The Creuzot Crucible: Critic raves over entire cast's performance in media-driven melodrama

The kerfuffle over Dallas District Attorney John Creuzot's rather modest decarceration proposals, discussed in this Grits post upon their announcement, has taken on rather telling and delicious overtones I had not expected.

What a delight! The DA's law enforcement critics came off like a Greek chorus of scalded cats. And I loved Governor Abbott in his new role as Inspector Javert!

The howls of recrimination from the usual tuff-on-crime crowd, using every nasty tactic in their rhetorical arsenal, could be heard from orbit. But the public hasn't sided with the lock-em-up hard-liners as reflexively as in the past, and so far, Creuzot hasn't backed down.

Best of all, at least for those of us who view all this weeping and gnashing of teeth as essentially performance art and judge it based on its entertainment value: Because Creuzot's policies are actually entirely modest and reasonable - not remotely as aggressive as other recently elected "progressive prosecutors" like Larry Krasner or Rachel Rollins - his critics look like buffoons, making outlandish claims that everyone can see on their face overstate and over-dramatize the issue.

The Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas immediately went to their go-to move: they called for Creuzot to straight-up resign, the equivalent of their frequent "no confidence" votes staged whenever a police chief disagrees with their affiliates locally. Notably, this tactic was promulgated in books and lectures by CLEAT founder Ron DeLord for two decades, most prominently in a police-union leadership textbook titled, "Police Association Power, Politics, and Confrontation."

However, DeLord, who is a self-branded acolyte of the Saul-Alinsky school of organizing, has more recently walked back his call for confrontation tactics by police unions, suggesting police had gained so much power that they now face an inevitable backlash. And this appears to Grits to be an example where the union has overreached.

A CLEAT spokesman declared, "When he was campaigning for the office, we don't remember not prosecuting crime as part of his platform." But that just shows they weren't paying attention during the campaign. The group I work with, Just Liberty, co-hosted a DA candidate forum in Dallas where Creuzot discussed non-prosecution of petty offenses and promised to produce this memo with the details within a few months in office. He wasn't specific about up-to-$750 theft, but he was about criminal trespass, and in general he ran on a platform of reducing incarceration, de-emphasizing low-level offenses, services instead of prosecution for the homeless, and using prosecutorial discretion to stop punishing the poor. No one who heard his campaign pitch would be surprised at this recent news.

Here's the absurd part: Dallas PD isn't arresting in these low-level shoplifting cases, anyway, precisely because they're too small-time to bother. Reported the Morning News, "the Dallas Police Department, shorthanded as it is, can't respond quickly to low-priority crimes like shoplifting." So there's some blame shifting going on here: Cops aren't arresting in these cases anyway, and have found an opportunity to shift responsibility to the the District Attorney. Even if they get what they want, though, the storekeepers aren't better off.

Creuzot is trying to make the best of a bad situation; the union is taking politicized pot shots.

Some of the local municipal police chiefs joined in the fun, even going to far as declaring they'd begin to prosecute these thefts in municipal courts as Class C misdemeanors. Those offenses do not carry jail time as a possible punishment, only a fine up to $500. But we're only talking about cases in which poor people are stealing basic necessities. How is fining them going to help? Who imagines they can or would pay?

Like I said, delicious! The unexamined assumptions and muddled thinking are just splayed out for everyone to see.

Creuzot's memo turned out to be a Rorschach test that tells us more about whomever is interpreting it than it does about the practical effects of his policies.

The most brilliant, glorious example of that had to be Governor Greg Abbott's pair of tweets. They were amazing, a magnificent fusion of Inspector Javert, Mr. Burns from the Simpsons, and Scrooge McDuck!

Opined the Governor, "If someone is hungry they can just steal some food. If cold, steal a coat. Where does it end? It's wealth redistribution by theft." The responses were perfect. I can't do them justice, go read them for yourself.

Then, after pausing for a bit to construct a tweet declaring all property taxes are theft (!), Abbott weighed back in, responding to a constituent who suggested that the problem of hungry people stealing food or people stealing a coat in the winter to keep warm might be resolved by other means.

TX provides for the hungry and needy through TANF and other programs. You proved my point. You & others reveal that STEALING is ok when people want things: cell phone, tire, lawn mower, almost any item you see in a store or in the open. That's socialism.

So let's be clear: Government programs that help the poor? Those are not "socialism." Instead, socialism is direct theft of private property by criminals, says the governor. (Like property taxes, apparently.) In his mind, police aren't arresting criminals, they're arresting socialists!

Again, utterly delicious!

Grits predicts this will all blow over soon because nobody has the authority to oust Creuzot over it, he's perfectly within his rights to exercise his discretion this way, and in fact if a Republican DA had done it, Abbott likely would never have said a word.

Again, to my mind, this should all be viewed as performance art. Everyone had a role to play in the media-driven melodrama, and the entire cast hammed it up admirably.

I'm already looking forward to the sequel.

'Thousands of Sandra Blands': Just Liberty analyzes new arrest data from Texas traffic stops

As the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee today prepares to hear HB 2754 (White), the committee substitute to which would limit most Class C misdemeanor arrests (with certain public safety exceptions), Just Liberty put out a new analysis of data titled, "Thousands of Sandra Blands: Analyzing Class-C-misdemeanor arrests and use-of-force at Texas traffic stops." 

The analysis relies on the new racial profiling reports which came out March 1st, analyzing information for Texas police departments in cities with more than 50,000 people, and sheriffs in counties with more than 100,000. Here's the table from Appendix One of the report with the underlying data.

Readers will recall that new detail about Class-C arrests, use of force, and outcomes of searches were added to the report as part of the Sandra Bland Act passed in 2017. But the provision to restrict Class C arrests was removed before the law was passed. So HB 2754 amounts to unfinished business for those concerned about what happened to Sandra Bland.

Our findings: The practice of arresting drivers for Class C misdemeanors - not warrants, and not more serious offenses - is more widespread than portrayed by law enforcement. The 96 police and sheriffs in our sample arrested people nearly 23,000 times for Class-C misdemeanors last year, with the Texas Department of Public Safety accounting for nearly 5,000 more.

While the average arrest rate at traffic stops is low - a mere 66.7 per 10,000 stops - that's about one arrest out of every 150 traffic stops. And some agencies arrest people much more often. Waco PD stood out the most, arresting people at 451.4 times per 10,000 stops, or at just more than 4.5 percent of all traffic stops in 2018.

The new reporting also included data on how often police use injury-causing force at traffic stops. After Austin PD corrected its misreported data, Houston PD stood out with the highest rate of injury-causing force among the jurisdictions in our sample, at 53.2 incidents per 10,000 stops. That's about one out of every 188 drivers pulled over by HPD.

These data represent fewer than 100 law enforcement agencies, but more than 2,000 agencies must submit racial profiling reports because they perform traffic stops in come capacity. Agencies in our dataset represent the largest jurisdictions, but not all by a longshot. If we assume that these departments plus DPS represent 60 percent of traffic stops in the state, and that the average arrest rate for the other 40 percent is the same as in this sample, then Texas law enforcement agencies arrested more than 45,000 people at traffic stops statewide last year, the report estimated.

These higher-than-previously-understood estimates are corroborated by Texas Appleseed's recent analysis of jail bookings. Examining data from eleven (11) counties, they found more than 30,000 jail bookings where Class C misdemeanors (not warrants) were the highest charge. The difference between analyzing jail bookings and racial-profiling data is that jail bookings include Class C arrests which happened anywhere. The racial profiling reports Just Liberty analyzed only consider arrests made during traffic stops. 

Taken together, these analyses demonstrate that the overall number of Class C arrests is much higher than anyone ever imagined when this topic has been discussed in the past.

$12K bail for stealing $1?; Twin Peaks prosecutions petered out; Harris justice system still digging out after Harvey, and other stories

Here are a few odds and ends that merit Grits readers' attention while mine is focused elsewhere:

Hurricane Harvey aftermath still affecting Harris County
The Houston Chronicle reports on long delays and an uncertain future for Harris County criminal courts. Commenters are blaming the new county judge, but this is a crisis she inherited. Meanwhile, terms of the county's bail settlement proffer has been announced; more on that development once your correspondent has time to digest it and talk to a few folks.

Twin Peaks prosecutions petered out
The last of the Twin Peaks biker shooting cases were dismissed. What a disaster! After all that hoopla - arresting many dozens for no good reason - not one person will be prosecuted for anything in the whole mess. Grits was told by a defense attorney whose seen the discovery that there may be a not-completely-unacceptable reason for that: The people involved in the shooting were all killed by one another or police during the event, and nearly everyone who was arrested were just innocent people who happened to be there. The few remaining cases finally dropped were ancillary to the event and the statute of limitations has now run out on all of them. Grits can't think of many recent competitors for examples of more egregious prosecutorial overreach. Abel Reyna screwed the pooch on the day of the shootings, substituting his own judgment and investigative approach for police commanders, and the community has been paying a steep-and-getting-steeper price ever since.

Panhandler gets $12K bail for stealing $1 at a food truck
An aggressive panhandler snatched a dollar bill - maybe two, it's a disputed account - from a food-truck customer in Austin last week and the courts gave her a $12,000 bail amount. What kind of jackassery is this? Are they TRYING to give bail reformers a poster child? Good Lord!

Fighting for police accountability via their union contract
Chas Moore and Sukyi McMahon from the Austin Justice Coalition had an op ed in the New York Times about their group's fight to reform the local police-union contract and improve civilian oversight of the Austin Police Department. For more background, check out this interview with Moore and two police-union negotiators in the aftermath of the contract agreement, reflecting on the year-and-a-half long fight.

Grand jury declines indictments for guards accused of falsifying disciplinary cases
Hard to get District Attorneys in small counties with sizable prison-guard populations to get real enthusiastic about prosecuting corruption, so one shouldn't be completely surprised that a grand jury declined to indict guards who allegedly falsified disciplinary cases against inmates. But it certainly contributes to an ongoing perception that the agency benefits from insular, rural settings and that external oversight is needed.

Texas still leader in exonerations/false convictions
Texas tied with New York for the most exonerations last years, according to the national registry. That's primarily because of exonerations based on plea deals based on flawed drug field tests, which have caused hundreds of false convictions in Harris County, and probably other jurisdictions where they haven't been uncovered because no one ever looked.

When prosecutors are too jaded to make a proper argument and too lazy to go farther than their Twitter feed to find an improper one
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ordered a new trial after a prosecutor used a viral video of a lion trying to get at a baby on the other side of a glass partition at a zoo to say that a defendant was a dangerous predator.

Is asset-forfeiture reform ready for its close-up?
Monday is civil-asset forfeiture reform day in the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee.

For the reading list
Finally, here are a few disparate items for the reading list:

• ProPublica: Why small debts matter so much to black lives
• Washington Post: You're out of prison, now you have to get your driver's license back
• New York Times: If prisons won't work, what will (Grits is quoted in this piece)
• New York Times: How tough on crime prosecutors contribute to mass incarceration
• New York Times: Tracking phones, Google is dragnet for the police
• Harvard Business Review: Sleep-deprived judges dole out harsher punishments

Austin PD misreported use of force data at traffic stops

After The Atlantic and the Austin Chronicle picked up on the data Grits first crunched in this blog post regarding use of force and Class C arrests at Texas traffic stops, the Austin Police Department issued a correction regarding its use-of-force data in the department's most recent, annual racial profiling report.

New reporting on use of force was mandated by the Legislature as part of the 2017 Sandra Bland Act, which required departments to include much more data about traffic stops than anyone had ever seen from local agencies. So police were reporting much of this information for the first time (though presumably it's all recorded somewhere in internal records).

According to Chief Bryan Manley, APD statisticians included the number of ALL use of force incidents resulting in bodily injury, rather than only those that occurred at traffic stops. That reduced their 2018 number from 921 - which put them at the highest statewide rate among larger agencies - to 80, which shifts the agency toward the back of the pack when it comes to the rate of use of force.

With APD's correction, Houston PD takes the prize for using force at traffic stops at higher rates than any large agency. More on this Monday when Just Liberty releases a new report analyzing these data.

Dallas DA dishes decarceration decisions: John Creuzot releases a much-anticipated memo

At a debate co-hosted by Just Liberty last fall, then-Dallas-DA-candidate John Creuzot promised to produce a memo three months into his term to identify changes/reforms designed to reduce mass incarceration.

Here's the memo. Check it out! Let's run through some highlights:

Marijuana: The Dallas DA will not prosecute first-time offenders unless the offense occurred in a drug-free zone, involved a deadly weapon, or there is evidence of delivery. He also said he'd decline first-time 3rd degree felony THC possession cases, with the same exceptions.

Harder drugs: Creuzot will no longer prosecute "trace" drug cases, which typically involve sending paraphernalia to a crime lab to scrape traces for a possession prosecution. In addition, his office will not file drug charges on arrestees until after a lab report has come back, an will ask judges for summons instead of warrants to get those folks back into court.

Criminal trespass: Aiming to reduce prosecution of homeless people, Creuzot will decline criminal trespass prosecutions unless they involve a residence or "physical intrusion into property."

Theft of Necessary Items: Creuzot pledged not to prosecute theft under $750 "unless evidence shows the alleged theft was for economic gain."

Driving With License Invalid: Here's one where he could have gone further. Creuzot announced a "diversion program that will result in charges being dismissed for defendants who clear their drivers licenses." Since most people with suspended drivers licenses had them suspended because of nonpayment of Driver Responsibility surcharges, and since those aren't going away (at least not just because of this announcement), most folks simply won't be able to "clear" their licenses. Instead, he should simply decline prosecution for DWLI, as he's doing for most pot cases. No one needs to be arrested for what in essence is a criminalized administrative violation.

Probation: Arguably the most important measure announced when it comes to decarceration in the state prison system is Creuzot's decision to significantly shorten probation stints, a decision with a great deal of evidence-based support. He suggested presumptive probation terms of 6 months for misdemeanors, 180 days for state jail felonies, two years for 3rd and 2nd degree felonies, and 5 years for 1st degree felonies. He also instructed prosecutors to stop revoking probationers for "technical violations" that do not threaten public safety. Regular readers will recall that about half of probationers revoked to prison in Texas have their probation terminated over technical violations.

Bail reform: Creuzot established a presumption of release for misdemeanants and state-jail-felony defendants with no criminal convictions in the last five years. If there is clear and convincing evidence the accused will fail to appear or a victim could be harmed, a risk assessment will be used "as a guide for developing appropriate conditions of release," a protocol that will also be applied to more serious offenses.

Magistration: "As soon as construction permits," Creuzot will begin assigning prosecutors to magistration hearings so prosecutors "can screen cases and decline to prosecute those cases" that fall within his new policy.

***

To be sure, Creuzot's reform policies are more moderate than those rolled out last year by Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner. (See his memo.) Grits would have liked to see the Dallas DA embrace some of the plea-bargain and sentencing reforms adopted in Philadelphia. But this announcement definitely ensconces Creuzot in the ranks of reform-minded prosecutors; nobody else in Texas is doing more.

MORE: Here's the Dallas News' coverage of the memo.

Governor Abbott radically scales back support for reduced pot penalties

I'll take "Things you say in a campaign that
you don't really mean" for $500, Alex

What a disappointment!

During his campaign last year during a debate with Democrat Lupe Valdez, Governor Greg Abbott announced his support for making possession of up to two ounces of marijuana a Class C misdemeanor. But the governor has now backed off of that position, radically limiting his earlier proposal. He's still for reducing marijuana penalties, but only for amounts so small that it won't affect most cases.

At the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee meeting on Monday, Chairman Nicole Collier laid out a new committee substitute to HB 335 (Dutton) to make possession of only up to 2 grams a Class C misdemeanor. On a third offense, charges would increase back to a Class B. She declared the changes were made at the request of Governor Abbott.

The governor said last year he did not want to see "jails stockpiled with people who have possession of small amounts of marijuana." But that's exactly what will continue to happen thanks to this change in the bill.

Two grams is a very small amount. Texas law currently treats up to 2 ounces as a Class B misdemeanor, which is considered a user-level amount. Most folks buy pot in quantities of an ounce (~28 grams), a quarter ounce (~7 grams), or an eighth of an ounce (~3.5 grams). So this change will keep pot possession a Class B misdemeanor for most people charged with the offense.

The same committee earlier approved HB 63 (Moody) making possession of up to one ounce of marijuana a civil penalty. But the governor reportedly favors keeping pot possession in the criminal statutes.

In this, Abbott is out of sync with his own party. The Texas GOP state party platform approved last year declares, "We support a change in the law to make it a civil, and not a criminal, offense for legal adults only to possess one ounce or less of marijuana for personal use, punishable by a fine of up to $100, but without jail time." Moody's bill is the closest legislative proposal to that position.

If the scaled-back version of HB 335 is all Governor Abbott will allow to happen, then I suppose, as my father likes to say, it's better than a sharp stick in the eye. But after seeing him campaign on a more aggressive proposal back when he was seeking to appeal to swing voters in a general election, it's discouraging to watch the governor backtrack.

Texas bail-reform legislation not ready for prime time

Competing bail-reform bills are up in the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee today, but in this writer's view, none of them is ready for prime time.

For reasons articulated before, the Texas Judicial Council bill carried by Murr/Whitmire (HB 1323) fails to address the main constitutional flaws identified in Texas' system by federal litigation.

The Governor's bill, carried by Rep. Kyle Kacal and backed by the bail-bond industry (HB 2020), is even worse. It creates a new layer of government - the Bail Advisory Program - and the committee substitute stocks it with politicians instead of issue-area experts. The program's mandate? To reinvent the wheel, creating a new validated-risk-assessment tool, even though the Office of Court Administration already has one that's available free for counties to use.

Neither bill addresses the failure of counties to provide defendants counsel when magistrates set bail, which is the principle issue at stake in all three federal litigation sites. And neither addresses the fundamental constitutional question of incarcerating people because they can't afford to pay money bail. So the matter won't be resolved no matter which bill passes.

In that light, Grits has come to believe legislating this topic is premature. In two years, once the 5th Circuit has clarified the constitutional baseline, it will be possible to create legislative rules that implement it. But if legislators aren't going to address the core subjects at issue in the federal litigation, Grits fails to see the point of passing anything now.

Vetting police arguments against limiting Class-C misdemeanor arrests

In preparation for tomorrow's hearing on HB 482 (Thompson) limiting Class C misdemeanor arrests Texas House Homeland Security and Public Safety Committee, I just watched last session's hearing on Chairwoman Senfronia Thompson's similar bill, which passed out of that committee on a 7-1 vote.

A few thoughts:

First, on defining the problem: the ship has sailed on the idea that Class C misdemeanor arrests are rare or only used in extraordinary circumstances. They happen tens of thousands of times around the state every year. and are a significant contributor to local county jail costs. No need for that debate again. The problem is much bigger than even the most vocal critics estimated.

Second, nobody has "Spidey Sense": Almost all the police testimony involved war stories of times when an officer had no evidence of a crime but sensed something was wrong and arrested a serious criminal on a hunch. The problem is, nobody knows how many times officers guess wrong, and the likelihood is, it's a lot. After all, every time a defendant is booked on Class C charges, it means the officer was unsuccessful at finding evidence of anything more serious. And that happens tens of thousands of times per year.

In the comic books, Peter Parker may have a "Spidey Sense" that lets him detect danger. But police officers aren't superheroes who've been bitten by radioactive spiders. And they are constrained by legal doctrines like "probable cause" and "reasonable suspicion" that do not concern masked comic-book vigilantes.

Third, a police officer opposing the bill outlined a scenario where a suspect left a drug buy and police wanted to arrest them with the evidence, but chose to arrest them for a Class C misdemeanor traffic violation because they didn't want to "burn" their confidential informant.

Grits had so many questions on this one! So you're not going to mention the confidential  informant or the undercover drug operation in the arrest report, even though you're going to charge the person with drug possession? I am not a lawyer, but wasn't this officer in essence admitting to using Class C misdemeanor arrests to get around the Michael Morton Act and Brady v. Maryland? Nobody asked, but the whole scenario didn't sound kosher.

Fourth, nearly everything specific that police named as a problem, like public intoxication or Class-C assault, are excepted in the committee substitute, which allows police to arrest for Class Cs if failing to do so would result in a continued breach of the peace.

Finally, the lobbyist for CLEAT repeated a phony re-imagining of the Timothy McVeigh story to argue against the bill. Grits has written about this before. McVeigh was arrested because he informed the Oklahoma state trooper who pulled him over that he was carrying an illegal handgun. That's what he was arrested for, not a fine-only traffic offense. The trooper has said so publicly many times.

None of that sounded too convincing, frankly, which I suppose is why the bill passed out of committee two years ago by a 7-1 margin, dying on the General State Calendar on the final day awaiting a House floor vote. Now that the legislation has returned with new life, having been endorsed by both state political party platforms after being stripped out of the Sandra Bland Act in 2017, here's hoping the committee looks favorably on Rep. Thompson's bill once again. It's time is now.

'Epidemic' of Class-C arrests poo-pooed in 2001 by SCOTUS now documented by new Appleseed report, racial-profiling data

"Data, data, data, I cannot make bricks without clay." - Sherlock Holmes

One of the frustrating aspects of debating the issue of Class C misdemeanors in Texas has been a general lack of information about how often people are arrested for these low-level infractions. When legislation to limit such arrests was heard in 2017, law enforcement claimed Class-C arrests almost never happened and were nothing to worry about. "Move along," we were told, "nothing to see here."

Except that was patently false: Now we know Class C arrests are common as dirt. They occur all the time, every day, all over the state.

Texas Appleseed just published Exhibit One for that contention: "An Analysis of Jail Bookings: How Texas counties could save millions of dollars by safely diverting people from jail." (See also the appendices.) This new report is based on an analysis of jail booking data from 12 of the state's 25 largest counties, and includes a number of new analyses and data points that weren't previously available. Among their findings, most jail bookings are for misdemeanors, not felonies. Here are the most common charges that result in jail bookings, according to Appleseed's research:

• DWI
• Pot possession
• Felony drug possession
• Misdemeanor theft
• Assault/Family violence
• Class C misdemeanor traffic violations

One notices from that list that the Legislature could do a lot this session to reduce jail bookings. Reducing marijuana penalties (either to a civil penalty or from a Class B to Class C misdemeanor) would go along way toward keeping low-risk people out of the jail who don't need to be there. Class C offenders are another large category of jail entrants who almost never need to be incarcerated. Legislation is being heard in House committees on both those topics this week.

Apropos of tomorrow's Homeland Security and Public Safety hearing on HB 482 (Thompson) limiting arrests for non-jailable offenses, Appleseed honed in on this problem of Class-C-misdemeanor incarceration. According to their research, "People charged with fine-only misdemeanors and no more serious charge make up an alarming number of jail bookings in most counties analyzed."

Appleseed found that, "Across 11 counties analyzed, more than 30,000 people were booked into Texas jails for a Class C misdemeanor and no more serious charge in a single year." (Numbers in Dallas were skewed downward because Class C defendants were mostly incarcerated in unregulated municipal jails for which Appleseed couldn't acquire data.)

That's an exceptionally large number, and for only a fraction of the state! It also jibes with other recent reporting. When Grits compiled new data on Class C misdemeanor arrests at traffic stops from about 60 larger Texas jurisdictions, I found more than 24,500 people arrested for violations of Class C traffic laws or municipal ordinances (excluding people arrested on warrants and for Penal Code violations). Assuming even more people are arrested in non-traffic-stop circumstances, 30k in 11 counties sounds reasonable. These are different data sources measuring different things, but the implications are the same: Tens of thousands of Texans annually are being arrested for Class C misdemeanors as the highest charge.

Before now, we knew that about 11 percent of jail bookings in Harris County were from Class C misdemeanors, thanks to a 2016 analysis Kathy Mitchell performed for the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition. But this Texas Appleseed data shows it's a statewide problem.

By law, magistrates in Texas must process Class C arrestees in 48 hours; in larger counties, it typically happens within 24 hours. However, if a driver does not have money to pay the ticket, they could wait longer. Appleseed suggested that jailing Class B and C misdemeanor defendants for longer than a few days worsens recidivism prospects and harms public safety:

In a groundbreaking study of defendants in Kentucky jails, low-risk defendants held at least 2 to 3 days were almost 40% more likely to commit a new crime before trial than a low-risk defendant held no more than 24 hours. Further, the longer low-risk defendants were held, the more likely they were to reoffend. Those detained more than a month were 74% more likely to commit a new crime before trial than those released within 24 hours. 

The point is that even a couple of additional days in jail increases one’s risk of rearrest. Each day in jail is a day of missed work, a day without access to substance abuse and mental health treatment, a day away from family and children. When jail booking cannot be avoided entirely, counties must prioritize releasing low-risk people as quickly as possible back to their community before trial. 

Yet, a substantial number of people are staying past this three-day mark after being charged with nothing more serious than a Class B misdemeanor. More than 24,000 people charged with either a Class C or Class B misdemeanor and nothing more serious spent more than 3 days in jail over the course of a single year in 11 counties. Of these, about half (i.e., more than 12,000 people charged with a Class C or Class B misdemeanor and nothing more serious) spent more than 10 days in jail in those counties. 

For 10 of the 12 counties, Appleseed was able to calculate the total bed days (at roughly $60 per day) spent on various misdemeanor offenses. Collectively:

• Class C misdemeanors accounted for 61,825 jail bed days.
• Class B misdemeanors accounted for 316,639 jail bed days
• Class A misdemeanors accounted for 480,495 jail bed days.

Jefferson County (Beaumont/Port Arthur) was by far the worst jurisdiction in the Apppleseed analysis when it came to Class C incarceration: 42% of all misdemeanor-bed days in the county jail were accounted for by Class-C defendants. That's unfathomable, really.

Appleseed's recommendations will ring familiar to Grits readers:

(1) End jail bookings for Class C misdemeanors.
(2) End most jail bookings for offenses eligible for citation.
(3) Quickly release most people after jail booking on personal bond.
(4) Implement diversion programs.
(5) Analyze local data to develop local solutions to reduce jail use.

Grits is delighted to see so much additional data produced about Class C misdemeanor arrests just before the Legislature considers limiting them.

Most readers have likely forgotten (but bill-author Senfronia Thompson certainly has not) that the Legislature in 2001 approved a bill similar to HB 482 limiting arrests for Class C misdemeanors in reaction to the Supreme Court's decision in Atwater v. City of Lago Vista. Rick Perry vetoed that legislation, as well as another, more modest effort to limit Class C arrests passed the following year.

At the time, law enforcement insisted these sorts of arrests were vanishingly rare. Sandra Day O'Connor's dissent in that case is an excellent primer on why such arrests should be limited, but even she thought arrests for non-jailable Class Cs didn't happen often. "Such unbounded discretion carries with it grave potential for abuse," she wrote. "The majority takes comfort in the lack of evidence of 'an epidemic of unnecessary minor-offense arrests.' But the relatively small number of published cases dealing with such arrests proves little and should provide little solace."

Now, the "epidemic of unnecessary minor-offense arrests" about which O'Connor rightly fretted has been thoroughly documented. Whether one looks at jail bookings, as does Texas Appleseed's analysis, or at recently published Class-C arrest data in Texas racial profiling reports, it's now clear that arresting Texans for non-jailable misdemeanors is a routine, everyday occurrence across the state.

Both the Republican and Democratic state party platforms call for ending arrests for Class Cs. HB 482 is sound, bipartisan public policy from both a justice-reform perspective and from a perspective of fiscal conservatism. It's correcting a wasteful, ill-considered policy that does more harm than good.

See prior, related Grits posts:

• Class C misdemeanor arrests in Texas by the numbers
• New reports show Austin police use force at traffic stops much more often than other agencies
• Defining an 'undue hardship': Updating last session's debtors-prison reform bill
• Texans incarcerated thousands of years over traffic ticket debt
• Texans think justice system skewed against poor, support end to debtors prison practices
• Banning arrests for Class Cs, giving drivers notice, would improve traffic stop culture
• Pretext-based policing and arrests for non-jailable offenses
• Bill to limit Class C arrests target of red-herring arguments
• New laws aimed at reducing ticketing in schools worked: 83% fewer last year
• Reflecting on Rick Perry's criminal justice vetoes

Class C misdemeanor arrests and incarceration in Texas, by the numbers

Beginning with the consideration of HB 482 (Thompson) in the House Homeland Security and Public Safety Committee on Wednesday, the Texas Legislature will spend quite a bit of time over the coming weeks considering the consequences of arrest and incarceration for Class C misdemeanors, which in Texas are minor offenses carrying a maximum punishment of a $500 fine and no jail time.

There are two ways people end up incarcerated over Class C misdemeanors. First, after the US Supreme Court okayed the practice in Atwater v. Lago Vista (2001), police may arrest drivers for minor traffic offenses or violations of municipal ordinances, even if the maximum punishment is only a fine. That's what happened to Sandra Bland. Though she was eventually charged with resisting, when the officer first placed her under arrest, it was for the underlying charge of failure to signal a lane change.

Alternatively, if drivers can't pay fines and fees and don't show up for court, a warrant or "capias pro fine" may be issued for their arrest. Millions of such arrest warrants are outstanding at any given time, and hundreds of thousands go to jail each year because they can't afford Class C fines.

For purposes of one-stop shopping, Grits thought it worthwhile to reiterate some of the basic data surrounding arrests and jail for fine-only offenses in Texas all in one post. For fun, let's roll them out Harper's-Index style:

***

Rate of arrest for Class C misdemeanors at traffic stops in 2018 by the Texas Department of Public Safety: 18.4 per 10,000 stops.*

Rate of arrest for Class C misdemeanors at traffic stops in 2018 by Waco PD: 451.4 per 10,000 stops.*

Proportion of jail admissions in Harris County in a four-month 2016 study for which a Class C misdemeanor was the highest charge: 11%.

Proportion of traffic stops at which Texas DPS troopers used force against a driver in 2018: 17.02 per 10,000 stops.*

Proportion of traffic stops at which Austin police officers used force against a driver in 2018: 77.2 per 10,000 stops.*

Number of Texans in 2018 who sat out their Class C fines and fees in jail because they couldn't afford to pay: 524,628.**

New arrest warrants and/or capias-pro fines issued by JPs and Municipal Judges in Texas in 2018 for Class C misdemeanors: 2,141,656.**

Number of Texans for whom judges waived Class-C fines for indigence in 2018: 54,794.**

Percentage of Texans who, according to an Office of Court Administration poll, disapprove of jailing people over fines and fees when defendants cannot afford to pay: 66%.

Percentage of Texans who believe "the wealthy enjoy substantially better outcomes in the criminal justice than poor and working-class people": 81%.

Percentage of Americans the Federal Reserve says cannot pay a surprise $400 bill without selling something or going into debt: 40%.

Percentage of Americans the Federal Reserve says cannot pay their current month's bills: 20%.

* Source: Compiled from agency racial profiling reports from March 1, 2019. See more background here.
** Office of Court Administration Judicial Statistics data query.

Bail-reform blues: Can't please all parties when reforming pretrial-detention process

Governor Greg Abbott's endorsement of bail reform last year appeared to give the issue fresh life. But Abbott has now backed a bail-reform bill that eschews best practices and instead puts his office at the center of future decisions about pretrial reform.

The Houston Chronicle editorial board rightly opined that the move puts legislative reform efforts at extreme risk, but it's hardly just the governor. There's a swirl of backroom drama surrounding this topic with an array of competing interests and agendas, and no obvious way to navigate the morass. Here's an overview of interests framing the topic:

• Federal court injunctions have mainly focused on representation of indigent defendants at bail hearings and eliminating discrimination based on ability to pay.
• Counties oppose requiring appointment of counsel for indigent defendants earlier in the process, considering this an "unfunded mandate."
• The Texas Judicial Council proposed using risk assessments to reduce incarceration of low-risk offenders (the Office of Court Administration developed an instrument based on work by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation to create a version counties could use for free).
• The bail industry opposes use of risk assessments with the heat of a thousand suns and is investing big money in lobbying and communications strategies to undermine bail reform efforts.
• After the death of a state trooper named Damon Allen, Governor Abbott weighed in to say his biggest priority was expanding the scope of preventive detention.
• The criminal defense bar adamantly opposes granting any additional preventive detention powers to the government.
• Criminal-justice reformers are split. In theory, all support reduced pretrial incarceration in county jails, but some oppose the use of risk-assessment algorithms which are viewed as racially biased.

The Governor's proposal criticized by the Chronicle focuses primarily on preventive detention and expanding the power of his office over local court processes. The federal litigation driving the issue is more focused on access to counsel at bail hearings and reducing unjustified pretrial detention. Meanwhile, the Whitmire/Murr legislation ignores the access to counsel issue and promotes risk assessments and preventive detention, trying to merge the Governor's priorities with the judiciary's.

Never say never, but it's hard to see the path toward threading that needle. And if it were to occur, the resulting bill likely wouldn't resolve the issues at stake in the federal litigation, and we'd be back doing this again in 2021. After the federal litigation has finished, it will be much more clear what needs to be in the bill to ensure counties meet baseline constitutional standards, since they will have been outlined by the 5th Circuit.

In the end, the will may not yet exist to solve the problem through the political process. Certainly there is no consensus regarding what reform should look like and who should control it.

But much could change between now and 2021. If the Lege fails to act this year, odds are federal litigation presently pending in the 5th Circuit will reach its denouement between now and the next time they meet. That will create a new baseline for pretrial-detention rules and give the Legislature much more guidance, and possibly different priorities.

So look for the Texas Lege to revisit bail reform in 2021, whether or not a bill passes this time.

Modifying 3-strikes theft enhancement would ↓ TX state-jail population

On Monday, the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee will hear a good little decarceration bill modifying the enhancement for misdemeanor three-strikes theft. This one should have been changed long ago.

Under current Texas law, if at any time in your life you commit three incidents of misdemeanor theft, regardless of the value of the property, prosecutors can charge it as a state-jail felony. Even if the third "strike" is stealing candy from the grocery-store check-out line, prosecutors can seek a felony conviction and sentence.

HB 1240 by Rep. Yvonne Davis would revise this statute in two important ways: First, it would require that the lower-level thefts be within five years of one another to count toward a penalty enhancement. Piecing together a new, theft with two others that are decades old will no longer be allowed.

Second, the penalty increase stemming from a third "strike" would only bump the charge up by one category. So if the third strike were a Class A misdemeanor ($750 to $2,499.99), it would make no difference. But if it were a Class C or B misdemeanor, the penalty would still be a misdemeanor.

This change will further reduce the number of inmates entering Texas state jails, which notoriously have the highest recidivism rates of any facilities in the system.

Just Liberty reviewed Texas Department of Criminal Justice datasets and discovered that three-strikes theft accounted for almost 2,400 state-jail admissions in the 2018 fiscal year. This is the second most common reason for a state-jail sentence after possession of a controlled substance.

A few of those folks would have still gone to state jail under HB 1240. But because most theft involves low-value items, many more people would have been charged with misdemeanors instead of felonies. Grits wouldn't be surprised if HB 1240 all but eliminated three-strike theft offenders in Texas state jails.

Hard to argue with this one: Reduces incarceration in state jails where recidivism is high, reduces public perceptions of unfairness, but still sends a message that repeat theft won't be tolerated. Grits is delighted Rep. Davis proposed the bill and pleased that Chairwoman Nicole Collier is taking it up on the early side this session. HB 1240 deserves strong, bipartisan support from criminal-justice reformers.

Why Police Should Be Required to Get a Warrant to Use Cell-Site-Simulators (aka, "stingrays")

Legislation heard this week in the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee, HB 352 (Blanco) would require warrants for Texas law enforcement to use so-called “stingrays” or “cell-site simulators” to track people's cell phones, and provide more transparency surrounding use of these devices.

So-called “Stingrays” or cell-site simulators are examples of relatively new surveillance techniques hovering at the bleeding edge of both cell-phone technology and Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Because their use has been largely shrouded in secrecy and few clear precedents exist to model limits on this tech, the handful of law-enforcement agencies using it have until now operated in virtually a regulation-free zone.

Rep. Cesar Blanco, a third-term Democrat and former Navy intelligence office, understands signals intelligence better than probably any other legislator and is an excellent bill sponsor for this topic.

How Cell-Site Simulators Work
Cell-site simulators work by tricking your cell phone into believing it’s attaching to a legitimate cell-phone tower, which it “pings” periodically to make sure the phone is ready to make a call. This means that, when targeted users (or others in their vicinity) make a phone call, it’s routed through the cell-site simulator instead of the nearest tower. Representations by Houston PD at Monday’s hearing about the limited nature of the technology understated its capacity.

Cell-site simulators hijack and divert cell-phone signals from their commercial carrier’s network, making it more similar to a wiretap than a “pen register.” Some models of cell-site simulators allow full-blown wiretapping; others provide access to metadata from calls and callers; others may only provide information on signal strength and direction, allowing investigators to triangulate location with just a few measurements. It all depends on how much functionality an agency chose to pay for; the device is capturing the entire signal and can let investigators access any or all of it.

Movement toward ‘stingray’ warrant requirement
The US Supreme Court has not yet ruled on so-called “stingrays,” but several states already require warrants for cell-site simulator use with no ill effects. (Virginia, Washington, Utah, Minnesota, and California.)

On December 19, 2016, the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform issued a comprehensive, bipartisan report on law-enforcement use of cell-site simulators and recommended legislation that would require “probable cause based warrants” to “ensure that the use of cell-site simulators and other similar tools does not infringe on the rights guaranteed in the Constitution.”

The US Department of Homeland Security established a policy of seeking a warrant for use of cell-site simulator technology with limited exceptions for exigent circumstances.

Finally, civil libertarians have persuasively argued that, when a cell phone inside someone’s home is targeted with signal interception via a cell-site-simulator device, it per se violates the Fourth Amendment right to security from unreasonable searches of one’s “houses, papers and effects.” (Traditionally, Fourth-Amendment protections inside the home have been much stronger than elsewhere.)

Secrecy breeds mistrust
At Monday’s hearing, police expressed fears that innocent people might be hurt if information from search warrant affidavits about how and when police used the technology ever surfaced. But search-warrant affidavits have been public records since the dawn of the Republic. The more significant concern is that law enforcement will use the technology unaccountably and secrecy will protect them.

Not only does the public deserve to know when the government is using invasive surveillance technology, undue secrecy creates systemic problems. In Houston, police have even kept prosecutors in the dark when stingray tech was used.

Texas legislators should extend the same warrant requirement mandated by the Supreme Court in US v. Carpenter to cell-site simulator devices. This shadowy practice has flourished for too long on the edges of modern technology and privacy law. HB 352 is Texas’ opportunity to begin to restrain and regulate it.

See prior, related Grits coverage.

Carpenter codification non-controversial so far

Rep. Cesar Blanco also filed a related piece of legislation, HB 353, which essentially codifies the US Supreme Court case US v. Carpenter requiring a search warrant for the government to access cell-phone location data held by wireless cell-phone carriers. (Readers may recall Grits' poetic ode to the case after the oral arguments.)

Unlike the stingray legislation, no one opposed this bill. There was a half-hearted effort by a cop speaking "on" the legislation to preserve the real-time vs. historic location information distinction that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals tried to stake out in Sims v. Texas. But it's awfully hard to defend the idea that the government has a right to know where you are at any given time, in real time, without demonstrating probable cause. From the solitude of Judge Barbara Hervey's chambers at the Court of Criminal Appeals, one perhaps can make that strained argument without fear of recrimination. At a legislative hearing, nobody even tried. 

The reality is, even if they tried to do a Less-Than Carpenter Codification, this area of constitutional law is fluid and trending toward requiring more warrants for surveillance, not less. As such, Grits imagines that trying to short-change the warrant requirement could result in future federal court decisions rendering the language anachronistic. Rep. Blanco's approach is the wiser one.

Podcast: Elsa Alcala says Texas death penalty unreliable; parsing new TX traffic-stop data; prospects for Lone-Star marijuana reform, and other stories

Here's the March 2018 episode  of the Reasonably Suspicious podcast, recorded last week on the SXSW Podcast Stage hosted by Cadence13. Former Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Elsa Alcala was our special guest, focusing on junk forensic science and the death penalty.


Here's what's on this month's show:

Opening Riff
Would permanently shifting to Daylight Savings Time reduce crime?

Top Stories

• Prospects for marijuana reform in Texas
• New data on use of force at Texas traffic stops
• Legislative proposals to end the Driver Responsibility surcharge

Forensic Focus
Judge Elsa Alcala discusses junk science cases at the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

Death and Texas
Judge Alcala discusses the evolution of her views on capital punishment, from proponent to critic, and what the Texas Legislature should do to fix the state's unconstitutional laws on executing people with developmental disabilities.

The Last Hurrah

• More corruption revealed after botched drug raid in Houston
• Should stealing Amazon packages become a felony?
• Closing the "Dead Suspect" loophole to the Texas Public Information Act

Find a transcript of the show below the jump.

Defining an 'undue hardship': Updating last session's debtors-prison reform bill

The Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee on Monday heard HB 465 (White), which is update legislation from debtors-prison reform legislation (HB351/SB1913) passed in 2017. (Attentive readers may recall that, when he laid out HB 351, state Rep. Terry Canales told the committee that the ideas in his legislation originated with a post on this blog!) Despite predictions two years ago that collections would plummet and indigent drivers wouldn't be held accountable, the opposite occurred: collections actually increased when some of the most regressive collections tactics were abandoned.

But the 2017 legislation only made a small dent in the problem. While there was an uptick in fines waived and community service granted, far more people (more than half a million) satisfied their fines through "jail credit" - i.e., they were incarcerated in lieu of payment.

Readers may also recall that, at their state conventions in June, both the Republican Party of Texas and the Texas Democratic Party included provisions in their platforms calling for an end to jailing drivers for non-payment of traffic tickets and other Class C misdemeanor debt, switching to commercial collections methods, instead.

HB 465 does not go that far. (White's HB 2754 comes much closer; more about that bill soon). Rather, HB 465 demands that judges take into account defendants' ability to pay, authorizing them to waive fines or order community service if penalties create an "undue hardship," a phrase which is defined more broadly in the bill than in the past. The changes would bump up usage of fine waivers and community service in lieu of incarceration, but leave the fundamental "pay or we jail you" structure of the system intact for most drivers. Regardless, it's a good bill making important improvements to a regressive, dysfunctional collections process.

Here's a fact sheet from the Texas Fair Defense Project and Texas Appleseed supporting the bill.

New reports show Austin police use force at traffic stops much more often than other agencies

UPDATE: Austin Police Chief Bryan Manley announced that his agency had mis-reported use-of-force data in its racial profiling report. See here for details. He did not dispute Austin's arrest data reported below.

(Original blog post) Austin police are more likely to use injury-causing force against drivers they pull over than any other large Texas jurisdiction, according to new "racial profiling" data reports out this month from law-enforcement agencies around the state. Go here to look up reports from various departments, which agencies were required to submit to the state by March 1st.

These are called "racial profiling" reports because documenting racial discrimination was their original purpose when they were mandated in 2001. But really, they're the most detailed description we have of police activities at Texas traffic stops, revealing lots of interesting patterns and trends in addition to (still extant) racial disparities.

Indeed, thanks to state Sen. John Whitmire and Rep. Garnet Coleman expanding data collection in 2017 as part of the Sandra Bland Act, Texas now has MUCH more information about law enforcement activities at traffic stops in Texas, including new information about use of force at stops, how many people are arrested on outstanding warrants, and how many people are arrested for Class C misdemeanors. This is the first round of reports with the new data elements included.

Most media coverage of these reports so far has focused on racial disparities in traffic stops and searches. But Grits thought it worthwhile to focus on the new data reported. Grits created a spreadsheet with info from 4.6 million traffic stops from 38 of the largest Texas jurisdictions, calculating the rate of use of force, arrests for Class C misdemeanors, and arrests for outstanding warrants. (Among the largest jurisdictions, Fort Worth PD has not yet submitted a report.)

The reports evidenced wide variation among agencies. Let's start with use-of-force rates at traffic stops.

As mentioned in the lede, drivers stopped by Austin PD were far and away more likely to have police use force against them than any other agency, at 77 times per 10,000 stops. Houston PD was next, with a much lower rate at 53 per 10,000. After that were Denton PD (42), Corpus Christi (24), and Texas DPS (17), with rates headed south from there.

Austin police use force at traffic stops more than four times as often as state troopers, and at 20x the rate of the San Antonio PD! That's a big outlier.

Looking at arrest rates for Class C misdemeanors, Waco PD leads the pack, arresting 451 drivers out of every 10,000 traffic stops. (Amazing: That's nearly one in 20 drivers!) Following Waco, departments arresting the most people at traffic stops for Class Cs were League City (406), San Antonio (246), Odessa (236), Killeen (181), Lewisville (172), Beaumont (153), Houston (150), Midland (142), and Austin (124).

Finally, some cities focus a great deal on arresting folks with outstanding warrants for traffic tickets (this will be mostly a simple nonpayment issue), while others hardly ever arrest drivers they pull over for traffic warrants. Arlington appears to almost never enforce warrants at traffic stops, while Beaumont, Killeen, Midland, League City, and Austin top the list of jurisdictions making the most such arrests per 10K stops.

Notably, Austin PD stands out among the worst in each category: Most likely to use force at traffic stops; in the the top five on arresting for outstanding warrants; and in the top ten for arresting drivers on Class C misdemeanor charges. The city has a reputation as liberal, but these data evidence quite authoritarian policing practices compared to other large Texas jurisdictions.

However, this isn't just a capital-city story. For Texas reporters and advocates reading this, the new racial-profiling reports present an opportunity for localized focus on use of force and Class-C-misdemeanor arrests in a way that previously wasn't possible. This is information to which no one had access before! (If your local agency isn't on Grits' spreadsheet, look them up here.) As such, there's a lot more to learn than the highlights conveyed in this blog post. I'm sure Grits will return to these data soon.

A tale of two approaches to Texas property-theft thresholds

A pair of bills heard in two Texas House committees this week demonstrate opposing philosophies when it comes to incarcerating people for low-end property theft.

At Monday's Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee hearing, state Rep. Gene Wu, a Houston Democrat, proposed HB 760 making theft of packages delivered to someone's front porch an automatic state-jail felony, even if the value of the stolen items were just a few dollars. Wu said this was justified because going onto someone's porch was a particularly egregious invasion of privacy. State Rep. Andrew Murr suggested expanding the bill to make it a state-jail felony to steal anything out of someone's yard or driveway.

State-jail felonies are essentially Texas' version of a fourth-degree felony, punishable by 180 days to 2 years incarcerated, served day for day without parole, with fines up to $10,000. Under current law, thieves must steal $2,500 or more worth of goods to reach that threshold in Texas; below that, theft is a misdemeanor.

There are still pockets of particular types of theft scattered throughout Texas' criminal code exempted from the 2015 thresholds. E.g., it's still a state-jail felony to steal "less than 10 head of sheep, swine, or goats." So, steal a couple of goats worth $40 apiece - which would be a Class C misdemeanor in terms of value - and it's an automatic felony. Switch price tags to reduce the price of a hammer at the hardware store - automatic Class A misdemeanor. Since the passage of Texas' new property-theft thresholds in 2015, legislators have continued the effort by applying them to additional theft types. E.g., in 2017, another bill by Konni Burton applied them to check forgery.

Just Liberty opposed HB 760 in committee and followed up this week walking around a handout to committee-members' offices opposing the bill. Our fear is that it would ramp up state imprisonment for property theft during an era when it's been rapidly declining. Give our handout a read.

Porch piracy is a function of consumers seeking convenience. People want products delivered to their homes, and don't want to wait around the house to sign for them. But convenience can come with trade-offs, both in terms of consumer privacy and security. When commerce occurs in a commercially zoned location, retailers employ loss-prevention specialists and a certain amount of low-grade shoplifting is considered a cost of doing business. Move commerce to your front porch and no one should be surprised if consumers face the same low-grade theft problem witnessed at retailers.

Wu compared porch piracy to burglary of a habitation, saying if it were made a state-jail felony, police would take it more seriously and investigate. But home burglaries have among the lowest clearance rates of all index crimes, often in the 10-12 percent range. There's scant evidence making the punishment for such crimes harsher makes them any easier to solve.

There's also no evidence to support his inference that public pressure couldn't convince police to change their priorities and investigate porch-piracy incidents, especially as cameras proliferate, making them easier to pursue. IRL, police are remarkably responsive to such pressure. Maybe not in every instance, but in aggregate, for sure.

By contrast, in the Business and Industry Committee on Tuesday, Rep. Matt Shaheen, a Plano Republican, proposed legislation Just Liberty supported, HB 427, which would apply the property-theft thresholds to theft involving price-tag switching. This is a less-frequently seen brand of shoplifting, essentially, which occasionally can reach grandiose levels but is more often an impulse crime committed in a moment of human weakness.

Presently, price-tag switching on low-value items garners an automatic Class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in county jail and a $4,000 fine. Shaheen's bill applies the property-theft thresholds Texas passed in 2015 to such crimes, so that the theft only becomes a Class A misdemeanor if the person is stealing more than $750. Remarkably, the bill faced no opposition in committee.

This blog has opposed criminal-penalty enhancements for more than a decade, and in recent years we've seen new allies step up like the Texas Public Policy Foundation criticizing the idea that criminal-penalty enhancements are a one-size-fits-all policy response to any objectionable behavior. Juxtaposing these two pieces of legislation provides a good demonstration of 2019 public-policy debates in Texas regarding punishment of property theft.

Shaheen's bill continues efforts to reduce incarceration for low-level theft begun by Republican state Sen. Konni Burton, who was ousted by Democrat Beverly Powell last November.

By contrast, Wu's HB 760 evinces an old-school, tuff-on-crime mindset: Don't like a petty but annoying behavior? Throw government resources at the problem till it goes away. (And then, pretend you're surprised when the behavior inevitably persists.)

To be fair, Wu has supported other criminal-justice reform legislation in the past, particularly on juvenile matters. But the last thing Texas needs is a new law filling up prisons for low-grade property theft. Shaheen's approach makes more sense. Legislators shouldn't begin carving out exceptions to property-theft thresholds just two sessions after enacting them. Consolidating all the various brands of theft to apply the thresholds across the board is the better approach.

TX marijuana reform news, notes, and questions

Grits' analysis of prospects for marijuana penalty reform haven't changed since the beginning of the legislative session. Full-blown Colorado-style legalization is off the table this year, but penalty reduction for user-level marijuana possession has an excellent chance.

The Republican Party in its platform has endorsed one proposal making possession of up to one ounce of marijuana a civil penalty, a measure embodied in Speaker Pro Tempore Joe Moody's HB 63, which received an early hearing this week. Watch the hearing here; the discussion of HB 63 begins at the 41 minute mark.

Meanwhile, Governor Abbott has endorsed reducing the penalty for up to two ounces of pot to a Class C misdemeanor, which is a fine-only offense usually handled with a written citation.

Those remain the two, competing proposals with the best chance of passage. And the civil-penalty idea is getting a head start in the House with a strong, early hearing. Plus we're gaining a little new information as the process moves along. Here are several, disparate, pot-related items I wanted to record at this point in the process which merit Grits readers' attention:

First, the Texas Observer best-in-state coverage of Monday's hearing was titled "Third Times' a Charm," which is certainly the case for Speaker Pro Tempore Joe Moody's bill providing civil penalties for pot. His was a fresh approach to an old problem. But it's worth remembering that legislation to reduce penalties for low-level marijuana possession, as Governor Abbott endorsed, first (unanimously) passed out of the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee in 2005. The bill simply has never been blessed by House leadership to receive a floor vote, even though most vote counters believe it would overwhelmingly pass.

Another tidbit from this Texas Tribune story, an updated estimate of the number of annual marijuana arrests: "According to the Texas Department of Public Safety, roughly 379,000 Texans have been arrested for possessing 2 ounces or less of marijuana in the past five years." That's 75,800 people arrested per year, more than has sometimes been reported.

Moreover, the Trib reported, "In Dallas County, newly-elected District Attorney John Creuzot said his office is currently declining prosecution for first-time marijuana possession offenders." Creuzot is the first Texas DA to go that far. Here's hoping he won't be the last, and that he'll expand the non-prosecution policy to other victimless crimes like Driving With License Invalid (DWLI).

In San Antonio, DA Joe Gonzalez aims to fix a broken, unused cite-and-release system for pot possession and theft of service, eliminating a $250 fee that kept people from using it, the Express-News reported. (He is also becoming a vocal proponent of bail reform.)

No companions have been filed in the Senate to either Moody's bill or the competing penalty-reduction legislation, although there are still a couple of days left to sneak one in under the wire. (See the comments.) But especially with Moody's bill getting an early start, it appears the marijuana reform action will begin on the House side this year. That suits me fine. I don't doubt for a moment there are sufficient votes on the House floor to pass it.

Unanswered questions: There are many.

Will the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee Chairwoman Nicole Collier also hear legislation promoting Gov. Abbott's version of reform, or was the early promotion of HB 63 a signal that she prefers that method?

Will Gov. Abbott acquiesce in a GOP-platform endorsed alternative (HB 63) to his own idea, or threaten an unpopular veto?

If Moody's bill comes over from the House with the GOP-state platform's imprimatur, will Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a champion of the platform on other topics, shut it down?

There's many a slip twixt the cup and the lip, as my late grandmother used to say. And while there are positive signs this year for reducing user-level marijuana penalties in Texas, there are also a lot of things that could go wrong if key actors aren't willing to compromise.

Grits prefers the Moody bill, but the Governor's proposal would be a huge improvement and I've supported his suggestion many times in past legislation, back before marijuana reform became the Flavor of the Month. Either approach would be a big improvement and I hope legislators, the Governor, and everyone else with competing proposals can agree on a path forward.

Funding needed to bolster Office of Capital and Forensic Writs

My Reasonably Suspicious podcast co-host, Amanda Marzullo, who is the executive director of the Texas Defender Service, asked me to publish this guest blog post she authored advocating for expanded resources for the Texas Office of Capital and Forensic Writs. Give it a read:

Members of the Senate Finance Committee’s Article IV Subcommittee should take a lead from their counterpart committee in the House  and adequately fund the Office of Capital and Forensic Writs (OCFW), which has been under-resourced since its inception in 2010.

The office represents people on death row in constitutional claims relating to their conviction or sentence. The post-conviction writs filed by OCFW, often composed of hundreds of pages and years of work, ensure our system is fair and helps us avoid the most serious of mistakes.

Importantly, counties are on the hook for most costs of post-conviction representation when OCFW is not able to handle a case. The OCFW seeks funding from the Fair Defense Account, a General Revenue-dedicated fund which can only be spent on indigent defense expenses.

Each session, the head of OCFW reports that staff is over worked and underpaid—even by government public service standards. Lawyers in this office handle 8.5 capital cases on average, which is about 70% higher than their counterparts in other Texas post-conviction entities, where attorney workloads are capped at 4 to 6 cases—depending on the size of a case’s record and the issues that require research and investigation. OCFW attorneys at this office are also paid significantly less than lawyers at other entities, which prevents the office from hiring and retaining experienced lawyers. For example, the State Prosecuting Attorneys Office, the Capital Habeas Units of the Federal Public Defender Offices in Dallas and Austin, and the Regional Public Defender for Capital Cases in Lubbock are all able to pay their lawyers 40-50% more on average than the OCFW.

Given this backdrop, it’s hardly surprisingly that the office struggles with high attrition rates. Since it opened its doors nine years ago, 27 staff members have departed from its payroll roster, which currently includes just 16 people. Such high turnover impedes their representation, and ultimately, may lead to a new grounds for appeal in federal court.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the House Appropriations subcommittee voted to provide funding for the office’s expansion into forensics writs.  Readers of the blog will remember that legislature directed the office to handle non-capital junk science cases that are referred by the Forensic Science Commission two sessions ago through legislation sponsored by Senator Hinojosa. Yet, to date, the legislature has not allocated one iota of funding for these cases. Funding for these cases and the OCFW simply makes sense.

Pot debate at #txlege launches early, Soldiers as cops?, Tailoring corrections practices to women prisoners, and other stories

At the Texas Legislature this week, criminal-justice bills are finally being heard, although not yet in all committees, and all on the House side. Most of the major legislation remains to be seen; some of it has yet to be filed. Excepting marijuana discussions described below, all the biggest #cjreform debates of the session are all yet to come. But here are a few mostly-small bills up in committee this week that deserve Grits readers' attention:

Marijuana reform debate launches early
This afternoon, the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee launches the first volley in what's sure to be a lively debate over marijuana policy, considering Speaker Pro Tempore Joe Moody's HB 63 reducing possession of less than an ounce of pot to a civil penalty punishable with a ticket/fine up to $250. Notably, Moody's proposal more or less matches what the state Republican Party platform endorsed last year (the GOP said the fine should be $100). Meanwhile Gov. Greg Abbott has endorsed reducing criminal penalties for possessing up to two ounces of pot from a Class B to a Class C misdemeanor. That's close but not exactly similar to state Rep. Alma Allen's HB 371, and rumors are flying that we may yet see another bill closer to the Governor's approach. (See Grits' earlier discussion of the competing proposals and the implications.) Chairwoman Nicole Collier's elevation of the Speaker Pro Tempore's bill to her committee's first substantive agenda means this debate launches early. For Grits part, I prefer Moody's bill but support either approach compared to the status quo.

Mandatory felony for porch piracy?
In the same Criminal Jurisprudence Committee hearing as the marijuana debate, Houston Democrat Gene Wu has proposed a bad bill making the theft of any package delivered to someone's front porch an automatic state jail felony. To be clear, if the value of the item stolen is more than $2,500, it's already a state jail felony. But Wu wants to create new mandatory minimums for all stolen packages. As I was writing this, my wife passed by and I asked her the last thing we purchased from Amazon. Her reply: Some dry-erase markers and a book my granddaughter needed for a middle-school class. Definitely not worthy of a state-jail felony.

Switching up punishments on price-tag switching
State Rep. Matt Shaheen, a Republican from Plano, has a small-but-interesting penalty-reduction bill up in the House Business and Industry Committee on Tuesday that's the philosophical opposite of Wu's porch-piracy bill: HB 427 would apply the property-theft thresholds increased by the Legislature in 2015 to the offense of price-tag switching, which right now is a Class A misdemeanor regardless of the value of the item. The new law would have price-tag switchers charged based on the value of the stolen item, whereas Wu wants the Legislature to ignore the new property-theft thresholds when it comes to stolen Amazon packages.

Soldiers as Cops
HB 971 (Clardy), up in the Homeland Security and Public Safety Committee on Wednesday, would let former military personnel substitute military service for police-officer training. With only narrow exceptions (e.g., markmanship) Grits wouldn't consider it even remotely proper to allow such substitutions. "Soldier" and "police officer" are quite different jobs.

Corrections Committee to focus on women and kids
House Corrections Committee Chairman Chairman James White has a pair of bills up in his committee on Thursday. HB 659 would require TDCJ to count and report the number of prison inmates with children "of any age." But that stops short of actually identifying minor-age children who might benefit from provision of services, or facilitating kids' access to their incarcerated parents. In that sense, the bill's a disappointment. The legislation resulted from one of the committee's interim charges, but doesn't go as far as discussed during the interim. (See Grits' write-up here.)

Tailoring corrections practices to women prisoners
Another chairman's bill up in Corrections this week, HB 650, would require TDCJ to provide feminine hygiene products (defined  as products whose "principal purpose" relates "feminine hygiene in connection with the menstrual cycle") to indigent women inmates in TDCJ free of charge. The bill requires guards in women's prisons to receive training related to pregnant inmates and for the women to receive education about their pregnancy, parenting skills, medical and mental health issues, etc.. The bill mandates that women (only) with children under 18 must be allowed up to two contact visits per week with them. Wardens can restrict this access based on security concerns. (Question: If we're not going to track which kids belong to which parents under HB 659, how can they decide who is entitled to two visits per week under HB 650?) The bill requires female guards to perform body cavity searches of women inmates, with limited exceptions, and institutes special nutrition requirements for pregnant women. The bill also ensures women who give birth in TDCJ can spend 72 hours with their newborns before they're taken away.

More people may seek restoration of civil rights bc of bill to expand clemency access
Juvenile Justice and Family Matters Committee Charman Harold Dutton has HB 573 up in House Corrections this week to let people who've completed their state prison sentence and waited three years to apply have their civil rights fully restored. Interesting bill, even if Grits isn't completely sure I understand all the implications. This is a rarely used clemency process that requires the governor's sign off, and it's been many decades since Texas had a governor willing to indulge anything more than an occasional, symbolic use of clemency powers, plus a few folks found actually innocent by DNA evidence and/or the courts.

Seeking to stop sex offenders seeking pen pals
Finally, Rep. Matt Shaheen has HB 428 up in House Corrections this week forbidding sex offenders incarcerated in TDCJ from soliciting pen pals on free-world web sites, even if someone else does the posting, pays the fees, etc.. But it's a strange ol' world, this practice is more common than the uninitiated might expect, and Grits is unwilling to condemn every such communication as lacking value. As long as there's transparency, I'm not sure I see a problem that stamping "Correspondence from a Registered Texas Sex Offender" on the outside of every outgoing envelope wouldn't solve. Last session, the same committee approved a similar bill but it never received a vote on the House floor.