Just a quick note this time around that our own Kristi Couvillon was quoted in an article in The Daily Texan regarding why a judge might set the trial dates apart for the two defendants facing charges in the Texas Youth Commission abuse case:

Kristi Couvillon, an attorney with Austin law firm Sumpter & Gonzalez, said that waiting until after Brookins’ trial made sense for the scenario, in which the cases were not directly related.

“That way you’re just focusing on that one defendant,” Couvillon said.

Labels: daily texan, in the news, texas youth commission

posted by Dan   permalink   0 Comments

It probably comes as no big surprise to most criminal defense attorneys that Henry Louis Gates, Jr. - Harvard professor, African-American scholar, literary critic, and black man - was arrested for disorderly conduct ("exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior") during an investigation by police about whether Mr. Gates was "breaking in" to his own home.

Most of us have read probable cause affidavits and police reports involving African-American clients and had a raised-eyebrow moment, when we strongly suspected that, while the stated reason for the stop of our client was "failure to signal a lane change" or some other such minor traffic violation, the real reason for the stop was that our client was black.

Most of us have had many of those moments.

I had one a few months ago when I represented an African-American client who was driving her old, not-very-fancy car in a wealthy, predominantly white neighborhood. She was stopped, allegedly, for failing to make a complete stop at a stop sign. Instead of issuing her a ticket and letting her get on her way, one of the officers, who was white, kept her there for a good while, apparently searching her record. And what did he find? An outstanding warrant.

Jackpot!

The warrant stemmed from a case from 26 years ago involving a $15 bounced check - a check she had written to buy food at a local grocery store that is no longer in business. Apparently, 26 years ago, she missed a court setting related to the case and a warrant was then issued for her arrest. For that transgression, she spent a night in jail, before being released on a personal recognizance bond.

My client is an established teacher at a local school who was in the neighborhood for a school-related fundraising event. She has no criminal record, other than the bounced check. She is devoted to her church and helping the less-fortunate and, ironically, she dedicates a lot of time to her church's prison ministry.

That's partly why the case was subsequently dismissed. (By a very nice white prosecutor, who was probably only 2 or 3 years old at the time the bounced check was written.) He did not hesitate to dismiss the case - and, in fact, went the extra mile and noted on the dismissal that it was "in the interest of justice."

But the officer didn't know all those things about my client when he stopped her. What he knew was that she is black. And from the make and model of her car, he also probably guessed that she is working class. As Brandon M. Terry writes on Huffington Post:

[I]f we can step back and see how easily this happened to someone like Gates, arguably the most famous academic in the country, it should encourage us to be more vigilant about the toll that continuing racial disparities in law enforcement are taking on blacks, particularly the working class and poor, in America. The disproportionate policing of amorphous criminal statutes like "disorderly conduct" and "disobeying the lawful order of a police officer" have served to introduce thousands of otherwise law-abiding people into the criminal justice system.

As goes the policing of statutes like "disorderly conduct," so goes the policing of minor traffic violations. While most traffic statutes might not be as amorphous, the use of traffic stops to investigate "suspicious" people or circumstances - pretext stops - is accepted legally, and more or less falls into the category of "that's just the way the world works."

My client sort of saw it that way - that's just the way the world works. Maybe that's because she's black and she doesn't have money, fame, influence, or power and that really is how the world works when that's your demographic.

But, to her great credit, she also saw what happened to her as an opportunity to better understand the experience of being arrested and incarcerated so she could be more empathetic in ministering to inmates.

Professor Gates is using what happened to him to start a larger, more public dialogue about racial profiling. He's got the platform to do it, and that's great. My client doesn't have that platform, but she still managed to use her experience to help others. She managed to find something good in a very bad experience.

That's not the way the way people usually work, but it's pretty amazing when they do.

posted by Raman Gill   permalink   0 Comments

Last week, I called on Governor Perry to sign a pardon for Timothy Cole. He has continued to deny Mr. Cole's family's request for a pardon, repeatedly citing an Attorney General's opinion that precludes posthumous pardons.

Since Governor Perry was apparently not swayed by the Texas Legislative Council's report that suggested that he did have the power to issue posthumous pardons, State Senator Rodney Ellis submitted a request for a new Attorney General's opinion regarding whether Texas governors can grant posthumous pardons.

I look forward to reading the new AG's opinion and continue to hope that Governor Perry will bring Timothy Cole's family some peace by signing the pardon. However, the whole thing leaves me wondering what is the real motivation behind Perry's unwillingness to clear an innocent man's name? There is no fear that he is actually guilty - DNA has cleared him and the true culprit has since confessed to the rape for which Cole was wrongly convicted.

The matter makes me think of Perry's veto of the expunction bill - again, if someone isn't found guilty of committing a crime (and they don't plead guilty), why should his or her name and criminal record suggest otherwise? This is not being "tough on crime," this is being tough on the innocent.*

*and yes, I realize that some people have their cases dismissed even when factually "guilty" due to some other reason - often mitigating evidence in the interest of justice. But if we empower prosecutors to determine whether a committed crime is worth pursuing, and they decide to dismiss, then there's no functional reason to insist on waiting the full statute of limitations period.

(photo via eschipul's flickrstream)

Labels: expunctions, governor perry, posthumous pardons, presumption of innocence, senator ellis, timothy cole

posted by Kristi Couvillon   permalink   0 Comments

I have about a dozen Google alerts set up for various topics, because I'm interested in a ton of things, but flaky when it comes to remembering what those things are. So, rather than remind myself to search news sites for words like "gorillas", "intoxilyzer", "iphone update", etc - I just add an alert for those terms and let the magic of Google be my outboard memory.

In a neat bit of synchronicity, two of my search terms converged today: "Drug court" and "Matt Jones".

Jones is an NFL wide receiver who was released by the Jacksonville Jaguars this off-season after being arrested for testing positive for alcohol, which violated a plea agreement he'd worked out. He'd previously been charged with felony possession of a controlled substance, gone through the drug court, and was in line to have the charges dismissed upon completion of the program. (I have a Google alert set up for him because he hasn't signed with a new team yet, and my Bears could sure use the help.)

Anyway - the thing that struck me in the article came in the comments section. Now, typically, I advise against reading the comments section on any news organization's site if you value a normal blood pressure (seriously - click any article on the Statesman's website and observe. Here's one at random, about the resignation of Evan Smith as editor of Texas Monthly, that quickly devolves into slinging insults at illegal immigrants), but I'm also interested in the way that people are perceived, especially people who've been charged with a crime.

This is the comment that stuck out to me:

Possession charges
Submitted by Temporary_S8nt on Fri. 7/17/2009 at 10:26 am
...dropped. How often does that happen to anyone else? Matt Jones, you're lucky on so many fronts--you idiot.

Tone aside (that's my future wide receiver you're calling an idiot!), I thought this was a pretty neat statement about the drug court and diversion system. This guy, Temporary_S8nt or whatever, assumed that receiving a chance to have charges dismissed in exchange for completing a diversion program was such a unique and extraordinary thing that it would be reserved exclusively for people like professional athletes. It's kind of nice to realize that systems like this, when they're used effectively, give ordinary folks the opportunities that we assume are the province of celebrities.

Labels: drug court, DWI Court, football, matt jones, pretrial diversion, texas monthly

posted by Dan   permalink   0 Comments