Poll: Public Strongly Supports Police
A poll of 10,000 people conducted in July by The Democracy Fund and UCLA found that fairly large majorities of both Democrats and Republicans oppose defunding police departments. Lynn Vavreck and
Crimes Known to Police Continued Decline in 2019
The FBI has released its annual final report on crime for last year, Crime in the United States, 2019. Nationwide, the rates per 100,000 population decreased 1% for violent crime and 4.5% for property crime. This data set does not include crimes not reported to or otherwise known to the police. As we have discussed on this blog previously, the change of many crimes from felonies to misdemeanors is likely to decrease reporting as the police are less likely to take any worthwhile action.
As noted last year and in multiple previous years, California has not fully shared in the national crime decline in property crime since it started its decarceration project. Continue reading . . .
Double Murderer Executed
The federal government executed double-murderer Christopher Andre Vialva last Thursday. Jolie McCullough of the Texas Tribune reports that Vialva was convicted of the 1999 carjacking, robbery and murder of an Iowa couple on their way home from church. Because the murders occurred on federal land (Fort Hood) Vialva was prosecuted under federal law. During the carjacking, Vialva forced the young couple into the trunk of their car, then tried to withdraw money from their bank accounts and pawn the woman’s wedding ring. Eventually, Vialva shot both victims while they lay in the trunk, killing the husband, but the wife was still alive when he and his accomplices set the car on fire. In his appeal for clemency Vialva did not deny his guilt, but said that he was a redeemed man. His execution was uneventful.
Mobs, Myths, and Courage
Mob action is often premised on falsehoods. The most notorious in recent years was the “Hands Up” lie in the Ferguson, Missouri matter. See this post. Now we have the facts in the death of Breonna Taylor, and once again the mob has been calling for the prosecution of the wrong people. Today’s Profile in Courage award goes to Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron. Continue reading . . .
Judge Lagoa and the Recusal Smear
The confirmation process for Supreme Court Justices has gone far downhill over the years, beginning with the dirty attack on Judge Robert Bork in 1987. Anyone nominated to the high court can expect to be smeared. Now we seem to have gone a step further, where simply being on the “short list” brings out the smear-mongers.
Eleventh Circuit Judge Barbara Lagoa is on the short list. As far as I can determine from reading her opinions over the last two days, she appears to be a solid, mainstream jurist. She is under attack for not recusing herself from a case involving Florida’s felon re-enfranchising law. There is nothing to this attack. Continue reading . . .
Justice Ginsburg, RIP
My wife, Federalist Society co-founder and former Scalia clerk Lee Liberman Otis, wrote an appreciation of Justice Ginsburg that I’d like to share.
Justice Ginsburg, RIP
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died today at the age of 87. Nina Totenberg has this report at NPR. Justice Ginsburg often disagreed with CJLF’s positions and had a different philosophy of the proper way to interpret the Constitution. Even so, we respected the fact that she had a principled approach to judging, not merely voting for the argument that produced the result favored by those of a given ideology. Continue reading . . .
Survey of 2019 State Criminal Law Legislation
The Federalist Society has this white paper by Robert Alt surveying changes in criminal law in 2019. The most encouraging development comes from Alaska. That state’s legislature and governor realized that prior “reform” (i.e., soft on crime) legislation went too far and rolled it back substantially. California has an initiative on the November ballot that, if approved by the voters, would make modest roll-backs of the state’s ill-conceived Propositions 47 and 57 of earlier years. Continue reading . . .
Shocking News: Attorney General Claims to Be Head of the Justice Department
Like much of the press, the Washington Post has walked away from its honorable role as a liberal but generally honest reporter of the news, and has become instead a relentless bullhorn for the Biden campaign and anything it thinks will assist that campaign. Today’s breathless story starts off with, “Attorney General William P. Barr delivered a scathing critique of his own Justice Department on Wednesday night, insisting on his absolute authority to overrule career staff, who he said too often injected themselves into politics and went ‘headhunting’ for high-profile targets.”
What have we come to? The AG thinks he can overrule a GS 15? Gads, I need my smelling salts. Continue reading . . .
The Minneapolis Effect and America’s Murder Explosion
My longtime friend and former colleague (in the US Attorney’s Office for EDVA) Paul Cassell has a must read op-ed out today. Its title is, “Homicide Stats Show ‘Minneapolis Effect’.” The subtitle is, “In cities across the U.S., the shooting started when anti-police protests led officers to pull back.”
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