by Kent Scheidegger · Aug 18, 2020 4:17 pm
Wes Bowers reports for the Lodi News-Sentinel
“A Lodi Police Department officer pulled a pedestrian from the Union Pacific Railroad tracks near Lodi Avenue Wednesday morning, narrowly escaping a fatal collision with an oncoming train.” Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Aug 18, 2020 3:45 pm
“Activists” who have been elected by nobody often claim to represent whole communities. Sometimes those people push back. This happened last week in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago. Protesters arrived to protest the fully justified shooting of a person who shot at the police first. The residents had other ideas, Tia Ewing reports for Fox 32 Chicago. Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Aug 12, 2020 10:27 am
Being chief of police in a city with a council having anti-law-enforcement leanings has never been easy. It has gotten especially tough this year. Seattle Chief Carmen Best has impressed me as one of the few public officials in the two largest Pacific Northwest cities to have a cool head on her shoulders.
Chief Best resigned yesterday following votes by the city council to cut the department budget, including her own salary, and reduce the police force,” Deanna Paul and Dan Frosch report for the WSJ. The council’s actions are supposedly “part of an effort to reform policing,” in a bizarre parody of the word “reform.” Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Aug 11, 2020 4:01 pm
A reporter asked me for my comments on Veep pick Kamala Harris’s criminal law record. Here is my response: Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Jul 29, 2020 3:18 pm
40 U.S.C. ยง1315(a):
To the extent provided for by transfers made pursuant to the Homeland Security Act of 2002, the Secretary of Homeland Security … shall protect the buildings, grounds, and property that are owned, occupied, or secured by the Federal Government … and the persons on the property.
“Shall,” for those unclear on the concept, means this is a duty.
by Kent Scheidegger · Jul 17, 2020 8:45 am
Number three in USDOJ’s murderers row, Dustin Honken, is set for execution today. Honken was a drug trafficker who murdered a dealer turned informant. He also murdered three other people in the household–a mother and her two children aged 10 and 6. He later murdered a fifth person.
Early this morning, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit denied a stay pending appeal of Honken’s claim under the Administrative Procedure Act. See this post from Wednesday for a brief description of that claim and the District Judge’s rejection of it.
by Kent Scheidegger · Jul 16, 2020 8:02 am
AP reports:
Wesley Ira Purkey was put to death at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. Purkey had been convicted of kidnapping and killing a 16-year-old girl, Jennifer Long, before dismembering, burning and dumping her body in a septic pond. He also was convicted in a state court in Kansas after using a claw hammer to kill an 80-year-old woman who had polio.
by Kent Scheidegger · Jul 15, 2020 1:30 pm
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, twice reversed for halting federal executions, has halted them yet again. Her 18 page opinion finds a probability of success on one claim, based on the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, and she concludes without analysis of any depth that the public interest in having this claim litigated outweighs the interest of justice in carrying out very long overdue sentences for heinous crimes.
by Kent Scheidegger · Jul 14, 2020 8:38 am
by Kent Scheidegger · Jul 13, 2020 4:13 pm
The appeal in the Eighth Amendment challenge to the federal exection protocol is now before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in case No. 20-5199, In the Matter of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Execution Protocol Cases: Roane v. Barr. See Mike’s post this morning. In her ruling, Judge Chutkan states, “The last-minute nature of this ruling is unfortunate, but no fault of the Plaintiffs.” She is partly correct in that, if in little else. The last-minute nature of the ruling is primarily the fault of Judge Chutkan herself. The Court of Appeals should not only vacate the stay, it should boot her off the case.
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