Reforming New York’s Bail Reform: A Public Safety-Minded Proposal

by · Mar 5, 2020 4:09 pm

Rafael Mangual has this issue brief for the Manhattan Institute with the above title.

After enacting a sweeping bail reform, New York lawmakers have drawn the ire of constituents who are troubled by the many stories of repeat and serious offenders—some with violent criminal histories—being returned to the street following their arrests. In the state’s biggest city, the public’s growing concerns are buttressed by brow-raising, if preliminary, crime data, amplifying calls for amending or repealing the bail reform.

Continue reading . . .

Alabama Murderer Facing Execution

by · Mar 5, 2020 2:26 pm

Nathaniel Woods, convicted in 2005 of the murders of three Birmingham police officers, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection tonight.  Bill Hutchinson of ABC news reports that death penalty opponents and some civil rights activists are demanding that Governor Kay Ivey grant Woods a reprieve.   A jury found that Woods and accomplice Kerry Spencer lured four officers serving an arrest warrant into a suspected crack house in Burmingham on June 17, 2004 where Spencer shot them all with a rifle, killing three.  The forth officer survived to testify at Woods’ trial.  On appeal Woods claimed that his trial attorney was ineffective and misinformed him about a possible plea bargain.  A 2016 Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals decision indicates that witnesses heard Woods threaten to kill the police if they came back to his house, and the he pointed out one of the officers coming in a back door so  Spencer could shoot him.  Among the celebrities calling Woods innocent and insisting his execution be halted is Kim Kardashian West.   Update:  Woods was pronounced dead at  9:01 PM Thursday.

State Identity Theft Law Not Preempted by Federal Immigration Law

by · Mar 3, 2020 10:10 am

Immigration is a subject fully within the authority of the federal government. A federal statute requires new employees to complete a form to confirm they are not unauthorized aliens. The law makes it a federal crime to provide false information on this form. It also preempts state laws imposing sanctions on employers for hiring unauthorized aliens.

A general Kansas law forbids identity theft. Can this law apply to an employee who put someone else’s Social Security number on the work authorization form and also on the tax withholding forms? The Supreme Court today said yes in a surprisingly close decision.

Continue reading . . .

Criminals, Parenting, and Release Proposals

by · Mar 2, 2020 4:22 pm

The soft-on-crime movement makes an emotional pitch to convince people to let more criminals out of prison by claiming that incarcerating a parent is necessarily bad for children.  I noted that the premise of this argument was very doubtful in this post last October, citing a newly released study.

Rafael Mangual has this article in the City Journal with the subtitle, Evidence suggests that children are often better off when criminal parents are imprisoned.

Continue reading . . .

No, misuse of ID info is not shoplifting

by · Mar 2, 2020 3:59 pm

California’s Proposition 47 created a new offense of shoplifting to deal with the overreach of charging people with burglary when they only walked in the open door of an open store to steal something, a crime which should have been charged as theft.

A creative defendant charged with misuse of personal information tried to get his crime reclassified as shoplifting, and a Court of Appeal panel actually bought that. Today, the California Supreme Court unanimously reversed.

Continue reading . . .

Supreme Math: 1791-1788=100

by · Mar 2, 2020 1:42 pm

In oral argument in the U.S. Supreme Court today, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said,

So that’s a vastly different question of whether the Suspension Clause –which predated the Due Process Clause by 100 years –the Suspension Clause, at the time, it was viewed as permitting anyone who had a legal claim to stay to file a habeas petition.

100 years?

Continue reading . . .

Rebuilding the Ninth Circuit

by · Mar 2, 2020 1:36 pm

Almost 40 years ago, one-term President Jimmy Carter completely changed the balance on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the largest and most litigious circuit in the country.   In 1978, after the Democrat majority in Congress expanded the 19-member court to 29, President Carter had the unprecedented opportunity to fill those 10 seats and replace another 5 judges who retired.  Carter did not just appoint liberal judges.  He appointed some of the most liberal judges ever to serve.   These new appointments sharply tilted the once-conservative court to the left, creating a Valhalla for criminal defendants and litigants seeking to advance progressive social causes through the courts.   Maura Dolan of the Los Angeles Times reports, that for the first time since 1981,  10 new appointments to the court by President Trump has significantly reduced the divide between Republican and Democrat judges.   “Ten new people at once sends a shock wave through the system,” one unnamed 9th Circuit judge said.

Continue reading . . .

SCOTUS Orders Monday

by · Mar 2, 2020 9:01 am

Today the U.S. Supreme Court released an orders list from last Friday’s conference. The Court took a new case on Armed Career Criminal Act sentencing to replace the deceased James Walker’s case. It relisted for this coming Friday cases to replace the withdrawn D.C. Sniper, Jr. case on juvenile life-without-parole sentencing. Finally, the Court passed, for now, on the question of whether bump stocks can be banned administratively without amending the relevant statute.

Continue reading . . .