Category: Prosecutors

Are State Courts Required to Accept a Confession of Error in a Capital Case?

by · Mar 24, 2025 9:42 am

Two years ago, in Escobar v. Texas, No. 21-1601, the Supreme Court issued a “grant, vacate, and remand” order directing the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to reconsider its denial of relief to a death-sentenced murderer ” in light of the confession of error by Texas,” i.e., by the Travis County District Attorney. Are state courts required to accept such confessions of error, however dubious?

In California, “progressive” district attorneys have made wholesale confessions of error in capital cases just because they disagree with the decision of the people to have capital punishment. Courts have mostly rolled over and gone along with these “take a dive” actions, although last week a Santa Clara County judge did draw the line at resentencing Richard Farley for seven murders. See NBC story here. Continue reading . . .

Kathy Cady

by · Jan 11, 2025 2:00 pm

The Metropolitan News-Enterprise has this profile of Kathleen Cady by Sherri Okamoto. Kathy is a tireless advocate for victims of crime. See prior posts here and here. Until recently she has been co-counsel with us in Jessica M. v. CDCR, a case mentioned in the article.

Newly elected Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman has brought her back to the DA’s office as Director of the Victim Witness Division, an excellent choice. We wish her well in her new position.

More on Trump v. New York

by · Jan 10, 2025 11:00 am

Following up on posts here and here, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a stay of President-elect Trump’s sentencing in New York 5-4. The order reads:

The application for stay presented to Justice Sotomayor and by her referred to the Court is denied for, inter alia, the following reasons. First, the alleged evidentiary violations at President-Elect Trump’s state-court trial can be addressed in the ordinary course on appeal. Second, the burden that sentencing will impose on the President-Elect’s responsibilities is relatively insubstantial in light of the trial court’s stated intent to impose a sentence of “unconditional discharge” after a brief virtual hearing.

Justice Thomas, Justice Alito, Justice Gorsuch, and Justice Kavanaugh would grant the application.

The hearing then went forward. The WSJ has this story. Continue reading . . .

Progress and Problems in Philadelphia

by · Dec 27, 2024 11:28 am

In 2023, Cherelle Parker won the Democratic primary for mayor of Philadelphia, running as more in favor of law enforcement than the other candidates. As CBS reported in May 2023, she promised to crack down on drug sales in the infested Kensington neighborhood, supported hiring more police officers, and opposed the absurd “defund the police” movement. The general election was a foregone conclusion in this heavily Democratic city.

As Mayor Parker closes out her first year, how much progress has there been? Some, to her credit, but not enough. The Philadelphia Inquirer had this story last Sunday.

Since January, the Parker administration has put 75 new police officers on the street, quashed homeless encampments, and increased narcotics arrests as it tries to respond to Kensington as if an open-air drug market had opened in Rittenhouse Square.

But the crackdown hasn’t been as swift or forceful as many residents had hoped.

An Inquirer analysis of police department data found that Kensington saw a steep reduction in gun violence, in keeping with a historic decline citywide. But the quality-of-life crimes and nuisance issues that plague the neighborhood have not improved, and have instead followed the familiar pattern of policing in Kensington: Old problems just move to new places.

What is holding up progress? Limited resources, as always, are a factor. Police can only make so many arrests when the jails are full. But curiously the Inquirer doesn’t even mention the District Attorney. The Wall Street Journal addresses that aspect in this editorial. Continue reading . . .

DA Recused in Trump Georgia Case

by · Dec 20, 2024 4:58 am

Yesterday, a divided panel of the Georgia Court of Appeals removed Atlanta DA Fani Willis from the case against President-elect Trump and others, reversing a trial court decision not to do so. The opinion is here.

Regardless of what one thinks of the merits of the underlying case, this decision strikes me as correct. DA Willis’s shenanigans severely undercut public confidence in this prosecution. “Odor of mendacity,” as the trial court described it, is an understatement. DAs have been recused for far less. The case in New York, on the other hand, is even worse, one of the clearest cases of prosecutor bias I have ever seen. Continue reading . . .

New Day in LA, Part 2

by · Dec 4, 2024 1:39 pm

Following up on this post, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office has this news release on the swearing in of Nathan Hochman.

DA Hochman announced a series of immediate policy changes that he said would promote public safety by holding the most dangerous offenders accountable. He said he would inform prosecutors that he is eliminating former DA Gascón’s special directives that prohibited or strictly limited the filing of certain charges and sentencing enhancements.

Prosecutors in the District Attorney’s Office will once again have the discretion to file charges based on the unique circumstances of each case, the crime committed, the defendant’s background, the impact on the victim and the law, he said.

“District attorneys must have only two things as their North Stars: the facts and the law,” DA Hochman said. “I reject blanket extreme policies on both sides of the pendulum swing – decarceration policies that predetermine that certain crimes and certain criminals are not going to be prosecuted and mass incarceration policies that also are not anchored in the facts and the law.”

Continue reading . . .

Santa Clara County Judges Line Up with DA on Death Sentence Reversal

by · Nov 21, 2024 10:58 am

Ron Matthias and Dolores Carr have this op-ed in the San Jose Spotlight with the above title.

Since August, local judges have been nullifying murderers’ death sentences one by one. But there’s a problem: The law the judges have been relying on to reduce those death sentences doesn’t apply to death sentences. And that’s not the only problem.

It’s easy for judges to make mistakes when they’re hearing only one side of the story, and that’s what happened here. The reductions are coming at the insistence of Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen, who has recently discovered he doesn’t like capital punishment. Unsurprisingly, the murderers feel the same way.

California law has a serious problem with statutes that effectively enable prosecutors to nullify existing sentences when they simply disagree with the law under which the perpetrator was properly sentenced years before. An initiative is sorely needed to fix this and other related problems, building on the success of the effort to enact Proposition 36 this year.

Continue reading . . .

A New Day Dawns in LA

by · Nov 18, 2024 9:02 am

LA DA-elect Nathan Hochman will be sworn in on December 2. Fox 11 has this story.

On day one in office, Hochman said he would eliminate Gascón’s extreme pro-criminal policies. Hochman said Gascón’s policies have led to a rise in crime throughout the county.

As DA, Hochman said his goal is to empower law enforcement, prosecutors, victim groups, store owners, and residents in LA County.

“They’re fed up with their cars being broken into, their homes being robbed. If they’re store owners with their stores being ransacked. And they want to bring back accountability. They wanted proportional, they wanted smart, they wanted common sense. They want the law enforcement officers to do a good job, but they want them to do that job,” Hochman said. Continue reading . . .

Federalist Society Convention

by · Nov 13, 2024 9:46 am

The Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention begins tomorrow. The panel discussions will be live streamed. The agenda is here. YouTube links are here.

The Criminal Law Practice Group’s panel is “Evaluating the Progressive Prosecutor Experiment.” It is tomorrow (Thursday) afternoon at 3:30-5:00 EST / 12:30-2:00 PST. California voters provided some grist for that mill last Tuesday, as noted in this post.

The speakers are Zack Smith from the Heritage Foundation, DA Ray Tierney from Suffolk County, NY (eastern Long Island), DA John Creuzot from Dallas, TX, and Prof. Carissa Hessick from UNC Law. Eleventh Circuit Judge Kevin Newsom moderates. Continue reading . . .

Prosecutors Taking a Dive

by · Oct 28, 2024 9:51 am

The Anglo-American system of justice has always depended on having adversarial advocates to present both sides of any controversy. But what happens when a prosecutor “takes a dive” and joins a convicted defendant’s efforts to overturn his conviction? U. Utah Law Professor Paul Cassell has this op-ed in The Hill on that subject. He focuses particularly on the Glossip case from Oklahoma presently before the Supreme Court, in which he represents the victim’s family. See this post.

This is not to say that confessions of error are always inappropriate. Sometimes they are the right thing to do. The problem arises when political or ideological considerations enter into the picture. There is a strong basis for suspicion that is happening in the Glossip case, where the AG’s investigator never even asked the trial prosecutor about the meaning of cryptic notes that lie at the heart of the present case. In other cases, there is no doubt at all. Continue reading . . .