Author: Kent Scheidegger

San Francisco’s Summer of Tough Love

by · Aug 16, 2025 10:36 am

Maggie Grether reports in the WSJ:

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court granted cities more power to penalize people for sleeping outside, handing city leaders a new tool with which to clear homeless people from the streets.

Since then, San Francisco has been among the most aggressive in wielding it.

Wow. For over 30 years, it has been an article of faith on the political left that taking any action against people who live on the streets and refuse to take any of the steps needed to be functional and self-supporting members of society was mean, cruel, heartless, and possibly Nazi. I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve been called one of those names in this regard.

And now the epicenter of the American left is “among the most aggressive” in cracking down. There is nothing like the convert zeal. When decades of so-called “progressive” mismanagement has given a city a problem that is among America’s worst, it becomes the strongest in the opposite direction. Continue reading . . .

Combining IQ Scores in Atkins Cases

by · Aug 8, 2025 3:24 pm

When the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Atkins v. Virginia in 2002 that people who are mentally retarded (now called intellectually disabled) can’t be executed no matter how heinous the crime, it opened a can or worms regarding deciding who actually qualifies for that category. The line between that condition and the next level up (borderline intellectual functioning) is a matter of convention, not really science, so there is a range of disagreement.

A case now being briefed before the court, Hamm v. Smith, deals with the question of how to assess the IQ of someone who has been tested multiple times. The court briefly touched on that issue in 2014 in Hall v. Florida. The year before, Joel Schneider of Temple University proposed a method in a chapter of an edited book. The opinion of the court cited that chapter but brushed it off with the comment that his method is “a complicated endeavor.” Really? It’s not all that complicated. I ran the numbers myself on the data in the Smith case. It wasn’t simple, but it was simpler than computing my 2024 income tax return.

As a preliminary matter, the makers of IQ tests regularly publish a “standard error of measurement” (SEM). That number represents, in a statistical way, the scatter one could expect in giving a test multiple times to the same person or to multiple people with identical true IQs. It doesn’t account for a host of other possible errors such as incorrect administration of the test, poor testing conditions, transient mental or physical problems of an examinee having a bad day, or–the big one in criminal cases–malingering.

So, putting those aside, here is how we do the math on the Smith case with the Schneider method. Continue reading . . .

Exceptionally Bad Reporting on the Glossip Case

by · Jul 24, 2025 9:29 am

Reporting on court cases is often bad, but NBC has an exceptionally atrocious report on the Glossip case here. The article says:

The witness, Justin Sneed, admitted killing Van Treese but told prosecutors that the killing was at Glossip’s direction in exchange for $10,000. Sneed, a motel handyman, was sentenced to life for the crime, while Glossip was given the death penalty.

In the Supreme Court’s majority ruling, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that prosecutors “knew Sneed’s statements were false” and that “because Sneed’s testimony was the only direct evidence of Glossip’s guilt of capital murder, the jury’s assessment of Sneed’s credibility was necessarily determinative here.”

Anyone reading that who did not already know the facts of the case would take it to mean that the Supreme Court held that the prosecutors knew Sneed’s statements about the crime were false. That is, a reader would naturally read it to say that the statements referred to in the second paragraph are those described in the first.

But that implication is false. No court has ever held that Sneed’s statements about the crime are false. The statements in the Supreme Court case involved collateral matters about Sneed’s treatment with lithium while in jail. Continue reading . . .

Parole for LWOP-Sentenced Murderers

by · Jul 21, 2025 9:47 am

In the many, many debates that I have had on capital punishment over the years, almost all of the opponents have promised the audience that we don’t need the death penalty to prevent release of murderers back in the community because we have this wonderful alternative of life without parole. The badly worded poll questions that opponents love to cite (see this post) involve offering life without parole as the alternative.

One of the problems with that argument is that there is no such thing as life in prison with no possibility of parole. Future governors, legislatures, or courts may create a possibility of parole even for the very worst murderers.

Tim Cruz has this article in the City Journal, titled Why Is Massachusetts Releasing First-Degree Murderers? Continue reading . . .

Of Crime and Groceries

by · Jul 11, 2025 8:43 am

Among the many strange ideas of New York mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani is the notion that government can do a better job running grocery stores than free enterprise. This strange idea arises from the combination of the fact that some neighborhoods have inadequate or insufficient groceries combined with the ideological imperative to blame problems on approved villains, with businesses being at the top of the list.

Steven Malanga, in the City Journal, argues that the true cause is quite different:

New York City retailers have been closing shops by the hundreds in the last seven years because of growing social unrest and crime sparked by misguided criminal-justice reforms. Moreover, Mamdani’s own criminal-justice agenda, which includes reducing enforcement by the police department, promises to add to retailers’ woes.

Continue reading . . .

The Cushy Prisons for Murderers Act of 2025

by · Jul 11, 2025 8:23 am

Just when one thinks that the California Legislature has already maxed out its soft-headedness on crime, it goes and demonstrates that there is no limit. A bill has passed the California Senate by a wide margin declaring that “life inside prison should be as close to life outside of prison as much as possible.” [Sic.] As amended in the Assembly, Senate Bill 551 now includes this provision*:

The Legislature recognizes that life in prison can never be the same as life in a free society. However, active steps should be taken to make conditions in prison as close to normal life as possible, aside from loss of liberty, and to ensure that this normalization does not lead to inhumane prison conditions.

Unbelievable. Yes, we do not want our prison conditions to be inhumane. But “as close to normal life as possible”? It’s supposed to be punishment. And since the 2011 realignment, nearly everyone in California state prison (as opposed to county jail) is there for serious crimes, multiple repeated crimes, or both.

For premeditated murder, death is justice and anything less is mercy. Mercy is sometimes the right choice, but that does not mean we have to go overboard. A premeditated murderer who gets life in prison with a possibility of parole has already gotten off with less than he deserves. So now we have to take “active steps” to make sure he is comfy and entertained during his too-short time in the slammer? And we spend taxpayer money to do so while far more important functions of government go unfunded?

Who votes for this insanity? Continue reading . . .

A Baltimore Miracle?

by · Jul 9, 2025 8:21 am

Is the infamously violent Baltimore City* on track for a miracle? Joshua Crawford, director of criminal justice initiatives at the Georgia Center for Opportunity, has this op-ed in the Baltimore Sun,** titled “Are we witnessing a Baltimore Miracle in fight against crime?” He notes Baltimore’s sky-high crime rates, followed by dramatic drops beginning in 2023:

Murder declined nearly 22% in 2023, and then another almost 23% in 2024 — erasing all of the post-2014 increases. Through May 1, 2025, homicides were down another 31%, putting Baltimore on pace for its fourth sub-200 murder year since 1970, and the city’s lowest total since the mid-1960s.

This success follows adoption of a three-pronged effort:

First, in January 2022, Mayor Brandon Scott’s office launched its Group Violence Reduction Strategy (GVRS). GVRS is a focused deterrence policing strategy that focuses on violent groups driving violence. It does so by credibly delivering three messages. Respected members of the community convey that violence is unacceptable and must stop, optional services are offered for those who wish to desist from shootings and other gun violence, and finally, predictable, swift, and certain consequences are promised to those whose groups continue to engage in gun violence.

Continue reading . . .

New Cases at the Supreme Court

by · Jul 3, 2025 8:27 am

This morning, the U.S. Supreme Court took up five cases for argument next term, two of which are consolidated. None are criminal cases. One case, Oliver v. Brandon, Mississippi involves the scope of the rule of Heck v. Humphrey, which prevents the use of civil litigation to do an end-run around the limits on collateral attack on state convictions in habeas corpus law. We will take a closer look at that one, although on its facts it appears that the plaintiff has a valid complaint.

Japan Executes Serial Killer

by · Jun 27, 2025 5:14 pm

Junko Ogura and Chris Lau report for CNN:

Japan has executed a man dubbed the “Twitter killer,” who was convicted of murdering and dismembering nine people, mostly women, in the country’s first use of capital punishment in nearly three years.

Takahiro Shiraishi, 34, was hanged Friday at the Tokyo Detention House. He was sentenced to death in 2020 after pleading guilty to killing the nine people – eight women and one man. Continue reading . . .