Crime and Consequences

Ninth Circuit Judges Reinhardt and Paez have been reversed again. This time by ... [drum roll] ... Judges Reinhardt and Paez. Hat tip: Decision of the Day.

Lionel Mendez was pulled over by two Phoenix officers for not having a valid license plate. They talked to him during the stop, and he said he had been a gang member and done prison time. They asked if he had weapons in the car, and he admitted he did. The original opinion concluded, "Mendez’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated when he was subjected to interrogation by the officers that exceeded the scope of the traffic stop." Judge Tallman's dissent began, "Here we go again."

Today the panel withdrew the original opinion and replaced it with a new one, which concludes,

We hold that the officers’ questioning of Mendez did not extend the duration of a lawful stop. For this reason, we also hold that the expanded questioning need not have been supported by separate reasonable suspicion.

The original opinion failed to take into account the Supreme Court decision in Muehler v. Mena, which reversed a Ninth Circuit decision on similar reasoning. Mena, BTW, was written by Judge Pregerson, joined by a visiting senior judge and ... bonus points for guessing.

Some Ninth Circuit judges consider being reversed by the Supreme Court to be a "badge of honor," but even a badge of honor can cease to be memorable when it is bestowed too often.

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 05:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Today was a conference day at the U.S. Supreme Court. No orders list emerged today, so we can expect it Monday.

Criminal cases on SCOTUSblog's "reasonable chance" list include Patrick v. Smith, No. 06-523, yet another Ninth Circuit nullification of the deference standard of AEPDA, and Beard v. Michael, No. 06-710, on whether a mentally competent death penalty "volunteer" can be thwarted by his former attorneys. Berger v. Arizona, No. 06-349, on a sentence of effective LWOP for possession of kiddie porn, previously noted here and here, was relisted from the week before. At the opposite end from the "reasonable chance" cases is the pro se rehearing petition of Lonnie Burton, of Burton v. Stewart infame.

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 04:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Cal. lethal injection deliberations can remain closed to the public, at least for now, Judge Jeremy Fogel ruled. David Kravets has this report for AP.

Jailed for over a year by accident, a homeless and mentally disabled man named Edward Perez a.k.a. "Edward Hammer Perez" was left in Lake County, Indiana jail 17 months after his release date for stealing Pepsi from a Wal-Mart. The AP story explained that Perez's attorney, Fred Flores, Judge Sheila Moss, and Perez's psychiatrist, believed he was already out. Perez was sent to a mental health facility on the 7th.

Spanking Ban Dropped San Francisco Assemblywoman, Sally Lieber is backing down from her proposed legislation on making the spanking of a child a criminal offense. Instead, Lieber proposed on Thursday making punishments such as "hitting with a belt, switch, or stick as unjustifiable and grounds for prosecution, probation or parental time-out," explained Aaron C. Davis' story. Lieber's new proposal is still under scrutiny, however, for problems such as wrongful prosecution of parents mentioned by Assemblyman Chuck Devore.

Flashers could have to register as sex offenders in New York under a proposal by City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. An AP story by Sara Kugler reported that a man in Queens had recently flashed two 9 year old girls and an 11 year old boy, then sexually assaulted a 13 year old girl. That was one of the reasons why Vallone is pushing for "public lewdness" to be a registry offense.

$5 million of California's grant funds are going to six sheriff's departments in order to "monitor, investigate, apprehend and prosecute habitual sex offenders in California" says this report. Specifically, the money goes to the departments' Sexual Assault Felony Enforcement (SAFE) Program which better prepares officers for tracking sex offenders.

Housing bill for sex offenders passed. A story from (WMC-TV) reports that the Arkansas House passed a bill that stops sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of their victims. The bill won by a 93-0 vote and is waiting for Senate approval.

Posted by CJLF Staff at 02:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A very interesting development (in my opinion) in the Duke Rape Case an be found here. Obviously, the Duke case is very controversial and there are hot feelings on both sides. But if the story is true, it demonstrates how the politics of crime, race, and sex has infected academia far too much.

Posted by Steven K. Erickson at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Early Release for California prisoners in order to relieve prison over-crowding is now an option that Gov. Schwarzenegger is considering due to the pressured deadline set by federal judges. Supposedly "non-violent" offenders will be the candidates for the early release plan in order to prevent intervention from the federal courts as reported here by Mark Martin. The assumption that criminals specialize and that a person who is in for a "nonviolent" crime does not commit violent crimes is dubious.

The deceptively named group "Taxpayers for Improving Public Safety" issued a press release denouncing "scare tactics" intended to convince the Legislature and the judiciary to allow transfers and construction of additional cells. The release contains this revealing line: "We should all recognize that although at first blush the release of thousand's [sic] of inmates may sound like a wonderful thing...."

Juror Questions: The Supreme Court of Arkansas ruled that judges are acting improperly when allowing questions from jurors to be posed to witnesses and that this practice must end. The order states that this type of questioning "may cause delay, prejudice or error" as reported here by AP.

Racial Discrimination during jury selection is the reasoning a Hinds County Circuit Court Judge gave when he threw out Elicia Hughes' murder conviction and ordered a new trial. The District Attorney who tried the case was surprised and stated in an article by Jimmie E. Gates that witnessing a trial court judge order a new trial before an appeal was a first for her. The judge believed that a mistake was made early in the trial therefore exercised the right to correct it; however, the DA plans to re-try Hughes in the near future.

Posted by CJLF Staff at 09:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

There’s been a lot of discussion about child pornography statutes, including the 200 year sentence of an Arizona teacher for possession of such materials (details here). But a few new worldwide developments highlight some interesting differences:

• This story is quite interesting. Two teenagers (ages 16 & 17) took some nude photos of themselves and emailed them to each other. Somehow they were discovered and a criminal prosecution followed for production and possession of child pornography. There was no evidence that the defendant (apparently only the female was charged) had distributed the images outside of her boyfriend and the only images in question were of her. Under a Florida precedent, the teens could not be charged for having sex, but the Florida First District Court of Appeals upheld the child pornography prosecution. Thus, the defendant will endure the label of being a sex offender for life because she took some nude photos of herself. Update: The opinion is here; the child abuse chapter of Florida Statutes is here.

• This story reports on a possible new law in Hungary which would allow personal possession of child pornography for images of children aged 14-17 years. Many argue that much of the child pornography is produced and distributed from Russia and Europe (and it was briefly legal in Denmark back in the 1970s), thus, this development is curious.

• Finally, this story, reports that the Netherlands may prosecute virtual child pornography under existing laws. Of course, the Supreme Court struck down a similar law in Ashcroft v. The Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234 (2002).

Posted by Steven K. Erickson at 08:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

In 1999, Frank Cobb, 71, and his wife, Bertha, 61, returned home to find a burglar there. He tied them up, shot them both in the head, and raped Mrs. Cobb. Firefighters found their bodies in the burning house. The only just punishment for such a crime was carried out today. The AP story is here. The Fifth Circuit opinion is here. There is no doubt of guilt in this case, as it was proved by DNA from the rape, and Anderson admitted guilt in an interview last week.

The Texas DCJ website indicates that Newton Anderson was received there in May, 2000, so it appears that the total review from sentence to execution was completed in less than seven years. That is getting close to what should be the norm in cases such as this.

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 06:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The "bottom side" briefs in the Supreme Court case of Fry v. Pliler, No. 06-5247, have been filed. Our collection of the briefs is available here. We have also uploaded the Joint Appendix, which includes the unpublished opinions of both the state and federal appellate courts and the federal district court. The petitioner seeks to carve out an exception to the harmless error rule of Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U.S. 619 (1993).

In 1967, the Supreme Court held in Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, that California could not apply its long-established harmless error standard to federal constitutional errors. The long-established federal standard of Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750 (1946), whether "the error had substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the jury's verdict," was not good enough, either. Chapman required "the beneficiary of a constitutional error to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the error complained of did not contribute to the verdict obtained."

Drawing such a line between constitutional and nonconstitutional errors would have made some sense in the days when only fundamental errors going to the heart of the fairness of the proceeding were considered constitutional, but that day was already past when Chapman was decided. The Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule was already excluding evidence for reasons having nothing whatever to do with the fairness of the trial, and the Miranda rule was tossing out confessions regardless of how clearly voluntary they were. Even so, Chapman is precedent, and the Court has shown no inclination to overrule it.

In 1993, the Court asked in Brecht if it was bound to apply Chapman on habeas corpus as well as on direct review of state judgments. The Court held it was not and decided that the Kotteakos standard was better suited to the "secondary and limited" proceeding of habeas corpus. That proceeding is not for the purpose of providing a second appeal, but rather to fix grievous wrongs. A technical error that was unlikely to have made any difference does not qualify.

In the course of the discussion, the Brecht Court noted that the state courts had previously considered the harmlessness of the error under the Chapman standard. The Eighth Circuit alone has held that Brecht is limited to that situation, and Chapman still applies when the state court, for whatever reason, did not do a Chapman harmless error analysis. All the other circuits to squarely address the question have gone the other way.

That issue should present the Court with little difficulty. The language of Brecht itself is clear enough that its rule applies to all federal habeas cases. The rule it created was not a rule of deference to the state court decision. Congress would enact that rule three years later. The primary rationale of Brecht was limitation of the drastic remedy of collateral attack on a final judgment to cases that really deserve it.

The Fry case contains an interesting wrinkle, though, in that the underlying rule is that of Chambers v. Mississippi, 410 U.S. 284 (1973). Can a Chambers violation ever be harmless?

For most rules, a finding of error must be followed by an inquiry as to whether the error was harmless. There are two classes where this is not necessary, which I call the "error is never harmless" group and the "harmless is never error" group. The first group is structural errors such as a complete denial of counsel. The second group consists of rules where harmfulness is built into the definition of the rule. For example, there is no such thing as a harmless Brady error — failure to disclose material exculpatory evidence — because if the failure to disclose was harmless then the evidence wasn't material, and there was no constitutional duty to disclose it in the first place. See Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U.S. 419, 436 (1995).

In United States v. Scheffer, 523 U.S. 303, 315-317 (1998) the Court reminded us that the Chambers line does not steamroller the entire rules of evidence and give criminal defendants carte blanche to introduce anything and everything. Only where the exclusion "undermined the fundamental elements of the defendant's defense" is there a constitutional error. If that is the threshold to be met to show an error, how could the error then be harmless under Brecht/Kotteakos?

Counsel for Fry protests that the Ninth Circuit's finding of Chambers error is inconsistent with its finding that the error was harmless. He has a point.  But which of those two decisions was wrong? The answer is fact-intense, and the facts of this case are complex.

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 05:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

1964 Klan case: A federal judge in Jackson, Mississippi refused to throw out federal kidnapping charges against a reputed Klansman in connection with the 1964 deaths of Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee, according to this AP story. Kidnapping was a federal capital offense in 1964, but Congress made it noncapital in 1972. Federal law has no statute of limitations for capital offenses, but the usual limit for noncapital cases is 5 years. See 18 U.S.C. §§ 3281, 3282(a). The judge held that the 1972 repeal did not impose a time limit retroactively on earlier cases.

Early Intervention System for the San Francisco Police Department was approved Wednesday by the Police Commission. An article by Susan Sward of the San Francisco Chronicle noted: "the planned computerized system will track use of force, citizen complaints, internal department complaints, officer involved shootings whether anyone is hit or not, legal claims and law suits against officers on-duty accidents and vehicle pursuits." Supervisors will be able to identify problems with officers' conduct faster.

Legislative hearing on the Death Penalty in Georgia Tuesday showed mixed views. Monica Lorraine's (WMGT-TV) report explained that the reform would allow the death penalty in cases without a unanimous jury.

Tennessee's sex offender registry list could double by adding out of state offenders "regardless of when and where they were convicted," reported here by Adam Longo. His report also shows statistics on the amount of sex offenders in different counties, besides those registered. The proposal however is under scrutiny because it is supposedly the first "online sex offender registry that would apply retroactively." An anonymous "local advocate" says Smith v. Doe, 538 U.S. 84 (2003) is distinguishable.

Posted by CJLF Staff at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Kathleen Culhane was arraigned in Sacramento today on 45 counts of forgery, filing false documents, and perjury. She is accused of forging the signatures of jurors and witnesses to false affidavits in the cases of four California death row inmates, according to this report by Don Thompson of AP.

One of them was the notorious Michael Morales case. Morales murdered a 17-year-old girl 26 years ago. "San Joaquin County prosecutors triggered the state's investigation of Culhane after they produced statements from jurors who swore they had never spoken with her and supported the death sentence for Morales."

The California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice intends to look at prosecutor misconduct on its next agenda. When are they going to look at defense misconduct?

Update: More coverage by Bob Egelko in the SF Chron, Louis Sahagun in the LA Times, and Scott Smith in the Stockton Record

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 05:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

In Wallace v. Kato, the Supreme Court delved once again into the problem of the same constitutional claim being at issue in a state criminal case and a civil suit brought by the criminal-case defendant against people involved in his arrest or prosecution. It has been a thorny problem over the years.

Andre Wallace was arrested for the murder of John Handy in 1994, and he confessed while in custody. A state appellate court found that he had been arrested without probable cause, making the confession inadmissible under Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590 (1975). The appellate proceedings finally ended in 2001 and the case was remanded for a new trial. The prosecution apparently concluded it could not convict without the excluded confession and dropped the charges in April, 2002, and he was released. Almost a year later, Wallace filed suit against the city of Chicago and the police officers under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the federal statute providing a civil cause of action for civil rights violations.

The statute of limitations for § 1983 is borrowed from state law, and in Illinois it is two years. If the statute began running in 1994, the suit was very late. If it began running in 2002, it was timely.

By analogy to the tort law of false imprisonment, the Court held that the statute of limitations began to run when Wallace's detention without legal process ended. That was the point where he ordered held by a magistrate, which was in 1994. The complicating issue here is the rule of Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477 (1994), under which a criminal defendant cannot use a § 1983 action to litigate an issue that would render his conviction invalid. The Heck rule was created to prevent defendants from using civil suits to do an end-run around the limitations on habeas corpus, including the exhaustion rule and the rule of Stone v. Powell, 428 U.S. 465 (1976), against relitigating Fourth Amendment claims.

In Fourth Amendment cases, the constitutional violation is typically completed before the criminal trial begins. The civil plaintiff could file his civil suit at a time when he has not yet been convicted. In that event, today's opinion says the federal district court can (and implies it should) "stay the civil action until the criminal case or the likelihood of a criminal case is ended." Further, "If the plaintiff is ultimately convicted, and if the stayed civil suit would impugn that conviction, Heck will require dismissal; otherwise, the civil action will proceed, absent some other bar to suit." Although the Court doesn't mention it, if the final state resolution of the matter is a rejection of the federal claim, that resolution is binding and cannot be relitigated in a federal civil suit. See Allen v. McCurry, 449 U.S. 90 (1980). But what if the defendant ultimately prevails in the criminal case after his civil case has been dismissed under Heck? Footnote 4 on page 10 of the opinion says,

Had petitioner filed suit upon his arrest and had his suit then been dismissed under Heck, the statute of limitations, absent tolling, would have run by the time he obtained reversal of his conviction. If under those circumstances he were not allowed to refile his suit, Heck would produce immunity from §1983 liability, a result surely not intended. Because in the present case petitioner did not file his suit within the limitations period, we need not decide, had he done so, how much time he would have had to refile the suit once the Heck bar was removed.

Wouldn't it be simpler to keep the federal civil case on ice until the final resolution of the state criminal case?

Of course, the simplest solution of all for Fourth Amendment cases would be to just overrule Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961) and make the civil remedy the only remedy.

In press coverage of this case, the AP blows it, referring to Wallace as "a man wrongly imprisoned for more than eight years...." The detention that the Illinois court decided was unlawful was the brief period from arrest to arraignment. It is possible that Wallace was innocent of the murder and that his confession was coerced and false, but we don't know that. It is also possible that he is the guilty murderer who went free by operation of the search-and-seizure exclusionary rule, as predicted by Judge Cardozo so many years ago.

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 04:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is apparently statute of limitations week at the Supreme Court. On Tuesday, the Court decided the habeas case of Lawrence v. Florida, and today it decided the civil case of Wallace v. Kato. In both cases, the Court decided on the shorter of the two possible limits.

Lawrence involved, once again, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. That act set a one-year statute of limitations on federal habeas corpus petitions by state prisoners when used to collaterally attack their convictions or sentences. The clock can begin ticking at several points, but the most common is when the Supreme Court denies certiorari or, if no timely petition is filed, the time to petition for certiorari expires. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1).

However, federal law has long required that a prisoner exhaust state remedies before turning to the federal courts, so paragraph (2) of the same subdivision provides for tolling of the period.

The time during which a properly filed application for state post-conviction or other collateral review with respect to the pertinent judgment or claim is pending shall not be counted toward any period of limitation under this subsection.

The Court settled six years ago in Duncan v. Walker, 533 U.S. 167 (2001), that this provision only applies to state proceedings, not a previous federal habeas petition. Further, it has been settled for decades that a certiorari petition to the U. S. Supreme Court is no part of the state remedies that need to be exhausted before turning to federal habeas.

Given the goal of Congress to expedite habeas proceedings and given how rarely the Supreme Court grants certiorari in state collateral cases, it makes sense to start the clock ticking again when the state courts are finished with the case. The exhaustion requirement has been fulfilled, and nothing prevents the defendant from extracting the federal claims from his appeal and state habeas petition and filing them immediately as a federal habeas petition.

One argument to the contrary consisted of contrasting the language of § 2244(d)(2) with § 2263(b)(2), which is supposed to apply in capital cases to those states which have provided qualified counsel for state habeas. (It hasn't yet, but that's another story.)  The Court has given this argument more weight than it deserves in the past. See Lindh v. Murphy, 521 U.S. 320 (1997). The reality, though, is that this act had to be hammered out quickly and rammed through Congress in a narrow window of political opportunity after decades of successful blocking by the other side. No valid inferences can be drawn from differences in drafting of the two different chapters.

The other argument was that limiting the tolling to the necessary steps to exhaust could result in "awkward" situations not anticipated by Congress. The strongest case is the situation presented by Florida v. Nixon, 543 U.S. 175 (2004), where the state court grants relief on collateral review and the U.S. Supreme Court grants certiorari and reverses. Does the clock continue to run during the Supreme Court's consideration of the petition and the case? Could the petitioner preserve his right to federal habeas review of his other claims by filing a federal habeas petition even though the state process had ended in his favor? The majority opinion in Lawrence did not squarely address that problem. It noted that equitable tolling might be available, but the Supreme Court has never resolved, and did not resolve in Lawrence, whether equitable tolling applies to § 2244(d) at all.

In the typical case, interpreting § 2244(d)(2) to toll during the pendency of a certiorari petition would give every defendant an automatic extension of six months to a year on a one-year statute simply by filing such a petition, even if it has virtually no chance of being granted. It is, indeed, unlikely that Congress intended this. The Nixon scenario will have to be dealt with somehow, though. It would be prudent for defendants who prevail on state habeas to file a protective federal petition on the other federal questions if the state petitions for certiorari.

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 03:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

The pro-criminal lobby is apparently on a roll in Maryland. That state already has a relatively lenient rule on allowing convicted felons to vote. First offenders have their right to vote restored immediately upon completion of probation or parole, and even repeaters need wait only three years thereafter. Some states disenfranchise convicted felons for life. But even current Maryland law is not enough for some legislators and advocates, according to this story by Ovetta Wiggins in the Washington Post. Proponents of the change make the usual racial arguments.

Bishop Adam J. Richardson Jr. said it is "unconscionable" that 140,000 former offenders, including 8 percent of Maryland's black population, are disenfranchised because of the voting laws.

This argument commits the common fallacy of looking at people as faceless members of racial groups rather than as individuals with free will. The individuals who have lost their vote lost it by their individual choice to commit a serious crime. The group they belong to should be irrelevant in a society dedicated to judging people by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin.

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 01:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice has issued this report and this press release on the DNA backlog problem. We at CJLF remain very skeptical of this commission. The circumstances of its creation, its composition, and its choice of a well-known partisan for the defense side as executive director all point to a likelihood that its final product will be anything but fair. Even so, this interim product is worthwhile, calling attention to a genuine problem which should get much higher funding priority from the Legislature than it presently receives.

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Supreme Court affirmed denial of Florida death row inmate Gary Lawrence's habeas petition in a 5-4 decision. An AP story by Pete Yost states the reason for the denial is due to the expiration of the one-year filing time frame allotted by the federal Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion and stated that the language in the law is clear that the time limit is not tolled during the time to file a certiorari petition for U.S. Supreme Court review of the state collateral proceeding. The contrary interpretation would give defense attorneys for death row inmates an incentive to delay as long as possible.

Superior Court Judge Gail Ohanesian ruled that Gov. Schwarzenegger's actions of transferring prisoners to private correctional facilities in other states is illegal and California's problem of prison overcrowding cannot be dealt with in this manner. The governor was outraged with the decision claiming that he absolutely refuses to allow early release for dangerous criminals and states that this "is a threat to public safety" as reported in an AP story by Don Thompson. The judge decided that the governor's actions violates the California Constitution as well as the state law.

The fix for California's death penalty process is scheduled for a hearing Friday, but the issue at hand is whether or not to hold a public hearing in private in order to protect the doctors from being labeled executioners. The concern is that medical experts may not be willing to offer any help if the hearing goes public. David Kravets, reports for AP.

Tougher sentencing for sexual predators in Texas has a victim's advocacy group worried that it will encourage more aggressive acts by the offenders, one being murder. The tougher laws that the AP story reports includes the death penalty for violent two time child molesters, but only in the worst cases. However, the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault still is not at ease with the resolve stating that since children are usually the only witness to the crime, offenders would be inclined to exercise every effort to ensure not being caught.

Posted by CJLF Staff at 09:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A Justice Department audit found numerous problems in terrorist-related investigations. An AP story by Lara Jakes Jordan explains that federal prosecutors used unrelated violations such as "marriage fraud" in the terrorism cases. The Department's Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said most of the statistics examined were diminished or inflated.

An elementary school vice principal in Bakersfield could face the death penalty for the murder of his three children, wife and mother-in-law. 44-year-old Vincent Brothers was charged with five counts of first degree murder for Joanie Harper, their children Marques (4), Lyndsey (2), and Marshall (6 weeks), and Harper's mother Ernestine (70). The five were shot and stabbed to death on July 8, 2003. The AP story by Garance Burke also reports a possible change of venue by Defense Attorney Michael Gardina and allegations of involvement from Brothers' brother for a credible alibi.

Cop killer, 39-year-old Steven Bixby (S.C.) was convicted on Sunday for the shooting deaths of Sgt. Danny Wilson and Georgia State Constable Donnie Ouzts in 2003. Meg Kinnard's story reports that Bixby and his parents were upset over 20 ft of their land being used to expand the highway. Bixby and his father claimed they would kill any officer who came on their property. Bixby wrote letters to his girlfriend detailing the killings and explaining how he could have killed more and signing off as "chaotic patriot Steve." Sentencing begins today and he could face the death penalty.

"Deliverance by DNA" is the third installment of Canadian journalist Mary Vallis' articles investigating America's Death Penalty in National Post. How Appealing Blog also discussed the stories here. The final article talks about DNA evidence that is proving some death row inmates' innocence. Specifically, Kirk Noble Bloodsworth, the first inmate proven innocent by DNA for the 1984 brutal rape and murder of a young girl named Dawn in Maryland. The article tells his story and provides some statistics on death row such as, "123 people in 25 states have been released from death row," (Death Penalty Information Center). As with so many articles on this subject, the article mentions the number released in the same sentence with the word "exonerated" to create the false impression that everyone on the list was actually innocent. This claim continues to surface despite being thoroughly discredited.

Tougher laws on sex offenders is becoming a trend in many states. Illinois has hopped on the band wagon for online restrictions towards sex offenders as well as "mandatory treatment and evaluation and residency restrictions" as reported here by Paige Winfield of the Naperville Sun.

Posted by CJLF Staff at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tomorrow is federal sentencing day in the Supreme Court, with the much anticipated oral arguments in Rita v. United States, No. 06-5754, and Claiborne v. United States, No. 06-5618. An interesting article by Frank Bowman is available here via SL&P. While suggesting what the Court should do about Blakely, Bowman reiterates his belief that it was a "huge mistake" in the first place. I second the motion. A commenter at SL&P suggests he dump the hackneyed Humpty Dumpty quote at the top of the article. I'll second that motion, also.

Also at SL&P, Doug Berman gives us this "shameless self-promotion" of links to his prior work on the cases and on Blakely and Booker issues generally.

Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog has this post. The Medill write-ups are here and here.

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 08:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Libby Trial is the target of this op-ed in the WashPost by former DAAG Victoria Toensing. She has a list of other people whom she thinks should be charged, leading off with Patrick Fitzgerald.

Maryland DP: Also in the Post, former Maryland Governor Harry Hughes has this op-ed on Maryland's "inherently flawed" death penalty, making the same arguments made and refuted many times.

Cal. Prisons: David Lesher addresses the political dynamics of California's prison overcrowding problem in this LA Times op-ed.

Rape Rates: Mike Males notes in the LA Times that sexual assault rates among youth are actually down sharply, contrary to popular belief. He credits generational shifts in attitudes towards women.

Pizza neck-bomb case solved?: A bizarre and particularly cruel murder from 2003 may have been solved, AP reports. In his dying declaration, Brian Wells said he went to deliver a pizza and was accosted by gunmen who locked a bomb around his neck and forced him to rob a bank.

Standing up to crime too often brings retaliation. Oakland anti-crime activist Patrick McCullough routinely reported drug dealing in his area. Two years ago, he was confronted in front of his house by 15 young men shouting "Kill the snitch." He shot and wounded one of them. Today, on the second anniversary of that incident, a shotgun blast was fired through his front door, according to this SF Chron story by John Zamora. No one was home. "There's no way I'm going to leave. That's what they want me to do," McCullough added. "If all the law-abiding people give in, then they win and this block becomes a no-man's land."

Border Patrol Case: Debra Saunders in the Chron questions the US Attorney's exercise of discretion in the Ramos/Compean case.

Cop Killer Parole: Chicago Tribune readers react here to a Feb. 11 story about possible parole of Theodore Bacino for the 1974 murder of Deputy Sheriff Michael Mayborne.

Police Chase Case: Orin Kerr at the Volokh Conspiracy has a post with links to most of the briefs in Scott v. Harris, a Supreme Court case on civil liability for a police chase, set for argument Feb. 26.

Posted by CJLF Staff at 09:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)