I am working on a new edition of Pleas, Punishment & Punishment and welcome any suggestions for corrections and additions to the book. The book, if you haven't read it, tries to state the law on the guilty plea and set out suggestions for achieving the perfect plea.
Some new things in the book:
You can plea bargain away the defendant's right to expunction.
The defendant has no right to appeal the voluntariness of a negotiated guilty plea.
You can't make the defendant testify at punishment if he only waived his privilege against self-incrimination as to guilt only.
How about including information and suggested procedures on including Extradition Waivers as part of a plea bargain? There's a discussion on this topic elsewhere on this forum that might be a good starting point. The extradition waiver is not something we have traditionally done, but it looks like it could be useful.
Posts: 54 | Location: Fort Stockton, Texas USA | Registered: April 04, 2001
I have already added that in, along with a note about how police evidence rooms everywhere will be grateful. It's a tricky thing, though. Do you have the defendant waive the right to retain the evidence or expressly consent to destruction? In Harris County, they felt like you should only give notice of intent to destroy. I didn't like that because it leaves an opening for defendant to come back with request to retain the evidence.
And how do you deal with a subsequent writ for ineffective assistance of counsel? Sometimes, the state wants to retain the evidence, particularly on a very serious offense.
The update to "Pleas, Probation & Punishment" (which is going back to the original title of "The Perfect Plea") is nearly finished, so this is your last chance to point out any mistakes and make any requests!
Someone recently told me about a neat deal where restitution judgments are rendered on something separate so they can be filed like a regular old civil judgment. Mostly useful in white collar cases. That may already be in there, knowing your thorough work.
Posts: 2138 | Location: McKinney, Texas, USA | Registered: February 15, 2001
Best of all, thanks to the grant from the Court of Criminal Appeals, all prosecutors in Texas will be receiving a copy of John's wonderful "Plea" book for free. We don't always have grant funds available to use for publications, but we've been lucky enough in the past year to be able to print and distribute a few books for free to prosecutors: Chip Wilkinson's "Texas Prosecutorial Ethics," A.P. Merillat's "Future Danger," the 2001 edition of "State's Appellate Manual," edited by Gail McConnell and Alan Curry.
In about a month, prosecutors will receive John's "Plea" update, and later this summer, felony prosecutors will receive a copy of "Capital Writs" by Roe Wilson. Next year, TDCAA will use grant funds to publish and distribute an "11.07 Writs" book also by Roe.
In the next several weeks, TDCAA will begin using the website to notify readers of significant updates to its existing publications, as well as offer a place to contribute ideas to publications that are in the works (much like John did with this discussion thread).
Thanks for all your input on our books over the years. Please e-mail, call, or otherwise get in touch with me if you have any ideas for improvements to existing publications or new book ideas.
I think its great that we're getting copies of the book. I was part of a project to write a manual for new felony prosecutors, but our product ended up looking in large part like a condensed (or simply inferior) version of John B.'s book.
Posts: 2138 | Location: McKinney, Texas, USA | Registered: February 15, 2001
How about suggesting some conditions of probation that can prove to be handy?
For example, if everybody included waiver of 4th amend. search rights approved by the Supremes in Knights ("Defendant shall submit his person, property, residence, vehicle, personal effects, etc. to search at any time, w/ or w/o a search or arrest warrant, or reasonable cause, by any probation officer or law enforcement officer") we'd have a few more cases made on probationers.
Another useful probation condition: that defendant is to sign over all tax refund checks to the probation office, to be applied towards restitution, court costs, fines, P/O fees, etc. This is a painless way to collect some significant money from probationers once a year.
Yet another: waiver of extradition.
On sex offenders, the standard condition is that they live, work, etc. at least 100 feet from any school, etc. 100 feet is really just across the street, however. We require 1,000 yards.
Another handy thing in any plea is to introduce a full set of the defendant's fingerprints and a booking photograph from the S/O. Sometimes its hard to later prove up the identity of a crook in an old plea. (I know: the clerk is supposed to get a thumbprint on the judgement, but most clerk's are clueless on what's required to have a useable print. About 95% are impossible to read.)
