Monthly Archive: November 2021

Oklahoma Set to Execute Another Murderer

by · Nov 18, 2021 10:35 am

Oklahoma is set to execute its second murderer in four weeks as convicted murderer Julius Jones faces lethal injection later today.  The Associated Press reports that celebrities and high school students gathered at the state capital to demand that Governor Kevin Stitt grant clemency.  Jones has maintained his innocence for two decades and his case was profiled by a three-part CBS documentary produced by actress Viola Davis which suggested that an accomplice actually shot and killed businessman Paul Howell in front of his sister and two daughters on July 28, 1999.  Following his conviction and sentence Jones claimed on habeas corpus, that a 2017 study  finding that black murderers who killed white victims were more likely to be sentenced to death, suggesting that Jones, who is black, is facing execution because of his race and the race of his victim, who was white.

UPDATE:  Governor Stitt has just commuted Jones’ sentence to life without parole as reported here.

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The BLM Threat to Black Lives in New York City

by · Nov 17, 2021 11:48 am

As noted in an earlier post, a Black Lives Matter (BLM) leader in New York City has threatened riots, fire and bloodshead if Mayor-elect Eric Adams restores the police department’s 600 member Anti-Crime Unit, which was disbanded last year.  In a piece in today’s Daily Mail, Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald breaks down the impact that decision last year had on crime in the Big Apple.  The unit had for several years, removed thousands of guns from gang members on New York streets and played a critical role in controlling violent crime.  In June of 2020 after several days of BLM riots over the death of George Floyd, which ravaged the city and injured 400 officers,  Police Commissioner Dermott Shea and Mayor Bill de Blasio  “desperate to show their sympathy with the anti-cop forces” disbanded the unit.  “Though stopping and questioning suspects short of making an arrest is a constitutional power, Shea labeled such stops as `brute force.’  The fall-out from Shea’s announcement was immediate.

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Police leadership and organizational culture on police effectiveness

by · Nov 16, 2021 3:43 pm

In a recent article, I discuss some of the antecedents and consequences of “de-policing,” a term used to refer to reductions in proactive policing strategies. Increases in de-policing also coincide with increases in public pressure and aggression (e.g., protests, ‘viral’ police use-of-force videos). Recently, there have been various movements meant to “reform” police departments, such as efforts to de-fund the police and efforts to end qualified immunity. Unfortunately though, these efforts can come off as aggressive and may decrease officer motivation and increase their cynicism of their jobs. This is important, as officer motivation and morale is likely a key mechanism contributing to the de-policing effect. On a broader scale, efforts to de-fund the police would constrain agencies’ abilities to train their officers, acquire new technology, and leverage data/digital evidence to be more proactive in preventing crime.

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Mississippi Murderer to be Executed

by · Nov 16, 2021 11:10 am

A Mississippi man who murdered his estranged wife in 2009, after several years of sexually abusing her daughter, is scheduled to be executed Wednesday (11/17).  Emily Wagster Pettus of the Associated Press reports that David Neal Cox was jailed in 2009 after his stepdaughter reported that he had been sexually assaulting her for years.  Even though Cox had been convicted of rape, sexual battery, child abuse and a drug charge, he was released from jail in April of 2010.  A month later Cox stormed into the house where his estranged wife, Kim Cox, was living and shot her in the arm and abdomen.  While she lay on the floor bleeding to death, Cox sexually assaulted her daughter in front of her.  After an eight-hour standoff, Cox surrendered to police.  He pled guilty to the murder in 2012.  UPDATE:  Cox was executed Wednesday afternoon as reported here.

Bonta and Gascón Collude to Overturn All Los Angeles Death Sentences

by · Nov 16, 2021 9:46 am

CJLF issued a press release with the above title this morning. Here is the text:

California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón are working together to overturn the death sentences of every condemned murderer convicted in Los Angeles County, according to the Sacramento-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation.

On November 5, Bonta’s office issued Notices of Withdrawal in at least four death penalty cases before county judges to consider new claims by murderers challenging their sentences. Gascón’s office then told the court that it agrees with (concedes) the murderers’ claims and asked the judge to vacate the death sentences and re-sentence the murderers to life without the possibility of parole (LWOP).

“The Constitution of California says that it is the ‘duty of the Attorney General to see that the laws of the State are uniformly and adequately enforced.’ Attorney General Bonta is doing exactly the opposite. He is facilitating collusive litigation by the Los Angeles District Attorney for the purpose of defeating the enforcement of the law,” said Foundation Legal Director Kent Scheidegger.

Update:  CJLF was on the Los Angeles drive time talk radio John & Ken show discussing this issue, available here.

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The Unwoking Begins

by · Nov 12, 2021 3:13 pm

Voters in New York City elected Eric Adams, a former police captain who promised to restore law and order in the big apple, as Mayor earlier this month.  Rebecca Rosenberg and Bryan Lleans of Fox News report that Adams plans to restore the city’s Anti-Crime Unit, a plaincloths team targeting gangs and illegal guns.  The unit was disbanded in 2020 after years of complaints that it was racially biased.  In a recent interview, Black Lives Matter (BLM) co-founder Hawk Newsome told reporters that if Adams brings back the unit “there will be riots, there will be fire, and there will be bloodshed.”    After claiming that his statement was not a threat, Newsome said that Adams would lead the city to another George Floyd incident.   The elections of Virginia’s Governor, Lt. Governor and Attorney General, all of whom promised to restore law and order, along with the rejection of the BLM demand to disband the police department in Minneapolis and the election of a pro-law enforcement Mayor, City Attorney and key City Council member in the progressive city of Seattle,  suggest that the people from both political parties have had enough of woke policing policies and BLM threats.

Antecedents and consequences of de-policing

by · Nov 12, 2021 10:47 am

De-policing is a term that refers to a reduction in proactive policing strategies, and it tends to coincide with officers’ fears of becoming ‘the next viral incident’ and/or criminal prosecution. The de-policing effect seemed to start around 2014 after a viral shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and hence, it is sometimes referred to as the “Ferguson Effect.” Since then, increased circulation of viral videos from body-worn camera footage and cell phone videos on the internet seem to have exacerbated the effect. The Manhattan Institute released a report recently discussing the research on de-policing effects and qualitative findings from interviews with police officers, and main findings indicated that de-policing seems to be associated with low police morale/motivation and fear of becoming involved in a viral use of force incident. Officer morale also decreases when officers feel less supported by their communities.

Simultaneously, there has been criticism of officers pulling back and being less proactive, saying that it is correlated to recent increases in homicides and violent crime. On September 27, 2021, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) released preliminary findings that revealed that violent crime is up, with a violent crime rate of 387.8 per 100,000 — a 5.2% increase when compared with 2019 rates (380.8 per 100,000). The violent crime increase appears to be driven by increases in aggravated assaults (+12.0%) and murders (+29.4%), whereas rates for other violent crimes (i.e., robbery, rape) decreased from 2019 to 2020 (-9.3% and -12.0%, respectively). While overall crime rates are lower than they have been in previous years, homicides and shootings are higher than normal, and this trend appears to be continuing into 2021. As stated above, many argue that the “de-policing effect” increases violent crime in certain cities. Additionally, the “defund the police” movement does not help this problem, as it simply limits law enforcement access to technology and/or other resources that could effectively reduce crime.

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Justice Gorsuch as the “Swing Vote” on Executions?

by · Nov 10, 2021 9:07 am

Yesterday after listening to the oral argument in Ramirez v. Collier, the Supreme Court’s clergy-in-the-execution-chamber case, I noted that the most important question is not whether the State or the murderer wins on the details of this case but whether we are going to have a permanent new layer of litigation further delaying already badly delayed justice in these cases.

Now we have the transcript of the argument and Amy Howe’s characteristically thorough and unbiased report. What the justices said during the argument is interesting, but perhaps more interesting is what one justice did not say. Justice Gorsuch is usually active in argument, but in this case he said zilch. Given that the other justices may very well be divided 4-4, the decision in this case may rest on him. Continue reading . . .

A Permanent New Layer of Capital Litigation?

by · Nov 9, 2021 10:50 am

The anti-death-penalty crowd hit the jackpot some years back when they discovered that they could add a new layer of litigation to a capital punishment process that already has too many layers. Civil litigation over the method of execution has become routine. It has stopped executions in some states but not others. The promising new tool for obstruction is civil litigation over whether the state has gone far enough to accommodate the inmate’s real or fabricated religious needs during the execution process.

This is the real issue beneath today’s argument in the U.S. Supreme Court in Ramirez v. Collier, No. 21-5592. The case was discussed in this post on October 25. Continue reading . . .

Even the Washington Post Gets It, Sort Of

by · Nov 9, 2021 7:57 am

The Washington Post is a predictably liberal newspaper very slightly to the right of the New York Times (in other words, not Maoist).  It woodenly goes along with whatever the liberal position du jour is, including opposition to the death penalty and an unfriendly skepticism toward the police and policing.

A week ago today, however, there was an election.  As has widely been reported, more liberal candidates took a pasting, running from 12 to 16 percentage points behind what Joe Biden won in 2020.  Crime and policing were issues across the country, including although not limited to Northern Virginia, just across the Potomac from the WaPo  —  which dutifully took note.

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