Crime and Consequences

Ed Silverman at Pharmalot has this post on the emerging (albeit very preliminary) evidence that gunman Stephen Kazmierczak had stopped taking his psychiatric medication before the killings at Northern Illinois University. As ABC news reports, there's evidence that Kazmierczak had a history of mental illness, which seems to have included depression, violence, and self mutilating behaviors.

The comment thread of the Pharmalot post is particularly revealing in its predictability of responses from those who blame antidepressants for violent behavior among those with mental illness. Those critics, however, want it both ways: to blame antidepressants for violent behavior if someone takes them and to blame them as well if someone stops taking them and becomes violent due to the amorphous discontinuation syndrome purportedly associated with some of these medicines. But as mentioned previously, antidepressants have become a popular target by those who wish imbue the pharmaceutical industry with evil for their supposed malfeasance and deception rather than focusing on the simple fact that sometimes people engage in very violent conduct which itself imbues evil- and this seems to occur more often among those with mental illnesses.

This should hardly be surprising. For all rhetoric we've been told that those with mental illnesses are no more likely to become violent than anyone else, intuition dictates that when an illness robes people of their rationality - as it often does with mental illness - bad outcomes are to follow. It is true that most people with mental illnesses are not violent; but we're not taking about most people when we're discussing incidents like Kazmierczak or Kendra Webdale. Rather, what comes into focus when we examine cases like these is the inconvenient truth that untreated mental illnesses can be harbingers for tragedies from the personal to the infamously public.

Posted by Steven K. Erickson at 09:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Chip Johnson has this commentary in the SF Chronicle on city government priorities in Oakland, California:

On the heels of the city's eighth homicide in four days, [City Administrator Deborah] Edgerly's office announced that the city, in response to complaints from local florists, would enforce a zero-tolerance policy on illegal street vendors on Valentine's Day.

Police officers and city employees would be assigned to foot patrols and issue citations to any street vendor without a permit, she said. Some police officers shook their heads, while others just laughed. Leaders in the business community were speechless.

As for me, I'm surprised that the city would approve such a bold plan to take back the streets.

Posted by CJLF Staff at 06:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The U.S. Supreme Court held a conference today. As expected, no grants or denials of certiorari were announced. The Court did issue an orders list of routine orders regarding briefing and argument. Announcement of the cases granted and denied today will be made in Tuesday's orders list. The Court is closed Monday for Washington's Birthday (no, not "Presidents' Day," see 5 U.S.C. § 6103).

Among the petitions considered at today's conference was Norris v. Simpson, No. 07-653, in which the Eighth Circuit held that a condemned murderer could raise his claim that he is retarded for the first time in a post-Atkins habeas petition, despite the facts that (1) the state had precluded execution of retarded murderers the whole time, and (2) he never claimed to be retarded during any of the state proceedings.

Wednesday is a likely day for decision announcements. Medellin v. Texas, discussed here, was argued October 10 and is ripe for decision.

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 04:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Judge Joseph Sneed: Today services were held for Judge Joseph Sneed, who served for over thirty years on the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Bob Egelko has this story in the San Francisco Chronicle. Judge Sneed died in his home Saturday at the age of 87. He was appointed by President Nixon in 1973. But the court changed dramatically a few years later.

"The Carter people have a different way of looking at the world, and we often divide on what you could call political lines," Judge Sneed told a Wall Street Journal reporter in 1984. "I'm usually on the losing side on panels in this circuit."

With "Friends" Like These... Sixteen-year-old Melisa Fernino faces criminal contempt charges for sending a MySpace "friend" request in violation of a restraining order, reports Alan Feuer in the New York Times. Sandra Delgrosso obtained the restraining order because Melisa made violent threats after Ms. Delgrosso dated Melisa's father. On August 23, Melisa sent a MySpace ‘friend request’ to Ms. Delgrosso and her two daughters. Judge Matthew A. Sciarrino Jr. of the Staten Island Criminal Court ruled today that this was as a form of contact prohibited by the order. If Melisa is convicted of the charges she will face up to a year in prison. "Judge Sciarrino’s order, which managed to quote both Wikipedia and 'Hamlet,' meanwhile served as something of a primer for the technologically challenged."

8th grader charged with murder and hate crime: The AP reports that Brandon David McInerney will be tried as an adult for the school shooting of 15-year-old Lawrence King, a classmate. King was shot in the head on Tuesday in class. Prosecutors plan to charge him with murder, firearm use, and a hate crime enhancement after finding out that King was declared brain dead on Wednesday. According to classmates, King was known for being openly gay and wearing feminine attire like high heels and make-up, which made him unpopular with the other boys on campus. McInerney faces 25-to-life. California law does not provide for life without parole in murder cases where the perpetrator is under 16 at the time of the crime. See Penal Code section 190.5(b).

Posted by CJLF Staff at 12:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tax/Crime Protest: In Oakland, California, shopkeeper Scott Silvera has tried for months to get mayor Ron Dellums' attention on the crime problem. "Finally, fed up, he vowed to stop paying sales taxes until he heard from the mayor's office," reports Phillip Matier in the SF Chron.

Gitmo Executions?: The military has updated its regulations to allow terrorists sentenced to death to be executed at Guantanamo, report Michael Melia and Andrew Selsky for AP. This change is based, as was the original Guantanamo siting of the detainment, on the theory that federal courts have greater habeas corpus review power if the prisoners are physically within the United States. As explained in CJLF's brief in Boumediene v. Bush, federal courts have habeas jurisdiction in the cases of alien enemies only if and to the extent that Congress has given it, and the physical location should be irrelevant under the Military Commissions Act.

Clinton and Terrorist Pardons: Debra Burlingame had this commentary yesterday about Bill Clinton’s FALN pardons. The Armed Forces of National Liberation, known by its Spanish acronym, FALN, had been linked to at least 146 bombings by 1996. The most gruesome attack was the bombing of the Fraunces Tavern in Lower Manhattan. In August of 1999 Clinton granted clemency to 16 members of FALN, causing a major controversy. Among the guidelines overlooked in this grant was one widely considered vital: the prisoners actually asking for clemency.

Spy Powers Expanded. After a year of struggling to decide, the Senate approved Tuesday the bill to make permanent the surveillance authority set to expire Saturday. The Senate bill, unlike the House version, will give legal protection to the phone companies that participated in past surveillance efforts. Siobhan Gorhan reports for the Wall Street Journal that the 68-29 final vote was "more lopsided than many expected." "'We lost every single battle we had on this bill,' said Sen. Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat who led the opposition to the immunity provision."

Republicans move to have Moratorium lifted on Executions. Yesterday in the Daily Herald, Christy Gutowski wrote about three Dupage Republicans urging Gov. Rod Blagojevich to lift Illinois' moratorium on executions. They also propose changes to the circumstances making a murderer eligible for the death penalty. They propose raising the age for the child-murder circumstance from 12 to 16 but reducing the overall number of circumstances from 21 to 9. The text of the resolution is available here.

Posted by CJLF Staff at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The "top side" amicus briefs have been filed in Indiana v. Edwards, No. 07-208. The briefs to date and other pertinent documents are available here. Along with the expected amici of CJLF, other states, and the federal government, we have some unusual players.

The case involves a defendant of marginal mental competence who moved under Faretta v. California, 422 U.S. 806 (1975), to reject counsel and represent himself. When the Court first granted certiorari, it occurred to me that this was one of those unusual cases where many defense lawyers might disagree with the position of the defendant in this case.

Sure enough, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers has filed a brief "supporting neither party," although part II of their brief really does support the prosecution. In part I, they call upon the Court to reconsider the standard for competency to stand trial, but failing that, "NACDL would agree with Petitioner that States should be given the option of requiring counsel for those unrepresented defendants who are competent under the Dusky standard yet, due to their mental infirmity, are not capable of defending themselves."

It is understandable why the NACDL doesn't want to caption its brief as supporting the prosecution. I'm not quite sure why the American Psychiatric Association and American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law caption theirs as supporting neither party. Their argument is fully consistent with the state's position, and their conclusion urges the court to answer the question presented in the way the state wants it answered and in a way that would require vacating the decision in favor of the defendant. Do these groups consider themselves so fully members of the defense team that they just can't bear to say "the prosecution is right"?

In contrast, one group that is fully a member of the defense team in criminal matters has filed a brief captioned as supporting the state. Yes, we actually have in this case a brief of the American Bar Association supporting the prosecution in a Supreme Court criminal case. I'm going to take this to a rare document collector and have it appraised. This brief is not, of course, a deviation from the ABA's absolute but unwritten policy of never opposing the defense bar, given that the NACDL itself wants this judgment reversed. Even so, this is a once-in-a-generation event. The brief itself is the usual superficial, tissue-thin filing we have come to expect from the ABA. It says, in a nutshell, "We are the ABA. We are wonderful. We have promulgated standards. Adopt them."

Although we have considerable agreement here with people we don't generally agree with, our position has a different emphasis. In Godinez v. Moran, 509 U.S. 389 (1993), the Supreme Court established that a defendant who wishes to waive counsel and is competent to know what he is doing may make a valid waiver. Hence, he has no claim of reversible error if the trial judge grants the motion, even if he is not actually able to represent himself. However, the Faretta right to proceed pro se does not stem from, and therefore is not necessarily coextensive with, the ability to waive counsel. In the twilight zone between the ability to make a knowing waiver and the ability to actually defend oneself, the state's own interest in orderly proceedings should justify denying a Faretta motion. Within this window, neither granting nor denying the motion for self-representation is reversible error on appeal by the defendant.

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

NJ Supreme Court Approves Passenger Criminal Checks
An AP Story by Jeffrey Gold reports that the New Jersey Supreme Court has ruled 6-0 that police can run a criminal check on a passenger during a traffic stop. The driver and any passengers are seized when an officer stops a vehicle according to the ruling which reinstated the conviction of a passenger with outstanding warrants, a suspended license and carrying crack cocaine. Chief Justice Stuart Rabner wrote in his unanimous decision that checking the NCIC database “was within the scope of the traffic stop and did not unreasonably prolong the stop, there was no basis to suppress the evidence found.”

Teen being tried as an Adult in Pit-Bull dog attack
A Southern California 17-year-old teen is facing felony charges as an adult for allegedly siccing his pit bull on an 8-year-old boy. The Mercury News has the story here.

Doughnut Theft dismissed on criminal’s potential “Third Strike”
A Fifty-one-year old Tehachapi man with two felony strikes against him for previous robberies and several misdemeanor convictions over the past three decades will not face life in prison for stealing a package of donuts. Steven Mayer of The Bakersfield Californian has this Kern County story where prosecutors conceded that there were just “too many holes in the case” the alleged doughnut thief.

Mummified Body found Buried in Bathtub
In this very unusual and bizarre story from the NY Daily News, a partially mummified body was found buried in a bathtub filled with dirt in an abandoned Phoenix apartment that was stacked to the ceiling with garbage and human waste.

Posted by CJLF Staff at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Should Bush Issue More Pardons? An editorial in today’s San Francisco Chronicle suggests that President Bush's reluctance to give pardons may be because Former President Clinton issued 140 last minute pardons to unworthy recipients including Marc Rich who was indicted in 1983 for tax evasion. It may also have something to do with Roger Adams, who, until recently, served as the Department of Justice Pardon Attorney for both the Clinton and Bush Administrations. Adams was replaced after a 2007 General Inspector’s audit, cited him for describing a drug offender's pardon application as "about as honest as you could expect from a Nigerian."

Daily Crime Reports by Email
Greg Whisenant founded Crimereports.com after a stranger in his building turned out to be a burglar. A neighborhood meeting ensued and led Whisenant to ask, with the latest technologies available, "Why can't we have some kind of alert system...?" According to this story by Brian Bergstein in today's SF Chronicle, the Crimereports.com website extracts information from police databases instead of newspapers like most alert systems. Whisenant's service provides free daily emails, with reports on crimes in specific neighborhoods. He currently has 40 law enforcement agencies signed up and the website is free of advertising.

Military to Seek Death Penalty for six detainees charged with playing key roles in the 9/11 attacks. A story by William Glaberson in today's New York Times quotes two law professors and unnamed lawyers who believe the process will be lengthy, complex and risky. The piece also suggests that because death sentences will be sought, the friction between the U.S. and European critics of capital punishment will increase. It would be interesting to see polling of the citizens of England, France, Spain and Germany and others who have suffered terrorist attacks to find out if they share their governments' views regarding these defendants.

Posted by CJLF Staff at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Bob Egelko has this story in the SF Chron. "Crime is seldom a prominent issue in presidential primaries, largely because the front-runners in each party typically take similar positions. But the subject can explode on Democrats in a November election."

Egelko notes that the positions of Clinton and Obama on the death penalty were once sharply different but have since converged. I'm inclined to think this is the result of changing political calculations rather than actual change in personal beliefs. As Obama moved from one state senate district to a statewide race for U.S. Senate, his previous forthright opposition wasn't going to fly. Clinton may not see the need to maintain emphatic support as the issue moves down on people's priority lists and as she moves to a race where other issues have relatively higher prominence.

The biggest impact a president has on state criminal cases is in who he or she appoints to the federal courts, and there "the difference between the parties is huge," the story quotes yours truly at the end.

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 07:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)