Allen Stanford: DEA snitch?

Did the US government tolerate fraud, money laundering and white-collar crime by Houston billionaire Allen Stanford because he was a snitch for the DEA? Reports the Press Association today:

Stanford guaranteed himself against fraud investigations by working with the US DEA, turning over details of money-laundering from Latin American clients from Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela and Ecuador, the corporation claims.

"We were convinced that Stanford's bank attracted millions of narco-dollars, but it was very difficult to get the evidence to nail him," sources apparently told Panorama.

"The word is that Stanford has been a confidential informer for the DEA since 99."

This is exactly the kind of scenario criticized by Prof. Alexandra Natapoff, arguably the nation's leading academic expert on the uses and abuses of confidential informants, who maintains that snitch agreements can actually produce and tolerate crime instead of preventing it. As she wrote in 2006 in the San Francisco Chronicle ("California reconsiders snitching," Nov. 19, 2006):

Unlike the law-abiding citizen who calls 911 to report a crime or who testifies at trial, criminal informants face prosecution for their own crimes, and thus have deep incentives to lie. If a snitch can convince the police officer or the prosecutor that his information is useful, he may avoid arrest, avoid the filing of serious charges or obtain a reduced sentence.

Snitches may also receive cash, drugs, permission to buy drugs, forgiveness for prior crimes and lenience for new crimes, even those committed in other jurisdictions. In return, law enforcement agents obtain information and convenience: They avoid having to expend time and resources prosecuting the snitch.

These secret deals between the government and criminals can last for years, and they can be very costly to the public welfare.

In the worse cases, informants continue to commit new crimes, while government handlers may turn a blind eye as long as the informant is useful.

This makes snitching a kind of "get-out-of-jail-free" card.

That's apparently what may have happened in the Stanford case. In retrospect, though, the crimes the feds tolerated arguably dwarfed any offenders who Stanford's information helped finger.

Related Grits posts:

• Natapoff: Snitching can be "crime producing and corrupting"
  
• Snitch rules protect lying DEA agent
  
• Congress should restrict criminal informant use to prevent false convictions, police corruption
• Snitch whose crimes were tolerated by feds will be extradited to Mexico
  
• DEA snitch data lost
  

Inmate used as enforcer by corrupt Montague County Sheriff

The indicted Montage County Sheriff died last week, unfortunately before being held to account for his numerous crimes against inmates, female informants and the state. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram today has an extended story based on interviews with inmates, guards and other involved parties ("On Sheriff's watch, North Texas jail became den of drugs and debauchery," May 9). Here's a notable excerpt:

Though it remained largely hidden from view, lawlessness and debauchery in the jail continued and intensified, according to interviews with authorities, jailers and prisoners. Luke Bolton’s story, authorities say, is largely consistent with discoveries of state and federal investigators.

Bolton said that in 2006, a few months after his arrest for assaulting his girlfriend, jailer Calvin Morales approached him with an offer that came "from the very top." Keating wanted a misbehaving prisoner to be taught a lesson.

"It was a hit, in other words," Bolton said in the recent interview. "He said, 'If you handle this, it’s two packs of cigarettes.’ They moved [the other prisoner] to [Bolton’s cell]. I whipped him down and stomped on his head.

"Morales [and another deputy] were standing at the window there outside of Cell 19b, and when they saw the blood, they came in and said, 'It’s over.’ They pulled him out, bandaged him up and put him in another cell."

Bolton said he was handed the promised packs of Marlboro reds within minutes, itself a violation of state law. In the months to come, Bolton said he was involved in 17 jailhouse fistfights, almost all of them at the request of the sheriff, either directly or through guards.

Bolton described a jailhouse drug ring that included both prisoners and jailers.

"We were distributing it throughout the jail . . . meth, marijuana, cocaine . . . and the sheriff was getting his 10 percent," Bolton said. "I was told this by Calvin Morales, that the sheriff was getting his 10 percent."

Getting creative on polygamy prosecution

It being Mother's Day, let's turn our attention to the legislative aftermath of the 2008 Great Eldorado Polygamist Roundup, where more than 400 children were taken from their parents at a West Texas ranch run by a polygamous Mormon sect, the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (FLDS).

This time last year, FLDS children were separated from their mothers based on a creative legal ruling that the parents' religious beliefs constituted per se abuse; appellate courts later overturned those interpretations and ordered the children's return. Now the Texas Legislature is flexing its own creative muscles trying to salvage prosecutions from this fiasco.

Legislation to lengthen the statute of limitations on bigamy passed the Senate and will be heard this week in the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee. Apparently, since authorities couldn't prosecute polygamists at the YFZ Ranch in West Texas as they'd prefer, they now want to give prosecutors up to seven years to pursue bigamy cases, ten if they involve a minor (although no victims are clamoring for prosecutions). The current statute of limitations for bigamy is just three years, as is the case for most felonies.

A different House committee already heard related but much broader legislation that has not moved nearly so far along in the process, so if this gets to the floor, I'd expect Reps Harvey Hildebran and Drew Darby to try to load it up with all the extra mischief in their bill. Sometimes you really have to get creative if you want to use the force of the state to impose your personal moral code on others but can't figure out how to do so within the constraints of their constitutional rights.

The blogger at Sore Toes and a Bleeding Heart yesterday blogged about the creative lawmaking that changed Texas' marital laws in 2005 to target polygamous Mormons who'd recently moved to West Texas. "Toes" pulled the money quote of the hearing from state Rep. Harvey Hildebran, who told the committee that any abuse report "has to come from inside, so we’ve got to be a little bit more creative in how we get the report."

Given what transpired after that, with more than 400 children seized on the basis of a hoax phone call, this is one of those quotes that makes you go, "Hmmmm." After all, the search warrant on which the raid was based was full of official "creativity."

Over at The Common Room, the Headmistress Zookeper further analyzes details from the original affidavit used to obtain the YFZ search warrant, noting that we now know a worker at a women's shelter suggested the name "Dale Barlow" to Rozita Swinton, the hoax phone caller (who claimed she'd been married three years but didn't know the name of her husband), after finding it on an Internet search while they were talking. The Headmistress also points out that Rozita's claim to have been treated at the local hospital was checked out by the Texas Rangers before the raid but couldn't be confirmed.

"There doesn't seem to have been any single identifying information in Ranger Brooks' application for a search warrant that he or somebody else didn't find via googling," she concludes. In other words, as Grits first suggested three days after the raid, the Great Eldorado Polygamist Roundup was a "setup job."

None of this inspires confidence. What's needed at this point to reestablish trust in the system are fewer "creative" efforts and more respect for the law and individual rights by Texas' political leadership.

More media focus on Tim Cole's posthumous exoneration

CBS Evening News will air a story on Timothy Cole's false conviction and posthumous exoneration tonight, Saturday, May 9^th, at 5:30pm CST. Check local listings on your CBS local station. (UPDATE: Here's the link.)

See also a Mother's Day themed editorial in the San Antonio Express News on the Tim Cole case, in which the author writes, "Texans ought to be outraged enough by what happened to Cole to take a hard look at the state's criminal justice system and take tangible steps to assure that justice, not convenient convictions, is sought at every turn."

RELATED: When Dallas DNA exoneree Johnnie Lindsey appeared last week on the daytime TV show The View, he said he and his fiance' weren't getting married yet because he couldn't find a job. The Dallas News' Crime Blog reports that since then he's received three different job offers. Congratultions, Johnnie!

AND MORE: Rounding out the current media flurry regarding false convictions in Texas, Radley Balko at Reason reviews the new movie, American Violet, and discusses the TV series Dallas DNA.

'Writ Writer' film wins ABA award

Congratulations to Susanne Mason for winning a "Silver Gavel" award from the American Bar Association for her documentary film, "Writ Writer," chronicling the history of Texas prison inmate and famed jailhouse barrister, the late Fred Cruz. The film aired on PBS' award winning Independent Lens series and earlier this year was screened at the Texas capitol.

Legislature 'picking on kids'?

Christy Hoppe at the Dallas News last week noticed a trend at the Texas Legislature of the Lege injecting itself in the role of parent ("Are proposed laws at the Texas Legislature picking on kids?," May 3):

Lawmakers don't want kids driving after 10 p.m., buying cigarettes or climbing into tanning beds. ...

Teenagers appear to be a target for lawmakers this year; everyone knows they need protection from their own self-destructiveness, and they can't vote. Lawmakers cite safety issues, but a few, such as [Jodie] Laubenberg, are starting to raise questions about parental rights as several measures move through the Legislature.

They include a number of restrictions on drivers under 18, including no text messaging or talking on cellphones without a hands-free device. Legislators also apparently believe that no good can come after 10 p.m. They propose that those 17 or younger shouldn't be driving after that hour – a change from the current midnight curfew.

"None of us would want to target any age group, but 17 and younger are inexperienced and still developing judgment and are prone to danger," said Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, whose bill with the 10 p.m. curfew has cleared the Senate and is pending in the House.

"The Legislature continues to try and find the appropriate balance between good policies and parenting," Carona said. "Government couldn't and shouldn't try to raise their kids, but where and when we can, we should find appropriate measures to protect them."

House Transportation Committee Chairman Joe Pickett, D-El Paso, said he favors the restrictions on driving while texting or phoning for young motorists, although he's not sure the earlier curfew is going to win House support.

"While I know it's like we're attacking young people, it's really helping them," Pickett said. "It's not that we want to be restrictive."

Pickett's last comment sums it up, doesn't it? It reminds me of Ronald Reagan's famous quip that the scariest words in the English language are "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." Pickett is certainly right that it's "like" they're "attacking young people." That's how the young people see it, no doubt, and perhaps also their parents whose decisions are being usurped.

One recalls that when the United States attacked Iraq, President Bush said we were "helping" them, too. (Note to policymakers: "Helping" and "attacking" are not synonyms!)

Why it should be up to the government and not their parents whether a teen wears a cowboy hat or a helmet in a rodeo or uses a tanning bed is beyond me. As with many new laws passed each session, much of this falls under the heading (in my book, anyway) of "none of the government's damn business."

Guilty plea from corrupt border Sheriff

Updating a story covered here on Grits last fall, StoptheDrugWar.org brings this news from a high-profile South Texas corruption case:

In San Antonio, a former Starr County sheriff pleaded guilty last Friday to one drug trafficking charge for assisting the Mexican Gulf Cartel as it smuggled drugs through his border county. Former Sheriff Reymundo "Rey" Guerra was arrested last October after he was one of 29 people indicted by a federal grand jury. He admitted passing information to an informant whom he knew had gone back to work for the cartel in return for payments of $2,000 to $3,000. He also admitted passing information about who tipped off authorities in a raid that resulted in the seizure of 314 kilos of pot and one kilo of cocaine. Guerra pleaded to one count of conspiracy to distribute narcotics as part of a plea deal that saw two other charges dropped. He faces from 10 years to life in prison when sentenced in July. Until then, he remains free on bond.

Austin PD to create eyewitness ID policy

The stories of dozens of innocent men falsely convicted by mistaken victims and eyewitnesses in photo lineups are beginning to spur law enforcement to become more professional in this area.

The Texas Legislature is responding - legislation to require law enforcement agencies to have written eyewitness ID policies yesterday passed out of the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee after already clearing the Senate. Now, Austin PD is taking the hint and creating a written policy on their own without waiting for legislative prompting. The Travis County Sheriff may follow suit, reports the Austin Statesman ("Austin police developing photo lineup policies," May 8):

Austin police officials said detectives use photo lineups dozens of times each month in cases that include homicides, sexual assaults and burglaries. Investigators use live lineups less frequently, although the department has written policies for how to do so.

Austin police Lt. Mark Spangler, who is charge of drafting the new policy, said detectives have historically relied on techniques used by previous investigators that have been passed from generation to generation.

Under those procedures, a lead investigator working on the case generally compiles a photo lineup involving the suspect and five others who have similar physical characteristics. In most instances, Spangler said, that same investigator also administers the lineup to victims or witnesses.

Spangler said the new policies probably will require that an investigator not associated with the case administer the lineup.

Austin defense attorney Bill Hines said he commends the police effort to adopt photo lineup policies. However, he said he thinks it is "embarrassing and shameful that they are only now coming into modern criminal jurisprudence."

These are important changes. The policy also needs to require that the witness be warned that the suspect may not be in the lineup, and that a failure to make an ID will not end the investigation. Investigators conducting lineups should also record a "confidence statement" from the witness declaring how sure they are of the identification in their own words.

Earlier this year Dallas PD decided to reform their lineup policies, mandating "blind administration" of lineups and that pictures be shown to a witness sequentially instead of as a group - a practice which further reduces chances of error.

Edwin Colfax of the Justice Project, who has authored an excellent public policy report (pdf) analyzing eyewitness ID policies at Texas police agencies, likes to say that eyewitness ID evidence should be considered more like "trace evidence" than some sort of evidentiary gold standard, and like other trace evidence, if not gathered carefully using correct procedures can become tainted, discriminatory and unusable.

Kudos for Austin PD for taking the initiative before the Lege forced them to do it.

See related Grits posts:

• Study: 88% of police and sheriffs have no written policy on eyewitness ID procedures
• Eyewitnesses in staged test only 8% accurate
• When eyewitnesses are wrong
  
• Exonerations educate courts, Lege on innocence
  
• 5th Harris County DNA exoneration an indictment of eyewitness IDs
• How much do eyewitnesses really see?
• Eyewitnesses and the 'feeling of knowing'
• Emotional pair of DNA exonerations argue for changing eyewitness ID procedures
• CCA Integrity Unit: Eyewitness ID reform should be top innocence priority

Harris Sheriff can't spend stimulus money on guns and gadgets

The infusion of federal stimulus money for law enforcement purposes raises significant questions about oversight of those funds and how best to spend them, so I'm glad to see the Harris County Commissioners Court setting the proper tone by rejecting proposals from the new county Sheriff to buy the department machine guns and lease a helicopter. According to the Houston Chronicle ("Harris County cuts Sheriff's wish list," May 5) :

The Harris County Commissioners Court on Tuesday tossed out almost all of Sheriff Adrian Garcia’s requests for federal stimulus funding, instead allocating his office $6.2 million for electronic inmate medical records.

The court balked at Garcia’s original plan to spend $6.6 million leasing a helicopter and another $550,000 buying equipment, including a covert surveillance van and machine guns for boats patrolling the Houston Ship Channel.

The sheriff’s revised proposal included a scaled-back helicopter program, but called for spending most of the money on computer systems to better manage inmates and jailers. Just $1.5 million would have gone toward electronic medical records under that plan.

That was a smart move by Harris County Commissioners. I'm glad to see somebody in Houston has figured out that job one for the Sheriff is running an overcrowded jail with 10,000 inmates. Fixing the jail's inmate record systems is a much more pressing concern than buying fancy surveillance equipment or adding machine guns to patrol boats in the harbor.

All over the state, counties are making similar decisions right now about what to do with federal stimulus money, and my guess is we'll see a lot of it squandered buying guns and gadgets instead of spending it on fundamentals. That would be a waste and a shame.

Larger cities may get needle exchange option

Excellent news! SB 188 - authorizing local-control needle exchange programs in Texas' largest cities and counties - passed out of the House Public Health Committee this afternoon on a 7-3 vote! Outstanding!

Voting in favor of the legislation, according to the needle-exchange focused blog, Sifting the Haystack, were: Garnet Coleman, John E. Davis, Veronica Gonzales, Susan King (a professional nurse), Elliott Naishtat, Vicki Truitt, and Doctor John Zerwas. Three of those - Davis, Truitt and Zerwas - are pickups from the House floor vote in 2007 that authorized a pilot needle exchange program in San Antonio.

Now SB 188 heads to the Calendars Committee, where I'm pleased to see that the Chairman, Brian McCall, was actually one of the authors of a companion needle exchange bill - HB 272 by Ortiz. That makes me optimistic SB 188 will get a vote on the House floor. Once there, SB 188 stands an excellent chance of passage. The Bexar County pilot last session passed on a 71-60 vote, so many members have already gone on the record in favor of the idea.

RELATED: Needle exchange, treatment and prevention.

Florida passes compromised snitching reforms

While legislation in Texas is moving along to protect innocent defendants by requiring corroboration to obtain a conviction based on testimony from jailhouse informants, Florida's GOP Governor Charlie Crist just signed a bill (discussed here on Grits previously) to protect the rights of informants themselves. According to the Tampa Bay Times:

The legislation is named for Rachel Hoffman, a Florida State University grad who was murdered while on an undercover drug buy for Tallahassee police a year ago today. ...

"Rachel's Law" calls on agencies to take into account a person's age and maturity, emotional state and the level of risk a mission would entail. Police also would be barred from promising an informer more lenient treatment; only prosecutors and judges can do that.

Not included are several provisions [Rachel] Hoffman's parents said could have prevented their daughter's death, including barring anyone in a drug treatment program, as 23-year-old Rachel was, from going on undercover drug buys. (more background here)

"This bill represents a great consensus," Crist said, flanked by the bill sponsors, Rep. Peter Nehr and Sen. Mike Fasano. "It’s probably not everything everybody wants. But it’s an awful lot of what is good and right and just about making sure that people are more safe."

There are a lot of questionable and disturbing aspects of informant use and it's interesting to see two large, southern states addressing different parts of the problem simultaneously. Maybe in two years here in Texas we can come back to address some of the problems they were confronting this time around in the Sunshine state.

Here's the text of the enrolled version of the Florida bill. My favorite part: Law enforcement must "Provide a person who is requested to serve as a confidential informant with an opportunity to consult with legal counsel upon request before the person agrees to perform any activities as a confidential informant."

However, while establishing a number of new protections, the bill also includes a disappointing caveat that "any failure to abide by the act does not create any additional right enforceable by a defendant in a criminal proceeding." (In essence they had to make the same compromise to pass the bill as was made on Texas' eyewitness ID legislation, which in its current form specifically exempts failure to abide by eyewitness ID procedures from falling under state's statutory exclusionary rule.) I'm not sure exactly how that would work if a defendant is denied the right to counsel before entering a snitch agreement, as now required in Florida law.

Florida's snitch-protection legislation passed unanimously in both chambers. Watered down or not, the fact that it passed and was signed by the Governor in a GOP-controlled state reinforces my sense that the issue of informant-based corruption of the justice system has sturdy, bipartisan legs.

BLOGVERSATION: At the South Carolina Criminal Defense Blog, Bobby Frederick writes:

If a person is trying to get clean or stay clean, they cannot repeatedly go into houses and make drug deals - sooner or later they will use and their recovery will be blown to bits. Many narcotics officers do not care if you stay clean or not - you are a tool that they use to do their job for them. Many narcotics officers do not care that you are placing yourself in danger - again, you are a tool that they require to make drug arrests. Rachel Hoffman's death in Florida, although tragic, was representative of the ethics problems that narcotics officers often ignore in their work and thankfully brought national attention to the problem.

Counties seek help on jail crowding, diversion

Two stories today related to county jail overcrowding caught my eye:

In my hometown of Tyler, Smith County officials have decided to forego a fourth vote on a new jail for the time being, with County Judge Joel Baker declaring, "Now is not the best time to bring up the bond option, so we have to find other ways to stop the bleeding."

That's good news. Jail proponents got their butts whipped in Smith County elections three years running, so it's definitely time they gave it a rest.

There ARE ways for Smith and other counties with overcrowding problems to reduce the "bleeding," though, if courts and jails utilize more diversion programs, focusing use of the jail more on safety concerns and less on money making ventures.

Meanwhile, the Dallas News today has an editorial about their jail's problems calling for the creation of a new position at the Texas Commission on Jail Standards to consult with counties about jail diversion. The paper opined that an independent view would be more constructive than a consultant beholden to the commissioners court who might tell them whatever they want to hear. (I tend to agree, though I think TCJS might need to be budgeted more than one person for that role if they're going to cover the entire state.)

The opinion piece was timed to coincide with a TCJS meeting in Austin today. Wrote the Dallas News editorial board:

The immediate problem is today in Austin, where several Dallas County officials will attempt to convince the jail commission board that they're doing all they can to reach compliance.

In immediate jeopardy is a 15-year-old variance that allows the county to exceed bed limits in the jail tower with serious, persistent fire-safety problems. If the board isn't convinced, it could order the county to move about 900 inmates out of the North Tower. County Judge Jim Foster estimates the cost at $4 million a month.

"They're tired of being told what we're doing," he says. "They want results."

Our suggestion is that they get behind Munoz's program specialist plan, which so far has survived the budget knives. If county commissioners want to add another consultant on top of that, fine. As many fresh eyes as possible for an increasingly tired problem.

RELATED: Here's a list of the 5 counties currently sending the most overflow inmates to other jails and private contractors:

• Harris: 1,021 inmates
  
• Fort Bend: 314
• Lubbock: 234
• Smith: 148
• Bexar: 76

Much of this results from choices by elected officials, not capacity shortages. All but one of these counties incarcerates its citizens at higher rates than the statewide average:

• Harris: 3.11 per 1,000
• Fort Bend: 2.20
• Lubbock: 3.74
• Smith: 4.22
• Bexar: 2.87
• Statewide: 2.63

Tenaha becoming poster child for asset-forfeiture abuses

Last night when laying out Sen. John Whitmire's SB 1529 regulating asset forfeiture, House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee Chairman Pete Gallego said he was sending a DVD to committee members with this story from CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 about Tenaha, a small town in East Texas that allegedly decided ripping off drivers passing through town was easier than raising taxes.

Key to ending the practice in Tenaha, the legislation would forbid police or prosecutors from requesting, requiring, or in any manner inducing defendants to waive their property interests until a formal civil foreiture case has been filed in a district court. Hopefully that will at least slow down the highway robbery mentality that appears to have infected some Texas jurisdictions when it comes to asset forfiture.

See related Grits posts:

• Reining in asset forfeiture abuses
  
• DA's overreliance on asset forfeiture violates the law
• Take the profit motive out of asset forfeiture
• Senate committee: Asset forfeiture too often a profit-making venture
• Outgoing Sheriff went on forfeiture-backed spending spree
  
• Asset forfeiture dependent Sheriff views Hwy 77 as 'piggy bank'
• Asset forfeiture funds may get more accountability, money diverted to drug courts
• Levin: Assets seized from criminals shouldn't become political slush fund
• What's the difference between a pirate and a privateer?

Innocence legislation wending through process

It's the time of year at the Texas capitol that bills are dying left and right because they can't make it through the process in time. Bills originating in the House of Representatives, for example, are dead if they do not pass out of committee by Monday May 11 and the final House floor calendar including House bills (excepting local and consent) will be issued the next day. As such, there's a great deal of anxiety right now under the pink dome.

Fortunately, quite a bit of legislation I've been working on for the Innocence Project of Texas is still alive and variously wending its way through the process. I spent a long, grueling day a the capitol yesterday waiting for the House of Representatives to adjourn so the Criminal Jurisprudence Committee could hear several pieces of innocence-related legislation at a hearing that didn't start until 10 p.m.:

• SB 116 by Ellis/Farrar which promotes recording custodial interrogations
• SB 1976 by Whitmire/Gallego expanding post-conviction writ access in cases with discredited forensics
  
• SB 1681 by Hinojosa/Gallego requiring corroboration for jailhouse informants
• SB 1847 by Hegar/Moody letting exonerated inmates access the same services as parolees when they immediately leave prison.
  

I felt lucky my boss Jeff Blackburn and I made it out of the building before 1 a.m.; the poor folks waiting to hear SB 298 on DWI roadblocks (and there were a bunch of them) had to stay to the bitter end to testify, by all appearances mostly against the bill, though I didn't stay to listen to them (and neither, btw, did the bill sponsor).

Another important innocence-related bill, SB 117 (Ellis/Gallego), has already been heard and is awaiting action by the same committee. It would require law enforcement agencies to have written policies regarding eyewitness identification procedures, a reform that the Court of Criminal Appeals' Criminal Justice Integrity Unit said should be the highest legislative priority for preventing false convictions.

Meanwhile, HB 1736 (Anchia/Duncan), increasing compensation for exonerees, passed out of the Senate State Affairs Committee on Monday and will likely be heard on the Senate floor by the end of the week.

The fact that these bills are all being considered in the second chamber means they've got an excellent chance of passing in some form or fashion, though we won't necessarily know for another few weeks what that final form will be.

What's clear, though, from the support garnered by these bills so far, is that many folks at the Legislature now understand the parade of innocent men walking out of Texas prisons exonerated by DNA evidence should be a wake up call that a broken justice system needs their attention - not just because prisons are expensive but because some of the prisoners in them shouldn't be there.

Jeff Blackburn said it well to the committee last night testifying on SB 1976: The reason we've seen 39 DNA exonerations in Texas is because the Legislature passed a DNA-testing statute in 2001, not because the courts did their job or the system was working well. And it's folly to expect the justice system to improve further without additional legislative action.

Most of this legislation has been scaled back and compromised during the process, and none of these bills is a cure-all: The Lege can't just pass them and then go back to their districts to declare the problem of convicting innocent people "fixed." But I feel like the body - in both chambers - is taking the issue much more seriously this year than at any time in recent memory. As I told the Criminal Jurisprudence Committee (sometime after midnight) last night, I'm thankful for it.

UPDATE: This afternoon (5/7), SB 116, SB 117, SB 1976, and SB 1681 were all voted out of the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee.

More disapprobation for Shanda Perkins nomination to parole board

I'm not the only one, apparently, dissatisfied with Shanda Perkins' nomination for the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole. Harold Cook at Letters from Texas vents that:

Yesterday, the nomination of Dr. Bryan Shaw came up, to continue as one of three commissioners over the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

Most of the Senate Democrats opposed the confirmation, based on the silly notion that the state agency charged with protecting the environment should...well, you know...do a little of that from time to time.

During the course of that debate, Republican Senator Mike Jackson, who chairs the Senate Nominations Committee, the first stop for all these appointees, remarked in defense of Dr. Shaw that the Senate needs to look beyond policy differences, and instead cast their votes based on a particular appointee's qualifications, experience, and expertise.

Fair enough, Chairman Jackson. Let's talk about Shanda Perkins . Ms. Perkins is pending in Jackson 's Nominations Committee, as a Perry appointee to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. Her committee hearing is today.

What are Shanda Perkins' qualifications? Well, she led a revolt against sex toys .

Her holy quest to rid Planet Earth of the scourge of people doing whatever they want in the privacy of their own homes landed one woman in jail, and the whole mess ended up in Federal Court. The courts eventually ruled that Ms. Perkins' goal, and the law that goes with it, is unconstitutionally illegal.

Perkins' only other qualification for appointment by Perry seems to be that she was caught passing out anonymous fliers attacking Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison at Republican events.

So what's it gonna be, Mr. Chairman? Is the talent bar in Texas so low these days that we're going to entrust decisions, regarding who remains in prison and who is set free, to a political hack anti sex toy crusader who is unconcerned with the U.S. Constitution?

The appointment is an embarrassment .

The Senate Nominations Committee will consider Perkins' nomination at a meeting this aftenoon at 1 pm. or 30 minutes after the Senate adjourns in the Senate chamber.

UPDATE: The Senate Nominations Committee approved Perkins' nomination on a 4-1 vote, with Sen. Elliott Shapleigh the lone opponent. Unfair Park broke the news of the committee vote; see also brief coverage from AP.

MORE (5/7): From the Dallas News' Trail Blazers Blog:

When Shapleigh quizzed Perkins and three other Perry appointees to the board about their credentials, the other three cited advanced degrees, years of prison work and experience in state and local government. Perkins cited her experience as a Sunday school teacher and a church youth counselor.

AND MORE: Best coverage yet of the hearing from Jim Vertuno at AP who reports:

The ACLU sent Perry's office a letter Wednesday saying Perkins' has "no relevant qualifications for the position and no identifiable experience in the area of corrections policy" and her nomination should be withdrawn.

Perkins' approval "will fail to promote fairness on the parole board or confidence in the criminal justice system," the letter said.

and also this tidbit:

Shapleigh also asked how she would vote if there was new evidence that could show a death row inmate may be mentally disabled, which would prevent them from being executed.

"I would vote against," execution, Perkins said.

Jeff Blackburn Hagiography

A blogger writing under the nom de plume "Harry Homeless" last month posted a notable hagiography of my boss Jeff Blackburn, the Legal Director at the Innocence Project of Texas (who incidentally will be in town this afternoon to testify on innocence legislation moving at the Lege).

The writer recounts his relationship with Jeff going back to the 1980s when the blogger worked as a contract janitor in Amarillo and he turned to Blackburn during an hilarious dispute with an ex-employer, who was then running for Mayor. The post includes several admiring tales of Blackburn's civil rights work in Amarillo; I've known Jeff for nearly a decade and there was much in this piece I'd never heard. But then, Jeff Blackburn is a man with a lot of war stories so I'm sure for the price of a beer or two he'd be willing to elaborate. ;)

Senate should reject anti-sex toy activist for parole board

The nomination of Shanda Perkins to the parole board - the anti-sex-toy activist chosen by Governor Rick Perry to make decisions about releasing prisoners - comes up tomorrow afternoon in the Senate Nominations Committee. See prior Grits posts for more background:

• Governor appoints anti-sex toy crusader to parole board

• Nomination of anti-sex toy activist to parole board draws more criticism

Perkins' push for harsh enforcement of petty vice laws against her neighbors in Johnson County ultimately resulted in Texas' law banning sex toys being overturned by federal courts. As I wrote when her nomination was announced, "She's so tough on crime, in other words, she's tough on crimes the federal courts say cannot exist because they're acts protected by the First Amendment."

Perkins appears to have no other criminal-justice related background besides her effort to have vibrator sales prosecuted. But there's another reason the Governor might believe (according to his press office) that she's the "most qualified candidate": She's lately been out distributing anonymous attack literature against Kay Bailey Hutchison at Republican Party events.

This nominee should be rejected; Perkins simply doesn't have a background to inspire confidence she'll make wise and judicious decisions on the parole board, and the board is already slanted in its membership and failing to meet its own release guidelines. Adding Perkins to the mix would only exacerbate that problem.

Auditor: TYC not processing abuse complaints quickly enough

The State Auditor's Office today issued a followup report on the Texas Youth Commission's compliance with reforms mandated in 2007. While the SAO found the agency had implemented 72% of reforms suggested in its 2007 audit, they identified several shortcomings:

- TYC did not competitively bid 11 contracts totaling $19.5 million that it awarded while the agency was in conservatorship from March 2007 to October 2008. While the Texas Government Code grants a conservator a series of powers and duties, it does not specifically exempt a conservator from complying with state procurement rules.

- TYC has not increased the number of certified sex offender counselors in its treatment programs or retained necessary documentation to support its staffing projections for juvenile correctional officers for fiscal years 2008 and 2009.

- In fiscal year 2007, TYC proposed closing five residential facilities. As a result, the Legislature reduced TYC's appropriations for fiscal years 2008 and 2009. However, TYC continues to operate the Victory Field Correctional Academy and the West Texas State School, which were two of the facilities that TYC proposed closing. TYC reported it spent $21.8 million during fiscal year 2008 to operate these two facilities.

- TYC did not ensure that its Office of Inspector General (1) received and investigated all reported allegations of mistreatment or (2) initiated and completed investigations of alleged mistreatment within 30 days as required by agency policy.

As for the facility closures, those will be decided in the conference committee on the budget. The House wants to keep them, the Senate wants to close them. The no-bid contracts are an unfortunate legacy of conservators' past, but not anything the current management can do anything about now.

Emily Ramshaw at the Dallas News focused particularly on new data about delays in investigating abuse cases, pointing out that SAO says "TYC took an average of 100 days to complete an abuse or neglect investigation - compared to 57 days in 2006, before the abuse scandal broke. The agency requires them to be complete in 30 days. 'TYC should evaluate whether [it has] the staffing resources necessary to complete investigations within the required time frames,' the report states."

See the full SAO report (pdf).

DPS Colonel ousted

Another nasty black eye for Texas law enforcement: The interim top cop at the Texas Department of Public Safety, Col. Stanley Clark, resigned abruptly over allegations of sexual harassment.

It's hard to ignore how the decision to force out long-time DPS Col. Tommy Davis last year doesn't look quite as clever now as it apparently did to the Public Safety Commission last summer. Col. Davis was a little too independent for the commission's tastes, bucking some of their proposed reorganization efforts, but surely that was preferable to this embarrassment?

Needle exchange, treatment and redemption

Local-control needle exchange legislation, SB 188, sounds like it's in pretty good shape from what I heard of the Texas House Public Health Committee hearing this morning. Rep. Ruth McLendon laid out the bill with an emotional story of personally going into her own district in East San Antonio to distribute needles with a volunteer group (presumably illegally!) and meeting a young man whose family she knew who later went voluntarily into drug treatment.

Chairwoman Lois Kolkhorst had earlier sent the bill to a subcommittee chaired by Rep. Susan King; there's no video in the broadcast archives of their April 16 subcommittee hearing, but it sounds like it was quite a meeting. They produced a committee substitute to include the following changes:

• Includes a preamble written to clarify the purpose of bill (prevent disease and facilitate treatment)
  
• Bracketed the legislation to jurisdictions of 300,000 and above
• Made the bill permissive - no one will be required to have a program
  
• Required programs to have an outreach component promoting drug treatment
  

Kolkhorst said an editorial by Dr. Bill Martin (pdf) in the Houston Chronicle arguing that needle exchange is "the Christian thing to do" had moved her to give the bill a hearing despite initial concerns about the bill. Rep. Susan King, who chaired the subcommittee, was an especially knowledgeable and enthusiastic proponent for the legislation; I hope she'll repeat the performance when it comes up on the House floor because she did a great job arguing the merits of the program.

Reacting to urging from the chair and committee member Dr. John Zerwas, King said the subcommittee added a strong counseling component to the bill, requiring syringe exchange programs to be "one stop shopping" information centers for helping drug addicts access treatment and medical services.

The witnesses began with ministers from St. Mark's in San Antonio and another minister from Austin who gave a faith-based argument for the program. A minister from St. Mark's said Christ ate and sat with sinners, not to condone them but to redeem them. The Austin minister said healing was a central activity of Jesus' own ministry - 72% of Jesus' miraculous activity relates to healing those with physical or mental illness, he said.

I got pulled away on a phone call and soon thereafter the committee recessed to go to the House floor, leaving the bill pending. They'll resume testimony during the House's lunch break around noon. From the sounds of things, though, the subcommittee has come up with a bipartisan compromise on which they can mostly agree. So far, so good.

UPDATE: Here's a link to the archived video of the first part of the hearing. The discussion of SB 188 begins at the 1:00:45 mark. MORE: Here's a link to video of part two of the hearing on SB 188.