Author: Michael Rushford

Tonight Texas is set to execute its second murderer this week, Arthur Brown, Jr., for the murders of four people, including a pregnant woman.  Jolie McCullough of the Texas Tribune reports that Brown was convicted, along with two accomplices, of the 1992 execution-style murders and attempted murders of two others who survived.  The facts presented in a 2012 decision by a unanimous panel of the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals described the cold blooded murders at a Houston drug house that supplied Brown and his companions, who were dealers.  All six victims were tied to chairs and shot in the head.  The surviving victims testified at trial, identifing Brown and one accomplice as the shooters.  On Tuesday, a judge denied Brown’s request for a last minute stay.  Brown’s attorneys claim they found new evidence that Brown is innocent, that his low IQ disqualifies him from execution, that one juror at the trial was racist and that his trial lawyer was incompetent.  While CJLF has no special sympathy for drug dealers, two of Brown’s victims were teenagers, and one, 19-year-old Jessica Quinones, was 9-months pregnant.  They could have straightened out their lives.  As usual all the compassion is for the murderer.  The other shooter, Brown’s accomplice Marion Dudly, was executed in 2006.  UPDATE:  Brown was pronounced dead at 6:37 PM last night.

The newly elected District Attorney of Alameda County, which includes the high-crime city of Oakland, has announced new  policies requiring the prosecutors in her office to seek the minimum sentences possible for convicted criminals, including those who use guns.  For example, in the case of a gang member who fires a gun into an occupied car injuring a passenger, the prosecutor would not be allowed to include the Three Strikes enhancement for the use of a firearm, which would have increased the sentence for the shooter.  Rachel Swan of the SF Chronicle reports that DA Pamela Price’s new policies are similar to those of progressive Los Angeles DA George Gascon’s, requiring deputies to seek probation for criminals who under state law are eligible for jail or prison.

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While homicides are down slightly in Chicago this year, according to the Chicago Police Department, robbery, sexual assault, motor vehicle theft, aggravated battery, burglary and theft over the first two months of 2023 are up 52% compared to last year.  Almost 4,000 additional crimes in just two months.  Chicago’s progressive District Attorney Kim Foxx, and Mayor Lori defund-the-police Lightfoot share much of the responsibility for this, but Governor J. B. Pritzker (D) and the democrat majority legislature are also complicit, having enacted “reforms” that have weakened sentencing.  Chicago police are also operating under an Obama-era consent decree which ties the hands of officers and requires the department to prove it is not racist.  This has driven officers out of the department to take early retirement or to jobs in other cities.  Currently Chicago PD is 1,300 officers short.  What to do?  State Rep. Thaddeus Jones (D) has the solution….force businesses to hire security guards to protect customers from the criminals state laws and local policies has kept on the streets.

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The following article was published in the February 17 edition of the California Globe:

Data released last September by the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services provided researchers at the Manhattan Institute with the necessary information to compare the rearrest rate for offenders prior to the state’s 2020 bail reform law with the rearrest rate after the law took effect. The intent of the bail reform law was to force judges to release more arrestees without bail, called Non-Monetary Release (NMR).  Charles Fain Lehman’s piece in the City Journal confirmed what many in law enforcement had predicted:  when offenders are released without bail, they are more likely to be rearrested for committing new crimes.  This finding was ignored by the major media and liberal think tanks like the Brennan Center, which had for months tried to convince the public that releasing more offenders without bail was not the cause of increased crime across the state.  One exception was a September New York Post article by Jim Quinn which noted:  “in 2019, 166 of the NMR participants got re-arrested each month. In 2021, the number soared to 445 re-arrests a month, including more than 300 felonies each month.”  That’s over 2 ½ times more rearrests per month.

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California Assemblyman Corey Jackson (D-Moreno Valley) has introduced a bill that would bar the use of police dogs in arrests, apprehensions and crowd control.  Evan Symon of the California Globe reports that the purpose of AB 742 is to end the disproportionate number of African Americans and people of color that are apprehended and injured by police dogs.  “We have to understand that the use of police K-9s has been a mainstay in this country’s dehumanization and it’s cruel and violent history,” said Assemblyman Jackson.  The problem is, a ban on police dogs will not reduce African American exposure to police, and will almost certainly increase shootings of suspects of color.  The disproportionate number of police encounters with blacks is the result of the disproportionate number of crimes committed by blacks.  In Los Angeles for example,  blacks commit forty-four percent of all violent crime, though they’re nine percent of the population.

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