Mark Pryor's Blog, page 10

DWI eradicated

Almost completely.  And yes, I'm serious.



Oh, wait, I'm not being clear: DWI has not been stopped in Austin, oh no, it's alive and well in our fair city.  But it has been eradicated from my docket of cases.



You see, I was having lunch with a friend yesterday and he was asking about the kinds of mischief kids get up to.  I told him there's a lot of vehicle burglaries, some home burglaries, and a whole heck of a lot of pot smoking.



And that got me thinking about the kinds of c...

Oh, media, how could you?

Dear Media,

I turned on my TV this morning, as I do every day while I drink my first cup of tea. I like these times when we're together, slowly warming up to the day. Of course, you get up first, by the time my kettle boils you've been up for a while, gathering news, readying it for me, sorting and condensing so I can go into the world knowing a little, just a little, of what's going on. I appreciate that, and I always have.

But lately things have been getting weird. I don't know, it's almost l...

Kids, drugs, and cops

I came across an interesting op-ed written by an Austin blogger, someone I link to from here because he's very involved in seeing that our criminal justice system improves.  Annoyingly, he also likes to hold cops and prosecutors accountable for their actions, an outrageous position that no right-minded human would go along with.  And I disagree with him on some issues.



But this is written not just from his perspective as a criminal justice observer, so to speak, but as a resident o...

Of Dope and Discretion

Two quick things before I head out to my Thursday night ride-along.


First, a riddle: two men are consuming marijuana when a policeman walks into the room.  The man smoking the joint is arrested and charged with a misdemeanor, but the man eating it is charged with a felony.  Why?



(I'll post my answer - hey, there may be more than one correct answer, right? - over the weekend, but it has nothing to do with amounts or weights.)



Second, a quick shout out to a fellow prosecutor (former...

Ballistics - matching bullets

Last week I showed you the brilliant photos that Greg Karim and his
colleagues use to figure out whether a cartridge casing was fired from a
particular gun. As promised, today I'm posting a series of photos
that show how the same kind of examination is made on the bullets
themselves.



Remember, here's the situation:



A
bullet is removed from the body of a victim. It's placed into
evidence and locked away. A gun is found on a suspect, who's now a
hundred miles from the crime scene. The gun is...

Ballistics - matching casings

One of the coolest aspects of this job is getting to work with people who are masters in their field. Of course, given my job their field is inherently interesting so you can imagine how fun it is to work with, say, a top-notch firearms analyst.

You know, like Austin P.D.'s Greg Karim.

Two of the things Greg and his colleagues can do include tests to (1) determine whether or not a particular shell casing was fired in a particular gun; and (2) whether or not a particular bullet was fired from a...

Nerves, for the first time in years

I don't get nervous. I don't get rattled, either. When that idiot/not idiot intentionally crashed into us, then rammed his car into a building, I felt cool as a cucumber the entire time. Didn't get the adrenaline rush I'd been expecting, nor any swings in emotion.  Likewise, I can get up and speak to a bunch of strangers in court with no hint of nerves, just a vague tingle of excitement.  Basically, cucumber.



And no, I'm not a sociopath (while scary things don't bug me, I can't wat...

The good, the bad, and the beachy.

Some observations, some of a criminal nature, from the seaside.



1.  If you want to smoke on the beach and bugger up the sea air don't do it near me and my kids.  Especially when we got there first.







2.  If #1 applies to you, covering your cigarette butt with two inches of sand is still littering.



3.  The nearer they are to the ocean, the more some 7-year-old girls wish mermaids were real.







4.  Because every wave is different, every wave needs jumping over.





5. ...

The mystery of the six-toed intruder

Everyone likes a good mystery, don't you think? Even if it can't be solved, there seems to be a certain pleasure in the wondering. Perhaps that's why Big Foot, aliens, and the Loch Ness Monster appeal - not because we expect to find them, but because we like to wonder, to consider the intriguing possibility that there are mysteries out there. . .



So here's one: yesterday morning I took the kids to summer camp. My littlest pointed out footprints on the windshield, prints that belonged to eith...