Serving
in the US Congress from 2005 until retiring in 2018, Houston’s Ted Poe is best
remembered these days as a wise-cracking conservative Republican lawmaker. But
he first made his mark at the Harris County Criminal Courthouse in the 1970s, ‘80s
and ‘90s first as a hard-nosed prosecutor and then as an innovative Criminal
District Judge.
I
met Poe as a young prosecutor when I worked as a reporter for The Houston Post covering that
courthouse between 1976 and 1979. Despite his hard line toward criminals, he
always displayed a great sense of humor, and we often shared many laughs during
his prosecutorial career. We even carpooled while performing our respective
duties on a high-profile criminal case moved to Huntsville on a change of venue
from Houston in 1977—him prosecuting and me reporting the testimony for The Houston Post. That case received
national attention, including coverage by TheWashington Post.
Although
our lifestyles and views differed greatly on everything from religion to
nightlife, we always got along well in what I always realized to be more of a
symbiotic relationship than a true friendship. For me, he was always good copy
and for him, I was a portal for media attention. Nevertheless, I’m sure that
symbiotic relationship included a large amount of mutual respect. I know it did
from my side of the equation.
So,
as a freelancer in the 1980s, I turned again to Ted Poe for story material
during his judicial career and he did not disappoint. I wrote several articles
about his innovative judicial methods, including this one published in the
October 1987 edition of Southwest Airlines’ Spirit
magazine. He always kept a framed copy of that cover among the artwork
decorating his office walls. Of course, there’s also a Wikipedia article on Poe
for anyone seeking details about his congressional career.
HIS BRAND OF SENTENCING
MAY BE UNORTHODOX, BUT JUDGE
TED IS LEAVING
HIS MARK ON THE TEXAS CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
Winston
Bradley (as we'll call him) was terrified. The young commodities broker had
just relocated to Houston in 1983, looking for professional opportunity. He'd
found that, all right, but along with it came something else. Admittedly "naive
and stupid," he had agreed to help acquaintance deliver cocaine, only to
walk straight into an undercover narcotics investigation trap. Fingerprinted,
booked and locked in jail for the first time in his life, Bradley then faced an
even more horrifying prospect: His case was assigned to the 228th Judicial
District, a court notorious in jailhouse circles as the Black Hole of Harris
County.
“The
other inmates in the jail were scared to death of the judge in that court,”
recalls Bradley. “I was briefed fully on Judge Ted Poe. I was terrified.”
At
first it appeared his fears had merit. After pleading guilty, he still refused
to throw himself on the mercy of a judge who regularly recites his hard-line
motto in public: “I just don't think the criminals ought to leave the
courthouse laughing.” Instead Bradley chose a rarely used provision in Texas
law that allows first offenders to have a jury assess the sentence. Despite the
prosecutor's insistence on 10 years in prison, the jurors decided on seven
years' probation with a $5,000 fine. Bradley breathed a sigh of relief.
Then
Judge Poe took his breath away.
Interpreting
Texas laws on probationary control to their most liberal extreme, Poe ordered
Bradley to spend the first 30 days of his term in the Harris County Jail as an
appetizer for the main course of punishment that would come if he were to
violate probation and draw a prison sentence. The judge ordered a urinalysis
taken twice a month plus 20 monthly hours of community service projects
assigned by the court.
Figuring
that his alternatives could be worse, Bradley swallowed his objections, silently
cursed his rotten luck and marched off to jail. After his release, he spent his
Saturdays working at a retail consignment shop, with the proceeds donated to
churches. He joined a crew of fellow probationers from the 228th Judicial
District in cleaning the battleship Texas and the San Jacinto Monument,
collecting no pay for the time-consuming volunteer duty. He quit drinking and
religiously reported for urinalysis. He met with the judge at regular
intervals. And slowly a change occurred.
Bradley
has been off probation for some time now. He has married and works hard to
support himself. The judge holds no power over Bradley anymore. But Bradley
still spends some Saturdays volunteering at the church shop. And he has a new
attitude about the man in black who took all the fun out of being on probation.
“I
now respect him greatly,” says Bradley of Judge Ted Poe. “He made me see the
light. When my judgment was set aside, it was like winning a million dollars.
He showed me guidance, and it was a strict probation. It changed my whole life.”
Bradley
is hardly typical of the “customers” who do business with the controversial
figure who laughs off his image as Houston's “hanging judge.” The criminal
justice system produces few satisfied customers anyway, and any review of Poe's
probation/prison statistics demonstrates his sympathy for old-fashioned, hellfire-and-brimstone
punishment. The majority of defendants assigned to the 228th won't get the same
opportunity afforded Bradley.
At
the same time, however, there's something new and creative going on in his
court. For too long, the public has felt powerless about crime, its only
response a choice between extremes: ship the offenders off to prison, where
they'll probably get worse before they return; or put them on probation, where
they can laugh about beating the system. Ted Poe's justice—dare we dub it
Poetic justice?—leaves offenders with little chance for beating the system.
Viewed
against the backdrop of prison overcrowding problems in Texas and, for that
matter, all over the country, Poe's justice looks like a harbinger of the
future. By August, the Texas prison system had been forced on 18 occasions to
bar new admissions. While halting delivery of prisoners to its front door, the
system has accelerated their departure out the back on at least four occasions
this year, with the governor's office awarding extra “good time” to precipitate
release of prisoners who would not ordinarily have been paroled. The situation
has only added to the frustration of critics who view the system as one big
revolving door.
Poe
isn't advocating more probation as an alternative to prison. Indeed, his court
is renowned as one in which prison sentences overwhelmingly outnumber probation
terms. But overcrowded prisons aren't limited to Texas. As more judges adopt
creative methods to make probation more effective, Poe emerges as a symbol of a
new response to the criminal problem.
“I
call it contemporary probation as opposed to straight probation, and it's a
national trend that's continually expanding,” says Malcolm MacDonald, president
of the American Probation and Parole Officers Association. As administrator for
community-based correctional programs for the Texas Adult Probation Commission,
MacDonald is particularly aware of the pressures on probation in the Southwest.
“Judges
are open to a new look at probation,” he explains. “Part of the motivation is
that judges aren’t seeing success with people going through the prison systems,
which are overcrowded anyway.”
In
that context, Poe represents the vanguard of a new and potentially more
effective method for confronting crime. But his pioneering efforts haven’t come
without criticism. Not yet 40 years old, Poe seems to enjoy his celebrity as a
controversial figure. He recalls feeling complimented when an outraged defense
attorney offered his description of Poe as a young prosecutor a few years ago: “He
can take 12 rational people on a jury and turn them into a howling lynch mob.”
The
judge chuckled at a more recent and earthy assessment offered by a killer sentenced
to death in his court: “You tell Judge Poe he has a heart like a thumping
gizzard.”
Because
of Poe's unmerciful record as a Harris County prosecutor, many observers feared
for the system when he won his judicial appointment in 1981 at the age of 33.
Here was an assistant district attorney who only half-jokingly referred to his
job as “the Lord's work.” Here was a prosecutor nicknamed "Toothbrush
Ted" because he had once slid a toothbrush across the defense table to a
defendant who slumped in his chair after drawing a long sentence. Poe said he brought
the toothbrush that day because he figured the defendant would need one for
prison after the trial.
Here
was a tea-totaling deacon from the Church of Christ who always credited his
religious background with fashioning his philosophy: “I believe there are
rights and there are wrongs. The whole world is not a mass of grays as some
people would try to lead us to believe.”
But
things have been a little different from the bench.
“I
don't call it the Lord's work from up here,” he says. And he resisted the
temptation to campaign for election by distributing toothbrushes with his name
on the handles.
“As
a defense attorney, I'm nervous about him. All those conditions just give my
clients more opportunity to mess up,” says Fred Dailey, one of the city's top
criminal lawyers. “But as a citizen, I've come to appreciate his approach.
Probation is too often considered a right by people who should learn criminal
conduct is serious business.”
For
some, however, the challenge is stiff. The judge recalls an occasion early in
his term when he watched a defendant wince while discussing the special
conditions demanded in the 228th. Finally, the probation officer addressed the
judge: “He says he'd rather go to prison.” Within minutes the man was headed
for the Texas Department of Corrections, happy to serve his time behind bars.
“Probation
for a defendant is a little white box all tied with yellow ribbons,” Poe
explains. “When they open that box in my court, they find a long list of dos
and don'ts. I'm no sociologist. But the people I see come through here are
selfish. One thing to help change that attitude is to get them doing things for
other people.”
Building
his probation philosophy on that maxim, Poe has constructed a special formula
for dealing with all probationers. It's a formula different from traditional
courts, where probationers are merely delivered to their supervisory officers
and left to follow basic rules set down by the state. Poe personally involves
himself with his probationers to the extent that they actually have two
supervisory officers—their probation department professional and his honor
himself.
All
property crime probations in Poe's court begin with a formal apology from the
defendant to the victim. It has to be delivered in writing to Poe, who reviews
it for sincerity: “The first step in rehabilitation is admitting you're wrong.”
If
the probationer hedges on that admission, the letter must be rewritten. One
probationer noted in his letter: “If somebody had taken my car like I did to you,
I'd probably have shot them.”
He
even required a welfare fraud probationer to publish a classified ad in one of
the daily papers apologizing to the citizens of Harris County.
While
many judges just sign the probation forms and allow probationers to report by
mail, he requires weekly personal visits to the probation department. In
addition, each probationer must personally visit him in his office every 60 or
90 days.
“I
want to see how they're doing. After all, they're my responsibility,” he says.
And
winning early release from probation is not necessarily a routine matter in the
228th. Poe requires a written report from the probationer clearly stating the
lifestyle changes that have created a “good citizen.”
But
these things are merely the surface of probation in the 228th. Poe really waxes
creative in two areas beyond paperwork: community service and special terms.
Sounding
much like a doting father with a pack of errant children to corral, Poe
recalls, “I read somewhere in the papers one Christmas that the Houston-Galveston
Food Bank was out of food. I thought, ‘I ought to get my probationers working
on that.’ So I had some of them help distribute food. And they threw a
Christmas party for the kids at Project Head Start. They collected items for
Toys for Tots. That was their three projects for that year.”
He
can dispatch his “probation team” like that thanks to some vague wording in his
probation term pleadings. All probationers are required to perform 20 hours of
community service per month. But Poe retains the option of determining just how
that will be done. He reviews the probationer's background and finds an
assignment to do the most good.
One
example is a probationer who owned two beauty shops. Convicted of criminal
mischief, the man was assigned to spend Saturdays cutting hair at the Texas centers
for the retarded and the blind. Says the judge: “If you drive past there and
wonder why all those kids have such great hairdos, well, that's why.”
DWI
(driving while intoxicated) probationers are routinely assigned to volunteer
for work in hospital emergency rooms: “So they can see first-hand the effects
of drunk driving.”
Once
he loaned a 20-probationer work crew to the state's parks department, where
they helped with restoration of the Battleship Texas while another Poe probation
squad cleaned the historic Founder Cemetery.
If
Poe's interpretation of community service authority seems creative, then his
penchant for “special terms” is often the stroke of genius. He always finds
something that tailors the probation to the crime. He first grabbed headlines
by exiling a probationer to Michigan. He orders high school dropouts to return
to school or obtain a GED as a special term of probation. Teens and adults who
commit property crimes at night are placed under a 10:30 p.m. curfew.
Jokes
the judge: “Someone said that would be impossible to enforce, but it's actually
the easiest of all. You just have the probation officer call the home. If
there's no answer, the probationer has violated the terms. By 10:30 p.m. the
news is off TV and they ought to be in bed, anyway.”
Always
eager to come down hard on drunken driving offenses, Poe even ordered child
support as a probationary term in a manslaughter case. The wreck victim's widow
testified about her poverty, and a light bulb flashed in the judge's brain. When
the jury placed the negligent driver on probation, Poe ordered the defendant to
help with child support for the widow.
Criminal
justice philosophers might argue that all this is effective only if a judge can
demonstrate lower rates of revoking those fancy probation contracts. Poe can't.
In fact, he admits he may have higher revocation rates because the terms are
often more stringent. But he counters that the extra effort is worth it if just
one case produces results.
At
the Harris County Courthouse these days, the impact of creative probation—Ted
Poe's justice—is becoming quite a trend. Vying with Poe now for new ideas is another
young jurist, Michael McSpadden. Having concocted some creative projects of his
own, McSpadden was disappointed when he heard Poe had been first to focus on
the Battleship Texas as a target for the 228th. So he warned Poe in a memo: “Keep
your hands off the Alamo—it's mine.”
Looking
up from the note, Poe offered a predictable response: “How does he know I don't
already have people there?”
