by Kent Scheidegger · Feb 19, 2021 11:19 am
Today is conference day at the U.S. Supreme Court. There are three criminal cases that have been relisted for another look multiple times. United States v. Tsarnaev, No. 20-443, is the Marathon Bomber case. See this post and this one. Johnson v. Precythe, 20-287, involves method-of-execution litigation. Harris v. Maryland, 20-101, involves a speedy trial claim.
Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Feb 18, 2021 2:03 pm
The Chicago Tribune reports:
Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Chicago police Superintendent David Brown led a response to protests and looting last spring plagued by “confusion and lack of coordination” that risked the safety of both police and citizens, the city’s watchdog found in a report released Thursday. Continue reading . . .
by Michael Rushford · Feb 17, 2021 11:52 am
A widely covered piece of breaking news, breathlessly reported by Jerry Lannelli in the Appeal, announced that Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón has sent an open letter resigning his membership in the California District Attorneys Association (CDAA). “Among other criticisms, the letter mentioned the CDAA’s failure to appoint a single person of color to its 17-member board of directors.” The article cites Anne Irwin, head of Smart Justice California, who said “Gascón’s decision could dramatically alter the CDAA’s power in Sacramento and continue to break apart the notion that prosecutors have “one voice.” Los Angeles County and its 10 milion residents represent over one fourth of California’s population.” There is only one problem with this story, Gascón is not a member of CDAA.
by Bill Otis · Feb 16, 2021 8:48 pm
Minneapolis, the site of George Floyd’s death in the hands of the police in May of last year, initially reacted as you might expect a city with far Left leadership to react — namely, to strike out against the police as a product of reflex rather than reflection. The snarling demand was to de-fund and disband the police department. In early June, the Minneapolis City Council declared an intent to restructure the department as a “new community-based system of public safety.”
But a funny thing happened on the way to de-funding. Reality.
by Bill Otis · Feb 16, 2021 4:31 pm
Glenn Loury, a black man, is a professor of economics and faculty fellow at the Watson Institute at Brown University and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He is also a man of tremendous courage and insight — one of the few in academia, or anywhere, who would write the following truth:
Common sense and much evidence suggest that, on the whole, people are not being arrested, convicted, and sentenced because of their race. Those in prison are, in the main, those who have broken the law—who have hurt others, or stolen things, or otherwise violated the basic behavioral norms which make civil society possible. Seeing prisons as a racist conspiracy to confine black people is an absurd proposition. No serious person could believe it. Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Feb 12, 2021 11:00 am
The game of “whack-a-mole” with clergy being in the execution chamber when a murderer finally gets his just deserts has popped up again.
Yesterday, the Supreme Court refused to lift a stay of execution imposed by the Eleventh Circuit on the ground that Alabama will not allow non-employees, including clergy, in the actual execution room. Four of the Justices concurring in this order purport to instruct the States how they can easily comply with the requirements and proceed with long-overdue justice. We’ve been there, done that. That’s how we got here. Continue reading . . .
by Bill Otis · Feb 11, 2021 7:54 pm
This story from the NYT is making the rounds on the Internet today. The headline is: “The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired.” The subhead is, “Ten doses of the Covid-19 vaccine would expire within hours, so a Houston doctor gave it to people with medical conditions, including his wife. What followed was ‘the lowest moment in my life,’ Dr. Hasan Gokal said.”
The lowest moment was not just that he was fired from his hospital. He was criminally charged by the Harris County District Attorney, Kim Ogg, for “stealing” the vaccine.
Now you might wonder, as I did, how a prosecutor could be so brain-dead as to charge a doctor for “stealing” this life-saving medicine when the alternative was to pour it down the sewer. And you might think, again as I did, that it was just a case of terminal hubris and stupidity. But it seems to have been more than that, and worse. A lot worse.
by Kent Scheidegger · Feb 10, 2021 1:37 pm
Eric Piza of John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Vijay Chillar of Rutgers School of Criminal Justice have published an article in Justice Evaluation Journal titled The Effect of Police Layoffs on Crime: A Natural Experiment Involving New Jersey’s Two Largest Cities. The published version is behind a paywall, but a post-publication manuscript version is available here.
“Our findings indicate that sudden and drastic reductions in police force size via police officer layoffs can generate significant crime increases.” The results “translate[] to approximately 108 … additional violent crime incidents per month resulting from the layoffs. Using a similar equation, the police layoffs resulted in approximately 103 additional property crime incidents per month in Newark.” Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · 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 . . .
by Michael Rushford · Feb 10, 2021 12:18 pm
The election, in recent years, of several so called “progressive” district attorneys (or state’s attorneys depending upon where you live) is confusing pheonomina that seems to defy common sense. “The prosecutors’ campaigns have been funded by the bogeyman of the Right, billionaire leftist George Soros, and animated by extreme left-wing political movements such as Black Lives Matter. The politicization of what was, in its origins, an apolitical law-enforcement function will have serious consequences for public safety and order,” notes Craig Trainor in his recent City Journal article.
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