Probation for Murder in Texas

weslinder · Nov 16, 2007

I saw this yesterday on MSNBC and was flabbergasted. I'm not a lawyer, but this seems ridiculous.

Wednesday's column

UNEQUAL JUSTICE Murderers on Probation

Even with strong self-defense claims, DAs may pressure defendants to take probation

"I wanted to ask the judge: 'What would you do in that situation? Would you sit there and let it happen, or would you defend yourself?' "
– Jacqueline Fox

The 17-year-old is trying to escape her ex-boyfriend, a career criminal twice her age. He hits her and tries to throw her over the second-floor railing.

She breaks free and takes refuge in a relative's apartment. But later, when she tries to leave, he is waiting with a handgun.

"b****, I told you, every time I see you I'm gonna kick your ass," a witness recalls him saying. He hands the gun to a buddy, hits her again and grabs a 2-by-4 from a truck bed.

What would you do? She runs. He chases her down and hits her with the board.

What would you do? She stumbles toward her mother's door and screams for help. He pounds her so hard that the board breaks.

What would you do? She stabs him twice with a kitchen knife, as her mother tries to intervene.

What prosecutors did was persuade a grand jury to indict Jacqueline Fox and her mom on murder charges. They told the teen she could avoid the risks of trial if she agreed to a 30-year prison sentence.

Ms. Fox refused. Too poor to afford bail, she spent 4 ½ months in a Dallas County jail awaiting trial.

As jury selection was about to start in early 2001, she got a surprise offer: Plead guilty, get probation.

She was mad. But given how much muscle the state had already shown, she was also afraid.

She took the deal.

Then the prosecutor dropped the charge against her mom.

Flimsy cases

Probation isn't just a tool defense attorneys use to help murderers avoid prison. It's also a weapon prosecutors occasionally wield to win flimsy cases.

A Dallas Morning News review of the 56 probation-for-murder cases in North Texas from 2000 through 2006 found that a dozen were especially weak. Some, like Ms. Fox's, had strong self-defense arguments. Some involved people who were charged with murder as accomplices, although the evidence connecting them to the crime was tenuous.

In one case, the killer's identity was in doubt, and prosecutors admitted in confidential documents that they could not prove the man they accused was guilty. In another, the medical examiner said he wasn't sure a homicide had even occurred.

Most of these prosecutions occurred in Dallas County, where the justice system has a long and embarrassing history of punishing innocent people. DNA tests have exonerated 13 men who went to prison for rape or murder – more than any other county in the nation. Dozens more were jailed in recent years after being framed with fake drugs.

Pursuing unprovable murder cases raises the specter of prosecutorial misconduct, said Robert Schuwerk, who teaches legal ethics at the University of Houston Law Center and formerly led the State Bar committee on disciplinary rules.

"Prosecutors – as defenders of justice on behalf of all of us – are supposed to essentially realize that occasionally cases go wrong," he said. "You get the wrong person or you get the wrong charge, and you should just fold your tent."

Many experts and courthouse insiders agree that some defendants will plead guilty to a crime they did not commit – especially if they're in jail awaiting a murder trial, which could result in a life sentence, and the alternative is probation.

Mr. Schuwerk said that prosecuting under such circumstances endangers not just individual defendants, but also the integrity of the justice system.

"One of the tragic byproducts of this is going to be that people in communities that have a high level of contact with the police and the prosecutors are going to come to distrust them," he said, "and to not cooperate with them even in cases where it would be in everyone's interest for them to cooperate."

That climate exists in Dallas County, said District Attorney Craig Watkins, who took office this year as the county's first black DA. And some of those who distrust authorities, he noted, end up on juries.

He said he is trying to change the climate by asking police to do more work on some cases and by dismissing others outright.

"If you know that you have a district attorney and an administration that's not rubber-stamping anything and they're asking you to find someone guilty, then we have improved the chance for us to convict someone who needs to be convicted," Mr. Watkins said. "What we're doing is restoring credibility."

'Beyond necessary force'

Ms. Fox's case is an example of what some former prosecutors say has been an institutional reluctance by the Dallas County district attorney's office to dismiss shaky charges.

The man who prosecuted her, Darrell Calvin Jr., would not comment on why he offered probation. Nor would he say whether he considered dismissing her case, as he did her mother's.

Mr. Calvin, who now works at a private civil law firm, did explain his assessment of the cases. He said he concluded that Ms. Fox's mother, Joyce Dickey, was trying to defend her daughter from a "scuffle" with the ex-boyfriend.

Ms. Fox then "took it beyond necessary force to end the attack and stabbed this victim when he was off balance," he said.

Ms. Dickey's lawyer, former prosecutor Tom Cox III, said Mr. Calvin initially offered his client probation for murder, too, "before all the facts were known."

The deal would have required her to testify against her daughter. She refused.

Mr. Cox credited Mr. Calvin with doing more investigation than police did and realizing that Ms. Dickey was innocent. But he noted that the prosecutor waited to dismiss the case until Ms. Fox had taken the probation deal.

Prosecutors should drop charges as soon as they know they are unsubstantiated, Mr. Cox said, adding, "Sadly, that has not been the practice of the district attorney's office."

Current managers of the district attorney's office said they don't know what to make of the cases. Their Fox file could not be located at a storage site outside the courthouse, they said, and their Dickey file contains no explanation of the prosecutor's thinking.

Mr. Calvin referred further questions to one of his former supervisors, Greg Davis. Mr. Davis said he did not remember the case – but based on a summary provided by The News, he said he would be inclined to prosecute it.

"It's one of those where she has taken a life – now go down there and see if they're willing to plead to something so we have her on supervision for a period of years," he said.

Mr. Davis, now the No. 2 official in the Collin County district attorney's office, worked under the three previous DAs in Dallas County: Henry Wade, John Vance and Bill Hill. All believed in prosecuting every homicide unless the defense was so clear-cut that a judge would order a jury to acquit, Mr. Davis said.

Former prosecutor Phillip Linder said many of his colleagues were uncomfortable with that philosophy but feared questioning it.

"You never asked questions like that," said Mr. Linder, who served four years under Mr. Vance and now is a defense lawyer. "There was an attitude and atmosphere of paranoia."

Mr. Hill's reign was no different, he said. The former DA denied that, saying prosecutors had nothing to fear if they worked hard.

Clark Kennington, another former Dallas prosecutor who now does defense work, said he occasionally succeeded in dismissing unprovable cases. But "it was very difficult – if not impossible – to get approval from some of the higher-ups," he said.

All of this angers Jacqueline Fox.

"It's just a job to them," she said. "They don't realize they hold someone's life in their hands."

How it starts

Mr. Calvin and others who prosecuted weak murder cases didn't make the initial decision to pursue them. That choice emerged from a process that is little understood and has little accountability.

Traditionally, the district attorney's intake division makes that decision, after a quick review of police records. The division refers nearly all killings to a grand jury.

That panel bears little resemblance to a trial jury. Opposing sides don't pick the members from a pool of randomly selected citizens. Instead, grand jurors are usually chosen by commissioners who have been appointed by a judge.

The rules are different, too. Grand jurors meet in secret. The panel decides simply whether there is probable cause to prosecute, not proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The decision to indict need not be unanimous; only nine of the 12 panelists must agree.

Most hearings last only a few minutes, and there are no rules of evidence.

"Everything is admissible," said defense attorney Hugh Lucas, who was the chief prosecutor in the Dallas County district attorney's grand jury unit for about a decade. "Hearsay, polygraphs, prior records, opinions."

In murder cases, there's often just one witness: a homicide detective.

"The whole proceeding is usually well-scripted by the district attorney," said Gerald Reamey, law professor at St. Mary's University in San Antonio and former legal adviser to the Irving police. "The grand jurors have the power to depart from the script, but they rarely exercise that power."

Defense attorneys may present a client's side of the story in writing, or as of last month, in person. However, many avoid communicating with the grand jury. They think an indictment is automatic and don't want to reveal their strategy to prosecutors.

"Out of 50 cases, there's usually zero defendants and zero defense evidence," Mr. Lucas said. "The grand jury normally will go with the police investigation and let a jury or judge or DA decide later what's the right thing."

Dallas lawyer Jeanette Drescher Green said she sat on a grand jury once with a person whose attitude was "Indict everything – it'll get worked out." She protested.

"It all depends on who [the case] gets assigned to. Is that prosecutor going to have the time to look at it? Who's the defense attorney?" she said. "I said, 'No, you weed your cases out now. You charge them correctly now.' "

Even when a case is over, it's often impossible to find out how grand juries reached a decision. Records, if kept, are sealed. And Texas clings to a questionable law that makes it illegal, under most circumstances, to reveal what went on in grand jury proceedings.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in 1990 that a similar Florida law was unconstitutional, to the extent that it barred a witness from discussing his own testimony after an investigation ended.

Limited view

Once a murder suspect is indicted, the prosecutor has leverage to bargain, especially if the accused is jailed and can't afford bail. The defendant knows that one group of jurors has already voted against him or her. And the relatives of the victim expect the prosecutor to deliver a conviction. All of which creates powerful momentum toward punishment, regardless of the details of a case.

Veteran ex-prosecutor Clark Birdsall, who defended Ms. Fox, said he suspects that grand jurors didn't get a complete picture of her case – that multiple witnesses supported her story, that she was 17 and had no record, that the dead man had been sentenced at least eight times in Dallas County on charges ranging from burglary to sexual assault.

"It may not have been worked up properly," Mr. Birdsall said, "or it may not have been fully presented."

Mr. Calvin, the prosecutor, stressed that he had nothing to do with the grand jury presentation.

The case Dallas police presented to the DA's office rested largely on statements from two witnesses. The statements indicated that the witnesses had seen only part of the fight between Ms. Fox and 34-year-old John H. Brooks Jr.

Because the district attorney's file is missing, it's unclear who testified before the grand jury and what was said. Defense attorneys typically could obtain such a record in the past, though only if a case went to trial.

Toward the end of Mr. Hill's tenure, the Dallas County district attorney's office quit keeping a record of detectives' grand jury testimony. That gives the defense no way to challenge potential inconsistencies or incompleteness.

"It's stunning arrogance on the part of the state," said Mr. Birdsall, who was fired from the DA's office in 2000 and later prosecuted on a misdemeanor assault charge. A jury acquitted him.

Mr. Hill said the record-keeping decision was to allow more money for prosecutors and equipment. His successor, Mr. Watkins, said he plans to change the record-keeping policy.

The News gained access to grand jury testimony in another Dallas County murder case and found that the detective made no mention of the defendant's self-defense argument.

Dallas Detective Brent Maudlin testified that Roy Lovato was outside a house after fighting with his estranged girlfriend, according to an official transcript. A neighbor, summoned to help, ran over and yelled at him. Mr. Lovato shot the man to death and drove off.

The detective didn't mention that the dead man was brandishing a handgun. And he had no legal right to carry it, because he was on probation for murder himself.

In an interview, Detective Maudlin said he didn't know why he omitted those details. He said his notes show that he took the information with him to the grand jury room "in case they would have asked."

Generally speaking, "you don't want to hide anything from them or let them think you're hiding anything," he said. "You let them know all the details and let them make their decision."

His testimony led to a murder indictment. Mr. Lovato, who had a concealed handgun license, was convicted months later in a jury trial. He was sentenced to probation.

'They robbed me'

Ms. Fox said that, at first, she didn't want to take the probation offer. "I know God's not going to punish me for something I didn't intend to do," she told herself.

But her time behind bars had given her a taste of how bad prison could be. And her mother urged her to take the sure thing.

Her probation will run until 2011, if she lasts that long. She repeatedly tested positive for mar1juana a few years ago, which nearly got her sent to prison. She blames her drug abuse on stress. She talks about how the murder charge makes it hard to find a good job, how probation leaves her in a state of suspended animation.

"The state of Texas robbed me," Ms. Fox said. "I despise them for it. I feel bad that I feel that, but I do. They robbed me of my teenage years."

Ms. Fox said she is afraid of police, so much that she didn't want to call for help when she was burglarized while on probation.

"They're going to look at my record and see I have a murder case and judge me," she said.

"I ain't no drug dealer," Ms. Fox added. "I ain't no gangbanger. I'm me – just a person who was caught in a situation."

She said she still can't make sense of why she was prosecuted. And she never asked the judge the What would you do? question.

"You can't stick it to them," she said, "because they'll stick it to you."
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Thursday's column

UNEQUAL JUSTICE Murderers on Probation

Experts question ethics of putting killers on street, say changes can - and should - be made

By Reese Dunklin and Brooks Egerton / The Dallas Morning News

Probation? For murder? In Texas?

The idea seemed so strange that a Houston lawyer in the Legislature this year promised colleagues free meals if they showed him one case prosecutors had approved in his city.

It happens "probably once in a hundred years," Rep. Harold Dutton told the House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence in March. Committee chairman Aaron Peña said he didn't know probation as a sentence for murder was legally possible.

As The Dallas Morning News has shown this week, it is not only legal, it happened at least 120 times in Texas from 2000 through 2006.

Dallas County led the state, by far, in granting probation for murder. It returned at least 47 killers to the streets, more than double the number the county sent to death row.

For different reasons, both sides in the adversarial legal system – prosecutors and defense lawyers – like having probation as an option for murder.

So is there a problem? If so, what's the solution?

"When prosecutors and defense lawyers say, 'We like it; what's your problem?' what they're ruling out is not only the interests of victims ... but the public interest in seeing that justice be done," said Marc Miller, a University of Arizona law professor and nationally recognized expert on sentencing and prosecutorial discretion.

"What has been bargained away by the prosecutors is the citizen's right, the public's right, to see punishment and prison imposed," he said.

Mr. Miller was one of a half-dozen leading scholars who reviewed the newspaper's findings. The experts – from Texas to New York, Oregon to Pennsylvania – had diverse credentials, including work inside district attorneys' offices, police departments and sentencing commissions.

Most called The News' research surprising and disturbing. Their criticism focused largely on the Dallas County district attorney's office and its reliance on plea bargains for probation.

The experts said they saw numerous examples of prosecutors taking dangerous or ethically questionable risks – either by freeing killers who could hurt more people, or by pursuing murder charges with weak evidence.

"The big picture is something appears to have gone off the track," said Robert Schuwerk, who teaches legal ethics at the University of Houston Law Center and helped write the rules that govern Texas lawyers. "The people of the state of Texas don't want murderers walking the streets if there's any reason to believe they could kill again."

Dallas County granted probation in murders at more than twice the rate of Harris County, which had the state's second-highest total. Most of Dallas County's cases came about through a prosecutorial strategy known as "the back door to prison."

Prosecutors didn't like their odds at trial, fearing acquittal or a conviction with a light sentence.

So they made an offer defendants couldn't resist: Plead guilty in exchange for deferred-adjudication probation. If the killers violated probation, as prosecutors hoped or expected, they would go to prison for a long time.

The lure for defendants is that completing this kind of probation means no conviction. For those too poor to afford bail, it looks like a get-out-of-jail-free card.

"The Dallas system comes across as fundamentally dishonest," Mr. Miller said.

Solution No. 1?
No probation

One potential remedy would be for Texas to outlaw probation as a murder sentence.

The News found that it is a rare or impossible sentence in many states – from Massachusetts to Ohio to New Mexico.

"I thought you guys were hard-core," Utah prison system executive director Tom Patterson said when told that Texas allowed probation for murder. Utah requires a minimum 15-year prison term.

Bennett Gershman, a law professor at Pace University in New York and a former prosecutor of violent crimes, said he thinks removing probation in murder cases would be a "valuable and valid objective."

"Prosecutors in different parts of Texas apparently use their discretion in wildly different ways," Mr. Gershman said. "That's where I think the crapshoot is. You get this prosecutor as opposed to this prosecutor, you're either going to face capital murder or you're going to get probation."

For several years, state Rep. Scott Hochberg has fought an often lonely battle in the Legislature to ban probation as a sentence for murder. That's what he was working on earlier this year, when Mr. Dutton promised everyone free meals.

Mr. Hochberg's inspiration was the 1998 murder trial of a man who shot a tow-truck driver for trying to remove his vehicle from a reserved parking spot. Harris County jurors convicted the killer but awarded him probation after six of his co-workers – firefighters in uniform – praised him on the witness stand.

But Mr. Hochberg has had difficulty building support. Texas prosecutors and defense lawyers don't want anything to limit their flexibility when making deals.

"They each tenaciously try to hold on to the tools in their tool chest," the Houston Democrat said.

In this year's legislative session, Mr. Hochberg got half of what he wanted. For murders committed after Sept. 1, juries cannot sentence people to probation for murder. But prosecutors still can cut the kind of deals The News found prevalent in its study.

Few expect the new law to change jurors' behavior much. They often have the option to convict a murder defendant on a lesser charge, such as manslaughter, for which probation remains available.

Prosecutors will also gain more power. They can sell probation by telling murder defendants that a plea bargain is the only way to get it.

Solution No. 2?
Internal policies

Some of the experts told The News they were not opposed to keeping probation available for murder, as long as it was reserved for only the most extraordinary cases, such as a mercy killing.

Mr. Miller, the Arizona law professor, said the Dallas County district attorney's office needed a "serious internal overhaul" and should create a policy specifying when probation plea bargains can be offered for murder.

In Travis County, there were no probation-for-murder cases during The News' study period. Prosecutors know, even without a written policy, that supervisors won't bless the "back door to prison" strategy, said Buddy Meyer of the district attorney's office in Austin.

"I don't know that that's the appropriate way to go about ensuring public safety," said Mr. Meyer, the trial division director. "You've got your responsibility to the community."

Murder prosecutors include prison time in their plea offers, he said, except for extremely rare cases. If defendants refuse, juries – as the voice of the community – make the call.

Craig Watkins, who took over as Dallas County district attorney after The News' study period, said he would no longer allow probation deals in certain situations. In cases highlighted by the newspaper, prosecutors went easy on some killers who were old or female.

"That's not going to be a factor in our decision," Mr. Watkins said. However, he said he would continue using the "back door" strategy for cases in which prosecutors were convinced of a defendant's guilt but feared losing at trial.

"We will pretty much follow what was done in the past because we have to," he said. "It's basically an attempt to get something out of the case so the person can be under supervision."

Judges traditionally have rubber-stamped deals made under such circumstances. And probation violations have been routinely tolerated, setting the stage for more crime, The News found.

Experts cited another problem with the deals. They let prosecutors dodge the high standard they're supposed to meet in criminal cases: proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

The standard is much lower for probation violations: Prosecutors must show only a preponderance of evidence.

There is also no right to a jury in probation violation cases. And if a judge revokes deferred- adjudication probation, the killer faces the full range of punishment for the murder – five years to life in prison. The most prison time judges can give when revoking standard probation is 10 years.

"You are trading in a case you don't think you can win, [trying] to get the sentence for the murder case that you couldn't prove," said Mr. Schuwerk, the University of Houston professor. "In terms of how the law is supposed to work, that's quite a serious problem."

George Dix, a University of Texas law professor, said he wasn't bothered by the number of murderers on probation statewide. But the back door strategy is nonetheless a gamble if the freed killer goes on to commit more violence, he said.

"You have a victim paying the cost," Mr. Dix said.

Still more disturbing to many of the experts were cases that prosecutors pursued in spite of strong self-defense arguments or extremely limited evidence.

In one example, The News found, a Dallas County man was prosecuted for murder for something the medical examiner said could have been a traffic accident.

Mr. Gershman, the New York law professor, said prosecutors should dismiss murder cases like that or refile them as lesser offenses. To continue to chase murder charges they know they can't prove is "bad faith."

"A prosecutor's ploy of charging murder and then using the leverage of probation may induce an innocent defendant to plead guilty rather than gamble with a trial," said Mr. Gershman, who has written extensively on prosecutorial misconduct. "The process for the most part seems unsavory, artificial and a potential or actual abuse of prosecutorial power."

Solution No. 3?
Equalize sentencing

Doug Beloof, director of the National Crime Victim Law Institute, said legal scholars and the public distrust plea bargains, which can create vast disparities.

"The central concern is that the plea bargain process corrupts the truth," he said.

But the justice system lacks the resources to try more than a small fraction of cases. So deals, he acknowledged, are a practical reality.

Given that, prosecutors need "to get as close to the truth, and offer as appropriate a sentence as they can, when making a deal," said Mr. Beloof, who teaches law at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore.

Other experts said Texas could also move toward more consistent punishments by having sentencing guidelines.

Nearly half of all states have such guidelines, but there's been little political support for them in Texas.

Under such a system, defendants undergo pre-sentence investigations and are scored on a variety of factors. Judges can see how their peers typically sentence people with a given score, because a sentencing commission collects and studies the data.

For now, Texas is one of the few states that leave sentencing to juries. That pretty much guarantees disparity, because each group of 12 people is different.

John Kramer spent nearly 20 years in top jobs at the Pennsylvania and U.S. sentencing commissions. He said that cases such as those documented in The News have led to sentencing guidelines in other states.

"One of the key purposes of a fair penalty structure is that penalties should be relatively commensurate to the severity of the offense," said Mr. Kramer, a Penn State University sociology professor specializing in criminal justice.

"If you compare these murder cases to theft, or burglary, it would be hard for a policy committee or sentencing commission not to conclude that murder is always more serious," he said. "Yet I assume in Texas that many thieves, burglars, etc., are getting more severe sanctions."

New Jersey lawmakers created a temporary sentencing commission in 2004, but they have not decided whether to make it permanent and whether to establish sentencing guidelines.

Taking those steps would help remedy disparity, promote public safety and reduce the need to spend money on new prisons, said Ben Barlyn, who recently resigned as the commission's executive director.

"It's absolutely essential," he said, "for any type of rational criminal justice system."
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danny317 · Nov 16, 2007

i think she should have gone to court. i could see a jury finding the girl and the mother innocent.

but then theyd have to stay in prison until theyre found innocent.

seems like self defense to me.

if they were found innocent, couldnt they inturn sue the state?

TeamUSA · Nov 16, 2007

if the article is accurate as to how the whoe thing happened, it's by common-sense a no-brainer act of self-defense.

if we are able to find that ex-coach guilty of killing his wife purely based on circumstantial evidence, this is by far close to the opposite.

A man, career criminal, older ( twice-her-age), murdered by a 17 year's old?

These prosecutors are guilty of stupidty.

danny317 · Nov 16, 2007

now that i think about it more. i definately take it to court bc a murder charge is permanently on your record!

no college, cant even join the military... youre basically screwed for the rest of your life!

Major · Nov 16, 2007

danny317 said:

now that i think about it more. i definately take it to court bc a murder charge is permanently on your record!
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What happens if you get a bloodthirsty jury and now you're in jail for 30 years? The article says she was poor, so I imagine she has a public defender. We know there are so cases of manufactured evidence (in Dallas, in particlar - see the Thin Blue Line) and innocent people found guilty for whatever reasons. I can see how she might not be willing to risk the next 30 years of her life on that.

danny317 · Nov 16, 2007

Major said:

What happens if you get a bloodthirsty jury and now you're in jail for 30 years? The article says she was poor, so I imagine she has a public defender. We know there are so cases of manufactured evidence (in Dallas, in particlar - see the Thin Blue Line) and innocent people found guilty for whatever reasons. I can see how she might not be willing to risk the next 30 years of her life on that.
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there are organizations that have excellent lawyers that provide pro-bono work.

she probably wanted to get the quick fix but its probably gonna screw her over for life.

Major · Nov 16, 2007

danny317 said:

she probably wanted to get the quick fix but its probably gonna screw her over for life.
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Easy choice to make when you (and I) are not the one facing 30 years in prison if something goes wrong in your case. Say there's a 10% chance of conviction - is it worth taking the risk? What about 5%? 2%?

Major · Nov 16, 2007

danny317 said:

there are organizations that have excellent lawyers that provide pro-bono work.

she probably wanted to get the quick fix but its probably gonna screw her over for life.
Click to expand...

From the article:

Most of these prosecutions occurred in Dallas County, where the justice system has a long and embarrassing history of punishing innocent people. DNA tests have exonerated 13 men who went to prison for rape or murder – more than any other county in the nation. Dozens more were jailed in recent years after being framed with fake drugs.

Is this a risk worth taking?

halfbreed · Nov 16, 2007

Major said:

From the article:

Most of these prosecutions occurred in Dallas County, where the justice system has a long and embarrassing history of punishing innocent people. DNA tests have exonerated 13 men who went to prison for rape or murder – more than any other county in the nation. Dozens more were jailed in recent years after being framed with fake drugs.

Is this a risk worth taking?
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13 out of how many convictions? That would be some helpful information.

Also, the "public defenders" who take on murder cases are far more capable than you give them credit for. The overworked public defender is the one who is dealing with less serious crimes. I know the media portrays a different picture but at least in my experiences, the public defenders retained in these types of cases are extremely capable and extremely good lawyers. Not to mention that in many cases, non-public defender defense attorneys will take on the case pro-bono as a career booster as many of them aim to run for public office and/or judgeships in their future.

danny317 · Nov 17, 2007

halfbreed said:

13 out of how many convictions? That would be some helpful information.

Also, the "public defenders" who take on murder cases are far more capable than you give them credit for. The overworked public defender is the one who is dealing with less serious crimes. I know the media portrays a different picture but at least in my experiences, the public defenders retained in these types of cases are extremely capable and extremely good lawyers. Not to mention that in many cases, non-public defender defense attorneys will take on the case pro-bono as a career booster as many of them aim to run for public office and/or judgeships in their future.
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yeah i think there would be a line of lawyers wanting to take this case pro-bono just for the media exposure. you cant pay for a story like this.

also i think the prosecution would come to its senses and drop the case. i dont know all the legal nuiances of self defense but and avg. joe on the street would call this self defense. and theyre the ones thatll make up the jury. get just one woman on that jury and i think this lady would have walked.

Apollo Creed · Nov 17, 2007

Dallas

bucket · Nov 17, 2007

halfbreed said:

13 out of how many convictions? That would be some helpful information.

Also, the "public defenders" who take on murder cases are far more capable than you give them credit for. The overworked public defender is the one who is dealing with less serious crimes. I know the media portrays a different picture but at least in my experiences, the public defenders retained in these types of cases are extremely capable and extremely good lawyers. Not to mention that in many cases, non-public defender defense attorneys will take on the case pro-bono as a career booster as many of them aim to run for public office and/or judgeships in their future.
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If it were 13 out of a million, it would be too many.

I hope you're right about public defenders being capable of handling their workload. I would caution you against thinking this is so based on your own experiences with a few public defenders; all public defenders need to be capable for the system to work.

Plus, people need to show up for jury duty.

weslinder · Nov 17, 2007

I know it's long, but if you can, read the second article. In 120 cases since 2000 (47 in Dallas County and 13 in Harris County), murderers have been given probation. The first article was an aberration. Most of them should have been convicted and jailed, but because the prosecutor was rushed or couldn't put together a good case, probation was offered in a plea bargain. The prosecutors are sending criminals back out on the street, counting on them to screw up, so they can get the "punishment they deserve". The legislature outlawed probation for murder, but now prosecutors are just offering manslaughter as a plea bargain with the same effect.

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