by Kent Scheidegger · Nov 21, 2024 5:25 pm
President-elect Trump has nominated former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi for United States Attorney General. She has substantial experience in criminal law and has run the justice department of a large state.
Much better.
The WSJ has this story.
by Kent Scheidegger · Nov 21, 2024 10:58 am
Ron Matthias and Dolores Carr have this op-ed in the San Jose Spotlight with the above title.
Since August, local judges have been nullifying murderers’ death sentences one by one. But there’s a problem: The law the judges have been relying on to reduce those death sentences doesn’t apply to death sentences. And that’s not the only problem.
It’s easy for judges to make mistakes when they’re hearing only one side of the story, and that’s what happened here. The reductions are coming at the insistence of Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen, who has recently discovered he doesn’t like capital punishment. Unsurprisingly, the murderers feel the same way.
California law has a serious problem with statutes that effectively enable prosecutors to nullify existing sentences when they simply disagree with the law under which the perpetrator was properly sentenced years before. An initiative is sorely needed to fix this and other related problems, building on the success of the effort to enact Proposition 36 this year.
by Kent Scheidegger · Nov 18, 2024 9:20 am
Speaking of a new day in LA, former County Sheriff Jim McDonnell is now the City Chief of Police. Richard Winton reports in the LA Times that the new chief expressed concern that the actual crime rate is higher than the official figures show because the people are reporting fewer of the crimes that are committed. This is a problem with crime statistics that we have noted many times on this blog.
Crime is trending down in Los Angeles, with homicides alone on track to fall 15% compared to last year, but newly sworn-in LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell is concerned that statistics aren’t telling the full story.
Speaking ahead of the ceremony Thursday to mark his arrival as the city’s 59th chief of police, McDonnell voiced concern about the perception of disorder — and the reality that crimes are going unreported because some believe nothing will be done to investigate. Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Nov 18, 2024 9:02 am
LA DA-elect Nathan Hochman will be sworn in on December 2. Fox 11 has this story.
On day one in office, Hochman said he would eliminate Gascón’s extreme pro-criminal policies. Hochman said Gascón’s policies have led to a rise in crime throughout the county.
As DA, Hochman said his goal is to empower law enforcement, prosecutors, victim groups, store owners, and residents in LA County.
“They’re fed up with their cars being broken into, their homes being robbed. If they’re store owners with their stores being ransacked. And they want to bring back accountability. They wanted proportional, they wanted smart, they wanted common sense. They want the law enforcement officers to do a good job, but they want them to do that job,” Hochman said. Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Nov 15, 2024 11:58 am
President-elect Trump has announced that he intends to nominate former Missouri Solicitor General John Sauer as the next U.S. Solicitor General. This appears to be a solid choice. Amy Howe has this post at Howe on the Court.
by Kent Scheidegger · Nov 14, 2024 10:45 am
The Council on Criminal Justice has a report by Thaddeus Johnson titled Violent Victimization is Decreasing–But Not for Everyone. The thrust of the report is based on the one-year changes in the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) between 2022 and 2023.
New federal crime data show that nonlethal violent victimization decreased by 11% in 2023 for Americans aged 12 and older. But while the rate of robberies, aggravated assaults, and rape/sexual assaults fell for White and Hispanic people, it moved in the opposite direction for Black Americans.
* * *
Victimization rates for Black Americans increased 37% from 2022 and 2023, driven by a 79% increase in robbery, 47% increase in rape/sexual assault rates, and a 16% increase in aggravated assault.
We will put to one side, for now, the variations in measures, which the report notes warrant caution. Even with that caution in mind, the reported increases are alarming. What caused these numbers to move in opposite directions?
The report is mostly statistics and not a discussion of possible causes. What little it does say, though, is a head shaker. Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Nov 14, 2024 9:17 am
President-elect Trump has nominated Rep. Matt Gaetz to be Attorney General of the United States. If he had intentionally set out to choose the Republican with the least chance of being confirmed, he could hardly have done better.
With a 53-47 Senate and his Vice-President having a tie-breaking vote, the 47 Democrats plus 4 Republicans can block a nominee. Mr. Gaetz is a disruptive, divisive figure, widely despised among his former colleagues in the House Republican Caucus. Can he attract unanimous support, or anything close to it, among Republicans in the upper chamber? That seems unlikely. An appeal to party loyalty and unity in support of a man who is the epitome of the exact opposite does not seem to be a winning argument. Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Nov 13, 2024 9:46 am
The Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention begins tomorrow. The panel discussions will be live streamed. The agenda is here. YouTube links are here.
The Criminal Law Practice Group’s panel is “Evaluating the Progressive Prosecutor Experiment.” It is tomorrow (Thursday) afternoon at 3:30-5:00 EST / 12:30-2:00 PST. California voters provided some grist for that mill last Tuesday, as noted in this post.
The speakers are Zack Smith from the Heritage Foundation, DA Ray Tierney from Suffolk County, NY (eastern Long Island), DA John Creuzot from Dallas, TX, and Prof. Carissa Hessick from UNC Law. Eleventh Circuit Judge Kevin Newsom moderates. Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Nov 11, 2024 12:55 pm
Roland Fryer, professor of economics at Harvard, has this article in the WSJ with the above title. The subtitle is “Scholars need incentives to tell the truth, not to hide it and promote socially acceptable ideas.”
Both academic journals and campus discussions are cramped by the mandate to conform to the political and social ideas that are presently dominant in academia.
A decade ago, I still interacted with dozens of undergraduates and doctoral students who were asking important and provocative questions about race and sex in America. But now students invite me to lunch and ask if their research idea is too risky; they wonder out loud what they are allowed to “say in public,” as though they are in the situation room discussing nuclear launch strategy rather than pondering the economics of policing in an overpriced cafe. Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Nov 10, 2024 10:55 am
In 1800, Jefferson’s Republicans routed Adams’s Federalists. During the transition period, the Federalists still controlled the government. They created many new judicial positions and filled them quite swiftly. The appointees were called the Midnight Judges, which has been a term of derision for this maneuver ever since.
Some people have been calling on Justice Sonia Sotomayor to retire abruptly in mid-term so that President Biden could replace her with a younger justice during the transition period. Justices rarely step down in mid term, as it would be disruptive to the workings of the Court. Doing so now would be correctly perceived as blatantly political, something the Court surely does not need.
Jess Bravin reports for the WSJ:
Despite calls from some liberal activists for Justice Sonia Sotomayor to step down while Democrats can fill her seat before political power changes hands in January, she has no plans to retire from the Supreme Court, people close to the justice said. Continue reading . . .
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