Author: Michael Rushford

A Utah man who slashed his ex-girlfriend’s mother to death in 1998 is asking the state parole board to commute his death sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Colleen Slevin and Matthew Brown of the Associated Press report that after decades of failed appeals, Taberon Dave Honie is seeking mercy for a crime that still traumatizes the state’s close-knit Native American community. At a hearing last Tuesday, relatives of 49-year-old Claudia Benn asked the parole board to uphold his death sentence for brutally murdering a “pillar of her family and community—a tribal council member, substance abuse counselor and caregiver for her children and grandchildren.”  Update:  Honie was executed without incident at 12:25 AM Thursday morning.

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Recently released data reported to the public indicate that since January, crime in Oakland, CA has declined by 33%.  As reported by Rachel Swan and Dan Kopf of the San Francisco Chronicle,  Governor Gavin Newsom cited that data as proof that his dispatch of CHP officers and prosecutors from the Attorney General’s office to crack down on Oakland crime has paid off.  The problem is, according to the Chronicle, those numbers are inaccurate. Law enforcement officials told reporters that there is a significant backlog of crimes reported which need to be verified.  As a result, the initial numbers, which are reported weekly, can be much lower that the actual number of crimes.

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While many democrat and progressive elected officials have resisted efforts to restore real consequences for criminals, the impact of soft-on-crime policies, particularly in large urban districts, will be hard to ignore next month when the party holds its national convention in Chicago.  Jasmine Minor, Tre Ward and Sarah Schulte of ABC 7 News report that over the recent 4th of July weekend, 109 people were shot with 19 fatalities in the windy city.  Victims included the elderly, women and children, with 19 people shot in mass shootings.  Many of the shootings appeared random including one incident where two women and an 8-year-old boy were killed as multiple shooters opened fire on a gathering at a home in Little Italy.  Last year 62 people were shot and 11 died in Chicago shootings over the 4th of July weekend.

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California Governor Gavin Newsom is proposing to cut roughly $187 million from law enforcement to reduce the state’s multi-billion dollar deficit. Hannah Grossman at Fox News reports that the cuts would include reduced funding to the state’s overburdened trial courts, eliminating 4,500 state prison beds, and reducing the number of state criminal prosecutors and county probation officers. The proposal follows a recent statement from the Governor’s office that there would be “no cuts to law enforcement.”

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A California law passed in 2021 requires that male convicts, who “identify” as female, to be transferred to a woman’s prison.  That law, SB 132 introduced by progressive San Francisco Senator Scott Wiener passed both houses of California’s democrat super-majority legislature before being signed by Governor Gavin Newsom.  It removed the previous policy of state corrections officials to make individualized assessments regarding the transfer of claimed transgender inmates, excluding inmates who didn’t have gender-reassignment surgery.  As reported by Chris Pandolfo and Michael Ruiz of Fox News, three months after SB 132 became law,  habitual felon Tremaine Carroll, serving 25-years-to-life in prison for multiple crimes, including sex offenses, began identifying as a female.

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A Santa Clara County Judge rejected condemned California murderer Richard Allen Davis’ petition to vacate his death sentence for the kidnap, rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl.  Louis Casiano and Audrey Conklin of Fox News report that the murderer’s attorneys argued that changes in state sentencing laws under Governor’s Brown and Newsom, including Newsom’s moratorium on executions, made Davis eligible for a reduced sentence. The judge was not buying, noting that the changes in the law allowed murderers sentenced to life without parole if they were 25 or younger at the time of the killing to ask for a lesser sentence, but did not include murderers sentenced to death. Davis kidnapped Polly Klaas from her bedroom in 1993, sexually assaulted her then killed her.  She was not found until Davis was arrested two months after her disappearance and led police to her body.  The case made national headlines and helped convince state voters to adopt the Three Strikes and Your Out, ballot measure.

An Alabama criminal convicted of the brutal 2004 murder and robbery of an elderly couple is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on May 30.  Ivana Hrynkiw of Huntsville Real-Time News reports that last week Chief U.S. District Judge Emily Marks rejected Jamie Ray Mills’ petition for a stay of execution noting that:

“The practice of filing lawsuits and requests for stay of execution at the last minute where the facts were known well in advance is ineffective, unworkable, and must stop.  The Court acknowledges that lawyers representing death row inmates set to be executed unquestionably owe a duty to their clients. However, these lawyers are also officers of the court. The act of filing a civil action and then a request for injunctive relief after unjustified delay often appears to be legal manipulation rather than genuine legal advocacy.”

UPDATE:  Mills was executed without incident at 6:26 PM on May 30.

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The FBI reports that in 2023 over 79,000 law enforcement officers were attacked, the most since 2014.  As reported by the Associated Press, over the same ten year period the number of officers who were shot increased by 113%, from 200 in 2014 to 466 last year.  Fatal attacks on officers totaled 60 last year compared to 61 in 2022.  Seventy three officers died in the line of duty in 2021.  During the national George Floyd riots in 2020, groups including Black Lives Matter, several civil rights leaders and progressive politicians spoke openly about their belief that police were racists, justifying the attacks on officers.  As that trend has continued, it is no mystery why fewer young men and women are choosing careers in law enforcement.  Update:  On May 17 the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning violence against police officers.  61 democrats voted against it.

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is expected to sign legislation into law that prohibits drivers from using cellphones as reported by Fox 29.  While most states have adopted similar laws to reduce distracted driving, the new PA law also requires police departments to document and report the race of drivers detained for traffic stops. The purpose of this new requirement, according to the legislature’s black caucus, is to expose racial profiling by police. In doing so, Pennsylvania joins other Democrat-controlled states in the effort to characterize law enforcement as “systemically racist,” a narrative advanced by Black Lives Matter, the ACLU and race hustlers such as Al Sharpton. The irrefutable fact that different races commit crimes at different rates, unrelated to their proportion of the population, is an inconvenient truth that progressive politicians and the mainstream media prefer to ignore. As Pennsylvania traffic officers shy away from stopping a black motorists using smartphones to avoid being tarred as a racist, the new distracted driver’s law will become merely symbolic.