The once bad-ass, toss ’em & lock ’em up state of Texas has now become a leader and innovator of criminal justice reform. Or in other words they finally realized the State couldn’t afford to keep dumping millions into their overcrowded prison system working, so they’re making changes – PB/TK
One of the reddest states in the US is leading the charge toward criminal-justice reform thanks to an unlikely political alliance – By Michelle Mark / July 27 2017
Mark Gonzalez had never prosecuted a single case before he was elected district attorney of Nueces County, Texas, last November.
The 37-year-old self-described “Mexican biker defense lawyer” spent his first decade in law poking holes through bad cases and defending low-level offenders from what he viewed as unnecessary prosecutions and unduly harsh penalties. So when the 2016 election season approached, Gonzalez thought the Nueces County district attorney’s office was ripe for an overhaul.
To say Gonzalez isn’t the archetype for the chief criminal prosecutor for the southern Texas county is an understatement. He’s covered in tattoos — the words “Not Guilty” stretch from shoulder to shoulder in jagged type, and his left forearm is inked with a portrait of Moses because, as his clients say, “he sets people free.” He spends his free time riding one of his three Harley-Davidson motorcycles along the barren Texas highways with the Calaveras Motorcycle Club, a group some of his critics called a “biker gang.” And at 19, he was arrested for a misdemeanor, driving while intoxicated. He keeps his mugshot framed in his office.
But there he was on January 5, in a tiny courthouse in his hometown of Agua Dulce, sworn in while wearing a Dallas Cowboys jersey in a private ceremony in front of his family.
Gonzalez’s inexperience and tattoos didn’t matter to Texans — they liked what he had to say.
Continue to businessinsider.com article: http://www.businessinsider.com/texas-criminal-justice-reform-conservatives-liberals-bipartisan-alliance-2017-7
