Sept. 5
TEXAS:
Death row inmates under television blackout---Opponents say state is
ignoring a tool to control the condemned
WHAT'S ALLOWED
Texas death row inmates can keep these items in their cells:
Miscellaneous: radios, fans, hot pots, typewriters, religious and legal
materials, mail, art supplies, and books
Games: chess and checkers boards; inmates can play by numbering the
positions on the boards and shouting their moves to each other.
A proposal to give death row inmates access to television is getting poor
reception from the head of the state prison system's board of directors.
Of the 38 states that have capital punishment, Texas is the only one that
does not allow condemned prisoners at least limited access to TV, say
attorneys with the Texas American Civil Liberties Union. They also are the
only Texas inmates who aren't allowed some amount of viewing time, a
privilege that some experts believe helps ease behavior problems.
The ban doesn't appear likely to change in the near future, say ACLU
officials, who can't get the chairwoman of the Texas Board of Criminal
Justice to even discuss the subject.
In May, ACLU prison project litigation director Yolanda Torres attempted
to broach the idea in a letter to Chairwoman Christina Melton Crain.
"We believe it is significant that every other death row in the country
has successfully developed and implemented policies and practices that
allow death row prisoners access to television, while at the same time
maintaining the safety and security of their employees and institutions,"
Torres wrote.
Crain responded two months later that the issue was not open for debate.
"I appreciate the passion and energy that you bring to matters for which
you advocate," Crain wrote. "But as the Board and the current
Administration do not wish to entertain this issue further, dialogue
between you and me on this subject is now closed."
Crain did not respond to requests from the Houston Chronicle for an
interview. However, through a spokesman, she e-mailed a brief statement.
"The Texas Department of Criminal Justice does not provide television
privileges to offenders (on) ... death row," she stated, "and the board of
criminal justice has no plans to amend this policy."
Stark difference
Life on death row has been drastically different since 1999, when the
condemned inmates were moved from the Ellis Unit in Huntsville, where they
were allowed to watch television, to what is now the Polunsky Unit in
Livingston.
Privileges for death row inmates were reduced to the level of
administrative segregation, or solitary confinement.
Now condemned prisoners are confined for 23 hours each day in their cells,
which measure 6 1/2 feet by 10 feet. They receive one hour of daily
recreation, either in an inside recreation yard or outdoor recreation
area. They also receive their meals in their cells, are escorted to
showers once daily and are escorted to the infirmary if they need medical
care.
Death row inmates no longer participate in work programs.
They can be interviewed by the news media on Wednesdays and are allowed to
meet with their attorneys Monday through Friday and occasionally on
weekends through special arrangement.
Condemned inmates also may have visits from approved spiritual advisers
and one general visit per week for a two-hour period. That period can be
extended if a visitor has traveled more than 300 miles.
Death row prisoners also can receive newspapers and magazines through
subscriptions and are allowed to spend $75 every 14 days in the unit's
commissary on hygiene supplies and snacks.
Some don't see problem
The lack of TV viewing time is just fine with victims' rights activists.
"Convicted felons lose certain rights and privileges, and even more so for
death row inmates," said Andy Kahan, victims' rights advocate for the city
of Houston. "The pain, misery and grief that death row inmates have
caused, committing some of the worst crimes known to mankind, should not
be rewarded."
Kahan suggests that the inmates take out Book of the Month Club
memberships and be required to write monthly book reports.
Dianne Clements of the group Justice For All adds that death row's
configuration would require putting TV sets in individual cells.
That, she says, would provide another hiding place for contraband and
source for makeshift weapons. On Aug. 18, condemned murderer Jorge Salinas
stabbed a prison guard 13 times with a metal rod from a typewriter. The
guard was not seriously injured.
But the ACLU's Torres contends that, if 37 other prison systems found ways
to provide TV access for death row, Texas officials should be able to do
so.
Another supporter of TV on death row is Chase Riveland, the former
director of the state prison systems in Washington and Colorado. H says
some degree of access to television can be an important tool for keeping
prisoners in line.
"In most jurisdictions, in order to have a television, an inmate has to
have a good disciplinary record," said Riveland, now a consultant who has
36 years of correctional experience.
"If the inmates know they're going to lose their television if they
misbehave, they're going to be very cautious about it, especially if
they're in a lockdown situation (as in Texas), because that's their only
real connection with the real world."
Riveland added that, in most other states, inmates' families pay for the
TV sets.
"I can't even fathom why one wouldn't want to use such an inexpensive
tool," he said.
He also suggests that the use of televisions on death row might actually
ensure that inmates are mentally fit to be executed.
If kept in isolation, he said, "the odds of inmates becoming mentally ill
are greatly enhanced."
"That, of course, then leads to all types of challenges against whether
you can execute them," Riveland said. "And so, by not having televisions
or other means of keeping them mentally alert, it may add to the taxpayer
drain through additional litigation."
Reconsideration request
Texas ACLU Executive Director Will Harrell recently asked Crain to
reconsider her "summary dismissal" of the organization's attempt to
discuss the TV issue with prison officials.
Meredith Martin Rountree, the Texas ACLU's prison project director,
believes Crain's decision is based on misguided popular opinion.
"TDCJ's job is not to pander to public misunderstandings and
misconceptions about criminal justice," Rountree said.
"Its job is to run a safe and constitutional prison system and to make
decisions based on sound, penological justifications.
"Every death row in the country has not only investigated this issue but
has found that televisions are good management tools," Rountree said. "Why
is TDCJ different?"
********************************
Sunday Conversation----Chief justice looks back at time on the bench
After 16 years as chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court, Tom Phillips
is leaving to teach at South Texas College of Law and Southern Methodist
University. Phillips, 54, who started his judicial career in 1981 on a
Harris County district court bench, talked recently with Austin bureau
reporter Janet Elliott.
Q: When Gov. Bill Clements named you chief justice in 1988, you were a
Republican who had to lead a court of Democrats at a time when the court
had been accused of being too cozy with campaign contributors. What was
that like?
A: It wasn't as awkward a situation as it sounds. ... I think everybody
realized that we all had election certificates or gubernatorial
appointments and we were there to do a job for the people of the state.
And we had relatively strong disagreements about things. Relationships
never were strained to the point it impaired our ability to put out work.
Q: You spent about $2.6 million in your 1990 campaign, and in your last
race you accepted zero contributions.
A: One from Gov. Bush's committee.
Q: OK, what happened in that 12-year period?
A: Well, Texas went from a one-party state to a 2-party state to a 1-party
state, but a different party. So those bitter races simply became not
viable at the statewide level, or indeed in very many of Texas' very
largest counties.
Most of the money for these campaigns arose out of the great tort battles.
In the period of time that I've been chief justice, many of those tort
decisions have been taken out of the hands of common law and have been
codified in legislation.
Or the United States Supreme Court has raised constitutional questions
about extremely large awards of punitive damages, for instance.
We haven't done anything in Texas that would prohibit those nasty,
high-dollar races from coming back again. We've just really been in this
lull caused by the dominance of the Republican Party, and it may all
change.
Q: What system would you design for Texas?
A: An initial appointment by the governor, with the advice and consent of
the Senate, and then a yes-or-no retention election would preserve the
best aspects of both an appointed judiciary and an elected judiciary.
The partisan election system continues to shrink down. For those states
that both elect and re-elect appellate and trial judges by partisan
ballot, that's just 4 states. That's us, Louisiana, Alabama and West
Virginia. It's perhaps coincidence, but perhaps not, that the U.S. Chamber
of Commerce's survey of the worst jurisdictions for fairness of the judges
are those 4 that still have partisan elections and the one that fairly
recently abandoned it, Mississippi.
Q: You've said the state court system is complicated and antiquated. What
should be done to modernize the system?
A: The basic structure of our courts was created at the Constitutional
Convention of 1875 in reaction to Reconstruction, where the courts were
appointed by the governor and were highly centralized at the county seat.
There was a strong feeling that people were having to leave the plow and
saddle up the horse and go into the county seat for relatively small sums
of money. So, by golly, it was going to take $500 before you went to a
district court. And below that we would just have a neighborhood judge who
you could reach in a few hours who presided one Saturday morning a month
at their farmhouse.
This system really became anachronistic when paved roads and telephones
were invented shortly thereafter. The idea that most of your judges are
part time with no specific training and that you'd have a bunch of
different levels of courts is somewhat outdated.
The general rule is Texas has 2 courts where every other state has 1. We
have 2 Supreme Courts, and we have 2 traffic courts. And we essentially
have 2 general jurisdiction, lawyer-judge trial courts. We just perpetuate
historical accidents when we could have a cheaper and more efficient
system, and one more comprehensible to the public if we just sit down and
redesign it.
Q: What's been the court's most significant case?
A: Well, school finance has to be the most significant. In terms of a
decision that affects most Texans' lives every day, the series of school
finance decisions and the legislative and popular response to those
decisions have probably been our most important litigation.
Q: Why did you decide to go into teaching instead of going into private
practice?
A: The teaching is just a 1-year commitment. And I really don't know what
I want to do next. I did not want to be slumping around, hat in hand,
looking for a job while I was the head of the judicial branch.
(source for both: Houston Chronicle)
************************
Girl allegedly beaten by mother and stepfather dies
A 5-year-old girl left brain dead after she was allegedly beaten by her
mother and stepfather died Friday morning after being taken off life
support.
The girl's father and his family were present when she died at Children's
Medical Center in Dallas, said Marissa Gonzales, a Child Protective
Services spokeswoman.
A juvenile district court judge ruled Thursday that Amber Rose Pacheco be
removed from life support after doctors testified she had no hope of
recovery and no neurological function except for an occasional gasp.
The judge acted on a request by an attorney serving as Amber's legal
guardian after CPS took permanent custody of her Monday.
An autopsy with the medical examiner's office was planned, after which the
body will be returned to the paternal family, Gonzales said.
Amber's death Friday brought sadness, but also relief that she is finally
at peace, Gonzales said.
"Everyone who was involved in this case has had a really hard time with
it," she said. "You never want to say that one case is worse than another
because they're all tragic. I think this one was made a little worse by
the fact that she lingered so long.
The girl's mother and stepfather, Hope and Jason Pumphrey, are being held
on injury to a child charges in lieu of $1 million bail. The couple could
face capital murder charges now that the girl has died.
Dallas police planned to review the autopsy results to examine the extent
of Amber's injuries and meet with the Dallas County District Attorney's
Office next week to decide whether to upgrade the charges to capital
murder, spokesman Sr. Cpl. Chris Gilliam said.
A spokeswoman with the district attorney's office said the case is still
waiting to be heard by a grand jury.
The couple took Amber to Children's Medical Center on Aug. 18 with head
trauma, a fractured skull and broken pelvis, arm and ribs. Authorities
said the couple told them the girl was possessed by a demon and had
earlier taken her to a church to ask for help.
Hope Pumphrey gave birth to Amber while she was in jail on drug charges,
according to CPS. She voluntarily gave the child to Rosa Pacheco, the
paternal grandmother, to raise.
CPS says caseworkers followed up with the grandmother and the child was
"happy and healthy and thriving." CPS isn't sure when the grandmother gave
the child back to the mother.
The girl's father and grandmother had supported her being taken off life
support. Her mother did not comment on the decision. The girl's
stepfather, who denies ever harming her, told The Dallas Morning News that
he did not want her removed from life support because he had hope she'd
recover.
******************************
Former judge says courtroom prepared him for Congress
Republican Ted Poe isn't afraid to get creative to make a point.
As a prosecutor, he screamed to get the jury's attention. As a judge, he
came up with creative sentences for offenders.
Now Poe thinks Congress could use some new approaches _ something he says
he offers after 22 years as a judge and eight as a prosecutor.
"Every time Congress passes a law, it affects people," said Poe, who left
the bench last year to begin his campaign to unseat 4-term Democrat Nick
Lampson in the newly drawn 2nd Congressional District in southeast Texas.
"If Congress knew how the laws they passed affected people, they may not
be passing some of those laws."
When handing down sentences, Poe required murderers to hang pictures of
their victims in their jail cells, auto thieves to give their cars to
victims, and minor offenders to read books from a court-approved reading
list.
Once he required a man who stole a pistol from Clayton Moore, the actor
who portrayed television's Lone Ranger, to spend 20 hours a month for 10
years cleaning the Houston Police Mounted Division stables.
"You had to make the punishment fit the crime," said Poe, who in 1981
became one of the state's youngest judges and among the first Republican
judges elected in Harris County since Reconstruction. "If we are held up
to public ridicule and public reprimand, we don't like it. It is
embarrassing and it changes conduct."
Some convicts told Poe they'd rather go to jail than carry a sign
admitting guilt, he said. The judge immediately ordered such offenders to
march outside the courthouse or at the scene of their crime with a sign
proclaiming their offense.
"We live in a culture where we don't want to hurt nobody's feelings," Poe
said. "That's hogwash. Some people's feelings need to be hurt, especially
when they commit a crime. If you don't feel some guilt, you are not going
to change."
Poe never lost a case as a prosecutor, and he earned the nickname
"Toothbrush Ted" for passing toothbrushes to defendants along with a note
saying they would need it in jail.
"You are an advocate for the little guy, the victims," Poe said. "You've
got to rant and rave and scream. ... I'd throw things. I wanted to get the
attention of the jury. I like being in the courtroom, down there in the
mud, blood and the beer with real people."
His passion was apparent.
"He was spirited in his determination to convict," recalled defense
attorney David A. Jones, who counts Poe as a friend, but as a Democrat
supports Lampson. "He was just so strongly motivated to win that it
bordered on ... it came close to being ruthless."
Poe, 55, has mellowed over the years, Jones said.
"He evolved from a very state's-minded pro-prosecution judge to one of the
fairest and most objective and passionate magistrates in the courthouse,"
Jones said. "I think he just matured on the bench. He became less of an
advocate."
State District Judge Denise Collins describes Poe as sensitive,
compassionate, warm, funny and "the most loyal friend in the world."
However, "he can be an intimidating force because he is so forthright and
outspoken and sure of himself," she said.
Poe's colorful nature comes naturally and he isn't a showman, Jones said.
He says some judges at the Harris County courthouse resented their
colleague's attention-grabbing tactics.
District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal said he doesn't know of anyone who
questioned Poe's judicial scholarship but admits he didn't always agree
with him. Rosenthal appealed Poe's decision to allow cameras in the jury
room of a capital murder case in 2002. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals
sided with Rosenthal and barred the cameras.
But Rosenthal said Poe always gave defendants a fair trial and "that is
one of the things you really seek as a lawyer."
And even though his punishments could be painful, they were always
well-researched, Houston defense attorney Stanley Schneider said.
"It all comes back to he does what he thinks is right," Schneider said.
"He always was thoughtful and extremely careful to think things out."
Schneider doesn't expect that to change if Poe goes to Congress.
"He won't fly by the seat of his pants," Schneider said. "And most of all,
he will stand by his belief that government is there to protect the
people."
Poe, who lives in the Houston suburb of Humble with his wife, Carol, says
that's been his approach for years.
"That's all I have ever done is get involved in people's problems,
people's issues," he said. "Hear their concerns, the facts, the evidence
and then make a decision and go to the next matter."
Poe, who has four grown children, says his grandmother inspired him to
evoke change, telling him: "'You need to be where you can do the most
damage.'
"It was kind of a negative way of saying: Do the most good," he said with
a laugh.
(source for both: The Associated Press)
**********************************
Want tough on crime? Start by fixing HPD lab----Problems at the Houston
Police Department's crime lab are in the headlines once again.
First, we discovered that George Rodriguez has been forced to spend the
past seventeen17 years in prison for a crime he did not commit due to the
incompetence of crime lab technicians. Then it was revealed that evidence
from overmore than 8,000 other cases was misplaced in the crime lab for
years, until recently discovered in a closet.
It would be disturbing enough if these were merely isolated events, but
the unfortunate reality is that these incidents represent only a portion
of the mounting evidence of the crime lab's ineptitude. As a result, the
validity of almost any case that has relied upon evidence produced by the
lab is questionable.
The lives of too many of our families have been devastated because
innocent, law-abiding citizens such as George Rodriguez, Josiah Sutton,
Anthony Robinson and countless others have all been forced to wear
shackles of injustice while suffering in prison for crimes they did not
commit.
When innocent people are sent to prison for crimes they did not commit,
the integrity of our entire criminal justice system is called into
question. Unfortunately, we in Texas have been willing to invest countless
dollars toward building prisons and achieving the highest incarceration
rate in the country, yet we have failed to adequately invest in essential
procedures to protect the rights of our citizens and ensure that we at
least send the right people to prison.
That's not being tough on crime. That's bad policy. Our citizens deserve a
system of justice that they can have faith in. How many innocent lives
must be sacrificed until we decide to make a change?
Local politicians, law enforcement officials and defense attorneys must
take a long look at ourselves when assessing blame for these troubles. It
is time that we come together, accept our responsibility to the public,
and deal with these tragedies of injustice. It is time to take Houston's
criminal justice system out of the spotlight of national shame and
transform it into a light of hope and example for systems of justice
around the country.
Police Chief Harold Hurtt and Mayor Bill White are to be commended for
taking the initial steps to remedy the problems with the crime lab that
they inherited. Conducting an in-depth and independent audit of the lab is
the right thing to do. It shows the people of Houston that their mayor and
chief of police are serious about protecting their liberties and
establishing a fair system of justice. However, an independent audit of
the lab is only the 1st step toward making the necessary reforms in the
field of forensics.
As policy-makers, we should require all state and local crime labs to be
accredited by a governmental regulatory body. In stark contrast to other
applied sciences, with the exception of forensic DNA testing, there is
simply no government regulatory process to ensure the scientific validity
of various forensic sciences before they are applied to questions of life
and liberty in criminal cases. It only seems logical that forensic
practices should be held to the same scientific standards as all other
sciences whose results affect public health and safety.
We should require our crime laboratories to implement quality assurance
and control standards before results from their labs can be deemed
credible, and require lab personnel to be licensed and certified.
Furthermore, crime labs should operate as a separate and independent third
party force in the criminal justice system.
When crime labs are operating within a police department, examiner bias
can undermine the integrity of scientific results. And finally, the work
of individual scientists should be subject to independent, external audits
whenever there is evidence of serious misconduct on the part of forensic
lab employees. When innocent people suffer as a consequence of an
individual's gross negligence or deliberate misconduct, someone should be
held accountable.
Our problems with the crime lab demonstrate that good science can become
bad science if it is not handled correctly. And the bottom line is that
bad science is bad law enforcement. It risks the conviction of the
innocent while the real bad guys remain free to commit more crime.
Only when we decide to establish proper regulations and implement serious
reforms will we begin to establish a criminal justice system that stands
for fairness and equality, where the guilty are punished, the innocent are
protected, and forensic disciplines are infused with the integrity that
justice demands.
(source: Viewpoints, Rodney Ellis is a Houston Democrat, and represents
District 6 in the Texas Senate, Houston Chronicle)
