Monthly Archive: September 2022

Culture, Root Causes, and Discussion Taboos

by · Sep 30, 2022 9:53 am

In a basketball tournament for teenage girls last November, one player punched an opponent, knocking her to the floor and giving her a concussion. What did the offending girl’s mother think of this blatant assault and battery? She was the one who instructed her daughter to do it. Latria Shonty Hunt was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor but let off with an apology and restitution. See this story by Vikki Vargas and Heather Navarro for NBC LA.

People have long debated the “root causes” of crime, and the discussion usually focuses on income. Poverty is the root cause of crime. Government programs are the solution to poverty. So let’s just spend more on government anti-poverty programs and crime will go down. That was how the Great Society was sold to America in the 1960s, and it was a cataclysmic failure. But that does not stop people from urging us to repeat the history.

Victor Hugo notwithstanding, we have enough of a social safety net in place that no one is going to jail for stealing loaves of bread to feed starving children. We need to look elsewhere for root causes. A powerful but under-discussed root cause of crime is culture. Too many young people are subject to influences from those around them that cause them to choose the path of crime rather than the path of law-abidingness. In the case of Ms. Hunt’s daughter, the very person who should have been teaching her to obey the law, respect the rights of others, and generally be a good person was teaching her just the opposite. Even kids with good parents are subject to bad influences from peers and popular culture.

So why don’t we hear more about culture as a root cause of crime? Continue reading . . .

A Report and a Critique on Nitrogen Hypoxia Executions

by · Sep 28, 2022 10:19 am

Scientific American has this report by Dana Smith on execution via nitrogen hypoxia. Dudley Sharp has this critique of the article. As Mr. Sharp notes, all of the people interviewed by Ms. Smith for the article are opponents of the death penalty. As is standard practice in journalism now, opponents of the death penalty are not identified as such. The Death Penalty Information Center’s misleading self-identification is repeated uncritically in the article: “a national nonprofit that provides information and analysis on death penalty issues.” This Soros-funded organization filters and colors the information it provides to support only anti-death-penalty arguments, but you would never know that from the way it is routinely identified in the press.

Some of the comments are misleading and some border on silly. Among the latter, an anesthesiologist criticizes the coining of a new term, “nitrogen hypoxia,” as “a made-up two-word expression meant to sound like you’re on the bridge of the starship Enterprise.” For the record, I am a Star Trek fan of long standing, and the term never once made me think of the Enterprise. There is absolutely nothing wrong with coining a new term for a new procedure or invention. “Television” is a made-up word unknown in the nineteenth century. “Smart phone” is a more recent coined term for a more recent invention. Anything wrong with either of those? Continue reading . . .

USCA9 Strikes Down Cal. Ban of Federal Private Prisons

by · Sep 27, 2022 10:59 am

State laws interfering with federal government operations within the state present a constitutional problem that goes back to the early days of the republic. In the early nineteenth century, the Bank of the United States was very controversial, and the State of Maryland tried to kill it with a discriminatory tax. The Supreme Court declared the tax unconstitutional in a landmark decision by Chief Justice Marshall, M’Culloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316 (1819).

Within California, immigration enforcement efforts are highly controversial, particularly in the prior Administration. Privately operated prisons are also very controversial. The state can, of course, choose not to use such prisons itself. However, the California Legislature in 2019 enacted AB 32, barring any person from operating a private prison. In essence, they barred federal contractors from continuing to provide services they had long provided to the federal government. Continue reading . . .

USDOJ Seeks Comments on Pentobarbital

by · Sep 26, 2022 11:27 am

The U.S. Department of Justice has published this notice in the Federal Register, asking for comments about the use of pentobarbital in executions.

This may be another step in the game of execution whack-a-mole. When the gas chamber and electrocution were the common methods of execution, they were attacked with an argument that the pain inherent in those methods was unnecessary because the three-drug lethal injection method was painless. When that method was widely adopted, it was attacked with an argument that the single-drug barbiturate method presented far less risk of pain. When that method was widely adopted, some experts crawled out of the woodwork to claim that it presents an unacceptable risk of painful pulmonary edema. Continue reading . . .

Judge Slaps Philly DA For Misconduct

by · Sep 20, 2022 2:31 pm

With homicides in Philadelphia on track to eclipse last year’s record-setting 562 murders according to AXIOS,  District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office is working to reduce sentences for convicted murderers.  The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that last week a federal judge rejected Krasner’s effort to reduce the death sentence of a 1984 double-murderer, in a decision highlighting the fact that his office had attempted to mislead the court.  Shortly after the former criminal defense attorney’s election as district attorney in 2018, Krasner fired 31 deputies, including a dozen experienced homicide prosecutors.  Since then. his office has partnered with defense attorneys to petition Philadelphia judges to resentence condemned murderers to life in prison without parole.  Earlier this year the DA joined the defense attorney for Robert Wharton, who murdered a young couple in 1984, to petition Federal District Judge Mitchell Goldberg to overturn his death sentence on a claim of ineffective assistance of council at the sentencing hearing.

Continue reading . . .

You billed the union health plan for what?

by · Sep 19, 2022 11:44 am

The U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California (LA and adjoining counties) issued this press release last Wednesday:

Federal prosecutors today filed criminal charges against nine defendants – seven of them dockworkers at the Port of Long Beach – who allowed more than $2.1 million in fraudulent claims to be submitted to their labor union’s health insurance plan for sexual services or for physical therapy that never was provided. Continue reading . . .

The Full Harm of Burglary

by · Sep 16, 2022 9:29 am

Karen Bass, a member of Congress and candidate for LA Mayor, was the victim of a home burglary recently. KTTV has this interview.

Ms. Bass says “my safety was shattered” and describes returning home to find the house burgled as “traumatic.” But isn’t burglary a “non-violent property crime”? Aren’t people who commit such crimes nearly harmless, to be handled with kid gloves and let off lightly? That’s what the folks on Ms. Bass’s side of the aisle have been telling us for years, and California has seen a cascade of laws designed to water down the consequences of committing such crimes. Continue reading . . .