Author: Michael Rushford

A federal district judge has rejected Alabama murderer Carey Dale Grayson’s petition to block his November 21 execution. Ivana Hrynkiw of the Birmingham News reports that Grayson will be the third murderer that the state has executed by nitrogen gas this year. His attorneys argued before District Judge Austin Huffaker that the execution method violates the Eighth Amendment bar against cruel and unusual punishment.  The judge noted that it had been used successfully and that there was no evidence that it caused any pain. Grayson at 19, was the oldest of four teens who picked up 37-year-old Vicki Lynn DeBlieux who was hitchhiking to her mother’s home in February of 1994. They took her into the woods, beat her to death then threw her body into a ravine. Like the other Alabama murderers executed by nitrogen gas, Grayson chose that method over execution via the electric chair.

Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón threw a “hail Mary” last week announcing that he will seek the resentencing and release of the Menendez brothers.  Phil Helsel and Antonio Planas of NBC news report that at a press conference last Thursday Gascón told reporters, “I believe that they have paid their debt to society.”  Gascón has stated several times that no criminal should spend more than 20 years behind bars.

The cold-blooded shotgun murders of Jose and Kitty Menendez in 1989 by their two sons Erik and Lyle, who were 21 and 18 years old, was among the most notorious murder cases in Los Angeles history. Erik and Lyle snuck into their parents’ house with shotguns and came up behind them while they were watching television, shooting Jose 8 times and Kitty 10 times.  The brothers initially claimed that they discovered their parents’ bodies and suggested that burglars killed them. They later admitted the killings but claimed self defense due to their father’s alleged sexual abuse. The brothers were tried twice for the murders.  At the second trial a jury sentenced them to life-without-the-possibility-of-parole.

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Last week we learned that the FBI grossly under-reported violent crime data for 2022.  In October of 2023 the FBI issued a press release announcing that “national violent crime decreased an estimated 2.1% in 2022 compared to 2021 estimates.” The Biden administration took credit for this decline and, during the September 10 debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, ABC moderator David Muir interrupted Trump’s statement that crime was increasing to tell the audience that the “FBI says overall violent crime is coming down in this country.”   Recently the FBI quietly revised its data for 2022 with new numbers showing that violent crime actually increased by 4.5% that year, meaning that several thousand more murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults occurred.  Now, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report has blatantly mischaracterized school discipline rates. The report entitled “K-12  Education Nationally, Black Girls Receive More Frequent and More Severe Discipline in School than Other Girls,” suggests that schools systematically punish black girls for misbehavior more severely than girls of other races for the same types of offenses.

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During an interview on ABC ‘s Sunday talk show “This Week”  correspondent Martha Raddatz decided to fact check Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance regarding former president Trump’s indictment of the Biden/Harris administration’s open border policy for allowing the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to take over parts of Aurora, Colorado. “The incidents were limited to a handful of apartment complexes—apartment complexes and the mayor said, ‘Our dedicated police officers have acted on those concerns,’ ” Raddatz, told Vance. “Martha, do you hear yourself?” replied Vance. “Only ‘a handful of apartment complexes’ in America were taken over by Venezuelan gangs, and Donald Trump is the problem and not Kamala Harris’ open border”?  The exchange highlights the major media’s effort to minimize policies by progressive politicians which have caused unprecedented increases in crime nationwide, and particularly in sanctuary states.

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The following article was published in the October 8, 2024 edition of the California Globe:

There was a time when data compiled by government agencies could be trusted. For generations federal labor statistics, and data on reported crimes, commerce, health, finance, industry, agriculture and even weather were relied upon by both the government and private sector to make policy decisions effecting millions of Americans. It has become apparent in recent years that government data can be manipulated, or even adjusted to favor a political agenda. We learned over the summer, for example, that the U.S. Department of Labor’s monthly jobs report overstated the number of people finding employment by over 818,000 jobs so far this year.

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An habitual criminal convicted of the 2022 stabbing murder of a 24-year-old graduate student has been sentenced life without the possibility of parole (LWOP) by a Los Angeles Judge. Steve Sorace of Fox News reports that the murderer, 34-year-old Shawn Laval Smith, presented an insanity defense at trial, which the judge rejected. A 2022 story in the New York Post on Smith’s arrest reports that Smith came to California from Charleston, South Carolina in 2019 while free on $50,000 bail on charges of shooting into a vehicle with a child inside during a road rage  incident. He already had convictions for illegal firearm possession and attacking a Charleston police officer.

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A federal District Judge has ordered the state of Indiana to provide sex reassignment surgery for a convicted murderer.  Matt Delaney of the Washington Times reports that District Judge Richard Young’s ruling in a lawsuit by the American  Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) requires state taxpayers to pay for the surgery, even though Indiana law forbids it.  The suit was brought on behalf of the former Jonathan Richardson, who now calls himself Autumn Cordellione.  Although Cordellione claims he identified as a female when he was six-years-old, he was married to a woman in 2001 when he strangled his 11-month-old stepdaughter to death while his wife was at work.  Although he was sentenced to 55 years in prison for the murder, he will be eligible for parole in 2027.

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President Biden issued a statement yesterday to take credit for the widely reported FBI data for 2023 showing a significant decline in crime.  The New York Times noted that “The latest data is consistent with earlier preliminary reports from the F.B.I., and with research from other organizations and criminologists, all showing continuing declines in most crime, including murder.” If this is true, why doesn’t the public believe it. As the Times notes: “a Gallup poll last year found that 77 percent of Americans believed crime was rising, even though it was actually falling.” Perhaps the FBI data does not accurately reflect what’s actually happening in the real world that most Americans are living in.

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The answer is yes if you believe a story by Matalie Neysa Alund in USA Today.  The headline reads “Missouri set to execute `loving father’ whose DNA wasn’t on murder weapon, attorneys say.”  Habitual felon Marcellus Williams will be executed tomorrow barring a last minute stay. He was convicted of killing 42-year-old Felicia Gayle on August 11, 1998, while burglarizing her home. Her husband discovered her body, which had been stabbed 43 times. A 2003 Missouri Supreme Court decision describes a random and brutal killing.  Update:  Williams was executed without incident Tuesday.

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While his Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation is accelerating the early release of serious and violent criminals in prison, Governor Gavin Newsom is pretending to get tough on thieves. Evan Simon of the California Globe reports that last Thursday Newsom signed a bill that would increase the sentences of some thieves. The bill, AB 1960 by Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) would add a one-year enhancement to the jail sentence of someone convicted of stealing or damaging property worth $50,000.  Stealing $200,000 would add two years to the jail sentence. The same enhancements would be added to the punishment of someone who receives or resells $50,000 or $200,000 worth of stolen property. With the possible exception of jewelry stores, this law will have zero impact on the hundreds of smash-and-grab thieves terrorizing markets, drug and department stores.   It does nothing to deter a thief who steals under $950 worth of goods from six different stores in one week. Under Proposition 47, a misleading initiative adopted in 2014, those thefts are misdemeanors and the habitual thief gets no punishment.

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