In a divided decision announced today the Arkansas Supreme Court has upheld a condemned murderer’s request to end the appeal of his conviction and sentence.   Andrew DeMillo of the Associated Press reports that Jerry Lard, convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of a police officer during a traffic stop in 2011, was found competent by the court to waive his right to post conviction relief.  Lard’s counsel argued that a mental review by a psychologist had concluded that Lard suffered from mild intellectual disability which should make him ineligible for execution.  The court held that because an execution date had not yet been set, the question of Lard’s eligibility for execution was not yet ripe for review.  Dashcam video from Officer Jonathan Schmidt’s patrol car showed Lard shooting him in the face, and the officer can later be heard begging for his life, before he was killed.

Progressive San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who took office in January, announced policy changes Friday to reduce racial disparities in arrests and sentencing.  Mary Jane Johnson of the San Francisco Examiner reports that Boudin’s office will no longer prosecute for drugs, guns or anything else, including a nuclear device, found during  “pretextual” traffic stops, and will not seek sentencing increases for habitual felons or gang members.  The new policy adopts reforms recommended by the Obama Justice Department in 2016 to address racial bias in policing.

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The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a habitual felon’s challenge to the sentence he received under Armed Career Criminal Act.  Alexandra Jones & Tim Ryan of Courthouse News report that in Borden v. United States, a criminal with three prior convictions for aggravated assault, claims that the nine-year sentence he received as a felon in possession of a firearm under the Act violated his right to due process.  The Act defines crimes involving a “reckless trigger” as crimes of violence subject to sentence enhancements.  Borden argues that a divide among the federal circuits on Act’s enforcement required a Supreme Court review of his constitutional challenge.   The case will be argued this fall.

The  early warnings about New York’s lenient bail reform law, which took effect in January, have come true according to a Fox News story published today.   The New York Police Department reported a 22.5% increase in major crime in February, compared to last year.  While murder was down, robbery, assault, burglary, grand larceny and auto thefts were all up. The Department noted that in the first 58 days of the year, 482 offenders arrested for felonies were set free under the new law and then rearrested for committing 846 new crimes, 299 of which were major crimes.  According to police, all of these offenders could have been held in jail prior to bail reform.