A New, Get Rich Scheme

Want to become a millionaire without actually working for it, or winning the lotto?  Sure, you say.  Who wouldn’t?  Well then, I have got a plan for you.  Check it out.

Step 1: Get falsely accused and convicted of a crime in Texas.  Just a tip, make sure it’s not a death penalty case.  You may end up getting executed.

Step 2: Spend a good part of your life in TDC.

Step 3: Get the Innocence Project to get your conviction overturned.

Step 4: Here’s where it’s all worth it, time to cash in!  As Texas provides the most compensation in the country to people who have been wrongfully convicted of crimes.

Here’s the story that caught my eye this morning on the topic.

Exonerees to be millionaires

By JEFF CARLTON
Associated Press

DALLAS — Thomas McGowan’s journey from prison to prosperity is about to culminate in $1.8 million, and he knows just how to spend it: on a house with three bedrooms, stainless steel kitchen appliances and a washer and dryer.

“I’ll let my girlfriend pick out the rest,” said McGowan, who was exonerated last year based on DNA evidence after spending nearly 23 years in prison for rape and robbery.

He and other exonerees in Texas, which leads the nation in freeing the wrongly convicted, soon will become instant millionaires under a new state law that took effect this week.

The annuity payments are especially popular among exonerees, who acknowledge their lack of experience in managing personal finances. A social worker who meets with the exonerees is setting them up with financial advisers and has led discussions alerting them to swindlers.

The annuities are “a way to guarantee these guys … payments for life as long as they follow the law,” said Kevin Glasheen, a Lubbock attorney representing a dozen exonerees.

Two who served about 26 years in prison for rape will receive lump sums of about $2 million apiece. Another, Steven Phillips, who spent about 24 years in prison for sexual assault and burglary, will get about $1.9 million.

The biggest compensation package will likely go to James Woodard, who spent more than 27 years in prison for a 1980 murder that DNA testing later showed he did not commit. He eventually could receive nearly $2.2 million but first needs a writ from the state’s Court of Criminal Appeals or a pardon from the governor.

Maybe it’s just me, but I did not like the tone of the article one bit.  It reads like the author is writing about some guys who won the lotto and these guys are lucky to get anything from the state.  These are guys who lost years of their lives, probably the best years, to a system that is supposed to protect the innocent.  And the AP words the story as life these guys have hit the jackpot and are set for life.

First off, 2.2 million bucks isn’t that much.  Not what it used to be at least.  It might be enough for me to retire on if I went somewhere with a good exchange rate.  But how do you put a price on losing 27 years of your life?  The headline is misleading as it is.  Yes, some of the exonerees will become millionaires.  But at a payout of 80K a year, you’d have to be wrongfully imprisoned for 12.5 years to become a millionaire.

And if you asked Mr. McGowan what he’d rather have, $1.8 million or 23 years of his life, I can say with 99% certainly that he’d say those 23 years.  The State of Texas is getting off cheap.

Keep your government hands off my Medicare

That’s been my favorite line from these town hall meetings about health care reform.  The above was allegedly uttered by a gentleman in South Carolina to his Representative, Robert Inglis.

I had the opporuntity to attend the town hall meeting today with my Rep, Chet Edwards.  I admit I don’t know a whole lot about Chet Edwards, other than that he’s a Democrat who keeps getting reelected in a red part of a red state.  Even after he got redistricted to take Foot Hood away from him and to add College Station to his district, he still won.  So I don’t know if that means he’s really doing something right, or he just has a lot of dirt on people.  But since he’s a Democrat in a conservative part of Texas, he’s been getting some heat over this whole health care mess.

My plan was to attend the CLE today at the Brazos Center, and then slip on over to the town hall when the CLE ended.  My plans were thwarted when I found a divider between the CLE section and the town hall section of the Brazos Center.  By the time the CLE was down, the line to get in was backed out through the parking lot and into the street.  I wasn’t about to wait for that.

While waiting in my car for the 10 minutes it took to go 200 feet to get out of the parking lot, I got a pretty good look at the line.  It seemed to be representative of College Station.  Overwhelmingly white, and a mix between people under 25 and people over 60.  One younger guy was carrying a sign that said “No Forced Abortions.”  Another older gentleman had a sign that said “The same people who ran Hurricane Katrina now want to run your health care.”  I liked that one, although he could have worded it better.  And I’m going from memory, so he may have actually worded it better.

As I drove home, a thought regarding the health care reform hit me.  Maybe it’s a simple thought, but I’m a simple man.

One of the biggest complaints I hear from people in town is that they don’t want to pay for someone else’s heath care.  OK, I have had private health for four years now.  Let’s say, for example, I’ve paid a total of $3,000 in premiums.  I’ve only been to the doctor once in that time.  An unfortunate result of too much alcohol and poor depth perception.  I went to the walk in clinic, sat in the lobby for an hour, and spent another 45 minutes waiting in other various rooms.  I probably spent a total of 15 minutes getting my foot x-rayed and talking to the doctor about it.  My co-pay was $30.  So total, my insurer has taken $3,030 from me.

And let’s say I used $1,000 of resources, between the x-ray machine (which was all on computers and was pretty cool) the x-ray techs and the doctor; that’s probably not a terribly unreasonable estimate.  To keep the numbers simple, let us say I’ve cost them another $30 in administrative costs, utilities, etc.  So I’ve used a total of $1,030.  There’s still $2,000 left.  Now what’s happened with that money?  I haven’t gotten it back since it hasn’t been used.  As far as I know, my insurer hasn’t invested it and will be giving me a return.

So what has that $2,000 been used for?  I don’t know, maybe new rims for a doctor’s Porsche.  Or, more likely, it’s been used to pay for the health care of another person.  It seems to me that I’m still paying for someone else’s health care.

But I’m just a simple lawyer, so I could be wrong.

The First Rule

Welcome to Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: you DO NOT talk about Fight Club! Third rule of Fight Club: if someone yells “stop!”, goes limp, or taps out, the fight is over. Fourth rule: only two guys to a fight. Fifth rule: one fight at a time, fellas. Sixth rule: the fights are bare knuckle. No shirt, no shoes, no weapons. Seventh rule: fights will go on as long as they have to. And the eighth and final rule: if this is your first time at Fight Club, you have to fight.

The movie Fight Club changed my life like nothing else.  Everyone has that one piece of art that moves them.  It could be anything.  A painting, photograph, song, movie, book or anything else that moves you.  Mine is Fight Club, really the book at the movie.  I first saw the teaser trailer for it when I saw the first of the Star Wars prequels.  I had no idea what the movie was about, but I thought it looked cool.  In the fall when Fight Club was released, I took a girl to see it as a first date.  I wanted to see the movie, she agreed since it had a shirtless Brad Pitt.  Everyone won.  She decided to stop dating me shortly thereafter.

But, the movie blew me away.  Even though it’s now 10 years old, the themes of the movie are still fresh today.  I’ve never seen or read anything that just hits home on being a male and growing up in this time frame.  About twice a year I either watch the movie or read the book, and I always get something new out of it.

The workers at the Corpus Christi State School obviously didn’t conduct their fight club with the same rules that Tyler Durden did.  Four workers are set to start trial tomorrow.  Two more are scheduled for trial sometime later this year.  The crimes they are accused of are pretty bad as well:

In March, Corpus Christi police announced the discovery of what they called a “fight club” case at the Corpus Christi center. Nearly 20 videos, dating to 2007, found on a cell phone turned in to police showed staff members forcing residents into late-night bouts, kicking to egg them on.

Which brings me to an issue I had never thought about before I became an attorney.  Care of the mentally disabled, or whatever the correct term these days is.  This had never come up on my radar because it never had any impact on my life.  Other than the short attention span of anyone raised on Nintendo, I don’t have any kind of mental disability, nor does anyone in my family.  Sure, there were kids at school or were and they were even in some of my classes, but I never thought about what was going to happen to them after school and they aged out.  That probably isn’t very sensitive, but in my defense, I was 18 and thought I knew it all.

Now that I’m a little older and realize the older I get, the less I actually know, this has been an issue I come across on a semi-regular basis; clients with some kind of developmental disability.  They’ve run the gamut from ones that are just a little slow to ones that are off their rocker.  But the common denominator is that there isn’t a whole lot being done to help them.

I want to help, but I don’t know how.  I make motions to get clients examined when I think there is a need to.  I’ve been fortunate that some of the judges where I practice have an interest in trying to help those with disabilities rather than just locking them up.  The problem for getting help is (like every other problem) money.  The people I’m talking about were 99% of the time going to be indigent.  People who have disabilities and a family with money are already being taken care of.  So it’s up to the government to foot the bill in a time when county coffers are shrinking.  Heck, even when things are good, I have a hard time believing there’s a ton of money set aside for treating mentally disabled people.  And Texas doesn’t seem to have the best track record lately.

In May, the Legislature approved a $112 million settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice over widespread mistreatment found at the state’s 13 residential facilities for people with developmental disabilities, now known as state supported living centers. The agency’s civil rights investigation found at least 53 deaths from September 2007 to September 2008 stemming from what it considered preventable conditions.

As part of the settlement, the state plans to hire 1,000 more staff members for the facilities.

Last month, Gov. Rick Perry signed legislation aimed at improving oversight of the facilities that house nearly 5,000 Texans, including installation of video cameras in common areas.

Laura Albrecht, a spokeswoman for the Department of Aging and Disability Services, said that the agency continues making unannounced visits to the Corpus Christi facility and that cameras are being installed. She said the settlement with the Justice Department was “a big step that will certainly bring improvements and changes to the system.”

So how does someone with no real dog in the fight get involved?  Write my state reps, find some lobby group?  Any ideas on getting involved and trying to help change conditions would be appreciated.

Think of the Children: Alabama Edition

I’ll start by saying this.  I like beer.  Good beer.  Not the straw colored horse-piss that 95% of America calls beer.  It’s not just America.  There’s plenty of so-called beer snobs that laugh at American beer while drinking a Heineken or Stella Artois.  Look, drinking those beers doesn’t make you better than Bud and Miller drinkers, it makes you dumber than them for drinking an equally crappy beer and paying more for it.

For years I’ve thought that the liquor laws in this country make no sense.  Why can I buy beer in County X but not County Y?  What difference does it make if I’m buying some booze at 11:59 A.M. or 12:01 P.M. on a Sunday morning?  And can we do away with Sunday blue laws anyway?  When you’re a Detroit Lions fan like I am, you need something strong to make it through Sundays in the fall.  It still boggles my mind that there was an Amendment to the United States Constitution outlawing alcoholic beverages.

While the state of Alabama is no doubt aware of the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, they’ve been implenmenting it in steps.  Very slow steps.  Up until a few weeks ago, beer that was stronger than 6% ABV was illegal in Alabama.  Mississippi and West Virginia still don’t allow beer over 6%.  I’m not going to really throw stones at Alabama and the legislative priorities, I approve of any measure that gets good beer to the people.  I just wonder if they might have had more important things to worry about.

The effort to pass the gourmet beer bill was sponsored by a grass-roots organization called Free The Hops.  In this day and age where so many people feel that the government has no interest in them and has no connection to them, it’s nice to see a group of citizens making a change.

The measure almost didn’t pass though, thanks to one man.  Hank Erwin, a Republican Alabama state Senator.  From now on, he will be referred to as Senator Buzzkill.  So why didn’t Senator Buzzkill want high alcohol beers in Alabama?  Well, according to The Crimson White:

Erwin’s first objection to the bill was a definition so loose, he said, a team of Clydesdales could drive through it.

“The way the bill was written gave sweeping new legislation to the definition of beer,” Erwin said. “We don’t have any definition to what gourmet beer is.

”Erwin steadfastly believes, even with the selection in 48 other states speaking to the contrary, the new legislation will make Alabama a target for national brewers who, after seeing the demand for high alcohol beers, will flood the state with stronger, cheaper brew.

“Miller or Budweiser will look at this as a whole new ballgame,” Erwin said. “They can boost their alcohol content to the level of gourmet beer.”

OK, I can get behind his first objection.  There’s nothing wrong with wanting clearly written legislation.  However, there’s so much wrong with his second objection, I’d almost say he was drunk.  Look, Budweiser and Miller are not going to introduce 10% ABV Bud Lite and Miller Lite.  It just isn’t going to happen.  First off, I’m not sure if it would even be possible to make a 10% Miller Lite and have it taste the same as it does now.  Secondly, those Bud, Miller, and Coors (known as BMC among beer snobs) haven’t to my knowledge changed their recipe in any of the other 48 states that allow higher alcohol beer, they’re not about to start for Alabama.

Why else did Senator Buzzkill oppose the bill?  The same old fallback reason.  For the children.

Still, the Montevallo senator can claim some victory in his fight against FTH. He sponsored a successful amendment that prevents convenience stores from selling the newly legal beers.

“We tried to better police it from the teenage kids,” Erwin said, “because they’ll get at it.”

OK, Senator.  Right now I have a bottle of Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA sitting in a drawer aging.  It’s 18% ABV and is 120 IBU’s.  IBU is a scale measuring the hoppiness of a beer.  For comparison Bud Lite is going to be roughly 10 – 20 IBU’s.  It’s 9 bucks for a single bottle.  In short, it is not the type of beer that teenagers are going to buy.  They’re not going to spend 9 bucks for one bottle of beer, when they can buy 30 Natty Lites for 15 bucks, tops.  But, why let that get in the way of saying you’re doing it for the children.

What might the Senator’s real motivation be?

“I came up in a family where I was taught that a responsible leader sets the example of self-discipline,” Erwin said while drinking an unsweet tea in a Pelham Cracker Barrel. “I never got into drinking — I never have. I had the power to say no.”

There you have it.  Senator Buzzkill never needed alcohol, so why do this rest of us?

And it’s not just Senator Buzzkill who didn’t like the new brew laws.

The Rev. Joe Godfrey, executive director of the church-funded Alabama Citizen Action Project, had fought the legislation and was disappointed by Riley’s signature.

“It’s further evidence our society is totally absorbed in alcohol consumption.” he said.

Carter and other proponents told legislators that the higher alcohol beers won’t appeal to people trying to get drunk because they are more expensive than the name brands. Godfrey predicted it won’t stay that way long.

“This opens the door for all beer companies to increase the level of alcohol in their beer and market it toward young people,” he said.

Like the Senator, the good Reverend knows exactly what right buzzwords are.  For the children.  Once again, a 16 year old that’s looking to get drunk is not going to buy a Russian Imperial Stout or an Imperial IPA.  BMC isn’t going to suddenly roll out a 11% version of Bud Lite.

And here’s the biggest problem of them all.  You know what else teenagers can buy (or try to buy), in Alabama and every other state?  Liquor and wine.  You know, two types of beverages that have more alcohol by volume than beer, even 13% beer.  You know what else you can buy in Alabama?  Everclear.  That’s right, a drink that 95% alcohol can be bought in Alabama, but making Stone Old Guardian available is going to cause the youth of The Dixie State to become a bunch of alcoholics?

Look, Reverend Godfrey, Senator Erwin; if you guys don’t like people drinking, that’s OK.  This is America, you have the choice whether to drink or not.  But don’t try to deny the citizens of your state the chance to drink decent beer just because you don’t like it.  And please, please don’t insult our intelligence and tell us that it’s for the children.

Help the Homeless by Fining Them

Texas Reds Fesitval is coming up.  A chance for the city of Bryan to show off their effort in revitalizing downtown Bryan.  Since I’ve only been here four years, I don’t know what downtown Bryan used to be like.  I’m willing to bet in the 80’s, it was pretty much ignored except for the Courthouse and other government buildings down there, and maybe a few shops.  I could be wrong, in fact I probably am.  But that’s just a guess.

There is one small hitch for Bryan, in showing off their fancy new downtown.  Panhandlers.  So, the city is taking steps.  From KBTX.

With the Texas Reds Festival just weeks away, the city of Bryan is considering a crackdown on panhandlers in the downtown area.

Texas Reds, June 19-20, is expected to attract thousands of visitors to Downtown Bryan. While they’re there, the city wants to make sure they’re not confronted by over-zealous street people looking for a handout.

To address the situation, the council will vote Tuesday on a new ordinance prohibiting “aggressive solicitation” in Downtown Bryan. Examples of aggressive solicitation in the ordinance include being followed, being cursed at or repeatedly asked for money.

If the ordinance passes, violators face fines of up to $500.

I really do understand where the city is coming from.  A lot of time and money as been spent on the downtown area.  The last the Bryan needs is a housewife from one of the ritzy neighborhoods getting harassed or mugged.  Detroit had the same problems for the Super Bowl a few years ago.  Their solution was the Homeless Super Bowl “Party”.  The city basically rounded up all the homeless they could find and took them to a shelter for a week or so to keep them out of sight.  I can’t confirm as to whether Detroit Police had shoot to kill orders if one of the homeless tried to escape, but it would not surprise me.

I will say this though, in the four years that I’ve been working in downtown Bryan, I’ve been approached by panhandlers twice.  I’d say getting hit up once every other year is pretty good.

The proposed ordinance leads to an obvious question as well.  If the panhandler can’t afford five bucks to buy food/booze/drugs, how on earth is he going afford a $500 fine?  And then what happens when he can’t pay the fine?  He gets locked up at the taxpayers expense most likely.

However, I have come up with a solution though.  The Panhandler’s Waiver Form.

I, Jane Q. Public to swear that I was approached by John Q. Panhandler.  Mr. Panhandler was not rude, did not follow me, and only asked me for money once in a respectful manner.

When asked for money, I (check one)

____ did give money, to which I was thanked in a polite manner.

____ did not give money, to which I was told may God bless me anyway.

I do not wish to see John Q. Panhandler prosecuted for this incident and I will not testify against him.

Signed,

Jane Q. Public.

I know it would be better if it was notarized, but it’s a start, right?

Stupidity at School: Now With Nudity

In the seminal US Supreme Court case of Tinker v. Des Moines, the Court stated that “It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” However, in our hyper-sensitive, post-Columbine age, common sense is shedded at the schoolhouse gate. Common sense really doesn’t even get near the schoolhouse gate, it probably stops in the weapons and/or drug free zone 1000 feet from the school.

And assuming the report is true, common sense has stopped at the Hays County line. From the Austin American-Statesman.

Hays County Sheriff’s Department officials today repudiated a radio report by Alex Jones about an elementary school girl being strip searched by sheriff’s deputies as untrue.

But Jones, right, says he believes the alleged search of an 8-year-old girl was an unlawful one. His shows are “syndicated by the Genesis Communication Network on over 60 AM and FM radio stations across the United States,” according to his Web site, and are available as podcasts.

I’ve never listened to Alex Jones, but I’ve heard the name before. A quick look at his Wikipedia page shows him as the conspiracy theorist type.

The school district doesn’t seem to deny that some kind of search took place.

In a brief statement today, Julie Jerome, an assistant superintendent with the Hays school district, said, “School staff responded appropriately to the child’s comments by contacting Child Protective Services.”

Sheriff’s department spokesman Lt. Leroy Opiela said a deputy was sent to Buda Elementary School on Tuesday to assist the CPS caseworker.

The caseworker, accompanied by the school nurse, went into a private room in the school where an examination of the child occurred, Opiela said.

Jones reported that deputies performed the strip search.

“That is completely untrue,” Opiela said. “Our deputy was asked to leave the room. He was not present for any type of exam or search.”

Jones’ story prompted calls that caused the Hays County 911 system, as well as the administrative lines at the sheriff’s office and the Hays school district, to overload from complaints, Opiela said.

OK, so caused this mess?

Wade Jefferies, the attorney for the family, said a school staff member saw a dime-sized bruise on the back of the girl’s thigh, and asked where it came from.

The girl said she hurt herself, Jefferies said, but when pressed further the girl said her mother may have done it. Jefferies said she was then asked to pull down her pants for a CPS official, school administrators and possibly a sheriff’s deputy.

A dime sized bruise? You have to be kidding me. I’m pretty sure that when I was a kid I managed to give myself a bruise a week, and they were bigger than a dime. After being pressed, the girl says her mother may have done it? I wonder how many times she was asked, or told that the bruise came from her mother. It’s like the old question, when did you stop beating your wife?

I am not a parent, but I cannot imagine how furious I would be if this were my child. Heck, I can’t imagine how furious I would be if my child was searched by CPS and the school over a dime sized bruise, even if the deputy isn’t there. Heads would roll. Figuratively of course, least any school official read this and think this is a threat of violence.

Is this the America we want? Strip searching kids over a bruise. Until enough people raise a fuss about this type of nonsense and stop buying the “it’s for the children” crap we always here, it’s the America we (sadly) deserve.

Victimhood

This week has been National Crime Victims’ Rights Week.  It would have been very easy to miss this, since it has been Killer Panic Inducing Swine Flu Week as well.  President Obama issued a proclamation urging all Americans to participate in activities that would raise awareness of victims’ rights.  I’ve never really understood “raising awareness,” but that is another topic for another day.

Making sure victims of crime get compensated or otherwise recieve support for whatever they went through is a noble cause.  In doing some reading before writing this post, I learned something I hadn’t before.  There seems to be a movement to give the victims of the crime a place at the table, along with the prosecution and the defense.

University of Utah law professor Paul Cassell wants to expand the Crime Victims’ Rights Act (CVRA) and create new rights for victims which would include,

2. Providing for victim participation in the plea bargain process (Rule 11);
6. Considering victims’ interests when cases are transferred or when a bench trial is ordered (Rules 21 and 23);
7. Integrating victims into the sentencing process (Rule 32);
8. Articulating victims’ right to discretionary appointment of counsel (Rule 44.1);
9. Giving victims the right to be heard at bail decisions (Rule 46);
10. Requiring victims’ views be considered before a case is dismissed (Rule 48);
11. Protecting victims’ right to a speedy trial (Rule 50);
14. Guaranteeing victims the right to be heard on bail, plea, sentencing, and other issues important to victims (Rule 60(a)(3)).

Professor Cassell apparently wants a complete overhaul of the criminal justice system and to create a third “side” for lack of a better term.  Letting victims be heard at every stage of the case?  Letting victims participate in plea bargain discussions?  There’s so many problems with this I don’t even know where to begain.  I suppose the eroding of the defendant’s rights would be a good place to start.  All of these great ideas to benefit the victim seem to come at the expense of the defendant.  If number two is implemented, not only does the defendant have to deal with the prosectuor, as he would in every other case.  He has a third party (with the taxpayers possibly footing the bill thanks to #8) that is going to have a say as well?

Or how about the additional backlog of cases this would create.  I don’t think there’s a Court in America that doesn’t have a backlog of cases (thank you War on Drugs).  Adding a third party to the table is only going to slow things down even more.  Especially when the victims are not represented by an attorney and are attempting to figure out the criminal justice system on their own.

By allowing victims a seat at the table, you’re going to inject irrationality into what is supposedly a rational process.  Recently I was involved in a hit and run accident with a drunk driver.  I was the sober hittee, not the drunk hitter.  If I were given a place to speak and get involved in the plea bargaining, I would probably demand that the prosecutor find the biggest book he can and throw it at the defendant.  That’s me speaking as a victim, not as a defense attorney.  The defense attorney in me knows what I would say if I was defending him, and what I would consider a fair punishment if he gets convicted.  But, I was pretty pissed off when here I am, minding my own business, driving home, and this guy runs into me.  Fortunately no one was hurt and insurance covered everything.  But I was still angry.

And if I’m angry enough to throw the book at someone for my situation, imagine someone who was raped, or robbered, or was hit by a drunk driver and was seriously injured.  Now imagine that both the prosecutor and the defense have to contend with a third party who has far more emotionally invested in the case.

Making sure victims are crime aren’t forgotten and are compensated if needed is a good thing and something the criminal justice system should work for.  Giving them a place at the table is only going to further erode the rights of the defendant and clog the courts even more.

H/T to Defending People and Simple Justice for making me aware it was Crime Victims’ Rights Week

There Oughta Be A Law

I went to an Astros game this weekend.  Two dogs and a beer cost $17.00.  And it wasn’t even good beer, it was Bud Lite.

By comparison, two dogs, chips, and pop at IKEA was $2.50.

Maybe the legislature could take some time from passing new oyster related laws to do something about this.

Kids Being Kids

Getting caught swearing at Caldwell High School gets you a $200 fine, or so I have been told by several sources I would consider reliable.  I believe you can do eight hours of a community service as an alternative, but I haven’t been able to confirm that.  A quick look at Caldwell ISD’s website wasn’t helpful.

A month or so ago, Houston attorney Murray Newman had a post about this very same topic.  I call it the criminalization of youth behavior.  That’s pretty boring, I need to come up with something better.

School seems to be different than 1998 when I got out of high school.  It was a pre-Columbine age.  We had a student get stabbed my senior year, but that was it.  There were no lockdowns.  We had security guards, but they were criminal justice students from Michigan State or people who (I assume) couldn’t cut it at the police academy.  There was no school district police force.   There was one deputy assigned to the school, but he only had to show up if he was actually needed.

I’ve recently had several juvenile defendants arrested for graffiti on school grounds.  The parents, and the students are amazed to learn that if little Johnny was an adult when he tagged the school, he could be looking at up to two years in a state jail.  In fact, they’re amazed that little Johnny is even facing charges.  “Why doesn’t the school just punish him,” is a fairly common question I’ve heard while doing Juvenile cases.  “Why are we even dealing with this,” is a fairly common question the Burleson County Attorney hears from me every time I get a case that (in my humble opinion) should have been dealt with at the school level.

I don’t quite know when schools decided to stop punishing students themselves and started to let the courts do it.  Sometime after Columbine and before I got out of law school, I assume.  Legislatures all over the country were probably bombarded by Helen Lovejoy types.  The only sensible solution was to create new laws and jack up the penalties on the existing laws.

Was it a success?  If the goal of it all was to turn usual school problems into felonies, well, then mission accomplished.

Know When To Fold ‘Em

As a non-native Texan, there are a lot of things about the Lone Star State I find facinsating.  The state’s attitude toward gambling is one of these.

When I started to write this post, I was under the assumption that there were no casinos in Texas.  But a quick Goggle search proved me one.  There is one casino in Texas, the Kickapoo Lucky Eagle Casino, in Eagle Pass, Texas, located on the Kickapoo Indian Reservation.  You learn something every day.  There used to be other Indian casinos, but the state shut them down back in the early part of the decade.

The legislature is currently considering a variety of bills and a possible Constitutional Amendment to expanding gambling in Texas.

Unless you want a trip down to the border, your choices in Texas for gambling are play the state-run lottery or go to one of the seven horse tracks or three dog tracks, or hang out at the Bingo Barn.  Even though Texas Hold-Em was invented here, unless you want to take a trip to Eagle Pass or risk a SWAT team coming through your door, you can’t play poker for money here.

But, any Texan can hop in their car and head to New Mexico, Oklahoma, Louisiana or catch a flight to Mexico if they want.  So why don’t we have it in Texas?  I haven’t been here long enough to know.  I have a few guesses.  Anti-gambling religious fundamentalists would be my first choice.  Second would be a state government that doesn’t run privately owned casinos taking money away from the state lottery.

But religious groups and the government aren’t going to stop people from gambling, as State Rep. Norma Chavez stated in the first linked article, people in the El Paso area continued to gamble after the Speaking Rock Casino was closed.  They just took their dollars and went to New Mexico.  I don’t know how much money Texans spend each year at out of state casinos.  I’d imagine it’s a decent amount of money though.  Money that could be kept in Texas.

And according to an extremely unscientific poll done by KBTX, people want to see Texas expand gambling.  And if the genreally conservative Brazos Valley thinkings keeping Texas money in Texans and having casinos is a good idea, maybe there’s a chance we can get some freedom back in Texas.