Monthly Archive: July 2024

A Soros-bankrolled public defender elected in 2023 to the top prosecutor position for Hennepin County Minnesota, which includes Minneapolis, is taking fire for her soft-on-crime policies.  Michael Goldberg of the Associated Press reports that County Attorney Mary Moriarty’s decisions to seek rehabilitation rather than prison time, even for murderers, has caused even her former supporters to say that she has gone too far and “not abided by the goals of that office, which are safety and justice.”   Moriarty, who received over $500,000 from Soros, ran on the  promise to reform the criminal justice system, abandoning punishment and focusing on the root causes of crime. That approach has caused a reported 150 seasoned county prosecutors, investigators and support staff to quit their jobs since her election. “People are afraid to talk. The morale is horrible,” said one former prosecutor.

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A Utah man who slashed his ex-girlfriend’s mother to death in 1998 is asking the state parole board to commute his death sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Colleen Slevin and Matthew Brown of the Associated Press report that after decades of failed appeals, Taberon Dave Honie is seeking mercy for a crime that still traumatizes the state’s close-knit Native American community. At a hearing last Tuesday, relatives of 49-year-old Claudia Benn asked the parole board to uphold his death sentence for brutally murdering a “pillar of her family and community—a tribal council member, substance abuse counselor and caregiver for her children and grandchildren.”  Update:  Honie was executed without incident at 12:25 AM Thursday morning.

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If the current elected prosecutor decides that a sentence obtained by a predecessor in a criminal case is not a good one (even if authorized by law and legally imposed), can he just move for a reduced sentence? Is the judge obligated to comply?

Ron Matthias, California Senior Assistant Attorney General (Ret.) has this op-ed in the Silicon Valley Voice denouncing Santa Clara District Attorney Jeff Rosen’s motions to reduce all of the death sentences coming from that county (San Jose and vicinity). Continue reading . . .

Recently released data reported to the public indicate that since January, crime in Oakland, CA has declined by 33%.  As reported by Rachel Swan and Dan Kopf of the San Francisco Chronicle,  Governor Gavin Newsom cited that data as proof that his dispatch of CHP officers and prosecutors from the Attorney General’s office to crack down on Oakland crime has paid off.  The problem is, according to the Chronicle, those numbers are inaccurate. Law enforcement officials told reporters that there is a significant backlog of crimes reported which need to be verified.  As a result, the initial numbers, which are reported weekly, can be much lower that the actual number of crimes.

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While many democrat and progressive elected officials have resisted efforts to restore real consequences for criminals, the impact of soft-on-crime policies, particularly in large urban districts, will be hard to ignore next month when the party holds its national convention in Chicago.  Jasmine Minor, Tre Ward and Sarah Schulte of ABC 7 News report that over the recent 4th of July weekend, 109 people were shot with 19 fatalities in the windy city.  Victims included the elderly, women and children, with 19 people shot in mass shootings.  Many of the shootings appeared random including one incident where two women and an 8-year-old boy were killed as multiple shooters opened fire on a gathering at a home in Little Italy.  Last year 62 people were shot and 11 died in Chicago shootings over the 4th of July weekend.

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