More Misinformation From Biden Administration

by · Oct 22, 2024 11:42 am

Last week we learned that the FBI grossly under-reported violent crime data for 2022.  In October of 2023 the FBI issued a press release announcing that “national violent crime decreased an estimated 2.1% in 2022 compared to 2021 estimates.” The Biden administration took credit for this decline and, during the September 10 debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, ABC moderator David Muir interrupted Trump’s statement that crime was increasing to tell the audience that the “FBI says overall violent crime is coming down in this country.”   Recently the FBI quietly revised its data for 2022 with new numbers showing that violent crime actually increased by 4.5% that year, meaning that several thousand more murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults occurred.  Now, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report has blatantly mischaracterized school discipline rates. The report entitled “K-12  Education Nationally, Black Girls Receive More Frequent and More Severe Discipline in School than Other Girls,” suggests that schools systematically punish black girls for misbehavior more severely than girls of other races for the same types of offenses.

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U.S. Supreme Court Takes Up Supervised Release Revocation Case

by · Oct 21, 2024 9:27 am

The United States Supreme Court issued an orders list this morning, taking up one criminal case. In Esteras v. United States, No. 23-7483, the high court will ponder what factors a federal district court may consider when deciding whether to revoke the supervised release of a federal convict. It is, once again, a question of interpretation of federal criminal statutes which will have little, if any, impact on the state courts that handle most criminal cases in this country. Continue reading . . .

Shoplifters Gone Wild

by · Oct 18, 2024 2:55 pm

Marc Fisher has this story with the above title in The Atlantic, mirrored here on msn.com. It’s a long piece on the surge in shoplifting, well worth reading in its entirety. Here are a few highlights.

Whereas many on the right see the rise in shoplifting as proof of a nationwide moral collapse, many on the left deny that it’s even happening or that it is a meaningful problem. Shoplifting is one of the hardest crimes to measure, because only a tiny proportion of cases are ever reported to police.

Later in the article, the underreporting problem is backed up with striking evidence:

In one study, criminologists spent the spring of 2000 to the spring of 2001 monitoring surveillance video in a major national chain drugstore in Atlanta. They determined that about 20,000 incidents of shoplifting took place in that one store, compared with only about 25,000 larceny-theft cases reported to police in the entire city in 2001.

Wow. Actual incidents in a single store exceeded reported incidents in the entire city, and a large city at that.

Excuse-making from the cultural left is part of the problem. Continue reading . . .

Drugs, Treatment, Jail, and Indirect Consequences

by · Oct 18, 2024 11:58 am

The folks in favor of so-called criminal justice “reform” are fond of simplistic slogans such as “treatment, not jail” for drug offenders. However, as this story by Julie Watts at Sacramento’s CBS 13 indicates, “reform” measures can sometimes undermine treatment rather than promote it. This is one more example of a primary cause of bad policy — failure to consider the indirect consequences and considering only the direct consequences.

Once upon a time, drug courts were a key element of criminal justice reform. These specialized courts provide an alternative to people arrested for drug crimes, either possession or low-level dealing. If they agree to treatment and follow through to completion of the program, the criminal charges will be dropped. As described in the story, many people credit these programs with savings their lives.

But what happens when the criminal penalties for low-level drug offenses are lowered so far that the incentive vanishes? Continue reading . . .

Person of the Year

by · Oct 16, 2024 11:04 am

The Metropolitan News-Enterprise, a law-oriented newspaper in LA, has designated six Persons of the Year. Among them is our friend and sometimes co-counsel Kathleen Cady.

Cady, [MetNews Co-Publisher Jo-Ann] Grace remarked, has “selflessly devoted untold hours to her attempts, on a pro bono basis, to vindicate victims’ rights.” A Los Angeles County deputy district attorney for 31 years, she is now in private practice with the Dordulian Law Group in Glendale.

Congratulations to Kathy for a well-deserved recognition.

The Policies Enabling Illegal Alien Street Gangs

by · Oct 15, 2024 2:31 pm

During an interview on ABC ‘s Sunday talk show “This Week”  correspondent Martha Raddatz decided to fact check Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance regarding former president Trump’s indictment of the Biden/Harris administration’s open border policy for allowing the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to take over parts of Aurora, Colorado. “The incidents were limited to a handful of apartment complexes—apartment complexes and the mayor said, ‘Our dedicated police officers have acted on those concerns,’ ” Raddatz, told Vance. “Martha, do you hear yourself?” replied Vance. “Only ‘a handful of apartment complexes’ in America were taken over by Venezuelan gangs, and Donald Trump is the problem and not Kamala Harris’ open border”?  The exchange highlights the major media’s effort to minimize policies by progressive politicians which have caused unprecedented increases in crime nationwide, and particularly in sanctuary states.

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Glossip Case in SCOTUS Tomorrow

by · Oct 8, 2024 11:11 am

The notorious case of Richard Glossip will be heard in the U.S. Supreme Court tomorrow. With the Oklahoma Attorney General supporting Glossip, the court appointed an amicus, Christopher Michel, to defend the decision of the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals. CJLF’s amicus brief in the case is here. Our press release is here. Utah law professor Paul Cassell has a three-part series of posts at the Volokh Conspiracy titled Glossip v. Oklahoma: The Story Behind How a Death Row Inmate and the Oklahoma A.G. Concocted a Phantom “Brady Violation” and Got Supreme Court Review here, here, and here. Continue reading . . .

Politicizing Government Data

by · Oct 8, 2024 11:09 am

The following article was published in the October 8, 2024 edition of the California Globe:

There was a time when data compiled by government agencies could be trusted. For generations federal labor statistics, and data on reported crimes, commerce, health, finance, industry, agriculture and even weather were relied upon by both the government and private sector to make policy decisions effecting millions of Americans. It has become apparent in recent years that government data can be manipulated, or even adjusted to favor a political agenda. We learned over the summer, for example, that the U.S. Department of Labor’s monthly jobs report overstated the number of people finding employment by over 818,000 jobs so far this year.

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Supreme Court Takes Up Law Enforcement Related Cases

by · Oct 4, 2024 10:19 am

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a short orders list from Monday’s pre-term conference, adding 15 cases to the docket for the October 2024 Term. A much longer list of cases turned down will likely be issued next Monday at the formal opening of the term.

Continuing the high court’s frustrating lack of interest in criminal law, the list includes only one actual criminal case, Thompson v. United States, No. 23-1095. This case raises the question of whether the federal law against false statements to financial institutions and federal agencies extends to misleading half truths. An aspect of the case that increases its media profile is the fact that defendant Patrick Daley Thompson is the grandson of Chicago’s notoriously corrupt mayor Richard J. Daley and the nephew of later mayor Richard M. Daley.

There are also several law-enforcement-related civil cases, a category that gets more interest from SCOTUS:

Gutierrez v. Saenz, No. 23-7809, is a federal civil rights suit regarding a Texas capital case. It presents somewhat complex issues regarding DNA testing, standing, and distinctions between innocence claims and sentencing claims.

Barnes v. Felix, No. 23-1239, is a police use-of-force case involving the “moment of threat doctrine.” As described by the petitioner (i.e., the plaintiff suing the police officer), this approach “evaluates the reasonableness of an officer’s actions only in the narrow window when the officer’s safety was threatened, and not based on events that precede the moment of the threat.” In the Fifth Circuit, Judge Higginbotham wrote a concurrence to his own majority opinion asking the Supreme Court to resolve the circuit split on this issue. Continue reading . . .

Murderer of UCLA Graduate Student Sentenced to LWOP

by · Oct 3, 2024 1:28 pm

An habitual criminal convicted of the 2022 stabbing murder of a 24-year-old graduate student has been sentenced life without the possibility of parole (LWOP) by a Los Angeles Judge. Steve Sorace of Fox News reports that the murderer, 34-year-old Shawn Laval Smith, presented an insanity defense at trial, which the judge rejected. A 2022 story in the New York Post on Smith’s arrest reports that Smith came to California from Charleston, South Carolina in 2019 while free on $50,000 bail on charges of shooting into a vehicle with a child inside during a road rage  incident. He already had convictions for illegal firearm possession and attacking a Charleston police officer.

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