Author: Michael Rushford

For over two years the American public has been told by the major media and a select group of criminal justice “experts” that the unprecedented increases  in crime and violence which began in 2020 and continues today were the result of “the disruptions of the pandemic—the social isolation, the closure of schools and jobs lost—likely led to an increase in crime,” as reported in the New York Times.  In a post last August, we addressed this claim pointing to multiple factors having nothing to do with the pandemic, particularly the widespread reduction of consequences for crime and policies that hogtied the police, which caused and continue to cause increased crime and violence.  In his piece in today’s Wall Street Journal, Joshua Crawford, of the Georgia Center for Opportunity, compares and contrasts crime in cities where “woke” policies remain in place with cities taking a pro-law enforcement approach.

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A ballot measure recently authorized for signature gathering would roll back provisions of California’s Proposition 47, which turned drug possession, drug trafficking, and theft into misdemeanors. If adopted by state voters next November, “The Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act” would give prosecutors the discretion to charge hard drug addicts with a “treatment-mandated felony” after two previous drug convictions. Offenders charged with the “treatment-mandated felony” would be given the option to complete a drug and mental health program or serve time in jail. After a fourth conviction, judges would have the option of sentencing the offenders to jail or state prison. The act would also increase penalties for drug dealers and allow judges to sentence dealers who possess firearms to state prison, rather than county jail. It would also categorize non-prescription fentanyl as a hard drug and allow dealers who sell a fatal dose to be prosecuted for second-degree murder. Continue reading . . .

A longtime tent city in a busy industrial district of South Boston has been targeted by the mayor for removal.  Brianna Herlihy of Fox News reports that the encampment, which starts at the corner of Melnea Cass Boulevard and Massachusetts Avenue has for years been dubbed the “Methadone Mile”  where addicts, criminals and the mentally ill have taken over the neighborhood.  The levels of crime, drug use and drug overdoses in the area have at times forced the city to prohibit caregivers from even visiting to protect their safety.  There have been several sweeps to remove tents and addicts from the area since 2019, but after each one the homeless have returned in greater numbers.  The city’s Democrat Mayor Michelle Wu recently announced that as of November 1, the police will begin to remove tents and take occupants to housing, rehab and mental services.

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Progressive California Attorney General Rob Bonta appeared at a recent Placer County press conference to congratulate Placer County’s district attorney for convicting a drug dealer of second degree murder.  Columnist Dan Walters writes in Cal Matters that the dealer, Nathanial Cabacungan knowingly sold a 15-year-old girl a fake Percocet pill containing a fatal dose of fentanyl.  The dealer was found guilty of second degree murder and sentenced to 15-years to life in prison.   Bonta called the prosecution “historic” and told reporters . . . “to me, it’s an example of good law enforcement at its finest, working together, following the facts, building the case.” Bonta cited the alarming increase in fatal fentanyl overdoses among young people, saying, “It’s cheap, it’s potent and it’s lethal.”

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A mentally disturbed New Jersey man who attacked a woman in front of other commuters at a crowded New York subway station in July, was not arrested although he was well known to police.  Last week the same man pushed another woman into a moving train, nearly killing her.  Michael Ruiz of Fox News reports that Sabir Jones, 39 was observed by dozens of witnesses during the lunch hour at the crowded 53rd Street station as he pushed a 30-year-old woman into the side of a train.  Bystanders pulled the woman off the tracks and she was rushed to the hospital with severe head trauma.  Minutes earlier Jones had punched a man in the face, breaking his jaw.  All of the attacks, including slugging the same poor woman he shoved twice last July, were random.

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As noted in this earlier post, when criminal justice reformers celebrate the early release of serious criminals it doesn’t always work out well.   Today the staff at Liberty Unyielding offer up another example.  This time the case involves a former bank robber who became a Georgetown law professor.  In the late 1990s Shon Hopwood was sentenced to 12 years in prison following a series of bank robberies that he committed in small town Nebraska.  Eleven years later, Hopwood was released after having earned a law degree and, as a jailhouse lawyer, twice got petitions on behalf of fellow inmates accepted for review in the U.S. Supreme Court.  Once free, Hopwood won a clerkship with the DC Circuit, and later took a professorship at Georgetown Law.  He also played a role in passing the federal sentencing reform “First Step Act.”  What a remarkable “second chance” success story.

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California’s notorious Sunset Strip Killer, Douglas Clark, who was sentenced to death for six grisly murders in 1983, died in a hospital last week at the age of 75.  Chris Eberhart of Fox News reports that Clark was convicted of kidnapping, sexually assaulting and murdering six women over the summer of 1980.  He mutilated the bodies of his victims, decapitating one and keeping her head in a freezer.  His partner in the murders, Carol Bundy, told police that Clark would have sex with some of his victims corpses before dumping the bodies.  The oldest victim was 25, while three others were teenagers.  All of these young women suffered horribly before they were killed and mutilated.  Because of Governors Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom refusing to enforce the death penalty, even after California voters demanded it remain the law, Clark avoided a well-deserved execution and lived out his life, dying of natural causes.

A Texas criminal who killed an elderly woman during a carjacking was executed late Tuesday.  Juan Lozano and Michael Graczyk of the Associated Press report that Jedidiah Murphy passed out a few seconds after receiving an injection of the anesthesia pentobarbital and was pronounced dead 25 minutes later.  A 2018 Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision  and a news story in the Dallas Morning News describe the murder of 80-year-old Bertie Lee Cunningham.  On the afternoon of October 4, 2000, Murphy forced his way into the woman’s car as she was driving home from shopping.  He had her drive to a secluded area then made her get into the car’s trunk before shooting her in the head.  He then dumped her body into a creek and drove off.  Hours later he used the victim’s credit cards to purchase alcohol and cigarettes.  Police caught up with him two days later.  

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