by Kent Scheidegger · Feb 9, 2024 11:28 am
The San Francisco Chronicle has this article on Mayor London Breed joining the coalition to overhaul California’s disastrous Proposition 47. And of course, being the Chronicle, the main thing they emphasize about the initiative is that it is “GOP-led,” generally regarded as a kiss of death in The City.
But Mayor Breed is not the only Democrat to climb on the fix-47 bandwagon. Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Feb 8, 2024 10:15 am
In the past two years, there have been dueling studies flying back and forth about whether jurisdictions in the political control of one party or the other have higher crime rates. They have been used by advocates to make “studies show” arguments in favor of or against particular policies. But this is all smoke and mirrors, as this Issue Brief from the Manhattan Institute shows. It is titled The “Red” vs. “Blue” Crime Debate and the Limits of Empirical Social Science, by George J. Borjas and Robert VerBruggen.
This is really a case study in how researcher-advocates can produce any bottom line they want in many cases through design decisions that fly beneath the radar of public awareness. Do you compare states or counties? What variables do you control for? The authors note, “Casual consumers of empirical social science research often fail to appreciate all the ways in which researchers can manipulate the data to say whatever they want.” An alternate expression is the pithy old saying, “Figures don’t lie, but liars figure.” Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Feb 6, 2024 11:03 am
The Approved Progressive Narrative tells us that criminal penalties have no deterrent effect. After all, people are just driftwood on the ocean, carried wherever the current takes them, so it is unfair and ineffective to punish people whose currents have taken them to commit crimes against other people.
Every once in a while, though, a common-sense contradiction of the Approved Narrative slips through the censorship net, even on media dedicated to promoting it.
Here is a transcript from CNN This Morning on February 2. John Miller, CNN Chief Law Enforcement and Intelligence Analyst, was reporting on the illegal aliens who attacked NYPD police officers and were promptly released. He noted that although most migrants are hard working, there is a criminal element among them.
These individuals, I went over their rap sheets yesterday, multiple charges, grand larceny, robbery, attempted robbery, grand larceny, grand larceny.
This particular crew operated on mopeds and scooters. They were doing organized retail theft. They were doing snatches on the street, iPhones, iPads, clothing, so on and so forth. One of them that they are still seeking has ten charges on one day because he’s part of a pattern that’s been going on.
And I’m looking at the dates that their arrest started, which is probably close to when they got here. They’ve only been here a couple of months. So, what the detectives are telling me is they have crews here that operate in New York, do all their stealing, then go to Florida to spend the money and then come back. And I’m like, well, why don’t they just stay and steal in Florida? And they said, because there, you go to jail.
by Kent Scheidegger · Jan 26, 2024 9:04 am
The first execution by nitrogen hypoxia was completed yesterday, as Alabama finally executed paid hit-man Kenneth Smith for the murder of Elizabeth Sennett 35 years ago. The hit men stabbed Mrs. Sennett and beat her with a fireplace tool in her home in Colbert County, Alabama. See this story at al.com, published in 2022 and updated yesterday. They had been hired by her husband, who self-executed before he could be charged.
As I have noted several times on this blog, hypoxia is painless, as I know from personal experience in Air Force flight training. Unconsciousness would normally be quick, but one thing we cannot control is the inmate’s resistance by holding his breath. That is apparently what happened yesterday. The AP reporter who witnessed the execution reports that Smith shook the gurney for about two minutes. Some of this was likely voluntary movement while conscious, and some may have been involuntary movement while unconscious. This was followed by several minutes of heavy breathing.*
The WSJ has this story, with video clips from Alabama DOC Commissioner John Hamm and Jeff Hood, identified as Smith’s “spiritual advisor.” Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Jan 23, 2024 2:23 pm
A common source of error in public policy is finding something wrong and “fixing” it by going too far in the other direction. The Oregon Legislature appears to be waking up to the reality that the state went too far in decriminalizing drugs, according to this report by AP.
SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Democratic lawmakers in Oregon on Tuesday unveiled a sweeping new bill that would undo a key part of the state’s first-in-the-nation drug decriminalization law, a recognition that public opinion has soured on the measure amid rampant public drug use during the fentanyl crisis.
by Kent Scheidegger · Jan 12, 2024 3:15 pm
Among the true “root causes” of crime is the decline of the family. Colbert King has this column in the WaPo on the eve of the MLK holiday weekend. Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Jan 12, 2024 1:29 pm
The U.S. Supreme Court today agreed to take up the case of Grants Pass v. Johnson, on camping ordinances. See this post.
Paul Larkin has an article on Camping and the Constitution forthcoming in the Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy. It is posted on SSRN. Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Jan 10, 2024 4:29 pm
The U.S. Supreme Court today heard oral argument in the case of Smith v. Arizona, No. 22-899. Docket is here. Audio and transcript are here.
It has been 20 years since the high court overhauled its approach to the Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses in Crawford v. Washington, and this is the fourth time it has addressed the application of that approach to expert testimony about lab results without the technician who did the tests being present and available for cross-examination.
Under Federal Rule of Evidence 703 and equivalent rules adopted in most states, an expert can give an opinion based on facts that would not otherwise be admissible in evidence if they are facts that would normally be relied on by experts in that field. How that squares with the Sixth Amendment has not yet been made clear. Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Jan 8, 2024 8:25 am
The U.S. Supreme Court issued a Monday orders list this morning, taking no new cases and not mentioning the two cases that CJLF filed in. See this post. There are also no opinions dissenting from denial of certiorari. Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Jan 5, 2024 3:16 pm
The U.S. Supreme Court held its first conference of 2024 today. The Court issued three orders after the conference, two of which took up new cases for briefing and argument. One order granted a stay in an abortion case from Idaho and took the case up. Another order took up and fast-tracked the Trump disqualification controversy.
Sometimes the Court issues a short order list of cases granted on the day of the conference and a long list of cases denied on the following Monday. Other times it issues a single list with both on Monday.
Given the unusual nature of both cases taken up today and the need for rapid action, this does not look like the typical short Friday order list situation. I expect that Monday’s list with have both grants and denials.
There were two cases scheduled for today’s conference where CJLF wrote or assisted with a brief: Grants Pass v. Johnson, involving the Ninth Circuit’s theory that the Eighth Amendment severely limits cities’ ability to ban camping on public property, and Glossip v. Oklahoma, involving repeated attacks on a murder conviction. Continue reading . . .
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