Monthly Archive: October 2022

Will the Crime Issue Decide the LA Mayor’s Race?

by · Oct 17, 2022 3:47 pm

The City of Los Angeles is about to select its next mayor.  The contrasts between two candidates are profound.  Karen Bass, is a liberal former community organizer, three-term Democrat state assemblywoman elected Speaker in 2008.  She left Sacramento for Washington with a 2010 election to Congress, and served from 2011 to 2021.  While in Congress she was elected chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, and appointed to Chair the United States House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations and the United States House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security.  During her political career, Bass has avoided the “in your face” approach to racial justice issues, although frequently shared her view the criminal justice system is systemically racist.  In August of 2020, as the the George Floyd riots were winding down, Bass was asked about her thoughts on defunding the police. Bass replied, “I say it a little different. Instead of saying, “defund the police,” I say, “refund the communities.  Communities [should] reinvision what public safety is like.”  Whatever this means exactly, it still sounds like taking funding from the police and spending it elsewhere.

Continue reading . . .

Crime trends in California: 2021 rates show increase in violent crime

by · Oct 17, 2022 9:55 am

A new report from the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) reviews some of the recently released state-level data on 2021 California crime rates. Once again, it seems like the authors are overselling the fact that crime rates are lower than the 1990s crime peak, although their findings are similar to what I found when I analyzed the data last month. Indeed, crime rates are lower than they were in the 1990s. But keep in mind that the 1990s saw a historic crime peak. If “success” means having crime rates that are lower than the historic peak, then that’s a pretty low bar for success. It’s almost like saying that the 2008 recession wasn’t that bad because it was still better than the Great Depression.

Continue reading . . .

The Truth and Myth of Willie Horton

by · Oct 14, 2022 10:45 am

With Republicans finally running effective campaign ads on the crime issue, we are hearing predictable cries from the soft-on-crime crowd that this is Willie Horton all over again. It is, but that does not mean what they are implying. Horton and his crimes were a completely valid criticism of a horrible policy decision by Massachusetts Governor and presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, but it has gone down in leftist mythology as racist fear-mongering. Diana Allocco has the first of a two-part series of articles at Tipp Insights here. Continue reading . . .

Florida’s Single-Juror-Veto Law Defeats Justice in Parkland Case

by · Oct 13, 2022 2:45 pm

For the sentencing phase of capital cases, some states have true unanimous verdict laws. The jury must deliberate until it is unanimous one way or the other, just as they do in the guilt phase. If they are truly hung, the penalty trial is done over before another jury. California and Arizona have true unanimity laws.

Unfortunately, when Florida rewrote its sentencing law in the wake of a Supreme Court decision throwing out the old one, the Legislature unwisely chose a single-juror-veto law. In this system, if the jury votes 11-1 for the death penalty, the view of the one prevails over the view of the eleven, and the defendant gets a life sentence. That system introduces needless arbitrariness into sentencing, as the luck of getting one juror who has hard-core anti-death-penalty views (and possibly lied on voir dire) or who is willing to accept claimed mitigation that most people reject will result in a life sentence for one defendant under circumstances where others will be sentenced to death. Continue reading . . .

The Marijuana Scam

by · Oct 12, 2022 3:41 pm

This week California Attorney Rob Bonta announced a multi-agency crackdown on illegal marijuana grows and marketing in the state.  Last week President Biden told reporters that he will pardon all people convicted under federal law of possession of marijuana.  While these announcements are unrelated, they may draw much needed attention to lies told to the public about marijuana.  The first lie is that marijuana is relatively safe.  In an August 4, piece in Deseret News Daryl Austin discusses research from major universities and journals that detail the harmful effects of regular use.

“Negative outcomes include research that suggests a connection between smoking marijuana and respiratory symptoms like chronic bronchitis. The drug also tends to impact school performance. `Since marijuana use impairs critical cognitive functions … many students could be functioning at a cognitive level that is below their natural capability for considerable periods of time,’ one review from the New England Journal of Medicine notes.”

Continue reading . . .

Court: DA Cannot Prosecute BLM Protesters

by · Oct 11, 2022 10:34 am

In a unanimous ruling on September 28,  California’s Second District Court of Appeal announced that the San Luis Obispo District Attorney’s Office cannot prosecute seven Black Lives Matter (BLM) protesters because the District Attorney’s “well publicized association with critics of the Black Lives Matter Movement.”  According to the North Coast Times, in July of 2020 Tianna Arata allegedly lead roughly 300 BLM demonstrators onto Highway 101, blocking all lanes for an hour.  Some of the demonstrators attacked cars, smashing the window of one car with a skateboard, shattering glass on a four-year-old child in the back seat.  Arata was charged with a felony and several misdemeanors.  Six other BLM protesters were also charged.   But, later that year, Superior Court Judge Matthew Guerreo disqualified Dow and every prosecutor in his office, citing a campaign email from Dow and his wife which stated that the District Attorney was leading the fight against the “wacky defund the police movement and anarchist groups that are trying to undermine the rule of law and public safety in our community.”

Continue reading . . .

No New SCOTUS Cases

by · Oct 11, 2022 9:04 am

Today is a virtual Monday at the U.S. Supreme Court, after the Columbus Day federal holiday. The Court released an orders list from last week’s conference, but it did not take up any new cases for full briefing and argument. Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson dissented from denial of certiorari in Thomas v. Lumpkin, No. 21-444, a capital case with a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel in jury selection.

There are no criminal cases on this month’s docket, but today the Court hears argument in the crime-related civil case of Reed v. Goertz, No. 21-442, regarding DNA testing. Continue reading . . .

The Consequences of No Consequences

by · Oct 10, 2022 2:00 pm

It is a basic principle of human behavior that incentives matter. If people have an incentive to do X and we reduce the adverse consequences of doing X, then more people will do X. People who think that crime is somehow exempt from this principle, and that we can therefore reduce or eliminate consequences with no increase in crime, are living in fantasy land.

The latest example comes to us from the nation’s capital, noted in this editorial in the WSJ. People have an obvious incentive to ride buses without paying. If you shrink the consequences of doing that to almost nothing, will more people do it, draining revenue from an already under-funded system? Continue reading . . .

Crime Near Top of Public Concerns

by · Oct 6, 2022 2:57 pm

In a representative democracy, the way a representative votes on an issue is determined not only by what position the voters favor but also by how important they think the issue is. The issues foremost in the public mind are those where a representative is least likely to go against the majority view of the voters. Further down the list, voters’ disagreement with a representative’s vote is less likely to change how they vote in the election. Representatives may feel more free to vote differently based on other factors, including the views of major contributors, impact on favorability of media coverage, or their own (possibly misguided) views of good policy.

Monmouth University has this poll, finding that crime has risen to number two on the voters’ priority list. Continue reading . . .