Author: Michael Rushford

Kim Gardner, the progressive St. Louis Circuit Attorney whose campaign was bankrolled by uber-liberal billionaire George Soros announced that she would resign from office on June 1.  Susan El Khoury and Lauren Trager of KMOV report that Gardner is facing removal from office by the State Attorney General for willfully neglecting the duties of her office.  Gardner was first elected in 2016 as the city’s first black female Circuit Attorney, vowing to reform the office and restore social justice.  The main elements of her reform agenda has been to decline to prosecute thousands of cases and fail to assign prosecutors to serious criminal cases set for trial.  In April her office was held in contempt for failing to appear for the trial of a man accused of murder and another trial of a suspect charged with shooting an 11-year-old girl.  Gardner’s refusal to revoke bail even for habitual offenders who repeatedly violate bail conditions without any consequences became a major issue for her opponents. In February Daniel Riley, who had violated bail at least 50 times while awaiting trial for armed robbery, rammed his car at high speed into 16-year-old Janae Edmondson and another car, pinning her between both vehicles. Riley was driving without a license. The girl, who was in town for a volleyball tournament, lost both legs due to the accident.  The Attorney General says he will not wait for June 1 to remove Gardner from office.

The mantra of death penalty opponents for all of my adult life has been Blackstone’s ratio:  “better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer.”  But what if one of the guilty allowed to escape is a murderer?   William Lee of the Chicago Tribune reports that last month the posterboy for compassionate release, Steven “Mustafa” Hawthorne, was arrested for the double murder of his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend.  In 1984, Hawthorne was convicted of killing two people and sentenced to life-without-the-possibility-of parole (LWOP).  Because he was 17-years-old at the time of the murders, Hawthorne was allowed to petition for re-sentencing  after the Supreme Court’s 2012 ruling in Miller v. Alabama.  In 2017, based upon findings that he had been rehabilitated, Hawthorne was released from prison.   As noted by Hans Bader in Liberty Unyielding, the sentencing reform group Families Against Mandatory Minimums, celebrated Hawthorne’s release noting that “there are  too many people in Illinois serving long prison terms that don’t make communities safer.  More of them need the same chance that Steven got.”

Continue reading . . .

A campaign  to recall progressive Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price has generated over 15,000 signatures toward a goal of 25,000 as reported by Rachel Schilke of the Washington Examiner.  Price, who assumed office in January, has implemented multiple progressive policies aimed to reduce sentences and substitute “healing” and programs for jail or prison sentences.  She has also fired 20 prosecutors and placed six others on administrative leave.  She sparked a backlash in March when her office offered a plea bargain to give accused murderer Delonzo Logwood a 15-year sentence for killing three people in a murder-for-hire scheme.   The judge in the case rejected the deal stating that Price provided no explanation for offering such a deal.  In most other CA counties a triple-murderer could receive a death sentence or life-without-the-possibility-of-parole.  Logwood’s trial begins this month.

Continue reading . . .

The man wanted for killing five members of a Cleveland, Texas family last Friday is an illegal alien who has been deported from the U.S. five times.  Danielle Wallace of Fox News reports that there is an $80,000 reward for information leading to the capture of Francisco Oropesa, a Mexican national identified by video at the scene of the execution-style murders of three women, a man and an eight-year-old boy.  Oropesa was also identified by some of the five other family members who survived the attack.  ICE reports that he was deported five times between 2009 and 2016.  In 2012, he was deported after serving time in jail for drunk driving.  Police told reporters that a member of the family had asked Oropesa to stop firing his rifle into the air late Friday night.  In response he walked into the neighbor’s home and began shooting.  Two of the female victims were murdered while lying on top of children to protect them.  Once again, while some politicians and the media will blame the gun for these killings, it was the refusal by Congress to fully secure the southern border that allowed the murderer to repeatedly enter the U.S.  Strict enforcement of immigration laws would have prevented this tragedy.

A little publicized 2021 public opinion survey by the Skeptic Research Center asked respondents to self identify as very conservative, conservative, moderate, liberal or very liberal.  The researchers then asked “how many unarmed black men were killed by police in 2019?”  20.28% of very conservatives believed that between 1,000 and 10,000 or more black men were killed by police.  13% of conservatives believed this.  25.8% of moderates thought so, while 38.7% of liberals and 53.5% of very liberal agreed.  In 2019, twenty-five unarmed black men were killed by police. The same survey asked “what percentage of people killed by police were black.”  The responses ranged from 60.4% from very liberal to 37.8% from conservatives.  Even the very conservatives thought 44.5% of those killed by police were black.  The actual percent was 24.9%.   How could so many people from all political stripes have been this wrong?  The fact is that for decades the public has been fed a steady diet of lies by liberal politicians and the mainstream media characterizing the police as racially-obsessed bigots randomly slaughtering innocent black men.   In an article from today’s City Journal, Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald painstakingly deconstructs this propaganda.

Continue reading . . .

On April 4, Chicago voters doubled down on woke criminal justice reform by electing Brandon Johnson as Mayor.  Out-of-control crime has been the city’s leading policy issue for several years, with most believing that former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s defeat was due to her failure to effectively address it.  Johnson’s recently-announced policies are even more anti-law enforcement than hers.  He is erasing the street gang database that has helped police identify violent offenders, calling it racist.  The Sun Times reports that instead of filling the hundreds of vacancies in the Chicago PD, Johnson is closing down police stations and wants to hire non-police “trained professionals” to respond to 911 calls.  He had vowed to address the root causes of crime (poverty, housing, education) rather than aggressively going after the criminals.  Last weekend, the criminals responded by shooting 35 people with 8 fatalities.  Two of the victims were shot when hundreds of teens took over the Millennium Park area, smashing windows and setting cars on fire.  The previous weekend 20 people were shot with three fatalities.  It looks like the open season in Chicago will continue.

A story posted in the online edition of the Sacramento Bee reports that after California’s 2016 adoption of Proposition 57, “The Public Safety and Rehabilitation Act,” recidivism went down according to a report from state’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). The initiative allowed criminals convicted of so called non-violent crimes such as drug dealing, car theft, grand larceny and burglary to be released from prison early based upon their behavior while incarcerated.  The criminal’s prior convictions, even for murder or rape, were not required to be considered in the CDCR process to determine who was eligible and how much time off they would receive.  The Bee article notes that the measure was opposed by law enforcement organizations like the San Francisco Police Officers Association, Association of Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs and the California District Attorneys Association, who warned that it would allow the release of dangerous violent offenders resulting in increased crime.  But in the three years after Proposition 57 passed, the CDCR reported that the conviction and return-to-prison rates for released inmates declined.

Continue reading . . .

Justin Jones, the Tennessee legislator expelled last week for active participation in a protest (insurrection?) that shut down proceedings in the statehouse, was indicted for assaulting a motorist during a George Floyd protest in the summer of 2020.  Caroline Downey of National Review reports that Jones was caught on video blocking a street outside the state capitol and attacking the driver of a pickup with a traffic cone as he attempted to leave.  The video was shown to a Grand Jury, which indicted Jones for assault and reckless endangerment.  Jones claimed that his actions were “peaceful” and that the police and prosecutors were “pushing a false narrative portraying me as violent.”  The video clearly shows Jones’s carrying out the assault, but my favorite is the protester in the yellow shirt who does an NBA flop when the silver car he’s blocking touches him.  He would be ejected from a game for such a blatant fake.  It is terrifying to be caught in one of these road blocks and swarmed by protesters.

This article was published in the  April 11, issue of the California Globe.

The California Senate Public Safety Committee will hear a legislative proposal Thursday which would give the state’s worst murderers, who have been sentenced to death or life without the possibility of parole (LWOP), the opportunity to have their sentences invalidated and make them eligible for parole.  SB94, introduced by Senator Dave Cortese (D-Santa Clara), specifies that criminals  convicted of murder with special circumstances before June 5, 1990 and sentenced to death or LWOP would be provided with a public defender to petition for recall and resentencing.  The bill would authorize the court to modify the petitioner’s sentence to impose a lesser sentence and apply any changes in law that reduce sentences or provide for judicial discretion, or to vacate the petitioner’s conviction and impose judgment on a lesser included offense.  Among the murderers who could apply for a sentence reduction and possible release is Tequon Cox, who in 1984, went to the wrong address for a gang-revenge killing and murdered a mother, her daughter and two of her grandchildren.  Cox was sentenced to death for these crimes.  In 2004, while on death row, Cox stabbed another condemned murderer and, along with three other murderers, cut a hole in the San Quentin fence and nearly  escaped.   UPDATE:  SB94 passed out of the committee by a vote of 4-1.  It now goes to the Appropriations Committee.

Continue reading . . .

Barring a last-minute stay, Florida will execute Louis Gaskin, dubbed the “Ninja Killer” for the murders and burglary of a Palm Coast couple.  Naomi Feinstein of the Miami New Times reports that Gaskin’s execution will be carried out on April 12.  Another Florida murderer, Darryl Barwick, is scheduled to be executed on May 4.  A unanimous Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals decision upholding Gaskin’s conviction and death sentence describes the random killings five days before Christmas in 1989.  That evening Gaskin drove through a of Palm Coast neighborhood and spotted a house with a light on.  He parked and walked around the house several times.  Looking in the windows he saw Robert and Georgette Strumfels sitting in their den.   He shot Robert twice through the window.  When Georgette attempted to leave the room, he shot her, then shot her again as she crawled down a hall.  Gaskin then climbed through a window and executed both victims with shots to the head.  He left after stealing several items from the home.  UPDATE:  Gaskin was pronounced dead at 6:15 pm, Wednesday.

Continue reading . . .