Category: News Scan

CA Prop. 47 Enabled the New El Chapo:  The Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) has flooded Los Angeles streets with drugs since passage of California’s Proposition 47.  Bill Melugin of Fox News reports that the CJNG  “is probably the most prolific cartel in Mexico,” according to the Los Angeles head of the Drug Enforcement Administration. The cartel is responsible for 1/3 of all the drugs entering the US and has an extensive network in Los Angeles, smuggling and distributing hundreds of pounds of methamphetamine every month–much of it to the city’s growing homeless population. Federal law enforcement considers the cartel’s leader, El Mencho, to be worse than the notorious El Chapo. The CEO of the Union Rescue Mission in downtown LA, Reverend Andy Bales, who lost his leg from infection after stepping in human feces, believes that the city’s drug/homeless crisis needs a National Guard response. A DEA official said that Proposition 47, which decriminalized drug use, played right into the cartel’s hands, by providing addicts with no reason to stop using drugs and no motivation to go to treatment. El Mencho was an illegal in California 30 years ago. He was deported back to Mexico after he was arrested on drug charges in San Francisco and Sacramento.

Georgia Executes Double Murderer:  A Georgia man convicted in 1999 of the brutal murder of his ex-wife and her boyfriend was put to death Wednesday by lethal injection.  Joshua Sharpe and Bill Rankin of the Atlanta Journal Constitution report that in 1967 Donnie Lance shot and killed his ex-wife’s boyfriend Dwight “Butch” Wood Jr. with a shotgun, then used the butt of the gun to beat Joy Lance to death.  The woman’s face was so badly beaten it was unrecognizable.  The Washington Post reports that jurors learned at trial that Lance had terrorized his ex-wife for months with beatings, strangulation, electric shocks, threats of death by handgun and chain-saw, and more. Witnesses testified that they had heard Lance threaten to kill his wife if she divorced him or started a romantic relationship with Wood.

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Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, now a candidate for President, is apologizing for one of the most successful policies he supported when he was serving as Mayor.  It was proactive policing that drove violent crime down in New York between 2002 and 2013, while Bloomberg was Mayor.  In her piece in The Hill, Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald notes that the most valuable tool police used during that period was “stop, question and frisk.”  Today as a candidate for President, Bloomberg is apologizing for allowing police to use that tool. “I got something important really wrong,” he said at the Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn. “I didn’t understand that back then, the full impact that stops were having on the black and Latino communities.”

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In 2018 the California Legislature passed and Governor Brown signed SB 1391 into law.  That bill removed the authority of District Attorneys and Superior Court Judges to try violent juvenile offenders under the age of 16  in adult court.  While trying a defendant of that age was already quite rare, in some cases where the murder was particularly horrific and clearly planned, a trial in adult court would allow the killer to be sentenced to a long incarceration or even a life term.  Murderers tried in juvenile court can only be held until age 25.  An example of why this is important is the case of Daniel Marsh.  In 2013 the 15 year-old stabbed to death and mutilated the bodies of an elderly couple in the small college town of Davis.  Marsh admitted to he had butchered the couple because he wanted to know what it felt like.

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ICE Subpoenas NY for Info on Criminal Aliens:  Following the arrest of an illegal alien for the rape and murder of  92-year-old Maria Fuertes earlier this month, Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has subpoenaed New York for information about the suspect and other criminal aliens which have been released into the city under its sanctuary city policy.   Adam Shaw of Fox News reports that when Reeaz Khan, an illegal alien from Guyana, was released from jail pending trial on assault and weapons charges New York’s sanctuary city policy prevented local law enforcement from notifying ICE so that they could hold him for deportation.

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SF DA Abolishes Cash Bail:  Not to be outdone by New York City, which abolished cash bail on January 1, the new ultra-progressive District Attorney of San Francisco announced yesterday that his office would no longer ask for bail.  Charles Fain Lehman of the Washington Free Beacon reports that, instead of requesting bail, DA Chesa Boudin will submit a risk assessment to the judge on the likelihood that the accused will show up for trial and whether he would present a risk to the public if released.

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A bill that cleared a key Virginia Senate committee last week, would allow the early release of serious criminals including rapists and murderers at age 50.  Hans Bader of Liberty Unyielding reports that SB 624 creates a new category called “geriatric release” to allow prison inmates who are 50 years old to seek release if they have been incarcerated for 20 years.  Inmates who are 55 could be released after serving 15 years.  Only inmates convicted of Class 1 felonies, such as killing a police officer or a child, can be excluded.

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DC Circuit Hears Federal Death Penalty Challenge:  A three judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit held oral argument last Wednesday on a lawsuit by condemned federal murderers seeking to block their executions.  John Kruzel of The Hill reports that last fall, after U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr announced his intention to resume federal executions and scheduled four murderers to receive lethal injections, the four won a district court ruling temporarily suspending their executions.

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Court Limits Felon Voter Law:  In an advisory opinion released Thursday, the Florida Supreme Court confirmed that Amendment 4, passed by voters in 2018, limits which felons will be allowed to vote in state and federal elections.  News4 and the Associated Press report that the initiative grants some 1.4 million ex-felons in Florida who have completed “all terms of sentence” with voting rights.  The court held that the “all terms” requirement includes fees and court-ordered restitution, which must be paid before the ex-felon is authorized to vote.  The ACLU and the Marshall Project opposed the requirement because it discriminates against poor ex-felons who do not have the money to comply.   This requirement could significantly reduce the number ex-felon voters in the next election.

An ABC Los Angeles story on crime in Southern California and a report by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) have found that overall crime is down in the Golden State, although there were some minor increases in some violent crimes, particularly, as ABC notes, among the homeless in Los Angeles.

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