Recent editorials from Texas newspapers

Here are excerpts from recent editorials in Texas newspapers:

The Dallas Morning News. April 14, 2019.

We’d be the first to say that the criminal justice system in this county, this state and country is in need of serious reform. Too often, people of color and poor defendants are unfairly penalized and trapped in dire situations from which they have difficulty ever recovering.

So we understand Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot’s aggressiveness in wanting to enact sweeping policy changes for his prosecutors on how they handle bail, probation and low-level crimes.

The county has long needed a better way to assess the risk that a defendant will flee, for example, and a fairer way to assign bail that factors in the ability to pay. The current bail system has been ruled unconstitutional so we applaud Creuzot’s efforts to curb the excessive amounts.

And we understand why he plans on spending the majority of his office’s resources on the most serious crimes in our community.

But as we work toward improvements, we are apprehensive about Creuzot’s plan to decriminalize low-level crimes. It has the potential to send the wrong message about our tolerance for any crime in this county. We worry about the new policy creating a system that tells petty criminals their bad acts are OK and that demands police officers look the other way.

And we can’t lose sight of the thousands of real victims of these crimes for which their experiences erode their feelings of safety - real or perceived - in their neighborhoods.

This newspaper has often praised Creuzot’s efforts as a judge to create one of the first drug courts in the state that offered defendants diversion alternatives to prison time. His new plan seems to focus on rehabilitation. In that regard, he joins reform-minded criminal justice leaders across the country in trying to bring more balance to an imperfect system.

Still, we worry that some aspects of his policy that he calls “decriminalizing poverty” may go too far in the other direction, particularly at a time when residents across this region are worried about increased crime in their neighborhoods, from package theft to car break-ins.

Creuzot says he’ll decline to prosecute theft of personal items worth less than $750 unless the theft was for financial gain. He says he’s in the process of dismissing all misdemeanor marijuana cases filed before he took office with a few exceptions including those where a deadly weapon was used. And he’ll stop prosecuting most first-time marijuana offenses and some misdemeanors that he believes often stem from poverty.

We remind Creuzot that most poor people in this city are law-abiding citizens. And sometimes, petty criminals escalate their activities to more serious offenses when enforcement is slack on more minor crimes.

We’ll be watching to see how the new policy plays out. We hope Creuzot’s willing to make necessary adjustments along the way.

Justice requires an equitable system where people can atone for their mistakes and live productive lives. But the goal also has be the protection of the sense of communal safety that is the first principle of a civil society.

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Texarkana Gazette. April 16, 2019.

One Texas lawmaker stepped up the fight against legal abortion.

A step too far, as it turned out.

State Rep. Roy Tinderholt, R-Arlington, reintroduced HB 869 last week. The bill would extend the definition of “living child” to include fertilized eggs.

The bill would make all abortion illegal in the state. But that’s not all.

Texas law allows the death penalty for the murder of a child under 10 years of age. If the bill ever became law, it could subject a woman who has an abortion to the death penalty.

Needless to say, when the news broke there was a firestorm. Pro-choice advocates took to social media to loudly proclaim that those who say they support life were now willing to kill women.

A bit dramatic, to be sure. The law would likely never survive a court challenge in the first place. And we seriously doubt any woman who had an abortion would have been strapped to the gurney and executed.

But the outrage was enough. State Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Collin County, chairman of the House Committee on Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence and himself proudly pro-life, effectively killed the bill by refusing to allow it out of committee.

Thankfully good sense won the day.

This isn’t the first time Tinderholt has tried this. It may not be the last. But it’s a bad move any way you look at it.

The pro-life movement has made some advances lately. That encourages us. But extremist bills like this can do a lot of damage. Now is the time to keep moving forward at a steady pace, not set the cause back.

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Beaumont Enterprise. April 16, 2019.

Texans who were hoping that this session of the Legislature would see some movement on medical marijuana in our state should start bracing themselves for disappointment. The window isn’t completely closed, but the remaining gap isn’t that wide.

At the start of this session, the chances seemed better. Seventeen bills were filed to liberalize state laws on medical cannabis, but most are fading away. Two bills could fare better: House Bill 1365, authored by Rep. Eddie Lucio III, D-Brownsville, and Senate Bill 90, authored by Sen. José Menéndez, D-San Antonio.

Lucio’s bill would allow patients to use medical marijuana for conditions like autism, epilepsy and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Menéndez’s bill would also expand the list of conditions for which medical cannabis could be prescribed to cancer and spinal cord injury, among others.

In both cases, those additional ailments need to be authorized for treatment because under current state law, only patients with intractable epilepsy can use small amounts of low-THC CBD oil. That’s better than nothing, but it’s not much, and it was a product of the 2015 legislative session.

Thirty-four other states have gone further, and Texas should join them in this session.

Medical marijuana is not a panacea for any ailment, and it has nothing to do with recreational smoking. But there is no doubt that some patients with some conditions are helped by various forms of medical cannabis. Whether the effect is psychological or physical could be debated in some cases, but the bottom line is that some people with severe medical problems get relief from medical cannabis. There ought to be a way for these desperate people in Texas to find out if they, too, could be helped.

State officials are actually moving in this direction. Both parties approved platform statements last year supporting greater use of medical marijuana. Gov. Greg Abbott has even said he favors fines instead of jail time for people caught with small amounts of marijuana for smoking.

This legislative session should reflect that momentum. The House and Senate should stop talking about helping seriously ill people get access to medical marijuana and start removing the roadblocks to that treatment.