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defense lawyers said his organization does not object to the bill as long as the oral confession is taped and the person receives a warning. He said it is important to require that the tape be kept until a court order says it may be destroyed “otherwise you could maintain whatever portion of the tape you wanted and destroy the other portion. Duncan said the governor’s bail bond bill “effectively denies bail to any person who is not independently wealthy. First it makes it an offense for any attorney to write a bail bond, and there are probably at least a hundred counties in Texas where no bail bond companies operate . . . . Then it makes members of the county bail bonding board personally liable for any forfeiture of a bonding company. That means any individual would have to be a fool to sit on the board.” The bill’s proponents say the current bail bond system is not regulated adequately by county bail bond boards, and loopholes have allowed bondsmen to escape liability on forfeitures. Dean said the bill would prevent undercapitalized concerns from writing bonds and eliminate fly-by-night operators. He denied it would make bonds less available to the poor, and he denied that board members would have to fork over in the event of forfeitures. “It does not make them liable for the forfeited dollars, but imposes a direct duty and obligation on them to do their job.” \(The bill makes it a misdemeanor if boards fail to exercise their obligations and duties Whitworth said the criminal defense lawyers’ only objection to the bill is the provision forbidding attorneys to make bond for their clients, and only for their clients. He said attorneys generally put up bond in municipal court cases where, for example, they might be representing someone for a traffic ticket. “Most lawyers just do that as part of representation and don’t charge for making them,” he said. The governor’s bill on the board of pardons and paroles would restructure that agency on grounds that the current board is inefficient and not responsible. It would also set up a system of halfway houses throughout the state to help persons on parole. Duncan said the bill “is an effort by the governor’s office to intimidate the board of pardons and paroles into reducing the number of parole recommendations . . . by wiping out the parole commissioners who presently have the same statutory authority as members of the board in making recommendations for parole.” Duncan said the governor’s reaction to criticisms of his veto of 5,200 parole recommendations has been to attempt to cut the flow of recommendations to his office, so he will no longer reap the blame. “What you have in the governor’s office is people who know absolutely nothing about the case, people who have not done face-to-face interviews, people who know nothing about the community the person comes from sitting there and just whimsically vetoing parole recommendations almost as if they have a quota to meet,” Duncan said. Dean said it was “absolutely untrue” that the governor was trying to cut parole recommendations off at the pass by restructuring the board. The governor has appointed one of three board members and two of six parole commissioners. The bill would mean, Dean said, that the governor gives up appointing parole commissioners, since they would be hired rather than appointed. “It’s not a power grab at all,” Dean said. “The fact of the matter is we want that board to be independent. It is important that board members and commissioners have the ability to exercise independent discretion.” Corrections department head W. J. Estelle said he favors the changes the governor has proposed in the board. He does not support every detail of the proposals, “but obviously in my opinion there are some needs for organizational and structural change.” Other bills in the crime package would: Require that juries be given information on parole laws prior to assessing sentences. Amend the “shock probation” law, a measure which gives first offenders a short amount of jail time, then puts them on probation in hope the jail time will be a salutary shock. Amend the aggravated rape and sexual abuse statutes so that rape accomplished through extreme violence constitutes aggravated rape. Amend statutes regarding sexual abuse of children. Strengthen ordinance authorities for cities and counties on the sale and distribution of pornographic material to minors. Duncan said changes in the shock probation, rape and abuse-of-children laws are merely cosmetic, though he said the original version of the shock probation bill was intended to gut it by requiring defendants to plead guilty and waive their right of appeal in order to be eligible. Dean said that the bills are “meaningful, well-thought-out changes in the criminal statutes” and the charge that they are minor is “false and absolutely misleading. If they were cosmetic, I think it all would have already passed.” Whitworth said the defense attorneys have “mixed feelings” about the bill instructing juries on parole laws. The intent of the bill is to clear up misunderstanding when juries sentence prisoners, on grounds that juries often would have given harsher or more lenient sentences had they understood parole laws completely. Whitworth said that it is almost impossible to predict how parole laws will affect a prisoner because so much depends on his or her behavior while in prison. In other words, parole would be based on how the prisoner behaves long after the jury has passed sentence. “I can see it causing hung juries on the issue of punishment, which would result in complete new trial,” Whitworth said. MARY LENZ Crime in Texas No Mafia but More Murders Austin “Texans enjoy the dubious distinction of having one out of 16 of the United States population and one out of nine of 8 APRIL 3, 1981 its murders,” said Col. James Adams, head of the Texas department of public safety. Adams, formerly the No. 2 man in the FBI, said crime might literally get out of control in the state as the population skyrockets and criminal justice facilities fail to keep pace. There are only about 27,000 prisoners