CONTINUING the ongoing debate and discussion about our criminal justice system, today we consider a defense of prosecutors. Several of them responded to the recent visit here with a lawyer who resigned as an assistant DA to become a defense attorney. They disagreed with the contention that most prosecutors believe justice to be synonymous with winning convictions. While many messages made similar points, I liked David Newell's best. Newell works for a prosecutor's office in the Houston area, but asked me not to say which one because he is expressing his personal opinion and not speaking for his entire office. [continues 644 words]
A defense lawyer who is a former Harris County assistant district attorney said he changed sides because of a quip he heard one day at work. One of the other prosecutors commented that convicting the guilty people is easy; the real challenge is in convicting someone who is innocent. This apparently is a common wisecrack among the folks who gauge success by the number of guilty pleas and verdicts they can win. I had already heard about it from other lawyers. However, when the protagonist of this tale thought about it on that particular day, it didn't seem much like a joke. It seemed to have become more of a motto or slogan. [continues 652 words]
FRIENDS have advised him to just give up and take it because no way can he beat the system. But Marcellus Wright won't quit. He looked for a new attorney in the Yellow Pages. One told him that for $10,000 he could make the problem go away. Wright doesn't have $10,000. It's all he and Judy, his wife of 11 years, can do these days to feed the family and keep a roof over their heads. But he won't quit. [continues 738 words]
He started out four years ago trying to help people break their crack addictions but got hooked himself. He wound up being taken prisoner in the drug war, but said he is clean now and wants to contribute to our on-going discussion of the criminal justice system. Wants to tell us what he has been through, what he has seen, what he faces. Ted Caster was a family man with young children. He was a college-educated engineer with an aluminum roofing business and several rental property investments. He was busy but found time to serve as church music director. [continues 725 words]
She had to find some way to go on, to keep from buckling under the heavy ache of grief, to put purpose and meaning and value into the rest of her life. So Linda White went back to college the year after her daughter, Cathy, just 26, was abducted, raped and murdered. In the books and studies and challenges, Linda began to find comfort, relief. She had tried looking for them in a support group, in meeting and talking with others who were suffering because someone dear to them had been murdered. But what she found there didn't suit her. [continues 663 words]
Sticks and stones may break your bones but how much does it hurt if someone calls you a liberal? Reason I'm asking is because this has happened to me several times lately in responses to discussions here regarding the state's criminal justice system. One fellow e-mailed that he considers me a "prime example ... of the workings of the ultra-liberal mind." Another fellow I mentioned a couple of weeks ago wrote: "teary-eyed, panty-wearing liberals like you make me sick." And there have been some others. [continues 638 words]
Today, a retired prison warden joins our ongoing discussion and debate regarding the state's criminal-justice system. Lon Bennett Glenn retired in 1995 after three decades in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, working his way up from guard. For the past three years he has been working on a book about the TDCJ. The 50,000-word project, with a working title of The Largest Hotel Chain in Texas, is in the final stages of editing, and he is looking for a publisher. [continues 716 words]
"Teary-eyed, panty-wearing liberals like you make me sick." The fellow who tossed that e-mail barb was upset about a recent discussion here regarding the growing number of people being warehoused in the growing number of prison facilities and the frustrations of the growing number of prisoners' families. "If you polled the taxpayers," wrote the upset fellow, "you would find that the majority, by far, would be in support of their tax dollars going to improvement and expansion of the prison system over many other things. The expansion will bring in thousands of new jobs for contractors, among many other people." [continues 599 words]
When the parents arrived last weekend at the prison where their son is locked up, they were pleased to learn he had been made a trusty. The mom said they weren't due to be allowed a contact visit for six more weeks, but because trusties have more privileges, "all our visits from now on will be contact visits. How wonderful to hug our son." When last we heard from this family, the mom and dad were fixing to make their weekly drive of 225 miles to see their son. The mom was going to drive because the dad needed to take it easy after his heart attack a few days before. [continues 678 words]
The mom was going to drive the 225 miles to the prison this time, since the dad is supposed to be taking it easy after his heart attack last week. It is a four-hour drive each way, and they are allowed one visit of two hours each weekend. In between visits are phone calls -- about $500 worth a month. The state and the phone company make a big profit from the high rates charged when prisoners call home. Their son was locked up on Nov. 4, for violating probation. The dad said the son failed a urinalysis after being with some pals who were smoking grass and he smoked a joint. [continues 643 words]
Serving as a juror can be an awkward-feeling, strange-fitting task for many of us. There you are, one-twelfth of the most important part of a jury trial. Yet you aren't required to know anything about the job when you report to work. You haven't been tutored about how to weigh evidence on the scales of justice. You haven't had to memorize any rules or answer any test questions about what ajuror may or may not do. [continues 686 words]
Local scientists can get pretty good at describing their projects, but nothing brings a study into focus like hearing a story straight from one of the research subjects. Norma Turner and Gayle Weaver of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston know that. Which is why, after telling a little about their work over the past seven years -- examining the addiction and recovery of women in the Galveston area -- they invited Nurse Morgan into our meeting at UTMB. Gaye Nell Morgan is not only a nurse, she recently completed the course work for becoming a licensed chemical dependency counselor and is beginning to accumulate the 4,000 hours of experience needed to complete the requirements. [continues 626 words]
HAVE to make this quick so as not to be late reporting for jury duty. I got passed over last time I was called, just a few months ago, and left the courthouse feeling depressed. However, after spending some time this week in Angleton with Lawrence Jablecki, director of the Brazoria County Community Supervision and Corrections Department, I feel a little better. Jablecki has been in the probation branch of the system for 21 years. Thus he has known a large number of criminals charged with a large variety of crimes. He has paid close attention to the reasons that some of them straighten out and others don't. He can quote figures and statistics to bolster the opinions and conclusions spawned by his experience. A scholar with a Ph.D. in philosophy, he can offer files, books and studies as convincing exhibits. [continues 636 words]
Justice Can Be Darned Elusive. Houston attorney Russell M. Webb has been playing hide-and-seek with it for more than a quarter of a century, first as a prison guard, then as a parole officer, then as an officer presiding over parole revocation hearings, and for the past 11 years as a criminal defense lawyer. He can tell many stories similar to the one about a 40-year-old fellow who was arrested several years ago outside a public housing project after a police officer saw him throw down something shiny. The cop found a piece of glass on the ground containing a speck that tested as cocaine. [continues 630 words]
They met on a night in May on a street in Montrose, a part-time cab driver and a hooker. "Something told me to talk to her," he said. "Have you ever walked by someone and got a certain aura or feeling or premonition?" She struck him as quite different from the others he sometimes approached between fares on slow nights. He gave her his phone number and asked her to call him. A few nights later, after she hadn't, he found her again. She told him she'd lost the number. He gave it to her again. Still no call. [continues 735 words]
Twelve Thousand Five Hundred And Four (12,504). That's how many cops I've counted in 114 agencies from all levels of government found in Harris County, provided my addition is correct. I came up with 66 agencies containing 7,525 officers at the city level, including school and college police forces, fire department arson investigators, and city marshals. At the state level, I counted eight agencies with 124 officers. Three railroads in the county have forces totalling 18 certified peace officers. [continues 1304 words]
Think of a toddler's set of alphabet building blocks, only imagine that instead of letters each block has printed upon it one of the following bits of information: * An attorney for the family of Pedro Oregon Navarro, who was shot and killed by Houston police last year, said that he has been told a scale model of the room where the fatal shots were fired was constructed in Washington, D.C., for the convenience of federal authorities investigating the death. [continues 619 words]
At least once a week, Bryant Reed of La Porte finds himself wondering how many police agencies we have watching us and why we need so many. Reed recently wrote in an e-mail, "In this area, we have HPD, Sheriff's Department, Metro PD, constables, U.S. Marshals, the Houston ISD PD, highway patrol, the Texas Rangers, the FBI, and, I swear, the other day I saw a Harris County Hospital District police car." I, too, have wandered down the trail of speculation about law enforcement proliferation. Writing down just the agencies that came quickly to mind, I came up with more than 20, including district attorney investigators, game wardens, postal inspectors and federal officers with the INS, DEA, ATF, CIA ... [continues 681 words]
I GOT ANOTHER LETTER from our mayor. He writes when he disagrees with something that shows up here on the edge of the page. This one responds to comments of last Sunday about the city's Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or DARE, program. As usual, I'm pleased to run as much of the letter as possible, even if it takes up most of my space. I figure one of these days, in exchange, I'll ask the mayor to let me help him run the city for a day or two. [continues 670 words]
Almost Everywhere Drugs Go, Money Follows Money is why farmers produce plants to be processed into illegal drugs instead of cultivating crops of less-profitable food or fiber. Money is the motivation driving drug dealers. Stealing for money to buy drugs is behind that big percentage of crime attributed to substance abusers. Fighting drugs is but the flip side of the same coin. Seizing assets from suspects in drug cases has proved quite lucrative for law enforcement agencies. This is on top of the vast sums of public money the government continues pouring into its so-called drug war year after year, despite an appalling lack of progress to show for it. [continues 645 words]
