Results matching “first”

The sentencing "reform" legislation apparently about to be introduced in the Senate would represent a step back from the system of determinate sentencing that has served our country so well for a generation. Contrary to the current liberal and libertarian anthem, our criminal justice system is hardly in "crisis."  The exact opposite is closer to the truth: Over the last 25 years, crime has fallen farther faster than at any time in the country's history. For reasons I have explained many times, see, e.g., here, we should build on, rather than pare back, this success.

Carly Fiorina is a rising star in the Republican Party and there is much to like about her, in my view.  But she made a big blunder last night when she said that two-thirds of America's prisoners are incarcerated for non-violent offenses, most of them involving drugs.  As Slate Magazine commendably shows, the truth is vastly different:

Glossip Granted Stay:  An Oklahoma appeals court has granted an emergency two-week stay of execution for a death row inmate to allow judges time to consider his last-minute appeal that new evidence supports his claim that he was framed.  CBS News reports that 52-year-old Richard Eugene Glossip received a death sentence for ordering the 1997 fatal beating of Barry Van Treese, the owner of the motel where Glossip worked.  His first sentence in 1998 was overturned due to ineffective legal counsel, and he was retried and sentenced again in 2004.  His current appeal claims that a fellow inmate of Justin Sneed, the prosecution's key witness in Glossip's trial who received a life sentence in exchange for his testimony, said in an affidavit that he heard Sneed say that Glossip didn't do anything.  Earlier this year Glossip and two other murderers lost a U.S. Supreme Court case claiming that the state's three-drug execution protocol violated the Eighth Amendment.  Glossip's execution has been stayed until Sept. 30.

Charleston Shooter Wants to Deal:  The man accused of shooting nine parishioners at a church in South Carolina is willing to plead guilty to murder charges in order to avoid the death penalty, his attorney said Wednesday.  Harriet McLeod of Reuters reports that a guilty plea would also avoid a trial in the case against Dylann Roof, the 21-year-old white man who gunned down nine black churchgoers during a Bible study at Charleston's historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church.  The case's latest hearing addresses whether a judge will release 911 calls and police reports about the June 17 massacre, all of which were sealed by a judge in July.  In addition to state murder charges, Roof faces 33 federal hate crime and weapons charges that could also result in a death sentence.

Border Sheriffs Fed Up With Feds:  Sheriffs from western states and along the border gathered for a conference in Sierra Vista, AZ, to discuss and collaborate on a "unified front" of the many issues affecting the U.S.-Mexico border's law enforcement community.  Ildefonso Ortiz of Breitbart reports that Danny Glick, President of the National Sheriffs' Association, was openly critical of the federal government's apathy and avoidance in facing the problem, stating "we are under assault and this administration refuses to do something about it."  Drug cartels were also a topic of concern at the conference.  Arizona State Senator Gail Griffin told how she woke up one morning in her house along the border to spot a cartel gunman armed with an AK-47 leading a pack of drug smugglers through her property.  The sheriffs are asking Washington to "pay attention, enforce the law and stop putting things on our back."

Most people are familiar with the issue of false recovered memories that plagued the psychological profession back in the 1980s and 1990s.  The idea that a psychologist could elicit memories of abuse that the patient was not even aware existed led to some really awful miscarriages of justice thanks to that junk science.  Now comes a new study from Psychological Science:

Mindfulness Meditation Linked to False Memory Recall

The study suggests individuals who engage in mindfulness meditation may have less accurate memories than those who do not take part in the practice.

"This is especially interesting given that previous research has primarily focused on the beneficial aspects of mindfulness training and mindfulness-based interventions," notes first author Brent M. Wilson, of the Department of Psychology at the University of California-San Diego (UCSD).

Mindfulness meditation involves the act of eliminating distracting or negative thoughts, allowing intense awareness of one's senses and feelings.

The study (subscription required): "Increased False-Memory Susceptibility After Mindfulness Meditation."

SF Jails to Segregate Inmates by Gender Preference:  Los Angeles Times writer James Queally reports that by the end of this year, inmates in San Francisco jails will be housed based upon their preferred gender.   "It's not going to be based on genitalia alone," said San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi. "We will have advisory committee, experts that help represent the transgender population," he added.  The announcement was hailed by head of the New York based Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund as a possible "model for the nation."  Last month California became the first state in the nation to agree to pay for a transgender inmate's reassignment surgery.  

Missouri Child Rapist Executed:  After 26 years of appeals, Roderick Nunley was executed by lethal injection last week for the kidnap, rape and stabbing murder of 15-year-old Ann Harrison in 1989.  Kasey Babbitt and Monica Evans of Fox4kc report that on the morning of Mar. 22 of that year, the young girl was waiting in front of her home for the school bus when Nunley and an accomplice, who had been bingeing on crack cocaine, stuffed her in the trunk of a car they had just stolen.  As the girl begged for her life the duo took her to the basement of Nunley's mother's home, bound her with wire and raped her.  They then got knives from the kitchen and stabbed her 10 times in the torso before slitting her throat.  Her body was found 36 hours later in the trunk of the stolen car.    

TN High Court Upholds Death Sentence:  The Tennessee Supreme Court upheld the death sentence for rapist/murderer Rickey Bell, Jr. yesterday, as reported by the Tennessee State Court website.   A 2012 article from Fox19 reports on Bell's trial for the 2010 rape and murder of his employer's wife, 36-year-old mother of three Starr Harris, after an argument over his paycheck. The woman had been beaten to death.  DNA evidence helped link Bell to the rape and murder.  In upholding Bell's conviction and sentence, the Court concurred with a lower court finding that two of the four aggravating circumstances qualifying Bell for a death sentence were invalid, but noted that only one was required to uphold his sentence.   

I'm pleased that my friend Will Haun, a brilliant lawyer and rising leader of the conservative legal movement, joined with me in pointing to what both traditional and libertarian-leaning conservatives could agree on by way of an overhaul of the federal criminal justice system.  Our piece is out today in Forbes.  It begins:

From late spring through about the end of July, it was my sense that some kind of fairly significant sentencing "reform" bill was going to make more headway in this Congress than in the last, and conceivably could pass. More members of the majority party had expressed an openness to it than we had seen in the last Congress.

In Miller v. Alabama, the Supreme Court declared that life-without-parole cannot be the mandatory sentence for murder when the murderer is 17 years, 364 days old or younger.  Of course, if he is one day older, then LWOP can be a mandatory sentence, and death is an allowed sentence.

Under the rule of Griffith v. Kentucky, Miller applies retroactively to all cases that were still on "direct appeal" on the date it came down.  "Direct appeal" is the initial appeal of the case on the trial record, as distinguished from "collateral review," further attacks on the judgment that typically come later, including habeas corpus and statutory substitutes for it.  The unresolved question, now before the high court in Montgomery v. Louisiana, is whether the Miller rule will reach back and require resentencing of every murderer sentenced under a mandatory LWOP statute for a crime committed a day or more before his 18th birthday, no matter how long ago that was.

CJLF's brief in the case was mailed in Monday.  The main argument of the brief is that the "first exception" to the anti-retroactivity rule of Teague v. Lane (1989) is properly understood as an "actual innocence" rule.  It applies only when the new rule renders the defendant innocent of the crime or ineligible for the punishment.

Readers of this blog and Sentencing Law and Policy may be interested in Part IV of the brief, where I go "heads up" with our friend Doug Berman.  He proposes that noncapital Eighth Amendment rules be exempted from Teague altogether.  Regular readers will not surprised to learn that I quite strongly disagree.

I've done my share of criticizing the criminal defense bar, but I understand that it's indispensable to justice.

[Defense attorney Chuck] Banks asked the court to show mercy on Shoffner, saying she "made a terrible, terrible error in judgment" and characterizing her as "gullible" and "clueless." He said that she was inclined to accept the bribes from Stephens in large part because she was in a bad financial situation, having underestimated the cost of commuting on a regular basis between Newport and Little Rock.

Banks asked Holmes to consider Shoffner's "good deeds," including her work for the Humane Society. He presented the court with a picture of her dog, Fred, and said he was moved by the fact that after Shoffner was first arrested, she asked Banks to call her sister to check on Fred.

AP has an article on the Hillary Clinton email scandal that is a prime example of why we sometimes feel that much of journalism is just an auxiliary to one side's campaign staff:

Experts in government secrecy law see almost no possibility of criminal action against Hillary Clinton or her top aides in connection with now-classified information sent over unsecure email while she was secretary of state, based on the public evidence thus far.

*                               *                         *  

By contrast [to the Petraeus and Deutch cases], there is no evidence of emails stored in Hillary Clinton's private server bearing classified markings. State Department officials say they don't believe that emails she sent or received included material classified at the time. And even if other government officials dispute that assertion, it is extremely difficult to prove anyone knowingly mishandled secrets.

"How can you be on notice if there are no markings?" said Leslie McAdoo, a lawyer who frequently handles security-clearance cases.

The picture is not nearly as clear as that first paragraph implies.

For starters, for outgoing email you write yourself, there won't be markings if you didn't put them there.  It is your responsibility to mark.  For incoming material, how do you know it's classified without markings?  The same way the person who should have put the markings knows to put them.  If your job is dealing with classified information, you have a responsibility to have some basic familiarity with the criteria, at least enough to ask someone if you are not sure.

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held oral argument yesterday in Jones v. Davis, the case in which a federal district judge ruled that the extreme delays in California's death penalty render it unconstitutional as a violation of the defendant's rights.  Make no mistake, the delays are unconstitutional as well as unconscionable, but they are a violation of the rights of the murder victims' families under Article I, Section 28 of the California Constitution.  To the extent the delays occur in federal court (and that is a large extent), they are a violation of the rights of the victims' families under 18 U.S.C. §3771.  The remedy is to fix the delays.  Links to earlier posts are collected in this post.

Before the argument, I said that I was confident that the decision would be reversed on one of the several limitations on habeas corpus breached by Judge Carney.  After the argument, others are saying it looks that way as well.

Adam Liptak has this article in the NYT.  The first two paragraphs read:

Justice Clarence Thomas has not asked a question from the Supreme Court bench since 2006. His majority opinions tend to be brisk, efficient and dutiful.

Now, studies using linguistic software have discovered another Thomas trait: Those opinions contain language from briefs submitted to the court at unusually high rates.

From that opening, the headline of the article, and the prominent picture of Justice Thomas, readers would likely get the impression he is very different from any of his colleagues on this measure.  Here are the actual numbers from further down the article:

Over the years, the average rate of nearly identical language between a party's brief and the majority opinion was 9.6 percent. Justice Thomas's rate was 11.3 percent. Justice Sonia Sotomayor's was 11 percent, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's 10.5 percent.

In other words, Justice Thomas is barely different at all from Justice Sotomayor and not much different from Justice Ginsburg, a result very different from the initial impression formed by the top of the article.  Liptak's characterization of Justice Thomas's rate as "unusually high" is particularly questionable.  On any measure, one of the nine has to be highest, and the fact that Justice Thomas's number happens to be a smidge higher than the next highest does not come close to justifying that characterization.

Parole Recommended for Charles Manson Follower:  Parole officials announced Thursday that, after 43 years in prison and 30 parole hearings, they have decided that it is safe to free one of Charles Manson's followers.  Don Thompson of the AP reports that 72-year-old Bruce Davis, serving a life sentence for two counts of first degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder and robbery in the slayings of musician Gary Hinman and stuntman Donald "Shorty" Shea in 1969, has had similar parole recommendations blocked three times, once by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and twice by Gov. Jerry Brown.  Brown has stated that Davis is still a danger to the public despite his age.  Though Davis was not a participant in the highly-publicized murders of actress Sharon Tate and six others, "the lesser-known slayings are plenty to keep him behind bars," says Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney John Morris.  Gov. Brown will decide on Thursday's recommendation in approximately five months.

Tourist Robbery Points to Rise in SF Property Crime:  San Francisco is experiencing a dramatic rise in property crime this year, exemplified by the Tuesday robbery and shooting of a tourist from Thailand over his camera.  KTVU reports that "smash and grabs" and muggings have become increasingly popular among criminals, who are attracted to small but valuable items such as cameras, cell phones and iPads as a quick way to make money and spend little or no time behind bars.  Many in law enforcement are pointing fingers at Prop. 47, the ballot measure passed by voters last November which reduces shoplifting and grand theft to misdemeanors, so long as the value of the stolen item is less than $950.  Since San Francisco is known to be lenient toward such crimes, career criminals are "gaming the system," says San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr.  With property crime up 20 percent in the city compared to the same time last year, Suhr urges amendments be made to current laws to ensure criminals do the time for their crimes.

Previously Deported Illegal Immigrant Accused of Sexual Assault:  Pearland, Texas police are in the process of tracking down a previously deported illegal immigrant sex offender who allegedly sexually assaulted a 16-year-old girl with Down syndrome at her home on Monday.  Jerome Hudson of Breitbart reports that 25-year-old Jesus Atrian, a family friend of the victim, was previously deported to his native Mexico for a prior conviction of indecency with a child in August 2014, for which he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to eight years of probation and required to register as a sex offender.  He was then released to ICE officials who reportedly deported him to Mexico.  Police are concerned that he has absconded to Mexico and are asking the public for help locating him.

The U.S. Supreme Court has released the last of its scheduled summer orders lists.  The orders in these lists are generally routine, and this one is no exception.

Among the most routine of orders are the denials of rehearing petitions.  There have been some cases where "rehearing" was granted to a case that was never literally heard in the first place.  That is, some cases turned away at the threshold (certiorari denied) have been taken back up after another case changed the relevant law.

But when was the last time the U.S. Supreme Court decided a case after full briefing and argument and then granted rehearing to reconsider its decision?  I can't remember a single case, and I've been doing this a long time. Yet lawyers keep filing the petitions.

Today's list denied rehearing in Glossip v. Gross.  The August 10 list denied rehearing in Davis v. Ayala.

We are often told that alternatives to prison will do as well to protect us, will cost less, and will mark a step forward in our humanity.  Leading the list of alternatives is more "investment" in rehabilitation.

Albuquerque School Hired Fugitive Pedophile:  A man being considered to become second-in-command at Albuquerque Public Schools in New Mexico was revealed Wednesday as a fugitive on the run from police in two states, facing multiple outstanding child sex abuse charges in Colorado.  Joseph J. Kolb of Fox News reports that 50-year-old Timothy Martinez was hired in June as the district's deputy superintendent using the alias Jason Martinez, but quit abruptly in August after dodging multiple fingerprint and background checks.  He faces charges of sexual contact with a boy under the age of 15 and 16, which prompted his resignation at Denver Public Schools in Colorado.  He was released on bond before relocating to New Mexico, though he was barred from leaving Colorado.  Martinez was personally appointed by the district's current superintendent, Luis Valentino, without submitting a resume, though Valentino denies knowledge of the allegations.  Martinez was arrested Wednesday when he returned to Denver.

Court Rules Illegal Immigrants Have 2^nd Amendment Rights:  In the case of United States v. Meza-Rodriguez, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit determined that illegal immigrants have Second Amendment rights.  Awr Hawkins of Breitbart reports that in August 2013, Mexican national Mariano Meza-Rodriguez was arrested, found to be in possession of a .22 caliber cartridge but lacking documentation, and was subsequently indicted.  He challenged the indictment, claiming it "impermissibly infringed on his rights under the Second Amendment of the Constitution."  Judge Diane Wood ruled, relying on the language in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), "that all people, including non-U.S. citizens, whether or not they are authorized to be in this country, enjoy at least some rights under the Second Amendment."

LA Police Officer, Victim Dead After Shooting, Stabbing:  A Louisiana police officer was shot and killed Wednesday when he responded to a triple stabbing that killed one woman and injured two others, after which the suspect crashed his car into a convenience store and barricaded himself in an office demanding a fight.  Fox News reports that the suspect, 35-year-old Harrison Riley Jr., is the cousin of the slain officer, 51-year-old Henry Nelson, and shot the officer with his own handgun.  The violence began when 40-year-old Shameka Johnson, among the deceased, and 34-year-old Shurlay Johnson, her sister, intervened in an argument that Riley was having with his wife.  When Officer Nelson arrived, a fight between them ensued.  Nelson is the second Louisiana police officer killed in four days and the fifth in four months.  Riley was arrested after a two-hour standoff and faces charges of first-degree murder, first-degree murder of a police officer, two counts of attempted first-degree murder, criminal damage to property and resisting arrest.

It's not like we've never seen shouting down opposing speakers.  We saw plenty of it, circa 1930's Germany.

Dozens of protestors shouting "black lives matter" interrupted D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser's address late Thursday morning on how to stem the rising number of homicides in the city.

Bowser (D) planned to announce a wide-ranging, $15 million plan to boost both community programs and police presence in response to a 36 percent spike in killings this year. But protesters linked to a nationwide movement that has mobilized over allegations of police misconduct erupted at her first mention of putting more officers on the streets. 

Let's do a quick-hitter of what we've learned so far about the top reasons to reject the mass sentencing reduction parading as "sentencing reform," and about why, instead, we should preserve the  system of honest and sober sentencing that has helped reduce crime by half over the last generation. 

The Associated Press reports that Nebraska voters have given enough signatures to put the legislature's death penalty repeal bill on the ballot next year.  Indeed, the petition drive gathered tens of thousands more signatures than were necessary to prevent the bill from taking effect at all.

An organization campaigning to reinstate Nebraska's death penalty after lawmakers repealed it in May said Wednesday it has collected more than enough signatures to suspend the law before it goes into effect and place it before voters in 2016.

Nebraskans for the Death Penalty, which was heavily financed by Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts and his family, said it had gathered 166,692 signatures from all 93 of the state's counties. Nebraska's unicameral Legislature had voted to repeal capital punishment over the objection of Ricketts, becoming the first traditionally conservative state to do so in 42 years.

The pro-death penalty group needed roughly 57,000 valid signatures from registered voters to force a statewide referendum, and double that number to immediately halt the death penalty repeal going into effect. They appear to have exceeded the 10 percent of registered voters hurdle needed to block repeal pending a November 2016 ballot measure on the issue.

News Journalists Killed on Live TV:  Two Virginia TV news journalists for WDBJ7, a reporter and a cameraman, were shot and killed on live television Wednesday morning, allegedly by a disgruntled employee.  Fox News reports that following the shooting of 24-year-old Alison Parker, 27-year-old Adam Ward, and an interviewee, who survived a gunshot wound to her back, Virginia State Police homed in on 41-year-old Vester Lee Flanagan, a former employee of WDBJ7 who went by the name Bryce Williams, while he was driving on the freeway.  The suspect refused to stop, ran his vehicle off the road and crashed, and then fatally shot himself.  Flanagan, who was fired from the station several years ago, made several posts on social media following the attack, including a first-person video he took during the murder and remarks about Parker's "racist comments" and his anger over Ward reporting him to the HR department.  He was reportedly angered by the Charleston rampage that occurred at a church in June, in which a white man gunned down nine black churchgoers. 

Father Loses Efforts to Remove Daughters from Sex Offender's Home:  The Nebraska Court of Appeals rejected a man's attempt to gain custody of his two teenage daughters after his ex-wife married a registered sex offender, who served four years in prison for the attempted sexual assault of his 15-year-old stepdaughter from a previous marriage.  Joe Duggan of the World-Herald Bureau reports that the girls' mother, who won primary custody of them after the 2004 divorce, moved in with the sex offender in 2011, marking her second relationship with a sex offender.  Her first occurred shortly after the end of her first marriage, and the man was later convicted of sexually assaulted her 5-year-old daughter, who is not party to the current custody dispute.  Nebraska law does not require automatic removal of children from homes shared by sex offenders so long as the count finds that there is "no significant risk of harm," which was supported by the girls' mental health therapist, testifying that there "appeared to be good boundaries" in the home.  No testimony was offered from a mental health specialist who interviewed the sex offender to determine risk of recidivism.

Lawsuit Settlement Allows Deportees to Return to U.S.:  Six of the nine illegal immigrants who filed a class-action lawsuit accusing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Border Patrol in Southern California of using coercive tactics to pressure them into voluntarily leaving the U.S. were allowed to return to the U.S. Tuesday.  Tatiana Sanchez of the San Diego Union-Tribune reports that the lawsuit was filed by the ACLU in 2013, stating that the illegal immigrants, all of whom are Mexican nationals with U.S.-citizen family members, were deprived of their right to be heard by an immigration judge before they signed documents authorizing their deportation.  ICE officials say that voluntary returns to home countries "remain an important option" for illegal immigrants and coercion is not tolerated in the agency.  The president of the union that represents San Diego Border Patrol agents also denies any coercion, trickery or force involved in their interactions with the immigrants.  The immigrants who were returned will be allowed to stay with family members while their cases are handled by immigration court, "a process that can take several years."

Dallas Police Face Unfair Discipline, Stress:  Officers in the Dallas Police Department have been taking longer to respond to 911 calls, partly due to officers being "mentally beaten down," according to the head of the Dallas Police Association.  J.D. Miles of CBS DFW reports that the association's president, Ron Pinkston, says that many of the 3,000 officers he represents "are moving slower because of concerns over safety and fears about violating department policies."  Dallas Police Chief David Brown attributes new training requirements to the slower responses to priority one calls, which at eight minutes and 13 seconds is the highest it has been in three years.  Ultimately, there is a lack of motivation within the force due to the fear of doing the right thing coupled with the fear that "nobody's going to support them."

Illegal Immigrant Carjacks Woman Minutes After Release:  An illegal immigrant, who had previously been deported, violently carjacked a woman 30 minutes after his release from jail.  Josh Fatzick of the Daily Caller reports that 24-year-old Guaynar Cabrera-Hernandez was released last Monday from the Montgomery County Detention Center in Washington, D.C., and approached a woman in a parking lot while wielding a knife and a brick, put the knife to her throat, forced her out of the car and hurled the brick at her before speeding off in her vehicle.  He struck again two days later, throwing a bottle at the head of a 68-year-old woman and taking her vehicle, crashing through a security gate with police in pursuit and apprehended when he attempted to flee on foot.  Cabrera-Hernandez was arrested in 2007 for being in the country illegally, and then again in 2011 for which he was subsequently deported.  According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Cabrera-Hernandez's past crimes did not meet the agency's "civil immigration enforcement priorities."  Currently, he is wanted in Maryland for an outstanding armed carjacking warrant and is in custody.

Prop. 47: 'A Well-Intentioned Blunder':  In this column on the San Diego Source, Thomas D. Elias acknowledges that Proposition 47, a ballot measure passed by a 60-40 margin last November that downgrades several felonies to misdemeanors, is a bad policy that endangers Californians.  With crime statistics for the first half of the year pouring out from around the state showing, to name but a few, a 47 percent increase in car burglaries in San Francisco and a 12.7 percent increase in overall crime in Los Angeles, "this measure looks worse and worse."  The consequences of Prop. 47, as Elias points out, are plentiful.  Criminals are adjusting their practices by stealing less than $950 worth of goods to avoid a felony charge. Enrollment in drug treatment programs have dropped now that addicts are relieved of the pressure to kick their habits, knowing they'll never do serious time.  Persons with prior convictions of crimes such as carjacking, armed robbery, child abuse and assault with a deadly weapon are not facing jail time because those crimes qualify for misdemeanor status for new non-violent offenses.  "Now it's time for legislators to fix this flawed measure," says Elias.

While decent people are outraged by prosecutorial lying, no one even bats an eyelash when defense counsel spin their yarns.  It's what they do.  The basics are easy:  The client is almost always guilty; telling the truth is thus the fast road to jail; therefore make something up.  That's how it works.  Whether it should work that way is another matter, but that is for a different entry.

"He is dumbfounded that his action is being characterized as terrorism," said [Ms.] David, a lawyer in Arras, where the train was rerouted to arrest El-Khazzani -- now being questioned outside Paris by anti-terrorism police.
He described himself as homeless and David said she had "no doubt" this was true, saying he was "very, very thin" as if suffering from malnutrition and "with a very wild look in his eyes."

LA Trooper Shot and Killed:  A Louisiana state trooper responding to reports of a possible intoxicated individual driving erratically, stopped Sunday afternoon to assist a man whose pickup truck had run into a ditch and was shot in the head when the man emerged from the truck with a sawed-off shotgun.  The trooper died of his injuries Monday morning.  Fox News reports that 43-year-old Senior Trooper Steven Vincent, a 13-year veteran of the state police, was shot by 54-year-old Kevin Daigle, a man whose record includes multiple DWIs and other arrests he refused to discuss.  The incident, caught on dash cam video, came to an end when two or three drivers stopped immediately, wrestled the gun out of Daigle's hands and handcuffed him with the officer's pair.  Daigle faces several charges, including first-degree murder of a police officer.  He is also being probed in the death of his roommate, found deceased on Monday, to determine whether he may have a connection to the homicide.

Last Month the Bloodiest in NY Jails:  New York City's jails surged with gang violence in the month of July, making it the bloodiest month behind bars in 15 years.  Reuven Blau of NY Daily News reports that records show a total of 21 slashings and one stabbing occurred last month in the facilities, with 16 of those incidents involving members of the Bloods, Crips or Latin Kings.  These figures have increased from last year, which only saw an average to seven slashings and stabbings in a month.  Prison officials believe that continued gang disputes on the streets are spilling over into the jails, and have also been openly critical of Correction Commissioner Joseph Ponte's reform to reduce the number of inmates placed in solitary confinement, which is thought to be contributing to the increased mayhem.

No Clear Answer for Crimes Spikes in U.S. Cities:  "There really is no particular reason," said LAPD's central division Captain Mike Oreb regarding Los Angeles' 12 percent spike in overall crime, with violent offenses rising more than 20 percent, a pattern that is resonating with major cities nationwide.  Haya El Nasser of Al Jazeera America reports that Los Angeles prosecutors and law enforcement officers are pointing fingers at a change in the crime reporting system and, most especially, to Prop. 47, a voter-approved initiative passed in November that downgrades certain felonies, including drug possession and theft, to misdemeanors.  However, Los Angeles does not stand alone in this trend, as Baltimore, New York, Chicago, Houston, Milwaukee, Dallas, St. Louis, San Antonio, New Orleans and Washington, D.C., are all reporting double-digit surges in murders in the first half of this year.  When asked if the numbers signify a reversal of decreasing crime trends the country has been experiencing for decades, president of the Police Foundation, Jim Bueermann, says "I don't think we really know."

Sex Offenders, Convicted Murderers Among CA Uber Drivers:  Uber, a ridesharing company that has given taxi drivers stiff competition, is accused of hiring drivers with criminal histories, including sex offenders and a convicted murderer, detailed in a consumer-protection lawsuit filed by San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon.  Mario Sevilla of KRON 4 reports that the complaint says that among the drivers that passed Uber's self-described "industry leading" background check were several registered sex offenders, a kidnapper, identity thieves, burglars and a convicted murderer who was hired less than seven years after being paroled, going on to provide 1,168 rides.  Gascon says that the company cannot "unfairly claim it is rigorously checking the background of its drivers" unless those drivers are put through the same fingerprinting process required of taxi drivers in California.  An Uber spokeswoman voiced her disagreement with Gascon's complaint, claiming that the process used by taxi companies is not "an inherently better system for screening drivers than our background checks."

Mixing politics and the power to prosecute is the fast road to tyranny.  That is one reason I have been unstinting in my criticism both of Eric Holder's politicization of DOJ and of the reckless grandstanding by Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby in the Freddie Gray case, see here, here, and here.

Sal Perricone, a high-ranking prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's Office, using a fake name, posted commentary on Nola.com, the website of the Times-Picayune, that (in the words of the Court of Appeals) "castigated the defendants and their lawyers and repeatedly chastised the New Orleans Police Department as a fish 'rotten from the head down.'"

Perricone was joined in this outrageous misconduct by Jan Mann, the first assistant to the U.S. attorney.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, Karla Dobinski, a veteran of Holder's Civil Rights Division, also posted inflammatory commentary under at least one assumed name. Ironically -- appallingly -- Dobinsky was part of the DOJ "taint team" in this case. As such, she was assigned to protect the civil rights of the indicted defendants. 

As often happens, the initial report on the attack on the French train was incorrect in a few particulars.  It looks like four people heroically stopped this apparently terrorist attack:  two American servicemen, one American civilian, and one Frenchman. Sam Schechner and Julian E. Barnes report for the WSJ:

Authorities praised two U.S. military members and their friend who tackled and subdued a man armed with guns and a box cutter on a Paris-bound train Friday as it sped through Belgium, breaking up what could have been a deadly terrorist attack.

The three Americans were seated on the train when they heard a gunshot and breaking glass, according to accounts from one of the men and a U.S. official briefed on the attack.

Crouching behind their seats, the Americans, who are childhood friends, decided they had to act. Airman First Class Spencer Stone, 23 years old, ran toward the gunman and tackled him.

"I told him to go, and he went," Alek Skarlatos, 22, a member of the Oregon National Guard who had been deployed in Afghanistan, said Saturday.

The "Black Lives Matter" Movement took root a little more than a year ago in Ferguson, Mo.  A white policeman, Darren Wilson, shot a blameless and unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown, as Brown had his hands up, trying to surrender (hence the Movement's first slogan, "Hands Up, Don't Shoot").  Thereafter, Wilson walked up to Brown, now prone, and, as noted in stories briefly recounted in this New Yorker article, shot him in the back.

Teen Girls to be tried as Adults in Stabbing:  Two 13-year-old Wisconsin girls are to be tried as adults in the 2014 stabbing of their friend, whom they were attempting to murder as a sacrifice to a fictitious horror character.  Greg Moore of the AP reports that the two girls, both 12 at the time of the crime, plotted in advance to lure their friend, Payton Leutner, into the woods during a sleepover, where they repeatedly stabbed her.  They did to win the favor of Slender Man, an imaginary character that has proliferated online in recent years.  The two girls told police that they believed they would be invited to live in Slender Man's mansion in exchange for killing Leutner, who miraculously survived the attack despite being stabbed 19 times.  Both girls pleaded not guilty on Friday to charges of attempted first-degree intentional homicide and face 65 years in prison if convicted as adults.  An appeals court could move the cases to juvenile court, where the two, if convicted, would be released with no supervision or mental health treatment at the age of 18.

No Protests for Murder of 9-year-old in Ferguson:  A nine-year-old girl was shot and killed while doing homework on her mother's bed in Ferguson, Mo. Tuesday evening, yet a Wednesday night protest was concerned only with the officer-involved shooting of an armed suspect who pointed a gun at police.  Fox News reports that whoever fired a gun through the home of Jamyla Bolden has not been identified, though the girl's relatives believe police are focusing on a person of interest who likely targeted the wrong house in the fatal drive-by shooting.  Bolden's mother suffered a non-fatal gunshot wound to the leg and was released from the hospital Wednesday.  

Crime Up in Riverside County:  The total number of violent and property crimes reported to the Riverside County Sheriff's Department increased in the first six months of 2015 compared to the first six months of 2014.  Brian Rokos and Ali Tadayon of the Press Enterprise report that the latest statistics reveal a 6.3 percent increase in violent crimes and a 2.2 percent increase in property crimes.  In just the unincorporated areas of the county, violent crimes have risen more than 15 percent while property crimes have jumped 7.7 percent.  A possible reason for the uptick, says LA area law professor Steven Lurie, is the "twin influences of Prop. 47 and realignment."  Prop. 47, approved by voters last November, downgrades certain felonies to misdemeanors and realignment, or AB 109,  transferred thousands of so called  "non-violent, non-serious, non-sexual" offenders from state prison to county jails, forcing Riverside County to release thousands of inmates early to accommodate criminals no longer eligible for prison.  Prop. 47 has been in effect for less than one year, and the sheriff's department will wait to assess a full year's worth of crime data before weighing in on specific impacts of Prop. 47 alone.

CJLF is not a partisan organization, although it's obvious it more frequently sides with Republicans than Democrats, particularly on matters of judicial selection.  I, as a guest contributor, have not been shy about strongly taking on such Republican stalwarts as Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and occasionally my brilliant friend from years ago  --  and a courageous man in my view  --  Sen. Ted Cruz. I have had very little to say about some prominent Democrats, in particular leading presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Anti-death penalty zealot Linda Greenhouse has a piece up in the NYT gushing over the Connecticut Supreme Court's 4-3 decision retrospectively abolishing the death penalty, even though the state legislature  --  a very liberal legislature  --  abolished it only prospectively, and even though that distinction was crucial to getting an abolition bill passed at all, as Kent has noted. The gist of Ms. Greenhouse's article is that the death penalty is on the way out the door, and sooner or later, the fabled "national conversation" about its defects will take us to the Higher Ground that Ms. Greenhouse and her Manhattan pals occupy.

We often hear that lack of opportunity for legal employment is a "root cause" of crime.  That is likely less of a factor than many would have us believe, but it would be equally fallacious to believe it is not a factor at all.

We need to be concerned, then, that the ladder of opportunity always be there and that those who want to climb it be able to do so.  Unfortunately, people pretending to have the best interests of low-wage workers at heart are busily sawing off the bottom rungs.