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Steve Hall
May 16, 2013, 10:58:19 AM5/16/13
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Austin American-Statesman - Morton Act a victory for justice
Dallas Morning News - Legislative progress report
Fort Worth Star-Telegram - Texas Senate must move quickly to pass exoneration bill
Blog post from:
DMN Views blog - Drama in committee hearing — Sen. Joan Huffman chewed out by witnesses on exoneree bill
Cmte Archived Video Link
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http://www.mystatesman.com/news/news/opinion/michael-morton-act-improves-justice/nXr4Y/?icmp=statesman_internallink_textlink_apr2013_statesmanstubtomystatesman_launch
Thursday, May 16, 2013 | Austin American-Statesman Editorial
Morton Act a victory for justice
By Editorial Board
All that remains to be done to make the Michael Morton Act state law is for Gov. Rick Perry to do the expected and sign it. This necessary legislation, which once appeared doomed in the Texas Senate before winning unanimous approval there and, on Tuesday, in the Texas House, brings statewide consistency to criminal cases by requiring prosecutors to share information with defense lawyers.
When the governor puts his signature on this important act, a statewide “open file” policy will be created. Such a policy should help prevent the kind of wrongful conviction that sent Morton to prison for almost 25 years for the murder of his wife, Christine.
Former Williamson County District Attorney Ken Anderson was arrested in April after a special court found he hid potentially exculpatory evidence to secure Morton’s conviction. Anderson potentially faces a criminal trial for allegedly failing to share information that pointed to Morton’s innocence.
DNA testing connected Mark Alan Norwood to Christine Morton’s 1986 murder. A jury in San Angelo convicted Norwood in March of killing Morton and sentenced him to life in prison. Norwood also has been charged with the 1988 beating death of Debra Baker in her Austin home.
The Michael Morton Act, which was co-authored by Democratic state Sen. Rodney Ellis of Houston and Republican state Sen. Robert Duncan of Lubbock, almost didn’t make it out of the Senate. District attorneys had expressed concern that the bill put at risk the safety of witnesses and victims, prompting Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst to push a reasonable compromise that allows prosecutors to delete identifying information from their files before turning them over to defense lawyers.
A related bill giving exonerated Texans four years from the date of their release from prison to pursue allegations that a prosecutor hid evidence also has been sent to the governor for him to sign. Under current law, the four-year statute of limitations begins at the time a violation occurs, a preposterous provision that makes it all but impossible to hold prosecutors accountable.
Anderson, now a state district judge, denies he withheld favorable evidence before and during Morton’s 1987 trial. His attorneys argue that he is protected from prosecution by the statute of limitations. The legislation resetting the statute of limitations, authored by state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, is not retroactive and won’t apply to Anderson once Perry signs it into law, which he is expected to do.
Additional measures addressing the problem of wrongful convictions await legislative action. The Senate Criminal Justice Committee held a hearing Tuesday on a proposal sponsored by Ellis and Democratic state Rep. Ruth Jones McClendon of San Antonio to create a nine-member Timothy Cole Exoneration Review Commission to investigate wrongful convictions. Cole was the Lubbock man who died in prison in 1999 while serving a 25-year sentence for rape. He was posthumously cleared by DNA evidence and pardoned by Perry.
McClendon’s bill passed the House in April on a strong 115-28 bipartisan vote, but Ellis told the Associated Press on Tuesday that the measure, strongly opposed by prosecutors, doesn’t have enough votes yet to pass the 31-member Senate.
Texas has recorded 125 wrongful convictions since 1989, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. As though we needed another example of prosecutors forgetting that justice is not synonymous with winning a guilty verdict, two weeks ago the state officially dismissed its murder case against Randolph Arledge, who had been convicted in 1984 of killing Carol Armstrong near Corsicana.
Prosecutors relied on the false testimony of a jailhouse cellmate to win Arledge’s conviction while downplaying testimony that signaled Arledge’s innocence. Arledge sat in prison for 29 years until DNA testing finally cleared him of Armstrong’s murder and led to his release in February.
Wrongful convictions undermine criminal justice. This session, legislators have taken significant and positive steps to try to reduce the number of wrongful convictions in the future and ensure that verdicts will be delivered against the guilty while the innocent walk free.
/ / / / /
http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/20130515-editorial-legislative-progress-report.ece
16 May 2013 | Dallas Morning News Editorial | Excerpt
Legislative progress report
Haven’t we done enough?
The implied question hung like a stink bomb over what should have been a satisfying day of landmark reform of criminal justice in Texas.
Just a few hours earlier on Tuesday, the Texas House gave final legislative OK to breakthrough legislation, the Michael Morton Act, to clarify and broaden a defendant’s access to evidence that could prove innocence. Passage of the bill, SB 1611, comes the week of the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Brady vs. Maryland, which established access to exculpatory evidence as a constitutional right.
It was inspiring to see the Texas House rally to that founding principle and pass SB 1611 unanimously, 146-0, and send it to the governor.
Then came the sour note from Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, as she chaired a Senate hearing on HB 166 to study cases of proven exoneration, like Morton’s. The goal is to apply lessons learned after analyzing cases of government overreach that robbed people of their freedom.
But Huffman lectured the committee — and a group of exonerees waiting to testify — that the state of Texas has done just fine by victims of wrongful conviction and has compiled an impressive list of reforms in recent years. Her recitation was as boneheaded as it was insulting to people who had lost decades of their lives because of slipshod work, backward practices or ethical lapses by cops and prosecutors.
Learning from breakdowns in justice should be an ongoing process. The state has adopted some new safeguards, but there is little track record.
It’s inconceivable that Huffman is so easily satisfied where the liberties of others are at stake.
Taking their turn at the microphone, frustrated exonerees who had spent time in Texas prisons gave Huffman a lecture in response. Setting the tone was an angry and upset Cory Session, brother of posthumous exoneree Timothy Cole. Session lost his cool, and who could blame him?
“That’s your job to figure out what went wrong in this state,” Session told Huffman. “It’s your job. You don’t like it? Go find another.”
Amen.
. . .
/ / / / /
http://www.star-telegram.com/2013/05/15/4858194/texas-senate-must-move-quickly.html
Thursday, May 16, 2013 | Fort Worth Star-Telegram Editorial
Texas Senate must move quickly to pass exoneration bill
There is a stain on the Texas criminal justice system that no spot remover can erase.
But Texas’ indelible shame of having sent too many innocent people to prison should not keep lawmakers, law enforcement officials, judges and prosecutors from working to improve the procedures whose flaws have led to serious mistakes.
With 117 exonerations, Texas leads the nation in erroneous convictions. Since 1994, there have been 49 exonerations based on DNA testing; 41 of those occurred in the last 12 years.
To its credit, the Legislature in the last few sessions has passed legislation aimed at reducing the chances of convicting innocent people, including strengthening the reliability of eyewitness identification such as through photo lineups.
This week, the state House passed the Michael Morton Act on a vote of 146-0. Named for a man who was wrongly convicted of murder in Williamson County after a district attorney withheld important evidence, the bill requires prosecutors to have an “open file” policy of sharing information with defense attorneys.
Ken Anderson, the district attorney in the Morton case, is now a state district judge. During a court of inquiry in April, Anderson was charged with tampering with physical evidence, tampering with government records and failing to comply with a judge’s order in the case.
The Morton case and many others in which the system failed make it extremely important that another pending bill is not allowed to die in the Senate.
HB166, which passed the House with strong bipartisan support, would create the Timothy Cole Exoneration Review Commission, a nine-member body that would examine all Texas cases in which a conviction was erased through exoneration.
The panel is named for a Fort Worth man who died in prison before his innocence was proven. Timothy Cole became the first person in the state to be exonerated posthumously.
The commission’s role would be to “identify errors and defects” in the criminal justice process and point out “ethical violations or misconduct by attorneys or judges.”
The Texas District and County Attorneys Association opposes HB166. The bill got hung up in a contentious meeting of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee Tuesday when there was a heated exchange between Cory Session (Cole’s brother) and Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Southside Place, who was acting chair in Sen. John Whitmire’s absence.
Although senate sponsor Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, had watered down the bill to win approval in the upper chamber — removing the commission’s subpoena power, for one — Huffman made it clear that she was against the legislation, saying it wasn’t needed because of all the “significant reforms” the Legislature has made in the criminal justice system.
Session stormed out of the hearing, uttering an expletive in reference to Huffman as he left.
He told the Star-Telegram Editorial Board on Wednesday that he regretted the situation escalated to that point but that he did not apologize for it.
The legislation is needed, he said, to uncover defects in the criminal justice system and make recommendations for improving it. Session noted that two of the state’s most powerful judges support it: Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson and Sharon Keller, presiding judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
Session said prosecutors are against it because “they’re afraid they’ll find another Ken Anderson.”
It would be the commission’s job to report any findings of prosecutorial, judicial or police misconduct.
Let there be an examination of each exoneration case, dissected from arrest through conviction, and let the public know what’s discovered. What could be the harm in that, especially if it helps refine the overall system and prevents other wrongful convictions?
But time is running out. The Senate needs to get this out of committee, passed on the floor and reconciled with the House, all in about a week’s time. It can, and must, be done.
/ / / / /
http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/2013/05/sen-joan-huffman-chewed-out-by-witness-on-exoneree-bill.html/
May 14, 2013 @ 5:40 pm | Dallas Morning News Views blog
Drama in committee hearing — Sen. Joan Huffman chewed out by witnesses on exoneree bill
By Rodger Jones | Editorial Writer | rmj...@dallasnews.com
Sen. Joan Huffman was chewed out today by witnesses at a Senate hearing after she hit a nerve about whether the state is doing enough to fight wrongful convictions.
One of the witnesses was Cory Session, brother of Timothy Cole, the state’s only posthumous exoneree, who raised his voice at her and said he was “pissed off” and “sickened” at her opposition to a bill (HB 166) to establish a wrongful convictions panel.
Huffman was chairing the Senate Committee on Criminal Justice at the time, and she flat out dumped on the bill as unnecessary. Angered and agitated, Session ended his testimony by telling Huffman she needed to get another job, and he stormed off.
The emotion boiled over after a long recitation by Huffman, R-Houston, in which she listed the various justice reforms that the Legislature has passed over the past 12 years, essentially saying enough is enough. It was a tedious beatdown. Huffman may have thought supporters of the bill would be impressed and mollified, but some of them obviously were insulted by her tactic.
Huffman, a former judge, was addressing bill sponsor Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, who is carrying the House-passed bill in the Senate. The bill would create a panel to study wrongful convictions and recommend improvements in the justice system.
Next came the witnesses. Four exonerees and Session walked to the witness table, and Session went first. He reached a boil fast. His testimony:
SESSION: The eyes of Texas have been closed on criminal justice reform. My brother’s eyes are permanently closed – permanently. He’s six feet under. He ain’t ever coming out. And to hear the attitude that you have, to me is deplorable.
Don’t box yourself in to refusing to invite change. I witnessed my mother nearly have a nervous breakdown when a closed-minded prosecutor, who had an attitude like yours …
HUFFMAN: Sir, let’s not get personal
SESSION: … put her son in jail. Let me finish, let me finish, stop — and let me finish.
HUFFMAN: Of course, sir
SESSION: This is not Harris County, and I heard you say Harris County is not in favor. Well, I can tell you the Tarrant County prosecutor is in favor, the Dallas County prosecutor is in favor, and so many other county prosecutors are in favor.
I am sickened. You might as well disband this committee. That’s your job to figure out what went wrong in this state. It’s your job. You don’t like it? Go find another. I’m sorry. I am just pissed off to hear that kind of attitude. It’s deplorable. It’s despicable. …
We’re trying to make it right for a lot of people, the incarcerated innocent, the nameless. They don’t have a voice. They need a voice. And you got the highest sitting judges in this state, Wallace Jefferson and Sharon Keller, saying “Yes, it’s time.” It’s time. Time is running out. You’ve got to do something. …
I’m sick of this state screwing people, screwing all of these gentlemen. I’m tired of it. I AM TIRED OF IT!
HUFFMAN: Yes, sir
SESSION: Keep your mind closed, if you will, but, damn it, you need another job. [Gets up and walks off]
HUFFMAN: Thank you, sir.
The next witness was Billy Smith of Dallas, who also gave Huffman a lecture, with volume.
“It’s been 27 years now, and I still don’t how and why I was convicted of a crime I did not commit,” he said. “I want an answer.”
After more exoneree and expert witnesses, Sen. John Whitmire later re-took the chair, and he tried to get critical prosecutor witnesses to move toward a spirit of compromise on this bill.
“I can’t imagine all these well-intentioned people on both sides can’t find language they can live with,” Whitmire said.
The bill was left pending. Whitmire left the impression he thinks it could have trouble in the Senate. That’s a switch from years previous, when the House put up the law-and-order front and reflexively gave justice reform a hard time.
Ellis observed that the tea party freshmen in the House have changed things over there, since the justice system is essentially a government program with all the glaring imperfections that brings with it.
- - - - -
You can view the action in the Senate Criminal Justice Cmte in Real Player at:
http://www.senate.state.tx.us/75r/senate/commit/c590/c590.htm
Rep. Rodney Ellis begins testimony on HB 166 at about 2:33 into the hearing. You can slide the bar at the bottom of the screen to fast forward to that point.
/ / / / /
Steve Hall
The StandDown Texas Project
PO Box 13475
Austin, TX 78711
512.879.1675 (o
512.627.3011 (m
shall78711 (Skype
sh...@standdown.org
www.StandDown.org
Austin American-Statesman - Morton Act a victory for justice
Dallas Morning News - Legislative progress report
Fort Worth Star-Telegram - Texas Senate must move quickly to pass exoneration bill
Blog post from:
DMN Views blog - Drama in committee hearing — Sen. Joan Huffman chewed out by witnesses on exoneree bill
Cmte Archived Video Link
- - - - -
http://www.mystatesman.com/news/news/opinion/michael-morton-act-improves-justice/nXr4Y/?icmp=statesman_internallink_textlink_apr2013_statesmanstubtomystatesman_launch
Thursday, May 16, 2013 | Austin American-Statesman Editorial
Morton Act a victory for justice
By Editorial Board
All that remains to be done to make the Michael Morton Act state law is for Gov. Rick Perry to do the expected and sign it. This necessary legislation, which once appeared doomed in the Texas Senate before winning unanimous approval there and, on Tuesday, in the Texas House, brings statewide consistency to criminal cases by requiring prosecutors to share information with defense lawyers.
When the governor puts his signature on this important act, a statewide “open file” policy will be created. Such a policy should help prevent the kind of wrongful conviction that sent Morton to prison for almost 25 years for the murder of his wife, Christine.
Former Williamson County District Attorney Ken Anderson was arrested in April after a special court found he hid potentially exculpatory evidence to secure Morton’s conviction. Anderson potentially faces a criminal trial for allegedly failing to share information that pointed to Morton’s innocence.
DNA testing connected Mark Alan Norwood to Christine Morton’s 1986 murder. A jury in San Angelo convicted Norwood in March of killing Morton and sentenced him to life in prison. Norwood also has been charged with the 1988 beating death of Debra Baker in her Austin home.
The Michael Morton Act, which was co-authored by Democratic state Sen. Rodney Ellis of Houston and Republican state Sen. Robert Duncan of Lubbock, almost didn’t make it out of the Senate. District attorneys had expressed concern that the bill put at risk the safety of witnesses and victims, prompting Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst to push a reasonable compromise that allows prosecutors to delete identifying information from their files before turning them over to defense lawyers.
A related bill giving exonerated Texans four years from the date of their release from prison to pursue allegations that a prosecutor hid evidence also has been sent to the governor for him to sign. Under current law, the four-year statute of limitations begins at the time a violation occurs, a preposterous provision that makes it all but impossible to hold prosecutors accountable.
Anderson, now a state district judge, denies he withheld favorable evidence before and during Morton’s 1987 trial. His attorneys argue that he is protected from prosecution by the statute of limitations. The legislation resetting the statute of limitations, authored by state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, is not retroactive and won’t apply to Anderson once Perry signs it into law, which he is expected to do.
Additional measures addressing the problem of wrongful convictions await legislative action. The Senate Criminal Justice Committee held a hearing Tuesday on a proposal sponsored by Ellis and Democratic state Rep. Ruth Jones McClendon of San Antonio to create a nine-member Timothy Cole Exoneration Review Commission to investigate wrongful convictions. Cole was the Lubbock man who died in prison in 1999 while serving a 25-year sentence for rape. He was posthumously cleared by DNA evidence and pardoned by Perry.
McClendon’s bill passed the House in April on a strong 115-28 bipartisan vote, but Ellis told the Associated Press on Tuesday that the measure, strongly opposed by prosecutors, doesn’t have enough votes yet to pass the 31-member Senate.
Texas has recorded 125 wrongful convictions since 1989, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. As though we needed another example of prosecutors forgetting that justice is not synonymous with winning a guilty verdict, two weeks ago the state officially dismissed its murder case against Randolph Arledge, who had been convicted in 1984 of killing Carol Armstrong near Corsicana.
Prosecutors relied on the false testimony of a jailhouse cellmate to win Arledge’s conviction while downplaying testimony that signaled Arledge’s innocence. Arledge sat in prison for 29 years until DNA testing finally cleared him of Armstrong’s murder and led to his release in February.
Wrongful convictions undermine criminal justice. This session, legislators have taken significant and positive steps to try to reduce the number of wrongful convictions in the future and ensure that verdicts will be delivered against the guilty while the innocent walk free.
/ / / / /
http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/20130515-editorial-legislative-progress-report.ece
16 May 2013 | Dallas Morning News Editorial | Excerpt
Legislative progress report
Haven’t we done enough?
The implied question hung like a stink bomb over what should have been a satisfying day of landmark reform of criminal justice in Texas.
Just a few hours earlier on Tuesday, the Texas House gave final legislative OK to breakthrough legislation, the Michael Morton Act, to clarify and broaden a defendant’s access to evidence that could prove innocence. Passage of the bill, SB 1611, comes the week of the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Brady vs. Maryland, which established access to exculpatory evidence as a constitutional right.
It was inspiring to see the Texas House rally to that founding principle and pass SB 1611 unanimously, 146-0, and send it to the governor.
Then came the sour note from Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, as she chaired a Senate hearing on HB 166 to study cases of proven exoneration, like Morton’s. The goal is to apply lessons learned after analyzing cases of government overreach that robbed people of their freedom.
But Huffman lectured the committee — and a group of exonerees waiting to testify — that the state of Texas has done just fine by victims of wrongful conviction and has compiled an impressive list of reforms in recent years. Her recitation was as boneheaded as it was insulting to people who had lost decades of their lives because of slipshod work, backward practices or ethical lapses by cops and prosecutors.
Learning from breakdowns in justice should be an ongoing process. The state has adopted some new safeguards, but there is little track record.
It’s inconceivable that Huffman is so easily satisfied where the liberties of others are at stake.
Taking their turn at the microphone, frustrated exonerees who had spent time in Texas prisons gave Huffman a lecture in response. Setting the tone was an angry and upset Cory Session, brother of posthumous exoneree Timothy Cole. Session lost his cool, and who could blame him?
“That’s your job to figure out what went wrong in this state,” Session told Huffman. “It’s your job. You don’t like it? Go find another.”
Amen.
. . .
/ / / / /
http://www.star-telegram.com/2013/05/15/4858194/texas-senate-must-move-quickly.html
Thursday, May 16, 2013 | Fort Worth Star-Telegram Editorial
Texas Senate must move quickly to pass exoneration bill
There is a stain on the Texas criminal justice system that no spot remover can erase.
But Texas’ indelible shame of having sent too many innocent people to prison should not keep lawmakers, law enforcement officials, judges and prosecutors from working to improve the procedures whose flaws have led to serious mistakes.
With 117 exonerations, Texas leads the nation in erroneous convictions. Since 1994, there have been 49 exonerations based on DNA testing; 41 of those occurred in the last 12 years.
To its credit, the Legislature in the last few sessions has passed legislation aimed at reducing the chances of convicting innocent people, including strengthening the reliability of eyewitness identification such as through photo lineups.
This week, the state House passed the Michael Morton Act on a vote of 146-0. Named for a man who was wrongly convicted of murder in Williamson County after a district attorney withheld important evidence, the bill requires prosecutors to have an “open file” policy of sharing information with defense attorneys.
Ken Anderson, the district attorney in the Morton case, is now a state district judge. During a court of inquiry in April, Anderson was charged with tampering with physical evidence, tampering with government records and failing to comply with a judge’s order in the case.
The Morton case and many others in which the system failed make it extremely important that another pending bill is not allowed to die in the Senate.
HB166, which passed the House with strong bipartisan support, would create the Timothy Cole Exoneration Review Commission, a nine-member body that would examine all Texas cases in which a conviction was erased through exoneration.
The panel is named for a Fort Worth man who died in prison before his innocence was proven. Timothy Cole became the first person in the state to be exonerated posthumously.
The commission’s role would be to “identify errors and defects” in the criminal justice process and point out “ethical violations or misconduct by attorneys or judges.”
The Texas District and County Attorneys Association opposes HB166. The bill got hung up in a contentious meeting of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee Tuesday when there was a heated exchange between Cory Session (Cole’s brother) and Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Southside Place, who was acting chair in Sen. John Whitmire’s absence.
Although senate sponsor Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, had watered down the bill to win approval in the upper chamber — removing the commission’s subpoena power, for one — Huffman made it clear that she was against the legislation, saying it wasn’t needed because of all the “significant reforms” the Legislature has made in the criminal justice system.
Session stormed out of the hearing, uttering an expletive in reference to Huffman as he left.
He told the Star-Telegram Editorial Board on Wednesday that he regretted the situation escalated to that point but that he did not apologize for it.
The legislation is needed, he said, to uncover defects in the criminal justice system and make recommendations for improving it. Session noted that two of the state’s most powerful judges support it: Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson and Sharon Keller, presiding judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
Session said prosecutors are against it because “they’re afraid they’ll find another Ken Anderson.”
It would be the commission’s job to report any findings of prosecutorial, judicial or police misconduct.
Let there be an examination of each exoneration case, dissected from arrest through conviction, and let the public know what’s discovered. What could be the harm in that, especially if it helps refine the overall system and prevents other wrongful convictions?
But time is running out. The Senate needs to get this out of committee, passed on the floor and reconciled with the House, all in about a week’s time. It can, and must, be done.
/ / / / /
http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/2013/05/sen-joan-huffman-chewed-out-by-witness-on-exoneree-bill.html/
May 14, 2013 @ 5:40 pm | Dallas Morning News Views blog
Drama in committee hearing — Sen. Joan Huffman chewed out by witnesses on exoneree bill
By Rodger Jones | Editorial Writer | rmj...@dallasnews.com
Sen. Joan Huffman was chewed out today by witnesses at a Senate hearing after she hit a nerve about whether the state is doing enough to fight wrongful convictions.
One of the witnesses was Cory Session, brother of Timothy Cole, the state’s only posthumous exoneree, who raised his voice at her and said he was “pissed off” and “sickened” at her opposition to a bill (HB 166) to establish a wrongful convictions panel.
Huffman was chairing the Senate Committee on Criminal Justice at the time, and she flat out dumped on the bill as unnecessary. Angered and agitated, Session ended his testimony by telling Huffman she needed to get another job, and he stormed off.
The emotion boiled over after a long recitation by Huffman, R-Houston, in which she listed the various justice reforms that the Legislature has passed over the past 12 years, essentially saying enough is enough. It was a tedious beatdown. Huffman may have thought supporters of the bill would be impressed and mollified, but some of them obviously were insulted by her tactic.
Huffman, a former judge, was addressing bill sponsor Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, who is carrying the House-passed bill in the Senate. The bill would create a panel to study wrongful convictions and recommend improvements in the justice system.
Next came the witnesses. Four exonerees and Session walked to the witness table, and Session went first. He reached a boil fast. His testimony:
SESSION: The eyes of Texas have been closed on criminal justice reform. My brother’s eyes are permanently closed – permanently. He’s six feet under. He ain’t ever coming out. And to hear the attitude that you have, to me is deplorable.
Don’t box yourself in to refusing to invite change. I witnessed my mother nearly have a nervous breakdown when a closed-minded prosecutor, who had an attitude like yours …
HUFFMAN: Sir, let’s not get personal
SESSION: … put her son in jail. Let me finish, let me finish, stop — and let me finish.
HUFFMAN: Of course, sir
SESSION: This is not Harris County, and I heard you say Harris County is not in favor. Well, I can tell you the Tarrant County prosecutor is in favor, the Dallas County prosecutor is in favor, and so many other county prosecutors are in favor.
I am sickened. You might as well disband this committee. That’s your job to figure out what went wrong in this state. It’s your job. You don’t like it? Go find another. I’m sorry. I am just pissed off to hear that kind of attitude. It’s deplorable. It’s despicable. …
We’re trying to make it right for a lot of people, the incarcerated innocent, the nameless. They don’t have a voice. They need a voice. And you got the highest sitting judges in this state, Wallace Jefferson and Sharon Keller, saying “Yes, it’s time.” It’s time. Time is running out. You’ve got to do something. …
I’m sick of this state screwing people, screwing all of these gentlemen. I’m tired of it. I AM TIRED OF IT!
HUFFMAN: Yes, sir
SESSION: Keep your mind closed, if you will, but, damn it, you need another job. [Gets up and walks off]
HUFFMAN: Thank you, sir.
The next witness was Billy Smith of Dallas, who also gave Huffman a lecture, with volume.
“It’s been 27 years now, and I still don’t how and why I was convicted of a crime I did not commit,” he said. “I want an answer.”
After more exoneree and expert witnesses, Sen. John Whitmire later re-took the chair, and he tried to get critical prosecutor witnesses to move toward a spirit of compromise on this bill.
“I can’t imagine all these well-intentioned people on both sides can’t find language they can live with,” Whitmire said.
The bill was left pending. Whitmire left the impression he thinks it could have trouble in the Senate. That’s a switch from years previous, when the House put up the law-and-order front and reflexively gave justice reform a hard time.
Ellis observed that the tea party freshmen in the House have changed things over there, since the justice system is essentially a government program with all the glaring imperfections that brings with it.
- - - - -
You can view the action in the Senate Criminal Justice Cmte in Real Player at:
http://www.senate.state.tx.us/75r/senate/commit/c590/c590.htm
Rep. Rodney Ellis begins testimony on HB 166 at about 2:33 into the hearing. You can slide the bar at the bottom of the screen to fast forward to that point.
/ / / / /
Steve Hall
The StandDown Texas Project
PO Box 13475
Austin, TX 78711
512.879.1675 (o
512.627.3011 (m
shall78711 (Skype
sh...@standdown.org
www.StandDown.org
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