Author: Michael Rushford

An Oklahoma gang member who killed two people in 2002 was put to death today by lethal injection.  Emily Mae Czachor of CBS News reports that Michael DeWayne Smith died ten minutes after injection.  A mountain of evidence including his detailed confession resulted in his conviction and death sentence, but in multiple appeals Smith claimed that he was innocent.  Facts presented in an April 26, 2007 decision by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals indicate that on February 22, 2002 Smith left his apartment armed with a .357 magnum revolver.  He went to the apartment of 41-year-old Janet Moore, whose son Smith believed had snitched on his fellow gang members regarding a robbery.  He kicked in the apartment door and, after learning that the son was not there, Smith fatally shot Moore.  He then went to a convenience store and murdered 22-year-old clerk Sarath Pulluru, took some money and set the store on fire.  He later went to a friend’s apartment and told a woman that he had killed Moore and some person at a “chink” store.  At the time of his arrest, Smith was wanted by police for an earlier killing.

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An article by Ann Ley in last week’s New York Times begins:  “A string of frightening attacks in the subway amid a broader increase in crime in the system so far this year has put some New Yorkers on edge.”  The article goes on to discuss what experts believe the city and transit authorities must do to make riders “feel” safe.  While data suggests that subway crime is down slightly compared to last year, subway riders do not feel safe.  As Ann Coulter notes in a recent piece on the subject,  “the experts’ ideas were not aimed at actually reducing crime — which to be fair, is impossible if you’re not allowed to put criminals in prison—but to “ease riders’ fears about the subway.”

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While reported property crime in LA declined last year violent crime has increased according to the Los Angeles Police Department. The City News Service reports that so far this year homicides have increased 28%, robberies are up 9.5% and overall violent crime is 2.9% higher than last year. The interim Police Chief told the city’s Board of Police Commissioners last week that robberies with firearms are up by 2.9% while gang-related robberies jumped by 5.3%. The Chief also noted that residential burglaries are up 4.5%.  These increases, while not as high as 2022, reflect a growing concern that District Attorney George Gascon’s refusal to prosecute most property and drug crimes while undercharging violent offenders is fueling the violence on LA streets.  The county’s decision to eliminate cash bail and simply release suspects charged with crimes pending trial may also be a contributing factor.  It is likely that the drop in reported property crimes is due to the fact that most thefts are cite-and-release misdemeanors under California law.  In LA, even car thieves are routinely charged and released without bail the same day they are arrested. With absolutely no consequences for most property crimes fewer people and businesses see any value in reporting them. A ballot measure currently gathering signatures would, if adopted by voters this November, restore consequences for property and drug crimes.   The defeat of District Attorney Gascon by former Federal Prosecutor Nathan Hochman in this fall’s general election would put a real prosecutor in charge of combating crime in Los Angeles.

California Governor Gavin Newsom plans to transfer 457 murderers, whose death sentences he postponed, out of San Quentin’s death row and into other prisons across the state. Hannah Wiley of the Los Angeles Times reports that the murderers will be released into the general population at two-dozen high-security prisons where they will have access to more rehabilitative programs and treatment services.  The  goal is to complete these transfers by this summer.  The effort to close down death row follows the Governor’s vision of transforming San Quentin into a Scandinavian-style campus where inmates would be allowed to wear their own clothes and cook their own food while attending classes and participating in job training programs. One wonders how safe it is going to be for the inmates serving time in the prisons where the state’s worst murderers are transferred.

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As serious and violent crime is slowly retreating from their 2022 highs, juvenile crime has sharply increased.  Liberty Unyielding has this article examining what happened in New York after the legislature passed the”Raise the Age” law in 2017.  That law reduced the punishment for 16 and 17-year-old criminal offenders.  The Albany County District Attorney David Soares, who immigrated to the U.S. from Africa, witnessed the impact of that law.

“Since that law passed, youth gun crime statewide has doubled—and youth gun victimization has nearly tripled. About 75 percent of violent felony cases now get handled in family court, which returns teens to the streets, where they often commit new crimes or become victims themselves of tit-for-tat gang warfare. “We witnessed the murder of a young man at the hands of another young man that had gone through the family court Raise the Age process . . . a minimum of three times,” Soares told local legislators in July. This was a system that was never designed to handle or deal with violent—super, super violent—youth.”

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In 2020, while most Californians were struggling with Governor Newsom’s pandemic lockdown and George Floyd rioters were tearing up our cities, the Legislature passed and Governor Newsom signed AB 2542 into law. In the Monday, March 4 Wall Street Journal, Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald wrote, that under the new law (the California Racial Justice Act), “every felon serving time in the state’s prisons and jails can now retroactively challenge his conviction and sentencing on the ground of systemic bias.”

“To prevail, the incarcerated prisoner need not show that the police officers, prosecutors, judge or jurors in his case were motivated by racism or that his proceedings were unfair. If he can demonstrate that in the past, criminal suspects of his race were arrested, prosecuted or sentenced more often or more severely than members of other racial groups, he will be entitled to a new trial or sentence.” Continue reading . . .

A Texas man convicted and sentenced to death for the 2000 robbery and murder of his cousin, James Mosqueda, and the cousin’s fiancee, Amy Kitchen, was executed Wednesday evening. James Powell of USA Today reports that Ivan Cantu continued to claim that he was innocent right up to his death, arguing that his ex-girlfriend gave false testimony at trial implicating him in the killings and that his defense attorney was incompetent.  Kim Kardashian contacted Texas Governor Greg Abbot asking him to postpone the execution for 30 days and 150,000 people signed a petition urging a stay of execution. Based on the overwhelming evidence, it is remarkable that anyone could question Cantu’s guilt.

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Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares has announced his opposition to an amendment to the state’s budget bill which gives sentence reductions to criminals, including violent criminals. Hans Bader of Liberty Unyielding reports that in a letter to the Democrat-controled legislature Miyares wrote,

“Cutting sentences for violent crime, especially in cases identified as a high risk for recidivism, is having a detrimental impact on public safety throughout Virginia,” Miyares wrote in the letter. “Aggressive sentence reductions for violent criminals and those with high risk for recidivism disregards past and future victims. Allowing such a practice is not justice, and it’s not safe.”

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Thomas Creech—who murdered at least six people, was sentenced to death in 1974, and then killed a fellow prison inmate in 1981—is finally facing execution on Wednesday in Idaho, as reported by the Associated Press. Last Friday, a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Creech’s claim that he should not be executed because he was sentenced for killing the inmate by a judge rather than a jury. While investigators believe that Creech murdered 11 people, he has only faced trial for six.

Creech’s first victim was 70-year-old retiree Paul Schrader, who he stabbed to death in Tuscon. After killing him, he used his victim’s credit cards and vehicle to flee to Portland, Oregon. He used a mental defense, was acquitted for that murder, and was committed to an Oregon mental hospital. In 1974, on a weekend pass,  Creech traveled to Sacramento and killed Vivian Grant Robinson at her home. The crime went unsolved until Creech confessed while in custody in Idaho. He was convicted of Robinson’s murder in 1980. Continue reading . . .