Crime & Consequences

Supreme Court Takes Up Law Enforcement Related Cases

by · Oct 4, 2024 10:19 am

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a short orders list from Monday’s pre-term conference, adding 15 cases to the docket for the October 2024 Term. A much longer list of cases turned down will likely be issued next Monday at the formal opening of the term.

Continuing the high court’s frustrating lack of interest in criminal law, the list includes only one actual criminal case, Thompson v. United States, No. 23-1095. This case raises the question of whether the federal law against false statements to financial institutions and federal agencies extends to misleading half truths. An aspect of the case that increases its media profile is the fact that defendant Patrick Daley Thompson is the grandson of Chicago’s notoriously corrupt mayor Richard J. Daley and the nephew of later mayor Richard M. Daley.

There are also several law-enforcement-related civil cases, a category that gets more interest from SCOTUS:

Gutierrez v. Saenz, No. 23-7809, is a federal civil rights suit regarding a Texas capital case. It presents somewhat complex issues regarding DNA testing, standing, and distinctions between innocence claims and sentencing claims.

Barnes v. Felix, No. 23-1239, is a police use-of-force case involving the “moment of threat doctrine.” As described by the petitioner (i.e., the plaintiff suing the police officer), this approach “evaluates the reasonableness of an officer’s actions only in the narrow window when the officer’s safety was threatened, and not based on events that precede the moment of the threat.” In the Fifth Circuit, Judge Higginbotham wrote a concurrence to his own majority opinion asking the Supreme Court to resolve the circuit split on this issue. Continue reading . . .

Murderer of UCLA Graduate Student Sentenced to LWOP

by · Oct 3, 2024 1:28 pm

An habitual criminal convicted of the 2022 stabbing murder of a 24-year-old graduate student has been sentenced life without the possibility of parole (LWOP) by a Los Angeles Judge. Steve Sorace of Fox News reports that the murderer, 34-year-old Shawn Laval Smith, presented an insanity defense at trial, which the judge rejected. A 2022 story in the New York Post on Smith’s arrest reports that Smith came to California from Charleston, South Carolina in 2019 while free on $50,000 bail on charges of shooting into a vehicle with a child inside during a road rage  incident. He already had convictions for illegal firearm possession and attacking a Charleston police officer.

Continue reading . . .

Multiple Murderer Executed in Texas

by · Oct 3, 2024 8:58 am

A man convicted of murdering two teenaged girls in 1988 was executed yesterday, Juan Lozano and Michael Graczyx report for AP.  Garcia White killed five people altogether. The appeals dragged on for well over three decades despite the lack of any doubt of guilt.

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, who witnessed White’s death, lamented that it took some 30 years to carry out the jury’s death verdict as multiple appeals in White’s case worked through the courts.

“The suffering of surviving (victims’) family members is just unspeakable,” she said. “At least it’s over.” Continue reading . . .

Free the Detergent!

by · Oct 2, 2024 5:08 pm

The San Diego Union-Tribune has this editorial, titled Endorsement: Yes on Prop. 36: Time to free the detergent.

The coming landslide win for Proposition 36 will be a triumph for truth over spin. The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board has long supported criminal justice reform. But in real time, we saw the obvious flaws of Proposition 47 — the November 2014 measure that Proposition 36 is meant to fix. It changed many “nonviolent” felonies into misdemeanors in a ham-handed way that incentivized certain crimes.

Eleven months later, The Washington Post dispatched a reporter to San Diego who wrote an unforgettable account showing the incredulity of law enforcement over the new status quo: “instead of arresting criminals and removing them from the streets, their officers have been dealing with the same offenders again and again. Caught in possession of drugs? That usually means a misdemeanor citation under Prop 47, or essentially a ticket. Caught stealing something worth less than $950? That means a ticket, too. Caught using some of that $950 to buy more drugs? Another citation.

Nothing has changed since then — unless you count the emergence of a cottage industry determined to depict Proposition 47 as good no matter what. So store clerks say they’ve stopped reporting thefts because there’s no point? It’s a blip. So store owners are spending heavily to lock up more goods than ever, including detergent? There’s no proof that’s necessary — the corporations in charge have an agenda.

Manipulation of crime statistics, one of our favorite subjects, enters into the picture: Continue reading . . .

Judge Orders Sex Change Surgery for Murderer

by · Sep 30, 2024 11:27 am

A federal District Judge has ordered the state of Indiana to provide sex reassignment surgery for a convicted murderer.  Matt Delaney of the Washington Times reports that District Judge Richard Young’s ruling in a lawsuit by the American  Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) requires state taxpayers to pay for the surgery, even though Indiana law forbids it.  The suit was brought on behalf of the former Jonathan Richardson, who now calls himself Autumn Cordellione.  Although Cordellione claims he identified as a female when he was six-years-old, he was married to a woman in 2001 when he strangled his 11-month-old stepdaughter to death while his wife was at work.  Although he was sentenced to 55 years in prison for the murder, he will be eligible for parole in 2027.

Continue reading . . .

The Myth That Crime is Down

by · Sep 24, 2024 3:19 pm

President Biden issued a statement yesterday to take credit for the widely reported FBI data for 2023 showing a significant decline in crime.  The New York Times noted that “The latest data is consistent with earlier preliminary reports from the F.B.I., and with research from other organizations and criminologists, all showing continuing declines in most crime, including murder.” If this is true, why doesn’t the public believe it. As the Times notes: “a Gallup poll last year found that 77 percent of Americans believed crime was rising, even though it was actually falling.” Perhaps the FBI data does not accurately reflect what’s actually happening in the real world that most Americans are living in.

Continue reading . . .

Is Missouri About to Execute an Innocent Man?

by · Sep 23, 2024 3:21 pm

The answer is yes if you believe a story by Matalie Neysa Alund in USA Today.  The headline reads “Missouri set to execute `loving father’ whose DNA wasn’t on murder weapon, attorneys say.”  Habitual felon Marcellus Williams will be executed tomorrow barring a last minute stay. He was convicted of killing 42-year-old Felicia Gayle on August 11, 1998, while burglarizing her home. Her husband discovered her body, which had been stabbed 43 times. A 2003 Missouri Supreme Court decision describes a random and brutal killing.  Update:  Williams was executed without incident Tuesday.

Continue reading . . .

The Cost of Lax Enforcement of the Law

by · Sep 17, 2024 11:06 am

The Washington Post provides an example of the cost of not enforcing the law, even for minor offenses, in this story by Racher Weiner.

Paisley Brodie, age 12, was walking from school to the library when she was hit by a car while crossing the street in the crosswalk. She was taken from the scene in an ambulance. The car that hit her “has 94 unpaid tickets worth $19,770 from D.C. traffic cameras, six for speeding just this month and four for running red lights since July.”

It turns out this is not unusual. The car “is among roughly 2,100 vehicles with 40 or more unpaid tickets, according to D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles numbers from last year. It’s a fresh example of how drivers can rack up infractions from D.C. cameras but remain on the road.” Continue reading . . .

Governor Newsom’s Fake Crackdown on Retail Theft

by · Sep 16, 2024 2:57 pm

While his Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation is accelerating the early release of serious and violent criminals in prison, Governor Gavin Newsom is pretending to get tough on thieves. Evan Simon of the California Globe reports that last Thursday Newsom signed a bill that would increase the sentences of some thieves. The bill, AB 1960 by Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) would add a one-year enhancement to the jail sentence of someone convicted of stealing or damaging property worth $50,000.  Stealing $200,000 would add two years to the jail sentence. The same enhancements would be added to the punishment of someone who receives or resells $50,000 or $200,000 worth of stolen property. With the possible exception of jewelry stores, this law will have zero impact on the hundreds of smash-and-grab thieves terrorizing markets, drug and department stores.   It does nothing to deter a thief who steals under $950 worth of goods from six different stores in one week. Under Proposition 47, a misleading initiative adopted in 2014, those thefts are misdemeanors and the habitual thief gets no punishment.

Continue reading . . .

Musk Enters the DA Election Wars

by · Sep 13, 2024 12:10 pm

For some years now, George Soros has been spending a chunk of his fortune to buy district attorney seats in many cities by injecting a massive infusion of cash in support of a soft-on-crime candidate, often with deceptive ads. In Los Angeles last time, for example, ads for George Gascón touted him as the Democratic candidate, even though the race was nonpartisan and his opponent was a lifelong Democrat.

The good news is that another billionaire, Elon Musk, is weighing in on the other side, Joe Palazzolo and Dana Mattioli report for the WSJ. The bad news is that his first effort was a flop. Continue reading . . .