Monthly Archive: December 2024

Progress and Problems in Philadelphia

by · Dec 27, 2024 11:28 am

In 2023, Cherelle Parker won the Democratic primary for mayor of Philadelphia, running as more in favor of law enforcement than the other candidates. As CBS reported in May 2023, she promised to crack down on drug sales in the infested Kensington neighborhood, supported hiring more police officers, and opposed the absurd “defund the police” movement. The general election was a foregone conclusion in this heavily Democratic city.

As Mayor Parker closes out her first year, how much progress has there been? Some, to her credit, but not enough. The Philadelphia Inquirer had this story last Sunday.

Since January, the Parker administration has put 75 new police officers on the street, quashed homeless encampments, and increased narcotics arrests as it tries to respond to Kensington as if an open-air drug market had opened in Rittenhouse Square.

But the crackdown hasn’t been as swift or forceful as many residents had hoped.

An Inquirer analysis of police department data found that Kensington saw a steep reduction in gun violence, in keeping with a historic decline citywide. But the quality-of-life crimes and nuisance issues that plague the neighborhood have not improved, and have instead followed the familiar pattern of policing in Kensington: Old problems just move to new places.

What is holding up progress? Limited resources, as always, are a factor. Police can only make so many arrests when the jails are full. But curiously the Inquirer doesn’t even mention the District Attorney. The Wall Street Journal addresses that aspect in this editorial. Continue reading . . .

Biden Pardon Misuse Escalates to Murderers

by · Dec 23, 2024 1:14 pm

President Biden’s misuse of the pardon power during the post-election period continues. He began with his influence-peddling, cocaine-snorting son, continued with a variety of undeserving miscreants, noted here, and now has expanding to reducing the sentences of 37 murderers. Jess Bravin has this story in the WSJ:

“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden said.

Mistake? Biden is the one who has un-condemned these justly sentenced murderers. He is the one who has compounded the “unimaginable and irreparable loss.” This move is not based on any individual problems with the cases but only on long-standing criticisms of capital punishment. So why didn’t Mr. Biden do this much earlier? Like, before the election? Because he knew that would have diminished his own electoral chances, before he dropped out, or his party’s afterward.

The 3:25 pm ET version of the WSJ story has these reactions:

“Joe Biden is using his last days in office to spare the worst monsters in America,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) said on X. “Democrats can’t even defend Biden’s outrageous decision as some kind of principled, across-the-board opposition to the death penalty since he didn’t commute the three most politically toxic cases.”

Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, called the commutations “a gross miscarriage of justice.” Scheidegger, whose group advocates for crime victims and supports capital punishment, said the Constitution should be amended “to suspend the pardon power during the lame-duck period, as that is when the worst abuses occur.”

Continue reading . . .

Biden Commutes the Death Sentences of 37 Murderers

by · Dec 23, 2024 11:47 am

Outgoing President Joe Biden is commuting the death sentences of 37 of America’s worst murderers, a move praised by death penalty opponents. Each will now serve life in prison without the possibility of parole (LWOP). Elizabeth Pritchett of Fox News reports that several of the murderers were gang members who killed rivals involved in drug trafficking. For example:

Drug lord Kaboni Savage murdered or directed someone else to murder 12 people during a 16-year period–including an arson that killed six members of a federal informant’s family.

Continue reading . . .

Two Days After Proposition 36 Became Law, Thieves Are Going to Jail

by · Dec 20, 2024 1:14 pm

In California’s capital city, police have pounced on thieves and druggies two days after the new tough-on-crime initiative, Proposition 36, became law. Michelle Bandur of KCRA News reports that on Thursday Sacramento deputies arrested 31 suspected thieves for shoplifting with three facing felonies under the new law.

Outside a retail store, deputies arrest a woman they say changed clothes inside the store. She told the deputies she has been arrested before and they explained the new law and how she will be going to jail, instead of getting a ticket. The law also says a previous misdemeanor in another state counts toward the two previous charges.

Continue reading . . .

DA Recused in Trump Georgia Case

by · Dec 20, 2024 4:58 am

Yesterday, a divided panel of the Georgia Court of Appeals removed Atlanta DA Fani Willis from the case against President-elect Trump and others, reversing a trial court decision not to do so. The opinion is here.

Regardless of what one thinks of the merits of the underlying case, this decision strikes me as correct. DA Willis’s shenanigans severely undercut public confidence in this prosecution. “Odor of mendacity,” as the trial court described it, is an understatement. DAs have been recused for far less. The case in New York, on the other hand, is even worse, one of the clearest cases of prosecutor bias I have ever seen. Continue reading . . .

Indiana Executes Murderer of Four

by · Dec 18, 2024 1:19 pm

An Indiana man who killed four people, including his brother, in 1997 was executed early this morning. CBS News reports that Joseph Corcoran received a lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital and was pronounced dead a few minutes later.

Facts taken from a unanimous Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals decision upholding his death sentence indicate that on July 26, 1997, Corcoran was in a bedroom at his sister’s home in Fort Wayne when he thought he heard his brother, future brother-in-law, and two friends talking about him downstairs.  Angry,  he loaded his rifle and confronted the four men, shooting his brother, his sister’s fiancé, and one friend at close range, he then chased the other friend into the kitchen and shot him in the head. At trial, Corcoran’s defense argued that he was upset about having to find a new home after his sister’s wedding.

Continue reading . . .

Corrupt “Kids for Cash” Judge Granted Clemency

by · Dec 15, 2024 6:00 pm

President Biden’s grant of mass clemency last week did not initially generate the degree of controversy as his earlier pardon of his son, partly because most people were not familiar with the cases. But as individual cases in this mass clemency are examined, very dubious examples are starting to emerge.

WaPo columnist Heather Long is appalled at one of the cases. “My jaw dropped when I saw Michael Conahan, a former judge involved in a notorious ‘kids for cash’ scandal in Pennsylvania, among the nearly 1,500 people President Joe Biden granted clemency to last week…. Conahan and fellow judge Mark Ciavarella Jr. were accused of receiving cash kickbacks in exchange for helping to construct two for-profit juvenile detention facilities in Luzerne County and then sentencing young people to those facilities to keep them full.”

Not only was the judge corruptly taking money to send delinquents to private rather than public lock-ups. That would have been bad enough, but it was much worse than that.

To maximize the payout, they often gave kids the harshest possible sentence. Young people who were first-time offenders and probably should have received a warning or community service would end up locked up. Some were younger than 13. What the judges did caused tremendous harm to thousands of young people and their families. One young man died by suicide. Many youths became depressed and dropped out of high school.

How did such an undeserving miscreant receive the grace of presidential clemency? This is, once again, a case insufficient investigation by an outgoing executive hurriedly handing out clemency during his “lame duck” period. Continue reading . . .

Trump Picks Freedom Fighter to Head Civil Rights Division

by · Dec 12, 2024 11:38 am

President-elect Donald Trump has picked California Attorney Harmeet Dhillon to serve as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights.  Evan Symon of the California Globe reports that over the past several years Dhillon;

helped lead lawsuits over California violating federal law over not verifying voter citizenship, and during the COVID-19 pandemic, sued the state and Governor Gavin Newsom over COVID school closings and re-openings, as well as over the state giving unemployment funds to illegal immigrants. She even made national headlines once again for helping defeat an outdoor dining ban in Los Angeles County in 2020. In addition, she started up her non-profit group, Center for American Liberty in 2018, taking on many cases that involved violations of free speech and civil liberties.

Continue reading . . .

New York DA Alvin Bragg Strikes Out Again

by · Dec 9, 2024 3:59 pm

In New York City, illegal alien gangs roam the streets looking for people to rob while mentally ill repeat offenders assault innocent commuters on the subways. As this goes on, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg releases repeat offenders hours after they assault or rob someone and typically declines to prosecute them. Yet, if a 61-year-old bodega employee defends himself against a violent repeat offender attacking him and the offender dies, Bragg prosecutes the victim. The attacker was black and the Hispanic employee spent a week in jail until a judge dismissed Bragg’s second-degree murder charge.

Today, a New York City jury acquitted Daniel Penny, who grabbed mentally ill repeat-offender Jordan Neely, who was threatening to attack subway riders.  Penny held Neely in a choke hold until he blacked out. Neely, who was high on drugs, died.

Continue reading . . .