Over at Grits for Breakfast, Scott Henson offers a damning assessment of the now-extinct legislative sessionin Austin, Texas. The spate of DNA exonerations in Dallas has embarrassed state legislators and hopes were high that meaningful reform was waiting in the wings. Unfortunately, Democrats and Republicans wasted valuable time sparring over voter registration issues. As a result, the session ended before a promising list of innocence-related proposals could be considered.
The one positive note, Scott reports, is the passage of a bill requiring corroboration for inmate snitch testimony. Let’s hope other states follow our lead on that one. As is often the case, the discussion in the comments section is almost as revealing as Scott’s informative post.
Friends of Justice 
It’s unfortunate that the voter restriction bill got in the way of some good criminal justice reform legislation which died with the session. The bill was really a solution in search of a problem. Pressed to point out even one instance of voter fraud based on identity, Republicans were repeatedly stymied. The Texas Senate, in a strict party line vote, changed the rules of procedure for this bill only to allow introduction with a simple majority rather than 2/3. In the previous session, Republicans thought they had a similar bill passed because one of the Democratic senators was ill. But he showed up on a stretcher to cast his vote against the bill, thus killing it.
This session house Democrats came up with their own strategy, chubbing, a form of filibuster, to talk the bill to death. A lot of good bills died with it. But so did some very bad ones IMO. Both of Jeff Wentworth’s firearms bills went down to defeat. One would have made it legal to carry concealed firearms on college and university campuses. The other created a sales tax holiday on all guns and ammo just prior to the opening of hunting season. That would have allowed people who are smuggling guns for the drug war in Mexico to purchase them sales tax free, thus making Texas citizens support Mexican drug lords.
I don’t predict but will not be surprised if Governor Good Hair declares a special session to deal only with the voter restriction bill. He did just that six years ago for the mid-session redistricting bill.