TJP Advances Important Reforms in the Texas Legislature
The Justice Project has been working hard to advance much-needed criminal justice reforms in the current session of the Texas Legislature. The legislative session began in January and wraps up on June 1. Below is a brief update on some of TJP’s key legislative initiatives.
On April 16th, two important bills passed the Texas Senate that will enhance the quality of evidence relied upon in criminal cases and reduce the risk of wrongful convictions. SB 117, by Senator Rodney Ellis, requires every police agency in the state to adopt and implement detailed written procedures for the conduct of photo and live lineups based on scientific research and which address key strategies for reducing error. In November 2008, TJP released a new report, Eyewitness Identification Procedures in Texas, which documented the lack of written policies in the vast majority of jurisdictions, and found that those that had policies rarely included key best practices for reducing the risk of error.
The second bill to pass the Senate on April 16th was SB 1681, which requires the testimony of in-custody informants, often referred to as “jailhouse snitches” to be corroborated. As detailed in our policy review on in-custody informant testimony, this form of evidence is dangerously unreliable, and has played a role in many documented wrongful convictions. This legislation would prevent convictions that depend on such testimony without independent corroboration of the defendant’s guilt.
On April 22nd, the Texas Senate passed SB 116, which says that, when practical, police should electronically record custodial interrogations in their entirety from the Miranda warnings forward. The bill also directs the Department of Public Safety to set up a grant program to assist local jurisdictions in purchasing recording equipment. A different version of the bill, HB 4090, is pending in the House and would require police to record the interrogation, and provide a cautionary instruction to the jury if the interrogation was not recorded and no reasonable exception applies.
The House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee has advanced HB 498 creating an Innocence Commission to study wrongful convictions and recommend reforms to prevent future mistakes. The bill is currently awaiting action on the House floor.
On April 9th, the Texas Senate passed an important bill creating a public defender office to handle new state post-conviction appeals for death penalty cases. SB 1091 fixes a deeply flawed system under which many unqualified attorneys were repeatedly appointed for this critical phase of capital appeals, in some cases filing appeals that reflected little understanding of this complex area of law. An October 2006 investigative series by the Austin American-Statesman detailed numerous examples of grossly incompetent work by appointed attorneys in these appeals. The bill implements recommendations of a Texas State Bar Task Force to respond to the crisis of incompetent representation when lives are literally on the line. The pending legislation provides oversight and accountability for the attorneys who do this work by creating a dedicated public defender office staffed with specialists and support personnel to replace the system of appointed attorneys for state habeas corpus appeals in capital cases.
The House Public Safety Committee has advanced HB 4143 to the floor expanding the authority of the Texas Forensic Science Commission to develop and implement a DNA lab audit program, to include unannounced inspections, review of records and protocol, and some retesting. This legislation builds on the existing oversight structure, which is focused on investigating complaints of negligence or misconduct, to a proactive role in assuring quality standards in the state’s forensic labs. Companion legislation in the Senate is pending in the Criminal Justice Committee as of April 23rd.
A number of bills are advancing that address the needs of exonerees after their release, including compensation, expunction of criminal records, and reintegration services. Other notable legislation include a bill making certain kinds of prosecutorial misconduct punishable as a state jail felony (HB 3351), which is still awaiting a hearing, and a comprehensive discovery bill (HB 301) which has cleared committee and is awaiting action on the House floor.
The next few weeks will be critical times for these important reform bills as the crush of business will surely begin to overwhelm the remaining days on the calendar. Because the Texas Legislature convenes for only five months every two years, TJP will continue to push these and other critical issues to the fore, to ensure that Texas responds to the many injustices that have been uncovered.
