Texas Republicans preparing another voter purge.

Previous effort was eventually scrapped over errors; more attention to detail vowed

Texas’ Republican leaders are preparing for another purge of suspected noncitizen voters, vowing to be more careful and avoid the mistakes from two years ago when the state threatened to knock nearly 60,000 legal voters off of election rolls.

“It must be done with extreme attention to detail,” said state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, of the proposal he filed to launch a new round of voter purges using state driver’s license information to flag potential illegal voting.

In 2019, the Texas secretary of state sent a list based on state driver’s license data to county election officials showing the names of drivers whom state officials believed might be noncitizens who were voting in Texas. But a further review revealed that tens of thousands of legal citizens were incorrectly included on that list. Then-Secretary of State David Whitley eventually apologized to state lawmakers, saying the lists should have been reviewed more carefully. The Texas Senate ultimately forced Whitley out of office.

Officials in Harris and several other counties refused to send notices that could have knocked voters off the rolls ahead of the 2020 election, and voter rights advocacy groups decried the state’s efforts, which they said unfairly targeted people who may have been noncitizens when they got a driver’s license but had since been naturalized.

Texas’ latest effort comes as Republican-led legislatures across the country move to limit voting access in the wake of Democratic gains last fall. The Brennan Center for Justice estimates that more than 250 restrictive voting bills have been introduced, prefiled or carried over in 2021 legislative sessions, a more than four-fold increase from a year ago.

Bettencourt said the Legislature is going to set up a better process for the Texas Department of

The conversation between an inmate at the Harris County Jail and two others involved a lengthy explanation about cleaning up transmission fluid in a home, language homicide investigators said was code for something else.

It was about cleaning blood from a home, an investigator noted in court records, and led to the recent arrest of two men in connection to the 2019 discovery of a man’s body in a car trunk.

Charges of tampering with evidence — in this case, a human corpse — were filed against Darell Phipps and Christopher Johnson in the death of Jamarcus Howard, whom Harris County Sheriff ’s Office deputy found shot to death in a trunk while investigating an abandoned vehicle in the 7500 block of Furay Road. The deputy, while writing an inventory log for a tow, saw blood on the back bumper and looked inside the trunk.

Investigators said they believe the 22-year-old shooting victim was killed elsewhere prior to the May 2019 discovery and dragged into the trunk. The court documents do not imply why Howard was killed or by whom.

A review of a jailhouse phone call between Phipps — following his arrest on a since-dismissed aggravated robbery charge — and two people led investigators to believe their lengthy explanation about cleaning up transmission fluid in a home was a euphemism for blood.

The phone call, recorded about a month after Howard’s death, suggests Phipps claimed to have spilled transmission oil throughout the house. The voices on the other end of the line were not worried about what investigators could find if they searched the 6500 block of Sandy Oaks Drive.

“It’s been over a month and they won’t find anything in there,” one of the callers said, according to charging papers.

The investigator, identified in court records as Billy Davis, paraphrased the three as saying transmission fluid was spilled in the kitchen, living room and a bedroom. One of the callers said they would go over the supposed oil spillage with soap and water. No scrubbing needed, the deputy heard.

“The soap and water will be enough to make the fluid disappear,” the caller continued.

The investigator, in a sworn statement, cast doubt that transmission fluid would be spilled throughout a house. Speaking from his own experience, the investigator said traces of the fluid would not vanish in a month with nothing but a dash of soapy water.

“However,” Davis wrote. “Blood and DNA evidence can be destroyed over time and by soapy water.”

A search warrant at the home, about a mile and a half from where Howard’s body was found, found traces of the victim’s blood in several rooms, according to court documents.

Police also looked to Johnson as a suspect after finding an Instagram video of him and Howard in a car together nearly two hours before his death.

Surveillance footage from a nearby corner store pointed to another vehicle — which Phipps was known to drive — trailing Howard’s car near to where his body was found.

A witness told investigators that she saw the suspects dump the vehicle along Furay Road and later confronted Phipps about the vehicle.

“Phipps told her to mind her business and stated, ‘Better him than me,’ ” the investigator continued.

During an August 2019 interview with Johnson, he denied knowing Phipps. He told investigators that he was with Howard that day but that the two “went their separate ways,” court records show. Months later, Phipps denied knowing Johnson or Howard.

Warrants for Phipps and Johnson were issued March 8 and the pair were arrested soon after.

Johnson, whose Harris County criminal history dates back to 2011, has since made bail on a $15,000 bond. Phipps remains jailed on a $50,000 bond.