Monthly Archive: November 2023

An Alabama murderer has been scheduled for execution between January 25 and 26 of 2024.  Kenneth Eugene Smith was twice convicted of murdering Elizabeth Sennett in March of 1988.  As reported by Devon M. Sayers and Emma Tucker of CNN, earlier this year Smith won a state Supreme Court decision accepting his request to be executed by nitrogen hypoxia rather than by lethal injection.  The article cites a description of the method by the Death Penalty Information Center (an opponent of capital punishment) as depriving the brain and body of oxygen, so the inmate would die by suffocation.  That is technically true, but a person breathing nitrogen gas simply goes to sleep painlessly.  Last year 717 Americans died similar deaths from accidentally breathing carbon monoxide.  Now Smith’s attorneys argue that nitrogen hypoxia is an untested experimental method which is unwarranted.

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For over two years the American public has been told by the major media and a select group of criminal justice “experts” that the unprecedented increases  in crime and violence which began in 2020 and continues today were the result of “the disruptions of the pandemic—the social isolation, the closure of schools and jobs lost—likely led to an increase in crime,” as reported in the New York Times.  In a post last August, we addressed this claim pointing to multiple factors having nothing to do with the pandemic, particularly the widespread reduction of consequences for crime and policies that hogtied the police, which caused and continue to cause increased crime and violence.  In his piece in today’s Wall Street Journal, Joshua Crawford, of the Georgia Center for Opportunity, compares and contrasts crime in cities where “woke” policies remain in place with cities taking a pro-law enforcement approach.

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A ballot measure recently authorized for signature gathering would roll back provisions of California’s Proposition 47, which turned drug possession, drug trafficking, and theft into misdemeanors. If adopted by state voters next November, “The Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act” would give prosecutors the discretion to charge hard drug addicts with a “treatment-mandated felony” after two previous drug convictions. Offenders charged with the “treatment-mandated felony” would be given the option to complete a drug and mental health program or serve time in jail. After a fourth conviction, judges would have the option of sentencing the offenders to jail or state prison. The act would also increase penalties for drug dealers and allow judges to sentence dealers who possess firearms to state prison, rather than county jail. It would also categorize non-prescription fentanyl as a hard drug and allow dealers who sell a fatal dose to be prosecuted for second-degree murder. Continue reading . . .