Problems on the Forty Acres

36 points and 576 yards against Oklahoma State.

48 points and 460 yards against West Virginia.

63 points and 677 yards against Oklahoma.

50 points and 607 yards against Baylor.

That's what the Texas defense has given up the last four weeks. Somehow the Longhorns came out of it with two wins (one aided by what looked to be a bad call).

At its core, defense in football is very simple. You contain the ball carrier. You hit the ball carrier. You wrap your arms around the ball carrier. You take the ball carrier to the ground. Forget about schemes and blitz packages and nickels and dimes and every other variant of defense that's out there. It all starts and ends with tackling.

Phil Steele, the college football guru, had the Texas defense ranked high at the beginning of the season. According to Mr. Steele, the UT defensive line was ranked 4th. Their linebacker corps was ranked 20th. The defensive backfield came in as his number 1 ranked unit.

How wrong could one person be.

The Texas defense, and I'm not certain defense is the right word, has been downright horrible this season. Not one game has passed without someone gashing the Texas defense for a long touchdown run - well, except for New Mexico (but their main goal seemed to be to keep Texas under 100 points).

Mack Brown brought in Manny Diaz from Mississippi State two years ago to replace Will Muschamp who took the head coaching gig at Florida. Mr. Diaz was supposed to be the next big thing among defensive coordinators. Lots of pressure and exotic blitz packages were supposed to take Texas to the tops of the polls. Not quite.

The Longhorns lost a number of defensive starters this past season - but, as Texas fans know, the Longhorns just go out and reload every year. The saying is that Texas doesn't recruit, Texas picks who it wants. The recruiting classes under Mack Brown have been in the top 5 nationally most years.

And that raises an important question. Are the recruiting classes not as good as we've been led to believe, or do they just not receive the coaching they need to succeed? Judging by the missed tackles I'm seeing week in and week out, I have a feeling that it's the latter. And, if it is the latter, then Mr. Diaz is the one holding the bag.

But even though the  Longhorns gave up more points on Saturday than they did in either of those shootouts, Diaz said he's take the outcome anyway. 

"There are a lot of things we need to fix," Diaz said. "But there are a lot of things that are encouraging."

Those comments from Manny Diaz were taken from an article in the Houston Chronicle (the mobile edition) that has since been edited. Those comments tell you all you need to know about Mr. Diaz and the reason he should not be working at the defensive coordinator at the University of Texas. There was nothing encouraging about what the defense did on Saturday night.

If Mr. Diaz had any self respect he'd hand Mack Brown his resignation letter first thing Monday morning so the Longhorn Nation can put this nightmare behind it. I don't care how aggressive his defenses are supposed to be. I don't care how often they come on crazy blitz packages. I want to see them tackle people and keep them out of the end zone.

Please, Mack, fire Manny Diaz now.

A couple of Saturday morning thoughts

Remembering George McGovern

George McGovern, the Democratic nominee foe the Presidency in 1972, who ran on an anti-war platform is near death. One can only wonder how much better a place this world would have been had he won the White House instead of Richard Nixon.

On Friday, Democracy Now! ran excerpts from Steve Vittoria's documentary One Bright Shining Moment: The Forgotten Summer of George McGovern. And, to honor the memory of Sen. McGovern, here it is...



Rest in peace, Senator.

Big Tex burns

Yesterday Big Tex, the iconic 60-foot cowboy at the State Fair of Texas burned. All that was left was the metal frame.

I happen to think it was an act of self-immolation because Tex couldn't take any more of the incompetence that is Manny Diaz running the defense (or what passes off as the defense) for the University of Texas. It would have seemed a bit more appropriate had the fire occurred last Saturday as the boys in orange trudged off the field after being humiliated by that band of dirt thieves and traitors from north of the Red River.

Update: High Court halts execution

He was convicted of killing a police man. He was scheduled to be strapped down to a gurney. He was going to have an IV containing a lethal dose of pentobarbital put into his arm.

Who was going to stop it? He was a cop killer, for chrissakes.

It didn't matter that his trial attorney failed to investigate the case adequately. It didn't matter that his trial attorney viewed the punishment phase of the trial as an afterthought.

But it did matter. So said the Nine Wearing Robes up in Washington. They were far enough from the emotion. They were far enough removed to consider the process by which a man was condemned to death. And they weren't impressed.

Less than three hours before the State of Texas was set to murder Anthony Haynes, the U.S.Supreme Court said it wasn't going to happen. At least not now. Not until the Nine decide whether or not Mr. Haynes received adequate representation at trial.

It's a temporary setback for the killing machine. But anytime you can keep the executioner from doing his job it's a victory. And for Mr. Haynes it's one more day that he'll be able to live.

And that's how you fight the battle. One day at a time. Today is a good day.

Mesquite police retaliate against local woman

Undercover police officers lie. That's their job. They create a persona and use it to gain entree into a world of lawlessness.

But where does the lying stop? Does it stop after the bust? After the offense report? After taking an oath to tell the truth on the stand? Or after the trial is over?

Melissa Walthall of Mesquite, Texas, had a friend who was upset at the testimony of an undercover narcotics officer. And, when Ms. Walthall came across a picture of the officer on a flyer, she posted it on Facebook with the caption "Anyone know this b****?"

Mesquite Police weren't amused. Investigators decided that Ms. Walthall's message posed a "viable threat to the officer's safety" so they charged her with felony retaliation.

Sec. 36.06. OBSTRUCTION OR RETALIATION. (a) [amended 9/1/97] A person commits an offense if he intentionally or knowingly harms or threatens to harm another by an unlawful act:
(1) in retaliation for or on account of the service or status of another as a:
(A) public servant, witness, prospective witness, or informant; or
(B) person who has reported or who the actor knows intends to report the occurrence of a crime; or
(2) to prevent or delay the service of another as a:
(A) public servant, witness, prospective witness, or informant; or
(B) person who has reported or who the actor knows intends to report the occurrence of a crime.
(b) For purposes of this section, "informant" means a person who has communicated information to the government in connection with any governmental function.
(c) An offense under this section is a felony of the third degree.

But what exactly did Ms. Walthall do wrong? She didn't harm the officer. She didn't threaten to harm the officer. She didn't ask anyone else to harm the officer. She just posted a picture she saw on a flyer and called the officer a bad name.

Yes, she busted the officer's cover. But so freaking what? He works undercover - that's one of the hazards of his job.

In order to convict Ms. Walthall, the government must first prove that she meant to harm or threaten to harm the officer. The government must then prove that she meant to harm or cause harm through an unlawful act.

I don't think the government can even prove the mens rea of the crime. She posted a picture with a derogatory caption. There was no threat in the caption. Moreover, there was no unlawful act. It's not against the law to post the picture of an undercover officer. Nor should it be against the law.

Ms. Walthall has a right under the First Amendment to speak freely. Her posting of the picture with the caption is clearly an act of speech. That act of speech is protected under the Bill of Rights. The actions of the Mesquite Police Department were clearly retaliatory.

The police are using their badges and guns to quell speech with which they don't agree. She was arrested for constitutionally protected activity by officers acting under color of law. That sounds like official oppression to me.

§ 39.03. OFFICIAL OPPRESSION. (a) A public servant acting under color of his office 

or employment commits an offense if he: (1) intentionally subjects another to

 mistreatment or to arrest, detention, search, seizure, dispossession, assessment,
 or lien that he knows is unlawful; (2) intentionally denies or impedes another in
 the exercise or enjoyment of any right, privilege, power, or immunity, knowing
 his conduct is unlawful; or (3) intentionally subjects another to sexual
 harassment.

But what's the likelihood that anyone up there is going to have the guts to do the right thing and charge the officers with the crime?

The investigators are aware that we all enjoy the right to speech free from government restriction under the First Amendment. The act of arresting Ms. Walthall impeded her ability to enjoy her right to free speech. What could be clearer? The action could also set the department up for a civil rights lawsuit under Chapter 1983.

The actions of the police in Mesquite were illegal and thuggish and were designed to discourage people from exercising their right to free speech. Thuggery is always the last resort for those who know they can't make a logical argument in defense of their actions.

Were they hiding under rocks?

I saw a little bit of the Presidential "debate" the other night - but I'm still mystified where they found 80 undecided voters just three weeks out from the election. Did they dig them out of the Institute for the Profoundly Clueless? Maybe they found a bunch of folks who had suffered short term memory loss (like the Guy Pearce in Memento) and couldn't remember who they were voting for.

How can anyone still be undecided at this point in the process? President Obama has been in office nearly four years. Mitt Romney has been campaigning since the beginning of last year. If anyone has paid any attention at all they know more or less where the candidates stand on most issues.

At this point you either think President Obama has done the best job possible with the hand that President Bush left him or that he's incompetent. Mitt Romney is either a really smart businessman who can translate those skills into managing the government or he's a shill for whoever's pumping big bucks into his campaign coffers.

Maybe you feel that Obama should be rewarded for working to bring back a sense of community in this country after decades of atomization. Or that Obama has sold the core constituency of the Democratic party down the river in his quest to make the party more like the GOP.

Maybe you think Romney could lead a revival of Ronald Reagan's supply-side economics. Or, perhaps, that Romney has no political convictions and will gladly flip a position if he thinks he can snare a handful of votes in Ohio or Florida.

One thing that should be clear is that neither Obama nor Romney give a rat's ass about the poor. Neither one  talks about the poor out on the campaign trail. They're both aiming for the mythical middle class.

When he took office, President Obama continued the very same policies that George W. Bush had instituted while he presided over the economic meltdown. Obama handed money to the banks hand over fist and did everything he could to protect the automobile industry. But, in all of the so-called stimulus plans President Obama introduced, not once did he allocate money for the purpose of directly hiring the unemployed. He gave it to the banks and the car companies. Instead of using the money to create public works jobs, he left his minions at the Fed to reduce interest rates to zero and pretended that it would solve the problem.

We know that it was the complete and utter deregulation of the financial sector that caused the meltdown. So what does Mr. Romney propose? You got it - even more deregulation. His investments created jobs - in China. His running mate will tell you about Mr. Romney's charitable endeavors to aid the poor - but why should the poor rely on charity? Shouldn't the government do something about it?

President Obama has done more harm to our privacy rights than any other president in the history of the Republic. He has done more to harm the rule of law in international affairs than any other president since the height of the Cold War. He inherited President Bush's program of extraordinary rendition and did his damndest to keep its darkest secrets from coming out.

Not that we should expect anything more from Mr. Romney.

Mr. Obama has proven himself to be a fraud. Mr. Romney has proven himself to be the more insincere candidate for the White House since - well, I can't remember.

Neither one of these men is fit to sit in the Oval Office. Unfortunately, one of them will be for the next four years.

Have you decided how you feel about that?

National Lawyers Guild seeks to halt Florida execution

The National Lawyers Guild has issued a call for the State of Florida to spare the life of John Errol Ferguson who is scheduled to be murdered by the State on Thursday night...

The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) calls for the State of Florida to halt the scheduled execution of John Errol Ferguson and commute his death sentences to life in prison. Ferguson is a severely mentally ill African American man who has spent the last 34 years on death row and whose execution is set for Thursday, October 18, unless the courts intervene.
 
“In no way, shape or form is John Ferguson competent to be executed,” said Anne O’Berry, NLG Southern Regional Vice President, who assisted with Mr. Ferguson’s representation in the 1990s and witnessed firsthand what happened when prison officials abruptly took him off anti-psychotic medications. “When I went to see John in the prison hospital, I was shocked at what I saw,” she noted. “He was catatonic. He could not move, he could not speak, and he had stopped eating because he thought they were poisoning his food. They inserted a feeding tube into his arm and transferred him to Chattahoochee State Hospital, where he was promptly put back on his medications and was again able to speak, move and eat. He stayed at Chattahoochee for quite a while but ultimately was transferred back to death row. For as long as I live, I’ll never forget the sight of him lying there, catatonic.”


The execution of Ferguson would constitute cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment and would also violate international conventions on human rights to which the United States is a party, including the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

Ferguson was diagnosed with mental illness in 1965 and was committed to state hospitals in the 1970s after he was arrested on felony charges and suffered a gunshot wound to the head. Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, he was found to be unable to distinguish right from wrong. In 1975, a doctor warned that Ferguson posed a danger to himself and others and “cannot be released under any circumstances.” Yet Ferguson was released from state custody within a year, and in 1978, was found guilty of the murders for which he is sentenced to die. 

The US Supreme Court ruled in 1986 in Ford v. Wainwright that the 8th Amendment to the Constitution prohibits a state from executing a mentally incompetent inmate. Despite this, Governor Rick Scott signed Ferguson’s death warrant, and after a 90-minute interview, a three-member panel appointed by the Governor deemed him competent to be executed.

Last Friday, after a two-day hearing on Ferguson’s competency, a circuit court judge rejected the State’s contention that Ferguson is feigning mental illness, finding that Ferguson believes he is the “Prince of God,” that the Department of Corrections is preparing him for “ascension,” and that he will be resurrected like Jesus Christ.

Yet despite these findings, and contrary to recent Supreme Court precedent holding that an inmate’s awareness of the State’s rationale for execution is not the same as a rational understanding of it, the judge ruled John Ferguson competent to be executed.

Click here to read the NLG's Emergency Resolution in Opposition to the Scheduled Execution of John Ferguson (Oct. 13, 2012)

The myth of foreign oil

I've gotten just a bit tired of hearing politicians like Mitt Romney and his ilk arguing that we need to do more drilling off the Gulf Coast, the Pacific Coast and in the Arctic in the name of reducing our dependence on foreign oil.

Guess what? There is no such thing as "foreign oil."

Oil is a fungible commodity. That means oil from Alaska, oil from Venezuela, oil from West Africa and oil from the Middle East is essentially the same and can be exchanged in much the same way as money or gold. Sure, some oil has a higher sulfur content and some oil is more viscous than other oil. But, at its core, oil is oil.

With a global marketplace, the days of the Texas Railroad Commission setting the price of oil are long since gone. These days the price is set by speculators trying to guess what's going to happen in the near-term and long-term futures.

Oil companies will sell their product wherever they can make the highest rate of profit. Exxon, for instance, couldn't care less whether their oil is sold in the U.S., in Europe or in Asia. The same goes for every other oil company.

So it doesn't matter how much oil is taken out of the ground in this country. It's not staying here. It's going into the global pool of oil to be distributed according to market forces throughout the world. It's the reason why trying to prevent Iranian oil from entering the global pool will fail - how are you going to tell the difference between a barrel of oil from Iran and a barrel of oil from Nigeria?

As an example, the Trans-Canada Keystone XL pipeline being built on stolen land in East Texas isn't going to benefit anyone in this country. The idea behind the pipeline was to get the tarsand oil from Alberta down to the Gulf Coast so it could be exported overseas. So,  all of Mr. Romney's rhetoric about President Obama making us more energy dependent by blocking construction of the pipeline through the middle of the country was wholly and completely irrelevant.

If the United States really wants to become energy independent, the only way to do so is to develop energy from sources for which there is no global market. Since no one has figured out how to commoditize sunlight or wind, those are two sources which can reduce the need for petroleum or carbon products to produce electricity.

But since wind and solar generators don't have millions of dollars in cash lying around from their subsidized profit-making operations, Mr. Romney doesn't have the time, nor desire, to pay then any attention.

Execution Watch: 10/18/2012

The state that keeps on killing is planning on killing again...

ON THURSDAY NIGHT, TEXAS PLANS TO EXECUTE:

ANTHONY HAYNES.The 33-year-old, who has been locked up since he was 19, was one of two black men convicted in the 1998 slaying of a white off-duty Houston police officer. Also convicted in the killing was Michael Turner. On appeal Mr. Haynes asserted that prosecutors deliberately excluded African-Americans from the jury.

In 2009, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals granted Mr. Haynes' writ of habeas corpus and ordered him released or retried due as a result of prosecutors excluding African-Americans from the jury. His victory, however, was short-lived as the U.S. Supreme Court reversed that ruling in 2010.

RADIO PROGRAM PREVIEW
EXECUTION WATCH
Unless a stay is issued, we'll broadcast ...Thursday, October 18, 2012, 6-7 PM CT
KPFT Houston 90.1 FM
Listen online: www.executionwatch.org > Listen

You can find more information on Execution Watch's Facebook page.

HPD's dirty little ticket secret

We all know that it's hard to win in traffic court. The officer has his shiny gadget that tells him how fast you may or may not have been driving - a readout that no one but him ever sees. And what about when he asks you for your driver's license and insurance? Chances are there's no one else in the car to contradict a word he says.

As far as the prosecutor and cashier judge are concerned he's got you on three grounds. Maybe you've got your insurance card to prove you had coverage at the time of the stop. Okay, that's one for you.

But what about that driver's license. There's no question it was valid at the time of the stop. But were you carrying it with you? Remember, it's your word against his.

Maybe they offer to dismiss the no driver's license charge if you take a deferred on the speeding case. Or maybe they offer you deferred on one and defensive driving on the other. All works out the same in the end - the city gets what it wants and you get screwed.

Happens every day in every court in the Municipal Courthouse.

But now there's a little twist.

What if the police officer has already preset his ticket-writing computer to issue citations for speeding, no insurance and no driver's license? Sounds crazy, doesn't it?

Unfortunately,  that's exactly what's been happening in Houston.

According to this article in the Houston Chronicle, Shirley Simmons was pulled over for speeding in a school zone near her grandson's school. What she didn't realize at the time was that the officer also cited her for failing to display a driver's license and for not having proof of insurance.

When she got home, put on her glasses and closely read the ticket, she discovered two incorrect charges: failure to display a valid Texas driver's license and lack of insurance. She went to two nearby Houston Police Department stations, but was directed to the traffic division downtown. 

After a supervisor spoke with her and the officer, the two extra violations were removed. She still must go to court later this month for driving 5 miles-per-hour over the limit. But Simmons, a disabled 61-year-old grandmother, wonders if officers are pre-setting tickets with violations in certain communities, like the crossroads of Sunnyside and South Acres, where she was stopped.

There is no doubt that there are a great number of drivers in our fair city who don't have a valid driver's license or insurance. I've had quite a few as clients of mine. But until Sgt. Robert Gonzales opened up his mouth without thinking, I had no idea that it was standard practice to have certain charges pre-set into the computer to save time.

Of course Sgt. Gonzales doesn't see it as a problem. And why should he? The traffic division is a fundraising unit for the City of Houston. The police aren't trained to look at people as being innocent unless proven otherwise. That kind of thinking is anathema to a police officer.

The problem, Sgt. Gonzales, is that no ticket spit out of a ticket-writing computer can be trusted anymore. We don't know if those charges were pre-set defaults or violations the officer actually observed. Hell, we don't even know if the ticket really tells us why the driver was stopped in the first place.

If a motorist is cited for speeding, failure to display a driver's license and not having proof of insurance - but they come to court with a valid driver's license and insurance card, wouldn't it be more likely that the motorist is being truthful when he says he wasn't speeding?

But, in a land in which judges are happy to sign check-the-box and fill-in-the-blank search warrant forms authorizing forcible blood draws in DWI cases, why should it surprise us that the police have rigged the ticket-writing computers?

And why, by the way, wasn't the officer who issued the ticket to Ms. Simmons not charged with filing a false government document? He pre-set the information. He knew it was pre-set. He printed out the ticket and handed it to Ms. Simmons. Then he filed a copy with the court.

Oh, but it was an accident. He didn't mean to do it. He was really sorry about it. Not that he did anything wrong, though.

Distracting the public

My colleague Murray Newman really wants Mike Anderson to be the next district attorney. Over the past four years he has never wasted an opportunity to castigate current Harris County DA Pat Lykos - all the time conveniently ignoring the multitude of ethical and legal problems that engulfed the office under Chuck Rosenthal.

Yes, Ms. Lykos ruffled a lot of feathers. She wasn't warm and fuzzy. She wasn't part of the good ol' boy network. The latter being her biggest fault.

Yet Ms. Lykos lacked the myopia of Rosenthal's crew. She understood that criminal prosecution wasn't the answer to every little problem. She realized it made no sense to send people to prison because they were found in possession of a trace amount of a controlled substance.

Mike Anderson is a throwback. A throwback to the good ol' boy network. The Harris County Jail is stuffed to the gills but if Anderson has his way he'll be locking up folks for possessing trace amounts again. Do tell us, Murray, where's the money going to come from to relieve the jail overcrowding we will face again? How much money are we going to ship to other counties to hold our pretrial detainees?

Murray and the rest of Anderson's followers are upset because Lloyd Oliver said that there should be fewer domestic assault prosecutions. Well, here's an inconvenient truth for y'all, a good number of domestic assault prosecutions end up in dismissals. Whether it be by the defendant taking a battering prevention class or because a complaining witness decided not to cooperate is a meaningless distinction.

And how is holding a defendant in custody with no bond until he is brought before a judge who issues a protective order solving any problem? All it serves to do is to contribute to the overcrowding of the county jail.

And now, in a sign of desperation, the Anderson campaign is trying to scare voters by claiming half of the DA's office will walk out if Mr. Oliver is elected. I guess that's easier than trying to explain how much it's going to cost to expanding drug prosecutions. It's probably easier than explaining why the Harris County Jail is the county's largest mental health facility.

What right to know?

In our government's ongoing quest to keep us in the dark about all that it does in our name, government prosecutors have requested that a military judge set to preside over the trials of five Guantanamo detainees prevent those detainees from revealing the extent of the torture regime they were subjected to.

This from the same government that felt no compunction to subject these men to utter brutality in contravention of all international conventions on the treatment of prisoners. Oh, they were so proud to let the public know they were waterboarding detainees back in the day. But, when faced with detainees testifying about what they were forced to endure out come the requests for protective orders and other devices to keep the truth from being known.

So much for that crap about the truth setting you free.

Our government is supposed to be accountable to the citizenry. If we are to be proper guardians of the public trust then there should be no government secrets. We have a right to know exactly what our government does in our name. Of course it is much easier just to sit there like a lemming and pretend that everything's okay.

Prosecutors are arguing that the torture regimes constitute confidential information that should not be released to the public. To quote a legal term, that is absolute bullshit. Can you imagine any other criminal forum in which the court would deny a defendant's right to testify that he had been subjected to torture?

If the judge is anything other than a stooge for the prosecution the request should be denied. It is time the world heard exactly what Presidents Bush and Obama authorized. It is time the world heard exactly how the Bush and Obama administrations conspired to violated international law. It is time the world heard the truth about what our government did.

Presidents Bush and Obama are war criminals and should be brought to justice. There is no excuse for a (nominally) democratic government to subject people to torture. Our government is quick to condemn other governments who do the same - yet it's all right for our government to do it and then try to keep it secret.

I just hope I live to see the day that Bush and Obama are forced to stand inside the dock at the International Criminal Court and answer the charges against them.

Cuffing and stuffing a 10-year-old

A ten-year-old boy was disruptive in class. No news there. But this young man attended elementary school in a suburban Houston school district.

Of course there are various accounts as to what happened in that classroom. The boy's great-grandmother said he had thrown a plastic container. Being as great-grandma was not in the classroom at the time, we can only assume that that's what he told her he did.

School officials paint a different picture. According to district officials the classroom was left in a shambles.

Instead of being sent to the principal's office, suspended or placed in detention, the child was arrested for assault of a public servant, handcuffed and taken to the Harris County Juvenile Detention Center.

Let that soak in for a little bit.

A ten-year-old child was placed in handcuffs and booked into a detention facility. A ten-year-old was charged with a felony offense.

What is wrong with these people?

Yes, he created a disturbance. Yes, I'm sure it was more than just a plastic container. No, I'm not condoning his actions. But arresting and cuffing a ten-year-old?

It allows the Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District to wash its hands of the child. Now it's in the hands of authorities in the juvenile (in)justice system. We have moved from trying to figure out whether the child has a problem to locking him up in jail.

We have moved beyond providing a basic education in math, reading and science to providing an education in the inner workings of our criminal (in)justice system. He is learning what it means to be an inmate. What it means to be cuffed and stuffed. What it means to have a judge and prosecutor look at you like you're not worth shit. Please, oh educators in the suburbs, explain to us how this helps the child.

Don't tell me you've forgotten. It's all about the children. Don't y'all remember. Well, except when it's not. Except when it's about telling a ten-year-old that he's worthless and deserves to be in jail.

And what alternative would you propose?

Oh, Mark, Mark, Mark.

Democracy is a very messy business. And, no, electing judges by partisan election isn't the best idea in the world. But what are the alternatives?

Would you rather the governor appoint the judges? Then we'd be left with a bunch of political hacks and big-money donors presiding over trials across the state.

Then would we wait for judges to die or resign or would we have periodic retention elections? Just wait for the single-issue partisans to get involved in those elections.

Non-partisan elections? How are candidates going to raise enough money to make their names known to the public? Lots and lots of campaign contributions from law firms, bondsmen and companies who depend on our predilection to throw people in jail at an ever increasing rate.

Four years ago the voters of Harris County threw out most of the Republican judges and replaced them with Democratic judges. And, you know what, the new judges are just as bad and just as incompetent as the ones they replaced.

Mike Wilkinson, the visiting judge I wrote about yesterday, sat on the bench in the 179th District Court until the voters fired him and hired Randy Roll. Judge Roll has been antagonistic to the defense and has used his seat to bully defendants to give up their constitutional right to trial by jury. He has ordered defendants to be held without bail illegally. He has revoked bonds on defendants who violated no express provision of their bonds. And, come January 1, Judge Roll will be off the bench, to be replaced by Kristen Guiney. Ms. Guiney will take the bench because she is running with an R after her name. The public doesn't know who she is. The public doesn't care.

After the 2008 elections I spoke with a civil judge whose daughter was on my youth soccer team. She told me that she asked one of the criminal judges who lost how it felt. The ex-judge told her that she won her seat because she had an R after her name and she lost her seat because she had an R after her name. It was just a part of the game.

For the most part, the public doesn't give a fuck about who sits on the bench. Most of your friends and neighbors will never see the inside of a courtroom and don't really care what goes on inside. It's an abstraction to them. They will make completely uninformed decisions that will affect a bunch of folks they'll never meet.

But, as screwed up a system as that is, it beats the alternative. It is better to have our judges at least somewhat accountable to the public than completely aloof from it. As Mr. Bennett has pointed out in the past, the more local the government, the more power it has to screw up your life. Our state judges should be on a short leash.

As to the rest of Mr. Bennett's criticism, Judge Susan Brown of the 185th Judicial District Court chose Mr. Wilkinson to sit on her bench.

Is it too much to ask for?

My girls are in a dual language program at their elementary school. They get half of their instruction in English and the other half in Spanish. The classes are divided equally between native English speakers and native Spanish speakers. The goal is for all of them to be fully bilingual by the time they get into high school.

It's not a bad idea. The population of Houston is about 1/3 Latino and that percentage is growing year by year. Being completely fluent in both English and Spanish will serve these kids well once they get out into the real world.

All is not rosy, however. One might think that a native English speaker would teach the English portion of the lesson and that a native Spanish speaker would teach the Spanish portion. Well, by the looks of the test sent home for my oldest daughter (she's been out of school for the last week), the wheels are coming off the bus.

What was the reason because of Louis Braille lose his sight, becoming blind person? 

What was the reason why Louis his second eye vision? 

The reader can infer that Louis Braille, what kind of person was him? 

Mention three different ways or systems have existed to help the blind people to read and write. 

Today, which tool are necessaries to be used by the blind people to help them to read and write? 

What was Louis job before he died, and his students feel for him?

 What are those passages, you ask? It reads like some of the spam comments I receive every night. It might even appear to be website copy prepared by a programmer in India who promised he could get you on the first page of Google.

Nope. Those are actual questions from my daughter's test.

Now I don't mean to pick on anyone but I would think that a basic requirement of an English teacher is to be able to communicate in (I don't know) English. If the person in the front of the classroom can't put together coherent sentences in English, I'm not so certain I want her teaching my daughter how to write.

I'm not in favor of making English the official language of the United States. Those that favor that proposition tend to be the ones who have forgotten that all of our forebears came from somewhere else and that English may or may not have been the language of choice back in the old country. But I do think that a teacher should be well-versed and knowledgeable in the field in which he or she teaches. I don't think that's asking too much.

I mean, if you're in law school you should expect that your professor in criminal procedure has some knowledge of the subject matter. If you're in medical school, it's not too much to ask that your instructor in orthopedics has a working knowledge of the material. Should we expect nothing less from our kids' elementary school teachers?

Update: Texas death machine keeps on rolling

Yesterday I wrote that US District Judge Nancy Atlas issued a stay of execution in the Jonathan Green case. Judge Atlas was concerned that Mr. Green's due process rights were violated by the manner in which a competency hearing was conducted.

That was not the end of the story, however. Today the State of Texas appealed Judge Atlas' ruling to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals who reversed the stay. Mr. Green's attorneys then filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court who decided it didn't really matter whether the competency hearing was fucked up or not. A last minute appeal to the 5th Circuit was then denied.

And now Mr. Green sits in the death chamber waiting for the state to inject him with a lethal dose of pentobarbital.

UPDATE: Mr. Green was murdered by the State of Texas at about 11pm last night. The legal machinations over the last two days highlighted the arbitrary and capricious nature of the death penalty. One judge found that the competency hearing violated Mr. Green's due process rights yet a panel of three more judges decided that it was all good.

The hearing was either flawed or it wasn't. It doesn't matter how many different courts or how many different judges looked at the case, the procedures were either okay or they weren't.

Carpet bagging judges

Last week I tried a dope case in Harris County. The regular judge was out for the week so we had a visiting judge. A judge who was terminated by the voters of Harris County back in 2008. A judge who wasn't accountable to the public.

Having said that, I thought he was very fair during voir dire. He never once tried to rehabilitate jurors for the state - a common pastime for judges in this part of the state. He gave us as much time as we needed and even had a damn good idea of who each of us wanted to challenge for cause.

The fun, however, began the next day.

We were dealing with a police officer who lied to the officer who wrote the offense report. He also took the stand and lied about what he saw on the evening in question. When I attempted to ask the lead officer if his job required him to lie to suspects, the judge shut me down. When we approached later and I told him (just as I had before the trial began) that we were dealing with police officers who were lying he just rolled his eyes and told me to give it a break.

After evidence was closed we discussed the jury charge. I pointed out that the charge should not read that it is the jury's duty to determine the guilt or innocence of my client. I pointed out that my client was presumed innocent, that the charge as worded implied we had some burden of proof and that the real question for the jury was whether or not the state had proven their case beyond all reasonable doubt.

Of course my objection  was overruled because, as the (unelected) judge pointed out, this was the way the charges had been written in Harris County for years. I briefly thought about pointing out that slavery and segregation had existed for years but that didn't make them right - but I realized I would be wasting my time.

After our closing arguments were made we waited for the jury. The first note came out after about 30-40 minutes. They wanted to see the photographs of my client's truck. I knew we were good at that point because there were jurors who didn't believe the officer was being truthful. After about two-and-a-half hours the jury set a note stating they were deadlocked at 11-1 and asking what they should do. The (unelected) judge told them to keep deliberating. I told my client we were way ahead.

We went back out into the hallway to relax. While I was out there the prosecutor came out and asked to speak to me. She told me that the (unelected) judge wanted to know if my client would accept a plea. I told her that if he were going to accept a plea he would have done it before now. I also told her there was no plea they could offer that we would accept.

A few minutes later, as I told my client, the jury came back with a not guilty verdict.

But one thing still bugged me - and it bugs me to this day. Why was the (unelected) judge asking the prosecutor to try to make a deal with my client? What business was it of his how the case turned out? His role was supposed to be that of a neutral arbiter - not an advocate of the state. The (unelected) judge overstepped his boundaries and became involved with the prosecution of the case. That is an ethical violation. That is wrong.

I would like to say that the public terminated his employment because they were sick and tired of such shenanigans on the bench. But that had nothing to do with it. With the exception of attorneys who try cases in front of judges, no one has the slightest idea what they do, how they do it and whether or not they do it worth a shit. The only consideration in a judicial race is whether the candidate has an R or a D after his or her name.

In the meantime, those who were tossed out of office by the public continue to preside over trials because their buddies and former colleagues keep using them as visiting judges. It's a process that needs to stop. We elect our judges (no matter how messy the process) because our forebears were wary of the power of the state and figured that the best way to control the arms of the government was to make as many people as possible accountable to the voters.

Fortunately in my client's case, it all worked out the way it should have. Others haven't been so lucky.

Gumming up the works

The post was already written. The execution was scheduled for Wednesday night. The victim was a 12-year-old girl. His only hope was that a judge would grant his request for a stay so someone could decide whether he was competent to be strapped down to a gurney and murdered by the state.

Jonathan Green's life was spared, at least temporarily, by US District Judge Nancy Atlas. Judge Atlas ruled that the mental competency hearing held to determine whether Mr. Green was competent enough to kill violated Mr. Green's due process rights. She also ruled that the judge who conducted it used the wrong standard to determine whether Mr. Green was competent.

Two years ago a stay was granted so that a hearing could be held to determine whether Mr. Green could be executed. The judge, Lisa Michalk, scheduled the hearing so soon after the court ordered it that medical personnel from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice who treated Mr. Green were unable to appear. The judge then denied defense motions to continue the hearing so that the witnesses would be available.

The judge made her decision based upon the testimony of two state's witnesses without affording the defense an adequate opportunity to be heard.

The stay is not to determine whether Mr. Green, who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, is competent, but to determine whether his due process rights were violated by the manner in which Judge Michalk conducted the competency hearing.

Mr. Green's guilt has never been at issue. The sole issue has been his mental state of being. It's not a sexy death penalty abolition case. But it is a case that examines the way in which we allow the state to send people to their deaths.

For those who truly believe in limited government, the notion that the state can order a man murdered without affording him his due process rights in a hearing to determine his competency, is more than troubling. The ability to kill is the most intrusive power the government has and here we have a case in which a judge did what she could to make certain that the playing field was not level for a man challenging the state's right to kill him.

The fight against the death penalty isn't on the innocence front. The fight is over the minutiae of the death machine. In Mr. Green's case, questions about the mechanics of a competency hearing have gummed up the works.

Preventing the "Big One"

My youngest daughter was sick this weekend so there we sat in the living room yesterday watching the tube. We alternated who got to watch what. She'd watch one of her shows on Nick Jr. and then I'd watch thirty minutes of the NASCAR race from Talladega.

As the race drew to a close the leader spun out and the yellow flag came out. There was going to be a frantic pack finish at NASCAR's longest and fastest track. Sure enough, the cars all moved in one giant amoeba-like mass as the next-to-last lap began. Due to safety concerns (allegedly), NASCAR mandates the use of restrictor plates which reduce the amount of air flowing into the engines. This keeps everyone at roughly the same horsepower and ensures that cars will run in a pack since a car running by itself is a sitting duck due to the aerodynamics of running nose-to-tail.

As the cars came through turn three on the final lap they started to jockey for position for the dash to the finish. Tony Stewart was on the bottom and in the lead. Matt Kenseth was running high and was in second. Then Stewart went low to try to block a driver and that's when all hell broke loose. As Matt Kenseth drove through turn four a massive 25 car wreck took out more than half the field less than a mile from the finish line.



NASCAR claims it restricts the speed of the cars to promote safety at a track where cars once reached speeds in excess of 210 mph. But the real effect of the restrictor plates is to create massive wrecks like the one that happened yesterday. TV audiences want wrecks and NASCAR delivers. It's a miracle that no one has died on the high banks of Talladega Superspeedway.

If NASCAR is really concerned about safety it's time to do away with the restrictor plates. If NASCAR is really concerned about safety, it's time to keep the cars from running in massive packs where one little wiggle can cause "the big one."

If NASCAR really wanted to make Talladega (and Daytona) safer they would reduce the size of the engines from 357 cubic inches (5.7 L) to 302 cubic inches (5.0 L). Next they would reduced the compression ratios in the engines. Reducing the engine size would reduce the horsepower which would reduce the speed. Lowering the compression ratios would also reduce the horsepower and speed of the cars. More importantly, however, is that these changes would affect the cars differently. Instead of everyone having a car with the same maximum horsepower, these changes would reward those teams who can find ways to go faster.

The end result would be no more pack racing. The racing at the track would be closer to what you see at other large racetracks. With more space between the cars there would be less chance of 15- and 20-car pileups.

Of course NASCAR won't do anything unless they are forced to do it. It will be up to the drivers to get together and make a stand. If anything is going to happen, it will happen because the drivers tell NASCAR that they won't race at Talladega until something is done to make it safer. Back when the track first opened in the 60's, the drivers went on strike and refused to race because they didn't feel it was safe. NASCAR sent in a bunch of replacement drivers and that quelled any dissent from the drivers. That ended dissent in the ranks.

With drivers today adorned in corporate logos from head-to-toe it's doubtful that anyone would be willing to stand up and make a stink. But, unless someone has the courage to speak their mind nothing will change.

On hypocrisy and handouts

Some things just never get old.

There are few things more ironic than politicians who accuse the poor of mooching off the state who have no problem dipping their hands into the taxpayer's pockets to pay for their jet-setting ways.

Gov. Rick Perry doesn't want to spend money on the poor. He doesn't want to expand Medicaid coverage. He doesn't want to increase education funding.

But, when it comes to out-of-state junkets, he is more than happy to bill the taxpayers for his security detail. Since his re-election in November 2010, the Fair-haired One has racked up $2.3 million in security charges for his travels. In the last quarter alone, after he shut down his disastrous presidential campaign, the taxpayers have forked out over $100,000 for his security detail in such places as Aspen, Boston and San Diego.

Of course I'm still waiting to see how any of those trips were necessary to his carrying out his duties as the chief executive of the Lone Star State.

Gov. Goodhair defends the expenses arguing that the world is a dangerous place and he must be under constant surveillance by state troopers. The only problem, Rick, is that most folks outside Texas wouldn't know you from Adam (just take a look at your numbers from the primaries). Furthermore, I doubt many terrorists have Perry in their sights in their quest for world domination.

What the Guv seems to have forgotten is that Texas has a weak governor system dating back to the end of Reconstruction and the desire of Texans to be out from under the thumb of the federal government. The real power broker in Austin is the lieutenant governor. He is the one who appoints committee chairs and breaks tie votes in the senate. The governor is reduced to signing or vetoing legislation and calling special sessions of the state legislature.

Not much to see there. If the terrorists really wanted to disrupt operations in Austin, they'd be better off targeting the lieutenant governor. But, since the legislature only meets for 140 days every other year, there isn't much to disrupt.

So, for the next two years, Gov. Perry will continue to reach into our back pockets to pay for his jaunts across the country while simultaneously collecting both his salary as Governor and his state pension. Quite the gig he's got there, huh?

Does triple crown equal MVP?

This season, the Detroit Tigers' third baseman, Miguel Cabrera, became the first player in 45 years to win baseball's Triple Crown. He did it by leading the American League in batting average, home runs and runs batted in. The last player to do that was Carl Yastrzemski back in 1967.

The feat is incredible. Generally sluggers are feast-and-famine style hitters. They have a fairly low batting average - but when they do hit the ball, they crush it.

But are those three categories the best way to determine who is the best offensive player in the league? And was Miguel Cabrera the best player in the AL? Because there are some who believe that Mike Trout of the California Angels was a more valuable player.

Batting average is important. The higher the average, the more balls a player has put into play and more opportunities he has created for his team to score. But the same can be said for players who draw walks. Billy Beane questioned whether it really matters how a player got on base. The important thing is he got on base and created the possibility of a run crossing the plate.

So maybe on-base percentage is a more important measurement of what a player brings to the plate. After all, the more a player gets on base, the fewer outs are used up - and outs are the most precious commodity in baseball.

For 2012, Mike Trout had the third-best OBP in the AL and Miguel Cabrera was fourth. The two leaders, Joe Mauer and Prince Fielder, both had OBP's almost 100 points above their batting averages (which means  they took a lot of walks).

Slugging percentage (total bases divided by at-bats) is another way to measure the offensive output of a batter. Simply put, the higher the slugging percentage, the more the players are being moved around the bases. And the more the players move around the bases, the more runs light up on the scoreboard.

Miguel Cabrera led the AL in slugging percentage with a .606, while Mike Trout came in third with a .564.

If you take that on-base percentage and add it to the slugging percentage you come up with a metric baseball wonks know as OPS. And it is this metric that tells us how valuable a batter is at the plate. The higher the OPS, the more good stuff happens when the batter steps into the box.

One stat that is vastly overrated is the run batted in (RBI). RBI's are a function of what the other batters on the team are doing. If they aren't getting on base, then you aren't getting any RBI's. So, far from indicating how awesome a player is, a gaudy RBI number means that when he came up to bat there were men on the bases in front of him. The only RBI a batter can control is the one he gets when he crosses the plate over hitting one over the fence.

So, if we take a look at OPS for 2012, Miguel Cabrera still comes out ahead with an awe-inspiring .999. His closest competitor was Mike Trout with a .963. (Click here for the final stats from the 2012 regular season.)

Now there are those who look at even more arcane numbers such as a player's wins above replacement (WAR). But that is a measurement that includes a heaping spoonful of conjecture and subjectivity. The metric attempts to calculate how many more games a team won because a certain player was in the lineup.

If that is your cup of tea, the Mike Trout was the best player in the American League with a WAR of 10.7 to Miguel Cabrera's 6.9.

I have a hard time, however, worshiping at the altar of WAR because it purports to measure that which cannot be measured. While OPS measures what a player did at the plate, WAR tries to measure how much better a player did that the person who would have replaced him had he not played. And that's impossible to measure because we don't know what might have happened had our star player gone down with an injury.

For that reason I have to go along with Miguel Cabrera as the American League's Most Valuable Player for the 2012 campaign. He was tops in the sexy categories and tops in the category (OPS) that is best measure of how good a player is at the plate.

Mike Trout may have made the Angels better than they would have been otherwise, but statistics such as WAR and defensive stats are far too subjective and far too dependent on contingency than OPS. The point of Sabermetrics (and Billy Beane's "moneyball") was to get rid of the subjectivity in baseball and to base decisions on cold, hard, objective numbers.

By that measure, Miguel Cabrera deserves to take home the MVP trophy.

Twiddle-dee and Twiddle-dum

Forget what you read in the papers or saw on the tube, the real winners from Wednesday's "debate" were Barack Romney and Mitt Obama. They were able to prevent any independent voices from appearing on the stage in Denver as they held their little soundbite-a-thon.

Both candidates deftly avoided talking about the plight of the poor (and the working poor) during the telecast. Mr. Obama raised his not-so populist flag as the champions of the amorphous and undefined middle class. He was concerned with how taxes and healthcare and education and social security would affect the nebulous middle class.

He never once raised Mr. Romney's comment about writing off 47% of the voting population because, well, to put it bluntly, he doesn't give a fuck about them either. They're certainly not the folks who are writing the big checks to the campaign.

As for Mr. Romney, his continued insistence that the market is the best regulator of health care and that the market will provide the means for reducing costs would be comical if people weren't buying it hook, line and sinker. You see, Mr. Romney, the market is what has allowed the cost of health care to escalate at a faster pace than the rate of inflation. To make the claim, with what passes for a straight face, that if we would just leave the market alone the cost of health care would fall to reasonable levels is quite the feat.

Neither man challenged the assumption that defense spending should be cut back significantly. While Mr. Romney calls for cutting every part of the budget except for defense, Mr. Obama is so scared of being labeled "soft" on defense that he refuses to consider serious cuts to the Pentagon's budget. If you want to cut the deficit - just slash the defense budget by 50%. Problem solved.

Neither candidate wanted to talk about the National Defense Authorization Act (and Jim Lehrer wasn't about to ask hard questions). Neither spoke out against the provisions allowing for indefinite detention for American citizens. Neither candidate spoke out about illegal wiretapping and domestic surveillance by the government. Despite a persistently high unemployment rate, neither candidate spoke of using federal dollars to revive the jobs programs of the New Deal.

Of course, had you watched, or listened to, Democracy Now!'s expanded coverage of the debate, you would have heard from the Green Party's candidate, Jill Stein, and the Justice Party's candidate, Rocky Anderson, answer the same questions asked of Obama and Romney. You would have heard two people talking about the real problems that face this country and not just the talking points handed out by the political operatives. You would have heard a discussion about health care and the single payer plan. You would have heard the candidates discussing the NDAA and its implications. You would have heard two candidates who haven't been bought by the corporate interests.

But most folks didn't because they have been socialized that the Republicrats and Democans, the Twiddle-dee and Twiddle-dum of the political world, are the only way to go. Part of the reason we are in this mess is because we have entrusted our future to two political organizations that care about nothing more than preserving their power and privilege in Washington.

Court to weigh in on warrantless blood draws

A person commits an offense if, knowing that an investigation or official proceeding is pending or in progress, he alters, destroys or conceals any record, document or thing with intent to impair its verity, legibility or availability as evidence in the investigation or official proceeding.
-- Texas Penal Code, Sec. 37.09

Just what does it mean to destroy evidence? The Texas statute would appear to mean a person has to do something with the knowledge that the evidence is wanted by the authorities. It requires a deliberate act on the part of the person being charged.

It doesn't, however, follow that involuntary bodily functions are a means of destroying evidence.

But somehow our police officers, prosecutors and legislators seem to be of the opinion that one can destroy evidence without intending to do so. And now it's time for the Nine in Robes to make the call.

Back in 2010, Tyler McNeely was stopped for exceeding the speed limit by 11 mph near Cape Girardeau, Missouri. The officer reported that Mr. McNeely did a poor job on the roadside calisthenics. He then had the gall to refuse to provide a blood sample.

That didn't sit too well with the Officer Winder who took him to a hospital and ordered a forcible blood draw. Of course the result indicated that Mr. McNeely was quite a bit over the legal limit.

At trial the state argued that it didn't matter that Officer Winder neglected to obtain a warrant to draw Mr. McNeely's blood because if he didn't, Mr. McNeely would destroy the evidence of his intoxication.  The trial judge wasn't buying it and neither were the judges on Missouri's supreme court.

The state is arguing that the natural elimination of alcohol in the body is an exigent circumstance as defined by the Supreme Court in a 1966 case - a case that typically created an exception to a long-standing precedent that turned the meaning of the Fourth Amendment on its ear.

If the police want to strap a suspect down and jab a needle in his arm, the very least they should do is obtain a warrant from a judge authorizing the infringement upon the suspect's rights. Of course they should also be required to submit an affidavit that actually lays out clearly articulated facts that would lead one to the conclusion that the suspect may have been intoxicated. But that might be asking for too much.

As much as I would prefer to see the Court to proclaim that warrantless blood draws in DWI cases are an unconstitutional infringement upon the public's protections under the Fourth Amendment. That's not what I think we'll get, however. What's more likely is the Court deciding that there were no exigent circumstances in Mr. McNeely's case and then laying out some examples of what might constitute exigent circumstances in a DWI case.

The end result will be an even more tangled mess of the Fourth Amendment and an expansion of the power of the state over the individual.

A few odds and ends

I was in trial all day yesterday so here are a few bits and pieces you might find interesting...

Democracy Now! is broadcasting a special expanded presidential debate tonight. After the question is asked, the debate will be paused so that Green Party candidate Jill Stein and Justice Party candidate Rocky Anderson can have equal time to respond. Coverage begins at 7:30pm central time.

If you don't have a radio station that carries Democracy Now!, here's a link to Houston's own community radio station, KPFT.

Two prosecutors with the Galveston County District Attorney's Office are former prosecutors this morning. Reese Campbell was terminated and Jon Hall resigned. The two are alleged to have committed acts of prosecutorial misconduct.

I have worked with Mr. Campbell for years down on the island and I never had any issues with his handling of any cases. However, it is good to see that District Attorney Jack Roady isn't going to put up with his prosecutors taking shortcuts and withholding evidence.

Harris County opened a felony mental health court yesterday that will seek to place mentally ill defendants on probation instead of behind bars. The court has been operating informally since May. There are currently 45 defendants on probation with room for another 35.

This is a mixed bag. On the one hand it's a step in the right direction that someone has decided locking up the mentally ill isn't a good use of resource. On the other hand, the criminal (in)justice system is not the best device  to dispense care for the mentally ill.

Dry labbing it, baby

Science.

Chemistry.

Laboratory.

When you see or hear those words you think of folks with advanced degrees wearing smocks and goggles huddled over test tubes or microscopes looking for the next big breakthrough.

We are taught that science is value-free. In other words, science is about what can be tested and proved or disproved through the scientific method. You make an observation. You think up a hypothesis, or theory to explain what you saw. You design tests to disprove your hypothesis. If the hypothesis cannot be disproved, then a new scientific theory emerges.

Science doesn't care about your political views. It doesn't care about your religious beliefs. it doesn't care about your agenda. It doesn't care who funds the lab. It doesn't care where you come from, where you live or where you went to school. It doesn't care about the consequences (be they good or bad) of your experiments.

Science only cares about that which can be observed and tested. The answer is what the answer is - regardless of what you were hoping it would be.

At least that's what we're taught to believe.

Annie Dookhan thought differently. She wanted to get ahead. So she worked hard. She performed more tests than any other analysts at the Hinton State Laboratory in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. Over the course of nine years she performed some 60,000 tests in 34,000 cases.

But that's not the whole story. You see, Ms. Dookhan was creative in her methods. She dry-labbed samples (eyeballing them instead of testing them with a color-changing chemical). She forged her colleagues initials on lab reports. She calibrated machines used by other analysts. She removed evidence from the lab. And she intentionally contaminated evidence to confirm her fraud.

It is unknown just how many people are in prison or on supervision because of her actions. It is also unknown how many defense attorneys advised their clients to plead guilty in the face of lab reports instead of fighting their cases.

Ms. Dookhan worked for a state lab that did work for law enforcement agencies until she resigned back in March. She worked for a lab that believed its job was to support law enforcement in prosecuting suspected wrong-doers. She worked in a lab that was accredited by the American Society of Crime Lab Directors/Laboratory Accreditation Board. She worked in a lab in which no one questioned how she was conducting an average of 18 tests a day, 365 days a year.

No one questioned her because this was "science." No one questioned her because no one wanted to believe that someone in the crime lab would fake it like there was no tomorrow. No one questioned her because too many defense attorneys are either scared to challenge scientific evidence or have no clue how to do it. No one questioned her because the judges who presided over the courts just blindly accepted the word of the government "scientist."

For all of this, Ms. Dookhan was charged with two counts of obstruction of justice and one count of pretending to hold a degree. Yep, that's it. Thousands of people whose convictions are now under a cloud of suspicion and she's looking at a couple of misdemeanor charges. The state couldn't even bring itself to charge her with perjury for lying in lab reports she knew were likely to be used in court.

I don't think I'm going out on a limb here when I tell y'all that this is far from an isolated event. I would even argue that it's to be expected whenever you have a lab that is operated for the benefit of law enforcement. The pressure is not to conduct good science, the pressure is to assist the state in the prosecution of alleged crimes. These labs are hardly independent.

The solution is to take the labs out of the hands of law enforcement and to change their mission statements to say the purpose of the lab is to test, in a reliable and accurate manner, items that might be evidence in a criminal prosecution - whether those items be supplied by prosecutors, the police or defense attorneys.

So long as law enforcement agencies pull the strings in these crime labs, analysts will always face a conflict of interest when it comes to the practice of good science versus assisting the prosecutor.

Judge halts execution over drug questions

The State of California had its heart set on murdering Albert Greenwood Brown, Jr. last Thursday. Mr. Brown was on death row since 1982 for the rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl.

California set Thursday as the latest deadline to kill Mr. Brown because the state's supply of thiopental sodium was about to hit its expiration date. Oops. And with the drug in short supply, Humira (the drug maker) estimates it wouldn't be until the end of the first quarter of 2013 before a new batch would be available.

But last Tuesday, US District Judge Jeremy Fogel said not so fast. Judge Fogel told state officials that he didn't have enough time to review the procedures under which California planned to murder Mr. Brown. The concern was whether or not the three drug lethal cocktail amounted to cruel punishment.

The question is whether the thiopental sodium would render an inmate fully unconscious prior to the injection of the second and third drugs in the cocktail. The problem arises because there is no way to test whether or not the protocol works as advertised.

For those of y'all not familiar with the three drug protocol, the first drug (thiopental sodium) is an anesthetic that is supposed to put the inmate to sleep. The second drug causes paralysis and the third drug stops the heart. But what if the first drug doesn't do its job? Once the second drug kicks in there is no way to tell whether or not the inmate is fully unconscious. And, should he not be, he would suffer agonizing pain as his lungs stop working and his heart is stopped.

There is also a lack of personnel qualified to determine whether the thiopental sodium is working properly in the death house.

The solution for some states was to move to yet another untested protocol - the one drug cocktail as used in Texas. Instead of putting the inmate to sleep, paralyzing him and stopping his heart; the new method is to subject him to a lethal overdose of pentobarbital.

But the mode of execution is just window dressing. It doesn't matter whether you pump drugs into an inmate's arm or whether you send a massive jolt electricity through him. It doesn't matter whether you strap him down and drop cyanide into a bowl of gas or whether you sit him down in front of a firing squad. Murder is murder - no matter what you call it or how you do it.

No, the men who populate death row are not choirboys. They committed heinous acts and caused pain to countless families. But strapping them down and killing them doesn't solve anything. All it does is bring our society down to the level of savages.

It's time to stop it.