by Kent Scheidegger · May 31, 2022 1:22 pm
Heather Knight reports for the SF Chronicle:
As [SF DA Chesa] Boudin faces a June 7 recall, it’s important for voters to understand what he promised and whether his office is delivering. And four former staffers and one current staffer in his Victim Services Division told me that victims are regularly not updated on progress in their cases, meaning their voices remain unheard as prosecutors work quickly to resolve them. Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · May 30, 2022 6:03 pm
Today let us all remember that freedom is not free and honor those who gave their lives in its defense.
by Elizabeth Berger · May 25, 2022 10:05 am
New reports published by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions discuss the recent surge in gun violence, outlining trends from recently-released 2020 gun death data. The results are making headlines.
by Kent Scheidegger · May 24, 2022 1:51 pm
Along with the two Arizona capital cases decided yesterday (see this post), the Supreme Court turned down another, the case of one of the longest-term residents of death row.
Justice Breyer penned another of his opinions lamenting how awful it is for these murderers to have death sentences hanging over their heads so long. And once again he failed to acknowledge how much the Supreme Court itself is at fault for this situation. Continue reading . . .
by Elizabeth Berger · May 23, 2022 12:17 pm
On May 17, 2022, the United States Sentencing Commission (USSC) published new findings on eight-year recidivism rates of 25,142 federal offenders after their participation in Bureau of Prisons (BOP) treatment programs. The report is part of a larger multi-year recidivism study of more than 32,000 federal offenders released in 2010. The programs reduced overall recidivism for people who completed programs relative to eligible non-participants. Despite this, drug-related recidivism was still higher among program completers. The latter finding is perplexing considering that one major goal of the treatment programs was to reduce substance use.
by Bill Otis · May 23, 2022 12:09 pm
President Biden has had all manner of things to say about the mass murder in Buffalo by a white supremacist, but nothing to say about the only legal punishment we have that even remotely fits a crime of that nature — the death penalty.
Now maybe it’s that Biden ran on a platform of abolishing capital punishment — the first candidate of a major party to do so, and in the face of the contrary views held by his former boss, President Barack Obama, and (get this) of himself: Biden had been an unambiguous supporter of the death penalty for years, but when the mainstream of the Democratic Party drifted into abolitionism, he had neither the energy nor the principle to put up a fight.
That now seems like a manifestly foolish decision, as I explain in my Substack entry this morning, here, and my guess is he’ll have to backtrack.
by Kent Scheidegger · May 23, 2022 11:08 am
Are Acts of Congress the law of the land, to be respected by the courts and implemented as intended, or are they merely inconvenient obstacles to the policies preferred by judges, to be danced around at will? That was the unstated question beneath the case of Shinn v. Ramirez, No. 20-1009, decided by the Supreme Court today.
The case involves the long-standing policy question of when a federal court hearing a habeas corpus petition by a state prisoner can second-guess the judgment of the state courts in a case already fully litigated there. The answer to that question has ebbed and flowed throughout American history, as relative confidence in federal v. state courts has varied. The answer has varied from “never” (1789) to “nearly always” (1963) and various points in between. Congress and the Supreme Court have both had their roles, but on this aspect of habeas corpus the Court has always acknowledged that Congress is boss, at least nominally.
From the mid-1970s to the early 1990s, the Supreme Court was gradually tightening up on relitigation, pulling back reins that had been loosened in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1992, the Court decided in Keeney v. Tamayo-Reyes that a habeas petitioner who wanted an evidentiary hearing in federal court to present evidence that he could have presented in state court but failed to would not get one unless he showed good cause for his previous failure and resulting prejudice.
This is one of a number of rules that I call “speak now or forever hold your peace” rules. When the system provides a time and forum to make your claim, you have to make it then and there or lose it. Without such rules, Yogi Berra notwithstanding, a case isn’t over even when it’s over. More prosaically, these rules are called “procedural default rules.” Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · May 20, 2022 9:48 am
LA Times political columnist George Skelton has this column on the race for California Attorney General.
The state’s “jungle primary” is June 7. The top two vote-getters, regardless of party, will advance to the November general election.
by Elizabeth Berger · May 18, 2022 12:33 pm
In the United States, recidivism rates are the primary measure to evaluate the success of correctional and re-entry programs. Recidivism estimates can be controversial though, particularly given limitations of currently available data. A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) highlights some of these challenges. A more controversial part of the report argues that the effectiveness of correctional and re-entry programs can be better understood by looking at things like education and employment outcomes rather than focusing on recidivism specifically. Unfortunately, focusing solely on the latter does not tell the whole story, and does not accurately reflect whether a particular program is successful or not.
by Kent Scheidegger · May 16, 2022 9:20 am
In 1948, Congress decided that using habeas corpus for collateral attacks on federal criminal judgments presented too many practical problems, so it created a new “motion to vacate” procedure in 28 USC § 2255. Congress provided that the new motion would be available on any ground that made the judgment vulnerable to collateral attack. Then it barred use of habeas corpus for this purpose, but added a “safety valve” that resort to habeas corpus could still be had if the motion procedure was “ineffective or inadequate” to test the validity of the prisoner’s detention.
Collateral attacks on criminal judgments (habeas corpus for state prisoners and § 2255 for federal prisoners) grew like weeds for the next five decades until Congress clamped down in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA).
Does the “safety valve” effectively negate the reforms for federal prisoners? Can they simply dance around the limits by saying the limits render the § 2255 remedy “ineffective or inadequate” and file a habeas corpus petition? The obvious answer is “no.” Congress does not enact laws with the intent that they be easily evaded. Yet, there is a circuit split, and today the Supreme Court took the question up. Continue reading . . .
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