Results matching “first”

About three and a half years ago, an Islamic terrorist, Maj. Nadal Hasan, shot and killed 13 people at Ft. Hood, Texas.  He has been charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and faces the death penalty.

His defense attorneys are seeking to take capital punishment off the table.  The reason du jour is not innocence, insanity, cost, racism, capitalism, militarism (I guess they couldn't really go for that one), or any of the usual shake-and-jive.  No, this is the reason:

Defense attorneys argue that Hasan should be spared a possible death sentence because his rights have been violated -- including by the former judge who ordered that Hasan's beard be forcibly shaved. Hasan first showed up in court in June with a beard, later saying it was required by his Muslim faith, but facial hair violates Army rules.

Not that his beard actually got shaved off, mind you.  Only that, at one point, he was ordered to shave it off.

The story is here, and my hat is off, I guess, to whatever defense lawyer thought of this one.

California Crime Spiked According to FBI Data: Tom DuHain of KCRA News reports total crime in California increased in the first six months of 2012 compared to the same period in 2011. In Sacramento, violent crime increased 7 percent. Car thefts in the city also jumped a significant 21 percent. A study from the Council of State Governments Justice Center released Tuesday found that 30 percent of the new crimes in Sacramento were committed by parolees and probationers. In other Central Valley cities, violent crime also increased. In Stockton, violent crime rose 25 percent, it jumped by 22 percent in Modesto, and it went up by 8 percent in Fairfield. CJLF's Press Release on the rise in crime in California, mentioned in the article, is here.

CA Appeals Court Rules Against Ethnic Privilege Restrictions: The Associated Press reports a three-judge panel of the California Court of Appeal ruled unanimously Wednesday that Pelican Bay State Prison authorities were wrong in implementing long-term race-based privilege denials. However, the appeals court ruled ethnic classification restrictions could be used during times of riots and emergencies. In 2010, inmate Jose Morales filed a lawsuit alleging certain privileges were denied to him solely based on his ethnicity. For three years following a riot between two rival Hispanic groups, Pelican Bay authorities denied privileges to all Hispanic inmates. The privileges included outside exercise, religious services, and family visits. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation may take the case to the Supreme Court for review.  

PA Killer Holds Mentally Disabled Victims Captive, Kills Two: The Crimesider Staff of CBS News reports federal prosecutors indicted Linda Ann Weston of Philadelphia on charges of holding mentally disabled victims captive over a decade, which resulted in two deaths. Weston collected her victims' Social Security payments, about $212,000. Her charges include murder in the aid of racketeering, kidnapping, forced human labor and hate crimes. Four victims were found confined in the basement of her apartment in October 2011 by her landlord. Between 2001 and 2011, Weston allegedly held six adults and four children who were mentally disabled captive in closets, attics, and basements in multiple states. While in Texas and Florida, two female victims were forced into prostitution. In 2008, a disabled woman living with Weston in Philadelphia died of meningitis and starvation. In 2005, Weston fatally drugged a woman whom she held captive in a laundry room. Three decades ago, Weston was convicted in Philadelphia in the starvation death of a man that she held captive in her apartment. Also indicted were four accomplices, including three men and her daughter. Weston may face the death penalty if convicted.

Alleged Killer of Pregnant Teen May Face OH Death Penalty: Jen Steer of News Net 5 reports alleged killer David Stoddard could face the death penalty in Ohio if convicted in the murder of a 16-year-old pregnant girl. On January 6, Stoddard fatally shot the pregnant teen to death in a home while looking for his ex-girlfriend. He also nonfatally shot a 19-year-old girl in the head. His gun jammed when he attempted to shoot another man. Police also linked Stoddard via DNA to an October home invasion. The homeowner's dog bit him, and Stoddard shot the dog to death. An officer obtained a DNA sample from the dog's mouth. Stoddard was indicted Wednesday for murder, attempted murder, felony assault, robbery and burglary.

The 1991 decision in Coleman v. Thompson is one of the most important protections for the finality of criminal judgments in U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence.  Without it, there could be an endless stream of collateral attacks on a judgment, with each lawyer claiming the supposed ineffectiveness of the lawyer before as "cause" for the earlier default of the claim.  Coleman drew the line on such "ineffectiveness as cause" claims at the first appeal.

California has not followed Coleman for state habeas corpus, and the result has been a disaster.  Even though successive petitions are very rarely granted, they are filed in nearly every case.  They regularly claim ineffectiveness of the first habeas lawyer as cause for default, and the "ineffectiveness" generally consists of nothing more than the first lawyer not bringing a claim the second lawyer wants to bring.  The California Supreme Court put some limits on these petitions last August in In re Reno, but not enough yet.  See this post.

The U.S. Supreme Court made two narrow exceptions to Coleman last term.  Maples v. Thomas made an exception for clients actually abandoned by their lawyers, fortunately a rare occurrence.  Martinez v. Ryan made an exception for states that actually bar all ineffectiveness claims from direct appeal, an odd little rule that a state should quickly jettison.

Now in Trevino v. Thaler, petitioner seeks to expand Martinez into an exception that swallows the rule.  That would be a disaster, as the California experience demonstrates.

Today CJLF filed an amicus brief opposing this change.

In a recent Sunday news show, NBC's David Gregory held up an empty ammunition clip to demonstrate to his guest, an NRA spokeman, the dangerousness of allowing people to possess a clip that can hold many (I think it was ten) bullets.  As it happens, it was a clear violation of DC gun control law for Gregory to have the clip, empty or not.  There ensued a heated debate about whether Gregory should have been prosecuted.

Many on the pro-Second Amendment side (a side I generally agree with) thought that he should have been charged.  They mocked the gun control crowd's flaunting the laws they so eagerly foist off on others.  They derisively noted that Gregory got a free pass from the DC Attorney General, Irv Nathan, wondering whether Nathan, the same sort of liberal Democrat that Gregory certainly seems to be, would have been similarly deferential to, say, a pro-gun rights TV talk show host on Fox News who held up the same ammo clip.

On the well-known conservative blog Legal Insurrection, I agreed that Nathan should have recused himself from the decision whether to prosecute Gregory.  In my view, however, Nathan's substantive decision not to prosecute was correct.  This provoked a firestorm of criticism from some of my fellow law-and-order conservatives.  But, as I explain after the break, their criticism partakes of exactly the prosecution-as-politics ethos that, in the gun control debate as elsewhere, they correctly decry.    

Sheila Weller has this article in the NYT on the long-overdue sentencing of the man who murdered her cousin, Ellen Hover, in 1977.

The man is Rodney Alcala.  He won't do time in Sing Sing.  He heads back to San Quentin to wait out the appeals from his third death sentence for killing 12-year-old Robin Samsoe in California.

Over the years Rodney Alcala's lawyers managed to twice overturn, on technicalities, his conviction for the murder of Robin Samsoe. He aggressively fought the use of DNA evidence against him, but ultimately lost. Finally, in February 2010, a jury re-re-convicted him of the murder of Robin Samsoe, along with the other four California women. He has not stopped fighting his execution sentence and suing the state for things like failing to provide him with a low-fat diet.

Since Ellen was killed, both of her parents have died; her brother has died; her aunt, my mother, has died. In all those years, Rodney Alcala was never charged with her murder. Many of Ellen's friends and family members felt a measure of justice when he was convicted in California in 2010 -- at least we felt it was the best we could ask for. We acted as if those acknowledged victims included Ellen: we wrote one another e-mails with exclamation points and thanked the Orange County prosecutor, Matt Murphy. But there was no trial for Ellen, and I don't think anyone ever expected there would be. I certainly didn't.

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WY Bill Would Eliminate Life Without Parole: Ben Neary of the Associated Press reports on proposed legislation by Wyoming Senator Bruce Burns, introduced Thursday that would eliminate life without parole sentences in Wyoming. This would apply to future cases and would grant the governor the option to shorten sentences for inmates currently serving LWOP. Wyoming inmates serving this sentence are first-degree murderers and/or repeat sex offenders. Burns argues that the LWOP prison population is aging, and the state will be responsible for the higher cost for their medical care. His plan is "basically get rid of the state's responsibility for these people." Cheyenne District Attorney Scott Homar opposes the bill, noting that for some offenders, particularly repeated sex offenders, life without parole is the only appropriate sentence. Wyoming has the death penalty.

NY Passes Gun Laws, Overlooks Officers: Michael Virtanen of the Associated Press reports on a new gun control bill passed Friday in New York. The bill passed in the Senate 43-18 Monday night, and cleared the Assembly 104-43 Tuesday. New York Governor Cuomo had issued a special waiver so the bill could be passed without the usual three days for lawmaker and public review in order stop the gun buying spree in the city. The law reduces maximum magazine capacity from ten to seven rounds and reclassifies some previously legal semiautomatic rifles as illegal but allows owners who had the previously legal guns to keep them if they register with police within a year. However, Jim Hoffer of Eyewitness News reports the new law neglected to exempt most NY law enforcement officers who handguns have a 15 round capacity. In March, it will be illegal to have a gun that holds more than seven rounds. The Patrolman's Benevolent Association President said Friday that changes to the law to provide both active and retired officer exemptions are in the works. State Senator and former New York Police Department Captain Eric Adams is seeking an amendment to implement the exemptions next week. Continued from this News Scan.

Ex-New Orleans Mayor Indicted for Corruption: The Associated Press reports that former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin (D) was indicted Friday on 21 counts of corruption. Among the charges are bribery, conspiracy, filing false tax returns, money laundering, and wire fraud. Nagin was first elected Mayor in 2002, then reelected in 2006.  In a speech a year after Hurricane Katrina, Nagin predicted New Orleans would become a "chocolate city" and that the hurricane was a result of God being mad at America.  During his second term, rebuilding after the disaster was painstakingly slow and violent crime increased across the city. During the rebuilding, a City Hall corruption investigation began. To date, two former city officials and two businessmen have pleaded guilty to charges of corruption. 

Can a state retroactively abolish a defense, even a "partial" defense such as diminished capacity?  If it is purely a legislative change, clearly not.  That is the heart of the constitutional prohibition of ex post facto laws.  A statute enacted after the crime that makes previously legal conduct criminal or increases the punishment of previously illegal conduct cannot be applied.

But how about a court's reinterpretation of a previously enacted statute?  Tougher question.  The Supreme Court has found a due process protection against court-made changes to substantive criminal law, but it is not exactly congruent with the ex post facto rule for statutes.

The Michigan Legislature passed a law in 1975.  Burt Lancaster [no, not that one] killed his wife in 1993.  The Michigan Supreme Court decided in 2001 that the 1975 law had abolished diminished capacity, a much-criticized doctrine under which a mental problem is claimed to negate the capacity to form a mental state such as "malice," typically reducing murder to manslaughter despite otherwise objective indicia of malice.  Lancaster's first conviction was overturned on habeas, and on retrial the trial court precluded the diminished capacity defense. 

The state court of appeals was okay with that.  Federal judges split 2-2, with two judges on the court of appeals panel saying the state court decision was both wrong and unreasonable.  The third member of the panel and the district judge disagreed.  Panel opinion is here.  Today, the Supreme Court took up the case as Metrish v. Lancaster, No.12-547.

Diminished capacity, BTW, is often known as the "twinkie defense."  The term comes from the notorious manslaughter verdict for Dan White, who killed San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.  Twinkies were not actually part of the defense, but the term has stuck, and the low reputation of the defense is entirely justified.

PA Seeks Death Penalty for Ransom Killer: Brad Segall of CBS News reports prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Raghu Yandamuri in Philadelphia. Yandamuri allegedly killed a ten-month-old girl and her grandmother October 2012. He stabbed the grandmother to death, then kidnapped the infant and suffocated her, dumping her body in the same building. CBS News previously reported Yandamuri left 10 copies of a ransom note for 50,000 dollars in the apartment.  

Court Denies IN Quad Killer's Appeal: The Associated Press reports a federal court judge denied Indiana death row inmate Joseph Corcoran's sentence appeal last week. Corcoran was convicted in 1999 of shooting his brother, his sister's fiance, and two other men to death with a semiautomatic rifle in July 1997. His case has been reviewed by the Indiana Supreme Court five times, a federal court twice, and the U.S. Supreme Court twice. His attorneys plan to file another appeal. He has also bragged while in prison about shooting his parents to death with a shotgun in 1992. He had been charged but acquitted in that case.

Four IL Double Homicide Suspects Arrested: The Associated Press reports four people appeared in court Monday in Illinois for the murders of two men. Allegedly, Alisa Massaro, 18, Adam Landerman, 19, Joshua Miner, 24, Bethany McKee, 18, lured the victims, two 22-year-old men, to Massaro's home. They then robbed the victims, killed them, and attempted to dismember them. Three of the suspects were arrested at the home, where police found the bodies Thursday; one was later apprehended.

FBI Releases Early 2012 Crime Statistics: The FBI has this preliminary report for the first six months of 2012. According to the report, violent crime went up 1.9 percent compared to the first half of 2011. Nationally, murder dropped 1.7 percent, rape declined 1.4 percent, robberies increased by 2 percent, and assaults went up by 2.3 percent. Property crime increased 1.5 percent nationwide. All categories of property crimes went up, theft by 1.9 percent, vehicle thefts by 1.7 percent, and burglary went up 0.1 percent. In the West, violent crime is up 3.1 percent and property crime by 4.7 percent. In the Midwest, violent crime increased 2.5 percent, and property crime by 1.3 percent. In the Northeast and South, property crime increased by 1.1 percent. However, the northeast experienced a 4.0 percent increase in property crime, while it declined 1.4 percent in the South.

Oakland Violent Crime Wave Continues: CBS San Francisco reports four separate people were shot to death on Friday in Oakland in six hours. The murders are believed to be a gang retaliation for the murder of a woman in Summer 2012. Oakland Police Chef Howard Jordan explained in a news conference Monday that an estimated 90 percent of the violence in the city since last summer has stemmed from the gang feud. Oakland city officials have hired former Los Angeles police chief  and New York City police commissioner Bill Bratton to help develop strategies to handle the crime wave. Details in this News Scan.

Search for More John Wayne Gacy Victims: Don Babwin of the Associated Press reports a search for more victims of Illinois serial killer John Wayne Gacy will be carried out. Gacy was convicted in 1980 of killing 33 young men. Investigators had located 29 bodies in the crawlspace and yard of his home in the 1970s. A judge approved a warrant to search for bodies underneath his late mother's apartment complex. According to witnesses, he had been a handyman for the property. Gacy was executed in 1994.

Paul Elias of AP has done some more digging on the question of how Stanworth ever got released.  The long version of his article in on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer site. (Some other sites are carrying truncated versions.)

Stanworth's biggest break came in 1972 when the state Supreme Court struck down California's death penalty as cruel and unusual punishment. As a result, Stanworth, Charles Manson, Sirhan Sirhan and 104 other Death Row inmates had their death sentences converted to life in prison.

At that time, however, the harshest penalty for first-degree murder was life with the chance of parole, rather than life without parole. So Stanworth was allowed to apply for parole, which he did unsuccessfully four times between 1974 and 1978.

Then in 1979, he hit pay dirt. The state's parole board gave Stanworth a date for release, saying he could leave prison sometime in 1990 after serving 23 years, four months and nine days. The board said he was entitled to release for five main reasons, according to yet another Supreme Court ruling in 1982 considering his parole:

Jane Goodall (the famous chimp researcher), Richard Wrongham, and Dale Peterson have this article in the WSJ.  Here is the first paragraph:

Where does human savagery come from? The animal behaviorist Marc Bekoff, writing in Psychology Today after last month's awful events in Newtown, Conn., echoed a common view: It can't possibly come from nature or evolution. Harsh aggression, he wrote, is "extremely rare" in nonhuman animals, while violence is merely an odd feature of our own species, produced by a few wicked people. If only we could "rewild our hearts," he concluded, we might harness our "inborn goodness and optimism" and thereby return to our "nice, kind, compassionate, empathic" original selves.

The article proceeds to explain why that is baloney.  The "conservative estimate[]" of violent death among chimps is 271 per 100,000, which is over 57 times the 2011 U.S. homicide rate, and the U.S. is high among developed nations.  The article concludes:

There are several interesting items in the Weekend WSJ today.  Adam White has this review of a collection of Judge Learned Hand's correspondence, edited by his granddaughter Constance Jordan.  White notes, "Only one jurist has condemned Brown [v. Board of Education] without losing his reputation, and he accomplished that feat only because he had established himself as one of the greatest judges in American history."  Hand was one of the foremost advocates of judicial restraint in the first half of the twentieth century, and he maintained his opposition to judicial activism even as the pendulum swung from results he opposed to results he favored.

Vauhini Vara has this article in the WSJ with the above title:

Property crime has been rising in California, and some law-enforcement officials blame the state's October 2011 sentencing overhaul that has kept thousands of low-level criminals out of prison.

California saw a year-over-year increase of 4.5% in property crime in the fourth quarter of 2011, immediately after the overhaul, marking the first rise since 2004, according to a report from the state attorney general this fall. In contrast, property crime, which includes burglary, auto theft and larceny, fell 2.4% in the nine months before the sentencing changes stemming from a U.S. Supreme Court decision.

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When you were a kid, did you ever point your finger like a gun and say "pow"?  I certainly did, lots of times.  Donna St. George reports in the WaPo:

The parents of a 6-year-old Silver Spring boy are fighting the first-grader's suspension from a Montgomery County public school for pointing his finger like a gun and saying "pow," an incident school officials characterized in a disciplinary letter as a threat "to shoot a student."

More and more, it seems, people with truly bizarre notions are in positions of authority, making decisions that affect lots of other people.  The weird is becoming mainstream, and the prospects for our country and our culture are not good.

The story also discusses schools' overuse of suspensions as a discipline measure, which is also a huge problem. 

'Tis the season for end-of-year assessments, so my contribution is the most interesting book I read in the last year.  It is Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion.

Haidt explores through the lens of evolutionary psychology why people have such fundamentally different views of right and wrong.  The basic thesis is that we are mostly self-centered beasts, competing with other individuals for survival of the fittest, but there is also a streak of loyalty to our group that sometimes transcends self-interest.  This, too, is a product of evolution, as groups that have such loyalty have a competitive advantage over groups that do not.

In Haidt's Moral Foundations Theory, there are six elements of the moral matrix:  care/harm, liberty/oppression, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation.  He then explores how people of different political orientations place differing emphasis on these elements.  Haidt is a liberal, and he unabashedly states that the motive for his research was to help liberals win elections.  He was distressed by John Kerry's dismal campaign in 2004.

The intentionally provocative title of this post may cause some readers to think that I'm about to go after white prosecutors for ignoring rape in black communities. I'm not. I'm aware that it's often said that prosecutors devalue the lives of black murder victims by seeking the death penalty against their killers less frequently than they seek it when the victim is white (Kent has debunked this claim). I don't think, however, that I've heard a similar claim made about rape cases (I'm all ears if readers know of some).

There have been many suggested responses to the Newtown massacre.  Generally, they involve more stringent gun control, improving our ability to commit mentally unstable people, and posting armed guards or police at schools.  All merit discussion, although I have no great faith that, in anything resembling a free country (and probably not a dictatorship either) any of them will work.  The occasional triumph of evil in this world is a part of life we are required to accept.

A New Haven attorney is asking permission to sue the state for $100 million on behalf of a student who survived the mass shooting at a Newtown school.

The Hartford Courant reports that attorney Irving Pinsky filed notice Thursday with Claims Commissioner J. Paul Vance Jr. The state has immunity against most lawsuits unless permission to sue is granted.

Pinsky said the 6-year-old student, identified as "Jill Doe," was in her classroom at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14 when "the horrific confrontation" with Adam Lanza came over the loudspeaker.

Pinsky said the student has been traumatized by the killings, and accused the state of failing to protect students from "foreseeable harm."

National Prison Population Declined in 2011: Statisticians E. Ann Carson and William J. Sabol of the Bureau of Justice Statistics report prison populations in 26 states declined in 2011. The largest decline of 15,493 inmates occurred in California due to Governor Jerry Brown's "Public Safety" Realignment (AB109). The policy accounted for 72 percent of the national prison population decline of 21,614. This decline, offset by 6,591 new prisons entering the system, resulted in 15,023 fewer prisoners incarcerated in the U.S. in 2011 overall. In Florida, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, and Texas, the prison populations declined by about 1,000 convicts last year.

Oakland Officials Hire Consultants After Violent Crimes Surge: Terry Collins of the Associated Press reports Oakland city officials announced Thursday they hired Bill Bratton to help with developing strategies to reduce murders and violent crime in the city. In 2012, Oakland homicides increased to 127 from 110 the previous year. Violent crime increased 23 percent in the same time period.  Bratton was the former Los Angeles police chief from 2002 to 2009, and New York City police commissioner from 1994 to 1996. He is an expert in fighting gang violence, reducing violent crime, and strengthening police-community relations. Joining Bratton is police strategist Bob Wasserman, who heads the Strategic Policy Partnership based out of Boston. Wasserman is already reviewing the entire Oakland Police Department. Bratton will join him early 2013.  

CT Geneticists to Study School Shooter DNA: Shushannah Walshe of ABC News reports University of Connecticut geneticists will be studying the DNA of school shooter Adam Lanza. The geneticists were approached by Connecticut Medical Examiner H. Wayne Carver. They will be looking for mutations or abnormalities that could be linked to violent behavior and aggression. This is the first time a DNA study has been done on a mass killer.

NYC Homicides at Record Low in 2012: The Associated Press reports New York City anticipates a record-low number of homicides for 2012. Homicides in the city declined 19 percent from last year. There were 414 homicides in 2012, compared to the previous record low of 471 in 2009. Shootings have also declined by 8 percent. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly give credit to the stop and frisk tactic adopted by the city in the mid-1990s. According to Kelly, the stops take about 8,000 weapons, 800 of which were illegal, off the streets annually. While 237 of the homicides in 2012 were shooting deaths, the number declined 20 percent from 2011. The police commissioner said, "We're preventing crimes before someone is killed and before someone else has to go to prison for murder or other serious crimes."

Chicago Homicides Spike: Jeremy Gorner and Peter Nickeas of the Chicago Tribune report Thursday's shooting brought Chicago's annual death toll to 500, the highest since 2008. Homicides in Chicago are up 17 percent in 2012. Shootings are up 11 percent. Within the first three months of the year, homicides in the city were already up 60 percent compared to 2011.

Tim Craig reports in the WaPo, "State police officials said Thursday that it will take months to determine why Adam Lanza massacred students and staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School, as investigators struggle to assess his mental state prior to the shootings."  Among other problems, Lanza attempted to destroy his hard drive, so it will take some special techniques to get any useful information from it.

This is just one more way that this case contradicts our initial thoughts.  Some in the media, both old and new, were saying immediately afterward that the media should not mention Lanza's name, show his picture, or ask about him, because postmortem infamy is what motivates killers in these kinds of cases.  Yet it appears in this instance that Lanza tried to conceal, rather than promote, whatever it was that motivated him.

Charles Krauthammer has this column, also in the WaPo.  He has no problem in principle with gun control but notes that the last assault weapons ban did not work and the new legislation being proposed will not work, either.  Lanza would have killed just as many children if he had been armed with a weapon that was not classifiable as an "assault weapon."  Psychiatrist Krauthammer notes the problem with involuntary commitment laws and how stronger ones might have allowed Jared Loughner to be committed, but as Steve pointed out on this blog, it is unlikely that would have made a difference in Lanza's case.

More generally on the search for solutions, Debbie Dingell has this op-ed:

AP reports:

The U.S. Army said Wednesday it will seek the death penalty against the soldier accused of massacring 16 Afghan villagers during pre-dawn raids in March.

The announcement followed a pretrial hearing last month for Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, 39, who faces premeditated murder and other charges in the attack on two villages in southern Afghanistan.

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Bales' defense team has said the government's case is incomplete and outside experts have said a key issue going forward will be to determine whether Bales, who served tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Meanwhile, back in Fort Hood, AP reports: 

The Army psychiatrist charged in the deadly Fort Hood shooting rampage apparently will be allowed to keep his beard during his military trial, after a new judge indicated Tuesday that she won't force him to shave.

The previous judge's order requiring Maj. Nidal Hasan to be clean-shaven or be forcibly shaved before his trial had tied up the case for more than three months, but an appeals court ousted that judge earlier this month.

Both crimes warrant the death penalty.  In Bales's case, PTSD is not remotely close to a mitigating circumstance sufficient to outweigh the aggravating.  In Hasan's case, it was preposterous to hold up the trial for three months over the military's beard-phobia.  Get on with the trial, expedite the review, and actually carry out the sentence.  Military justice is supposed to be swift, remember?

A psychiatrist in France has been convicted of manslaughter for failing to recognize the "grave risk" posed by one of her patients who later brutally murdered an elderly man.   

A court in Marseilles said Daniele Canarelli, 58, had committed a "grave error" by failing to recognize the public danger posed by Joel Gaillard, her patient of four years.

Gaillard hacked to death 80-year-old Germain Trabuc with an axe in March 2004 in Gap, in the Alps region of southeastern France, 20 days after fleeing a consultation with Canarelli at Marseilles's Edouard Toulouse hospital.

Canarelli was handed a one-year prison sentence and ordered to pay 8,500 euros to the victim's children, in the first case of its kind in France. Defense lawyers said the ruling would have serious repercussions for treatment of the mentally ill.

I'd like to know more details about the case, but this seems on its face a bit heavy handed (what happened to the United States being the overly-aggressive, prosecutor-oriented bad guy?)

Last month, Washington state legalized (as a matter of state law) the recreational use of marijuana.  Earlier this week, we saw what the "recreation" looks like, as reported on a Fox TV station.  As the story notes, "Police believe this is the first deadly crash involving the drug since it became legal in the state of Washington."

Ellen Huet posts at SFGate:

A 33-year-old man had to be rescued by firefighters early Monday after he became stuck in the brick chimney of his home in San Francisco's Pacific Heights neighborhood, authorities said.

As Kent notes, there seems to be two issues in the Newtown case that has everyone talking:  access to firearms and mental illness.  I'll leave it for others to debate the merits of gun control, but I wanted to make a few comments about the role of mental illness and violent crime.

First, as Kent noted, the issue of involuntary commitment looms large in these discussions.  It is true that the legal standard for involuntary treatment has changed considerably over the years to the present state where it is exceedingly difficult to involuntarily commit someone for a prolonged period of time. For the most part, our nation has adopted an outpatient mental health treatment model, know often as the hospital without walls, that simply fails to provide the appropriate amount of care because it cannot do so: there's only so much that mental health providers can do in an outpatient setting.  Many people with serious mental illness do not believe that they are sick and consequently do not want help.  Since our modern commitment standards operate primarily under the rubric of the state's police powers instead of the parens patriae model, commitment is reserved for those individuals who are deemed dangerous not sick and in need of treatment.  The focus is wrong and needs to be changed.

But even if the laws were different it is not clear that the results would have been much different with Adam Lanza.  Details are still sketchy and much of what is supposedly known is mere speculation, but if it holds true that Mr. Lanza's sole mental health problem was Asperger syndrome, it's unlikely that even a broad civil commitment standard would have captured him.  The link between Asperger's syndrome and grave disability - the broader commitment standard - is remote.

Kent also mentions access to mental health services.  It is true that access is often trotted out in these tragic cases as examples of why our nation should increase funding for mental health services.  In many of these cases it's not self-evident that access to more services would have brought a different result.  Services are underutilized because many people with serious mental illnesses do not believe they are sick and therefore do not want treatment.  But it is also a question of priorities.  Our nation spends a lot on what can reasonably be said is a vast overdiagnosis of ADHD and even Autism at the expense of adequate funding for programs that deal with severe mental illness.  As a mental health professional I can attest to the fact that this segment of our mental health services is indeed vastly underfunded.

Whether that would have made a difference in the case of Adam Lanza is unknown.  But every year there are preventable tragedies that could be avoided if our public mental health funding had different priorities and our approach to civil commitment was more rationale given what we know about serious mental illness.   The defining issue when it comes to civil commitment shouldn't be dangerousness but illness and its need for consistent, effective treatment.

Robert Leider of U. Pa. has this op-ed in the WSJ.  He calls for breaking the stalemate on gun-control legislation by both sides yielding a bit.

Leider also notes:

In addition to guns, the common denominator in most of these mass shootings has been mental illness. Seung-Hui Cho (Virginia Tech), Jared Lee Loughner (Tucson, Ariz.), James Eagen Holmes (in the Aurora, Colo. theater), and now Adam Lanza all had significant mental health problems. As the country turns its attention to overhauling its health-care delivery system, we must discuss improving access and delivery of mental health care to those who need it. As part of this conversation, we need to update federal firearm laws as they relate to persons with mental illness--laws that currently are primitive and rooted in stereotypes.

True as far as it goes.  However, as the Lanza case indicates, a mentally ill person need not personally purchase the firearms.  Leider says, "Gun owners (especially close relatives of such persons, such as Adam Lanza's mother) should also be obligated to store unused firearms safely so that potentially dangerous persons and minor children do not gain easy access to them."  How would you enforce that?  Home inspections?

The mental health issue in greatest need of attention is the standard for involuntary treatment.  The legal hurdle of dangerousness is simply too high, given the difficulty of predicting and proving dangerousness.  This is the classic case of yesterday's reform being today's problem.  America overreacted to the "Cuckoo's Nest" problem and swung too far in the other direction. 

The problem is not, as is commonly asserted, underfunding of community mental health clinics.  Those clinics are not turning away seriously mentally ill people for lack of funding.  Quite the contrary, they often overdiagnose mental illness in people who actually just need counseling just to get the government money flowing.  And flow it does.  The problem is that the people in greatest need of treatment do not volunteer for it.  The very illness that needs treatment prevents them from making a rational decision whether to seek it.  That problem should be the first priority.

When does anyone plead guilty and get a life sentence in a state with no enforceable death penalty?  Not as often as in states that do have a death penalty, but it does happen.  Like, for instance, when a serial killer is already subject to a death sentence in another state.  That happened Friday in New York, Laura Italiano reports for the NY Post:

He killed the heiress. And he killed the flight attendant, too.

Serial sex killer Rodney Alcala took a surprise guilty plea in Manhattan this afternoon to taking the life of two women, both age 23, from 1971 and 1977.

The so-called "Dating Game" killer, 67, admitted to the 1971 murder of TWA flight attendant Corelia Crilley and the 1977 murder of Ellen Hover, daughter of a Hollywood nightclub owner.

Under his plea, the pony-tailed monster will be sentenced next month to 25 years to life in prison -- a legally irrelevant term given that he will now be returned directly to death row in San Quentin Prison in California.

For background on the California cases, see Alcala v. Superior Court, 43 Cal. 4th 1205 (2008).  Alcala's current death penalty appeal is case S181535.  Nothing has happened on it since shortly after the judgment in 2010.  Alcala's first death sentence was overturned by the state courts.  The second one was affirmed by the state courts but overturned by the federal courts.  The 1996 act of Congress limiting federal court second-guessing of state court judgments did not apply because Alcala filed his petition before that act.

CT School Shooting Claims 20 Children and 8 Adults, Including Gunman: John Christoffersen of the Associated Press reports gunman Adam Lanza, 20, killed 20 children, from ages five to 10, and six adults Friday morning in a Connecticut elementary school before killing himself. Another adult was found dead at a second crime scene. No further details have been released. Lanza entered the school and opened fire in two classrooms. He was the son of a teacher at the school, Nancy Lanza. CBS News reports his mother was killed in the shooting. Some of the children killed were his mother's students. The shooters older brother, Ryan Lanza of New Jersey, is being questioned. This is the second-deadliest shooting the nation has ever seen, the first being the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, with 33 dead.

IA May Reinstate Death Penalty: Kayleigh McCollough of WHO-TV News reports Iowa Governor Terry Branstad will be discussing reinstating the death penalty in limited circumstances in the state. He will be meeting with several families of kidnapped and killed children on Monday. State Senator Kent Sorenson has been preparing legislation for the January session. Iowa has not had the death penalty since 1965.

MA Reevaluates Releasing Low-Risk Sex Offender Names: Jim Morrison of the Sun Chronicle reports Massachusetts lawmakers will be reevaluating a bill introduced last year by Governor Deval Patrick that would publicly release the names of Level 1 sex offenders. Currently, Level 3 offenders are listed in a searchable online database, and the names of Level 2 offenders can be provided by local police departments. The bill has gotten new attention stemming from the case of John Burbine, a Level 1 sex offender. Burbine is charged with more than 100 counts of sexually abusing 13 infants and toddlers over a two-year period at his wife's unlicensed children's daycare facility. He was convicted in 1989 of indecent assault and battery on a child. Laurel J. Sweet of the Boston Herald reported Burbine pleaded not guilty to rape of a child by force, posing a child in a state of nudity, posing a child in a state of sexual activity, possession and dissemination of child pornography. His youngest victim was only eight days old.

OK Man Pleaded Guilty to Murdering Parole Officer: KOCO News reports Lester Kinchion pleaded guilty Thursday to the May killing of an Oklahoma parole officer. Kinchion beat the officer unconscious then shot him with him own firearm. Kinchion will serve 10 years for the illegal use of a firearm, life for shooting with an intent to kill, and life without parole for murder. The court recommended he receive treatment for schizophrenia.

MS Double Murderer Charged with AL Killing: Candace Murphy of Fox 10 TV reports convicted double-murderer Dennis Hicks was charged Thursday with the murder of a 23-year-old man in Alabama. In September 2011, Hicks allegedly decapitated and dismembered his victim while on parole. The skeletal remains were found dumped in a wooded area. Hicks was convicted of a 1979 double-homicide in Mississippi. He was sentenced to serve two life sentences but was paroled after 25 years. Hicks was arrested on September 9, 2011 for theft but made bail. He was arrested again on November 30, 2011 for a parole violation.

The Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law has a symposium issue on the 25th anniversary of McCleskey v. Kemp.  My contribution can now be cited as Kent Scheidegger, Rebutting the Myths About Race and the Death Penalty, 10 Ohio St. J. Crim. L. 147 (2012).

Doug Berman wrote the intro to the issue.  He begins, "The Supreme Court's 1987 ruling in McCleskey v. Kemp was widely condemned when first handed down, and the passage of time has hardly softened the critical appraisal."  He moves in different circles than I do.  The decision was and continues to be "widely condemned" on the political left and in academia, the latter being close to a proper subset of the former.  Among those fighting for justice in the worst murder cases, the opinion is regarded as both necessary and correct.

VT Killer Planned to Kill Pop Star: Russell Contreras of the Associated Press reports convicted killer Dana Martin devised a plan to kill four individuals, including pop-star Justin Bieber and his bodyguard, and to castrate the other two. Martin, who is serving two life terms for the 2000 killing a 15-year-old girl in Vermont, is infatuated with Bieber.  After receiving no answers from his many letters to  Bieber, Martin recruited a man he met in prison and his nephew to kill the singer. The pair, Mark Staake and Tarrer Ruane were on their way to New York when they made a wrong turn in Vermont and ended up in Canada. Staake had an outstanding warrant and was arrested. Investigators found details of the plot and a drawing of Bieber in Ruane's vehicle. Staake and Ruane are facing multiple charges, including conspiracy to commit aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.

CODIS IDs 10,000 Suspects in TX Cold Cases: Maurice Chammah of the Texas Tribune reports 10,000 suspects in cold cases have been identified in Texas using the FBI's Combined DNA Index System database. In Texas, all juveniles, sex offenders, and felons must provide a DNA sample. DNA in new cases is then run through CODIS and investigators are alerted if the DNA is a match to anyone who has been previously convicted of a crime. Since 1996, CODIS has analyzed more than 660,000 samples of DNA.

In FL About 1M Can Carry Concealed Weapons: Michael Peltier of Reuters reports almost one million Florida residents have active concealed weapon licenses. Florida has the most registered gun owners of any state in the nation. More than two million have been issued since 1987, with only 0.3 percent revoked.

Public safety is the primary reason we have government in the first place.  But California's government, we are told, is too broke to lock up the bad guys and execute the worst guys.  And we can't cut other expenditures, because they have already been cut to the bone.

Oh, really?  Dave Siders reports in the SacBee:

State officials overseeing construction of the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge agreed this year to pay a public relations company nearly $10 million for services the Brown administration says it knew nothing about, including hundreds of thousands of dollars to conduct tours and to produce a video and commemorative book.