Is John Bradley the worst American prosecutor of 2011? ... and other burning questions

Here are a few, disparate items that won't make their way into full Grits posts but which deserve readers' attention:

Is John Bradley the worst American prosecutor of 2011?
At The Agitator, Radley Balko has placed Williamson County DA John Bradley on his list of nominees for "The 2011 Worst Prosecutor of the Year Award." Of course, he's up against quite a rogues gallery of competitors, and as of this writing is in second place. Go vote.

Send her to jail
Joe Gamm at the Amarillo Globe News has an article on the growing proportion of female inmates and the classification problems it creates in county jails. Sheriffs all over the state are dealing with the same issue.

Dallas man freed after 31 years after prosecutor misconduct revealed
A man in Dallas, Ricky Wyatt, has been released after 31 years after prosecutors agreed there was prosecutorial misconduct in the case where information wasn't turned over to the defense that would have changed the outcome of the trial if jurors had seen it. "Both [Dallas DA Craig] Watkins and Wyatt's attorney, Jason Kreag of the New York-based Innocence Project, said prosecutors withheld evidence that clearly disputed testimony by the victim that her attacker did not have facial hair and weighed significantly more than Wyatt did at the time." Grits recently argued that, given recent court precedents, in the near future prosecutorial misconduct claims may be the most fruitful avenue for non-DNA innocence cases because it's the one area where there's a clear, viable legal path to a new trial. This case is precisely an example of that.

Harris DA primary battle marred by challenger missteps
At the Houston Chronicle, Brian Rogers analyzes the primary battle to unseat incumbent DA Pat Lykos. Grits' prognostication: Her opponent, Mike Anderson, started off on the wrong foot, can't unseat her without attacking her viciously, and will lose most GOP women if he does, which in a Republican primary would be deadly. Anderson's poor positioning stems mainly from poor initial strategy by his campaign, IMO, and may have already doomed his candidacy. From the perspective of a political strategist, I could envision a path to unseat this incumbent, but Anderson chose a different one. He's already missed the opportunity to frame this (very short) campaign around wedge issues that might unseat her, and instead his bid looks from the outside as though it results from some highly personal squabble. The GOP establishment didn't want this fight, which even Anderson says he regrets undertaking (Big Jolly reports Anderson told him "he wished he hadn’t been convinced that he had to file"). Anderson could have been a very difficult opponent for Lykos, and may still be, but his own missteps have somewhat diminished the threat. Murray Newman can mock Pat Lykos all he wants, but if his own candidate doesn't improve - and improve by ceasing to pander to folks with Murray's views - Pat Lykos will get the last laugh on election day.

County would resurrect empty TYC facility as juvenile campus
Brown County may take over the old Ron Jackson Unit II detention center that was closed in the Texas Juvenile Justice Department consolidation and use it for the county's own, local juvenile detention center. Locals say it is "constructed better than the county’s current facility and is not in a flood plain," which are both strong arguments for a move. If counties are going to be responsible for ever-more juvenile programming, they'll need adequate facilities they haven't historically provided.

'This Old Courthouse: Harris County edition'
Paul Kennedy has pics of the renovated historic courthouse in downtown Houston which will soon house the 1st and 14th Texas Courts of Appeals.

Sam Sparks on humor in the courtroom
At Texas Lawyer's Tex Parte Blog, Federal District Judge Sam Sparks in a video interview discusses his recently controversial use of humor in the courtroom, and discusses the need for judges to provide on-the-job training to inexperienced attorneys from the bench.

So, you've been disappeared ...
See a tip sheet for American citizens indefinitely detained by their government.

'End of the Road for Bonnie and Clyde'
See a remembrance of Texas' most famous outlaws, Bonnie and Clyde, from a local paper in Bastrop, LA, where the couple was slain. Remarkably, after all these years, "Every now and then, visitors leave flowers at the site" of their ambush.