Category: Sentencing

Ballot Measure Lets Parolees Vote

by · Jul 8, 2020 2:52 pm

In the last week of June the California Legislature passed a Constitutional Amendment that, if adopted by the voters this November, would give criminals on parole the right to vote in state and federal elections.  Evan Symon of the California Globe reports that ACA 8 passed 28-9 in the Democrat-controlled state senate and is now on its way to the November 3rd ballot.  Spearheading passage of the bill was Northern California Assemblyman Kevin McCarthy, who noted that because a disproportionate number of African Americans are on parole the bar against parolees voting unfairly excludes them.

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Because Black Lives Matter, Save Them Instead of Sacrificing Them to Blind Ideology

by · Jun 28, 2020 2:31 pm

As I noted in an earlier post, no normal person disagrees with the proposition that black lives matter.  So the obvious question is:  What can we do to preserve and enhance them?

This is not a hard question, because we’ve been preserving and enhancing black lives for an entire generation.  We didn’t do it by tearing down statues, defacing monuments, chucking bricks through store windows or setting up lawless “autonomous zones.”  Liberals know perfectly well how we did it, but don’t want to admit it because that would confound The Received Woke Wisdom.  Jason Riley of the WSJ spills the beans, however.

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Open Season on the Most Vulnerable in NYC

by · Jun 23, 2020 3:18 pm

As reported in earlier posts, the no bail law in New York City, the widespread attacks on police officers and the mayor’s soft approach to rioters during the first two weeks of June has resulted in a spike in shootings, murders, burglaries and assaults.   Last week a habitual criminal with over 100 arrests for prior crimes was caught on video punching a 93-year-old woman, who hit her head on a fire hydrant as she fell.  The attack was unprovoked.

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Revisiting the Roger Stone Sentencing

by · Jun 23, 2020 2:53 pm

Tomorrow, one of the line prosecutors in the Roger Stone case will testify before the House Judiciary Committee.  A news story relating part of his prepared testimony tells us that the attorney, Aaron Zelinsky, plans to say, among other things:

What I saw was the Department of Justice exerting significant pressure on the line prosecutors in the case to obscure the correct Sentencing Guidelines calculation to which Roger Stone was subject – and to water down and in some cases outright distort the events that transpired in his trial and the criminal conduct that gave rise to his conviction….What I heard – repeatedly – was that Roger Stone was being treated differently from any other defendant because of his relationship to the President. I was told that the Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Timothy Shea, was receiving heavy pressure from the highest levels of the Department of Justice to cut Stone a break, and that the U.S. Attorney’s sentencing instructions to us were based on political considerations.

Zelinsky’s account seems both odd and oddly incomplete.

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How Covid Inmate Releases Contributes to NYC’s Crime Spike

by · Jun 22, 2020 11:16 am

Recent reports from the New York City Police department tell of a sudden, staggering increase in violence and crime. The city has seen high numbers of shootings and injuries, as officials warn these incidents point to a “storm on the horizon” that warrants immediate change.

In the last week alone (June 15-June 22), an estimated 73 people were wounded in 53 shootings across the city, as compared to only 14 injured individuals and 12 incidents in the same period last year.  On Saturday alone, two dozen shootings occurred.

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USSG Requests Hold on Federal JLWOP Case

by · Mar 11, 2020 9:13 am

United States v. Briones, No. 19-720, is a federal case regarding what finding needs to be made before an under-18 murderer can be sentenced to life without parole. On Monday, the Supreme Court took up a Mississippi case raising the same question, as noted in this post. Yesterday the Solicitor General filed a letter with the Court asking for its case to be put on hold pending a decision in the Mississippi case.

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SCOTUS Orders Monday

by · Mar 2, 2020 9:01 am

Today the U.S. Supreme Court released an orders list from last Friday’s conference. The Court took a new case on Armed Career Criminal Act sentencing to replace the deceased James Walker’s case. It relisted for this coming Friday cases to replace the withdrawn D.C. Sniper, Jr. case on juvenile life-without-parole sentencing. Finally, the Court passed, for now, on the question of whether bump stocks can be banned administratively without amending the relevant statute.

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Additional Malvo Replacement Candidates

by · Feb 27, 2020 3:36 pm

Yesterday, I noted the case of Newton v. Indiana, No. 17-1511 as a possible replacement for the recently-dropped Malvo case on sentencing juvenile murderers to life-without-parole. I have since been made aware of four other cases also listed for tomorrow’s U.S. Supreme Court conference. Update: See end of post.

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