The population of Houston, Texas in 1960 was 1,364,569. By 1980 the population was 2,754,304, or slightly more than doubled in twenty years.
A reasonable argument can be made that the period from 1960 to 1980 marks the end of the Texas frontier era, and the beginning of the modern Texas era. My family moved to the Houston area fairly late in that period. I remember reading the daily newspaper (we were a Chron family), and it seemed that there were giants in the earth in those days. Carol Vance was one of them. Boomtown DA
Mr. Vance joined the Harris County District Attorney’s office in 1958 as an assistant DA. He was elected District Attorney in 1966, and held that office until 1979. Not only was he DA during Houston’s explosive period of growth, his office also prosecuted some of Houston’s legendary cases: the Joan Hill/John Hill murder trials, the Don Yarbrough case, Ronald Clark O’Bryan, and the Corll/Brooks/Henley serial killings, to take a few examples.
What comes through in Boomtown DA is that Mr. Vance is a guy I’d like to sit down with over some barbecue and a few beers or a large orange. He’s committed not to putting people behind bars or running up a huge win-loss record (“Win-loss records, by the way, are not all that important.”), but to seeing justice is done. He’s a man of deep religious commitment, who continues to be active in prison ministry. And he’s a very modest man.
I tend to get annoyed at the overuse of “I” in autobiographies. Too many small-press/self-published biographies overuse the “I”: certainly, it can’t be avoided in an autobiography, but it can be moderated. If anyone had an excuse for overuse of the “I”, it would be Mr. Vance. But when it comes to the achievements of the DA’s office under his tenure, he doesn’t lean on the “I”. It’s always “we did this”, “these people did this”, never “I did this by myself”. Mr. Vance is not shy about spreading around the credit to other folks in his office, especially Johnny Holmes (who succeeded Mr. Vance as DA, served twenty years in the office, and really needs to write his own book). That’s admirable. You don’t often see that kind of behavior these days.
Chapter 20, about Gerry Phelps, who went from left-wing college professor to convicted armed robber to conservative Christian, friend of Marvin Olasky, and prison minister, is a heck of a story. (I would link to Ms. Phelps website, but it appears to be under the control of a squatter right now. This appears to be her blog, which covers much of the same ground Mr. Vance covers.) I suspect Mr. Vance could fill an entire second book with stories of “Racehorse” Haynes, Percy Foreman, Marvin Zindler, and other characters he’s known. I’d buy that book.
Mr. Vance’s modesty and his fund of good stories about the characters he make up for some of Boomtown DA‘s flaws. I think he’s written a fun and fascinating book, especially for lawyers and amateur students of the law such as myself. I commend it to your attention. But I’d love to sit down with Mr. Vance and talk about some things…
- It’s a shame that his chapter on the Joan Hill/John Hill case reads more like a civics lesson on grand juries and how they work. To be fair, Blood and Money
is the classic book on the case and wins praise from Mr. Vance; it would be hard to top that book, but Mr. Vance’s writing on the case seems curiously detached. (Also, there are some differences between facts as recounted by Mr. Vance, and facts as recounted by Mr. Thompson. Most significantly, their accounts of the aftermath of Bobby Vandiver’s death differ.)
- Mr. Vance also doesn’t cover the Ronald Clark O’Bryan case at all, which is a curious omission. I understand this may have been a sensitive issue to the father of five children, but it was a major case in my youth, one that sparked my interest in crime and criminal justice, and it would have been nice to see his thoughts on it.
- Mr. Vance doesn’t talk very much about drugs and drug prosecutions (though he does mention the Lee Otis Johnson case: yes, I know that link requires a sign-in, but even if you can’t get BugMeNot to work, those first few paragraphs give you the meat). I’d like to hear his thoughts on our War On Drugs today. Does he believe marijuana should be legalized for medical use? Or completely legalized? Does he believe that drug prosecutions are taking away resources from prosecutors that could be put to better use? Does he think that the criminal justice system could be reformed to better handle drug crimes, perhaps with aggressive treatment programs instead of prison time?
- Under Mr. Vance’s tenure, Houston started using random DWI checkpoints and aggressively prosecuting DWI offenses. Does Mr. Vance believe that the expanded use of checkpoints, and the pursuit of DWI down to the .08 level (and possibly even lower) is a good idea? Or would we be better off pursuing the impaired driver, whether he’s talking on a cell phone or three sheets to the wind?
- I noted above that Mr. Vance did not see the DA’s office as being a tool of the police force, but first and foremost as a place where justice was done. It seems that today, prosecution has become a “win at all costs” game, and that’s resulted in some awful miscarriages of justice. (See, for example, Clarence Brandley and Anthony Graves.) How does Mr. Vance propose we get past that? And how does he think the justice system can be reformed to reduce the number of false convictions? Would he agree with Radley Balko’s recommendations? What scientific standard does he believe should be applied to evidence, and how much of modern forensics meets that standard? (Side note: I find it interesting that Mr. Vance was the first prosecutor in the United States to get neutron activation analysis of hair admitted as evidence in a criminal case.)
- Mr. Vance makes it clear he is in favor of the death penalty, but does he believe it is requested too frequently these days? Should it be reserved for the most serious crimes? How does he defend the death penalty against opponents? And how does he reconcile his belief in the death penalty with the prison mission work he’s involved in?
- Mr. Vance’s comments on the mythical “Saturday Night Special” and his attempts to ban them (page 46) aren’t really worthy of serious consideration. But it would be interesting to see him try to reconcile his complaints about the “Saturday Night Special” with his statement that “In all these sudden crimes of passion, the preferred weapon was whatever could be found at the time.” (page 39) as well as his lengthy catalog of murder weapons he’s seen: “a hammer, an ice pick, an axe, a hatchet, a big butcher’s knife, a small paring knife, a car, a truck, a switchblade knife, a hunting knife, a large rock, a shovel, a shotgun, a rifle, a piece of lumber, and guns galore consisting of pistols, rifles, and shotguns of all calibers.” If people were killing each other with lumber, butcher’s knives, and whatever else came to hand, does he really believe a ban of the non-existent “Saturday Night Special” would have been useful?
- Chapter 21 is devoted to Mr. Vance’s pursuit of Universal Amusement Company, and his eventual loss at the Supreme Court level. If this doesn’t ring any bells with you, UAC were the people who distributed “Deep Throat”, and Mr. Vance was trying to get the movie declared obscene. He clearly feels to this day that the Supreme Court made a bad decision, and that pornography is bad for the country. Yet anyone who studies the history of “Deep Throat” knows that most, if not all, of the profit from that movie went back to the Mob. Compare that to the situation we have today, where porno movies are legitimate, in the sense that they’re made and distributed by tax-paying business people and enterprises that make some effort (however flawed) to protect their workers. If Mr. Vance had his way, wouldn’t he just drive porn back underground, and restore the bad old days of the 1960’s? Are there any similarities worth considering between porn then and now, and the War on Drugs? I understand and support Mr. Vance’s religious beliefs, but it seems that his views on porn are motivated by those beliefs. I’d ask him what he believes the harm to society is if a lonely salesman in a hotel room (or a lonely Muslim terrorist) watches “Weapons of Ass Destruction 6” (especially since it wraps up plot points left dangling from the fifth movie). And does he believe it is appropriate for the church to enforce morality at the point of a gun? Because in the end, that’s what all laws come down to: the point of a gun.
- I’d also like to talk to Mr. Vance about where he thinks the line should be drawn between government and religion. Mr. Vance, as I’ve noted, is involved in prison ministry; one of the TDC’s prisons is explicitly Christian in nature, and named after Mr. Vance. It is tough to argue with an 8% recidivism rate, but is this good government? Does Mr. Vance think that the success of the prison is due to Christianity itself, or more generally giving inmates something larger to care about? Would it matter if the prison was Jewish, Catholic, or Muslim instead of Christian?
- I would love to see an actual chapter and verse citation of the paramour statute in the old Texas legal codes, not just folks talking about it. (Mr. Vance was one of the people responsible for the modern Texas legal codes, which included the elimination of that statute. And he refers to it unfavorably more than once.)