Crime & Consequences

Category: Prisons

Supreme Court Takes Up Law Enforcement Related Cases

by · Oct 4, 2024 10:19 am

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a short orders list from Monday’s pre-term conference, adding 15 cases to the docket for the October 2024 Term. A much longer list of cases turned down will likely be issued next Monday at the formal opening of the term.

Continuing the high court’s frustrating lack of interest in criminal law, the list includes only one actual criminal case, Thompson v. United States, No. 23-1095. This case raises the question of whether the federal law against false statements to financial institutions and federal agencies extends to misleading half truths. An aspect of the case that increases its media profile is the fact that defendant Patrick Daley Thompson is the grandson of Chicago’s notoriously corrupt mayor Richard J. Daley and the nephew of later mayor Richard M. Daley.

There are also several law-enforcement-related civil cases, a category that gets more interest from SCOTUS:

Gutierrez v. Saenz, No. 23-7809, is a federal civil rights suit regarding a Texas capital case. It presents somewhat complex issues regarding DNA testing, standing, and distinctions between innocence claims and sentencing claims.

Barnes v. Felix, No. 23-1239, is a police use-of-force case involving the “moment of threat doctrine.” As described by the petitioner (i.e., the plaintiff suing the police officer), this approach “evaluates the reasonableness of an officer’s actions only in the narrow window when the officer’s safety was threatened, and not based on events that precede the moment of the threat.” In the Fifth Circuit, Judge Higginbotham wrote a concurrence to his own majority opinion asking the Supreme Court to resolve the circuit split on this issue. Continue reading . . .

Hit Man Sentenced to No Punishment At All for Murder

by · Sep 6, 2024 1:13 pm

AP reports:

A former Mafia hitman already serving life in prison was sentenced to 25 years Friday in the 2018 fatal prison bludgeoning of notorious Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger.

Prosecutors said Fotios “Freddy” Geas used a lock attached to a belt to repeatedly hit the 89-year-old Bulger in the head hours after he arrived at the troubled U.S. Penitentiary, Hazelton, from another lockup in Florida in October 2018. Defense attorneys disputed that characterization Friday, saying Geas hit Bulger with his fist.

The Justice Department said last year that it would not seek the death penalty against Geas in Bulger’s killing.

Congress abolished parole in the federal system many years ago, so life in federal prison is life without parole. Gaes’s new sentence is nominally consecutive to his life sentence, meaning it will begin the day he dies. Hence, he has been sentenced to no punishment at all. The government even plea-bargained a clearly premeditated murder down to manslaughter. Continue reading . . .

Released Robber Robs Again the Next Day

by · Jun 18, 2024 10:53 am

On May 7, convicted robber Eric Gray was released from San Quentin. The next day he robbed a bank in Orange County, California and held three employees prisoner. He presently faces charges in federal court. The Orange County Register has this article.

The federal complaint states that “Gray has a lengthy criminal history that includes, but is not limited to, grand theft auto, robbery, sexual battery, and narcotics-related offenses. Continue reading . . .

The Persistent Myths of Mass Incarceration

by · Jan 18, 2024 1:41 pm

Professor Paul Robinson and a fellow colleague from Penn have posted an in-depth article that is worth a read.  The abstract, sans the roadmap:

Few claims have won such widespread acceptance in legal academia as the “mass incarceration” narrative: the idea that the rise in America’s prison population over the last half century was fueled largely by the needless and unjust imprisonment of millions of criminal offenders due to punitive changes in sentencing. To many academics and activists, the question is not how accurate the mass incarceration narrative is, but how mass incarceration can be ended. This Article argues the “mass incarceration” narrative is based on a series of myths and, as a result, many proposed reforms are based on a misunderstanding of America’s past and present carceral practices. A more accurate understanding is needed to produce effective reform.

The central myth of the mass incarceration narrative is that exceptional and unjustified punitiveness largely explains America’s significant increase in prison population since the 1960s. This explanation overlooks the numerous non-sentencing factors that increased incarceration: a near doubling in U.S. population, higher crime rates, increased justice system effectiveness, deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, new and tightened criminalizations, worsening criminal offender histories, and more. While this Article makes no attempt at statistical precision, these non-sentencing factors can easily explain most of America’s elevated incarceration compared to the 1960s—a fact in direct conflict with the mass incarceration narrative. Additionally, while some punishments have increased in severity since the 1960s, most of these increases are likely to be seen as moving sentences closer to what the community – and many incarceration reformers – would believe is appropriate and just, as in cases of sexual assault, domestic violence, stalking, human trafficking, firearm offenses, and child pornography, among others. Continue reading . . .

CA Lawsuit to Stop Early Inmate Releases Moves Forward

by · Sep 7, 2023 1:13 pm

The California Globe published CJLF’s press release on last Friday’s favorable ruling in the lawsuit to end the state’s early releases of prison inmates.

On Friday, September 1, a Sacramento judge rejected California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s attempt to throw out a lawsuit challenging the Newsom Administration’s scheme to grant early release to tens of thousands of prison inmates. The suit, brought by the Sacramento-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation (CJLF) on behalf of crime victims and their families, argues that administrative regulations authorizing the inmate releases, adopted in 2021 by the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), violate numerous state laws and ballot measures that specify when and how a prison inmate qualifies for credits to gain early release and when those credits may be used to advance a minimum eligible parole date. The Foundation is seeking a writ of mandate to halt the releases.

Continue reading . . .

Defining “Violent”

by · Aug 31, 2023 3:44 pm

One would not think that defining “violent crime” is all that difficult. Yet in both federal law and California law, there are definitions of “violent” that are excessively narrow, excluding crimes that everyone with sense would consider violent. Dan Walters has this column at CalMatters, titled “California law treats some violent crimes as nonviolent, letting offenders off the hook.” He has an extended quote from this column by Emily Hoeven at the SF Chronicle (behind a paywall).

From Walters’ column:

Hoeven noted that earlier this year, the Assembly’s (perhaps misnamed) Public Safety Committee rejected a Republican bill to classify domestic violence as a violent crime, thereby making it easier to keep offenders behind bars.

This outrageous situation results from a 2016 ballot measure, sponsored principally by then-Gov. Jerry Brown and passed by voters, that purported to give those who commit nonviolent crimes chances to earn their way out of prison.

However, it was deceptive. Proposition 57’s indirect definition of a nonviolent crime was that it did not appear on a specific Penal Code list of 23 violent crimes.

That list only referred to particularly heinous crimes and omitted many offenses that ordinary folks would consider violent, including some forms of rape and domestic violence. The result is that those who commit some unspeakable crimes, including battering one’s spouse, are given kid gloves treatment in the penal system.

How did the definition get so screwed up? The problem in California is, in substantial part, the result of lazy drafting. (The federal problem is a topic for another post.) Continue reading . . .

The Pillowcase Rapist and the Folly of Current Cal. Policies

by · Jun 28, 2023 3:01 pm

A post earlier today described the case of the “pillowcase rapist” and his arrest for a new violent crime at the age of 71, following release after only half his sentence. Further research has determined that this appalling result comes from an old, misguided law that has since been fixed, not the current misguided policy. Even so, the case illustrates the folly of the current policies. It is yet one more example of the maxim that those who cannot remember history are condemned to repeat it. Continue reading . . .

Calls for Audit of Cal. Prison Credits

by · Jun 23, 2023 3:19 pm

California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has been handing out sentence reduction credits like Halloween candy. However, Julie Watts of Sacramento’s CBS-13 reports:

For more than a year, CBS Sacramento has been working to answer the question: “Are prison reform laws in California leading to more rehabilitation and fewer felons reoffending after release?” Unfortunately, we still don’t know because, as we’ve learned, the state isn’t analyzing, or won’t release, crucial data.

In an interview with CBS-13, the chairman of the California Assembly Public Safety Committee said he would submit a state audit request to get the data that CDCR won’t even give the Legislature, and he will include the station’s unanswered questions.

The Placer County District Attorney is joining the call for an audit, the Sierra Sun reports: Continue reading . . .

California leniency kills 5 young women in Minnesota

by · Jun 21, 2023 11:18 am

Present California policy shaves large amounts of time off prison sentences, even for violent crimes. We are fighting these policies because of the danger they present to law-abiding Californians. But crime knows no boundaries, and these policies also endanger people in other states, as was tragically demonstrated last Friday according to this report in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune by Paul Walsh

Derrick John Thompson, 27, of Brooklyn Park, remains jailed Tuesday with charges pending on suspicion of murder in connection with the crash late Friday after he sped off an Interstate 35W exit ramp in his full-size Cadillac Escalade SUV and struck a car going through an E. Lake Street intersection….

Killed in the crash were Sabiriin Ali, 17, of Bloomington; Sahra Gesaade, 20, of Brooklyn Center; Salma Abdikadir, 20, of St. Louis Park; Sagal Hersi, 19, of Minneapolis; and Siham Adam, 19, of Minneapolis.

The crash occurred three years after Thompson was sentenced to eight years in California prison, the story reports. How is that possible? Continue reading . . .