Texas Veterans Courts – Why Bell County Needs One

Bell County is home to Fort Hood, the largest active duty armored post in the United States Armed Services.  As a result, Bell County has a lot of residents who are veterans.  The Texas Legislature has provided Bell County with a great opportunity to help many of our resident veterans, but Bell County has yet to do anything about it.

During the last session of the Texas Legislature, a bill was passed to allow the creation of special “veterans court programs” in this state.  The governor signed the bill into law on June 19, 2009, and it became effective September 1, 2009.  What that means is that we could have already started this program.

The veterans court program was a small part of a larger law which was designed to address the special needs of the approximately 1.7 million veterans who reside in Texas.  Specifically, the law created the “Fund for Veterans’ Assistance.”  The fund awards grants “to enhance or improve veterans’ assistance programs, including veterans’ representation and counseling, and to make grants to local communities to address veterans’ needs.”  One of the most important improvements, though, was the establishment of special pretrial veterans court programs.

Here’s how the program works:  The first step is for the county commissioners court to authorize the court.  Texas Health and Safety Code Chapter 617 authorizes the commissioners court of a county to establish a veterans court program for persons arrested for or charged with any misdemeanor or felony offense.  There are no limits—it could be as simple as a drug or alcohol-related crime, or even domestic violence cases.

However, there are some limits.  A veteran is only eligible to participate in the veterans court program if: 1) the prosecutor agrees to the defendant’s participation in the program and 2) if the court in which the criminal case is pending finds that the defendant is a veteran or current member of the United States armed forces, including a member of the reserves, national guard, or state guard; and that the veteran suffers from a brain injury, mental illness, or mental disorder, including post-traumatic stress disorder, that resulted from the defendant’s military service in a combat zone or other similar hazardous duty area and materially affected the defendant’s criminal conduct at issue in the case.  Finally, the veteran ultimately retains the right to choose whether to proceed through the veterans court program or to just go through the regular criminal justice system.

Once the veteran qualifies and agrees to participate, the veteran participates in a special pretrial program.  The prosecutor and the criminal defense attorney are supposed to work together in a “non-adversarial” fashion to create an “individualized treatment plan” for the veteran. 

The individualized treatment plan lasts from a minimum of six months up to the maximum length of probation for whatever offense was charged.  The veteran can choose to withdraw from the program at any time, but then the veteran loses the benefits which would have been gained by successfully completing the pretrial intervention program. 

What are those benefits?  Well, the most important one is that any charges against the veteran would be dismissed.  That’s pretty big.  Also, the veteran is then entitled to go back and have the offense expunged from his criminal history!  That’s a huge one.

The law states that the cost to the veteran for participating in the program can be no more than $1,000; plus the cost of testing, counseling, and treatment fees in whatever amount is necessary to cover the costs of any such testing, counseling, or treatment provided under the program.

It’s also important to note that the veterans court is required by law to take steps to ensure “maximum participation of eligible defendants.”  Not only are our Bell County courts not ensuring maximum participation, they are not even ensuring any participation.  The courts can only ensure participation, though, after the county commissioners court authorizes the program.  Something our county commissioners court has yet to do!

Tarrant County is already going to be the first county to implement this type of program.  That distinction should have been ours.  If we are going to make this county a “great place” for our veterans, we need to implement this program as soon as possible.

Big Brother is a Texan, apparently

The Pew Charitable Trust is a non-partisan organization dedicated to finding what they describe as “fact-based solutions and goal-driven investments to improve society.”  One part of the organization is Pew’s Center on the States (PCS).  Each year, PCS publishes a report which “examines the scale and cost of prison, jail, probation and parole in each of the 50 states.”  PCS then recommends ways in which the states can “cut both crime and spending by reallocating prison expenses to fund stronger supervision of the large number of offenders in the community.”  In other words, they believe community supervision (probation) is preferable to prison incarceration.

The latest report by PCS in entitled One in 31: The Long Reach of American Corrections.  The One in 31 refers to the fact that 1 out of every 31 adults in the United States is either in prison, on parole, or on probation.  That’s 7.3 million people! 

The report also discusses how less than one-third of those 7.3 million people are behind bars; but that in spite of this, the states spend nearly 90 percent of their corrections budget on prisons.  It’s certainly an interesting read whether you agree with the conclusions or not.

Of most interest, though, is the information on this fact-sheet about Texas.  It should be called One in 22: The Long Reach of Texas Corrections.  Can you believe it?  One out of every 22 Texans is being actively watched and monitored by the government.  Big Brother is a Texan, apparently.  Who knew?  Astonishingly, though, Texas is only the fourth most controlling state in the Union.  We are behind Georgia, Idaho, and Washington, D.C.

Another interesting facts in the report is that in 2008 Texas spent $2.96 billion dollars on corrections, or 6.8 percent of the general fund.  Here is a chart that breaks down the percentages:

Every defense lawyers worst nightmare

I wonder how many people wrote the editor about the lawyer who represented this guy twenty years ago?  From The Seattle Times comes the report of a former police officer wrongfully imprisoned for the last twenty years.  Read this and tell me you think justice was done.  Children: Father didn’t abuse us.

Note that the father entered a no-contest plea “after learning his court-appointed attorney had not prepared a defense.”  This got him “two life terms in prison plus 14 years.”

Best of all, he was “denied parole five times because he refused to admit guilt and enter a sex-offender treatment program.”  Of course.

2008 Board Certified Criminal Law Specialists

As I posted recently, I was fortunate enough to be among the new class of Board Certified criminal law attorneys.  Having just attended the induction ceremony this past week, I was curious who else had joined me in this 2008 class of inductees.  I did some research with the help of the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, along with the State Bar and TCDLA websites, and found the following information:

In the criminal law specialization category, there were only 48 examinees who sat for the certification test this past October. Of those, exactly 50% passed the exam (24 new inductees). A minimum passing score was 350 points out of a possible 400. As of last year, there were only 841 out of the state’s approximately 80,000 attorneys who were Board Certified in Criminal Law, or approximately one percent.  Therefore, so long as no one lost their certification, there are now 865 Board Certified Criminal Law attorneys in Texas.

The induction ceremony took place this past Thursday, February 5, 2009.  The ceremony was at the Texas Law Center in Austin, and it was presided over by Wallace B. Jefferson, Chief Justice of The Texas Supreme Court. Also in attendance were other members of the Texas Supreme Court, the Court of Criminal Appeals, and the Third Court of Appeals in Austin. When Chief Justice Jefferson inadvertently introduced Lawrence E. Meyers as a Justice on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Judge Meyers responded by reminding the Chief Justice that “there is no justice on the Court of Criminal Appeals, only judges.”

Among the twenty-four newly certified criminal law attorneys, eight (or one-third of the total) identify themselves as prosecutors. This year’s class includes assistant district attorneys from the following counties: Anderson, Brazoria, Hays, Tarrant (three prosecutors), Wichita, and Williamson.

There was one Justice from the First District Court of Appeals in Houston, Justice Elsa Alcala. There was also one judge, the Honorable Jeremy Warren, Judge of Brazoria County Court at Law Number Three.

While the remaining fourteen appear to be defense attorneys, only eight of them are members of TCDLA. The other six may be defense attorneys, but I have yet to confirm this.

Also, in case you were curious like I was, here is some interesting trivia concerning this new class of certified criminal law attorneys: The average years of experience is 11, the median is 9. The person with the least amount of experience had only five years (the minimum for certification). The most experienced inductee had 25 years of experience.

Baylor University (my alma mater), Texas Tech, and Texas Wesleyan law schools each had three graduates certified in criminal law this year. South Texas, SMU, St. Mary’s, and UT each had two apiece. The following law schools had one each: Louisiana State, Regent University, Texas Southern, Tulane, University Of Houston, University Of Wyoming, and Valparaiso University.

The following chart summarizes the geographical locations of each new inductee:

Board Certified Criminal Law—Texas Board of Legal Specialization

That’s what only about 1% of the Texas Bar is able to advertise.  Board Certification in Criminal Law is something that only 833 lawyers could claim in 2008.  Now, those 833 have some company… me!  That’s right, I received my notice yesterday that I am now Board Certified in Criminal Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization.

According to the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, an attorney who is Board Certified in Criminal Law must have "experience in the preparation and trial of serious criminal matters.  The attorney must also have extensive knowledge of state and federal constitutional law, evidence, procedure and penal laws involved in the trial of these matters."

The qualifications for an attorney to become board certified are:

1. The attorney must have been licensed to practice law for at least five years;
2. The attorney must devote a required percentage of his or her practice to criminal law for at least the last three years;
3. The attorney must have handled a wide variety of criminal law matters which demonstrate his or her experience and involvement in criminal law;
4. The attorney must have attended criminal law continuing education seminars regularly to keep his or her legal training up to date;
5. The attorney must have been successfully evaluated by fellow lawyers and judges; and, most difficult of all,
6. The attorney must have passed a written examination demonstrating a thorough understanding of criminal law and procedure.

I am proud to announce that I have met each and every one of those qualifications, and I can now officially claim to be what I have long desired to be, a criminal law specialist in the State of Texas.  This has been a goal of mine ever since I took an interest in criminal law over twelve years ago while in law school.

I have long felt that if I was going to accept the responsibility of protecting the rights of my fellow citizens who have come to feel the power and force of their own government turning against them, then I must dedicate myself to learning everything that I can about the laws, rules and procedures which the government is going to use against my clients.  It is only by knowing the rules better than even the rule-makers themselves that I can truly protect those individuals who have put their trust in me to see them through a most difficult time.

The 2009 Induction Ceremony honoring all of the 2008 Newly Board Certified Attorneys will take place on Thursday, February 5, 2009 at 3:00 p.m., at the Texas Law Center in Austin, Texas.  At that time, members of the Supreme Court of Texas will preside over the presentation of Certificates of Special Competence which will be given to each of the new inductees.