KEEL IN CHINA

An Ex-Lawman Writes A Few Good Bills

Among the bills coining out of Austin Representative Terry Keel's office
this session are three that just don't seem to fit. Most of the Republican
former sheriff's proposed legislation seems predictable enough: He's got
one bill to make it easier to prosecute someone who robs an elderly person,
for instance, while another increases the penalties for evading arrest.

But in House Bills 511,512, and 513, the American Civil Liberties Union of
Texas and the Drug Policy Forum have found an unlikely ally. The first of
these would strengthen an existing requirement that affidavits supporting
arrest warrants be made public immediately. HB 512 sets limits on the time
people can be held in jail without probable cause for belief of guilt and
sets a maximum bond. And should HB 513 become law, Texas would join the
small group of states that have enacted statutes decriminalizing medical
marijuana use.

Terry Keel is a lawman, as a quick glance around his office will tell you.
Most of the walls are decorated here and there with plaques and thank-you
certificates from police groups.

The man himself doesn't shake this impression with his nearly unblinking
stare and stretched-out vowels.

No donut-belly, he looks younger than his actual age of 43. Keel won't
hesitate to tell you he's a conservative. A Republican. But for the
representative of half of Austin and Travis County; that might mean
something different than it would in any other Texas district.

"You know that saying, 'only Nixon could go to China'?" says Keel,
explaining how he came to cross the Great Wall between enforcement and
treatment.

In sponsoring marijuana legislation, he has joined forces with what his
office calls "a weird constituency" from all over the political map. House
Bill 513 would change the Health and Safety Code to allow a person using
marijuana because of a physician's recommendation to use that
recommendation as a defense against a possession charge in court. "We ought
to have a realistic approach in Texas that recognizes that just because a
drug may be abused by some, its medicinal qualities should not be kept from
legitimate use, and that decision should rest between a patient and a
doctor;' says Keel.

Al Robison, a professor of pharmacology and director of the Drug Policy
Forum of Texas, is upbeat about the bill, but he laments that it doesn't
protect the recommending doctors.

Keel doesn't think doctors face any legal danger, since only a
recommendation-not a prescription-is needed as a defense.

Professional reputation is a matter doctors will have to work out among
themselves.

Then there's the bill that Texas ACLU Director Will Harrell describes as
"extraordinary and brilliant;' HB 512. For those arrested without a
warrant, the bill would set a maximum jail time of 24 hours for
misdemeanors and 48 hours for felonies if a magistrate hasn't found
probable cause to believe a suspect is guilty. Moreover, the bill limits
personal bond to maximums of $5,000 for misdemeanors and $10,000 for felonies.

Harrell says being left to rot in jail is more common than you might think.
"Too often we've discovered cases of people languishing in jail for months
without having been charged and almost certainly without having been given
bond, and certainly one that was set a reasonable amount.

And a lot of that was due to negligence of the judges, but more often than
that, an effort on behalf of the prosecutor to extract pleas of guilt."

Keel says the bill's jail-time limits would correct a mistaken, but
all-too-common interpretation of a civil court ruling that found agencies
liable for time spent in jail in excess of 72 hours. "Some agencies have
unfortunately allowed officers to throw people in jail and then they just
sit around and either wait until the full 72 hours to file charges, or they
don't ever file charges and the jail lets them go. And then later they file
a warrant and go back and throw them in jail for the same thing.

That's wrong" Since a person arrested on a minor charge can't post bond if
charges haven't been filed, Keel says it's possible for someone arrested on
a felony charge to get out first.

David Weeks, director of the Texas County and District Attorney
Association, says he hasn't paid much attention to the bill, but he sounds
fairly amicable to the idea. "Finding a probable cause should be done
fairly quickly because you have to get a bond set in a reasonable period of
time." Keel expects opposition, but only until the bill can be explained.
"It'll protect sheriffs' offices of the state who're in charge of
incarcerating these people"

Nor has TCDAA opposed Keel's open records bill, which Weeks says he reads
as a clarification of present law. As Texas law stands, sworn affidavits
supporting arrest warrants have to be made public right away, just like
those for search warrants.

Sometimes they're not. The law doesn't really say, in black and white and
in one place, precisely when to make these affidavits public record or
where to display them. Keel's bill clears up any vagueness by borrowing
language from a similar law that covers search warrant affidavits. A
similar effort in the last legislative session, Keel's HB 1246, died in the
House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence. Harrell says the practice of
making these affidavits public is at the discretion of a judge, who will
often seal them at a prosecutor's suggestion. "This is a situation that
would be very important in cases like Tulia (a town where a number of black
citizens were arrested on questionable drug charges). If we had had access
from the very beginning to what the basis of the arrest was and could
criticize it then we could have pointed out the inconsistencies and
flat-out lies that the prosecutor was using to get the war-rant for these
people's arrests."