Tag: Criminal Charges
A new bill filed in Texas would make it more difficult for police to withhold body camera footage of fatal encounters involving police officers and criminal suspects. The bill was filed after prosecutors brought a murder charge against an officer, almost a year after the fatal shooting of an unarmed black and Hispanic man in…
For more than four decades Texas Rangers have used the controversial practice of hypnosis to interrogate crime suspects and witnesses. The Texas Department of Public Safety has finally stopped using the technique. The Dallas Morning News reported the decision comes less than a year after its two-part series “The Memory Room” which raised troubling questions…
The system of cash bail for defendants is controversial. Opponents say those who cannot afford to pay languish in jails even if they have been charged with minor crimes. However, the system is being overhauled nationwide after Illinois became the first state to abolish it, and a large Texas jurisdiction is allowing people to be…
Important changes in how sexual assaults are investigated and victims are treated were enacted in Texas in 2019. Advocates of change are hopeful of further momentum in 2021. The reforms enacted two years ago came on the heels of the #MeToo movement, the Texas Tribune reported. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle in Austin…
Drunk driving again made headlines in Dallas this month when a police officer was killed by an allegedly intoxicated driver. The Dallas Police Department said an officer who was working an accident scene was killed in the early hours on Feb. 13. In a tweet, Chief Eddie Garcia said a police officer was “struck and…
The stalled criminal justice system in Texas due to the COVID-19 pandemic has had an unforeseen effect on incarceration rates, leaving county jails facing an overcrowding crisis at a time when they are hotbeds of infection. The pandemic has disrupted life in Texas at all levels and criminal justice is no exception. State prisons stopped…
Homicides increased in many major U.S. cities during 2020, the pandemic year. Cities in Texas were no exception. This month, NPR reported on an alarming increase in homicides in 2020 which left many communities searching for answers given that the pandemic put many people on lockdown. Rising murder rates were recorded n Chicago, Los Angeles,…
The use of deadly force by police officers on Black suspects was a hot button topic in 2020. The issue will again come to the fore in 2021 when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals looks again at the case of the conviction of a former North Texas police officer who killed an unarmed Black…
Moves to strengthen Dallas’ no cruising laws to clamp down on prostitution and sex trafficking in recent weeks have provoked a lively debate. While supporters said an extension of the city’s ordinance would help police to tackle sex crimes, opponents claim they are a threat to civil liberties comparing them to maligned stop and frisk…
Illegal voting is taken very seriously in Texas and can land suspects in jail. A Fort Worth woman who claims she cast her ballot while she was ineligible is seeking to have her conviction overturned. Crystal Mason was sentenced to five years in prison for illegal voting. She cast a provisional ballot in the 2016…