The Dallas Morning News has Governor Perry’s response to Texas’ execution of an innocent man in Cameron Todd Willingham. It involves the use of the phrase “so-called” and air-quotes to deride the fact that the state executed a man based on evidence and testimony that’s provably false.

Y’all might have had your hearts warmed by the story of the Grapevine, TX high school football coach who asked half of his team’s fans and cheerleaders to support the Gainesville State School team, consisting of kids in corrections. ESPN covered it. So did This American Life, national news throughout the country, and there’s apparently a movie underway about the coach. Grits for Breakfast has the two TYC teams’ schedule online now, including a Thursday night game in Austin on October 15. If you were moved by the story – and what are you, made of stone, if you’re not – it might be worth showing up to let them know that being supported isn’t just a one-time thing.

Also on the subject of high school football, an Ohio judge sentenced a teenaged boy who pled to an assault charge to five years of probation and barred him from playing team sports for that period. The story comes from Popehat.com, who rightfully point out that the other terms of his probation – finding full-time work in a state with over 10% unemployment or enrolling as a full-time student – may be difficult without the ability to engage his natural talents. Before the conviction, the boy was being scouted by a number of universities.

Slashdot.com, the somewhat over-reactive online community, is in a tizzy about APD. And, specifically, about Chief Acevedo’s talk about “taking on” people who criticize the department online. The summary of the story from the Statesman that got all the comments on Slashdot is pretty off, though – it misrepresents Acevedo’s position so that it looks like he’s saying, “we’re going to arrest people if they call us jerks”, when he’s really saying “pretending to be an APD official when you’re not and making statements that are untrue is a criminal act”, which is true. Grits for Breakfast pops up again to wonder if this means that, like, all other crime in Austin has been completely eradicated so this is a really good use of police time.

Ever get arrested in a casino? Apparently rather than just break people’s legs for cheating these days, the house will now hold them in custody and offer them the opportunity, sanctioned by a district court judge, to sign a confession, pay $500, and not be prosecuted. Which is a little bit creepy, since if you’re being detained against your will and accused of a crime by people with vast resources, you’re not really in a great position to make a great decision, hence the fact that the practice is now under investigation. Insert your own “whatever happens in Vegas” or “the house always wins” pun here – this practice is apparently good for almost $750,000 a year.

Also on Popehat, there’s a downright terrifying piece about an undercover investigative report from a Florida television station in which they went to various police stations asking for the form to file a complaint. A (very mild) sample:

tester: Do you have a complaint form that I can, like, fill out or something like that?
officer: Might not be a legitimate complaint.
tester: Who decides that?
officer: I’m trying to help you.
tester: Like, if there’s a form, why can’t I just take it and leave, right?
officer: No, you don’t leave with forms. You tell me what happened, and then I help you from there. Do you have I-D on?
tester: Why?
officer: You know what? You need to leave.

(It gets worse from there.)

But in more fun news, Austin solo practice attorney George Lobb crashed the groundbreaking ceremony for the new federal courthouse  in Austin. He brought his own shovel and hardhat, and a real big smile. Click the photo to enlarge. it’s a pretty great picture. he looks very happy to be there.

We’ve also got a bigger piece on this coming up, but in case you missed it last week, Charles Hood, a death row inmate here in Texas, had his motion for a new trial denied by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals even though his prosecutor and the judge were having an affair at the time of his trial and conviction. The argument, as best as I can understand it – and bear in mind that I’m not a lawyer, went something like this:

Appellate Attorney: My client needs a stay of execution, because the judge was sleeping with the prosecutor.

Court: Prove it!

Appellette Attorney proves it by deposing the participants, who admit the affair under oath.

Appellate Attorney: There, proof, now can my client be treated fairly?

Court: Oh, not at this point. You should have done this earlier.

(Cue the wah-wah-WAH sound.)

Labels: abuse of power, APD, art acevedo, football, governor perry, grits for breakfast, in the news, linkdump, money

posted by Dan   permalink   0 Comments

There's finally a little bit of good news - or, at least, potential good news - regarding DWI surcharges.

Since I started defending people accused of DWI, I have noticed that most of my clients know that they are looking at a possible fine and jail sentence from the courts, but very few of them know about Texas's Drivers License Surcharges that come along with DWI convictions.

As it stands right now, if you're convicted of a first-time DWI, Intoxication Assault, or Intoxication Manslaughter, you will have to pay $1,000.00 a year to the Texas Department of Public Safety for three years in order to keep your license. If you're convicted a subsequent time, it shoots up to $1,500.00. And if your breath or blood test comes back at 0.16 or greater, it spikes to $2,000.00.

The surcharge system - which extends beyond DWI, incidentally, to driving without proof of insurance, driving with license suspended, and more, albeit with lower fees for those charges - results in a number of people who live in poverty, including some of my clients, driving around without a valid driver's license. A thousand or more dollars a year is a huge portion of a lot of people's income. And this puts them (and the public) at greater risk - without a license, they can't get insurance, and they're also susceptible to arrest for Driving While License Invalid, which both result in - yeah - another surcharge. It's a cycle that never quits going for people who don't make enough money to keep up. But what's the alternative? If they quit driving, most of them won't be able to get to work, and then they'll never pay off the fines. (Furthermore, you can't just quit driving for the three years, then go back and get your license once the fee period expires - when you try, you'll still be liable for the $3,000-$6,000 in back fees you racked up over those years.)

But there is good news. The DPS actually seems to understand the burden this puts on people, and the cyclical nature of the problem that means that this system makes an innocent driver's chances of being in an accident with an ininsured motorist more likely, as well as making people who've only really been convicted of one thing liable for more crimes. The minutes from the DPS meeting is on the DPS Officer's Association blog, and they feature a pretty cogent grasp of the problem as we see it:

One in nine people have warrants out for them in El Paso (11%) due to this program. The numbers were similar in Travis County (Austin). A one-time infraction costs $1,000. Suspended license – $1,000. We have a 70% non-compliance rate, since many violators are not able to pay the surcharges. The LBB said that it has lead to more uninsured drivers on the road. It fails to make roads safer. More than 1,080,000 drivers cannot pay.
[...]
Elizabeth Earle, County Court Judge, Travis County [...] We hear “I will never be able to climb out of this hole; Just put me in jail.”

Their proposal is encouraging. The full details are at Grits for Breakfast, but the short form is that those who qualify could replace the $1,000 annual payment with a $500 one-time fee; those whose fees would be $1,500-$2,000 annually would see them replaced with a single $1,000 charge. Qualification would require passing a Drug Court program, the details for which are unspecified right now. But at the very least, this is a step in the right direction.

Labels: dps, dwi, dwi surcharges, money

posted by Kristi Couvillon   permalink   1 Comments

Dan mentioned a riveting piece in the New York Times during one of his recent "round-ups." The article is entitled "Is It Now a Crime to be Poor?" And the answer is yes. Absolutely yes.

I served as an Assistant Public Defender in Dallas County for two and a half years in the late 1990s. And it was a crime to be poor back then too. As a public defender, all of my clients were indigent and I often commented that, most days, I felt more like a poverty lawyer than a criminal defense lawyer. I defended numerous people against charges that they were Driving While License Suspended (DWLS) - people who were often forced to make a choice between putting food on the table or purchasing car insurance to clear a license suspension. I defended a mom who stole jeans from an expensive store so she could sell them to friends in order to buy medicine for her young son who was suffering with juvenile diabetes. I defended countless homeless and mentally ill people against criminal trespass charges.

And I enlisted a large civil firm to challenge Dallas County's practice of jailing people on warrants issued for failure to pay fines and court costs without first holding required hearings to determine whether they could afford to pay the fines and costs. The New York Times piece mentioned the constitutional prohibition against "debtors prison." But our jails are filled with poor people who are "sitting out" costs and fines they can't otherwise pay or who are serving time on charges that stem, essentially, from their poverty. And how much sense does this make? Not only do counties fail to collect the costs and fines, but they pay to incarcerate and feed people for failure to pay the costs and fines -- people who often lose their jobs and fall deeper into poverty while they are sitting in jail. It's a lose-lose proposition.

As Barbara Ehrenreich sets out in the New York times piece, the recent economic downturn is only exacerbating the criminalization of the poor:

In defiance of all reason and compassion, the criminalization of poverty has actually been intensifying as the recession generates ever more poverty. So concludes a new study from the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, which found that the number of ordinances against the publicly poor has been rising since 2006, along with ticketing and arrests for more “neutral” infractions like jaywalking, littering or carrying an open container of alcohol...The experience of the poor, and especially poor minorities, comes to resemble that of a rat in a cage scrambling to avoid erratically administered electric shocks.

Even in a progressive town like Austin, where I now practice at Sumpter & Gonzalez, there are ordinances galore that aim to push the homeless wherever it is they are supposed to go when they can't be "camping" in the park, or panhandling near an ATM or roadway.

Thankfully, there are also good prosecutors in Austin who get it, and who will dismiss a case if we convince them that the source of the offense was not criminality, but poverty. Getting cases dismissed one at a time is better than nothing, but it's only a very small dent in a huge problem that demands systemic reform. And, let's be honest, even such reform, were it to happen, would hardly begin to address all the day-to-day obstacles faced by poor people.

Indeed, it would only be one small step for the poor.

But a pretty big step for humankind.

Labels: barbara ehrenreich, homelessness, indigent defense, money, poverty, public defenders, what prosecutors do right

posted by Raman Gill   permalink   0 Comments

By David Gonzalez

Harvard Medical School Professor Dr. Atul Gawande was interviewed on NPR’s Marketplace about the rising cost of health care. His recent study – and critique – of the business of health care set his sights on McAllen, Texas, where health care costs are more than $14,000.00 more than anywhere else in the nation.

Dr. Gawande had an interesting hypothesis for the three different types of business models for medical practices:

[W]hen I think about money as a physician there's three ways you can think about it. One is you just try to ignore it, and hope that your expenses come out OK at the end of the month, and you can pay the secretary, and your malpractice premiums, and the rent on your office.

The second way doctors think is, hey, I've got some good money coming in maybe I'll use it to improve the quality of care for my patients. And so they'll hire a nurse practitioner to follow up on the diabetes patients, make sure people are all getting their mammograms like they are supposed to. And then there's a third way you think about the money, which is that you just focus on how do you maximize the revenue.

The interview hit close to home. Since the onset of the Great Recession, we’ve had to be more strategic about the choices our Firm makes. For the past ten years we’ve bounced between the First Option & Second Option. We’ve always believed that if we do good work for clients, word will get around and our business will steadily grow in direct proportion to the quality of our legal work. We have consistently re-invested profits back into the Firm, hiring additional lawyers, paralegals, legal assistants, and social workers to improve the quality of our legal services to clients. Working in a profession that is already highly criticized for an unhealthy devotion to money, we imprudently thought we were taking the moral high ground by avoiding the money issue and just sort of let it take care of itself.

It turns out that we weren’t taking the moral high ground, we were just taking the easy way out. It may not be hard to calculate overhead expenses, breakeven points, regression analysis, standard deviations, and profit margins for somebody who went to business school and loves numbers. But for somebody who still hasn’t found a good use for trigonometry or Pre-Calculus, it was always easier to jump to the interesting legal issues and ignore the boring business ones for another day.

What we realized is that we were jeopardizing the level of care we were providing to our clients. While we used to stay awake at night worrying about our arguments in court the next day, we found ourselves worrying about cash flow and financing. When the recession hit, we realized how little control we had in the professional side of our practice. I have control over the number of times I can practice an oral argument; I don’t have any control when both of our banks stopped extending lines of credit for small businesses.

There has been and will always continue to be an uncomfortable relationship between business and professional service. I believe that all of the businesses that focus on profit and revenue will eventually fail because they have no core purpose other than making money. I believe that businesses that focus on providing the best possible product or service to clients will eventually succeed because they are in business for the right reasons.

The hard part is maintaining the balance in the middle.

(flickr image via daviddmuir)

Labels: mcallen, money, the business of law, the recession

posted by Dan   permalink   0 Comments