Results matching “first”

This Administration will not tolerate violence against police, and we will do all we can to protect the safety of law enforcement officers.  I will share with you one proposal that we will be advancing after Labor Day.  We will be proposing legislation providing that in cases of mass murder, or in cases of murder of a law enforcement officer, there will be a timetable for judicial proceedings that will allow imposition of any death sentence without undue delay.  Punishment must be swift and certain.

I am elated that speeding up the needlessly and grotesquely protracted proceedings in capital cases is getting the personal attention of the Attorney General. However, the chances of getting death penalty fast track legislation through Nancy Pelosi's House of Representatives are essentially nil, so why don't we see what we can do with existing law?

59 Shot in Chicago Last Weekend:  The first weekend in August was the most violent of the year in Chicago with seven people killed and 52 wounded in the city's west-side neighborhoods.  Julie Bosman of the New York Times reports that the recent violence brings total murders in the city to at least 300, with 1,600 shootings this year.  Chicago police have been criticizing Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx for the light sentences and release on bond given to gun offenders.  As reported by the Daily Wire, Fox ran as a progressive in 2016, promising to reign in police and reduce incarceration.  She received $300,000 in campaign contributions from ultra-liberal billionaire George Soros and another $75,000 from Soros to her PAC for her next election. 

Bill Introduced to Abolish the Death Penalty:  Senate Judiciary Committee members joined by four Democrat presidential candidates have have proposed legislation to abolish the federal death penalty.  Janta Kan of the Epoch Times reports that Senator Cory Booker, who is running for president, was joined by Judiciary Committee members Patrick Leahy and Dick Durbin in an announcement Wednesday that the legislation would prohibit the execution of those convicted in federal court of aggravated first degree murder.  Co-sponsors of the bill include presidential candidates Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and Amy Klobuchar.  The bill is in response to Attorney General William Barr's recent announcement to move forward with the executions of five federal murderers who have exhausted their appeals.  Among the killers the bill's sponsors want to spare is Wesley Ira Purkey, sentenced to death for the violent rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl, whose body he dismembered, burned, and dumped in a septic pond. He also was convicted in state court for using a claw hammer to bludgeon to death an 80-year-old woman who suffered from polio and walked with a cane.  CJLF Legal Director Kent Scheidegger said that the bill will go nowhere, citing polls indicating that most Americans do not want to abolish capital punishment.  The odds are zero that the Senate bill or the companion bill in the House will pass in either chamber.    

Attorney General William Barr should be applauded for announcing Thursday that the federal government will resume executing convicted murderers on death row for the first time since 2003, beginning with five vicious killers in December and January.

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While the legislation Barr refers to permits a punishment of death, it doesn't compel it. We rely on the Justice Department to seek the death penalty only for the worst of the worst murderers - those who most clearly deserve to die. And we rely on juries in each individual murder case to act as the moral filter and conscience of the community to decide if the death penalty is warranted.

Reviewing the despicable crimes of the five men scheduled to be executed, we can safely say that the Justice Department has exercised its prerogative wisely.

Attorney General William P. Barr has directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to adopt a proposed Addendum to the Federal Execution Protocol--clearing the way for the federal government to resume capital punishment after a nearly two decade lapse, and bringing justice to victims of the most horrific crimes.  The Attorney General has further directed the Acting Director of the BOP, Hugh Hurwitz, to schedule the executions of five death-row inmates convicted of murdering, and in some cases torturing and raping, the most vulnerable in our society--children and the elderly.

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The Federal Execution Protocol Addendum, which closely mirrors protocols utilized by several states, including currently Georgia, Missouri, and Texas, replaces the three-drug procedure previously used in federal executions with a single drug--pentobarbital.  Since 2010, 14 states have used pentobarbital in over 200 executions, and federal courts, including the Supreme Court, have repeatedly upheld the use of pentobarbital in executions as consistent with the Eighth Amendment.

"Bikini barista" stands are drive-through businesses where scantily clad employees sell coffee and other nonalcoholic beverages. In Everett, Washington, a police investigation confirmed complaints that some baristas were engaging in lewd conduct at these establishments, that some baristas had been victimized by patrons, and that other crimes were associated with the stands. The City responded by adopting Everett Municipal Code (EMC) § 5.132.010-060 (the Dress Code Ordinance) requiring that the dress of employees, owners, and operators of Quick-Service Facilities cover "minimum body areas." Separately, the City also broadened its lewd conduct misdemeanor by expanding the Everett Municipal Code's definition of "lewd act" to include the public display of specific parts of the body. EMC § 10.24.010. The City also created a new misdemeanor called Facilitating Lewd Conduct for those who permit, cause or encourage lewd conduct. EMC § 10.24.020

In the roughly 8 1/2 years since California lawmakers embarked on an historic sentencing reform campaign, homicides in the state's county jails have increased by 46%.  Alyssa Hodenfield and John Walker of the Sacramento Bee report that the state's effort to eliminate prison overcrowding has transformed jails into violent and overcrowded mini-prisons with neither the resources, training, or the facilities to serve the influx of hardened repeat felons no longer eligible for prison.  In October of 2011, Governor Brown's "Public Safety Realignment" law, AB 109, took effect.  The law shifted sentences for habitual property and drug offenders from prison to county jails, requiring jails originally designed to hold drunks and petty thieves for a year or less to accommodate habitual drug dealers, wife beaters, car thieves, and commercial burglars for years rather than months.  While the state has classified these offenders as low risk for violence, many are violent, gang-affiliated criminals.  The article cites a study by the Public Policy Institute of California that AB 109 has not had an effect on public safety, although the FBI Uniform Crime Report has shown increased violent crime in California for 2015, 2016, and 2017.  This is the first three-year increase in violent crime since 1992.  Also, as noted in earlier posts, thousands of property crimes converted to misdemeanors by Proposition 47, are no longer reported to police, meaning while the overall crime rate (violent+property) appears slightly lower, this is a false indicator.

Teen Usage Up in Legal Pot States:  One of the most repeated promises from legalized marijuana advocates has been that allowing the government-regulated sale of the drug will assure that children do not have access to it.  Jennifer Oldham of the Washington Post reports that in the first two states to legalize recreational pot, parents, educators and physicians report that teen usage has increased with often devastating results.  In the Denver area, visits to Children's Hospital Colorado facilities for treatment of cyclic vomiting, paranoia, psychosis and other acute cannabis-related symptoms jumped to 777 in 2015, from 161 in 2005.  A 2018 study by the Journal of Adolescent Health determined that surveys finding that pot use among children has not changed much since 2014, may not reflect the impact of legalization on adolescent health.  Washington's latest Health Youth Survey found that 20% of eighth graders and nearly half of high school seniors consider marijuana to be a low risk activity, although medical and mental health professionals say the impact of high potency pot and edibles is doing major damage to adolescent brains.  "I hope we don't lose a generation of people before we become clear we need to protect our kids' brains," said an adolescent medicine specialist at Seattle Children's Hospital.  But there is a trade off.  Washington raked in $358 million and Colorado reported $266 million in government revenue from pot sales in 2018. 

Progressive political activists allege that tech companies have inflated housing costs and forced middle-class people onto the streets. Declaring that "no two people living on Skid Row . . . ended up there for the same reasons," Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti, for his part, blames a housing shortage, stagnant wages, cuts to mental health services, domestic and sexual abuse, shortcomings in criminal justice, and a lack of resources for veterans. These factors may all have played a role, but the most pervasive cause of West Coast homelessness is clear: heroin, fentanyl, and synthetic opioids.

Today's criminal law action in the U.S. Supreme Court is mostly in the "Opinions Relating to Orders" section, where individual Justices opine on whether the Court should or should not have stayed an execution, taken a case up, or sent it back to a lower court for a "do over."

Proposition 57, passed by California voters in November 2016, mandated that all allegations of criminal conduct against a minor (under age 18) must be initiated in juvenile court.  Pre-Proposition 57, minors ages 14+ could be tried in adult court in 1 of 3 ways: (1) statutory waiver; (2) prosecutorial waiver; or (3) judicial waiver.  Proposition 57 eliminated options 1 and 2.  In early 2018, the California Supreme Court held that Proposition 57 applied retroactively to all cases that were not final at the time of its enactment.  (See my post here for more details).

Alexander Cervantes was 14 years old when he was directly charged as an adult for committing horrific sex crimes against a 13-year-old girl.  Cervantes was convicted by a jury and his case was pending on appeal when Proposition 57 passed.  (CJLF filed a brief in his case arguing that Prop 57 should not be applied retroactively).  He benefited from the Proposition's retroactivity and his case was sent back to the juvenile court so that a judge could decide if his case should stay there or be transferred to adult court.  However, while his transfer hearing was pending, former California Governor Jerry Brown signed SB 1391.  SB 1391 "repeal[ed] the authority of a District Attorney to make a motion to transfer" 14- and 15-year-old offenders from juvenile court to adult court.  There is an odd exception in the law for 14- and 15-year-olds who "were not apprehended prior to the end of juvenile court jurisdiction."  SB 1391 went into effect on 1/1/19.  In a nutshell, 14- and 15-year-old criminals must stay and be tried in juvenile court and in no way can a judge decide if he or she should be transferred to adult court.  This is true regardless of the crime committed.    

Even before announcing that he would seek the Democratic presidential nomination, Joe Biden was busy apologizing. At a Martin Luther King Day speech to Al Sharpton's National Action Network, Mr. Biden said "I haven't always been right" about criminal justice and "white America has to admit there's still a systematic racism and it goes almost unnoticed by so many of us."

Not long ago Mr. Biden publicly defended his role in shaping the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which funded the hiring of more cops and encouraged more "truth in sentencing" by requiring that prisoners actually serve the majority of their sentences before becoming eligible for parole. That law, Barack Obama's vice president said in 2016, "restored American cities." Mr. Biden, who was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1994, reiterated that view in his 2017 memoir.

The Constitution allows capital punishment. [Cites to Glossip and Baze and discussion of founding-era punishment and recognition of capital cases in Fifth Amendment.] Of course, that doesn't mean the American people must continue to use the death penalty. The same Constitution that permits States to authorize capital punishment also allows them to outlaw it. But it does mean that the judiciary bears no license to end a debate reserved for the people and their representatives.

That is the strongest statement of the unquestionable constitutionality of capital punishment that I have ever seen in an opinion of the Court, rather than in a concurring or dissenting opinion. It is as emphatic as the absolute statement of Justice Hugo Black (who was fond of absolute statements) nearly half a century ago in McGautha v. California.

Illegal Kills Washington Cop:  One Sheriff's Deputy died and another officer was wounded Tuesday in a shootout with an illegal alien near the college town of Ellensburg, Washington.  Eric Lacitis of The Seattle Times reports that Juan Manuel Flores Del Toro, a citizen of Mexico, led the officers responding to a road-rage incident on a chase that ended at a trailer park.  Flores Del Toro exited the car and opened fire on the officers, killing deputy Ryan Thompson and injuring officer Benito Chavez.  Flores Del Toro was also fatally wounded in the shootout.  Thompson was the married father of three.  It was the first murder of a police officer in the county since 1927.