting the public.”

To tell if that's really true, researchers would have to examine local records about the number of crimes reported before and after the hurricane for counties that reduced arrests. I'll bet he's right, though -- I've long suspected that a lot of low-level arrests, especially for non-violent offenses, aren't really improving public safety. With a little research it'd be possible to find out for sure.

Austinites: Support Garage Sale for Justice

Austinites who want to support the excellent work of the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition should stop by their "Garage Sale for Justice."

When: Saturday, December 3rd, 7:00am-3:00pm
Where: 1912 East 7th Street

Snitching reforms from other states cited

The Miami Herald has the story of a jailhouse snitch who recanted after falsely accusing a Florida defendant of confessing to strangling the victim ("Jailhouse Informers: A risky bet," Nov. 24). (Regular readers know Grits has long been interested in confidential informant policies, since false snitch testimony ranks among the leading causes of wrongful convictions and other questionable police practices.) The Herald outlined several reforms proposed in other states to improve the informant system. The paper reported:

In response to problems with the use of jailhouse informants, some lawmakers and courts have increased restrictions on their use by prosecutors:

• Illinois: In any capital case in which prosecutors are using a jailhouse snitch, a judge must conduct a pretrial conference to determine if the informant is reliable.

• California: Whenever prosecutors have a snitch testify, a judge instructs jurors "the informant should be viewed with caution and close scrutiny" and to consider how much the testimony may have been influenced by favors or leniency from prosecutors.

• Courts in a handful of other states, including Oklahoma, Montana, Mississippi and Louisiana, have adopted similar jury instructions. Courts in Georgia, Ohio, Kentucky, California and Illinois have determined that credibility of a witness - even an informant - is up to the jury to decide.

• The American Bar Association's ruling body in February recommended that prosecutors carefully limit snitch testimony "ensuring that no prosecution should occur based solely upon uncorroborated jailhouse informant testimony."

Corroboration, new warnings in jury instructions and heightened judicial review all would be important reforms to the snitch process, which could also be improved by granting informants a right to counsel before they agree to cooperate with police officers or prosecutors, and by notifying defense attorneys of snitch arrangements before trial. While some folks want to "stop snitching," a far more useful and realistic goal would be to reform the practice to mitigate the worst abuses. Obviously many other states are ahead of Texas in that regard.

Texas has had our share of lying snitches, too. In addition to citing proposed reforms, the Herald listed these other recent high profile cases involving mendacious informants:

1989: Leslie Vernon White, a longtime jailhouse informant in Los Angeles, admitted lying in a dozen cases. A grand jury later found widespread problems with the use of snitches and complicity by police and prosecutors.

2001: Prosecutors in Colorado, Florida, South Carolina and Missouri dropped 26 drug cases because an informant who received $2 million in payments over 12 years lied under oath dozens of times.

2004: A state court in California threw out the murder conviction of Thomas Goldstein because of an unreliable jailhouse snitch, 24 years after he testified.

2005: A California man serving a murder sentence was granted a new trial when the jailhouse informant who testified against him was found by a judge to lack credibility.

UPDATE: And they just keep coming. Via Drug War Rant, the Los Angeles Times had another story this week about a confidential informant making wrongful accusations on behalf of the DEA ("Snagging a rogue snitch," Dec. 2).

Say 'no' to police searches

Flex Your Rights encourages people to say 'no' to so-called "consent searches" by police ...

Click on the icons for advice on how to refuse police searches.

Bumming around the blogosphere

Light posting today and in the near term while I catch up on work, but I wanted to refer readers to other great sources around the blogosphere I've been reading lately:

State Rep. Carter Casteel has been named the blogosphere's Texan of the Year, Pink Dome reports. I didn't have time to participate in this process, but I'm glad PD and the rest took up the banner: I often disagree with Casteel on policy stuff but I respect her independence -- she's a good choice.

I've enjoyed Larry James' Urban Daily a lot recently, so for now I've bumped him up to Grits' Daily Checks list. Larry works on poverty issues as CEO of Central Dallas Ministries. He's a solutions-oriented guy, the kind of religious thinker who earnestly wants to help others and seek justice. Good stuff.

I'm glad to see Freedom is Slavery posting regularly after Scott's extended hiatus. Along with the UK's Spy Blog, FIS is a good way to track what's up in the new surveillance society. Of course, Bruce Schneier's blog still provides the blogospheric gold standard on high-tech security matters. Where else would you find tips on how to crack safes using thermal imaging, or on methods for hacking government wiretappers?

Lots of great drug war blogging recently. Pete at Drug War Rant continues to produce high quality fare just about daily -- I especially liked his recent item about encountering a faux drug roadblock at a rest stop, to which Radley Balko added great background. The Dare Generation Diary so far promises to be a great new blogging source on the drug war, today bringing the news of a lawsuit Students for Sensible Drug Policy and ACLU are filing that challenges the law banning financial aid to people with drug convictions. Thehim's Drug War Roundup at Blog Reload keeps getting better and better. And as always, Libby at Last One Speaks provides a great one-stop shopping source on the drug war, plus she's developing a case of Austin-envy.

Folks who care about criminal justice matters should read Doc Berman at Sentencing Law & Policy all the time -- today he reports on a New Jersey commission that will propose new drug sentencing reforms, plus he's a first-rate source of capital punishment news and views.

I've also been reading the good folks at Concurring Opinions more often, recently, and particularly enjoyed this piece on The Ontology of Blogging.

I wonder what the blog 1,000 executions will do after tomorrow? That's when the 1,000th is likely to occur. I don't really like the focus on what Doc Berman called the "magic of round numbers." The 1,000th execution is no better or worse than the 654th or the 1,087th. The real question, to me, is do you trust the state to always get it right?

I neglected a couple of weeks ago to point to some fine posts by OSAPian, a parole officer blogging at Patriotic Rants, who criticized California prison rules that undermine drug treatment programs and take offenders out of programs because they're succeeding! OSAPian's a staunch conservative, but never think criminal justice professionals don't know exactly how the system is screwed up.

Back in Texas, Rep. Aaron Pena's A Capitol Blog improves every week -- I think the good rep has hit a writing groove, because many of his posts have been first rate. Pena even made his re-election announcement on his blog!

Check out these folks and other bloggers linked at the right while I try to churn through the stack awaiting me on my desk to clear the way for more Grits' posts, soon.

And I'll bet they don't have access to the tunnels, either

The number of people living in downtown Houston increased by 200% during the 1990s, but only if you include jail inmates. Via Houston Strategies comes the news that 81% of those living in downtown Houston are incarcerated in the overflowing county jail. Notes blogger Tory Gattis, "at least you can say we have high-density residential downtown - although I don't think the guards encourage a very pedestrian-friendly environment."