Can California Democrats Kill Proposition 36?

by · Mar 14, 2025 3:20 pm

On November 5, 2024, California voters overwhelmingly adopted Proposition 36, the Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act, a modest reform to restore consequences for thieves and drug dealers and require treatment for addicts.  It’s adoption was a complete rebuke of Proposition 47, the so-called Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act adopted in 2014 with major funding from the ACLU and socialist billionaire George Soros. That measure decriminalized theft and drug crimes. It’s important to note that Proposition 47 was supported by then Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom and the Democrat supermajority in the state legislature. Ten years later, these same politicians opposed Proposition 36, although millions of democrats voted for it.

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Courts Block Executions in Texas and Louisiana

by · Mar 12, 2025 1:17 pm

On Tuesday the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals voted 6-2, with one abstaining, to stay the execution of, David Leonard Wood, “the Desert Killer.” On the same day a federal district judge in Louisiana stayed the nitrogen gas execution of a rapist/murderer, Jessie Hoffman, Jr. Alexis Simmerman, Amanda Lee Meyers and Aaron Martinez of the Austin American Statesman report that the Texas court did not state the reasons for staying David Leonard Wood’s execution in its per-curiam opinion. The same court blocked Wood’s execution in 2009 based on his lawyers claim that he was too mentally retarded to qualify for it.  Wood, an habitual sex offender, was convicted in 1987 of the kidnapping, rape and murders of six young women and girls, whose bodies were found in shallow graves in the desert near El Paso. Jurors heard testimony from two cellmates that Woods told about the killings.  A sex  worker also testified that Wood raped her in the same desert area, where the bodies were found, but she escaped when a noise startled him while digging her grave. Wood was convicted of that rape. His attorneys for the murder charges argued that all three were lying.

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Four Illegals Arrested in Sanctuary City For Human Trafficking

by · Mar 5, 2025 11:14 am

Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reports that its agents arrested the head of a Guatemalan human trafficking ring that smuggled an estimated 20,000 illegal aliens into the United States from 2019 to 2024.  At a press conference in the sanctuary city of Los Angeles last Monday, acting U.S. Attorney Joseph McNally told reporters that Guatemalan illegal alien, Eduardo Domingo Renoj-Matul, was arrested in the LA neighborhood of Westlake. He was the leader of one of the largest transnational smuggling cartels in the U.S.  Renoj-Matul and his three lieutenants, all illegals from Guatemala, charged between $15,000 and $18,000 to smuggle men, women and children into the U.S. and held most of them in stash houses in Los Angeles. While Renoj-Matul and two of his lieutenants were arrested in LA, a fourth gang member, a driver for the gang, was arrested in Oklahoma where he is facing charges for a November 2023 car crash which killed seven illegals including a four-year-old child.

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Canadian Study Finds Length of Incarceration Decreases Recidivism

by · Mar 4, 2025 1:54 pm

Simon Fraser University in British Columbia has this press release announcing this study in the Journal of Criminal Justice regarding the effect of sentence length on recividism. Overall, studies on this issue have mixed results and generally show little effect either way, as Elizabeth Berger and I describe in this article, which is cited in the new article.

Here is the abstract: Continue reading . . .

Mexico Extradites Killer of US DEA Agent, 40 Years Late

by · Feb 28, 2025 10:06 am

US DEA Agent Enrique Camarena was murdered in Mexico in 1985. Now Mexico has extradited drug boss Rafael Caro Quintero, who is wanted for the crime, along with 28 others. Santiago Pérez and José de Córdoba have this story in the WSJ.

Better late than never.

It would be understandable for a country to refuse to extradite its citizens if it had a functioning justice system that could and would impose a just punishment domestically. But that is not the case in Mexico when it comes to the drug gangs. Continue reading . . .

NYPD Commissioner Demands End to Zero Bail

by · Feb 27, 2025 2:03 pm

The head of the New York City Police Department spoke out Wednesday demanding that state politicians repeal the 2020 bail reform laws that have turned the criminal justice system into a “revolving door.” Michael Dorgan of Fox News reports that NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch told attendees to an annual breakfast meeting that “your cops are out there doing their jobs, and in 2024, they made the most felony arrests in 26 years. But before they can even finish that paperwork, they are immediately returned to the neighborhood and the people that they just victimized.”

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Supreme Court Allows OK AG to Take a Dive

by · Feb 25, 2025 8:09 am

A short-handed and divided U.S. Supreme Court today decided the case of Glossip v. Oklahoma, taking the side of convicted murderer Richard Glossip. The Oklahoma Attorney General had taken his side as well. CJLF filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of upholding the state court decision. The Court also appointed an amicus to make the argument the state AG should have made.

A bare majority of the Court held that the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals’ decision did not rest on adequate and independent state courts and further found that Glossip had established his claim that the state had used and failed to correct perjured testimony, despite serious factual questions on the latter point. Rather than simply send the case back to state court for an evidentiary hearing, the Court ordered a new trial.

Justice Barrett concurred on the first point, partly concurred on the second, and dissented on the third. Justices Thomas and Alito dissented from the entirety. Justice Gorsuch was recused, having participated in the case during his time on the Tenth Circuit. Continue reading . . .

Study Suggests Drunk Witnesses Are Less Likely to Remember a Suspect’s Face

by · Feb 19, 2025 6:09 pm

The University of Portsmouth, England, has this press release announcing this unsurprising result. “New research has revealed that alcohol can impair the ability of eyewitnesses to accurately recall a suspect’s facial features, particularly key details such as the eyes, nose, and mouth.”

It’s easy to laugh and say “of course” (and I did), but there is some value in research that confirms the obvious. Every once in a while such efforts actually contradict the obvious, and those incidents are important in the progress of science. The research also fills in some details that are not quite so obvious. Continue reading . . .