© 2016 The Texas Lawbook.
By Mark Curriden
(April 26) – Dallas businessman Doug Deason was 17-years-old when he held a party at a neighbor’s house while they were gone. Booze flowed. Music was loud. Cops were called.
“The couple’s son gave me a key and things got out of hand,” says Deason, who was charged with felony burglary.
Deason’s parents hired a well-connected criminal defense lawyer, who convinced prosecutors to lower the charge to misdemeanor trespassing and to agree to expunge his record if he stayed clean for a year.
“A felony could have ruined my life, as I would have been forced to check that box on every school and job application,” says Deason, who is the son of Affiliated Computers Services founder Darwin Deason. “There are a lot of people who make a mistake like I did and end up paying for it for their entire life.”
That was 1979 in northwest Arkansas.
The Deason Family Criminal Justice Reform Center will conduct actual statistical and analytical studies ranging from pre-trial procedures, sentencing disparities and pre-trial diversion, abuses of asset seizure and forfeiture laws and wrongful convictions.
SMU Dedman Law Dean Jennifer Collins says the Deason gift combined with a matching $3.5 million contribution by the Charles Koch Foundation will fully fund the center, which will be located on the law school campus.
“This tremendous opportunity is happening only because of Doug Deason’s passion for this issue and his passion for SMU,” she said.
Collins said the combined $7 million allows the law school to hire an executive director, an outreach director and additional faculty in the field.
John Creuzot, a former Dallas County district judge and prosecutor, says the new center is a fabulous idea.
“It’s an outstanding opportunity to see what is working and what needs improvement,” says Creuzot, who is an SMU Dedman alum. “There is so much that goes on in court right now that is unstudied.”
Creuzot is widely credited for developing and implementing pre-trial and post-trial diversion programs in Texas that wipe clean a criminal defendant’s record if they stay out of trouble for a certain period of time.
Criminal justice experts say the center should investigate the effectiveness of prison educational and training programs. They point out that the Georgia Department of Corrections once had a program that allowed inmates to study and obtain college degrees or associates degrees in various tradecrafts while incarcerated. The recidivism rate for such inmates when they were released was less than 10 percent while the overall prison population recidivism rate exceeded 60 percent.
However, the program was halted after victim’s rights groups and conservative Republican political leaders condemned the efforts as being soft on crime.
Deason, himself a Republican, says many in his own political party are shortsighted when it comes to “doing what’s right and what’s effective” in the area of criminal justice. He says the decision by Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, to restore voting rights to 200,000 former felons who have served their entire sentences and remained clean is “awesome.”
“If they’ve paid their debt to society and taken the necessary steps, then why not give them a better chance to re-emerge into society to live a successful and dignified life,” he says.
Deason, who is the president of Deason Capital Services, has pushed Congress to reduce mandatory minimum sentences of non-violent drug offenders.
The proposal passed the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee 15 to 5. He points out that Texas Senator John Cornyn voted for the bill, while Sen. Ted Cruz voted against it.
“There’s an extreme right wing that doesn’t understand this issue or they are politically afraid to do the right thing,” Deason says, which he says is ironic because he and the Koch brothers support the measure with President Obama.
“I was lucky enough to get a second chance,” he says. “Other less fortunate people deserve that same opportunity.”
Deason says he hopes the new center will research asset seizure and forfeiture efforts by law enforcement, which he says are “the most un-American things you can imagine.
“When a young man sells drugs out of his grandmother’s basement, we see prosecutors seizing grandmother’s house, even though she knew nothing about the criminal activity,” he says. “That is just wrong and unfair to many of our citizens who cannot afford to fight against the power of the government.”
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