Federal Death Penalty Memorandum
The U.S. Attorney General’s memorandum Reviving the Federal Death Penalty and Lifting the Moratorium on Federal Executions, February 5, is available here.
Category: General
As Crime Rises San Francisco Doubles Down on Sanctuary Policy
With the latest data showing that violent crime is increasing and property crime remains the highest of any California county, San Francisco leaders emphasized last week that it would continue to be a sanctuary city. Chase DiFeliciantonio, and Molly Burke of SF Gate report that at a rally last week,
“Officials including Mayor Daniel Lurie, City Attorney David Chiu, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, union leaders and the entire Board of Supervisors took turns reiterating their commitment to San Francisco’s sanctuary policy, which restricts the city’s cooperation with federal immigration authorities. The policy is intended to afford people the confidence to interact with city police and other public safety agencies without fear of their immigration status being called into question.”
The rally, called by Service Employees International Union (SEIU) leader Olga Miranda, in response to an attempt by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to enter a city government building with a warrant to arrest an illegal alien, either charged with a crime or with one or more prior criminal convictions.
Illegal Deported 10 Times Before Killing Girlfriend
California’s sanctuary policy and Los Angeles County’s former soft-on-crime DA George Gascón enabled an illegal alien from El Salvador to murder his girlfriend in front of her 3-year-old daughter last month. Norma Riveiro and Lorena Bourdevaire-Casillas of NBC News San Diego report that police identified Herbert Nixon Flores as the person who shot 35-year-old Karen Ruiz in the Pacoima suburb of Los Angeles County on January 8. Flores had committed multiple crimes since entering California illegally in 1990, including drug trafficking, theft, illegal possession of firearms and identify theft. He had been deported 10 times. Flores was arrested last August for severely beating Ruiz, but under Gascón’s policy of not holding criminals charged with assault, he was released days after his arrest. Under California’s SB 54, a 2017 law called the California Trust Act, local police are forbidden from holding arrestees like Flores for deportation by federal authorities.
Alabama Murderer Faces February 6 Execution
A Michigan man convicted of the 1991 rape, robbery and murder of 40-year-old Pauline Brown in her Birmingham, Alabama apartment is challenging his death sentence set for February 6. The facts presented at trial and multiple appeals indicate that on the night of November 27, 1991, Demetrius Frazier noticed a light on in Brown’s ground-floor apartment. He entered the apartment through a window and found $10 in cash. He then went to another room, where he found Brown asleep. After waking her up, Frazier demanded more money, and she gave him $80. Frazier then threatened her with a gun, and raped her as she begged for her life. When he was finished he shot her in the back of the head. After confirming that nobody heard the shot, Frazier made sure that Brown was dead, searched the apartment for more money, ate two bananas and left, throwing his gun in a ditch. Ralph Chapoco of the Alabama Reflector reports that attorneys for Frazier are petitioning in Federal District Court for a stay of execution claiming that the state’s use of nitrogen gas will cause him to suffer, in violation of the Eighth Amendment bar against cruel and unusual punishment. If the execution is carried out, Frazier will be the fourth condemned murderer dispatched by nitrogen gas. UPDATE: Frazier’s execution was carried out without incident on the morning of February 6.
Preemptive Pardons and Hypocrisy
“The idea of a kind of prospective pardon, this sort of permanent federal Get Out of Jail Free card, That seems to be what we’re talking about in the case of this, right?” said MSNBC Chris Hayes. “I wouldn’t ask for a pardon. I don’t think I deserve one because I don’t think I’ve done anything criminal. But like, where does that come from? That concept you can just kind of wave your magic pardon wand?” he continued.
“Have you ever heard of somebody getting a preemptive pardon who was innocent of all crime, who’s just an innocent person? Have you ever heard of that, just somebody getting a blanket pardon and they’re an innocent person?” MSNBC’s Joy Reid asked Congressman Adam Schiff. “No,” Schiff responded. “It’s the president’s own family. It’s people that have been covering up for the President, in addition to his own family.”
In another interview CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Schiff, “Would you see that. . . as essentially an admission of guilt?” “I certainly would view it that way,” Schiff told Blitzer. “I think millions of Americans would view it that way. If there was no belief in criminality, why would he think a pardon was necessary?” As reported by Joseph A. Wulfsohn and Kristine Parks of Fox News, these statements were made in 2020 after a December 1, New York Times headline “Trump Has Discussed With Advisers Pardons for His 3 Eldest Children and Giuliani.” The rumor turned out to be false.
Garland Reduces Sentence For Gang Murderer
The Biden justice department is allowing the illegal alien leader of the brutal MS-13 gang to plead guilty to involvement in the murders of seven people in exchange for a reduced sentence. Michael Ruiz of Fox News reports that Attorney General Merrick Garland has agreed to a plea deal for Jairo Saenz, a 28-year-old illegal from El Salvador, which sentences him to 40 to 60 years in prison, instead of the death penalty or life-without-the-possibility-of-parole (LWOP). Suffolk County police introduced evidence that Ruiz and his brother Alexi murdered two Brentwood High School girls; Kayla Cuevas, 16, and her friend Nisa Mickens, 15, in 2016 after one of the girls criticized the gang on facebook. The girls were hacked to death with machetes. “It’s disgraceful. It’s an insult to the families,” Suffolk County Police Benevolent Association President Lou Civello said of the plea deal Wednesday. “When you look at how barbaric these crimes were, murdering young kids with machetes, baseball bats, this is a clear case for the death penalty.” If Saenz serves the lower end of his sentencing range, that amounts to less than six years per murder, Civello told Fox News Digital.
San Francisco Proves Tough on Crime Works
Three years ago San Francisco voters fired their soft-on-crime District Attorney and elected a replacement who promised to start prosecuting criminals, and particularly the so-called “low level criminals” like thieves, drug dealers and burglars. The new DA, Brooke Jenkins, partnered with the police to go after criminals breaking into cars, smash-and-grab retail thieves and even protesters blocking streets and bridges. The result, crime has dropped dramatically as reported by Danielle Echeverria of the San Francisco Chronicle. The latest numbers from SFPD show significant declines in both property crime and violent crime outpacing the nation as a whole. Violent crime fell by 14% between 2023 and 2024. Property crime fell by 31% over the same period. This is happening in what used to be the most tolerant city in the U.S.
NY Governor’s “Congestion Toll” Endangers Commuters
As of last Sunday, commuters driving into New York City will have to pay a daily $9 congestion toll. The toll signed into law last November by Governor Kathy Hochul was enacted to reduce traffic in Manhattan and raise $15 billion for mass transit according to of the New York Post. The toll was supposed to take effect last June, but Hochul postponed it to protect fellow New York democrats running for Congressional seats from backlash by angry commuters. Commuters who have to go into the city to work are being forced to abandon their cars and ride on a public transit system which is demonstrably unsafe. Continue reading . . .
Biden Commutes the Death Sentences of 37 Murderers
Outgoing President Joe Biden is commuting the death sentences of 37 of America’s worst murderers, a move praised by death penalty opponents. Each will now serve life in prison without the possibility of parole (LWOP). Elizabeth Pritchett of Fox News reports that several of the murderers were gang members who killed rivals involved in drug trafficking. For example:
Drug lord Kaboni Savage murdered or directed someone else to murder 12 people during a 16-year period–including an arson that killed six members of a federal informant’s family.
Two Days After Proposition 36 Became Law, Thieves Are Going to Jail
In California’s capital city, police have pounced on thieves and druggies two days after the new tough-on-crime initiative, Proposition 36, became law. Michelle Bandur of KCRA News reports that on Thursday Sacramento deputies arrested 31 suspected thieves for shoplifting with three facing felonies under the new law.
Outside a retail store, deputies arrest a woman they say changed clothes inside the store. She told the deputies she has been arrested before and they explained the new law and how she will be going to jail, instead of getting a ticket. The law also says a previous misdemeanor in another state counts toward the two previous charges.
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