Roundup: SCOTUS to decide DNA testing in Texas death row case; more fentanyl "touch exposure" hysteria; study finds cops get better results when they aren't assholes

• You don’t say: “Study Finds ‘Hot-Spot Policing’ More Effective When Officers Show Respect”

• You might think that if DNA testing could establish the innocence of a death row prisoner, a state would want to allow it, both so it didn’t execute an innocent man, but also so it could pursue real justice for the killer’s victims. You’d be wrong, at least in Texas. And the Supreme Court will decide this term whether Texas can get away with it.

• Meanwhile, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has refused to overturn a conviction and death sentence, despite the fact that both the trial judge and the DA for the district where the prisoner was tried both say he was wrongly convicted.

• The unseen toll of nonfatal police shootings.

• Philadelphia reformist DA Larry Krasner may soon be impeached. His critics cite a flawed study claiming his policies are responsible for a surge in murders. But it’s more likely because he’s holding bad cops accountable.

• Maine’s public defense system is a shambles.

• Oklahoma City Republican DA candidate runs to the right of one of the most right-wing incumbent DAs in the country, saying of a 15-year-old black kid killed by cops, “I would have shot him myself.” It’s worth noting that Oklahoma City is one of the “leading” counties in the country for both executions and fatal police shootings.

• Your latest hysterical, wholly implausible story about “touch exposure” to fentanyl. (Related: Why is there fentanyl in the cocaine supply, anyway?)

• So far, every city to experiment with sending mental health professionals (instead of cops) in response to mental health crises has found the experiment to be an unqualified success.

• Here’s a guide to all the election deniers running for public office next month. Meanwhile, there’s some grim shit going down in Nevada.

• The de facto leader of the Republican Party and presumptive 2024 presidential nominee cracks a joke about journalists getting imprisoned and raped for doing their jobs.

• This is one of the nuttiest corruption stories I’ve seen in a while.

• It will never not be baffling to me that the Supreme Court can decide that some thing a state has been doing for decades is an egregious violation of the rights of the accused, but then decide that everyone harmed by that unconstitutional thing up until the moment the justices finally stepped up and did their jobs . . . is out of luck.

• I suspect we’ll see more of these: Florida voter has election fraud charges touted by DeSantis dismissed

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This week in dog history:

On October 19, 1892, the Times-Philadelphia reported on the burgeoning poodle-grooming industry in Paris. The French poodle was all the rage among fashionable Parisians, but some new owners found it difficult to keep up grooming for the high-maintenance breed. So itinerant poodle-groomers sprang up along the banks of the Seine to meet demand. “Here ‘dog-clipping’ has become a regular industry,” the paper reported, “and poodles are sheared and shaved just like some of their two-legged kindred who move in the same social circles.”

Photo: Glacier landing, Denali National Park, Alaska

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