Rep. Harold Dutton has proposed making POM less than 1 oz. a class C misd. because the current Class B misd. penalty is "clogging up" the courts.

While I disagree with making POM a Class C Misd., I applaud Rep. Dutton's concern for statutes that clog up the courts, and generally waste money. If only more legislators had the same attitude.

So, my thought is, why don't we members of this board suggest time and money wasting statutes that need change or elimination. Then maybe Shannon can put them all together in one proposed "Anti-Clogging Criminal Justice Omnibus Bill," and take it over to Rep. Dutton, so he can sponsor the same. If he gets it passed, I'd think Rep. Dutton should be recognized by the TDCAA as the "Pro-Law Enforcement Legislator of the Year."

So here is my first suggestion: repeal CCP Art.s 2.131--139, the Anti-Racial Profiling statutes. These require police agencies to keep detailed records on the race of everyone a cop stops, and the disposition of the stop, etc. Some of this is waived if the agency gets video cameras mounted on all patrol cars, but even then there is a ton of administrative headaches and real expense associated with these statutes. Believe me: these statutes waste far more police resources than all the Class B POM arrests in Texas! In the end, the statistics that these records generate are scientifically meaningless, which means they can (and have been)used by ignorant reporters to write sensational, and totally baseless stories about racial problems in law enforcement.

Here's another anti-clogging idea: repeal CCP Art. 38.22--Texas' notoriously complicated, and utterly useless confession statute. Instead, the police and the courts would have to simply rely on Miranda, which is bad enough, but a model of simplicity compared to 38.22. This way, courts would not have to spend hours of court time hearing evidence and deciding whether an obviously freely made confession which meets all of the requirements of Miranda, also meets the extra requirements of 38.22. Repeal would also mean that more confessions would be admissable, thus furthering the cause of Justice (which, when you think about it, is one of the central reasons we even have a criminal justice system--not a bad by-product.)

So, what streamlining, anti-clogging ideas do you have for Shannon to put in his proposed bill?

(Based on the first post, I think the title of this thread should more properly be entitled "How to Get Shannon Kicked Out of Rep. Dutton's Office for the 79th Session" ... )