Big Brother, felony pranks, and rebates for 'murder insurance'

Let's do a roundup post to clear out the mounting, increasingly daunting sea of tabs across my browser that have relentlessly taunted Grits for several days now:

PBS features Kerry Max Cook saga
PBS Frontline has a new feature on Kerry Max Cook, following up on a New York Times story last week by Michael Hall.

Picking grand jurors
This Austin Statesman story gives one of the best descriptions you'll see of the nuts and bolts of how grand juries are selected in Travis County - either by appointed commissioners or from the same jury pool as regular jurors. I prefer the latter, even if the commissioner system generates more "diversity." I don't want prosecutors cherrypicking grand juries - as DA Rosemary Lehmberg said she did in a recent, high-profile case involving a police shooting - based on the grand jurors' skin colors, either to affect the outcome or to pander to public perception.

Big Brother in Big D
According to the Dallas Morning News, tomorrow Dallas Police Chief David "Brown will unveil the latest in crime-fighting technology that, he hopes, will ensure that the city’s crime rate stays permanently on its declining trajectory. The technology consists of monitoring devices such as cameras, license-plate readers for squad cars and tracking equipment" for use in bait cars and other "bait" items. The News editorial focuses on the "bait" strategy, but I'm more concerned about the expansion of cameras with little credible evidence they're cost effective or prevent crime, much less "license plate readers for squad cars," which would amount to a massive data mining project operating in the field with little regulation. The Dallas City Council should reject those two items.

Big Brother meets the Alamo
James Bamford at Wired has a lengthy, must-read story on the domestic intelligence gathering apparatus of the National Security Administration, including a massive campus at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio which "Focuses on intercepts from Latin America and, since 9/11, the Middle East and Europe. Some 2,000 workers staff the operation. The NSA recently completed a $100 million renovation on a mega-data center here—a backup storage facility for the Utah Data Center."

Defense can explain 'guilty beyond a reasonable doubt'
The Court of Criminal Appeals recently upheld a pro-defense ruling to say that defense counsel has a right to explain to jurors what "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt means." Good luck with that! In my experience if you get five different lawyers in a room you'll get at least six different opinions on the question. As the judge in the story pointed out, reasonable doubt "is not mathematically quantifiable, but rather is a level of certainty of belief in the minds of each of the jurors."

Counties get 'murder insurance' rebate
The regional capital public defender office in West Texas - what some have dubbed "murder insurance" - refunded $400K to the 77 counties in its jurisdiction, reported the Lubbock Avalanche Journal.

Public interest lawyering recognized
Congrats to the UT Law School's Texas Law Fellowship Public Interest Award recipients. "They are: Ian Spechler, ‘07, founder of the Legal Representation for Dually Managed Youth Project; David Gonzalez, founding partner of a sliding-scale criminal defense firm in Austin; UT Law Clinical Professors Bill Allison and Patricia Cummings of the Criminal Defense Clinic, who are being recognized for their work on the Michael Morton case; and Jordan Pollock, a third-year UT Law student."

Corrupt in Covington?
Attorney Michael Lowe writes about a Texas Ranger investigation of alleged police corruption in Covington, TX.

Felony pranks
In College Station, a young Aggie has been charged with a third degree felony for online impersonation after posting a woman's cell phone number in the Craig's List casual encounters section as a prank. Though not a Texas case, in Georgia a valedictorian and senior class president has been charged with a felony for participating in ritual graff writing with a group of classmates as the end of their senior year approached. Texas has a similarly harsh law making any graffiti on school property a felony.