Recent editorials from Texas newspapers

Houston Chronicle. April 11, 2016.

A clear trend: The end of the death penalty in Texas is long past due

Amnesty International last week issued its annual report on the use of capital punishment, reporting that worldwide executions spiked by 54 percent, while the number of executions carried out in the United States continued to decline in 2015.

A total of 28 people were put to death in six states, the lowest number of executions recorded in the U.S. since 1991. Only three states - Texas, Missouri and Georgia - were responsible for 85 percent. The busiest executioner in 2015 was in Texas, where 13 men were put to death by lethal injection.

Nationally, these numbers are headed in the right direction, but Texas has been stubbornly resistant even as one example after another of botched justice has come to light.

The most recent high-profile example of our error-prone death penalty is the case of former death row inmate Alfred Dwayne Brown, who continues to battle the state of Texas for fair treatment after he was wrongfully convicted in the 2003 shooting death of Houston Police Officer Charles Clark. Brown, now 34, spent a decade of his incarceration on death row, but his conviction was overturned by an appeals court. The Harris County District Attorney’s Office decided there was not enough credible evidence to try the case again, and the charges were dismissed. However, the state is refusing to award him just compensation for his ordeal.

Brown’s case is not unique and sounds tragically familiar. A litany of Texas cases over the years has raised serious questions about whether defendants received justice in a Texas courtroom.

Well-known Texas exoneree Anthony Graves was released from prison in 2010 after 18 years, 16 of them on death row, in the 1992 deaths of six people in Sommerville. His case was riddled with false or misleading forensic evidence, perjury or false accusation and official misconduct. Twice the former Burleson County resident was given an execution date.

According to the National Registry of Exonerations, a joint project of the University of Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law, Texas has had 241 exonerations between January 1989 and February. There are other cases where defendants may have been executed on the basis of questionable or false evidence.

State Reps. Harold Dutton and Jessica Farrar, both D-Houston, and state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., D-Brownsville, last year filed separate bills to abolish the death penalty. Their goal may seem quixotic to some, given Texas lawmakers’ dedication to the ultimate penalty, but we urge them to try again when the Legislature assembles for the next session in 2017.

Some things take time to change. For the end of the death penalty in Texas, that time is past due.

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Corpus Christi Caller-Times. April. 4, 2016.

A too-narrow unanimous Supreme Court

Up is up, down is down and Texas Senate districts are apportioned by population, period, not population of registered voters. A unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision affirming the one-person, one-vote standard should have been that much of a given.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t. Justice Clarence Thomas, while agreeing in the narrowest pragmatic sense that Texas doesn’t need to redraw its Senate districts, wrote a concurring opinion that dismissed the idea of one person, one vote. Thomas’ view just goes to show that one of the most enduring principles of our form of government can’t be taken for granted. Thomas wrote that the states should have “significant leeway” in deciding how to draw district lines. That’s a scary thought here in Texas, where the political ruling class has been trying to limit rather than increase access to voting via impediments such as the state’s overly restrictive voter identification law. That law is under judicial review but remains in effect.

The plaintiffs in the one-person, one-vote case, Sue Evenwel, of Mount Pleasant, and Edward Pfenninger, of Montgomery County, asserted that their votes are diluted by residents in their district who are not registered to vote, either by choice or ineligibility.

Think about what this would mean - that their state senators would represent only constituents who voted for or against them, or who could have voted but didn’t. That leaves out the entire under-18 population. It also dismisses anyone else not registered, whether because they choose not to register or aren’t eligible for reasons including not being citizens. (Legal noncitizen permanent residents outnumber those here illegally, according to government estimates. It’s unfortunate that we feel compelled to point that out.)

The plaintiffs sought to establish a special class - a privileged one - by robbing others of representation afforded them since the infancy of this nation. It was fitting that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the majority, quoted someone who has been dead since 1804, Founding Father Alexander Hamilton: “There can be no truer principle than this - that every individual of the community at large has an equal right to the protection of government.”

In Ginsburg’s own words: “As the Framers of the Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment comprehended, representatives serve all residents, not just those eligible or registered to vote. Nonvoters have an important stake in many policy debates - children, their parents, even their grandparents, for example, have a stake in a strong public education …”

It takes a special kind of cheekiness to argue that one’s voting strength is diluted by the presence of a nonvoting population in one’s district. To the contrary, low turnout, an unfortunate affliction in Texas, increases the power of those who vote over those who don’t or can’t. A voting minority has been calling the shots for the majority. It’s evident in Nueces County, where Republicans swept all countywide offices in 2014 in a historically low-turnout election. To wield this power and complain of disenfranchisement, as did the plaintiffs, is self-contradicting, to say the least.

The 8-0 Supreme Court vote should have been 9-0. But that’s another constitutional battle to be fought.

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The Dallas Morning News. April 11, 2016.

Turmoil at Texas’ child-welfare agency is unconscionable

If meaningful change demands a period of disruption, Texas’ child-welfare agency is the throes of revolution. From top to bottom, this is an agency in turmoil.

Blameless children are the ones paying for this chaos: While grown-ups argue over how to fix the system, kids suffer. In March, a Grand Prairie 4-year-old, Leiliana Wright, was tortured and beaten to death after caseworkers and investigators repeatedly dropped the ball on her case. The girl’s mother and the mother’s boyfriend are charged in her death.

Just since March, Department of Family and Protective Services chief John Specia and his deputy over Child Protective Services, Lisa Black, have announced they are stepping down. A federal judge who found disgraceful lapses in the state’s foster-care system appointed two out-of-state special masters to oversee court-ordered reforms. The system saw a spike in the number of children removed from dangerous home situations who had to sleep in CPS offices, because there were no emergency placements for them available.

It gets worse: Last week, the top CPS official for the 19-county area that includes Dallas, Jackie Freeman, announced that she, too, is leaving the agency. Her departure came on the heels of a dismaying statistic: Turnover among front-line child-welfare caseworkers in this region reached an astonishing 57 percent in the last reporting quarter - a testament to persistent reports that CPS workers are demoralized by bruising caseloads, mandatory unpaid overtimes, constant new policy mandates and mountains of paperwork.

Fed-up caseworkers report a new policy forcing them to spend more time in transit (thus, less time with children and families) helped spur the turnover. Staffing shortages were so severe that caseworkers had to be rushed from other parts of the state to fill in on an emergency basis - at the risk of creating a fresh set of falling dominoes in other regions.

After months of defensive posturing, the agency itself is coming clean about some of its problems: the “current upheaval” in the Dallas region, CPS spokesman Patrick Crimmins said, “is the result of our failure to properly manage a challenging combination of factors.”

Why, after repeated cycles of damning reports and grand plans for reform, is our child welfare system still so deeply troubled? In an interview with the Texas Tribune, child advocacy expert Katherine Barillas sums it up: “It is a crisis-oriented system, and CPS is constantly playing defense,” she said. “They don’t have the time to look at substantive, systemic change.”

That time is now: Time for state authorities to stop objecting to federal oversight of the foster-care system; time for an honest appraisal of the agency’s funding needs; time for the governor, the Legislature, and two federally appointed special masters to join forces to guarantee humane treatment for the most vulnerable, voiceless citizens in our state.

Under the most optimistic scenario, the current chaos really will lead to meaningful and sustainable reform. If it’s business-as-usual, defensive, reactive patches and bandages will be slapped over the worst problems until the uproar subsides.

These are Texas’ own children. If our leaders can’t make them our first priority, what does that say about Texans?

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San Antonio Express-News. April 8, 2016.

More trouble for Sid Miller

Forgive us, but with nearly three years left in Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller’s term, we just might need to book our own trip to Oklahoma for a “Jesus Shot.”

After all, “The Jesus Shot” is supposed to treat long-term pain, which is an apt description of what it’s like to watch Miller flail about in statewide office. We’re not even halfway done with his term.

We’ll skip the cupcakes and deep fryers, Miller’s junk foods of choice, and focus on this healthier fiasco: “The Jesus Shot.”

Let’s review: Shortly after Miller took office in 2015, he flew to Oklahoma City on the pretense of touring the Oklahoma National Stockyards and meeting with state officials to talk agriculture. He billed taxpayers $1,120, but as the Houston Chronicle reported, Miller blew off a meeting he requested with the Oklahoma secretary of agriculture, and appears to have overhyped casual conversations he had with lawmakers there. He did, though, make an appointment with an Oklahoma doctor who offers “The Jesus Shot.”

When Rosenthal requested Miller’s travel documents, Department of Agriculture officials initially failed to include information about the Oklahoma trip. A second request specifically about the Oklahoma trip eventually yielded the relevant documents. State officials said it was a mistake. We’re skeptical, but these things can happen.

But now we know it’s happened twice - with the same excuse. In response to a February public records request, Miller’s office said there were no emails related to the Oklahoma trip. In fact, more than a dozen emails exist, Rosenthal reported. The emails undercut Miller’s previous description of the trip, showing he scheduled an appointment in Kingfisher, the only place to obtain “The Jesus Shot.”

Miller, who has never said he received the shot, has since said he will repay the $1,120 taxpayers spent on this trip. The issue is small, but the principles are big. Lacking further explanation from Miller, the state should conduct an investigation into his trip.

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Waco Tribune-Herald. April 12, 2016.

Many of us are complicit in scandal fast engulfing state attorney general

If Texas Republicans are to lay claim to values such as public integrity and good governance amid changing political demographics, they best deal with the ethical problems mounting around State Attorney General Ken Paxton. Of course, if Paxton truly cared about his political party, his state and the fleeting prestige of his office, he would resign and save taxpayers a bundle of money in legal costs and any further embarrassment.

Just Monday, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission added to Paxton’s swelling legal problems by charging civil securities fraud for his business sideline back in the Texas Legislature - encouraging people to buy stock in Servergy Inc., a North Texas tech company, without revealing he was being compensated by that company. He already faces criminal charges for the same business dealings, a violation of Texas law.

Among the people the McKinney Republican reportedly serenaded were friends, business associates, law firm clients and members of an investment group to which he belonged. Despite a legal and ethical duty to do so, Paxton “recklessly failed to inform the individuals he recruited (to invest) that he was being compensated to promote Servergy to investors,” the SEC alleges. According to the complaint, he raised $840,000 in investor funds for Servergy and received 100,000 shares of stock in return.

More evidence? The technology company that Paxton was reportedly talking up to friends and associates is accused of boosting stock sales with false claims about a “supposedly revolutionary computer server and big-name customers purportedly placing orders to buy it.” Servergy has since cut ties with its earlier CEO and agreed to pay a $200,000 penalty to settle these damning SEC charges.

Texas voters are quite complicit in all this. While some outrage is voiced over such snafus as the botched March 1 local election, the fact remains voters are too often foolish in casting ballots when they do get a chance to do it right. In 2014, many Republicans - including a plurality in McLennan County - bypassed two upstanding, qualified Republicans running for attorney general - Barry Smitherman and Dan Branch - and instead rallied around Paxton, who by then had already admitted to violating state securities laws, a third-degree felony. Amazing.

Some Republicans argue the charges against Paxton parallel the politically motivated legal troubles of former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, including allegations that Perry abused his state executive powers. This newspaper knows better, which is why we repeatedly defended the Republican governor of those charges, eventually dismissed. Paxton has admitted to violating state securities laws. His holding of a high office of public trust as this state’s top law enforcement officer is a disgrace that indicates just how deeply many of us have failed as citizens.