Monthly Archive: May 2021

The Redundant Federal Charges Against Derek Chauvin

by · May 9, 2021 8:48 pm

Last week, the Justice Department indicted former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the same conduct  —  the killing of George Floyd  — for which a Minnesota state jury convicted him of murder.  Contrary to the wailing of a goodly portion of the defense bar, such a successive prosecution by a different sovereign is permitted by the Constitution, as SCOTUS reaffirmed in its 7-2 opinion two years ago in Gamble v. United States.    But that does not end the inquiry:  Although the prosecution is permitted, is it wise?  Is it fair?  Does it serve a distinct federal interest sufficient to be worth the cost and risks?

I have considerable doubts about all those things, as explained below.  But I want to say one thing by way of preface.  This should not become yet another “oh-the-government-is-so-bad” festival.  The trouble here started with Chauvin, not the government.  If he had shown more restraint, judgment and professional care, we wouldn’t be in this situation.  The best way to avoid having to deal with the outcroppings of criminal behavior is to avoid the behavior to begin with.  In Chauvin’s case, as in most, it’s just not that hard.

Continue reading . . .

Murders Are Rising the Most in a Few Isolated Precincts of Major Cities

by · May 9, 2021 10:21 am

Jon Hilsenrath and Joe Barrett have this article in WSJ, with the subhead “A handful of neighborhoods with histories of violence are the primary source of a recent surge in killings in Chicago, New York and elsewhere.”

As always with crime, there are multiple factors, but what factors are specific to the neighborhoods with the extreme murder rates?

“Researchers have shown the economic and social fabric of neighborhoods is central to crime.” Crime creates a vicious cycle on both the economic and social fronts. When crime is high, businesses leave, taking jobs with them. Law-abiding people who can afford to do so also leave, weakening the social checks against criminality and lesser forms of misbehavior. Continue reading . . .

Austin Voters Reinstate Street Camping Ban

by · May 7, 2021 3:18 pm

Austin has for some time been regarded as a liberal island in a conservative state, a bit of Berkeley in the heart of Texas. Consistently with that reputation, the city council in 2019 repealed the ban on camping in the streets. Inconsistently with that reputation, the people reinstated the ban last Saturday.

The vote was 57-43, according to this report for KVUE. That is a reasonably healthy majority.
Continue reading . . .

Baltimore’s Disastrous Experiment with De-Policing

by · May 7, 2021 9:52 am

Stephen J.K. Walters writes in the City Journal:

A decade ago, Baltimoreans became lab rats in a fateful experiment: their elected officials decided to treat the city’s long-running crime problem with many fewer cops. In effect, Baltimore began to defund its police and engage in de-policing long before those terms gained popular currency.

This experiment has been an abject failure. Since 2011, nearly 3,000 Baltimoreans have been murdered—one of every 200 city residents over that period. The annual homicide rate has climbed from 31 per 100,000 residents to 56—ten times the national rate. And 93 percent of the homicide victims of known race over this period were black.

Walters traces the history, which ironically includes an attempt to emulate the “Broken Windows” approach to policing that James Q. Wilson and George Kelling proposed in their famous 1982 Atlantic article. The approach had worked very well in New York, back when New Yorkers knew how to elect good mayors.

The problem, Walters says, is that Baltimore’s attempt was pathetically bad. Continue reading . . .

When Execution Drugs Are in Short Supply…

by · May 6, 2021 2:32 pm

…alternative methods will be found.  Since, as the Court held in Glossip, “the death penalty is constitutional,” and since a majority of our citizens continue to support it, and since gruesome murders continue to be committed that warrant it, we will continue to administer it.  This is true despite false claims that “the death penalty is dying.”  Instead, over the last five years, we have had an average of one execution every 17 days, and, after years of decline (as the murder rate declined), support for capital punishment has held stable at 55% over that time.

The latest news is from South Carolina, which is bringing back firing squads.

Continue reading . . .

Dumping a Dishonest Precedent Less Than Honestly — Part II

by · May 6, 2021 10:09 am

In Jones v. Mississippi, decided April 22, the U.S. Supreme Court held that in cases where a juvenile is facing life without parole (LWOP) for murder, all that is needed to comply with its 2012 precedent in Miller v. Alabama is for the sentencing court to have discretion to choose a lower sentence and consider the defendant’s youth in making the choice.

That would have been fairly straightforward based on Miller itself. The complications arose from the 2016 decision in Montgomery v. Louisiana, making Miller retroactive so as to require resentencing for a 1963 murder. The problem, as explained at length in the previous post, is that Montgomery contradicted Miller in order to achieve that result, and Montgomery even contradicted itself, making statements that cannot be reconciled.

In Jones, the majority opinion joined by five Justices and the dissent joined by three have many sharp points of disagreement, but they agree on one thing. Both maintain the fiction that Montgomery is consistent with Miller. As a result, neither opinion’s analysis can possibly be completely correct, and neither is. Continue reading . . .

Presiding Over Slaughter in Chicago

by · May 5, 2021 11:10 am

During 2020,  774 mostly black people in Chicago were murdered, a 50% increase compared to 2019.  Shootings were up by over 52% with 3,237 shot.   Those numbers should have raised questions among voters about reelecting progressive States Attorney Kim Foxx, who, according to the Chicago Tribune, dropped charges against over 25,000 felons in 2019 and ran on the promise not to prosecute so-called low level criminals like drug dealers and thieves.   But with $2 million from George Soros, as reported in the Sun Times,  Foxx won reelection last November by over 180,000 votes.  Apparently the voters are willing to tolerate more crime because they like her politically correct anti-police and pro Black Lives Matter messaging.

Continue reading . . .

Older Women Stabbed at SF Bus Stop in Broad Daylight

by · May 5, 2021 9:00 am

A man attacked two older women waiting for a bus on Market Street in the heart of San Francisco in broad daylight and then casually walked away. One was in her 60s and one was in her 80s. Both are out of surgery and in the ICU as of this writing. A suspect has been arrested, described only as a San Francisco man in his 50s.

Kate Larson has this report for KGO. A witness who works at a nearby flower stand said, “I feel like we do need more officers patrolling.” The member of the Board of Supervisors who represents the district said, “We have to hold people accountable who are committing crimes like this, we have to have police in areas where people need to be safe and have them more visible.”

In other words, everything the “woke” crowd is saying is wrong, and we need an about-face in criminal justice policy. We need it right now. Continue reading . . .