The property tax revenue cap “emergency” bill lacks the votes to make it to the floor of the Senate, the new secretary of state’s appointment is about to be rejected by the Senate Nominations Committee, and there’s still no agreement on how to fix school finance. If this is supposed to be the “Kumbaya Session,” we’d hate to see what it looks like when they aren’t supposedly getting along so famously. 

Judicial branch pay issues

Members of TDCAA’s Legislative Committee convened in Austin this week to discuss various funding and pay issues that you are going to have to deal with this session. As a result of their deliberations, a delegation of elected prosecutors intends to bring their concerns to State Sen. Joan Huffman (R-Houston), author of the bill that would give some (but not all) judges—and no elected prosecutors—a pay raise (SB 387, discussed in further detail here).

We will share with you the outcome of that meeting after it has taken place, along with any recommendations based on those developments. We recognize how important these matters are to you, so if events necessitate a mid-week update from us, we will do so. Until then, please continue to talk to your local judges and neighboring prosecutors about your concerns, and please share with us here in Austin any new information you learn.

SCOTUS issues opinion on asset forfeiture?

OK, that’s not really what Timbs v. Indiana was about, we just wanted to grab your attention. In truth, this was a rather esoteric constitutional law decision about the 8^th and 14^th Amendments that arose in the context of an asset forfeiture case. You can read today’s case summaries to learn the ins and outs of that ruling, but due to some erroneous reporting about the case in the media, we feel obligated to note in this space that the Timbs decision does not change the law in Texas. Unlike some other states (such as Indiana), our appellate courts have been willing to apply the Excessive Fines Clause of the 8^th Amendment to asset forfeiture cases for the past two decades (if not longer). While Timbs could lead to more of those types of challenges due to the attention the case has garnered in some quarters, it’s nothing new or dramatic for Texas jurisprudence, so feel free to share that background with anyone who asks you about this topic.

Scattershots

Here are some stories and articles we don’t have time to summarize, but they might be of interest to some of you:

• Death penalty reform bill lands Republican joint authors (Texas Tribune)
• Gangs, lack of guards trigger riots at TJJD facility (Houston Chronicle)
• Senator Paxton files bill to give General Paxton regulatory authority over securities regulations he is accused of violating (Texas Tribune)
• Study: Vaping pot yields more powerful high than smoking it (NBC News)
• Courts struggle to interpret emojis (The Verge) 

Floor action

Bills on issues designated as an “emergency” are now reaching the Senate floor, as SB 10 by Nelson (R-Flower Mound) to create a Texas Mental Health Care Consortium is on the Senate calendar for Monday. (Not on that calendar is SB 2, the property tax reform bill, which currently lacks the votes it needs to be considered under the Senate’s three-fifths rule.) It will be several weeks before any non-emergency items can be debated on the House or Senate floor, but take this as yet another sign that the legislature is about to get to work in earnest.

Committee hearings

Each week we will try to provide you with notice of relevant bills being heard in various committees. Due to space limitations, we won’t always list all the bills posted for a hearing, but you can click on the underlined hyperlink in the committee name for a full listing of each notice, including bill information (such as the actual text of a proposal) that can be accessed by clicking on any bill number posted there.

Monday, February 25

House International Relations & Economic Development – 10:00 a.m. in Room E2.014

• HB 48 by M. Gonzalez requiring prosecutors to report wage theft convictions to a state registry

House Criminal Jurisprudence – 2:00 p.m. in Room E2.012

• HB 51 by Canales mandating certain standardized forms for criminal actions statewide
• HB 93 by Canales requiring a magistrate’s name on certain signed orders
• HB 98 by M. Gonzalez revising the revenge porn statute after Ex Parte Jones
• HB 101 by Canales creating the criminal offense of false caller ID display
• HB 226 by Krause creating a commission to review penal laws outside the Penal Code
• HB 595 by Rosenthal increasing the penalty for false report hate crimes

Wednesday, February 27

House Homeland Security & Public Safety – 8:00 a.m. in Room E2.016

• HB 162 by White shortening or repealing the period of DL suspensions for various offenses
• HB 238 by Krause prohibiting the enforcement of federal firearm regulations in Texas
• HB 302 by Paul banning certain property owners from restricting the carrying of firearms
• HB 364 by Tinderholt creating a statewide database of ignition interlock users

Remember, TDCAA is not going to testify for or against these bills. To steal someone else’s slogan: “We report, you decide.” And if no one shows up at the committee hearing but then complains about what the committee did, we will steal someone else’s slogan: “Where’s the beef??!” Remember, the legislative process is like some raffles: You must be present to win. If you want to learn more about a bill and find out how to get involved for or against it—or even just get us to stop recycling lame ad jingles from decades past—contact Shannon for details. 

New bills to watch

We are now tracking 789 (25% percent) of the 3,191 bills filed through Wednesday of this week. Here is another list highlighting some of the more interesting bills filed in the past few days:

• HB 1871 by Goldman, expanding public access to juvenile court proceedings
• HB 1936 by Rose, excluding persons with “severe mental illness” from the death penalty
• HB 1955 by Dutton, mandating release on personal bond for most misdemeanors
• HB 1961 by Moody, making it a crime to make a false report to a jailer or correctional officer
• HB 1992 by Leman, prohibiting telemarketers from using misleading caller ID information
• HB 1996 by Leman, requiring immigration admonitions to be given orally and in writing
• HB 2015 by Dutton, regulating searches, seizures, and raids by SWAT teams
• HB 2026 by Collier, creating an optional “wobbler” penalty for certain state jail felonies
• HB 2049 by Collier, expanding factors indicating a lack of consent to sexual assault
• HB 2120 by Leach, the omnibus judicial branch and court creation bill
• HB 2134 by Klick, restricting the use of certain physicians in certain child abuse investigations
• SB 887 by Menendez, prohibiting a “gay panic” defense and authorizing anti-bigotry instructions
• SB 891 by Huffman, the omnibus judicial branch and court creation bill

To read any bill, go to https://capitol.texas.gov/, enter the bill number in the appropriate field, and click “go”—then on the subsequent webpage, select the tab at the top of the page for the information (history, bill text, actions, authors, etc.) you want. And as always, you can contact Shannon or Rob if you are having trouble finding the information you seek. 

Next week

We’re still waiting for bills to drop (that’s Capitol lingo for “be filed”) on a variety of topics that may be of interest to you, including state jail felonies, civil asset forfeiture, the death penalty, and grand juries. Even though bill filings seem to be slower this session, there will still be two or three thousand more bills filed over the next two weeks ahead of the 60-day deadline (March 8), so we’ll review them all and be sure to find the needles in that haystack for you. Bill-filing will be the primary focus of legislators of legislators for two more weeks, but as that winds down, the focus will turn to committee hearings. Remember, these committee hearings are the single biggest “choke point” in the legislative process: Approval by a committee often translates into a bill ending up on the governor’s desk, while defeat in a committee leads to almost-certain death. (Good luck if you want to pass some new laws!)

Legislative rotation sign-up

If you are interested in coming to Austin this session, please contact Shannon for details on how to get involved. We have several slots available for prosecutors to come to Austin and help craft the laws and appropriations that directly impact you, so check your calendar and find a good time to come to hang out with us. 

Domestic Violence Seminar

Registration is now open for TDCAA’s 2019 Domestic Violence Seminar. Whether you are new to prosecution or a seasoned hand, this course will cover practical skills you need to do your job today. From intake to advocacy, this is domestic violence training developed for Texas prosecutors and presented by Texas prosecutors. Join us in Georgetown, Texas, from April 9th to the 12th for this exciting training opportunity. For more information, please click here. 

Quotes of the Week

“The no-knock warrants are going to go away like leaded gasoline in this city.”

Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo, in response to a no-knock drug bust by HPD that went horribly awry, resulting in two civilian deaths and multiple injured officers—including some who may now face criminal charges themselves.

“In the House, we recognize that we’re going to be the adults in the room. We’re going to come up with pragmatic and thoughtful policy—and we won’t react to the artificial deadlines set by the Senate.”

State Rep. Trey Martinez-Fischer (D-San Antonio), member of the House Ways & Means Committee that will consider legislation to lower local revenue caps.

“Well, y’know, time is just time. I’m here to turn myself in.”

Former State Sen. Carlos Uresti (D-San Antonio), outside the federal courthouse where he turned himself in to start serving his 12-year federal prison sentence for various fraud and corruption-related charges.

“Really, when you’re looking at trying to keep a community safe, safety is not a Democrat or a Republican issue. It’s an issue of common sense. Democrats want to keep our streets safe just like Republicans do. So, everyone is doing their part in my administration to ensure the safety of this community.”

Bexar County Criminal DA Joe Gonzalez (D), who has hired several recently-defeated local Republican judges to serve in his new administration.

Valentine’s Day is over, which means everyone around the capitol is about to “lose that lovin’ feelin’” as the real work will begin upon return from this upcoming three-day weekend.

House Appropriations takes on pay issues

The House Appropriations Subcommittee overseeing judicial branch funding met early this morning to discuss budget proposals in those areas. If you recall, the House’s initial version of the budget (HB 1) included both a temporary fix for assistant prosecutor longevity pay (to keep that program in the black for another two years) and a 10-percent increase in the state’s judicial benchmark salary that would apply across the board so that judicial (and elected prosecutor) salaries and supplements could be increased for only the third time in the past 20 years. These appropriations compare favorably to the initial Senate budget (SB 1), which included neither increase (although there are some encouraging signs on the longevity pay front going forward).

With that background, Chief Justice Nathan Hecht appeared before the subcommittee and testified on a variety of funding issues. Saving the salary issue for the end of his presentation, he thanked the House members for proposing a 10-percent across-the-board raise but then recommended they instead consider SB 387 by Huffman (R-Houston) as an alternative plan. If you recall, that is the bill we mentioned two weeks ago that would give certain long-tenured judges immediate salary increases—up to 30 percent for some—while leaving all prosecutors, regardless of tenure, stuck (perhaps for good) with the current benchmark salary. He also said that we can expect a House companion to SB 387 to be filed soon by Rep. Jeff Leach (R-Plano), the new chairman of the House Judiciary & Civil Jurisprudence Committee, and we expect both bills will be referred to the bill authors’ own committees for further consideration.

TDCAA’s Legislative Committee will meet next week to discuss these funding issues, so keep an eye out for an update on this topic next Friday, including potential recommendations for action from that group.

Property tax reform

Speaking of funding: Our friends at the Texas Association of Counties (TAC) are paying close attention to property tax reform bills that might constrain budgeting for local government services. The main measures to follow are SB 2by Bettencourt (R-Houston) and its companion, HB 2 by Burrows (R-Lubbock), which both seek to lower the current revenue cap on increased local government spending from eight percent to 2.5 percent (a local election is required for any tax increase beyond that). As proposed, SB 2 applies only to larger taxing units (e.g., counties, cities, school districts), but voters in smaller taxing units could opt-in to the lower limit via election. The topic has been named by the governor as an emergency item, so it is on the legislative fast-track right now, but opponents fear this cap reduction will negatively impact county budgets and the ability to properly fund core services, such as local criminal justice systems.

Numerous county and local officials testified against SB 2 when it was considered by the Senate Committee on Property Tax last week, noting that the bill does not provide any meaningful property tax relief and it does not reform school finance—the main driver behind tax increases—nor does it address unfunded mandates on counties, which are another significant cost driver for local budgets. Despite those objections, SB 2 was voted out of the Senate committee and may receive a floor vote soon. If you are concerned about the potential negative effects of this legislation on your office’s budget and want to get more involved, contact Laura Garcia with TAC’s Legislative Services Division. We lack the bandwidth to closely track this issue during the session, but TAC has a wealth of information about it on the TAC website, and you can work with them if you have concerns about it.

Death penalty legislation

Sometimes we (only half-)jokingly say that capital punishment is 1 percent of a prosecutor’s job but 99 percent of what the press wants to talk to prosecutors about. At some point this session that quip is bound to come true again, so here is what you can expect to see filed on this topic beyond the usual abolition and moratorium bills that rarely go anywhere:

• Pretrial determination of intellectual disability (aka mental retardation) by a judge to exempt those offenders from the death penalty (already filed as HB 1139 and SB 418)
• Pretrial determination of “severe mental illness” by a judge to exempt those offenders from the death penalty
• Exempt from the death penalty anyone convicted as a party co-conspirator who did not specifically intend to commit capital murder (HB 472)
• Inform capital juries of the effect of their deadlock if they cannot unanimously agree on any special issue
• Create an out-of-time motion for new trial that allows the prosecution and defense to re-open old cases and re-sentence offenders serving “unjust” sentences
• Create a State Defense Attorney counterpart to the State Prosecuting Attorney in Austin

In addition, bills have been filed to expand the death penalty so that it applies to murder victims under 15 years old (HB 261 and SB 719) and murder victims working as emergency services personnel (HB 1573 and SB 714).

Prosecutors wishing to have a say in what any of these filed bills look like as they move through the process should get involved sooner rather than later. If you have questions about them or how you can participate in their consideration at the legislature, contact Shannon. 

Scattershooting

Here are some stories and articles we don’t have time to summarize, but they might be of interest to some of you:

• Santa Fe H.S. shooting survivors are expecting results from the Legislature (Texas Tribune)
• Will lawmakers fix the Driver Responsibility Program? (Texas Tribune)
• Legislature eyes state jail reforms (Texas Tribune) 

New bills to watch

Through yesterday, we are tracking 743 (26 percent) of the 2,819 bills filed to date. Here is another list highlighting a score of interesting bills filed in the past week or so:

• HB 1528 by Rose, requiring the reporting of certain information on Class C family violence cases
• HB 1539 by Geren, reducing penalty ranges for tampering with evidence in certain cases
• HB 1580 by Phelan, expanding collection of DNA samples from certain accused felons
• HB 1609 by Tinderholt, making grand jurors’ names confidential but granting access to the press
• HB 1615 by Schaefer, requiring the state to disprove an “innocent owner” defense in forfeiture proceedings
• HB 1625 by K. Bell, creating the offense of false report of misconduct by emergency responders
• HB 1637 by Miller, requiring trauma-informed care training for lawyers who represent DFPS
• HB 1686 by R. Smith, mandating protective orders upon conviction for certain sex crimes
• HB 1713 by Ramos, requiring surrender of firearms upon conviction for certain offenses
• HB 1719 by Thompson, reducing penalties for certain marijuana and PG1 drug possession offenses
• HB 1721 by Israel, changing various alcohol-related offenses by minors into civil infractions
• HB 1787 by Geren, reducing penalties for certain habitual theft offenders
• HB 1791 by Krause, prohibiting local governments from restricting the licensed carry of a handgun on property owned or leased by that governmental entity
• HB 1811 by Murr, increasing boating while intoxicated penalties when BAC > 0.15
• HJR by Canales, exempting certain judges from the resign-to-run rule for other offices
• SB 735 by Watson, revising the statute of limitations for certain sexual assaults involving DNA
• SB 736 by Watson, allowing the admission of extraneous acts in certain sexual assault cases
• SB 782 by West, restricting an officer’s access to certain body-cam footage after an officer-involved shooting
• SB 821 by Nelson, relating to child advocacy centers and multidisciplinary child abuse teams
• SB 831 by Huffman, creating an offense for tampering with an electronic monitor while on parole
• SB 840 by Hinojosa, expanding the elements of continuous family violence

To read any bill, go to https://capitol.texas.gov/, enter the bill number in the appropriate field, and click “go”—then on the subsequent webpage, select the tab at the top of the page for the information (history, bill text, actions, authors, etc.) you want. And as always, you can contact Shannon or Rob if you are having trouble finding the information you seek. 

Next week

Legislative committees will hold more organizational meetings, and a few will start hearing the bills that have been referred to them for consideration (although none of general interest to us yet); 100–150 new bills per day will be filed; and the Senate may try to take up SB 2 on the floor if it has the three-fifths vote threshold necessary to be considered.

As we mentioned last week, if you are serious about proposing new legislation, you need to get your bill idea into a legislator’s hand ASAP. The official deadline for filing a bill is Friday, March 8, but bills filed that late already have one foot in the grave.

Legislative rotation sign-up

If you are interested in coming to Austin this session, please contact Shannon for details on how to get involved. We have several slots available for prosecutors to come to Austin and help craft the laws and appropriations that directly impact you, so check your calendar and find a good time to come to hang out with us.

Domestic Violence Seminar

Registration is now open for TDCAA’s 2019 Domestic Violence Seminar. Whether you are new to prosecution or a seasoned hand, this course will cover practical skills you need to do your job today. From intake to advocacy, this is domestic violence training developed for Texas prosecutors and presented by Texas prosecutors. Join us in Georgetown, Texas, from April 9th to the 12th for this exciting training opportunity. For more information, please click here.

New DWI manual on the way

Thanks to funding from TxDOT, we are shipping copies of our new DWI manual to all prosecutor offices in Texas. The updated edition of the book has been reorganized to include more material on blood search warrants (and other ways to obtain blood evidence in an impaired driving case) as well as a new chapter on drugged driving. The manual includes up-to-date caselaw, and related documents and instructional videos are accessible on the TDCAA website. Books are shipped to each office based on the number of prosecutors indicated in TDCAA’s membership database. Additional copies may be purchased for $45 via the TDCAA website.

Quotes of the Week

“The Legislature is where ideas go to die. Or to be turned into something different.”

Ross Ramsey, Executive Editor of the Texas Tribune, in his column explaining why agreement among the leadership still does not guarantee a smooth ride for legislation like property tax reform.

“I don’t know if it’s 2.5 percent or not because I do know that puts a real stranglehold on our county officials, our city officials. But I do think they’re going to get comfortable with a number that’s less than 8.”

State Rep. John Zerwas (R-Richmond), chair of the House Appropriations Committee, on the prospect of lowering local government revenue caps this session.

“I cannot imagine the 2.5 percent [cap] will pass. The end game was to go with something so bad that those opposed will accept something lower than 8.”

State Rep. Donna Howard (D-Austin), describing how the debate over SB 2 is likely to play out in her chamber.

“His conviction is a victory for every American family who lost a loved one to the black hole of drug addiction.”

U.S. Attorney Richard Donoghue (ED-NY), on the recent conviction of former Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

“[The FBI was better off when] y’all only hired Irishmen. They were drunks, but they could be trusted. Not like all those new people with nose rings and tattoos. Who knows what they’re doing?”

Comment attributed to former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, in a recent tell-all book by former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe.

“More prosecutors does not simply mean more prosecution—rather, our charge is to seek justice. In fact, we believe a reasonable work-load will increase our diversion numbers, keeping individuals in the workforce and out of jail.”

Harris County DA Kim Ogg, in an op/ed explaining why she is requesting more prosecutors and support staff for her office. (The request was later denied after coming under fire from criminal justice reform advocates.)

Weather in Texas is rarely boring, is it?

State of the State

The governor shifted the Legislature from first gear into second gear this week by giving a State of the State Address on Tuesday that included the following five issues as “emergency items” (listed in the order they were announced by the governor):

• School finance reform and increasing teacher salaries;
• School safety;
• Property tax reform and direct election of county tax appraisers;
• Creating a state mental health care consortium; and
• Natural disaster preparations and recovery.

These emergency issues can now be heard in committees and debated on the floor of either chamber immediately. In fact, the Senate held a committee hearing on SB 2, the proposal to cap local property tax increases, the very next day after the governor’s address, so the major topic of this session is already off and running.

Besides these emergency items, the governor also expressed his support for several public safety-related initiatives, such as continued funding for border security, new anti-gang fusion centers in Waco and Tyler, new funding for tackling the rape kit backlog, and more funding for human trafficking investigations, along with new mandatory minimum prison sentences for human traffickers. However, one topic notably absent from his list of priorities was anything related to bail bond reform; more on that below.

State of the Judiciary

On Wednesday, Chief Justice Nathan Hecht gave the State of the Judiciary address to the combined houses of the legislature. After commending local courts for (literally) weathering the Hurricane Harvey storm, he urged lawmakers to:

• Change the judicial selection process, or at least make elections non-partisan;
• Pass SB 387, the “judicial retention” pay raise bill we summarized last week;
• Pass SB 561 to increase minimum qualifications to serve on the bench;
• Pass SB 628 to reform pretrial release on bond (more on that below);
• Pass SB 346 to simplify court costs and ensure they go to court-related services; and
• Treat juveniles’ Class C offenses as civil infractions (as done with truancy four years ago; bill has yet to be filed).

These were just a few of the suggestions he had for the legislature, but they are the ones we will probably spend the most time following this session.

Bail bond reform

Prior to both of the addresses mentioned above, State Sen. John Whitmire (D-Houston) and State Rep. Andy Murr (R-Junction) laid out the bail bond reform legislation championed by Chief Justice Hecht and certain reformers. For those of you who remember this topic from the debate over Sen. Whitmire’s Senate Bill 1338 last session, new SB 628 and its identical House companion, HB 1323, will look familiar (although not identical). Here’s a short summary of the procedures imposed by these latest bills:

• Magistrates must use validated pretrial risk assessments;
• All arrestees are entitled to a presumption of release on the least restrictive conditions and the minimum amount of bail, if any;
• Magistrates can grant release on personal bond or money bond, both with or without conditions;
• Magistrates can deny bail (if authorized by public approval of a constitutional amendment to be put on the ballot by SJR 37/HJR 62);
• If denied bail, an arrestee has a right to a lawyer and a full evidentiary hearing within 10 days, at which hearing witnesses may be called and examined;
• After a hearing, the magistrate must grant some form of release unless the State proves by clear and convincing evidence that the arrestee is a flight risk or will endanger the public/victim; and
• Arrestees may appeal any denial of bail.

Some additional notes:

• The effective date for these changes would be September 1, 2020, to allow the courts time to prepare for the impending changes after any vote on the constitutional amendment.
• The constitutional amendment must be approved by voters to authorize outright denial of bail, but if it fails to be adopted, the rest of the bill—presumptive release on minimum terms, etc., for all cases—would still go into effect.
• The bill is being called the “Damon Allen Act” after a DPS trooper who was murdered by an offender out on bond.

For those of you who read through new SB 628 and wonder why the provisions requiring pretrial detention hearings that were taken out last session are now back in this session’s version of the bill … well, we don’t have a verifiable answer for you, but we do have an informed guess. We know that there were lengthy negotiations between proponents of last session’s reforms and staff from the governor’s office during which the two sides tried to meld last session’s bill and Governor Abbott’s interim proposal for a Damon Allen Act, but it appears that they never found common ground (which might explain the omission of any mention of bail bond reform in the governor’s State of the State address.) Instead, the pretrial detention hearings were probably put back into the bill as a response to situations like those that led to the murder of Trooper Allen, and the bill was named after him even though his widow and surviving family did not participate in the press conference rolling out the bill (which we found unusual—although they were present for the chief justice’s state of the judiciary address the next day).

Also, unlike last session, we anticipate at least one, and maybe two, other “bail bond reform” bills to be filed in the next month. One will be from the bail bondsmen, who purport to have language that would codify the Fifth Circuit’s decision out of Harris County; the other may be a bill that more closely hews to Governor Abbott’s original idea for a Damon Allen Act. Either way, this issue is far from settled, so if you want to participate in that discussion in Austin—especially as it relates to prosecutors’ new duty to participate in (and ultimately be held responsible for the results of) these pretrial detention hearings—contact Shannon for the latest information.

Incarceration overview

The Legislative Budget Board (LBB) gave the House Appropriations Committee an overview of TDCJ and TJJD population projections and related information this week, and we thought you might find some of that information interesting. Here are some key items taken from the LBB’s report:

• Prison, parole, and felony adult probation populations are expected to remain steady for the next five years, while misdemeanor probation caseloads are projected to continue their decline.
• Prosecutors and probation departments continue to expand their pretrial diversion programs but need additional substance abuse and mental health rehabilitation resources for those programs to be successful (especially in rural areas).
• The three-year re-arrest rates for offenders released from TDCJ in 2015 remain steady for state jail (63 percent) and prison (45 percent) offenders, but less than half of each of those cohorts who get re-arrested end up back in prison, which means graduated sanctions are being used.
• The 2018 felony probation revocation rate was only 16 percent, while the parole revocation rate was even lower at 8 percent, so that seems competitive when compared to many other states.
• Later testimony in another hearing revealed that half of those felony probation revocations are for new offenses and another quarter of all revocations are absconders, so the overall felony probation revocation rate for pure technical violations is probably somewhere in the range of about 4 percent.
• TJJD’s juvenile correctional and probation populations are predicted to increase slightly due to recent upticks in referrals for violent crimes.
• Average costs per day remained relatively steady for TDCJ ($62), parole ($4.40), and probation ($3.75), but increased for TJJD ($480) and juvenile parole ($41) and decreased for juvenile probation ($13.55). (Keep these adult-to-juvenile disparities in mind for the next time someone asks you why the Raise the Age bill is so expensive.)

Budget news

The following members of the House Appropriations Committee were assigned to the Subcommittee on Articles I, IV, and V (General Government, Judiciary, and Public Safety): Oscar Longoria (D-Mission), chair; Rick Miller (R-Sugar Land), vice-chair; Brad Buckley (R-Lampasas), Giovanni Capriglione (R-Southlake), Jarvis D. Johnson (D-Houston), and Gene Wu (D-Houston). That subcommittee is scheduled to consider judicial pay raise and prosecutor longevity pay on Friday, February 15.

New bills to watch

As of yesterday, we are tracking 636 (27 percent) of the 2,325 bills filed to date. (Both of those numbers roughly doubled in the past week, by the way.) Here is another entry highlighting 10 20* interesting bills filed in the past week or so [*Ed. note: The bill-filing pace is picking up so we are expanding this section to keep up]:

• HB 1202 by Collier, limiting the prosecution of theft offenses related to rent-to-own agreements
• HB 1223 by VanDeaver, increasing enforcement of child custody agreement violations
• HB 1240 by Y. Davis, lowering the penalty ranges for habitual theft offenses
• HB 1261 by K. Bell, expanding the presumption of child endangerment by drug exposure
• HB 1271 by S. Thompson, granting retroactive early parole consideration to violent offenders
• HB 1279 by Allen, revising the jury instructions on parole eligibility
• HB 1316 by Moody, authorizing prosecutors to provide CCH information in lieu of certain notices
• HB 1320 by Moody, requiring larger counties to implement mental health courts
• HB 1343 by Leach, criminalizing inmate contact with their adult victims
• HB 1381 by Wray, increasing penalties for certain aggravated assaults on school property
• HB 1389 by S. Thompson, on sentencing offenders who are the primary caretaker of a child
• HB 1399 by R. Smith, collecting DNA samples from certain arrested offenders
• HB 1419 by S. Thompson, permitting felons on probation or parole to vote
• HB 1452 by S. Thompson, accelerating eligibility times for nondisclosure applications
• HB 1498 by Metcalf, expanding the scope of the offense of continuous sexual abuse of a child
• SB 535 by Campbell, lowering penalties for licensed carrying of a handgun into certain prohibited places (including churches)
• SB 549 by West, regulating the operation of motor-assisted scooters
• SB 584 by Watson, expanding the factors establishing lack of consent in sexual assaults
• SB 587 by Watson, collecting data on the investigation and prosecution of sexual assaults
• SB 693 by West, requiring the reporting of certain information on Class C family violence cases

To read any bill, go to https://capitol.texas.gov/, enter the bill number in the appropriate field, and click “go”—then on the subsequent webpage, select the tab at the top of the page for the information (history, bill text, actions, authors, etc.) you want. And as always, you can contact Shannon or Rob if you are having trouble finding the information you seek.

Next week

Legislative committees will hold their organizational meetings while they await bills to be referred to them for consideration (hearings on bills will likely start the week of February 18); the House Appropriations Committee will start digging into their budget items that impact your business; and bill filings will increase to roughly 100 new proposals per day (don’t worry, we went to our optometrist and ordered new eyeglasses before session for just such an occasion).

As we mentioned last week, if you are serious about proposing new legislation, you need to get your bill idea into a legislator’s hand by next week. The official deadlines don’t kick in for another month, but bills filed close to that deadline usually lack sufficient time to navigate all the hurdles before adjournment at the end of May.

Legislative rotation sign-up

Remember, if you aren’t at the table in Austin, then you are on the menu! In you are interested in participating in the legislative process, please contact Shannon for details on how to get involved. We have several slots available for prosecutors to come to Austin and help craft the laws and appropriations that directly impact you, so check your calendar and find a good time to come to hang out with us.

New DWI Manual on the way

Thanks to funding from TxDOT, we are shipping copies of our new DWI manual to all prosecutor offices in Texas. The updated edition of the book has been reorganized to include more material on blood search warrants (and other ways to obtain blood evidence in an impaired driving case) as well as a new chapter on drugged driving. The manual includes up-to-date caselaw, and related documents and instructional videos are accessible on the TDCAA website. Books are shipped to each office based on the number of prosecutors indicated in TDCAA’s membership database. Additional copies may be purchased for $45 via the TDCAA website.

Quotes of the Week

“Who else is going to divert offenders who should re-enter society, and prosecute the people who should be incarcerated to protect the public? This is a question of how fast do our funders really want to reform our justice system?”

Kim Ogg, Harris County DA, explaining her funding request to hire 140 new staff members, for which she is now facing criticism from certain advocacy groups who have supported many of her recent policies.

“The issue is that the salaries have remained stagnant, and the student loan debt has risen so much that it’s just not feasible to go into a job that pays $60,000 when they have over $200,000 in debt.”

Michaela Andruzzi, Carroll County (NH) County Attorney, explaining what’s behind the lack of applicants for her open prosecutor positions.

“The state needs a 12-step program, and the first step is to publicly admit, ‘I am the State of Texas, and I am addicted to local property taxes.’”

David Thompson, a lawyer who has represented both the state and school districts in lawsuits over school funding.

“Colombia is to cocaine as Colorado is to marijuana.”

Randy Ladd, spokesman for the DEA’s Denver field office, describing the impact of Colorado’s state law that allows people to grow large amounts of marijuana in their residences, which has led to the state becoming a prime location for grow houses operated by international drug syndicates.

“I don’t believe I’ve seen anything more broken in the criminal justice system than our current bail bond process. … The current bond system in the state of Texas does not serve public safety. It is actually endangering all of us.”

State Sen. John Whitmire (D-Houston), explaining why he filed SB 628 to reform pretrial release laws.

Well, we thought this might be a Groundhog Day session—you know, same song, different verse, hit the snooze button and go back to sleep—but recent events indicate that will not be the case. We suggest you take a seat, move all sharp objects away from your easy reach, and read on for details.

Raises for me but not for thee

Apparently, this is the new position of the Texas judiciary this session when it comes to judicial pay raises.

If you recall, we previously told you that the initial House budget includes funding for a 10-percent raise of the judicial benchmark salary (from $140,000 to $154,000), including funding for other officials whose salaries are linked to that benchmark, like appellate judges and elected prosecutors. The estimated cost for that House measure was about $30 million for the biennium. In contrast, the Senate’s initial proposal included no salary increase. But this week in the Senate Finance Committee, Chief Justice Hecht and the Office of Court Administration (OCA) expressed support for an entirely new judicial salary structure that would maintain the current judicial benchmark salary ($140,000) to which many of you are tied while granting district and appellate judges three 10-percent longevity raises for every four years of service over their first 12 years in office.

Just coincidentally, these increases would also cost approximately $30 million for the biennium—the same as the proposed across-the-board increase in the House budget—but only members of the judiciary would benefit from this new plan. As described in the hearing, this proposal would go into effect on September 1, 2019, and grant longer-tenured district judges an immediate raise of up to $42,000 (from $140,000 to $182,000), while pulling up the ladder and leaving nothing for anyone else—including district attorneys (both salary or retirement), county attorneys (through their state supplement), and county court judges (as near as we can tell—we are not experts on their salaries, but ask your local ones to see if they agree). And if we are reading this proposal correctly, the plan tops out just north of $220,000 for a chief justice of the state supreme court with more than twelve years of experience, which comes out to be a $50,000/year bump.

Based on the brief explanation at the hearing, it is clear that one of the factors leading to the creation of this hybrid system is a desire to avoid the “bad optics” of legislators increasing their own retirements by increasing the judicial benchmark salary. As proposed, this new scheme cooked up by our friends at OCA would keep that benchmark figure the same for legislators (and elected district attorneys)—perhaps in perpetuity—while district and appellate court judges could get periodic, automatic raises.

This helps those judges, but it will make it even more difficult in the future for the legislature to raise the benchmark starting district judge salary to which everyone else is tied. OCA director David Slayton testified at this week’s hearing that he had recently shared the new proposal with the various “judiciary groups” and they had all provided positive feedback to him. (We bet they did!) Needless to say, neither you—nor we—were on that distribution list, but you can now consider yourself on notice. As for our initial “hot take” on the judges’ plan, well, let’s just say that it appears to throw 40 years of progress and parity under the Professional Prosecutors Act (PPA) out the window, but we’ll have more on that in the coming weeks as we gain more clarity on this issue.

Meanwhile … what’s next?

First, read the details of this new funding mechanism being proposed by the judiciary by checking out the filed version of SB 387 by Huffman (R-Houston)—however, we will warn you ahead of time that it is a very obtuse bill that may not make much sense unless you are already schooled in the finer points of judicial compensation and retirement. After that, you can watch the archived video of the relevant committee discussions held earlier this week by clicking on http://tlcsenate.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?clip_id=13754 and fast-forwarding to the 17:30 mark; the discussion lasts about five minutes. (And if you need further explanations of how we think this will work, call Rob Kepple after reading the bill and watching the video).

Your next step should be to take a deep breath and not do anything rash. Remember, this idea has only recently been made public, and most of your legislators probably don’t even know about it yet, so venting to them won’t do much good at this point. But if you do want to make them aware that this is what the Texas Judicial Council has apparently decided to push this session, as well as any initial concerns you might have about it, please be our guest.

Third, consider coming to Austin to get more involved in the legislature’s deliberations over this issue. For more details on how to do that, see the entry at the end of this update.

And last, note that we will soon be convening a meeting of TDCAA’s Legislative Committee, which now has something new on its plate besides working on a fix for assistant prosecutor longevity pay. Look for more information on that in weeks to come.

Other budget news

Speaking of longevity pay, it wasn’t all bad news in the Senate Finance Committee this week; in fact, there was positive movement on several other fronts:

• Senators Joan Huffman (R-Houston), Chuy Hinojosa (D-McAllen), and Royce West (D-Dallas) all expressed support for finding a new, more sustainable source of revenue for assistant prosecutor longevity pay (although no further commitments or details were promised);
• As previously reported, the Senate wants to increase DPS lab capacity by hiring 122 new full-time equivalent employees (FTEs) to process rape kits and general backlogs without charging “user fees” from local submitting agencies; and
• Sen. Huffman (R-Houston) let on that she is working on a bill that would repeal and replace the Driver Responsibility Program (DRP), which has been a thorn in everyone’s side for more than 15 years now.

Meanwhile, the House Appropriations Committee has started its general review of its own initial budget proposals. The various subject matter of those hearings in the House will lag a week or two behind those of its Senate counterpart, so we should get a better grasp on the benchmark salary issue and other items when they come up in the House Appropriations Committee in the weeks to come.

New bills to watch

As of two days ago, we are tracking 330 (28%) of the 1,172 bills filed to date. Here is another entry highlighting 10 interesting bills (out of several hundred) filed in the past week or so:

• HB 1076 by White, expanding non-disclosure rights to offenders convicted of state jail felonies
• HB 1086 by Guillen, increasing the punishment range for intox assault and intox manslaughter
• HB 1088 by Geren, enhancing certain habitual misdemeanor offenses into state jail felonies
• HB 1127 by Stucky, authorizing judges to carry in 30.06 gun-free zones
• HB 1139 by S. Thompson, creating a framework for determining intellectual disability in capital cases
• SB 472 by Hughes, creating exceptions to criminal trespass for certain gun-holders
• SB 485 by Hughes, limiting government access to and maintenance of biometric identifiers
• SB 494 by Huffman, revising certain open meetings/records laws during natural disasters
• SB 495 by Hughes, creating victim-offender mediation programs for certain criminal matters
• SB 523 by Hinojosa, limiting the denial of occupational licenses to certain offenders

To read any bill, go to https://capitol.texas.gov/, enter the bill number in the appropriate field, and click “go”—then on the subsequent webpage, select the tab at the top of the page for the information (history, bill text, actions, authors, etc.) you want. And as always, you can contact Shannon or Rob if you are having trouble finding the information you seek.

Links

So much news comes at us so fast during the session that it’s hard for us to summarize everything for you, but we’re going to try out a new section for these updates that will aggregate some news you might useful. Click on any stories below for more details, and let us know if you like this new feature! Here goes:

• The Big Three announce a property tax cap plan and your local commissioners probably won’t like it.
• Podcast interview about criminal justice reform with new House Criminal Jurisprudence Chairwoman Nicole Collier (D-Fort Worth) and Right on Crime director Marc Levin.
• “Inside the Mind of Eric Williams,” the killer of two Kaufman County prosecutors.

And to receive similar items in a more timely fashion, be sure to follow us on Twitter here and here.

Next week

Governor Abbott is scheduled to give his State of the State address on Tuesday morning, a newsworthy event that may get snowed under by the attention given to the President’s (delayed) State of the Union speech later that evening. However, the former address is likely to have a much more direct impact on your daily work than the latter because the State of the State is traditionally when the governor announces his “emergency items,” a designation that allows the legislature to dispense with constitutional limitations on debate and start moving bills on those chosen topics. The conventional wisdom in Austin is that school finance, property taxes, and election fraud will be among the topics placed in this legislative express lane, but anything could be in play.

The day after the governor’s address, Chief Justice Hecht will deliver his State of the Judiciary address to the combined chambers of the legislature. We’ll be sure to let you know what he suggests as his priority items at that time (besides pay raises, of course). Elsewhere, committees will start to post notice for their organizational meetings (which does not imply action, but merely some getting-to-know-each-other gatherings that accord with their own open meetings rules), and bill filings will continue to increase.

On that latter note, let us remind you: Even though the official bill-filing deadline for most bills in Friday, March 8 (the 60^th day of the session), bills filed that late rarely pass. If you really want to pass something, a more realistic deadline for getting your bill idea in a legislator’s hand in time to get an officially-drafted version back from the Legislative Council is somewhere around Valentine’s Day. In other words, get a legislator to agree to file your bill in the next two weeks or don’t bother.

Legislative rotation sign-up

To date, we’ve only had about a dozen elected prosecutors indicate an interest in coming to Austin this session, but we’re betting that might change in light of some of the information detailed above. If you find yourself suddenly more interested in the legislative process, please contact Shannon for details on how to get involved. We have several slots available for prosecutors to come to Austin and help craft the laws and appropriations that directly impact you, so check your calendar and find a good time to come to Austin.

Quotes of the Week

“I think we all agree that we don’t want these hard-working people to suffer a pay cut.”

State Sen. Joan Huffman (R-Houston), during the Senate Finance Committee’s discussion of where to find a new, permanent source of funding for assistant prosecutor longevity pay.

“I think it’s immoral to require a district attorney to be a fee collector to keep my doors open. The fact that I have to collect a fee from somebody I’m prosecuting and putting on probation, I shouldn’t have to be put in that spot. My job should be public safety and applying facts to law.”

Steve Kunzweiler, Tulsa County (OK) District Attorney, complaining about that state’s partial funding of local prosecutors’ offices through a direct fee-for-services collection system. [See, someone always has it worse than you!]

“I’m friends with both. … We all wish we weren’t having this discussion.”

State Sen. Larry Taylor (R-Friendswood), declining to comment on the recent kerfuffle involving Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R-Houston) and State Sen. Kel Seliger (R-Amarillo).

“The fact that some fringe groups can’t count to five for a nine-member committee is really not my problem.”

Speaker Dennis Bonnen (R-Angleton), in a barbed retort on his Facebook page responding to criticism from (unnamed) gun rights groups that have criticized his appointment of Democrats to chair the two House committees that oversee gun-related legislation; both committees have a one-vote majority of Republican members.

“Quite frankly, the lobbyists are damn lucky to have a chance to invest in a great business and they’re the ones gaining the advantage, not me.”

Speaker Bonnen, in response to questions about registered lobbyists who are investors in the Pearland bank he runs back home.

“The way that Texas statute is set up, the attorney general’s office does not have original jurisdiction on these criminal matters such as the issues facing the church. We have to rely on local district attorneys from the 254 counties in our state to either refer the case to us or ask for our assistance.”

Marc Rylander, spokesman for the Office of the Attorney General, explaining why that office is not following certain other states’ attorneys general in investigating past complaints of sexual abuse made against Catholic clergy.

“I’m a mad DA, which is what victims need. We don’t need a DA who’s looking for forgiveness.”

Montgomery County DA Brett Ligon, explaining his mindset in pursuing allegations of sexual abuse at a church at which he used to be a parishioner.

“[It’s] the crystal meth of newsrooms.”

David Von Drehle, Washington Post columnist, in an article about the negative impact that Twitter is having on the journalism profession.

“The number one reason kids die is neglect. It’s because the parents are impaired and not providing adequate supervision.”

Melinda Gushwa of the Simmons College (MA) School of Social Work, whose job involves analyzing reports of child fatalities, as quoted in an article about drug-addicted mothers.

“I realized that I was exhausted from knowing people only because of the terrible things that befall them. That is the nature of my job. … I am incredibly proud to have dedicated a career to seeking justice for others. But life is too short to spend it all in the darkness. I am excited about stepping into the light and enjoying the beauty of life with my family and friends.”

Patrick Wilson, Ellis County & District Attorney (and TDCAA board member), in his public statement announcing he will not run for re-election in 2020.

Legislators are already calling each other out in public and retaliating against each other and it’s only their third week in Austin. So much for this being the “Kumbaya Session”!

Senate budget writers go “all in” on human trafficking

This week the Senate Finance Committee began hearing testimony on the Senate’s version of the General Appropriations Act. Once again, hundreds of millions of state dollars will be spent on border security, which should come as no surprise if you follow public polls that show that issue to be a high priority for many Texas voters. However, Chairwoman Jane Nelson (R-Flower Mound) also highlighted a significant new proposed state investment in one of the rare bi-partisan policy areas lauded by members of both parties: the fight against human trafficking.

The Senate’s proposed budget includes $89 million for human trafficking prevention and enforcement over the biennium, which is a $64 million dollar (256%) increase over the current budget. The money is spread among seven state agencies: The Office of the Governor, Department of Family and Protective Service, Department of State Health Services, Alcoholic Beverage Commission, Department of Public Safety, Department of Licensing and Regulation, and the Office of the Attorney General.

In fact, the committee chairwoman announced that they had granted every agency request for new funding for human trafficking-related initiatives, including funding for an additional 13 employees (five lawyers and eight support personnel) for the AG’s human trafficking section, as well as the creation of a new Human Trafficking Prevention Coordinating Council to be chaired by the AG and composed of representatives from the seven agencies getting these appropriations. The council’s job will be to develop strategic five-year plans for the prevention of human trafficking and to report back to the legislature with the results of these expenditures—because make no mistake, the legislature expects those various state agencies to show some good results when they appropriate this much money on a specific issue.

That can also result in state agencies feeling that they must take greater ownership and control over those issues in order to show those results. We’ll have more information for you in the coming weeks on what that might look like in the area of human trafficking investigations and prosecutions, but for now, just note that if you were wondering whether policymaker’s attention on this issue was wavering over the years, we think the senate’s proposed budget provides your answer; now go make good use of that information.

House committee assignments

The speaker has released his committee assignments, and—as to be expected in the wake of the first change in House leadership in a decade—there could be some shake-ups in how that chamber conducts its business this session.

We spend most of our time in the House working with the following committees, so read on to see who will be making the important decisions affecting your business this session:

Appropriations: John Zerwas (R-Fulshear), chair; Oscar Longoria (D-Mission), vice-chair; Cecil Bell (R-Magnolia), Greg Bonnen (R-Friendswood), Brad Buckley (R-Killeen), Giovanni Capriglione (R-Southlake), Philip Cortez (D-San Antonio), Sarah Davis (R-Houston), Mary Gonzalez (D-Clint), Cole Hefner (R-Mt. Pleasant), Donna Howard (D-Austin), Jarvis Johnson (D-Houston), Rick Miller (R-Sugar Land), Ina Minjarez (D-San Antonio), Sergio Munoz (D-Mission), Toni Rose (D-Dallas), Matt Schaefer (R-Tyler), J.D. Sheffield (R-Gatesville), Carl Sherman (D-DeSoto), Reggie Smith (R-Sherman), Lynn Stucky (R-Sanger), Steve Toth (R-Conroe), John Turner (D-Dallas), Gary VanDeaver (R-New Boston), Armando Walle (D-Houston), Terry Wilson (R- ), Gene Wu (D-Houston) (Note: the smaller subcommittee for our relevant budget articles will be announced soon).

Calendars (decides what bills get debated on the House floor):Four Price (R-Amarillo), chair; Joe Moody (D-El Paso), vice-chair; Joe Deshotel (D-Beaumont), John Frullo (R-Lubbock), Craig Goldman (R-Fort Worth), Oscar Longoria (D-Mission), Will Metcalf (R-Conroe), Tom Oliverson (R-Houston), Eddie Rodriguez (D-Austin), Toni Rose (D-Dallas), John Wray (R-Waxahachie).

Corrections: James White (R-Hillister), chair; Alma Allen (D-Houston), vice-chair; Ernest Bailes (R-Bailes), Rhetta Andrews Bowers (D-Rowlett), Jay Dean (R-Longview), Victoria Neave (D-Dallas), Carl Sherman (D-DeSoto), Phil Stephenson (R-Wharton).

Criminal Jurisprudence: Nicole Collier (D-Fort Worth), chair; Bill Zedler (R-Arlington), vice-chair; Keith Bell (R-Forney), Jessica Gonzalez (D-Dallas), Todd Hunter (R-Corpus Christi), Phil King (R-Weatherford), Joe Moody (D-El Paso), Andrew Murr (R-Junction), Leo Pacheco (D-San Antonio).

Homeland Security & Public Safety: Poncho Nevarez (D-Eagle Pass), chair; Dennis Paul (R-Webster), vice-chair; DeWayne Burns (R-Cleburne), Gina Calanni (D-Katy), Travis Clardy (R-Nacogdoches), Vikki Goodwin (D-Austin), Celia Israel (D-Austin), Mike Lang (R-Granbury), Tony Tinderholt (R-Arlington).

Judiciary & Civil Jurisprudence: Jeff Leach (R-Plano), chair; Jessica Farrar (D-Houston), vice-chair; Yvonne Davis (D-Dallas), Julie Johnson (D-Carrollton), Matt Krause (R-Fort Worth), Morgan Meyer (R-Dallas), Victoria Neave (D-Dallas), Reggie Smith (R-Sherman), James White (R-Hillister).

Juvenile Justice & Family Issues: Harold Dutton (D-Houston), chair; Andrew Murr (R-Junction), vice-chair; Rhetta Andrews Bowers (D-Rowlett), Gina Calanni (D-Katy), John Cyrier (R-Lockhart), Jay Dean (R-Longview), Hugh Shine (R-Temple), James Talarico (D-Round Rock), plus one vacancy TBD.

For a full PDF list of all assignments by committee, click here.
To see where your favorite rep landed, click here.

Committee assignment observations

These House committee assignments have come a full two weeks earlier in the session than last time, which most outside observers take to be an indication of the new speaker’s eagerness to get to work on his primary goals: fixing school finance and property taxes. Earlier assignments theoretically also allow for more bills to be heard and debated in those committees, which can start that work in a few weeks. That’s good news if you’re trying to pass something, but less-good news if you’re trying to stop something.

As for the actual assignments, those who recall the line-ups from last session will note that four of the seven House committees listed above have new chairpersons, so changes to the process are coming—but at this point there is no telling what those changes will look like. For instance, Joe Moody (D-El Paso), the former chairman of the Criminal Jurisprudence Committee, was promoted to Speaker Pro Tem, a minister-without-portfolio leadership position most recently held by current Speaker Bonnen. He remains on his old committee, but he will no longer serve as chairman, as that job was assigned to Rep. Nicole Collier (D-Fort Worth), who (for trivia buffs out there) will be the first woman and first African-American to ever hold that position. She is a lawyer—in fact, six of the nine members of that committee are now lawyers, by far the highest percentage in recent history—but only one of them (Moody) regularly practices criminal law.

We point this out only to serve as a good example of the primary effect of new committee assignments: namely, the need to educate members about your issues all over again. Even if you have been working on your pet issue at the Capitol for multiple sessions, new committee assignments mean starting over again at the beginning and building up from there, never assuming that the new committee members share your subject matter knowledge or your mastery of the legislative history on that issue. In other words, it means work. Prepare accordingly.

New bills to watch

Here is another entry highlighting some of the recent filings of interest:

• HB 949 by Minjarez, increasing aggravated assault w/ a deadly weapon resulting in quadriplegia to a first-degree felony
• HB 979 by A. Hernandez, authorizing the collection of DNA samples from certain defendants
• HB 1020 by Moody, requiring law enforcement agencies to adopt model cite-and-release policies
• HB 1029 by Moody, removing certain discovery exemptions for CAC forensic videos
• HB 1030 by Moody, requiring unanimity in death penalty special issues
• SB 387 by Huffman, revising various statutes relating to judicial compensation and retirement
• SB 400 by West, expanding Texas’ Compassionate Use Act to more conditions and more substances
• SB 405 by Birdwell, criminalizing a false report to a jailer or correctional officer
• SB 418 by Miles, prohibiting the death penalty for persons with an intellectual disability
• SB 433 by Hinojosa, recategorizing certain peace officer disciplinary records as public records

To read any bill, go to https://capitol.texas.gov/, enter the bill number in the appropriate field, and click “go”—then on the subsequent webpage, select the tab at the top of the page for the information (history, bill text, actions, authors, etc.) you want. And as always, you can contact Shannon or Rob if you are having trouble finding the information you seek.

Next week

The Senate Finance Committee will review the budget provisions that include assistant prosecutor longevity pay; House committees will hire staff and (hopefully) release the weekly committee schedules so we know when we have to be where each week; and everyone will be speculating about what the governor will proclaim to be emergency issues so that the legislature can start tackling them ahead of the usual 60-day threshold for floor debates.

Legislative rotation sign-up

Contact Shannon for details on how to get involved in the legislative process—even if it is only to get an up-close-and-personal view of the sausage-making for the first time. We still have several slots available for prosecutors to come to Austin and help craft the laws that you must enforce, so check your calendar and find a good time to come to Austin.

Quotes of the Month

“I don’t care what the narrative is out in the blogosphere after these are announced.”

New House Speaker Dennis Bonnen (R-Angleton), prior to the new House committee assignments being read on the House floor earlier this week.

“There’s a stronger control element with him than there was with Straus, and that’s not a criticism. He wants a tight operation and a strong operation.”

Bill Miller, Austin lobbyist and political consultant, comparing the new speaker’s leadership style to that of his predecessor.

“This is a warning to other Republicans, that if you stray from the lieutenant governor’s agenda, there will be a price to pay. And I always knew that, but the other Republicans do now, too.”

State Sen. Kel Seliger (R-Amarillo), on why he thinks he was given less desirable committee assignments this session.

“I could count on one hand how many times people said they have firearms. They could say ‘no’ and feel secure in the fact no one is coming to their house to look.”
—

Jerry Varney, Dallas County Asst. Criminal DA, on why that county’s practice of asking offenders banned from possessing firearms whether they have any that should be relinquished has failed to yield many positive results.

The governor and lieutenant governor were sworn in on Tuesday, and the related pre-parties and post-parties and inaugural balls (including a performance by George Strait) ensured that no one at the capitol was in much of a condition to do any real work this week. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have any news for you! Read on for the details.

Proposed budgets released

The House and Senate both released their initial proposed biennial budgets this week. These baseline budgets are a way for each chamber to signal its priorities heading into the session and they immediately become the starting point for all budget negotiations for the rest of the session.

For the general public, the big news is the various proposals for increased public education funding and property tax relief that you can read about in your local fish wrap. But there are also several items that may be of particular interest to you, which we will break down further as proposed changes shared by both bills, then those that are found only in one version:

Both House and Senate (but amounts may vary): Increased funding for the Border Prosecution Unit, judicial branch CLE education grants, Victim Assistance Grants (through OAG), CPS functions, local mental health outpatient treatment, and indigent defense; less operational funding for TDCJ and TJJD due to declining bed populations.

House only: Increased funding for a 10-percent bump in the judicial benchmark salary (from $140,000 to $154,000), construction projects at San Antonio, Kerrville, and Rusk State Hospitals, prison health care, and as-yet-unnamed school safety programs; still leaves about $3 billion unspent under constitutional spending limits.

Senate only: Increased funding for DPS and OAG to investigate and prosecute human trafficking and anti-gang activities, and for DPS to hire more crime lab analysts; still leaves roughly $7 billion unspent.

Again, these are just some examples of where the budget discussions will begin; nothing is guaranteed except (sometimes dramatic!) changes. The key thing to remember at this stage is that a spending item must be approved by at least one of the two chambers prior to the behind-closed-doors negotiations over the final budget compromise if it is to make it into that final version.

Longevity pay update

One of the major issues for prosecutors this session will be finding a healthier funding vehicle for the assistant prosecutor longevity pay program. For those following the issue, Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa (D-McAllen) has filed SB 353 as a placeholder or “shell” bill for any statutory changes that may need to be made once a solution is identified and agreed upon. (In other words, the language currently in the bill will be changed as it moves forward, so don’t worry about the details right now.) We will continue to provide you updates on this very important topic as they develop. Meanwhile, if you have questions about any of this, contact Rob.

Senate committee assignments

The lite guv released his committee assignments. To see where your favorite senator landed, click here.

We spend most of our time in the Senate dealing with bills in these committees, so read these lists to discover who your new best friends will be for the next five months:

Senate Finance: Jane Nelson (R-Flower Mound), chair; Chuy Hinojosa (D-McAllen), vice-chair; Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston), Brian Birdwell (R-Granbury), Donna Campbell (R-New Braunfels), Pete Flores (R-Pleasanton), Kelly Hancock (R-North Richland Hills), Joan Huffman (R-Houston), Lois Kolkhorst (R-Brenham), Robert Nichols (R-Jacksonville), Charles Perry (R-Lubbock), Larry Taylor (R-Friendswood), Kirk Watson (D-Austin), Royce West (D-Dallas), John Whitmire (D-Houston).

Senate Criminal Justice: John Whitmire (D-Houston), chair; Joan Huffman (R-Houston), vice-chair; Dawn Buckingham (R-Lakeway), Pete Flores (R-Pleasanton), Bryan Hughes (R-Mineola), Borris Miles (D-Houston), Charles Perry (R-Lubbock).

Senate State Affairs: Joan Huffman (R-Houston), chair; Bryan Hughes (R-Mineola), vice-chair; Brian Birdwell (R- Granbury), Brandon Creighton (R-Conroe), Pat Fallon (R-Prosper), Bob Hall (R-Canton), Eddie Lucio, Jr. (D-Brownsville), Jane Nelson (R-Flower Mound), Judith Zaffirini (D-Laredo).

New bills to watch

Here is another entry highlighting some of the recent filings of interest:

• HB 745 by Rose, amending the duties and powers of peace officers
• HB 746 by Rose, authorizing needle exchange programs in certain urban counties
• HB 753 by Wu, reducing POM < 0.35 oz (aka 10g) to a Class C misdemeanor
• HB 756 by Wu, allowing a defendant to waive jury punishment over the State’s objection
• HB 758 by Wu, expanding public access to juvenile court proceedings
• HB 887 by Thompson, limiting an officer’s right to self-defense in officer-involved shootings
• HB 903 by Lozano, revising elements of the offense of smuggling of persons
• SB 332 by West, relating to the public release of law enforcement video footage
• SB 341 by Huffman, prohibiting the appointment of non-prosecutors as attorneys pro tem
• SB 342 by Huffman, revising the elements of unlawful disclosure of intimate visual material

To read any bill, go to https://capitol.texas.gov/, enter the bill number in the appropriate field, and click “go”—then on the subsequent webpage, select the tab at the top of the page for the information (history, bill text, actions, authors, etc.) you want. And as always, you can contact Shannon or Rob if you are having trouble finding the information you seek.

Roundtable discussion on marijuana

There are numerous proposals this session dealing with the legal status of marijuana. This is not just a state issue, but a national one as well—and that national debate seems to be getting more heated as it wades into discussions of prohibition, public health, racially-disparate impacts, taxation, and corporate greed, among other topics. If you want to read a good debate between experts on various sides of this issue—and yes, there are more than just two sides—check out this recent roundtable discussion hosted by the non-profit criminal justice news outlet the Marshall Project: https://www.themarshallproject.org/2019/01/14/how-dangerous-is-marijuana-really.

Next week

Senate committees are out, so now everyone is sitting around waiting for House committee assignments to be released. Until that happens, don’t look for much action on anything in the lower chamber. (But remember, that is a feature of the system at this stage of session, not a bug.) Meanwhile, the Senate Finance Committee will start holding hearings on their budget this Tuesday, and awaaaaaaaaaaaay they go!

Legislative rotation sign-up

Please contact Shannon for details on how to get involved in the legislative process—even if it is only to get an up-close-and-personal view of the sausage-making for the first time. We still have several slots available on a first-come, first-served basis, so check your calendar and find a good time to come to Austin. Remember, the squeaky wheel gets the grease at the Capitol, so don’t be shy!

New CCP Chapters 18A and 18B

As of January 1, 2019, former Code of Criminal Procedure articles 18.20 and 18.21 have been recodified as new CCP Chapters 18A (Detection, Interception, and Use of Wire, Oral, and Electronic Communications) and 18B (Installation and Use of Tracking Equipment; Access to Communications). These non-substantive reorganizations were passed via HB 2931 (2017) and are not intended to make any substantive changes, but it is still important to make sure all your paperwork and practices comply with these newly-organized laws. Visit this page of our website for a PDF version of the new CCP chapters, along with a source and disposition chart for each chapter (which is also included as Appendix A of the new 2018 version of our Warrants Manual).

Quotes of the Month

“With the teamwork we have between the Senate and the House, this is going to be the greatest session ever in the history of Texas.”

Lt. Governor Dan Patrick (R-Houston), during his inaugural address after being sworn in this week.

“The Austin lobby, by and large, gives for influence and access, it doesn’t give due to ideological affinities. When it was clear that Dennis Bonnen would become speaker, Dennis Bonnen became one of the three most powerful politicians in Texas and therefore someone that every lobbyist — from the left to the right, from clean energy to oil and coal, from beer distributors to craft breweries — everyone wants to be on his good side.”

Mark Jones, a Rice University political scientist, on the news that the new House speaker collected almost $4 million in campaign donations in the four-week period after he announced he had secured the votes necessary to win the speaker’s race.

“The new methods [of making methamphetamine] have really altered the potency, so the meth we’re looking at today is much more potent than it was 10 years ago.”

Jane Maxwell, research professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s social work school, in an article explaining why meth is making a comeback.

“The idea that it’s going to be in this balm or that balm, I don’t know what the scientific basis for that is. … The people who are talking the loudest about CBD don’t have a scientific background. They are marketers and advertisers, and they have done a hell of a job.”

Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), on the recent proliferation of unregulated low-dose CBD-based health products.

“It saves lives. It deters people at all BAC levels from drinking. And it separates drinking from driving.”

Bella Dinh-Zarr, a member of the National Traffic Safety Board, on the benefits of lowering per se blood alcohol content (BAC) standards from 0.08 to 0.05, as Utah recently did.

“Maybe I can have more success at the legislative level to get somebody to understand that there are some real true problems [with the death penalty].”

Former Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Elsa Alcala, who recently accepted a job as public policy director for the Texas Defender Service.

New Speaker

As predicted, State Rep. Dennis Bonnen (R-Angleton) was elected by his peers to lead the House as speaker this session. Now that the formalities are over, he can finish getting his staff in place and start the all-important job of deciding who gets assigned to which committee and, even more importantly, who on those committees will wield the gavel from the middle chair. These assignments are important because the committees and their chairmen determine the fate of most legislation during a session. Committees generally must wait until the session’s 30th day to hear bills (unless the bill concerns the state budget or the topic of the bill has been designated an emergency by the governor), but the sooner the committee assignments are made, the sooner everyone else can start pestering those committee members to file their pet bills.

We don’t have any inside information on the timing of this announcement, but we’re guessing House committee assignments will come out at the end of either next week or the following week, while in the Senate (which is not under new leadership and has fewer new members), the committee assignments should come out as soon this afternoon, or if not, probably no later than the end of next week. (Why the end of the week? Good question. The answer is that dumping the news after the final adjournment for the week helps the speaker or lite guv get a head start and be far from Austin and “unavailable” when legislators who are unhappy with their assignments want to find him and complain to them about it!)

One other prediction: Right now, the House and Senate leadership and the governor are singing kumbaya and pledging their cooperation with each other, but like all new crushes, this too will end—the only question is when. To paraphrase a golden rule of bicameral politics: “The other political party is not ‘the enemy,’ they are ‘the opposition’; the other chamber is the enemy.” This rule will kick in at some point this session, but until then, expect the natural tensions to remain bottled up for a few weeks.

New rules

During the first week of a session, each chamber of the legislature must adopt the rules under which its members will operate. (Must be nice to get to set your own rules, eh?) Among the rule changes that may impact your work at the capitol are the following:

• The Senate Criminal Justice Committee will be reduced from nine to seven members, meaning shorter waits to establish quorums, shorter hearings, and fewer votes to whip if you are trying to pass or kill a bill. All in all, that is going to make your work easier in the Senate (depending on who is on the committee, of course).
• The House committees on Criminal Jurisprudence, Corrections, and Juvenile Justice were all expanded from seven to nine members, so reverse everything we just said above and apply it here. (What can we say—the Lege giveth, and the Lege taketh away!)
• The House made it harder to kill bills that have been placed on the Local and Consent Calendar (a tactic used to great effect last session by the House Freedom Caucus).
• Both chambers updated their rules to govern complaints of sexual harassment and related training obligations—but how that will work in practice remains to be seen.

New money

“Always follow the money” is a well-heeded rule of thumb at the state capitol, and this week the state comptroller released his all-important biennial revenue estimate to give lawmakers an initial target for how much general revenue money they can spend in the next two fiscal years. The good news is that Comptroller Hegar predicted there would be an extra $9 billion in general revenue for legislators to play with (plus as much as $15 billion in the hard-to-tap Rainy Day Fund); the bad news is that they have billions of dollars of outstanding debts to cover, and the comptroller’s final estimate could be lowered later in the session (usually around April) if oil prices stay low and the national economic situation remains in flux.

Overall, however, this is cautiously optimistic news for observers interested in squeezing more juice from the legislature’s lemon—say, for things like a judicial pay raise or shoring up assistant prosecutor longevity pay or creating new courts, for example. But all of that will be contingent on how much of this “new money” gets earmarked for school finance and property tax relief, the two intertwined issues that will dominate this session. It could take anywhere from $5 billion to $12 billion (every biennium, mind you) to truly “solve” those problems, so all bets are off when it comes to guessing what the final accounting will be. But the bottom line is that all things are still possible, unlike in some other sessions when a weak estimate has immediately doomed new endeavors.

New bills to watch

For the first 60 days of a session, legislators’ focus is on budget hearings and bill filings. With that in mind, here is another entry in the category we began last week highlighting some of the recent filings of interest:

• HB 629 by Landgraf, creating a statewide protective order registry
• HB 658 by Dutton, changing the age of juvenile jurisdiction to 12–17 years of age
• HB 667 by K. King, enhancing the punishment for sexual assaults involving incest
• HB 707 by Flynn, enhancing the punishment for sexual assaults involving incest (yes, this is the exact same bill as the previous one; that happens in the House sometimes)
• HB 738 by Harless, requiring conditions of bond to be entered into TCIC
• SB 315 by Hughes, adding unlawful interception to engaging in organized criminal activity
• SB 325 by Huffman, creating a statewide protective order registry (companion to HB 629 above)

To read any bill, go to https://capitol.texas.gov/, enter the bill number in the appropriate field, and click “go”—then on the subsequent webpage, select the tab at the top of the page for the information (history, bill text, actions, authors, etc.) you want. And as always, you can contact Shannon or Rob if you are having trouble finding the information you seek.

New interim reports

Committees are still releasing their final reports from the interim. The House County Affairs Committee released its report yesterday, most of which will be of more interest to your county commissioners and the civil practitioners with whom they consult. We are also still waiting for the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee to release its recommendations.

New wish lists

Now that the legislature has convened, numerous lobby and advocacy groups are papering the hallways of the capitol with their policy papers and wish lists for the session. In the criminal justice sphere, that includes these entities that released their agendas this week:

Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF)/Right on Crime (PDF copy available here)

• Prohibit “public agency association” (such as TAC, TML, and—yes—TDCAA) from receiving any public funds
• Prohibit local governments from using public funds on employees (like assistant prosecutors) who come to Austin to work on legislation
• Grand jury reforms (same as last session)
• Reform/eliminate civil asset forfeiture (same as last session)
• Revise the state’s funding formula for probation departments to incentivize treatment and early terminations of successful probationers
• “Presumptive pre-trial diversion/drug courts” for drug possession cases
• Raise the age of juvenile jurisdiction to include 17-year-olds
• Expand eligibility for orders of non-disclosure
• Expand the list of offenses eligible for cite-and-release
• Pre-trial presumption of release on personal bond for low-risk offenders (based on validated risk assessment)
• Prohibit arrest for fine-only offenses
• Increase default mens rea standard from recklessly to intentionally/knowingly
• And many more; see the full report for all the details

Texas Criminal Justice Coalition (TCJC) (PDF copy available for download here)

• Remove parole and good time information from punishment jury charges
• Retroactively grant some young violent or sex offenders early parole eligibility (aka the “Second Look” bill)
• Reduce low-level felony drug offenses to misdemeanors
• Reduce low-level marijuana possession to a Class C offense or a civil sanction
• Reduce all Class B DWLI offenses back to Class Cs
• Remove felony enhancements for prostitution sellers (“Janes”)
• Increase funding for pre-trial diversion services for state jail felony offenders
• Replace current bail bond system with county-run pre-trial services and create a presumption of release on personal bond for low-risk offenders
• Require courts to consider “parenthood status” in sentencing
• Raise the age of juvenile jurisdiction to include 17-year-olds
• Remove minimum terms of confinement for juvenile determinate sentences
• Numerous other re-entry and rehabilitation proposals (see the report for details) 

Texas Council on Family Violence (TCFV)

• Enter “no contact” conditions of bond into TCIC (as with protective orders now)
• Keep firearms out of the hands of FV offenders who cannot legally possess them
• Expand existing Property Code laws allowing lease terminations due to family violence
• Increase training on strangulation recognition and victim services
• Various funding requests 

Texas Human Trafficking Prevention Task Force

• Apply rape shield law protections to victims of human trafficking
• Allow evidence of extraneous offenses in the guilt/innocence phase of trafficking trials
• Create a new Penal Code offense for online promotion of prostitution/trafficking
• Allow stacking of continuous human trafficking cases
• Broaden the definition of “coercion” for certain trafficking offenses
• Make it easier for human trafficking victims to get orders of non-disclosure for crimes committed while being trafficked
• Increase penalties for buyers of prostitution (“Johns”); mandatory probation for a first offense by sellers (“Janes”)

Next week

The governor and lieutenant governor’s inaugurations are on Tuesday, so very little substantive work will be accomplished next week—which is as it should be, because the focus at this stage is on filing bills, not debating them. If/when committee assignments are announced, we’ll break down those assignments for you and continue to highlight certain bills or lobby group agendas as they are rolled out.

Legislative rotation sign-up

Remember, you can contact Shannon for details on how to can get involved in the legislative process—even if it is only to get an up-close-and-personal view of the sausage-making for your first time. If you know when you’d like to come to Austin, give those dates to Shannon so he can put you on our first-come, first-served calendar (it is starting to fill up!). And if not, reach out and ask him for suggestions on when a visit may best suit your goals. Remember, the squeaky wheel gets the grease at the Capitol, so don’t be shy—your legislators need to hear from you!

Quotes of the Month

“The top three things—number one, number two, and number three—is [sic] school finance and property tax reform. Those are the top three issues for me.”

New House Speaker Dennis Bonnen (R-Angleton), when asked last month what his legislative priorities would be this session. He even went so far as to stock the House members’ lounge with drinking cups that said “School finance reform: The time is now.”

“Most certainly, the numbers mean this will be a school finance session.”

Dale Craymer, president of the Texas Taxpayers & Research Association, commenting upon the comptroller’s budget projections for the next biennium.

“If you don’t do it, you’re fighting with one hand tied behind your back. You have a moral imperative to do this—to do whatever it takes.”

Matt Osborne, a political activist who recently created a “false flag” Facebook page to discredit a rival party’s Senate candidate.

“I tried to get her to come to lunch today and she gave me some lame excuse about session.”

Attorney General Ken Paxton, joking about his wife, new State Senator Angela Paxton (R-Plano).

“There’s nothing ‘easy’ about Dennis.”

Former State Rep. Patricia Harless (R-Houston), giving a tongue-in-cheek reply when asked if she would say new House Speaker Dennis Bonnen was as “easy on the eyes” as she once remarked about his predecessor.

Yes, that’s right, this is Week Zero* because Austin is already being invaded by legislative Huns even though the session doesn’t convene until Tuesday of next week. [* – Kudos to the UIL football geniuses for inventing the term.] Therefore, today we will kick off our series of weekly updates so that you can keep up with the important happenings in Austin. Our goal is to help make you the most well-informed person in your courthouse on the legislative issues that will affect our court system, so feel free to share your new-found knowledge with those who share your goals and concerns.

Mandatory training reminder

Before we dive into legislative information, we want to remind everyone of two mandatory training requirements for new prosecutors.

The first mandatory training relates to a prosecutor’s duty to disclose exculpatory and mitigating evidence, as required by Gov’t Code §41.111. Every new prosecutor—whether elected, appointed, or hired—has 180 days from the date of his or her hire/appointment/election to complete the training. Thanks to funding from the Criminal Justice Section of the State Bar and the Court of Criminal Appeals, prosecutors can complete the required training for FREE through this online portal of our website: http://tdcaa.litmos.com/online-courses. (This course also satisfies the requirement for existing prosecutors to take subsequent classes every four years; contact TDCAA if you aren’t sure when you last took the class.)

The second training requirement is for elected prosecutors and relates to the Public Information Act, as required by Gov’t Code §552.012. Every newly-elected prosecutor (or your public information officer, if you have one) must complete this course within 90 days of taking the oath of office. The AG’s Office has also created an online course that satisfies this training requirement; to complete it, visit https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/open-government/governmental-bodies/pia-and-oma-training-resources/public-information-act-training.

Important legislative dates 

If your Texas civics lessons have gotten a little fuzzy after all these years, never fear! We are here to remind you how all of this works. (Or doesn’t work, as the case may be.)

Every odd-numbered year, the Texas legislature convenes on the second Tuesday in January and meets in regular session for 140 days. For the upcoming 86^th Regular Session, the following dates might deserve a place on your 2019 calendar:

Other things that will take place the first four weeks of session include the election of the speaker of the House, the governor’s State of the State address, the chief justice’s State of the Judiciary address, the adoption of House and Senate rules, the naming of committee members, and the filing of a few thousand bills. (Don’t worry, we read them so you don’t have to!) The 60-day bill filing deadline forces the first month or two of session to focus on filing bills; the remaining 80 days are then dedicated to passing or killing them, and that is when prosecutors who are interested in supporting or opposing legislation that they did not file can have the greatest impact on the process.

Legislative rotation sign-up

This is probably a good point at which to remind you to contact Shannon for details on how you can get involved in the legislative process—even if it is only to get an up-close-and-personal view of the sausage-making for your first time. If you know when you’d like to come to Austin, give those dates to Shannon so he can get you on the calendar; if not, reach out and ask him for suggestions on when a visit may best suit your goals. Remember, the squeaky wheel gets the grease at the Capitol, so don’t be shy—your legislators need to hear from you!

Bill updates

It’s an oft-cited fact that half of all filed bills will never get a committee hearing, meaning many bills are DOF (Dead On Filing) even if no one knows it at the time. We can’t predict with certainty which bills will or won’t move, but we can make some educated guesses, so with that caveat in mind, here are ten pre-filed bills you might want to read up on while we wait for session to get started:

• HB 63 by Moody, creating civil penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana
• HB 182 by Canales, changing the burden of proof in civil asset forfeiture cases and limiting federal adoptions
• HB 184 by Canales, requiring prosecutors to provide cost/benefit information for all proposed plea bargain sentences
• HB 215 & HJR 22 by Reynolds, disqualifying local prosecutors from handling officer-involved shootings
• HB 404 by Thompson, S., repealing civil asset forfeiture
• HB 549 by Canales, authorizing either party in a criminal case to object to the appointment of a visiting judge
• SB 90 by Menendez, legalizing medical marijuana
• SB 191 by Miles, repealing the Driver Responsibility Program and replacing it with other fees
• SB 223 by Seliger, de-linking legislators’—but not DAs’—ERS retirement from the judicial benchmark salary

There are many more where these came from, but this is a sample of some of the 270 bills we are tracking to date. (And again, these are just some bills that you might want to have on your legislative radar at this early stage; what will eventually happen to them—if anything—remains to be seen.) To read up on any bill, go to https://capitol.texas.gov/, enter the bill number in the appropriate field, and click “go”—then on the subsequent webpage, select the tab at the top of the page for the information (history, bill text, actions, authors, etc.) you want. And as always, you can contact Shannon or Rob if you are having trouble finding the information you seek.

Session overview

For a preview of some of the many issues that are likely to be debated in Austin this spring, check out this report from the House Research Organization. It briefly discusses topics like bail/pre-trial release, civil asset forfeiture, grand juries, Raise the Age, state jail felonies, and drug crime penalties, and more. None of this should be news to anyone who has been reading our updates over the interim, but if you’d like to see some of the major issues in criminal justice (and other policy areas) laid out in summary form, this is a good resource.

Fun with names

If you’ve ever been frustrated by our laws’ inconsistent references to who is a “child,” a “juvenile,” or a “minor,” you are not alone. In fact, last session the Legislature asked the Office of Court Administration (OCA) to examine the extent of that problem. The result is a new report (PDF version available here) that identifies the inconsistencies but also points out the difficulties in standardizing one definition for each of those terms. As requested by the Legislature, the report also looks into various alternatives for handling youths’ non-traffic Class C offenses, including the possibility of turning all of those (tens of thousands of) criminal citations into “civil violations” as was done with truancy cases a few sessions ago. For all the details, read the report.

New felony judgment forms

As we told you last month, OCA has updated its felony judgment forms, instructions, affirmative orders, and special findings, all of which can be found at http://www.txcourts.gov/rules-forms/forms/. The revised forms became effective on January 1, 2019. If you have any questions or concerns, please call Margie Johnson, OCA Assistant General Counsel, at (512) 936-1183, or email her at [email protected].

Prosecutor Trial Skills Course registration

Registration is open for our January 2019 Prosecutor Trial Skills Course in Austin. From plea-bargaining to closing argument, this training will cover the tips and tools necessary to see that justice is done, both for new prosecutors and those just looking for a refresher. For more information on dates, the location, and the agenda, or to register, please click here.

Quotes of the Month

“There aren’t enough forensic scientists. There aren’t enough lab techs that are trained to do this.”

State Rep. Victoria Neave (D-Dallas), explaining why most of the state’s crowd-sourced funding for analyzing backlogged rape kits has not yet been spent.

“They said they need real-world examples, but I don’t want to be their real-world mistake.”

Erik Polka, a Chandler (AZ) business owner who has been cited by police for repeatedly harassing experimental self-driving vehicles operating in that town after one of them struck his son.

“I tried to get ahead of the perceived problems, and in this case, we’re certainly not taking away any tools in the toolbox and not taking away any of [law enforcement’s] authority. We’re just sanctioning small possessions in a different way. I think it’s a practical thing for me, the court system, the community and taxpayers.”

State Rep. Joe Moody (D-El Paso), describing his bill (HB 63) to “sanction” possession of small amounts of marijuana as civil, rather than criminal, cases.

“The way to open the door to legalization is through medical marijuana. Our state leaders are very aware of where we have stood for years on marijuana use and the legalization of marijuana—which we think is the end game on all of these processes that are taking place.”

Jackson County Sheriff Andy Louderback, legislative director for the Sheriffs Association of Texas, on upcoming efforts to legalize all forms of medical marijuana in Texas.

“I enjoyed driving my ‘98 Jeep Wrangler with a lift, Flowmaster, and six floodlights over to the White House when President Bush was president and I was able to park it on the driveway—not in the back, in the front. President Bush didn’t seem to mind. Although before I left, I did leave a little Texas oil on the driveway of the White House.”

Retiring Congressman Ted Poe (R-TX), a former Harris County prosecutor and judge, on his favorite memory from his stint in Congress. [For this source and related comments, read this compilation of comments from retiring members of Texas’ congressional delegation.]

“Judgements are made before you get to know someone, and reaching across the aisle is something you don’t see much of anymore.”

Retiring Congressman Sam Johnson (R-TX), in that same article.

“[T]here is really no better good-bye than the words of Davy Crockett when he left Congress, when he said, affectionately: ‘You may all go to hell, I am going to Texas.’”

Congressman Poe, in his farewell address to his fellow House members.