Category: Prosecutors

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 . . .

Recall of East Bay DA

by · Oct 25, 2024 4:06 pm

The big news in “progressive” prosecutor elections is in Los Angeles, but northern California also has a race worth watching. The East Bay Times has this editorial endorsing the recall of Alameda County DA Pamela Price. (Alameda Co. is Oakland and a number of other cities on the east side of San Francisco Bay.)

It’s not surprising that Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price has tried to shake things up. That’s what she promised in 2022 when she campaigned as a criminal justice reformer.

But her actions have gone far beyond reform. Price has punished opponents, hired allies with questionable credentials including her own boyfriend, insisted on disturbing leniency for violent criminals, undermined public disclosure laws, demonstrated prosecutorial bias about cases and even, it is now alleged, made racist comments and tried to extort money from a political rival.

The EBT is part of the same media group as the San Jose Mercury-News, which is definitely not a conservative paper.

If the recall succeeds, the county board of supervisors will choose a temporary replacement to serve until the next general election in 2026. Continue reading . . .

Musk Enters the DA Election Wars

by · Sep 13, 2024 12:10 pm

For some years now, George Soros has been spending a chunk of his fortune to buy district attorney seats in many cities by injecting a massive infusion of cash in support of a soft-on-crime candidate, often with deceptive ads. In Los Angeles last time, for example, ads for George Gascón touted him as the Democratic candidate, even though the race was nonpartisan and his opponent was a lifelong Democrat.

The good news is that another billionaire, Elon Musk, is weighing in on the other side, Joe Palazzolo and Dana Mattioli report for the WSJ. The bad news is that his first effort was a flop. Continue reading . . .

Portland Follow-Up

by · May 23, 2024 1:16 pm

Following up on Tuesday’s post on the Multnomah County District Attorney election, the Oregonian has called the race for challenger Nathan Vasquez over the Soros-backed incumbent Mike Schmidt. Vasquez’s margin is 8% on partial returns Wednesday afternoon and projected to be 5% in the final tally. “The Oregonian/OregonLive determined Schmidt has no statistical path to victory.” Continue reading . . .

The Revolution Reaches Portland

by · May 21, 2024 11:21 am

Multnomah County in Oregon, which has not voted for a republican president since 1960, is poised to replace its uber-progressive, Soros funded District Attorney with a former republican law-and-order prosecutor.  A piece by Johnathan Martin in Politico reports that the current DA, Mike Schmidt, was swept into office during the George Floyd riots in 2020 with 77% of the vote.  Schmidt ran on the same criminal justice reform platform as other Soros-bankrolled prosecutors including Chicago’s Kim Foxx, San Francisco’s Chesa Boudin, and Los Angeles DA George Gascon.  The main tenet of that platform is that police, prosecutors and punishment are racist constructs of the white male ruling class and social justice requires that they be abandoned.  UPDATE:  Schmidt was defeated Tuesday by longtime prosecutor Nathan Vasquez with 54% of the vote.

Continue reading . . .

Deja Vu All Over Again

by · Mar 13, 2024 2:22 pm

A March 4 article by By Paul Demko, Jeremy White and Jason Befferman published in POLITICO reports that liberal Democrat politicians in some of the nation’s most progressive cities are abandoning the soft-on-crime policies that they vigorously supported a few years ago. Back in 2020, as the George Floyd riots were tearing up these same cities, politicians running New York, Washington DC, Chicago, Baltimore, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles and San Francisco were insisting that sentences for so-called “low level” drug and theft related crimes be reduced, that cash bail be eliminated and that criminals, including violent gang members, be released early to rehabilitation programs. The motivator for these policies was the systemic racism narrative promoted by progressive academics, non-profits like Black Lives Matter, race-baiting politicians and the national media. While this narrative had been pushed since the 1990s, it got major traction after Floyd’s death as deep blue cities reflexively cut police budgets, elected pro-defendant prosecutors and swept away consequences for crime. Then something happened.

Continue reading . . .

Poll on LA DA Election

by · Feb 12, 2024 9:58 am

You know an incumbent running for re-election is in deep kimchi when he (1) polls only 15% before the primary and (2) has a “disapprove” job rating from an outright majority and more than double the number who approve. The latest California Elections & Policy Poll* is available here. Continue reading . . .