Author: Kent Scheidegger

Double Murderer Released Early, Convicted of New Murder

by · Mar 23, 2026 11:45 am

The Los Angeles District Attorney has this press release on the case of previously convicted double murderer who has now been convicted of a third murder. If the laws in effect at the time of the first judgment had been enforced, the third murder victim would likely be alive.

On Sept. 17, 1995, 28-year-old Derrick Reese was using a payphone when Collins carjacked him. After taking the vehicle, Collins backed up and shot Reese at least twice, killing him.

On Sept. 28, 1995, Collins entered a diner in Inglewood where 44-year-old Thomas Weiss was working as a cashier. Collins held Weiss at gunpoint and demanded money. When Weiss did not comply, Collins shot him in the face, killing him.

Both victims were random strangers, murdered 11 days apart. On January 15, 1998, Collins was sentenced to 50 years to life imprisonment.

Both the multiple murder and robbery-murder special circumstances are obviously true, so Collins could have gotten death or life without parole for these killings, but 50-to-life would have seemed sufficient at the time to ensure that Collins would not get out until he was quite elderly, if at all. Yet Collins was released in 2020. Why? Continue reading . . .

Serial Child Rapist Released from Prison, Back in Jail

by · Feb 27, 2026 9:37 am

Notorious California sexual predator David Funston (see this post) was released on parole yesterday under the state’s misguided “elderly” parole law and promptly taken into custody on new charges for an old crime. He is now in Placer County Jail. See this story by Darrell Smith in the Sacramento Bee and this story by Stepheny Price at Fox News.

Funston committed his crimes in an area northeast of Sacramento that includes parts of Sacramento and Placer Counties. After he received three consecutive life sentences in the Sacramento case, the Placer County District Attorney decided not to pursue the case in that county. The District Attorney Office’s statement is copied below.

This prompt action may prevent the unjust release of a predator in this case, but the case illustrates the urgent need for the California Legislature to repair its errors committed over the last decade. The prison overcrowding crisis and the Covid pandemic are long behind us, and measures adopted to deal with them should have had sunset dates. Basic justice requires long terms for the most egregious crimes. Some criminals, including Funston, should never walk free again.

Continue reading . . .

Attorney-Client Communication During an Overnight Break

by · Feb 25, 2026 7:30 am

When a defendant in a criminal case chooses to testify, and there is an overnight break in the middle of the testimony, can the trial judge forbid the lawyer to talk to the client about the testimony, even while allowing discussion of other topics?

Yes, the U.S. Supreme Court held today in Villareal v. Texas.

The decision drew the line between two bookend cases, Geders v. United States (1976) and Perry v. Leeke (1989). Continue reading . . .

Developments in the Law of Standing

by · Feb 24, 2026 9:55 am

Prof. Richard Re has this post at SCOTUSblog on the U.S. Supreme Court’s January 14 decision on standing in Bost v. Illinois Board of Elections. He notes several ways that the high court seems to be loosening the restrictions on standing in federal courts.

Standing is an issue that often comes up in crime victims’ rights litigation.

U.S. Supreme Court decisions based on Article III of the U.S. Constitution are not necessarily binding on state courts, where standing issues turn on the judiciary article of the state constitution and other state laws. Even so, the high court’s decisions are often persuasive precedent in state courts. Continue reading . . .

“Monster” Child Sexual Predator Granted Early Parole

by · Feb 22, 2026 6:58 pm

The Los Angeles Times has this story by Clara Harter:

A Sacramento man once described by a judge as “the monster parents fear the most” seemed destined to spend the rest of his life in prison after he was convicted of 16 counts of kidnapping and child molestation in 1999.

Instead, he is now set to go free after being granted elderly parole — much to the anger and horror of some of his victims, as well as the prosecutor who oversaw his case.

“He shouldn’t be breathing the same air that we’re breathing at all,” one victim, who was kidnapped and assaulted when she was just 4 years old, told The Times in an interview. “I disagree with him getting paroled out because he’s a horrible person. That man is a monster.” Continue reading . . .

California’s “Elderly” Parole Law

by · Feb 9, 2026 10:16 am

CJLF CEO Anne Marie Schubert has this op-ed in the Sacramento Bee on California’ “elderly” parole law.

The law absurdly defines “elderly” as over 50, and it permits parole after 20 years regardless of the minimum term specified in the sentence or in the law under which the inmate was sentenced.

California’s elderly parole law is the most lenient in the nation. While 24 other states have similar programs, most automatically exclude murderers and sex offenders. California does not. Continue reading . . .

Evading Accountability for Injustice

by · Jan 27, 2026 2:55 am

In most states, the power to grant a pardon or commute a sentence is vested in the governor, sometimes with a check on the power by another body. Parole boards can also shorten sentences, but in most states the members are appointed by the governor. Although far from perfect, these conventional arrangements do provide some semblance of accountability for unjust, undeserved reductions of punishment for major crimes. Even when not running for reelection, governors often have their eyes on another office and tend to be reluctant to anger voters with excessive sentence reductions.

Now in Virginia there is a bill to take the heat off the governor by greatly expanding the parole board and vesting appointment authority for the new seats in two legislators: the Speaker of the House of Delegates and the chairman of the Senate Rules Committee. These office holders directly face the voters of only their own districts, often “safe” ones, and they can be much less concerned with angering the voters of the state as a whole.

This post at Liberty Unyielding denounces the proposal. It is reproduced below with permission. Continue reading . . .

Emergency Entry and the Fourth Amendment

by · Jan 14, 2026 2:24 pm

Here is a bit deeper dive on Case v. Montana, the U.S. Supreme Court emergency entry case that I noted briefly this morning. Although the high court affirmed the judgment of the Montana Supreme Court, it did so with a more limiting standard than the state court used. Three standards have been used by various courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court chose the middle one. The standard is unique to emergency cases, rejecting both looser and more restrictive standards derived from criminal investigation cases.

The emergency in this case was created when Case’s former girlfriend reported that Case had said during a phone call that he intended to kill himself. This was followed by a click that may have been a gun being cocked, a pop that may have been a discharge, and then dead air. This information, combined with Case’s history, make it hard to see how the state could have lost this case under any standard. The strong possibility that he had already shot himself but might be still alive and in need of emergency aid to save his life seems compelling.

The Montana Supreme Court thought that the “community caretaking” function of the police permits entry of a home in emergency situations “when ‘objective, specific and articulable facts’ would lead an ‘experienced officer [to] suspect’ that a person inside ‘is in need of help or is in peril.’ ” That is the minimal standard needed for the police to briefly detain someone on the street, known as a “Terry stop” for the 1968 case of Terry v. Ohio. The defendant wanted the much more restrictive standard needed for search warrants: probable cause. He cited cases from the D.C., Second, and Eleventh Circuits supporting that view.

In the 2006 case of Brigham City v. Stuart, the Supreme Court set out a rule for entry to a home in an emergency: “Police may enter a home without a warrant when they have an objectively reasonable basis for believing that an occupant is seriously injured or imminently threatened with such injury.” Is the Brigham City standard equivalent to either the Terry standard or the probable cause standard? Continue reading . . .

SCOTUS Decides Double Punishment and Emergency Entry Cases

by · Jan 14, 2026 8:54 am

The U.S. Supreme Court decided two criminal cases today. In Barrett v. United States, the court decided that if a single act violates two provisions of a notoriously complex federal firearms statute the defendant can only be punished for one of them. In Case v. Montana the court confirmed that entry into a home for the purpose of emergency assistance requires only “an “objectively reasonable basis for believing that someone inside needs emergency assistance.” Probable cause is not required. “The probable-cause requirement is rooted in, and derives its meaning from, the criminal context, and we decline to transplant it to this different one.”

Both decisions are unanimous, although Justice Gorsuch declines to join one subpart of the Barrett opinion.