A leading argument behind the current movement to limit or eliminate bail is that the traditional cash bail process discriminates against minority arrestees.  Tom Simonite of Wired reports that to fix this disparity,  many jurisdictions are utilizing computer software to peruse nine factors about an arrestee including age,  past convictions and current charges.  No data on an arrestee’s race are considered.   The Oakland, CA nonprofit  MediaJustice found that these algorithms are used in 46 states to guide judicial decisions on bail, sentencing, parole and probation.  Law enforcement representatives have been skeptical, noting that using software to decide which arrestees are held in jail or set free removes responsibility from those charged with making those decisions, who should be encouraged to err on the side of caution.  The software doesn’t consider public safety.

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Beginning in 2011, shortly after Jerry Brown began his third term as Governor, a series of bills he signed into law, and several ballot measures financed by progressive criminal justice reform advocates have changed California’s criminal justice system.  Since the late 1980s, state laws and policies, many adopted by the voters as ballot measures, reduced violent and property crime crime rates in California by 50% and homicide by more than two-thirds, by increasing sentences for repeat offenders and cracking down on quality of life crimes like drug use, vagrancy, vandalism and theft.  All of this has changed over the past nine years. Today, selling and using drugs, stealing property valued under $950, sleeping and going to the bathroom on city sidewalks and parks are no longer punishable offenses.  Repeatedly stealing cars, burglarizing businesses and beating your wife, girlfriend or children are no longer crimes that come with a prison sentence and some 30,000 criminals who were serving time for these crimes have been released back onto the streets, along with rapists and murderers that new laws have made eligible for early release.

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Nicholas Todd Sutton who, at age 18, killed his grandmother, a high school friend and a Knoxville contractor in 1979, then killed a fellow prison inmate in 1985, was executed in the electric chair at 7:28 p.m. last night.  The Tennessean reports  that Sutton, who found religion while his appeals dragged through the courts, told observers, “I’m just grateful to be a servant of God.”   Jack Durschlag of Fox News reports that Sutton’s killing spree began in 1979 when he knocked his grandmother Dorothy Sutton unconscious with a piece of firewood, wrapping her in garbage bags and chaining her to cinder blocks before throwing her alive into the Nolichucky River.  He later shot and killed Charles Almon, 46, and beat his friend Charles Large, 19, to death.

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A panel of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a District Court’s preliminary injunction to block enforcement of a Florida law that requires 17 ex-felons to fulfill the financial obligations of their sentences before they are allowed to vote.  The law was passed by the Florida Legislature last year to clarify a 2018 initiative constitutional amendment adopted by voters which gives felons the right to vote after they have competed “all the terms of their sentence including parole and probation.”  The legislative measure specified that fines and restitution are also among the terms of the sentence.  On January 16, the Florida Supreme Court issued an advisory opinion finding that fines and restitution are part of a criminal’s sentence, but did not address any federal constitutional issues.  In its Per Curiam opinion issued today the Circuit panel upheld the District Court injunction in a case where a group of 17 ex-felons have sued claiming that denying them the vote because they cannot afford to pay the fines and restitution required by their sentences, violates the 14th Amendment.  The panel determined that the plaintiffs had a “substantial likelihood of success on the merits” of this claim.  The injunction only allows the 17 ex-felons involved in the lawsuit to vote.  The state’s estimated 1.4 million felons who have not yet paid off their fines and restitution will be restricted from voting until the lawsuit is resolved.  The state intends to petition the Eleventh Circuit seeking en-banc review of the panel’s ruling.

Articles in the New York Times and the New York Daily News provide more evidence that criminal justice reform has become a top issue, especially in Democrat controlled communities.  The shift in majorities in the Virginia Legislature has sparked bills to allow the early release of murderers over 50-years-old and expand parole opportunities for criminals convicted of violent crimes.  The state had eliminated parole for most offenders in the 1990s to keep serious offenders off the streets but as Democrat Senator David Marsden notes, “People are now more likely to believe that people deserve a second chance.”

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