Monthly Archive: October 2024

Person of the Year

by · Oct 16, 2024 11:04 am

The Metropolitan News-Enterprise, a law-oriented newspaper in LA, has designated six Persons of the Year. Among them is our friend and sometimes co-counsel Kathleen Cady.

Cady, [MetNews Co-Publisher Jo-Ann] Grace remarked, has “selflessly devoted untold hours to her attempts, on a pro bono basis, to vindicate victims’ rights.” A Los Angeles County deputy district attorney for 31 years, she is now in private practice with the Dordulian Law Group in Glendale.

Congratulations to Kathy for a well-deserved recognition.

The Policies Enabling Illegal Alien Street Gangs

by · Oct 15, 2024 2:31 pm

During an interview on ABC ‘s Sunday talk show “This Week”  correspondent Martha Raddatz decided to fact check Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance regarding former president Trump’s indictment of the Biden/Harris administration’s open border policy for allowing the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to take over parts of Aurora, Colorado. “The incidents were limited to a handful of apartment complexes—apartment complexes and the mayor said, ‘Our dedicated police officers have acted on those concerns,’ ” Raddatz, told Vance. “Martha, do you hear yourself?” replied Vance. “Only ‘a handful of apartment complexes’ in America were taken over by Venezuelan gangs, and Donald Trump is the problem and not Kamala Harris’ open border”?  The exchange highlights the major media’s effort to minimize policies by progressive politicians which have caused unprecedented increases in crime nationwide, and particularly in sanctuary states.

Continue reading . . .

Can cognitive behavioral therapy reduce criminal behavior?

by · Oct 10, 2024 10:10 am

In recent years, the conversation around reforming the criminal justice system has grown increasingly urgent, with various stakeholders advocating for the expansion of rehabilitation programs that can help reduce recidivism. Among these approaches, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has emerged as a potential tool for addressing problematic behaviors associated with criminal behavior. A newly-released paper by the Manhattan Institute provides a thorough examination of the effectiveness of CBT in this context, finding that while CBT can yield modest benefits, it is not a panacea.

Continue reading . . .

Glossip Case in SCOTUS Tomorrow

by · Oct 8, 2024 11:11 am

The notorious case of Richard Glossip will be heard in the U.S. Supreme Court tomorrow. With the Oklahoma Attorney General supporting Glossip, the court appointed an amicus, Christopher Michel, to defend the decision of the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals. CJLF’s amicus brief in the case is here. Our press release is here. Utah law professor Paul Cassell has a three-part series of posts at the Volokh Conspiracy titled Glossip v. Oklahoma: The Story Behind How a Death Row Inmate and the Oklahoma A.G. Concocted a Phantom “Brady Violation” and Got Supreme Court Review here, here, and here. Continue reading . . .

Politicizing Government Data

by · Oct 8, 2024 11:09 am

The following article was published in the October 8, 2024 edition of the California Globe:

There was a time when data compiled by government agencies could be trusted. For generations federal labor statistics, and data on reported crimes, commerce, health, finance, industry, agriculture and even weather were relied upon by both the government and private sector to make policy decisions effecting millions of Americans. It has become apparent in recent years that government data can be manipulated, or even adjusted to favor a political agenda. We learned over the summer, for example, that the U.S. Department of Labor’s monthly jobs report overstated the number of people finding employment by over 818,000 jobs so far this year.

Continue reading . . .

Supreme Court Takes Up Law Enforcement Related Cases

by · Oct 4, 2024 10:19 am

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a short orders list from Monday’s pre-term conference, adding 15 cases to the docket for the October 2024 Term. A much longer list of cases turned down will likely be issued next Monday at the formal opening of the term.

Continuing the high court’s frustrating lack of interest in criminal law, the list includes only one actual criminal case, Thompson v. United States, No. 23-1095. This case raises the question of whether the federal law against false statements to financial institutions and federal agencies extends to misleading half truths. An aspect of the case that increases its media profile is the fact that defendant Patrick Daley Thompson is the grandson of Chicago’s notoriously corrupt mayor Richard J. Daley and the nephew of later mayor Richard M. Daley.

There are also several law-enforcement-related civil cases, a category that gets more interest from SCOTUS:

Gutierrez v. Saenz, No. 23-7809, is a federal civil rights suit regarding a Texas capital case. It presents somewhat complex issues regarding DNA testing, standing, and distinctions between innocence claims and sentencing claims.

Barnes v. Felix, No. 23-1239, is a police use-of-force case involving the “moment of threat doctrine.” As described by the petitioner (i.e., the plaintiff suing the police officer), this approach “evaluates the reasonableness of an officer’s actions only in the narrow window when the officer’s safety was threatened, and not based on events that precede the moment of the threat.” In the Fifth Circuit, Judge Higginbotham wrote a concurrence to his own majority opinion asking the Supreme Court to resolve the circuit split on this issue. Continue reading . . .

Murderer of UCLA Graduate Student Sentenced to LWOP

by · Oct 3, 2024 1:28 pm

An habitual criminal convicted of the 2022 stabbing murder of a 24-year-old graduate student has been sentenced life without the possibility of parole (LWOP) by a Los Angeles Judge. Steve Sorace of Fox News reports that the murderer, 34-year-old Shawn Laval Smith, presented an insanity defense at trial, which the judge rejected. A 2022 story in the New York Post on Smith’s arrest reports that Smith came to California from Charleston, South Carolina in 2019 while free on $50,000 bail on charges of shooting into a vehicle with a child inside during a road rage  incident. He already had convictions for illegal firearm possession and attacking a Charleston police officer.

Continue reading . . .

Multiple Murderer Executed in Texas

by · Oct 3, 2024 8:58 am

A man convicted of murdering two teenaged girls in 1988 was executed yesterday, Juan Lozano and Michael Graczyx report for AP.  Garcia White killed five people altogether. The appeals dragged on for well over three decades despite the lack of any doubt of guilt.

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, who witnessed White’s death, lamented that it took some 30 years to carry out the jury’s death verdict as multiple appeals in White’s case worked through the courts.

“The suffering of surviving (victims’) family members is just unspeakable,” she said. “At least it’s over.” Continue reading . . .

Free the Detergent!

by · Oct 2, 2024 5:08 pm

The San Diego Union-Tribune has this editorial, titled Endorsement: Yes on Prop. 36: Time to free the detergent.

The coming landslide win for Proposition 36 will be a triumph for truth over spin. The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board has long supported criminal justice reform. But in real time, we saw the obvious flaws of Proposition 47 — the November 2014 measure that Proposition 36 is meant to fix. It changed many “nonviolent” felonies into misdemeanors in a ham-handed way that incentivized certain crimes.

Eleven months later, The Washington Post dispatched a reporter to San Diego who wrote an unforgettable account showing the incredulity of law enforcement over the new status quo: “instead of arresting criminals and removing them from the streets, their officers have been dealing with the same offenders again and again. Caught in possession of drugs? That usually means a misdemeanor citation under Prop 47, or essentially a ticket. Caught stealing something worth less than $950? That means a ticket, too. Caught using some of that $950 to buy more drugs? Another citation.

Nothing has changed since then — unless you count the emergence of a cottage industry determined to depict Proposition 47 as good no matter what. So store clerks say they’ve stopped reporting thefts because there’s no point? It’s a blip. So store owners are spending heavily to lock up more goods than ever, including detergent? There’s no proof that’s necessary — the corporations in charge have an agenda.

Manipulation of crime statistics, one of our favorite subjects, enters into the picture: Continue reading . . .