Author: Bill Otis

Crime, Race, and Cancel Culture’s Poisonous Game of Dare

by · Feb 16, 2021 4:31 pm

Glenn Loury, a black man, is a professor of economics and faculty fellow at the Watson Institute at Brown University and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.  He is also a man of tremendous courage and insight  —  one of the few in academia, or anywhere, who would write the following truth:

Common sense and much evidence suggest that, on the whole, people are not being arrested, convicted, and sentenced because of their race. Those in prison are, in the main, those who have broken the law—who have hurt others, or stolen things, or otherwise violated the basic behavioral norms which make civil society possible. Seeing prisons as a racist conspiracy to confine black people is an absurd proposition. No serious person could believe it. Continue reading . . .

An Evil Prosecution of the George Soros Kind

by · Feb 11, 2021 7:54 pm

This story from the NYT is making the rounds on the Internet today.  The headline is:  “The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired.”  The subhead is, “Ten doses of the Covid-19 vaccine would expire within hours, so a Houston doctor gave it to people with medical conditions, including his wife. What followed was ‘the lowest moment in my life,’ Dr. Hasan Gokal said.”

The lowest moment was not just that he was fired from his hospital.  He was criminally charged by the Harris County District Attorney, Kim Ogg, for “stealing” the vaccine.

Now you might wonder, as I did, how a prosecutor could be so brain-dead as to charge a doctor for “stealing” this life-saving medicine when the alternative was to pour it down the sewer.  And you might think, again as I did, that it was just a case of terminal hubris and stupidity.  But it seems to have been more than that, and worse.  A lot worse.

Continue reading . . .

Catch-and-Release Has a Cost — It Just Gets Pushed Behind the Curtain

by · Feb 9, 2021 11:41 pm

But the curtain will get pulled back in this space.  Here’s the story’s opening paragraph:

Jerry Lyons, 31, had spent his entire adult life committing crimes. He had dozens of arrests in California — attempted robbery, burglary, evading police, driving a stolen vehicle, weapons charges, drug charges, shoplifting, trespassing, etc. — but kept getting turned loose until Thursday, when he finally killed somebody. Sheria Musyoka, 26, was an immigrant from Kenya who had graduated from Dartmouth and moved to San Francisco with his wife and three-year-old son. Lyons was behind the wheel of a stolen car when he killed Musyoka.

It doesn’t get any better.

Continue reading . . .

By All Means, Let’s Bring Back Parole…….

by · Feb 9, 2021 11:13 pm

…..or maybe not.  Here’s the headline from People Magazine:  “Mom Allegedly Left Newborn in Toilet After Giving Birth While on Parole for Role in Death of Another Baby.”  The sub-head is also informative:  “Denette Williams allegedly told police she did not know she was pregnant when she felt cramps and heard a ‘plop’ in the toilet.”

Ah yes, loving motherhood.  What better way to enter the world than as “a plop in the toilet.”

Continue reading . . .

Jury Nullification Gets Nullified

by · Feb 1, 2021 4:23 pm

The highest court in Maryland, the state Court of Appeals, has outlawed jury nullification in the most forceful terms I can remember seeing.  This is the right result.  Jury nullification is simply inconsistent with any intelligible concept of law.  One of the main functions we want law to do is to let citizens know what the rules are.  If we are to have, on a completely ad hoc basis, different rules depending on which jury you happen to draw (i.e., crack is legal in one jury’s mind but still illegal in the mind of the jury across the hall, or the age of consent is 13 in one jury’s mind but 17 in the mind of the jury across the hall), then whatever you have, it’s not law.

Continue reading . . .

What Caused Last Year’s Huge Spike in Murder?

by · Feb 1, 2021 11:07 am

My longtime friend, former colleague in the USAO, former US District Judge, and now distinguished law professor Paul Cassell takes a look.  He concludes, “While a new report released today by the Council on Criminal Justice downplays the role anti-police protests played in last year’s unprecedented homicide spike, a decline in pro-active policing following the protests remains the most likely cause.”

Full disclosure:  I am a member of the Council on Criminal Justice (as I believe is Paul), but we’re in the small minority favoring the sober Reagan/Bush/Bill Clinton approach to crime.  The Council’s Report is here.

What To Make of Plea Bargaining?

by · Jan 31, 2021 8:53 pm

The Federalist Society student chapter at Arizona State was kind enough to host Clark Neily of Cato and me for a discussion of the modern state of plea bargaining.  Is it a coercive and reckless tool for overbearing prosecutors, and one that all but eliminates the citizen participation the Founders thought essential for the criminal justice system, or a reasonably reliable tool for the government to adjudicate the flood of criminal cases and provide justice to many more crime victims than would otherwise be possible?

Clark  —  a gentleman throughout  —  and I have at it here.

And Now for Something a Little Different

by · Jan 24, 2021 9:04 pm

From Republicword.com (and confirmed by other sources):

A motorcade thief stole a woman’s car in Oregon, US, but halfway through the drive discovered a baby boy couched in the backseat. In a twist of fate, the suspect drove back due to moral consc[ience] to return the child to the mother, and also to lecture her for leaving her baby unattended. In a statement released by the Beaverton police, the car was stolen on Saturday outside Basics Meat Market. But the thief returned to the spot, chided the woman about forgetting the baby, and ordered her to get the child out of the car before driving off again.

Continue reading . . .

“2020’s Spike in Urban Homicides Should Not Be a Mystery”

by · Jan 13, 2021 7:24 pm

It’s not news by now that last year saw a dramatic surge in murder across the country.  As recounted by this National Review article: “In 2020, homicides increased by 35 percent from 2019 across the 50 largest urban areas, reaching levels in many cities not seen for more than 20 years.”  But why?  “Some in the media suggest the spike is simply another downside of the pandemic. But this would appear to gloss over the likely link to unintended consequences of the nationwide demonstrations after George Floyd’s death in the custody of Minneapolis police.”

Unintended consequences indeed.  As the author explains, when you legitimate rage at society, you can’t be surprised when the outcroppings of rage arrive on your doorstep.

Continue reading . . .