Category: Sentencing

Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón Restricts Ability to Prosecute Dangerous Criminals

by · Apr 1, 2021 1:14 pm

In a Tweet yesterday LA County Sheriff Alex Villanueva stated, “While gang members are busy driving up LA County’s homicide rate, LA DA @GeorgeGascon is now dismantling the Hardcore Gang Unit that works in collaboration with local law enforcement”. An article in the Washington Examiner today by Jake Dima brings to light statements made like the one by Sheriff Villanueva and other prosecutors that oppose the so-called reform policies being enacted by LA County DA Gascón. 

Continue reading . . .

Murderer on Parole Arrested for Attacking Asian Woman

by · Mar 31, 2021 10:04 am

An Asian American woman 65 years old, was beaten in NYC on her way to church on Monday morning (3/29). The suspect, Brandon Elliot, a 38 year-old African American man, was arrested just after midnight.  In an article this morning by Stephanie Pagones of Fox News, “Police sources told Fox News on Wednesday that Elliot has two prior arrests. In 2000, he allegedly robbed his mother in the Bronx, where he stole jewelry and allegedly choked her, according to the New York Post. Just two years later, in April of 2002, he was arrested for murdering her.” 

Continue reading . . .

Time Actually Served in Prison

by · Mar 30, 2021 3:35 pm

“Everybody knows” that the reason that incarceration rates are so high in the United States is that we sentence people to far longer terms than their crimes warrant. As the old saying goes, it’s not what we don’t know that gets us in trouble; it’s what we know for a fact that just isn’t so.

On the left is a reasonable facsimile of Figure 1 from a new Bureau of Justice Statistics Report, Time Served in State Prison, 2018. It shows the median time actually served by state prisoners released in 2018, by their most serious offense. The ones serving long sentences are murderers and rapists, exactly the criminals whom persons of sense believe should be put away for a long time. Continue reading . . .

Following Science or Making It Up?

by · Mar 17, 2021 2:46 pm

The Los Angeles District Attorney Office issued this release touting the “accomplishments” of George Gascón’s first quarter in office. Among them is “a 71 percent reduction in enhancements filed by the office when comparing a three-month span between December 2020 and February 2021 to the same period the prior year.”

Why is that an accomplishment? “Conservative estimates suggest the reduction equates to more than 8,000 years of unnecessary exposure and the three-month cost savings are projected to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.” (Emphasis added.)

How do we know that exposure was “unnecessary”? How do we know there is any net “savings” at all, rather than a net cost, when the full cost of the additional crimes that will be committed in the future are factored in? Continue reading . . .

Addicts for Incarceration

by · Mar 8, 2021 2:37 pm

Deseret News has this op-ed collectively written by The Other Side Academy.

We are a group of former longtime felons and drug addicts. Collectively we have been arrested over 400 times. Between us, we’ve been incarcerated for well over 150 years. And that was the best thing you could have done for us. Continue reading . . .

DA Gascón and What “Studies Show”

by · Mar 3, 2021 11:51 am

Do “studies show” that longer prison sentences increase recidivism?

Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón’s Special Directive 20-08 says:

While initial incarceration prevents crime through incapacitation, studies show that each additional sentence year causes a 4 to 7 percent increase in recidivism that actually outweighs the incapacitation benefit. 1
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1 Mueller-Smith, Michael (2015) “The Criminal and Labor Market Impacts of Incarceration.”, available at https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mgms/wp-content/uploads/sites/283/2015/09/incar.pdf.

Note the plural, “studies show.” Despite the plural, Gascón has never, to my knowledge, cited anything other than this one unpublished manuscript. Continue reading . . .

Should Felons Decide What Sentences Felons Deserve?

by · Feb 25, 2021 2:06 pm

Sentencing Law and Policy has this thought-provoking post urging President Biden to make filling Sentencing Commission slots a priority, and recommending  —  you’ll never guess  —  “diversity.”  But it’s diversity of a notable kind.  The post’s final paragraph tells the story in only slightly scrubbed language:

In his pioneering 1972 book, Criminal Sentences: Law Without Order, Judge Marvin Frankel first advocated for a “Commission on Sentencing” to include “lawyers, judges, penologists, and criminologists, … sociologists, psychologists, business people, artists, and, lastly for emphasis, former or present prison inmates.”  As Judge Frankel explained, having justice-involved persons on a sentencing commission “merely recognizes what took too long to become obvious—that the recipients of penal ‘treatment’ must have relevant things to say about it.”  Judge Frankel’s insights remain ever so timely a half-century later, and the federal system can now follow a recent sound state example: Brandon Flood was appointed Secretary of the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons in 2019, not despite but largely because of his lived experience as an inmate and his numerous encounters with the criminal justice system.  President Biden’s could and should consider going even further by including multiple persons with diverse, direct experiences with U.S. justice systems in his nominations to the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

What to make of the suggestion that the inmates should decide how long other inmates remain in the asylum?

Continue reading . . .

Defining “Occasion”

by · Feb 22, 2021 7:27 am

The federal “three strikes” law provides enhanced penalties for felons who possess firearms after three convictions for violent felonies or serious drug offenses “committed on occasions different from one another.” What exactly is an “occasion”?

Wooden v. United States, No. 20-5279, taken up by the Supreme Court today, is one of the rare cases where a defendant writing his own certiorari petition actually got the Court to take the case up for full briefing and argument. Continue reading . . .

Another Stacked Commission, Another Slanted Report

by · Feb 10, 2021 12:22 pm

Last year, the California Legislature created a committee to study revision of the Penal Code. Unlike, e.g., the U.S. Sentencing Commission, the statute made no effort whatever to achieve balance or bipartisanship. Yesterday, the committee issued its first report. See this article by Don Thompson for AP. Unsurprisingly, the report reflects a 100% pro-perpetrator viewpoint. Every change proposed is to move the law in the direction of reducing the consequences of criminals’ choices to violate the law and, in most cases, to violate the rights of other people. The possibility that some of the changes of the last decade have already gone too far and need to be rolled back does not appear to have even been considered. Continue reading . . .

LA Superior Court Enjoins Many Gascón Policies

by · Feb 8, 2021 11:39 am

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge James Chalfant granted most of the preliminary injunction sought by the Association of Deputy District Attorneys for Los Angeles County (ADDA) against recently elected District Attorney George Gascón. Among other matters, the DA is enjoined from requiring deputies to violate the mandatory charging aspect of California’s Three Strikes Law.

Here is the operative paragraph of the order: Continue reading . . .