From the Texas Tribune: Analysis: The Texas Legislature’s unexciting, no drama, very humdrum session

As seems to be intended.

- Click here for the article.

Are you not bored?

And do you not remember that this is what the governor and legislative leaders promised the people of the great state of Texas in January?

They said they were going to get along, that they were all on the same page, that this would be a meat-and-potatoes or bread-and-butter session. (Choose your preferred food group, if it’s in there.) In conversation, elected officials — the Republicans in particular — said they wanted to govern without looking like they had been driving around in a Washington, D.C., clown car. This was going to be a serious, no-nonsense legislative session.

They weren’t kidding.

And for the most part, that’s what they’ve delivered. No "bathroom bill" to bring out the armies of culture warriors. Education bills without fights, or really any conversation at all, about vouchers or other ways to use public money on private schools. Efforts to fan the immigration flames have been relatively scarce, unlike the days of "sanctuary cities" legislation (once deemed an emergency issue by Gov. Greg Abbott). Compared with other states in recent months, this Legislature’s abortion law disputes have been muted. Other than false claims that an election bill would prevent old people from carpooling to the polls, the perennial skirmishes over voting rights have been side issues.

Sure, there are battles. That voter legislation, Senate Bill 9, has plenty of material for snarling, snarky debate. And the state’s misbegotten effort to purge noncitizens from voter rolls ended with a court settlement and, probably, the busted gubernatorial appointment of Texas Secretary of State David Whitley, who oversaw that fiasco. But those wrangles haven’t reached the pitch of years past and certainly haven’t been loud enough to invoke comparisons with Congress.

From Grits for Breakfast: Debtors prison and the Great Texas Warrant Roundup

Debtors prisons aren't allowed under the Texas Bill of Rights, but they still seem to exist.

- Click here for the article.

The State’s unreasonable traffic ticket scheme and the devastation it can wreak on low-income Texans receive considerably less attention.

Depending on the jurisdiction, a ticket for failing to signal a lane change—the pretext for Sandra Bland’s tragic traffic stop—will cost you around $66. But the State tacks on $103 in court costs and a host of fees, some bordering on Kafkaesque. Texas will charge you a public defender fee, even though courts refuse to appoint a public defender for traffic ticket cases. If your fine is already too expensive to afford, Texas charges a fee to put you on a payment plan. You’ll even pay an “administrative fee” for the privilege of handing money over to the court. For people who are too poor to pay their tickets, that $66 fine can grow to over $500.

If you can’t afford to keep up with these fees, the State will suspend renewal of your driver’s license (add another $30 for the License Renewal Suspension Fee), and you’ll be unable to register your car, making it illegal for you to drive to the job you need to take care of your kids and pay off your spiraling debt. An expired registration means you’re certain to be pulled over and put back at square one, with new tickets, new fines, new fees, and no hope.

From the Austin American Statesman: Appeals court’s rulings limit warrantless blood draws

The Bill of Rights in Texas as defined by the Texas 3rd Court of Criminal Appeals.

- Click here for the story.

The Texas 3rd Court of Appeals delivered three rulings Wednesday that essentially gutted a portion of the state law that allowed police in certain circumstances to draw blood from suspected drunken drivers without a warrant.

The court ruled that police can no longer rely on portions of the Texas Transportation Code that say they don’t need a warrant if a driver has two previous convictions for driving while intoxicated or if the driver had caused a serious injury.

One case reviewed by the court involved a suspected drunken driver who was involved in a 2011 crash that sent two people to the hospital. The driver, Gina Roop, refused sobriety tests and didn’t consent to police taking a blood sample.

However, at the Travis County Jail, the Austin police officer who detained her ordered her blood drawn, which indicated Roop’s blood alcohol level was 0.276, more than three times the legal limit. Roop tried to have the blood test suppressed in her case, but a judge ruled against that. She later pleaded guilty to felony driving while intoxicated.

One of the three rulings Wednesday voided her conviction and ordered a new trial. The appeals court ruled that blood could only be taken without a warrant if a police officer was in a situation in which a warrant couldn’t be obtained before the driver’s blood alcohol level returned to normal. In Roop’s case, a magistrate was on call at the time of her arrest, but the officer made no attempt to get a warrant.

From the Texas Tribune: Is it Time to Ditch Texas' Key Man Grand Jury System?

Here's something related to our look at the Texas Bill of Rights in 2306 - notably the guarantee that people do not have to face trial unless they have been indicted by a grand jury. This is meant to limit the executive and ensure that the decision to go to trial is not abused, but questions exist about whether the grand jury system in fact places limits on the executive. Will indict whoever the district attorney wishes indicted?

The Texas Tribune mentions that each county determines how to put grand juries together and some use the "key man system" as opposed to a random selection process. They are critical of its use:

- Click here for the article.

Many Texas courts in larger cities rely on a so-called “key man” selection process, where judges choose a commissioner responsible for recruiting a panel of grand jurors. That method — one that is unusual nationally — was not chosen for Perry’s grand jury because the visiting judge overseeing the case comes from a part of the state where random selection is preferred.

But as the Perry case moves to trial, it is prompting questions about Texas’ quirky key man grand jury system — and whether it is time to ditch it entirely. Critics of the key man system suggest that using random selection in Perry’s case was a good defense against perceived or actual bias — and that it should be used in all Texas criminal cases.

“The difficulty is, where did the ‘key man’ come from?” asked Larry Karson, a criminal justice professor at the University of Houston-Downtown who in 2004 studied the key man system. “What is the relationship of the key man to the judge? And what is the relationship of the potential grand juror to the key man?”

Texas law allows judges in its 254 counties to decide for themselves whether to have grand jurors chosen at random or selected by a key man — a method frequently used by judges in Austin, Dallas and Houston.

It's an important question: should grand juries be selected in the same way the trial juries are selected? Will that result in a fairer process for determining who faces trial and who does not?

On this day in history ...

Since we've been discussing state constitutions in 2306, this historical note is appropriate. On this day in 1777 Georgia adopted a new state constitution and abolished the practive of primogenitor and entail.

Primogeniture ensured that the eldest son in a family inherited the largest portion of his father's property upon the father's death. The practice of entail, guaranteeing that a landed estate remain in the hands of only one male heir, was frequently practiced in conjunction with primogeniture. (Virginia abolished entail in 1776, but permitted primogeniture to persist until 1785.)

Georgians restructured inheritance laws in Article LI of the state's constitution by abolishing entail in all forms and proclaiming that any person who died without a will would have his or her estate divided equally among their children; the widow shall have a child's share, or her dower at her option.

The British colonies in North America, and particularly the southern colonies, were known as a haven for younger sons of the British gentry. Most famously, Benjamin Franklin announced in his autobiography that he was the youngest Son of the youngest Son for 5 Generations back. Moving to the colonies was an attractive option for younger sons like Franklin because there younger sons could take their monetary inheritance and build up their own estates, whereas primogeniture and entail prevented them from inheriting similar estates in the mother country.

In yesterday's review of the Texas Bill of Rights we noted those limitations in one of the sections and discussed them. This helps us understand the role each played in the establishment of the nation.

Torcaso v. Watkins

Some 2301 students have noted in last week's written assignment that the Texas Bill of Rights contains a clause that says: No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, in this State; nor shall any one be excluded from holding office on account of his religious sentiments, provided he acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being.
This makes it clear that atheists cannot hold public office in the state, and is very different than language in the US Constitution that preculdes such limitations.

This clause was negated however in the 1961 court case Torcaso v. Watkins, which argued that it violated the establishment clause which, they argued, protects people from being compeled to profess a belief in a church or religion. It was also held that the requirement violated the Constitution's mandate that religious tests not be used as a qualification to hold office.

This applied not only to Texas, but to other state constitutions that had similar clauses that allowed for discrimination against atheists.