by Kent Scheidegger · Feb 4, 2020 1:31 pm
New York City has long been the exemplar of a big city that achieved big drops in it crime rate. Today, though, the NYPD released a disturbing report that crime in the month just ended is up nearly 17% over the same month the year before.
Robbery, burglary, assault, and grand larceny are all up substantially, and grand larceny auto is up a staggering 72%.
Murder is down 21% even though shootings are up 29%, prompting the Seinfeldian Question, “What’s up with that?”
by Michael Rushford · Feb 4, 2020 9:54 am
Killer of Five Faces Execution Thursday: A Texas man convicted of the 2002 murders of his wife, his 7-year-old and 9-month-old daughters, his sister in law and father in law, is scheduled for execution by lethal injection Thursday. Brian Bingamon of the Austin Chronicle reports that the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Abel Ochoa’s last appeal in October of 2019. Unless a lower court orders a stay or the state grants clemency, his execution will be carried out. At trial Ochoa claimed that he was suffering from a crack-cocaine induced delirium when he committed the murders, which included his reloading his gun, chasing down his 7-year-old daughter and shooting her four times. The jury took 10 minutes to unanimously find him guilty. On direct appeal and habeas corpus Ochoa claimed that his trial attorney was incompetent, the jury was biased, and that his alleged sexual abuse as a child and possible mental illness mitigated his responsibility for the murders.
Update: Ochoa was pronounced dead at 6:48 p.m Thursday.
by Michael Rushford · Feb 3, 2020 12:56 pm
CA Prop. 47 Enabled the New El Chapo: The Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) has flooded Los Angeles streets with drugs since passage of California’s Proposition 47. Bill Melugin of Fox News reports that the CJNG “is probably the most prolific cartel in Mexico,” according to the Los Angeles head of the Drug Enforcement Administration. The cartel is responsible for 1/3 of all the drugs entering the US and has an extensive network in Los Angeles, smuggling and distributing hundreds of pounds of methamphetamine every month–much of it to the city’s growing homeless population. Federal law enforcement considers the cartel’s leader, El Mencho, to be worse than the notorious El Chapo. The CEO of the Union Rescue Mission in downtown LA, Reverend Andy Bales, who lost his leg from infection after stepping in human feces, believes that the city’s drug/homeless crisis needs a National Guard response. A DEA official said that Proposition 47, which decriminalized drug use, played right into the cartel’s hands, by providing addicts with no reason to stop using drugs and no motivation to go to treatment. El Mencho was an illegal in California 30 years ago. He was deported back to Mexico after he was arrested on drug charges in San Francisco and Sacramento.
by Kent Scheidegger · Jan 31, 2020 3:31 pm
The U.S. Supreme Court has released its calendar of March oral arguments. Only one is an actual criminal case.
On March 23, the joined cases of United States v. Briggs, No. 19-108 and United States v. Collins, No. 19-184 will address the statute of limitations for rape under military law.
by Kent Scheidegger · Jan 31, 2020 2:46 pm
Today’s “how not to do it” lesson comes from our neighbors to the north. Stephane Giroux reports for CTV in Montreal:
A parolee charged with murder had been allowed by his case manager to meet women for sex.
In 2004, Eustachio Gallese killed his wife, Chantale Deschenes, by beating her with a hammer before repeatedly stabbing her. A judge sentenced him to life in prison in 2006. After serving 15 years, in Sept. 2019, Gallese was granted day parole. Last week, while out on parole, Gallese entered a Quebec City hotel where 22-year-old sex worker Marylene Levesque gave massages. Police later arrested and charged him with her murder.
Gallese was on parole despite a moderate risk of reoffending, his case manager had written.
by Michael Rushford · Jan 31, 2020 10:45 am
Georgia Executes Double Murderer: A Georgia man convicted in 1999 of the brutal murder of his ex-wife and her boyfriend was put to death Wednesday by lethal injection. Joshua Sharpe and Bill Rankin of the Atlanta Journal Constitution report that in 1967 Donnie Lance shot and killed his ex-wife’s boyfriend Dwight “Butch” Wood Jr. with a shotgun, then used the butt of the gun to beat Joy Lance to death. The woman’s face was so badly beaten it was unrecognizable. The Washington Post reports that jurors learned at trial that Lance had terrorized his ex-wife for months with beatings, strangulation, electric shocks, threats of death by handgun and chain-saw, and more. Witnesses testified that they had heard Lance threaten to kill his wife if she divorced him or started a romantic relationship with Wood.
by Kent Scheidegger · Jan 30, 2020 11:52 am
In the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, Congress clamped down hard on repeated habeas corpus petitions by prisoners. Under 28 U.S.C. §2244(b), “second or successive” petitions are only allowed under very narrow circumstances.
But what happens if a prisoner obtains partial relief from his judgment and a new judgment is entered? Does that reset the petition counter to zero, giving him full range to attack the judgment on any ground?
by Michael Rushford · Jan 30, 2020 10:12 am
Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, now a candidate for President, is apologizing for one of the most successful policies he supported when he was serving as Mayor. It was proactive policing that drove violent crime down in New York between 2002 and 2013, while Bloomberg was Mayor. In her piece in The Hill, Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald notes that the most valuable tool police used during that period was “stop, question and frisk.” Today as a candidate for President, Bloomberg is apologizing for allowing police to use that tool. “I got something important really wrong,” he said at the Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn. “I didn’t understand that back then, the full impact that stops were having on the black and Latino communities.”
by Michael Rushford · Jan 29, 2020 2:38 pm
In 2018 the California Legislature passed and Governor Brown signed SB 1391 into law. That bill removed the authority of District Attorneys and Superior Court Judges to try violent juvenile offenders under the age of 16 in adult court. While trying a defendant of that age was already quite rare, in some cases where the murder was particularly horrific and clearly planned, a trial in adult court would allow the killer to be sentenced to a long incarceration or even a life term. Murderers tried in juvenile court can only be held until age 25. An example of why this is important is the case of Daniel Marsh. In 2013 the 15 year-old stabbed to death and mutilated the bodies of an elderly couple in the small college town of Davis. Marsh admitted to he had butchered the couple because he wanted to know what it felt like.
by Kent Scheidegger · Jan 29, 2020 11:11 am
Bob Brody has this essay in the WSJ with the above title. The subtitle is “My great-grandfather refused to give $4 to a robber in 1926. Would I have done the same?”
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