Attempted Robbery Is Not Violent?

by · Jun 21, 2022 9:02 am

The U.S. Supreme Court continued its chip-by-chip undermining of federal sentence enhancements for violent crimes, making one more narrowing of the definition of “violent felony.” In United States v. Taylor, No. 20-1459, it’s attempted robbery under the Hobbs Act that bites the dust. This will come as no surprise to those who have watched the steady parade of decisions excluding from the term “violent felony” crimes that common sense would tell us are violent. See, e.g., this post. Continue reading . . .

Court: Police Questioning of Minorities is Illegal

by · Jun 13, 2022 11:37 am

On Friday morning, April 9, 2019,  a police officer patrolling a high crime neighborhood in Pierce County, Washington, noticed a car parked near the entrance to a church with both the driver and the passenger asleep.  The officer knocked on the window for a while and the driver slowly woke up.  The officer asked the driver, Palla Sum, if he owned the car, and the driver responded that the car was not his.  The officer then asked both the driver and the passenger for their names and date of birth.  Sum gave the officer a false name and birthday, the passenger gave his correct name and date.   As the officer returned to his patrol car to check the names, Sum drove away at high speed, running stop signs and multiple red lights before crashing onto a yard.   Police found registration in the car indicating the Sum was the owner.   They also found a handgun.  In a unanimous ruling last Thursday, the Washington Supreme Court held that, because Sum was a minority (Asian), the police questioning of him was illegal.

Continue reading . . .

Go Ahead and Say “Never” on Bivens Extensions

by · Jun 10, 2022 11:32 am

Way back in Reconstruction, Congress created a civil cause of action against state and local officials who violate federal constitutional rights. Today, that statute is 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Congress did not, however, create a parallel right to sue federal agents. In 1971, the Supreme Court made one up anyway in the case of Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents.

The Court extended Bivens to a couple of new contexts in the early years afterward but soon came to realize it had overreached. In Wednesday’s decision in Egbert v. Boule, Justice Thomas notes in the opinion of the Court, “Over the past 42 years, however, we have declined 11 times to imply a similar cause of action for other alleged constitutional violations.” In Egbert, the Court declined to extend Bivens to a claim of allegedly excessive force allegedly used by a Border Patrol agent against an American citizen on U.S. soil. Continue reading . . .

Central Valley DA Race Still Pending Due to Ballot Problem

by · Jun 9, 2022 4:41 pm

We previously reported a result in the race for District Attorney for San Joaquin County in California’s Central Valley. It turns out that was premature because of a massive problem with misprinted mail-in ballots with faulty bar codes. Two days after the election, only a fifth of the total vote has been reported. I have temporarily unpublished the post and will republish it with any necessary corrections when we have a more reliable result.

Chesa Boudin Recalled in a Landslide

by · Jun 7, 2022 9:42 pm

Only 45% of the vote is counted at this point, but the NYT has already called the race  —  a landslide win for the recall of pro-criminal San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin.  Boudin’s disastrous policies have been recounted by Kent and Mike many times here.  The people who had to live with them have had enough.  At this point, the recall is winning by slightly more than 3-2.

For what is probably the most liberal city in the country to recall a “progressive prosecutor” by a margin this big, and despite a ton of Soros money, should send shock waves through the forces that want criminals to have a field day.

I don’t know who’s listening, but I’ll bet George Gascon is one of them.

Cal. Law Giving Parole to LWOP-Sentenced Juveniles Struck Down

by · Jun 7, 2022 3:12 pm

A California Superior Court judge ruled Friday that a statute passed by the Legislature to give parole eligibility to murderers sentenced to life without parole for murders committed before their eighteenth birthdays is unconstitutional. The law providing for juvenile life-without-parole (JLWOP) sentences was enacted by the people by initiative, and the legislative statute ran afoul of a state constitutional provision limiting the Legislature’s ability to amend initiative statutes.

Section 190.5(b) of the Penal Code was enacted by Proposition 115 of 1990. For the types of first-degree murder that would be capital crimes if committed by an adult, that law gives the trial judge discretion to choose between a sentence of life without parole or 25 years to life. In 2017, the California Legislature enacted SB 394, which added subdivision (b)(4) to Penal Code section 3051. That subdivision authorizes parole after 25 years to inmates sentenced to life without parole under section 190.5(b). The bill’s sponsor told the Legislature that this change was necessary because the U.S. Supreme Court had outlawed life without parole for juveniles in Miller v. Alabama (2012). That was a patent falsehood. Miller held no such thing. Last year in Jones v. Mississippi, the high court further clarified that for juvenile life without parole “a State’s discretionary sentencing system is both constitutionally necessary and constitutionally sufficient.” Continue reading . . .

What Actually Works to Suppress “Gun Violence”?

by · Jun 2, 2022 3:27 pm

That is the title of my post today on Substack.  Frequent readers here will have no problem figuring out the answer.  What works is not gun control (which has no predictable effect on the number of murders nor the murder rate), nor going soft on crime, whether it be called “criminal justice reform” or something else equally fuzzy and opaque.

From more than fifty years’ experience, we know that what works is getting tough and staying tough.  The decades of evidence simply leave no room for doubt.

Gascon: People Behind His Recall Are “Fear Mongering”

by · Jun 2, 2022 2:50 pm

With just over a month to go for gathering signatures to qualify his recall for the ballot, Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon is claiming that the effort is being driven by fear mongering “conservative, very right wing forces.”  Ronn Blitzer of Fox News reports that Gascon’s remarks were made in a recent podcast on “How We Win,”  a pro-democrat site.   “They have sort of created this false narrative about this is anti-safety, with is kind of the same fear-mongering tactics frankly that you can go back to the Nixon era, right, you now Willie Horton.” said Gascon.   The only thing wrong with this is that none of it is true.

Continue reading . . .