Category: General

Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed into law a bill that allows the use of nitrogen gas to execute condemned murderers.  Andres DeMillo of the Associated Press reports that Arkansas joins Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Oklahoma which have approved the use of the gas for executions. Death penalty opponents and most of the mainstream media are criticizing its use as unconstitutional, although it has been approved by multiple courts. Opponents have characterized its use as death by suffocation.

“The decision to use nitrogen suffocation as an execution method is a dangerous and regressive move that puts Arkansas out of step with national trends away from the death penalty,” Megan Bailey, a spokesperson for the American Civil Liberties of Arkansas, said in a statement.

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On March 18 the state of Louisiana executed rapist/murderer Jessie Hoffman. Anna Young of the New York Post reports that  Hoffman was executed by nitrogen gas. He was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1996 kidnapping, rape and execution-style murder of 28-year-old Molly Elliott. Hoffman’s lawyers argued that using nitrogen gas for executions is cruel and unusual punishment, violating the Eighth Amendment. They also claimed that using the gas interfered with his Buddhist meditative breathing before he died. Their last minute appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was rejected by a 5-4 vote with Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Neil Gorsuch dissenting. Alabama used the widely available colorless and odorless gas to put down four murderers without incident last year. Pilar Aries of Fox News reports that Arizona executed murderer Aaron Gunches by lethal injection Wednesday. Gunches was sentenced to death for the murder of his girlfriend’s ex-husband outside of Mesa Arizona in 2002. He refused legal efforts to stop his execution.

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On November 5, 2024, California voters overwhelmingly adopted Proposition 36, the Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act, a modest reform to restore consequences for thieves and drug dealers and require treatment for addicts.  It’s adoption was a complete rebuke of Proposition 47, the so-called Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act adopted in 2014 with major funding from the ACLU and socialist billionaire George Soros. That measure decriminalized theft and drug crimes. It’s important to note that Proposition 47 was supported by then Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom and the Democrat supermajority in the state legislature. Ten years later, these same politicians opposed Proposition 36, although millions of democrats voted for it.

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The head of the New York City Police Department spoke out Wednesday demanding that state politicians repeal the 2020 bail reform laws that have turned the criminal justice system into a “revolving door.” Michael Dorgan of Fox News reports that NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch told attendees to an annual breakfast meeting that “your cops are out there doing their jobs, and in 2024, they made the most felony arrests in 26 years. But before they can even finish that paperwork, they are immediately returned to the neighborhood and the people that they just victimized.”

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The movement to defund the police is not new. While it gained traction in 2020 following the death of George Floyd, it has been the mantra of civil rights groups and race-hustlers for decades, and is rooted in the fiction that the entire criminal justice system is systemically racist.  One of the alternatives to police pushed by progressive academia has been to replace police officers with “violence interrupters.” For the past several years cities controlled by democrats including Chicago, Minneapolis and Los Angeles have diverted funds from police departments to non-government organizations (NGOs) which employ ex-gang members to interact with local street gangs, supposedly to counsel for non-violence and “restorative justice” programs. Restorative Justice is an alternative to punishment which involves putting crime victims and the criminals who attacked them together with counselors to help them heal emotionally and forgive each other. In places that have diverted funds to these programs law enforcement decreased while crime increased.

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An Austin, Texas man charged with the October 2024 murder of a 20-year-old with a gunshot to the back of the head, was released on $200 bail last Saturday. Brian Slupski of the Lawyer Herald reports that a judge reduced Stephon Martin Morson’s bail from $800,000 to $200 based on a Texas law that allows reduced bail if the District Attorney fails to bring an indictment against a violent offender withing 90 days of arrest.  Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza has not yet indicted Morson, who was arrested for the murder on November 6, 2024.  Garza is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America whose campaign was largely financed by socialist/progressive billionaire George Soros.  Failing to indict an accused murderer and thereby allowing his release is a profound dereliction of a district attorney’s obligation to enforce the law.  Stepheny Price of Fox News reports, elected leaders outside of Austin are outraged.

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Two murderers, both who killed multiple victims, were put to death Thursday.

Michael Dorgan of Fox News reports that Richard Tabler mouthed the words “I’m sorry” to his victims’ relatives just before he was executed by lethal injection. Tabler was convicted and sentenced to death for the 2004 Thanksgiving Day murders of two men in Killeen, Texas. He lured the co-owner of a club (where he once worked) and the co-owner’s friend to a remote area on the pretense of buying stolen stereo equipment. Both were shot to death. Two days later, Tabler killed two teenaged girls (an 18-year-old and a 16-year-old) who worked at the club because he thought they would tell police that he murdered the two men. He admitted to killing the two teen girls to police after his arrest. While his attorneys argued that Tabler was mentally incompetent for execution, he had repeatedly asked the court to stop the appeals. Continue reading . . .

Fourteen years after Governor Jerry Brown signed AB 109, so called “Public Safety Realignment,” into law and began dumping ex-cons and thousands of new felons on county probation departments, LA County is no longer able to handle the volume of serious offenders. Louis Casiano of Fox News reports that the state Probation Chief recently sent an urgent request to the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services asking for an additional 150 police officers to take over supervision of both adult and juvenile offenders sentenced to probation, rather than jail or prison. Adding to the shortage of officers, on January 1 dozens of officers were suspended at the county’s Juvenile Hall due to alleged offenses.

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The Sacramento County District Attorney’s office has filed argument in support of a lawsuit brought by the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation to block the Newsom administration’s illegal early release of violent criminals from prison.

In 2017, Governor Jerry Brown authorized the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to adopt new regulations increasing sentence reduction credits (called “good time” credits) for inmates that it determined had behaved well and participated in rehabilitation programs. The Governor believed that Proposition 57, adopted by voters a year earlier, empowered the CDCR to award these credits without limits in order to shorten the sentences of inmates. In 2021 Governor Gavin Newsom directed CDCR to increase the number of inmates eligible for credits and the number of credits awarded to further expedite early releases.

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The U.S. Attorney General’s memorandum Reviving the Federal Death Penalty and Lifting the Moratorium on Federal Executions, February 5, is available here.