Bundle up, buttercups, it’s gonna get cold this week! During the impending arctic blast, please be sure to protect your “4 Ps”—pets, plants, pipes, and prosecutors.
Business Meeting
TDCAA’s annual board director elections were held in conjunction with our Elected Prosecutor Conference earlier this month. Here are the results for open seats:
President-Elect: Erleigh Wiley, Kaufman County CDA
Secretary-Treasurer: Kriste Burnett, Palo Pinto County DA
Criminal District Attorney-At-Large: Joe Gonzales, Bexar County CDA
County Attorney-At-Large: Natalie Cobb Koehler, Bosque County CA
Director, Region 1: Landon Lambert, Donley County CA
Director, Region 2: Laura Nodolf, Midland County CDA
Director, Region 4: Carlos Omar Garcia, 79th Jud. DA
Director, Region 7: Jeff Swain, Parker County DA
For all board positions for 2023 (complete with pictures!), see our website.
Session volunteers
The 88th Regular Session convenes on Tuesday, January 10, 2023, and committee hearings should start up a month after that. If you would like to see how the sausage is made (or make some yourself!), please contact Shannon to reserve a week to come to Austin in February, March, or April of 2023. Preference will be given to elected prosecutors, but assistants are also welcome to volunteer (with their boss’s permission, of course).
DPS budget items
For those of you wanting to impress upon your legislators the importance of getting timely and effective help from DPS crime labs, you can now direct your policymakers to specific budget proposals they can support. In particular, that state agency has listed as its fourth priority exceptional item request—that’s lege speak for “Item #4 on our Christmas wish list”—almost $29 million of additional crime lab funding for the next biennium. If approved, those funds would be used for three initiatives:
- faster forensic blood toxicology testing;
- support for critical lab activities, such as developing new testing for hemp-related cases; and
- creation of a forensic lab records discovery portal for criminal discovery.
If you think one or more of these items is important, then let your legislators know they should fund DPS Exceptional Item Request #4 this upcoming session.
Bill tracking
Are you curious to know what is being filed for the upcoming session? Of the 1,350 bills filed through last week, we are tracking 360 (27 percent) of them. To see bills that would amend the Penal Code (94 bills), the Code of Criminal Procedure (108 bills), and other “Bills to Watch” (a curated list of 14 other bills that you might care about), use the links on our Legislative webpage (right-hand side for desktop access, bottom of the page on mobile devices).
We maintain more than 40 different bill tracks for various topics, but these three lists will give you a good idea of what has been filed so far. And if you or someone in your office has proposed a bill that gets filed, please drop Shannon a note so he can track it as such.
Prosecutor compensation update
Speaking of “bills to watch,” some of you will want to bookmark Senate Bill 277 by Huffman (R-Houston) because it would grant “cross-credit” service to prosecutors and judges who get elected to another such position. Currently, these elected officials lose their seniority service credit and have to start over in their new position, which can be a deterrent to finding good candidates for those offices. We will continue to closely follow this bill during the session.
And for those needing some reading material over the holiday break, check out the Judicial Compensation Commission’s 2022 Report (PDF) in which the group recommends the Lege increase judicial benchmark salaries by 22 percent. That could be a tall order in this next session, but the commission is also supporting the concept behind SB 277 on page 7 of the report. Read the entire document for more details.
Brenham query
Washington County DA Julie Renken is working on a bill to make Intoxication Manslaughter a first-degree felony when there is more than one person killed (as opposed to potentially stacking sentences). To that end, she is trying to identify cases from other jurisdictions that such a change might have impacted. If you’d like to help her with that project, please call Julie at (w) 979/277-6247.
Denton query
In its 2021 Ortiz decision (summarized here), the Court of Criminal Appeals found that bodily injury Assault Family Violence (Class A) is not a lesser included offense of occlusion/strangulation Assault Family Violence (3rd Degree). This has presented prosecutors with new hurdles in trying and plea bargaining these already challenging cases. The Denton County Criminal District Attorney’s Office is exploring the legislative fix Justice Baker called for in his subsequent McCall concurrence (summarized here). If your office is working on this issue or interested in participating, please contact Denton ACDA Jesse Davis at [email protected].
Free CLE: Mandatory Brady training
The 2022 version of TDCAA’s free Mandatory Brady Training is now available online. Click the link above for more details and be sure the other prosecutors in your office are clicking it too!
Free CLE: “Alternatives to Traditional Prosecution of Mental Health Cases”
Part Three of our online Mental Health Video Series is now available online free of charge. This 3-hour course focuses on the creation and operation of mental health specialty dockets and courts and related diversion options. To register for this course or either of the two prior free online offerings in the series, visit our online training webpage. Special thanks to the Court of Criminal Appeals for funding these mental health training courses!
PVAC recognition
TDCAA’s Professional Victim Assistance Coordinator (PVAC) recognition is a voluntary program designed to recognize professionalism in prosecutor-based victim assistance and acknowledge a minimum standard of training in the field. If you know of a VAC in your office who might merit such recognition, a list of the requirements and an application can be found here. The deadline for 2023 applications is January 31, 2023. For questions, contact TDCAA’s Victim Services Director at [email protected].
Scattershooting
Here are some December stories that you might’ve missed:
- “Five down in Apt. 307: Mass fentanyl deaths test a Colorado prosecutor” (Washington Post)
- “Voters in five Texas cities approved decriminalizing marijuana. Now city officials are standing in the way.” (Texas Tribune)
- “One of deadliest prison escapes in US history was preceded by multiple security failures” (Houston Chronicle)
- “US study: Over half of car crash victims had drugs in system” (AP News)
- “A lobbyist’s perspective on why legislators file unpassable bills” (Texas Standard)
Quotes of the Month
“I used to have a lot of faith in our law enforcement and our government. I have to say I’ve really begun to question our judicial system and the way things are done.”
—Melanie Tieperman, a Leon County resident who witnessed the escape of a TDCJ inmate from a transport bus in May 2022 and then watched as a local police officer on the scene failed to pursue the inmate, who would later murder a grandfather and four of his grandsons before being killed himself in a stand-off with authorities.
“I think that DA offices should be like law enforcement and should not be able to be defunded by local [commissioners courts].”
—State Sen. Joan Huffman (R-Houston), announcing during a recent Senate Criminal Justice Committee interim hearing that she intends to try to expand the law passed last session limiting the defunding of urban police and sheriff department to include district attorney offices in those counties.
TDCAA offices will be closed next week and re-open for business on Monday, January 2, 2023.
Look for these legislative update emails in your inbox every Friday afternoon during the upcoming session.
Until then … Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!
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