Category: Equal Protection
by Kent Scheidegger · Mar 5, 2024 4:28 pm
A California law, enacted directly by the people, provides that the crime of first-degree murder with special circumstanhe ces committed by an adult is punishable by death or life in prison with no possibility of parole. Yet Tony Hardin, who committed a vicious murder at age 25, claimed that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires that he be considered for parole anyway because others who committed lesser degrees of murder at the same age are eligible for “youth offender parole” under California law. A California Court of Appeal panel actually bought that. The California Supreme Court rejected this claim in a 5-2 decision yesterday, reversing the Court of Appeal. Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Jun 30, 2023 4:39 pm
Did Contra Costa County* District Attorney Diana Becton “take a dive” when her office was accused of discriminatory charging practices? Ron Matthias, retired Senior Asst. AG, has this op-ed in the San Jose Mercury News.
Thanks to the Contra Costa district attorney’s puzzling refusal to adequately defend her office against bogus allegations of racially discriminatory charging practices, the county’s most dangerous gang-banging murderers will avoid the punishment they deserve.
Diana Becton’s anemic response to both the charge of bias and a subsequent court ruling sustaining it will leave informed observers with the nagging suspicion that she’s happy with the result. She could use the ruling as a convenient excuse for never again seeking appropriate charges against hardcore gang members and for dropping charges against some who already have been convicted.
Under California law, a gang-inspired murderer can see his sentence “enhanced” by 10 additional years, and in the case of an especially egregious murder, the gang connection could support a “special circumstance” subjecting him to a no-parole life sentence or even the death penalty. In either instance, the connection must be charged and proved.
Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Apr 18, 2022 12:09 pm
Mark Twain once referred to a jury as “twelve men … who don’t know anything and can’t read.” He was exaggerating. Yet, this morning three Justices of the United States Supreme Court dissented from the Court’s refusal to take up a case of alleged juror bias for review, when the claim of bias was the juror’s statement of a demographic fact that is undeniably true. Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Oct 2, 2020 4:15 pm
The criminal justice system takes too long and costs too much. That is why the much-criticized practice of plea bargaining is a necessary evil. That is why actually carrying out the just, deserved sentences for the very worst murderers is the exception and not the rule.
So what did California Governor Gavin Newsom do Wednesday? He signed a bill to make the problem worse, layering a large, expensive, and time-consuming new burden on the already staggering system. The pretense for AB 2542 (now Chapter 317, Statutes of 2020) is redressing racial discrimination, but it will not do any good along those lines, while it will do much harm. Continue reading . . .
by Bill Otis · Jun 15, 2020 5:57 am
Jury nullification is the theory that a jury should be able to render a verdict it believes is just notwithstanding what the law and the facts of the case may require. Most often, jury nullification is pushed by libertarians in the context of drug prosecutions. Under libertarian theory, drugs should be legal, and obstinate legislative refusal to repeal drug laws should be nullified by juries’ refusal to convict defendants in drug cases. An offshoot of the same theory is that juries should acquit because, even if drug laws are arguably acceptable in some circumstances, the punishments, particularly mandatory minimum sentences, are so wildly excessive that a justice-oriented jury should prevent their imposition.
There are numerous problems with nullification theory. Continue reading . . .
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