Results matching “first”

The thrice-reversed panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has finally given up finding excuses to reverse the death sentence of Ohio murderer Robert Van Hook.  The Supreme Court described the crime in its reversal two years ago:

On February 18, 1985, Van Hook went to a Cincinnati bar that catered to homosexual men, hoping to find someone to rob. He approached David Self, and after the two spent several hours drinking together they left for Self's apartment. There Van Hook "lured Self into a vulnerable position" and attacked him, first strangling him until he was unconscious, then killing him with a kitchen knife and mutilating his body. State v. Van Hook, 39 Ohio St. 3d 256, 256-257, 530 N. E. 2d 883, 884 (1988). Before fleeing with Self's valuables, Van Hook attempted to cover his tracks, stuffing the knife and other items into the body and smearing fingerprints he had left behind. Six weeks later, police found him in Florida, where he confessed.

The Ohio courts finished with this case, affirming the conviction and sentence, 19 years ago.  It has been in the federal courts ever since.  The District Court rejected Van Hook's claims.  The Sixth Circuit panel reversed and was then reversed itself three times, twice by the en banc Sixth Circuit and once by the Supreme Court.  Today the panel finally rejected the remaining claims and upheld the judgment. 

This is why we needed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996.  If this case had been subject to the act, and if the act had been properly applied, this case could have been resolved in a fraction of the time.  Of course, that second "if" is a big one.  Resistance to AEDPA by federal judges has largely frustrated its goals, but we are making progress.

Jonathan Adler has this post at VC.

New Evidence Contradicts AG Eric Holder's Statements: Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News reports new documents show Attorney General Eric Holder was briefed on the controversial Fast and Furious operation as early as July 2010. This directly contradicts a statement Holder made to Congress in May 2011, when he said he had heard about the operation for the first time just a few weeks prior. Internal Justice Department documents obtained by CBS News show Holder began frequently receiving memos regarding Fast and Furious at least ten months before the May hearing. The documents came from the head of the National Drug Intelligence Center and Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer. The Justice Department told CBS News that Holder misunderstood the question from the Congressional committee - he did know about Fast and Furious, just not the details. Ever since an ATF agent blew the whistle on the operation the Justice Department has tried to publicly distance itself, but the new evidence proves high level officials knew about it.

Utah Study Shows Convictions for Child Homicides Similar to Adult Homicides: Aaron Falk of The Salt Lake Tribune reports a new study by doctors at the University of Utah's Department of Pediatrics shows that in Utah suspects of child homicides are now convicted at similar rates as those of adult homicides. Experts attribute the finding to new laws, improved forensics, and a shift in cultural attitudes. The article cites examples of improved forensics in proving a shaken-baby case, and the creation of the state's child abuse homicide law.

Wednesday's Execution for Georgia Inmate Delayed: Retuers reports Georgia death row inmate Marcus Ray Johnson, scheduled for execution tomorrow, has been granted a stay. Doughterty County Superior Court Chief Judge W.E. Lockette delayed the execution and set a February hearing to evaluation Johnson's request for further DNA testing. Johnson was convicted of the 1994 rape and murder of a woman Johnson met at a bar, then mutilated and stabbed 41 times with a small knife before leaving her body lying across the front seat of her car. Johnson admitted to police that he "hit [the victim] hard," but claimed "I didn't kill her intentionally if I did kill her."

Utah Supreme Court Debates Right of Defendant to Decide Evidence: Emiley Morgan of Deseret News (UT) reports the Utah Supreme Court heard argument today about whether a capital defendant has the right to decide against putting on mitigating evidence during the sentencing phase of trial - or whether that decision rests with the defendant's attorney. The issue is presented in the case of Floyd Maestas, who was sentenced to death in 2008 for the stomping death of a 75-year-old woman. Maestas waived his right to present mitigating evidence during the sentencing phase, saying he didn't want any information publicized that could embarrass his family. Maestas's defense attorney argued today that the decision to waive that right is a strategic decision that should have been made by his attorneys.  

The 2011 Ig Nobel prizes were awarded last Thursday.  Most relevant to this blog was the Peace Prize, awarded to "Arturas Zuokas, the mayor of Vilnius, LITHUANIA, for demonstrating that the problem of illegally parked luxury cars can be solved by running them over with an armored tank."

Eugene Volokh at his eponymous conspiracy has this post on an astonishingly broad, and almost certainly unconstitutional, proposal on cyberbullying in New York.  He emphasizes this sentence:

Proponents of a more refined First Amendment argue that this freedom should be treated not as a right but as a privilege -- a special entitlement granted by the state on a conditional basis that can be revoked if it is ever abused or maltreated.

Yeah, right, "refined."  Always cast your proposal as the more sophisticated approach.

The Field Poll shows that opinion among California voters on whether to do away with the death penalty is essentially unchanged over the last decade, presently at 68-27.

A very badly worded question that implies the respondent must choose a single punishment for all first-degree murders shows a plurality choosing life imprisonment over the death penalty, 48-40.  I would say life imprisonment myself, if the choice were really so constrained.  But of course it is not.

On the two questions asked, California voters are nearly identical to Connecticut voters surveyed by the Quinnipiac Poll, noted here.  Quinnipiac went on to ask a third question that reflects much better the actual policy choice:

"Which statement comes closest to your point of view? (A) All persons convicted of murder should get the death penalty. (B) No one convicted of murder should get the death penalty. (C) Whether or not someone convicted of murder gets the death penalty should depend on the circumstances of the case." 

When asked the correct question, 83% said either "all" or "it depends" and only 16% said "no one."  That is the true measure of support.  It is most unfortunate that Field did not ask California voters the correct question.

Cop Killer Executed in Florida: The Associated Press reports Manuel Valle, 61, was executed last night in Florida for killing a police officer Louis Pena during a traffic stop 33 years ago. He was pronounced dead at 7:14pm Wednesday. Valle also shot another officer at the time, who was saved by his bulletproof vest. Valle was the first Florida inmate to be executed with a new mix of lethal drugs. Pena's children, who were 13 and 19 when he was killed, were present for the execution.

Former Death Row Inmate Granted Medical Parole Hearing: Sam Stanton of The Sacramento Bee reports California inmate Willie Curtis Miller, 84, has been granted a medical parole hearing. Miller was sentenced to death in 1968 for the sexual assault and murder of an 8-year-old girl. His sentence was converted to life in prison after the U.S. Supreme Court threw out the death penalty in 1972. Now Miller, who is in failing health, has a chance of getting out of prison under California's new medical parole law. 15 inmates have been released under the law since the state began holding medical parole hearings in May. Sacramento District Attorney Jan Scully is working to prevent Miller from becoming the 16th, calling him a "savage child molester and murderer."

PA High Court Says Mass Murderer Not Competent for Execution: The Associated Press reports the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ruled that mass killer George Banks is mentally incompetent to be executed. Banks killed 13 people with a semiautomatic rifle in Pennsylvania nearly 30 years ago, including five of his own children. The state Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling on Banks Wednesday, who has been on death row since 1982. His execution was stayed in 2004 after his mother filed a petition asserting that the execution would violate the U.S. Constitution. In the ruling, the justices cited testimony by medical experts who believe that Banks suffers from severe mental illness and is delusional about his crimes.

ICE Arrests Nearly 3,000 Criminal Immigrants: Tim Mak of Politico reports Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced Wednesday it arrested nearly 3,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records as part of a week-long sweep. The crackdown took place in all 50 states and led to the arrest of 2,901 individuals of which 151 were convicted sex offenders and 42 were gang members, according to ICE. This was the largest raid of its kind and included more than 1,900 ICE officers. The announcement came the same day U.S. District Judge Sharon Blackburn ruled that Alabama could enforce key parts of its immigration law.  

The Supreme Court's orders are here and here.  No dissents are noted.

An earlier story by Brendan Farrington of AP is here.

Update:  Looks like Manuel Valle had a total of five petitions before the Court.  Two more denials were issued after the original post, here and here.

For the fifth one (actually the first, by docket number), Justice Breyer dissents, as federalist notes in the comments.  The order and dissenting opinion are here.  Breyer repeats the old Lackey claim, that it is cruel to execute someone after so many years on death row.  He includes these comments near the end (emphasis added):

It might be argued that Valle, not the State, is responsible for the long delay. But Valle replies that more than two decades of delay reflect the State's failure to provide the kind of trial and penalty procedures that the law requires. Regardless, one cannot realistically expect a defendant condemned to death to refrain from fighting for his life by seeking to use whatever procedures the law allows.

It might also be argued that it is not so much the State as it is the numerous procedures that the law demands that produce decades of delay. But this kind of an argument does not automatically justify execution in this case. Rather, the argument may point instead to a more basic difficulty, namely the difficulty of reconciling the imposition of the death penalty as currently administered with procedures necessary to assure that the wrong person is not executed.

The italicized phrases highlight two of the problems with Justice Breyer's argument.  First, the law does not demand the length of procedures that currently exist.  Quite the contrary, if the lower federal courts were implementing AEDPA the way it was written and intended, the procedures would be far shorter.  Second, very little of postconviction litigation in capital cases has anything to do with identity of the perpetrator.  The Davis case was very much the exception.

I will address the first paragraph in a later post.

Jackie Alexander has this report of the execution for the Gainesville Sun.

And now, for something completely different, the term mens rea appears in the first paragraph of a front-page story in a newspaper not specifically for lawyers.

Gary Fields and John Emshwiller have this story in the WSJ on watering down of the criminal intent requirements in federal criminal laws.  Their lead horror story is a Native Alaskan trapper charged with a crime for selling sea otters.  The sale would have been perfectly legal if the buyer were another Native Alaskan but, unknown to the seller, he was not.

Declining mens rea requirements are compounded by overfederalization and overcriminalization.

The criminal law draws its moral force from a societal consensus on the wrongness of the conduct.  Expanding criminal law beyond inherently wrong acts such as robbery and murder into regulatory matters needs to be done carefully.  As the story illustrates, Congress has been astonishingly sloppy at times.

F. James Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican and chairman of the House crime subcommittee, said he wants to clean up the definition of criminal intent as part of a broader revamp of the criminal-justice system. There are crimes scattered among 42 of the 51 titles of the federal code, with varying standards of criminal intent. Still others are set by court decisions.

"How the definition of mens rea is applied is going to be one of the more difficult areas to figure out a way to fix," he said.

Well, this is disappointing.  The US Supreme Court met for its "long conference" yesterday.  That is the private conference of the Justices where they consider the petitions for certiorari (asking the Court to take up a case) that built up over the summer while they were off in Austria or Lake Tahoe or anywhere but Washington.  (The Clerk went to Lubbock, a curious choice.)

The day after the conference, the Court issues a short list of orders with the cases it has decided to take up, along with some administrative matters in pending cases.  Today's order is here.  The much longer list of cases not taken will be issued at the formal beginning of the term, the first Monday in October.

There appears to be a grand total of one criminal or habeas case, and it is a quirky statute of limitations case.  In Wood v. Milyard (U.S. No. 10-9995, USCA10 No. 09-1348), the District Court raised a statute of limitations issue sua sponte.  "[T]he Respondents provided a cryptic response to the timeliness question. They first incorporated an argument from their pre-answer response about the statute of limitations expiring before Wood filed his habeas petition, and then stated that they were 'not challenging, but do not concede, the timeliness of [Wood's] [habeas] petition.' "  Huh?  The District Court dismissed some claims as unexhausted and others as meritless, but the Court of Appeals affirmed on statute of limitations.

Why this oddball case is certworthy is less than clear, especially in a case where the defendant is clearly guilty, he got a sentence that is definitely no more than he deserved and arguably less, and the underlying procedural claims are meritless.

So, of the numerous more certworthy cases on the conference list, which did they turn down, which did they vacate and remand, and which did they "relist" for reconsideration at a later conference?  Check back here Monday.

In how many habeas cases will we see an order of "granted, vacated, and remanded for reconsideration in light of" Richter, Pinholster, or both?  How many for Walker v. Martin?  A fair number, I expect.

John Schwartz of the New York Times called me yesterday to get my take on the Troy Davis execution (which was then still several hours away).  His article appears in the Times today.

The quotations he attributes to me are correct but not complete.  I do not attribute this to any ill will or bias on his part.  Writers have word limits, and it's simply not possible to get in everything an interviewee says.  I want to take this opportunity, however, to add to what appears in the article.

The portion in which I am quoted is this:

William Otis, a former federal prosecutor and special White House counsel under President George W. Bush, said "there has to be finality for any system that's going to work," but added: "To say that there has to be finality is not to say that things should be rushed. The primary duty of courts is to get it right."

A problem for Mr. Davis's defenders, he said, is that judges tend to look at recantations, especially from witnesses who are in prison, "with a flinty eye."

Mr. Otis added: "The question is not whether you can avoid errors. The only realistic question in an adult mind is which set of errors you're going to accept. You have to be mature and honest about it, and understand there is the risk of executing an innocent person."

It is certainly true that the primary duty of courts is to get it right, and that a rush to judgment must be avoided.  But no such thing happened in the Davis case.  Appellate courts looked at it a dozen times over the course of two decades.  To my knowledge, not a single judge or Justice took the view that the evidence, then or now, showed that Davis was innocent. 

While Ann Coulter lays out the evidence, Dahlia Lithwick of Slate, who never saw a killer without an excuse, insists that the Troy Davis execution means the death penalty is done for in the United States.

Ms. Lithwick is a relentless campaigner against capital punishment who, like most such campaigners, begins from the assumption that racism and sleazy prosecutors, among a zillion other things, make capital punishment a moral stain.  She has decided the public will now agree with her because, inter alia, "many" people believe Davis was innocent, and the morally impervious quest for "finality" of judgment, having now been exposed, will give way to the more compelling desire to be certain we have the right guy.  Since we can never really be certain  --  or at least not often enough  --  death penalty support will wither.

Ms. Lithwick's piece is so stuffed with fraud that it would take me all day to deconstruct it, and I don't have all day.  So I'll just do her first paragraph.

 

CNN has this story:

For the Georgia prosecutor who put Troy Davis on trial in 1991 for killing a cop and won a conviction, there were two cases being fought.

"There is the legal case, the case in court, and the public relations case," Spencer Lawton, the former Chatham County prosecutor, said. "We have consistently won the case as it has been presented in court. We have consistently lost the case as it has been presented in the public realm, on TV and elsewhere."

The Sixth Circuit today held that Michigan's parole scheme does not create a constitutionally protected liberty interest cognizable on federal habeas review:

[I]n determining whether Michigan's parole system creates a liberty interest, we must determine whether Petitioner had "a legitimate claim of entitlement to" parole, rather than "an abstract need or desire for it."

Professor-Murderer Attends Tulane Law School: Bruce Nolan of the The Times-Picayune reports on convicted murderer Bruce Reilly's notoriety at Tulane Law School after his classmates learned about his criminal record on the legal blog Above the Law. In 1993, Reilly, then 20, was arrested for the stabbing death and robbery of Charles A. Russell, a 58-year-old English professor at Community College of Rhode Island.  Reilly pleaded no contest to second-degree murder and robbery, and served 12 years in prison. He took up jailhouse lawyering, and came out of prison wanting to improve the criminal justice system and reduce inmate abuse. He was admitted to Tulane Law School this year with a scholarship from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and a Dean's Merit Scholarship. There is no guarantee that the admitted murderer will be allowed to practice law in Louisiana. Though felons aren't automatically excluded, every applicant for the bar exam "bears the burden of proving his or her good moral character and fitness to practice law by clear and convincing evidence," according to state Supreme Court guidelines.

Life With Parole = Around 20 Years in California: Bob Egelko of the SF Chronicle reports a recent study by the Stanford Criminal Justice Center at the university's law school found that California inmates serving life with the possibility of parole spend an average of 20 years in prison. The study also found that the state parole board is less likely to approve release at an inmate's first hearing than at later hearings, and is less than half as likely to grant parole when a victim's relatives attend the hearing. The parole board currently has authority to grant early release to inmates convicted of premeditated first-degree murder (without a special circumstance) and second-degree murder, but starting in 2019 will also consider release for third-strikers. The study says the board now approves release in 18 percent of the hearings, three times the rate in 2007.

Prosecutor Cleared of Misconduct:  Sheri Qualters reports in the NLJ, "A three-judge panel in the District of Massachusetts has declined to impose disciplinary sanctions on Boston federal prosecutor Jeffrey Auerhahn for judicial findings that Auerhahn's withholding of exculpatory evidence prompted the release of purported mobsters from prison.   In a Sept. 15 order in In the Matter of Auerhahn, a majority of the panel concluded that the allegations of professional misconduct were not proven by clear and convincing evidence."

From Comite de Jornaleros de Redondo Beach v. City of Redondo Beach, USCA9 No. 06-55750, decided today:

Chief Judge KOZINSKI, with whom Judge BEA joins, in deep dissent:

This is folly.

For years, the city of Redondo Beach has had a serious problem with day laborers--sometimes as many as seventy-five--crowding sidewalks and street-corners, soliciting work from passing motorists. See Appendix 1. As might be expected when large groups of men gather at a single location, they litter, vandalize, urinate, block the sidewalk, harass females and damage property. Cars and trucks stop to negotiate employment and load up laborers, disrupting traffic.

Residents and businesses need not suffer these harms and indignities day in and day out for years on end. It is to secure the safety, beauty, tranquility and orderliness of neighborhoods that municipal governments are instituted among men. Nothing in the First Amendment prevents government from ensuring that sidewalks are reserved for walking rather than loitering; streets are used as thoroughfares rather than open-air hiring halls; and bushes serve as adornment rather than latrines. See Appendix 2. The majority is demonstrably, egregiously, recklessly wrong. If I could dissent twice, I would.

The US Supreme Court yesterday stayed the execution of Texas murderer Duane Buck while it considers his petition to review the decision of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.  At the same time, the Court denied Buck's habeas corpus petition filed directly in the Supreme Court.  (It hasn't granted one of those in decades.  See this post.)

The case involves an unfortunate statement by an expert witness regarding race and dangerousness.  The odd thing about this case is that it was the defense witness who said that, and he first said it in response to a question from the defense lawyer.  An excerpt from the Fifth Circuit opinion follows the break.

The Casey Anthony case was a world of bad news.  The principal bad news was, of course, that, in the opinion of the great majority of observers, Little Miss Innocent got away with murder. 

That cannot be undone, but at least she'll have to pay a bit of a price for her copious lying.  Criminal defendants lie all the time, as anyone familiar with the system knows, but Ms. Anthony might have set a new record.  If the truth ever came out of her mouth, I missed it.

Ms. Anthony's having to pay up is the good news.  The bad news is that she can get it all back with her first photo shoot for Penthouse, or whatever she's going to do to get money.  Somehow, though, I don't think it will be in the babysitting business.

[See also this post from Sept. 5. -- KS]

New Illinois Law Limits Benefits For Criminals: Illinois Governor Pat Quinn recently signed two new bills that seek to limit employee benefits to workers who commit crimes. Senate Bill 1147 prohibits employees from receiving workers' compensation benefits for injuries sustained while committing a forcible felony, aggravated DUI or reckless homicide. House Bill  3591 prohibits all new hires to the Chicago Transit Authority, Metra and Pace from collecting pension benefits if they are convicted of a felony related to their duties. BLR Human Resource Network reports.

Chicago Releases Crime Stats For The First Time: In an attempt to debunk Chicago's notorious reputation for withholding information, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration will publish millions of crime statistics dating from 2001 in an online searchable database. Brett Goldstein, the city's chief data officer and former police officer, said the recent release is part of "a whole new era of openness and transparency." The data will be updated daily, and will benefit academics and journalists by cutting down on time-consuming and costly requests for records. It also increases the potential for long term studies and crime prevention techniques. Chicago's efforts appear to be unprecedented among law enforcement groups nationwide. Sophia Tareen from AP has this story.

Court Rejects Appeal by Wife Convicted of Murder: Paul Elias of AP reports on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision on Tuesday to reverse its previous ruling in favor of Kristin Rossum, a former toxicologist convicted of poisoning her husband in a notorious San Diego murder case. The Ninth Circuit 's previous ruling granted a special hearing to determine whether her trial lawyer's performance was so bad that she was entitled to a new trial. The Court's ruling yesterday said it was bound by the Supreme Court decision limiting federal review of state court decisions. Rossum was convicted of murder in 2002 and sentenced to life in prison.

"Mr. Inmate"?:  Tom Whitehead reports in The Guardian (UK) that guidelines released by the UK's Ministry of Justice says prison guards should use the formal address "Mister" when speaking to prisoners with learning disabilities, as well as use the prisoner's name at the beginning of each sentence. A spokesperson for the Ministry said the guidelines do not impose a general order to call all inmates "Mister," but instead apply only to prisoners who self-report as having learning difficulties, a category which may include inmates with dyslexia. Steve Bostock, national vice-chairman of the Prison Officers Association, called the guidelines "unnecessary" and said "there are more important things to be worrying about than calling someone Mister."

Justin Davenport and Peter Dominiczak report in the London Evening Standard on the new Commissioner for Scotland Yard, Bernard Hogan-Howe.

In his first public appearance at New Scotland Yard, Mr Hogan-Howe said he wanted to tell the people of London that "the idea is to make the criminals fear the police".

The Commissioner - the third Met chief in six years - is expected to move quickly to shake up the Yard and bring in zero-tolerance policies which proved so successful on Merseyside [his prior post].

These included the widespread use of metal-detecting arches to combat the carrying of weapons, and a tough approach to people caught with guns and knives.

We've all seen a lot of American television crime dramas where a high-ranking police official gets personally involved in catching the crook in an individual case, and we shake our heads and say, "Yeah, right."  Well...

[Mr.] Hogan-Howe chased and caught two suspected bike thieves weeks before being given the top job at the Met.

The Commissioner, 53, who was appointed yesterday, chased the alleged teenage thieves to a housing estate* and "relieved them of the bike".

*English-American translation:  housing estate = housing project.

We are approaching the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 atrocity.  There's going to be a deluge of commentary on it, almost all of which I plan to avoid, on the theory that just about everything that's sensible to say has already been said, and that the torrent of non-sensble things, including a great deal of pure mush  --  and not a little national self-flagellation  -- is best left ignored.

It's not that I want to be unfeeling about it.  I lost a friend, Barbara Olson (wife of former Solicitor General Ted Olson) on the plane that slammed into the Pentagon.  I had known Barbara for years.  She was an AUSA in DC when I was an AUSA across the Potomac River in Alexandria, Virginia, and we spoke often.  She was a total live wire, dedicated, determined and beautiful.  Not for nothing did she later become a frequent guest on TV shows all over the place, including, more than once, Larry King.  There was no better spokesman for the values that guide C&C.

It would be one thing if the coming remembrances would honor fighters like Barbara and the things she believed in.  It would be one thing if they honored the soldiers who have spent a decade in a just and necessary war to destroy our enemies.

But you know full well that's not what's coming up.

  

First Hearing Under Racial Justice Act: Paul Woolverton of The Fayetteville Observer (NC) reports Marcus Reymond Robinson is scheduled today to be the first condemned inmate under North Carolina's Racial Justice Act to present evidence of racism in an attempt to convert his sentence to life without parole. Robinson, who is black, was sentenced to death in 1994 for the 1991 killing of a white teenage boy. The Racial Justice Act gives death row inmates in North Carolina the opportunity to claim that their death sentences are the result of racism, and to use statistical trends as proof of racism in the system. All but seven of North Carolina's 158 death row inmates have pending Racial Justice Act claims.

Arizona Prisons Charging Fee to Visit Inmates: Erica Goode reported Monday in the NYT that the State of Arizona has enacted the first of its kind legislation that imposes a one-time $25 fee on visitors to the Arizona Department of Corrections. The fee will only be imposed on those over 18 years of age, and will help address a $150 million maintenance gap for the Arizona Department of Corrections. The Department of Corrections says the fee will serve to keep the facilities safer for visitors and inmates. Prisoner rights groups have the expected reaction -- they have filed lawsuits.

Gold Fever Sweeps the Criminal Underworld: Thomas Watkins of the AP has this so-titled piece about the surge in robberies and burglaries related to gold after the price of the precious metal peaked last month at $1,981 an ounce, an increase of more than $600 from a year earlier. Police in Oakland say dozens of women have had gold necklaces yanked from their necks on the street, and similar stories are emerging from cities nationwide. Earlier this summer, thieves in New Jersey even took off with $400,000 in gold nuggets from a mining museum display. Gold is an easy substance to fence, as jewelry can be melted down, thus destroying the evidence, and sold.

In 1977, the New York Legislature passed the first "Son of Sam Law" to prevent a notorious serial killer from cashing in on his own crime with a book deal.  Other states followed.  The Supreme Court eventually struck down the New York law in Simon & Schuster, Inc. v. Members of the New York State Crime Victims Board, 502 U.S. 105 (1991).  While some states have amended their laws to get around that decision, a more effective method is sometimes just to get a plain old tort judgment against the perpetrator for more than that person will ever have, book deal and all.

An advantage of the plain old tort suit is that it can be used even if a boneheaded jury in the criminal case lets the perpetrator off.  Fred Goldman famously got a whopping civil judgment against O.J. Simpson that scuttled his book deal and reduced him to game of asset hide-and-seek, eventually ending in a robbery that finally put him in the slammer where he belongs.

Can this be applied to the Casey Anthony case?  Unfortunately, Caylee's other next of kin is her father, and God only knows who that is.  Well, maybe Casey does, but she hasn't said.

WSJ Law Blog has this post, and WFTV has this story on claims for reimbursement by agencies that spent large sums investigating Caylee's disappearance as a result of lies by Casey.  Unfortunately, these claims won't be enough to soak up a multimillion dollar book deal, if Casey gets one, and the acquittal will likely preclude application of even the revised Son of Sam laws.

Maybe every guy in Florida who thinks he might be the father should come forward to be DNA tested.  It could be a large group, but the odds are better than the state lottery.  Somebody, anybody, needs to soak up that book deal money.  For Casey Anthony to become a millionaire out of this would be beyond obscene.

Every once in a while, I think we need to clarify our policies on comments.

Here's a bit of good news on the international front.  Nicholas Cecil reports in the London Evening Standard:

Britain opposes the death penalty for Colonel Gaddafi, but his fate should be a matter for the Libyan people, Cabinet minister Andrew Mitchell said today.

As the net closes on the dictator, the International Criminal Court is seeking to have him dragged to The Hague to face charges of crimes against humanity.

But rebel leaders want to put the 69-year-old tyrant on trial in Libya first - where he could face execution if found guilty of atrocities in which thousands of his citizens were killed.

In an interview with the Evening Standard, Mr Mitchell, the International Development Secretary, laid out Britain's position on whether Colonel Gaddafi should be executed.

"People will have different views on the issue of the death penalty but it's a matter for the Libyan people and their new government, the National Transitional Council," he said.

Right.

Texas Closes First State Prison: Robert Stanton of Hearst Newspapers reports Texas has closed one of its state prisons for the first time. On Wednesday the Texas Legislature agreed to end funding for the Central Unit in Sugar Land. The closing of the Sugar Land facility is expected to save the state about $12.4 million a year.

Decrease In Death Penalty Convictions Tied to Bad Economy: Dan Springer of Fox News has this piece about the decline of death penalty convictions partly due to the bad economy. Death penalty sentences have dropped 60 percent nationwide since 2000. Death penalty cases costs 2-3 times more than a comparable murder case where the state is seeking life in prison without parole. King County (Wash.) Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg says "it is a big deal for county budgets... when a death penalty case comes up cost is a factor that everyone is considering."   Talking about why the costs are so high Satterberg noted that defense attorneys have increasingly used mitigation specialists to conduct lengthy investigations into a defendant's past looking for abuse, mental illness or any other reason that might explain the murderer's behavior.  "They want to drive up the cost.  They want to delay the cases forever, only to turn around and use those arguments why we should get rid of the death penalty,"  Satterberg said. "They're given a blank check," he added.

No "Hot Pursuit" for Tribal Police Off Reservation: In its third time addressing the case, the Washington Supreme Court today reversed its 2010 decision and ruled that tribal police cannot follow drunk drivers off reservation land in "hot pursuit." Justice Mary Fairhurst acknowledged that the ruling could create "the incentive for intoxicated drivers to race for the reservation border," but that such policy problems would be best addressed by legislative tools "such as cross-deputization or mutual aid pacts." The court noted, however, that tribal police could be permitted to effect an arrest outside the reservation under the common law rule "when in fresh pursuit of one who had committed a felony." Levi Pulkkinen of Seattlepi.com has this story. 

We are coming up on the tenth anniversary of the most grotesque terrorist attack in our history.  We know the bunch who did it.  To his credit, President Obama approved the operation that eradicated one of them, Osama bin Laden, and likewise to his credit, did so without a lick of due process.  We are, after all, in a war.

We have custody of the principal operational mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.  We have had him for eight years, since 2003.  President Bush belatedly put him before a military commission.  A little less than three years ago, KSM and some of his cohorts pleaded guilty.  He wanted to become a "martyr."

The commission foolishly put off the plea in order to conduct a mental competency hearing, notwithstanding that there was not the ghost of a reason to suspect that KSM had any mental issues at all, other than being a bloodthirsty, America-hating jihadist.

In the ensuing delay, Eric Holder saw his chance. 

Inmate's "Failure to Warn" Lawsuit to Proceed:  The AP reports a federal judge in Los Angeles has refused to dismiss most of a former inmate's lawsuit claiming that the federal government was negligent in exposing him to potentially deadly disease.  Convicted drug dealer Arjang Panah was transferred to a federal prison in California's Central Valley in 2005, where he contracted coccidioidomycosis ("valley fever"), a disease caused by a fungus found in soil in southwestern United States.  District Judge Gary Feess said the government's immunity in such cases "does not apply to plaintiff's negligence claims to the extent they are based on defendants' failure to warn of the cocci outbreak." 

More Feedback on Police Lineups:  As noted in this earlier post, the New Jersey Supreme Court has ordered that state to change rules governing police lineups.  A piece in Sunday's New York Times by Erica Goode and John Schwartz reports on research raising questions about the reliability of the identification of suspects via lineups, and on efforts by some larger police departments to reduce the pressure on witness and eliminate influence by detectives seeking a suspect. 

Rethinking Clarance Thomas:  "There are few articles of faith as firmly fixed in the liberal canon as the belief that Clarance Thomas is, to put it as bluntly as many liberals do, a dunce and a worm," notes Walter Russell Mead early in this piece from the American Interest.  While liberal pundits and pop academics have stumbled over each other to malign Thomas since the day his appointment was announced, many who actually read Supreme Court opinions have recognized that Justice Thomas' intellectual depth and understanding of the Constitution put him on par historically with some of the Court's best legal minds.  Mead points to a profile of Thomas by Jeffery Toobin in the New Yorker which finally acknowledges that "In several of the most important areas of constitutional law, Thomas has emerged as an intellectual leader of the Supreme Court."  Areas where Justice Thomas is credited with influencing the Court include the First Amendment, Second Amendment and Eighth Amendment.  While characterizing the 2008 Second Amendment decision (District of Columbia v. Heller)  as a constitutional land mine for the left, Mead describes Thomas' effort to seriously restore the Tenth Amendment as "a nuclear bomb." 

James Q. Wilson has this article in the City Journal on crime rates, unemployment, and the various reasons for variations in crime rates.  Some excerpts follow the jump.

This is only marginally on topic, but interesting.  Texas has an entrance fee of $5 for strip joints that serve alcohol.  This has been humorously dubbed the "pole tax."  Cf. U.S. Const. Amdt. XXIV.  The Texas Supreme Court today upheld the pole tax against First Amendment challenge, reports Jim Vertuno of AP.

As Michael Rushford has noted, Kent had the dubious honor of appearing on "Hardball" to answer stand-in host Ron Reagan as Reagan fired one loaded question after the next, seldom allowing a response.  The ostensible purpose of the program was to explore Gov. Rick Perry's record on executions.  The actual purpose was to stage the "Willingham-Was-Innocent" show and paint death penalty advocates as bloodlusting hoodlums, ready to string up anyone at hand, guilty or not.

I note this because the death penalty might well become an issue in Presidential politics.  While Perry has been Governor, Texas has had vastly more executions than any other state.  With President Obama confronted with the prospect of having to run on a weak and sinking economy; sustained high unemployment; runaway debt; and an approval rating headed toward Jimmy Carter levels, you don't have to be a genius to figure out that the plan will be to make the election about his opponent's views and leadership rather than his.*

This presents a wonderful and, I must say, unexpected opportunity for a national debate about capital punishment.  A candidate has seldom been handed a more one-sided issue. 

*  The President's record on issues other than criminal law is not the subject of C&C, but has recently been noted elsewhere.