Not guilty

A not guilty verdict in a criminal trail means the state was unable to convince even one juror (out of 12) of guilt. If they can convince just one they get a hung jury, not a not guilty verdict, and they get another shot at trying to get a conviction.

So, it's understandable that not guilty verdicts are rare.

Paterico's Pontification seems to miss the point by a wide margin when they comment on Micheal Jackson:

report on this bit of cloying hyperbole from the mouth of LAPD Assistant Chief Earl Paysinger, who, while discussing plans for Michael Jackson’s pending memorial, addressed reporters at the Staples Center on Friday: “On behalf of the Chief of Police William Bratton, and the entire Los Angeles Police Department, I would like to express my sincere and deep condolences for the Jackson family for the loss of such a great man.” (Audio clip available at the link.)

Leonard goes on to point out that Paysinger’s characterization of Jackson “may not be shared by the LAPD detectives who were assigned to the Sexually Exploited Child Unit in the 1990s, when they built a multi-victim felony child rape case against Jackson, only to be thwarted by Jackson’s checkbook

Oh, come on.

The state and county also had a pretty big checkbook, plus had the power to cajole and intimidate witnessses but they couldn't convince even one juror of the truth of even one of those felony accusations.

It could be that they just went after an innocent guy for the crime of being weird.

Our criminal justice system

Simple Justice, a New York Criminal Defense Blog by Scott Greenfield, inadvertently points out a serious problem with our criminal justice system when he says

Piss off a court clerk and you will learn how important their role is, as you sit and wait for your case to be called for the next 7 hours.

Piss off any functionary in the criminal justice system and you're in trouble. Piss off a jailer and you'll get beat up. Piss off a judge and you'll go to jail for contempt (unless you're a lawyer, then you'll pay a fine). Piss off a cop and you'll get arrested (and maybe get beat up first). In the scheme of things, it seems that pissing off a court clerk should be the least of your worries if you're in contact with the criminal justice system.

But the problem I'm talking about is the level of raw power that government functionaries have and the complete lack of consequences to them when they abuse that power. It's a real problem.

UPDATE: Fixed the link

Construction sites

When I was a kid construction sites made wonderful playgrounds. Texas summers get hot and construction workers would typically work from really early in the morning until about 2pm on those very hot days. That left the sites open for exploration by us kids.

In Flordia that would be a felony these days. If we don't start making those felons early we might start cut into the long term profitability of prisons.

Harris County

Back when was a graduate student in criminal justice at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas myself and a couple of other graduate students spent a few minutes one afternoon trying to count the number of police agencies in Harris County (Houston). We counted over 50 before we had to stop to go to class. And we hadn't even counted railroad police yet.

It's a very over-policed area, every suburban city has a police department, every school district or university campus has it's own police department, eight constables (in Texas each political precinct has a constable, an elected official which is essentially a precinct level sheriff), various federal agency offices with their own police powers, etc, etc.

It's really no surprise at all that Harris County jails have been dangerously overcrowded for over 20 years. I did some unpublished writings on jail overcrowding in Harris County in the early '90's^*. Nothing's really changed.



^*"Techniques for Forecasting an Urban Jail Population During Periods of Policy Disequilibrium", presentation to Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, March 12, 1992, with Charlie Friel.

Disaggregated Forecasts of the Harris County Jail Population: 1992-1997. Prepared for Commissioners Court, Harris County Texas, May 1991, 1-114, with C. M. Friel and M. Bodapati.

American myths

One of the great myths of America is that of a frontier country, a place where anyone can go and reinvent themselves, can become a part of society no matter what their background.

That has long been a myth of the country and was very strong myth of the SouthWestern US as I was growing up in Texas. No matter who badly you might screw up you can come to Texas and redeem yourself. That's the magic of the great story of the Alamo -- Crockett, Travis, and Bowie had all come to Texas to escape personal failures and even criminal prosecution in the case of Travis.

That's just not the way the country works anymore though. If you screw up there's nothing you can do about it. They'll get you eventually.

In the 33 years since her escape from a Georgia women's prison, Deborah Ann Gavin Murphey was able to evade authorities and keep most of her past to herself, carving out a small-town life in East Texas where she worked as a nurse and raised two children.

She offered a few clues about her past to her husband and partner of 32 years, Richard Murphey.

He knew she was a military brat and he had met members of her family.

And before they were married, he knew she had spent time in prison.

But he didn't learn the full story until this week, after federal agents arrested his wife at the couple's home in tiny Frankston, about halfway between Tyler and Palestine. It turns out, she walked out of the Georgia Women's Correctional Institution in 1974, where she was serving time for an armed robbery conviction.

"It's like a whirlwind around here," Murphey, 63, said Friday as he spent another day learning more about his wife while also trying to find her an attorney.

Deborah Murphey sits in the Anderson County Jail awaiting transfer back to Georgia.

"I seen her yesterday and she's not doing good," Murphey said of his wife.

On Wednesday, a federal fugitive task force arrested Deborah Murphey, 53, more than three decades after she simply walked away from prison — her sixth escape, authorities said.

The cold case had made it into the hands of Atlanta-based Jason Watson, a Georgia corrections employee assigned to the newly formed U.S. Marshal Service's Southeast Regional Fugitive Task Force, a few months ago.

Watson said Murphey's case had been open but no significant development pinpointing her whereabouts occurred until late September, when another member received a tip that she was living in Frankston.


Married in McKinney
The former Deborah Gavin was convicted of an armed robbery that she has since told her family she didn't commit.

"She was passed out in the back seat," Murphey said of the crime that landed his wife in prison. "She met this boy and this girl. When the car stopped, it was surrounded by police. She had found out they had stopped and robbed the store somewhere."

After her prison escape in 1974, she fled to Tennessee and Florida. She made her way to her mother's home in Irving, near Dallas the next year. While living there, Deborah Gavin met Murphey, a construction worker, through friends. He offered her a job as a construction helper at his job in Plano.

Shortly after the two became a couple in 1975, she told Murphey she had been in prison and had escaped at least once.

"I knew she had been in the pen and she had gotten out, went to Louisiana and then she got caught," Murphey said.

But she said nothing about her last escape until after the two were married by a McKinney justice of the peace in 1984.

"It was awhile after we got married," Murphey said. "I was kind of tongue-tied."

The couple eventually relocated to East Texas, where the woman with an eighth-grade education got into the University of Texas at Tyler, earning a nursing degree in 1994.

On her application for a Texas nursing license, Deborah Murphey checked the "No" box when asked: "Have you ever been convicted of a crime other than minor traffic violations?"

The Texas Board of Nursing Examiners did not do background checks at that time. Her license has since been renewed, but was to expire next year.

Background checks on nursing license applicants became mandatory in 2004. Murphey's record had not been checked at the time of her arrest this week, according to the board.

The couple had two children, a boy and girl, now grown. "They didn't know nothing until Wednesday," their father said.

Murphey did tell her husband that the prison was involved in a sex abuse scandal involving correctional officers and inmates. Officials confirm that a sex abuse scandal forced the prison to close in the 1990s. Murphey said he never asked his wife if she had been abused.

"She didn't tell me," he said. "I didn't want to know."

But one of her siblings, living in Oklahoma City, informed Murphey this week that she was sexually abused at the prison.


'The marshals are here'
Murphey worked as a nurse until two years ago, when a back injury forced her to quit her job at East Texas Medical Center in Tyler. She's had heart problems and one kidney removed because of cancer.

She was home alone Wednesday.

The marshals' task force first posed as municipal workers to verify Deborah Murphey was indeed Gavin the fugitive.

Once they confirmed her identity, they regrouped and approached the two-story home again. They identified themselves and informed her she was about to be arrested.

She walked back into the house, telling officers she had to place the family dog, Roxy, in another room. She returned, Watson said, with a 12-gauge shotgun.

She told the officers she was afraid and would put down the gun if they let her talk to her husband.

Murphey was working in Tyler when his wife called to say she would not be home when he returned from work.

"She said: 'The marshals are here and they're going to arrest me,' " Murphey said.

Life without parole

What's wrong with the United States?

In December, the United Nations took up a resolution calling for the abolition of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for children and young teenagers. The vote was 185 to 1, with the United States the lone dissenter.

Indeed, the United States stands alone in the world in convicting young adolescents as adults and sentencing them to live out their lives in prison. According to a new report, there are 73 Americans serving such sentences for crimes they committed at 13 or 14.

Let's criminalize everything

Our government doesn't follow it's own laws, but it sure has time to use the criminal law to keep us on your toes.

When 6 year olds make chalk drawing on the sidewalk they can expect to hear from the Department of Sanitation.

When a woman is ashamed about losing custody of her son and she lies to her freinds about what happened, she can expect to be arrested.

We put more of our citizens in prison than any other country.