Conference in Austin

I got the chance to sit down and grab a few drinks with regular posters and fellow-bloggers, Michael and Grits for Breakfast while I was in Austin yesterday. Its always nice to sit down and have an intelligent discussion with folks over a beer or three. We had good talk over everthing from FLDS to CPS to politics.

It was a lot fun, guys. Let's do it again, soon.

Okay, I Can't Resist Either

Okay, I have to admit that I'm inspired by Leviathan's comments, and an earlier off-blog e-mail from Michael stating (in response to this Chronicle article) that he wasn't aware that Pat Lykos had already taken office.

I've decided to assist the Chronicle and re-write the Rat Snake Article for them. Here we go:

In a predictable move today, local attorney Lloyd Kelley filed suit against the Harris County Sheriff's Office, the District Attorney's Office, the Harris County Sanitation Department, and an unnamed Rat Snake for various and sundry civil rights violations committed against his clients, the Ibarra brothers.

"This snake is very similar to one that Sean and Erik saw in their front yard last Wednesday, when they were busy praying on their lawn for the FLDS kids as well as the victims of the Myanmar earthquake," Kelley stated. "Clearly, the snake is a sophisticated surveillance tool utilized by the Sheriff's Department to spy on my clients, who, by the way, have done nothing but pray since being awarded their $4 million from the county."

Community activist Quannel X was quick to join Kelley's call for justice, criticizing the snake: "As a community, we must demand better of our serpents. To even consider working in conjunction with Sheriff Tommy Thomas makes them no better than a snake in the grass."

Mr. X subsequently demanded that the snake be replaced with a Federal Turtle.

Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association President Mark Bennett hailed the discovery of the Rat Snake as "a strong and positive step towards Anarchy".

Defense Attorney Danalynn Recer, who is representing the unnamed Rat Snake was quick to release a report to the media stating that her client was not, in fact, a snake. Rather, her client was a bunny rabbit who only wanted to snuggle with children until it was discovered by District Attorney personnel. Recer clarified that the Rat Snake only became a snake when it suffered a panic attack after being taken into custody. "It perceived being taken into custody as a threat to it's safety. This snake, uh, rabbit, is clearly legally insane."

When interviewed from a holding cell at the Harris County Jail, the Rat Snake stated that it had not intended to do anything appropriate. It issued the following statement:

"Although I have enjoyed excellent treatment on the banks of Buffalo Bayou, I have come to learn that a particular combination of drugs prescribed for me in the past has caused some impairment in my judgment. Specifically, they made me think that living in closet in the CJC would be preferable to chasing rats on the bayou."

The Rat Snake also stated that he regarded the DELETE key on his computer as prey, which caused him to strike at it repeatedly.

Additional attorneys for the Rat Snake have demanded that it be removed from custody and returned to the CJC closet where it was living.

Democratic candidate for District Attorney, C.O. Bradford stated that the snake was welcome in his administration, but if the snake drew a Batson challenge, the snake would be brought before the Disciplinary Committee.

Republican candidate for District Attorney, Pat Lykos stated that she would support the snake being returned to the closet of the CJC if the snake was willing to follow the Rule of Law.

Guess Who is Back

In his continuing effort to sue all of Law Enforcement into oblivion, Lloyd Kelley has filed yet another law suit today.

At the moment, only the television media seems to have articles up and running about it, and their coverage on the Web leaves a lot of questions. The Chronicle website, as we speak, doesn't have anything on the lawsuit yet, which leads me to believe that Jeff Cohen is still in euphoric ecstasy over the Quintero verdict to the degree that he isn't paying attention to what else is going on.

Apparently, Lloyd and Quannel X are calling for the Feds to take over the Sheriff's Office because they don't like the way HCSO is doing it's job.

Had I known that Lloyd and Crew had the power to dictate who could take over an elected office when they were displeased with job performance, I would have gladly joined his anti-Rosenthal bandwagon earlier, if they had only demanded Chuck be replaced with Angelina Jolie.

More on this as it develops.

Yet Another Reason Being a Criminal Lawyer in Texas is Awesome

Where else but Texas, in the midst of everything else, could you get an awesome story like this?

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5808490.html

Honestly, there are so many lawyer jokes or Rosenthal jokes that can come out of this, that I truly don't know where to begin.

Poll Results

Well the polls closed over the weekend, scientifically answering the questions of who will win the D.A.'s race, who should win the D.A.'s race, and what would the candidacy of Ken Magidson do to the race?

In the poll for who will win the race, former-HPD Police Chief Clarence Bradford edged out Pat Lykos by 55% to 44%. I think with the enthusiasm generated behind Barack Obama's candidacy getting stronger as he gets closer to locking in the Democratic nomination for President, that this number is actually pretty damn likely.

In the poll for who should win the race, Pat Lykos beat Bradford 57% to 42%, which also makes senses given her more extensive experience in the legal system from within a courtroom.

But once the potential of Ken Magidson as a candidate was thrown into the mix, the numbers get thrown completely to the wind. Magidson took home 70% of the vote, with Lykos getting 20% and Bradford getting 9%.

Now, I'm not a political scientist, and I'm sure nobody would consider this poll to be even mildly scientific.

But maybe Magidson ought to look into investing into some "Ken in 2012" bumper stickers.

Which is Worse?

In the wake of the Quintero verdict, there has been much discussion over the appropriateness of the punishment. Clearly, a Life sentence was not punishment enough for the State or for the family and friends of Officer Rodney Johnson.

Of course, Life without the Possibility of Parole (LWOP) is a punishment, and a significant one at that. I certainly don't disagree with that principle and I don't think anyone else does either.

What I do disagree with is the theory set out by some that Life in Prison is a worse punishment than receiving the Death Penalty.

Although a person may be spending the rest of their natural life in prison, that doesn't mean that they won't learn to adapt. They will develop a new routine and social structure. They will go on. There are many plus sides to being alive as opposed to dead -- even in prison.

A long time ago, I had the rare experience to be back in the holdover with a young kid who had been convicted of capital murder. He was still a teenager and I wasn't all that much older than he was.

When we spoke, a jury was back in the jury room, deliberating over what his capital punishment would be.

"If I were in your shoes," I told him. "I don't know what I would want the jury to do."

He made a face and then nodded.

"That's what I kind of thought when this all started, you know," he said. "I was like, I don't know whether I would want to live or die."

He paused for a second and then said: "But trust me, when you've got those twelve people back there deciding what to do with you, you want to live."

I've never forgotten what he said to me that day, and ultimately, he did live. I bring it up now, just to point out that, although "LWOP" is certainly a serious punishment, I don't think anyone can really make the argument that it is more severe than the death penalty.

Of Babies and Bathwater

With the certainty of Barack Obama being the Democratic Nominee for President of the United States becoming clearer and clearer every day, the biggest underlying theme of political discussion around the CJC is "will there be a Democratic sweep in Harris County come November?".

I'm too young to have been around when the "Republican Sweep" of the 1980s occurred, but I've heard the stories of some (not all) good judges losing their benches in Reagan-era fervor.

To me, the idea of a sweep illustrates why I really and truly wish that the words "Republican" or "Democrat" didn't have to appear next to a candidate for a position involving criminal justice. Honestly, I think it is fundamentally inappropriate that it happens that way.

The statue of Lady Justice shows a lady with a blindfold, holding the Scales of Justice. If our judges are to be politically partisan, than how can we really claim that Justice is still truly blind to anything but the law? Leave it to your partisan legislators to write the law, but when it comes to enforcing criminal laws, a judge's position on taxes, abortion, and immigration don't have any relevance to their job description.

The reason I'm writing about this is that there are some damn good Republican Felony District Court Judges on the ballot this year that I don't think anyone who works in the CJC wants to see go. Now, I'm sure that my friend, Grits for Breakfast will speaketh from the Holy Temple in Mt. Austin that "Change is necessary. Change is good.", but I don't agree. Sometimes you do get people in elected positions that are so damn good at their jobs that you really don't need a change, and change would most definitely not be good. (As an aside, my analogy to counter Grits' argument is that if change is always so freaking good, why aren't we encouraging more skilled heart surgeons to go into podiatry?)

An example of why change is not always good could probably not be more clear in the case of Judge Caprice Cosper of the 339th District Court, who is on the ballot as the Republican candidate this November.

Judge Cosper is widely regarded as one of the best (if not the best) Felony District Court Judges in the CJC. She is one of the founding judges and heart and soul behind the STAR program, which focuses on rehabilitating defendants with drug addiction problems. She will argue with Defendants who opt to take the "easy" route of a quick 12.44(a) conviction for Harris County jail time, rather than try to get their lives together through a deferred adjudication with drug treatment. She is known for her compassion and willingness to take risks on people who need help.

She's also not afraid to be tough when toughness is called for, and has no problem with sentencing a violent offender to Life in prison if that is what the evidence demands.

She is a legal bookworm who remains constantly up-to-date on the latest court opinions, which she has memorized. She is friendly and pleasant to both members of the defense bar and the prosecution.

In short, she's a model judge.

Her opponent on the Democratic side is a City of Houston Municipal Court Judge. I've tried to find her name on the internet, but my Googling skills seem to be lacking this evening. To date, her most significant case may be a really big speeding case, or perhaps a huge "no seatbelt" case.

She specializes in traffic tickets, folks. The thought of her taking over the 339th bench due to a Democratic sweep is saddening.

Judge Cosper isn't the only Judge that I hope keeps his or her bench come November. As a matter of fact, I hope the vast, vast majority of them do. I know there will be some disagreement from the Defense Bar over how many of them should stay or go (and yes Mark, I'm rooting for Shawna in this one), but in my personal opinion, when you look at the Judges on the ballot (Judge Devon Anderson, Judge Roger Bridgewater, Judge Mike Wilkinson, Judge Brock Thomas, Judge Mark Ellis, and Judge Cosper), you have included 4 out of 4 of the Judges who spend their extra time in the STAR program, and a group of good men and women who are trying to make a positive change in the Justice System.

A sweep of them all simply because of partisan politics would be a miscarriage of justice, not to mention incredibly foolish of the voters.

R.I.P. DA Blog

It is with great sadness that I must inform you all that the much more humorous "DA Blog" which I had previously linked to, has abruptly ended it's brief and brilliant career.

The DA Blog, if you never got a chance to read it, did an excellent job of pointing out the humor in the dark world that prosecutors live in. It was much more edgy than my blog, and I enjoyed it immensely.

I can only hope that DA Texan will find another entertaining and enlightening mechanism to channel his considerable writing talents.

The Quintero Verdict

As you probably know by now, Juan Leonardo Quintero was sentenced to life in prison today for the murder of decorated Houston Police Officer Rodney Johnson.

I will not criticize the decision of the jury, because I wasn't there, and I don't know what they saw or what did or did not factor into their decision.

That being said, I think the decision is a travesty.

I believe that whenever a person thinks of what the ultimate police officer should be, that they need only to look to the example set by Officer Johnson. A veteran police officer who had stayed in the patrol division like Officer Johnson did is clearly an officer who likes being out and interacting with his community and doing everything in his power to improve it. The stories of his bravery, dedication, and kindness resonated throughout the trial and the media's coverage of it.

To put it mildly, the term "a credit to the Force" doesn't seem to have even scratched the surface in describing this fine man.

On the opposite end of the spectrum of good and evil, we had Quintero.

A convicted sex-offender and previously deported felon who, after shooting Officer Johnson multiple times in the back and head, called the dying hero a "nigger" in his final moments.

The jury had two questions to answers in deciding his fate.

The first was whether or not Quintero would be a continuing threat to society. The jury answered that he would.

The second was whether or not there was evidence that was sufficiently mitigating that would warrant a life sentence be imposed, rather than death. This question is commonly referred to as the "safety valve" question. If a juror finds any reason from the evidence that life is more appropriate than death, they only have to answer "yes", and Life it is. The Quintero jury did not reach a unanimous verdict on this, rather they reached a 10-2 verdict that the answer was yes. That was all that was required by law.

Where the jury found mitigation is beyond me. Quintero was raised in a strict household where none of the other children had turned out to be cop killers, and his "insanity" defense had been rejected during the guilt/innocence phase.

Playing arm-chair quarterback, I think the jury just didn't want to give a death sentence to someone.

Because God knows that if anyone deserved to die for his crime, it was Juan Quintero.

The District Attorney's Office was represented by three of the best prosecutors in the building: Lyn McClellan, John Jordan, and Denise Bradley. If they couldn't secure the death penalty against this monster, then nobody could.

What I fear is that today's verdict is more reflective of the changing attitude of our society, specifically in Harris County, Texas. When voices are more vocal in support of a child molester/cop killer than they are for one of the most honorable peace officers to ever hold a badge, what does that say about the shift in our values?

Have we really gotten to a place where victims of crime, and advocates of victims of crime can be shouted down by those who argue that it is the law (not to mention those who enforce it) which is barbaric, rather than the criminal? Do we really want to celebrate that somewhere Danalynn Recer is toasting her great success today, while the Johnson family is left to wonder what it was that made this crime somehow less deserving of the ultimate punishment?

Susan Johnson, Officer Johnson's sister, said that in prison, Quintero would most likely join one of the prison gang's and be a celebrated member by virtue of the fact that he killed a cop. I fear that her statement is nauseatingly accurate.

Tonight, my heart goes out to the family and the memory of Rodney Johnson. I have so much admiration and awe of the job that Peace Officers of Harris County do every day.

No single officer seems to have embodied those qualities which I look up to more than Officer Johnson.

Chief Bradford Responds to Rumors

We were glad to have former-HPD Chief and current-District Attorney candidate Clarence Bradford write in, responding to the Rumors in the Air post we did last week. (Quite frankly, we were shocked that anybody important read this blog -- except you, Grits, of course).

Below are the question-by-question responses that Chief Bradford gave to the rumors that have been circulating around the CJC for some time now.

Here we go:

1. He will dismantle the Special Crimes Division (and maybe the Public Integrity Division) of the Office.
No decision has been made regarding existing Divisions. After I am elected, I will complete a review of each Unit and Division.

2. Lloyd Kelley will be his first assistant.
Lloyd Kelley will not be working within the DA's Office under my administration.

3. Quannel X and his followers will have free access all over the District Attorney's Office.
As DA, I will be visible and accessible to all communities. However, no one will have free access to roam thru the DA's Office.

4. His 'Upper Administration' (i.e., Bureau and Division Chiefs) will be filled with people of no more than three years of legal experience, including some who never rose to the level of misdemeanor chief.
No decision has been made regarding existing personnel. After I am elected, I will complete a review of personnel and overall staffing.

5. Bradford will bring up for Disciplinary Rule any Prosecutor who draws a Batson challenge.
No potential juror should be struck based solely on their race. One good probable cause for inquiry would be a Batson challenge being granted by a judge.

6. Bradford is accepting lists from Defense Attorneys regarding which current prosecutors should be fired.
No such list has been solicited or received.

Thank you for taking the time to respond, Chief.