Results matching “first”

The House of Representatives is reading the Constitution this morning.  It is a symbolic gesture, but as noted in this post, symbolic gestures can have an effect on the zeitgeist and ultimately impact substantive decisions.

You hear some rhapsodizing in some quarters about the "perfect Constitution."  That is nonsense, as a full reading reveals.  The original Constitution was far from perfect.  Some deficiencies stemmed from necessary political compromises, some from oversights, and some from ideas that just didn't work out.  Amendments were necessary and remain necessary.

The title above is the title of this post by David Ingram at BLT:

President Barack Obama today re-nominated, as expected, the vast majority of judicial nominees who were not confirmed at the end of 2010. But exactly one previous nominee is not among them: Judge Robert Chatigny for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit.

The lack of another nomination makes Chatigny the first of Obama's judicial picks to fail to win confirmation, though others, such as Goodwin Liu for the 9th Circuit, may be filibustered.

Chatigny faced heated Republican opposition because of his involvement, as a federal district judge, in a state capital case. A threat he made about a lawyer's law license had prompted an ethics inquiry, though a panel of three other federal judges cleared Chatigny.

It is good to see capital cases getting the attention they warrant in the judicial confirmation process.  These cases have a particularly strong effect in exposing the tendency of judges and wannabe judges to substitute their policy preferences for the laws duly enacted through the democratic process.

Another of the Governator's last-minute clemencies was for Sara Kruzan, who committed murder at the age of 16.  Her cause was championed by State Senator Leland Yee, who for the last several years has been pushing legislation to create a possibility of parole for all under-18 murderers.

The National Organization of Victims of Juvenile Lifers cites the Kruzan clemency as evidence that Yee's legislation is unnecessary.  There are already enough safety valves in the system.  Their press release follows the jump.

Gov. Schwarzenegger Commutes Sentence During Final Hours:  During the final hours of his term in office, Governor Schwarzenegger commuted the manslaughter sentence of Esteban Nunez, who pleaded guilty earlier this year to fatally stabbing a man during a fight.  Family members of victim Luis Santos, deeming Schwarzenegger's decision a "sneaky" move, pointed out that Esteban had already received a reduced sentence as part of a plea bargain and that Esteban's father, former assembly speaker Fabian Nunez, previously worked with the Governor on key legislation.  One legal analyst countered that the Nunez family properly followed the required legal process for obtaining a commuted sentence.  Lilian Kim of KGO-TV (CA) has this story.

Accused New Year's Day Murderer Had Violent History:  Teri Figueroa of the North County Times (CA) reports Dontaye Henderson, charged with shooting to death his wife on New Year's Day in front of their six-year-old daughter, was a parolee with a history of violence against women.  Henderson pleaded guilty in 2003 to raping his estranged first wife at knife-point.  He was released on parole in 2005, but returned to prison at least three times for parole violations. Henderson has been on the run since the shooting over the weekend.

Arizona High Court to Consider Execution Drug Dispute:  The Arizona Supreme Court will consider today how to proceed in the case of double murderer and death row inmate Daniel Wayne Cook, reports Michael Kiefer of The Arizona Republic.  Cook's attorneys have asked the court to hold off on setting an execution date unless and until it can be determined whether the state legally obtained its supply of thiopental.  If the court elects to issue a death warrant, Cook would be executed in 35 days.

Foot-Shootin' DEA Agent's Suit Tossed:  The AP reports a federal judge in Florida last week dismissed a lawsuit against the DEA by former agent Lee Paige, who was made infamous by his 2004 foot-shooting blunder during a gun safety demonstration.  Paige had alleged a violation of his right to privacy, but the judge determined Paige failed to provide evidence as to who made the video public.

Joel Rubin and Robert Faturechi report in the Los Angeles Times:

For the first time in more than four decades, Los Angeles is on track to end the year with fewer than 300 killings, a milestone in a steady decline of homicides that has changed the quality of life in many neighborhoods and defied predictions that a bad economy would inexorably lead to higher crime.

As of mid-afternoon on Sunday, the Los Angeles Police Department had tallied 291 homicides in 2010. The city is likely to record the fewest number of killings since 1967, when its population was almost 30% smaller.

Strikingly, homicides in the city have dropped by about one-third since 2007, the last full year before the economic downturn, according to a Times' analysis of coroner records. Throughout the rest of the county, which is patrolled by the L.A. County sheriff and individual cities' police departments, homicides during the same period tumbled by nearly 40%.

So, if economic ups and downs aren't the explanation, what is?

The change, experts say, is not easily explained and is probably the result of several factors working together, including effective crime-fighting strategies, strict sentencing laws that have greatly increased the number of people in prison, demographic shifts and sociological influences.

(Italics added.)  Yes, the elephant has been sighted, if mentioned only briefly and in passing.  And it's not that we have more people in prison, it's that we have a specific type of people in prison -- those who have committed serious crimes. 

Locking up the bad guys is, indeed, only one of multiple reasons for the decline in crime generally and murder specifically.  But it is a reason, and we must not abandon measures that have worked merely because "experts" tell us it would be "smart" to do so. 

People are walking around alive who would have been murdered but for our failed, ignorant, politicized "tough on crime" policies. The living people who would have been murdered will never know who they are.  They will never know that these "failed" policies saved their lives. But they were saved nonetheless.

Psychologist Robin Wilson provides an overview of two new studies published in the journal Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment on whether those who download and view child pornography are likely to engage in contact offenses with children.

Many jurisdictions now have tough penalties for those caught possessing, distributing, or creating child pornography. In some cases, the mandatory minimum sentences for possessing child pornography exceed the typical sentences given for contact offenses against children. Clearly, as a society, we take a very dim view of those who traffic in these sorts of materials.

But, what of the offenders?

In some respects, this may be a "chicken and egg" dilemma. Do pedophiles seek out child pornography or does downloading (and other subsequent activities best left to the imagination) of sexually explicit images of children lead to eventual contact (or "offline") offending with children?

...

In regard to the question of how many online offenders also have contact sexual offenses, Seto and colleagues found that only one in eight online offenders had officially-documented histories of contact offenses. However, this is tempered by their finding that more than half of such offenders are inclined to admit to contact offenses that are unknown to authorities... The first statistic (1:8) seems consistent with the argument made by some offenders that they are only interested in the pictures, and that surfing internet child pornography meets their needs and helps them to refrain from engaging in contact offenses. However, the second statistic (50%) gets to the heart of our (SO professionals) fears that many of these guys are just not getting caught. Indeed, under-reporting has always been the fly in the ointment for all of us quoting statistics regarding sexual abuse rates,incidence or recidivism.

The second study discussed by Wilson suggests that there may indeed be a subgroup of online offenders who pose a low risk for contact offenses.  The problem, of course, is identifying those offenders from the general pool of online offenders. 

Pedophilia Guide Author Jailed:  Rick Rousos of The Ledger (FL) reports Polk County, Florida officials traveled 1,900 miles to arrest 47-year-old Phillip Greaves in his Colorado home.  Greaves is charged with violating Florida's obscenity laws, after he sold and mailed a copy of his book "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure," which one officials deemed "a how-to guide" for raping children.  The book was at one time sold on Amazon.com until protests persuaded the retailer to remove the item from its listing.  Legal experts predict major issues in the case will be whether the picture-less book meets the definition of "obscenity" and whether the book falls within Greaves's First Amendment rights.

Random Bag Searches at Washington Metro Stations:  The Washington Metro transit agency began randomized bag searches at two stations today, reports Kytja Weir of The Washington Examiner.  The bags are screened for hazardous materials using ionization technology and K-9 units, and do not need to be opened unless further inspection is necessary.  Interest groups have mounted opposition to the security measures, but several Metro riders referred to the process as "relatively painless" and not offensive.

Irony at its Finest:  AP reporter Robert Barr writes Julian Assange is complaining that someone improperly leaked a Swedish police report on his alleged sexual offenses.  Assange claimed to the British newspaper The Times that a rival newspaper, The Guardian, "selectively publish[ed]" parts of the report.   Assange also criticized the timing of the leak: "The leak of the police report to The Guardian was clearly designed to undermine my bail application.  It was timed to come up on the desk of the judge that morning."

PTSD is often criticized because it is extremely easy to feign.  Most of the symptoms are entirely subjective and hard to independently verify.  The current issue of  Psychological Injury and Law has several articles on the purposed changes to the PTSD diagnosis in the upcoming DSM-V.   The lead article by Michael B. First sets the pace:

This commentary focuses on the proposed changes to the trauma stressor criterion for PTSD for DSM-5, specifically its likely impact on malingering. PTSD is particularly susceptible to malingering because the diagnosis relies so heavily on a patient's subjective symptoms. Because the traumatic event that is the trigger of the PTSD syndrome is generally based on objective fact and thus often easily corroborated, this element of the diagnosis is usually more challenging to malinger than subjective reports of symptoms. Therefore, one of the main gateways for limiting the misuse of the PTSD diagnosis in forensic settings is the criterion defining the range of qualifying traumas. Proposed changes to criterion A of PTSD in the draft include modifying the types of qualifying trauma by replacing "threat to physical integrity" with "sexual violation," and clarifying the modes of exposure by replacing the phrase "confronted with" with two criterion: "learning that the event occurred to a close relative or close friend" and "experiencing repeated or extreme exposure to aversive details of the event." Each of these changes has the potential to significantly broaden the range of qualifying stressors and consequently expand the potential pool of individuals who might be in a position to malinger the disorder. Given the likelihood that the DSM-5 field trials will be unable to provide information relevant to assessing the impact of making these changes in forensic settings, it would be prudent to resist the inclination to tinker with the wording unless other mechanisms are available to ensure that the wording changes do more good than harm.

The FBI's preliminary first-half 2010 crime stats. show a substantial drop in crime, as has been widely reported.  See prior post here.  There is a curious regional difference, though.

Violent crime is down 6.2% nationally.  By region, though, it is down 7.8% in the South, 7.2% in the West and Midwest, and hardly changed in the Northeast.  For murder, the regional variation is even greater.  Murder is down a whopping 12% in the South, down 7.2% and 6.3% in the West and Midwest respectively, and up 5.7% in the Northeast.

These numbers bounce around from one time period to another.  In 2009, the Northeast improved somewhat more than the rest of the country.  In 2008, the Northeast and Midwest had fractional point increases in murder while the South and West dropped about 7%.  I wouldn't jump to any conclusions based on one report, but the nearly 18% spread from best to worst region is remarkable and the variation is worth keeping an eye on.

Ghailani Appeals Conviction:  The AP reports former Gitmo detainee Ahmed Ghailani has appealed his conviction for conspiracy to destroy government buildings, the only count out of 224 he was convicted of last month.  His defense team claims the conviction should be tossed because once the jury found him not guilty of bombing the embassies, they should likewise have acquitted him of conspiracy to bomb the buildings.

Disparity in Federal Sentencing:  Boston Globe staff writer Jonathan Saltzman has this article on a recent study of the widened disparity in federal sentences in light of the case United States v. Booker, which declared the federal sentencing guidelines instructive, but not mandatory.  In his article "Inter-Judge Sentencing Disparity After Booker: A First Look," published this week in the Stanford Law Review, law school professor Ryan W. Scott analyzed 2,262 sentences imposed by ten federal judges in Boston.  In an interview, Scott indicated his findings were troubling: "It offends our notions of equality and consistency and the rule of law that an offender's sentence should depend on which judge happens to be assigned to the case."  Hat tip to How Appealing.

Pennsylvania Serial Killer Appeals Death Sentence:  Convicted serial killer Harvey Robinson attempted last week to have his last remaining death sentence vacated, reports Kevin Amerman of The Morning Call (PA).  Robinson had at one time point racked up three death sentences, all for killing women in Allentown, PA, but succeeded in having two of the sentences vacated.  In Robinson's current appeal, he argues his trial attorneys were deficient in failing to present evidence he suffered from frontal lobe brain damage.

Thermometer Attack:  The Los Angeles Times reports a California man was convicted last week of attempted murder for attacking a moviegoer with a five inch long digital thermometer.  During a movie screening, the victim politely asked 40-year-old Landry Boullard's female companion to turn off her cell phone.  Boullard responded with a brutal stabbing attack, leaving the victim with puncture wounds in the neck and bleeding in the brain.  Boullard faces up to life in prison when sentenced in January.

Certiorari Comments in Capital Cases:  Robert Barnes has this article in the WaPo on the frequency of Supreme Court Justices commenting on the Court's decision to deny review of capital cases.  Such denials are usually without comment.

Legislation Next Year on the Death Penalty:   Maureen Callahan has this article in the New York Post on the politics of death penalty repeal in Connecticut.  Misty Higgins has this article in the Martinsburg Journal on a drive to reinstate the death penalty in West Virginia.

What kind of monster kills someone and then immediately contacts the victim's mother to gloat?  Well, there are two we know of: Albert Greenwood Brown in California and John David Duty in Oklahoma.  The Chickasha Express News has this story on Duty.

Oklahoma is switching to pentobarbital due to the shortage of thiopental.  As expected, DPIC is protesting that this drug has not been used for executions before.  Well someone has to be first.  It's not like you are going to do controlled trials with volunteers.

CNN quotes Richard Dieter: "It's been used on animals and humans in an anesthetic way, not a killing way, but if it doesn't work in that context, we know that the other two drugs are extremely painful, so it's going to be an excruciating process."  But in the three-drug protocol, it only needs to work "in an anesthetic way" in order that it not be "an excruciating process."

Update:  The execution was completed and Duty was pronounced dead at 6:18 Central Time, AP reports.

The D.C. Court of Appeals has upheld the convictions of some anti-DP protesters who held their protests on the Supreme Court grounds in violation of 40 U.S.C. § 6135.  The Court has held that there is a First Amendment right to protest on the sidewalk by the Court building, but not on the grounds.  See United States v. Grace, 461 U.S. 171, 181 (1983).

The protesters were holding a banner and also doing the Spoiled Children Cheer.  You know the one.  It goes "What do want? [whatever] When do we want it? Now!"  Why anyone does this cheer any more is something of a mystery, given that the medium devalues the message.  The [whatever] expresses an opinion, but the rest of the cheer informs hearers that the person expressing that opinion is a whiny, spoiled, obnoxious brat, thereby making the hearers less rather more likely to be persuaded of [whatever].  In this case, [whatever] was "Abolition."

The opinion is here.  Mike Scarcella has this post at BLT with pictures.

Oklahoma Execution Tonight:  Oklahoma death row inmate John David Duty is scheduled for execution at 6 p.m. this evening, reports Rachel Peterson of the McAlester News-Capital (OK).  Duty was sentenced to death for murdering 22-year-old Curtis Wise, his cellmate at a state prison where Duty was serving three life sentences for rape and robbery.  Duty strangled Wise with a shoelace, afterwards writing a letter to his victim's mother:  "Well I tied him up hands and feet, then I strangled him.  It's not like the movies, it took awhile."  The U.S. Supreme Court denied his last appeal in early October.

Professional Masks Giving Criminals Extra Protection:  Los Angeles Times writer Sharon Bernstein reports on an increasing trend in the criminal underworld - ultra-realistic masks that instantly transform the appearance of one's race and/or age.  SPFXMasks, one company in the industry, manufactures masks to look and feel like human skin, selling them for between $600 and $1,200.  Last year, a European bank robber used one of SPFXMask's mask to disguise himself as an African American male, which lead to the mistaken arrest and identification of another man.  Investigators also suspect the SoCal "Geezer Bandit" may not actually be an elderly man, given his resemblance to SPFXMask's "Elder" mask.

Escaped Inmate Caught After 19-Hour Crime Spree:  A 20-year-old Iowa inmate who escaped from a university hospital and commenced a 19-hour crime spree was caught last night after he flipped and crashed a stolen vehicle.  Anthony Koehlhoeffer was awaiting trial on 11 charges when he escaped into the 10 degree night wearing only a hospital gown and sandals.  He is suspected of committing several carjackings throughout the state during his flight.  Lee Hermiston of the Iowa City Press-Citizen has this story.

Charles Manson Gets 30 Extra Days:  IBMTimes reports another 30 days has been added to Charles Manson's life sentence after a cell phone was recently discovered in his prison cell.  Manson was able to make calls and send text messages to people in three states and Canada before the phone was confiscated, but officials have not identified who he contacted.  An official from the California Department of Corrections stated it was "troubling that he (Manson) had a cellphone since he's a person who got other people to murder on his behalf."

Violent Crime Up in California Counties:  Despite a decline in the crime rate for much of California, the Alameda and Contra Costa Sheriff's Departments are reporting a 24% and 39%, respectively, jump in violent crime for the first half of 2010 from last year.  The increase may be due in part to budget cuts, but academics and officials also point to the spread of gang activity into the unincorporated parts of the counties.  Several unincorporated areas in Alameda and Contra Costa, some of which one county official stated are "left to fend for themselves," have experienced gang-related violence over the past year.  Justin Scheck and Bobby White of The Wall Street Journal have this article.

Search for "Grim Sleeper" Victims:  The LAPD has released 180 photos found in the possession of alleged serial killer David Franklin, hoping to determine if any of them are additional victims, reports the LA Times.

That seems to be the question posed by a new outfit called "Right on Crime."  Those heading up this group have genuine conservative credentials.  Foremost among them is former Reagan administration Attorney General Ed Meese.  Also included are Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist.

Small government and respect for individual liberty are two of the central principles of conservatism.  It seems that Right on Crime asks whether the size of the prison population, the expense of maintaining it, and its rate of growth can be squared with those principles.  Accordingly, it is viewed as an ally of convenience by those on the Left who think now, as they have thought for years, that a dime spent on imprisonment is a dime too much, and that "rehabilitation"  --  or, as I see it, the mostly phony promise of rehabilitation  --  is the answer.  Thus Right on Crime is all the rage today on Doug Berman's blog. 

When a man of Ed Meese's stature lends his name to this sort of "reform effort," we need to pay attention.  I have tried to think it through, and have five observations.

 

Death Sentence Sought for 21-Year-Old Accused Murderer:  The Ventura County District Attorney announced yesterday he will seek the death penalty in the case against Joshua Graham Packer, accused of stabbing to death a husband and pregnant wife at their beach house last year.  Packer was linked to the killings through a crime scene DNA sample.  He is charged with three counts of first-degree murder (including one for the unborn child, who was six-months-old), and several robbery and burglary charges.  Raul Hernandez of the Ventura County Star has this story.

California Teen Charged as Adult in Brutal Home Invasion:  Catherine Browen of The Reporter (CA) reports 14-year-old Alexander Cervantes was charged as an adult with a total of 15 felonies, including attempted murder, torture, and numerous sex offenses stemming from a home invasion over the weekend.  Early Sunday morning, Cervantes broke into a Vacaville home and raped a 13-year-old girl after stabbing her more than 30 times.  Cervantes also stabbed the girl's 18-month-old brother, who awoke during the attack.  Cervantes is the minimum eligible age in California to be prosecuted as an adult, but prosecutors say he is unfit for juvenile court.

Sixth Circuit: Warrant Required to Search Emails:  The Sixth Circuit yesterday defined the scope of Fourth Amendment protection for emails, ruling a search warrant is required before the government can obtain email messages from an internet service provider (ISP).  While investigating Steven Warshak for fraud, the feds subpoenaed his emails from an ISP without a warrant.  The court determined this was a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights.  "Warshak plainly manifested an expectation that his emails would be shielded from outside scrutiny," and given the inherently private nature of email communication, his expectation was reasonable.  Read the AP's story here.

"Parent Accountability Act" Sends Parents to School:  Thomas Watkins of the Associated Press reports on the recent implementation of California's "Parent Accountability Act," the first state law allowing judges to order parents of gang members to attend parenting classes.  The law went into effect in January, but classes only recently started due to budget cuts and low attendance.  The training courses teach parents about warning signs that a child may be involved in gang activity and the legal consequences of gang-related offenses, and will eventually include victims of gang violence as guest speakers.

Suspects in Hotel Killing Could Face Death Penalty:  A husband-wife duo appeared in court today, accused of killing and dismembering a man in a Los Angeles hotel room.  The couple is charged with first degree murder with special circumstances, meaning they could face the death penalty if convicted.  49-year-old Herbert Tracy White's body was discovered mutilated in late November in a hotel room the two were renting.  The Los Angeles Times has this story.

Misdirected Criticism?:  The Washington Post has this editorial on Attorney General Eric Holder's attack on a recent House vote to bar federal funds to move any detainee from Guantanamo to the US for any purpose, including trial.  The editorial begins: "We have some sympathy for Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. as he rails against Congress's latest proposed limits on moving detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba - but not much.  The House is irresponsibly filling a vacuum created because the Obama administration failed to lead."

 Death Row Inmate Back in Prison:  A former Ohio death row inmate is back behind bars, reports John Futty of The Columbus Dispatch.  Thomas Anderson was sentenced to death at the age of 17 for murdering a Columbus police officer during a robbery, but was released in 1988 after the Ohio Supreme Court reduced his sentence to life.  His most recent crime, one count of robbery for punching a women who confronted him after he stole a purse from her car, is his seventh felony charge since his early release.

"An Eye for an Eye"... Literally:  FoxNews reports an Iranian man who blinded his lover's husband by throwing poison into his eyes has been sentenced to a punishment to match his crime:  having acid poured in his eyes.  The sentence has been upheld by Iran's highest court and the prosecutor on the case indicated that officials, "have asked for forensic specialists to oversee the blinding of the convict."

Since we began this blog, the comment traffic has been more sparse than most blogs, but it has been largely civil, in contrast to the "food fight" type of comment thread you often see elsewhere.

A while back, I loosened some settings to make it easier to register and comment.  I expected that would increase the comment traffic but worried that it might increase the number of low-grade comments.  For the most part, for a time, it did not.  Recently, though, we are getting an increase in comments that merely call people names while adding nothing of substance to the discussion.

Blogs are analogous to a private living room, not "speaker's corner" in a public park.  There is no First Amendment right to say anything you want.  As a guest, you observe the host's rules or you leave.

If you want to add to the discussion with thoughtful, substantive comments, you are welcome here, and that applies equally whether you agree or disagree with the post.  However, we do not need or welcome comments that just sling mud.  We also do not need or welcome comments that make gross mischaracterizations of what the original post said just to knock down the straw man.

I very rarely ban commenters, other than spammers.  If I do find it necessary, though, let me note in advance that doing so is not "censorship," the claim that banned commenters usually make.  Censorship is when the government fines or imprisons people for speech in the public forum.  Asking an unruly guest to leave a private party in your living room in not censorship; it is being a responsible host.

In the 1971 Bivens case, the Supreme Court created a cause of action for constitutional violations by government actors.  Does that cause of action apply to the guards employed by a privately operated prison who have no immunity from ordinary tort remedies?  The Ninth Circuit today denied rehearing en banc to a decision saying yes.  Judge Bea dissents, joined by seven others.  He says this creates a split with the Fourth and Eleventh Circuits.

Next stop, 1 First Street, NE.

Massachusetts Court Affirms Murder Conviction:  The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts today affirmed the conviction of Christopher McCowen, rejecting his claim that the jury's decision was tainted by racial bias.  McCowen, an African America trash collector, raped and fatally stabbed Christa Worthington, a white female, in 2002.  Worthington's two-year-old daughter was found unharmed clinging to her mother's body.  He claimed on appeal that several jurors made racially charged statements during deliberations, but the court found no violation of his right to due process.  Justice Roderick Ireland, who was recently appointed the court's first black chief justice, joined the court's opinion.  Denise Lavoie of the San Francisco Chronicle has more on the story here.

"A Want-to-be Vampire" Burns "V" on Teen's Forehead:  Police in Alabama say 20-year-old Evan Francis Brown, a follower of Satanism, believes he's a vampire and is accused of burning a "V" into the forehead of another teenager.  After tricking a 17-year-old into thinking they were playing a game, Brown allegedly tied the teen up and used a heated fork or spoon to brand a "V" into his forehead.    Police also discovered cigarette burns on the teen's face and arms and further signs of beatings.  Brown is charged with second degree assault.  The San Francisco Chronicle has the story here.

Man Given Life With Possibility of Parole for Stomping Woman to Death:  Michael Kiefer of the Arizona Republic reports on the sentencing of Jose Preciliano Quintero, 18, for the stomping death of Helen Coulter, 39, in 2008.  Quintero, a gang member since the age of 14, approached Coulter and requested sexual acts from her.  When she allegedly responded with a racial epithet, Quintero dragged Coulter to a vacant lot, stripped her and stomped on her throat and face for 30-45 minutes.  Coulter's face was deformed beyond recognition.  Quintero confessed to the killing after bloody prints from his sneakers were found on Coulter's face.  Quintero was sentenced yesterday to life in prison with a possibility of parole after 25 years, plus an additional 23 and a half years for kidnapping and sexual abuse to be served thereafter.  The prosecutor elected not to seek a sentence of life without parole, in light of the pending litigation of such sentences for juveniles.

Where Will They Honeymoon?:  Emiley Morgan of the Deseret News reports Utah death row inmate Troy Kell was married yesterday.  Kell and his bride were not permitted any physical contact before, during, or after the ceremony, which took place in a small room with a physical barrier between the couple.  Kell was sent to death row for brutally stabbing a fellow inmate in a Utah state prison, where Kell was already serving a sentence of life without parole for shooting a man in the face six times.

We have made no secret here of the fact that we consider President Obama's transfer of terrorist trials from military commissions to civilian courts to be a huge error.  However, we have not questioned that as commander-in-chief he did have the authority to make that decision.

Maybe not much longer, though.  AP reports:

In a setback for President Barack Obama, Democrats still controlling the House have approved legislation to prevent Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other detainees at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay from being transferred to the U.S. for trials in criminal courts.

The Guantanamo ban was included in a huge catchall spending bill that passed the House Wednesday by a 212-206 vote. The Senate has yet to act on the legislation, which would further imperil Obama's effort to close the detention center for terrorist suspects.

The move comes after the first Guantanamo detainee to face a civilian trial, Ahmed Ghailani, was found guilty last month of just one of the hundreds of charges brought against him connected to attacks on two U.S. embassies in 1998.

Although Ghailani faces up to life in prison, Republican lawmakers pointed to the case as a reason to support military trials for the Guantanamo detainees.

Update:  David Ingram at BLT has this post and a link to the actual bill language. (The official government system, Thomas, typically does not give bill language to the public until it is too late to contact your congressman.)  Section 1116 of the bill provides:

SEC. 1116. None of the funds made available in this or any prior Act may be used to transfer, release, or assist in the transfer or release to or within the United States, its territories, or possessions Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or any other detainee who--

(1) is not a United States citizen or a member of the Armed Forces of the United States; and
(2) is or was held on or after June 24, 2009, at the United States Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by the Department of Defense.

Our friend Dudley Sharp tells me that Dr. William Petit, whose family was slaughtered in a case that by itself justifies retaining the death penalty, will be on the Oprah Winfrey show today:

In hours of terror, Jennifer Hawke-Petit, Dr. Petit's wife, was raped and strangled. Their two daughters, 17-year-old  Haley and 11-year-old Michaela were also murdered.. Michaela was sexually assaulted. Both girls were burned alive and died of smoke inhalation. 

 

Dr. Petit was beaten with a baseball bat, suffers permanent injuries, but survived. He is the sole survivor from his immediate family.

 

Here is Dr. Petit's victim impact statement from the first trial, wherein Steven Hayes was given the death penalty.

Nick Miroff and William Booth report for the WaPo:

IN ASCENCION, MEXICO -- In this dusty farm town, an hour south of the U.S. border, more than 40 people were abducted - one a week - in the first nine months of the year.

Then, on Sept. 21, the kidnappings stopped.

That was the day a gang of kidnappers with AK-47s burst into Lolo's seafood restaurant and tried to abduct the 17-year-old cashier. A mob of enraged residents chased down two of the teenage attackers and lynched them in a cotton field on the edge of town.

As John Locke explained over three centuries ago, people in a state of nature have the right to carry out their own justice.  We give that up when we agree to live under a government of laws.  If that government fails in its first duty, then people must revert to self help. 

The Framers of the United States Constitution decided to separate the legislative, executive, and judicial powers to a greater degree than was true in England at the time.  The judicial branch is headed by a separate Supreme Court, not the upper house of the legislature, an example imitated by the mother country only recently.

They didn't go the whole hog, though.  They did leave with the Senate one judicial power of the House of Lords -- trial of impeachments.  This less-than-complete separation is defended in the Federalist Papers, especially in number 66 by Hamilton.

The Senate exercised this judicial power for the first time in a decade today, convicting a corrupt judge from Louisiana, Thomas Porteous. Michael Memoli has this story in the LA Times.

Conviction on the first count was unanimous.  Subsequent counts were less than unanimous, but they have no consequence.  One is enough for removal from office, and the Senate is powerless to impose any other punishment.

"Porteous, who served on the federal court for the eastern district of Louisiana, was charged with accepting cash and other favors from individuals with business before his court in order to pay gambling debts, and with lying to the Senate and FBI following his nomination to the federal bench."

The "everybody does it in Louisiana" defense apparently didn't get much traction.

Kent noted in the preceding entry that he does not join with those who bash "defense lawyers as a group.  For the most part, they are responsible professionals who perform an important function in our system."

I agree with that, but there is more to say, sufficiently so that I think it's worth a separate entry.

Out the outset, I want to note that, to an extent, Kent has understated the case.  In some instances, defense lawyers are not merely responsible but heroic.  One of the most obvious recent examples was the execrable Duke lacrosse case, in which prosecutor Mike Nifong brought felony rape charges against three white lacrosse players knowing or having reason to know that the whole "rape" was a fabrication.  He brought the charges for one reason only, to wit, that he was in a close and contested primary campaign in heavily black Durham, NC, and wanted to win racial brownie points with the Democratic electorate.  Risking the venomous wrath of the Duke PC community, which is most of the campus, the players' defense counsel showed that the prosecution was a hoax.  This is a shining example of criminal defense as a national treasure. 

Nor is it a lone example.  The defense bar at its best can be a sentinel against corrupt, factually baseless and/or politically rigged or motivated prosecutions.  Unfortunately, such instances are not representative, as I shall now attempt to explain.   

US Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens (Ret.) is the principal architect of today's constitutional jurisprudence of capital sentencing.  Looking back over the decisions from Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976) to last term, Justice Stevens was on the winning side of more of the major battles than any other justice.  So it is exceedingly odd that he has written this article in the New York Review of Books bashing a body of law that is largely his own creation.

The article is a review of a book by David Garland, titled Peculiar Institution: America's Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition.  From the title alone, we know where Garland is coming from.  He asks why America has the death penalty when Europe has abandoned it.  The short answer is that our government is more democratic than theirs, but Garland manages to spin that in ways that make it sound like democracy is a bad thing.  I'll leave refuting Garland for another day.

For much of the article, Justice Stevens makes the claim that the jurisprudence of the death penalty has moved in the prosecution's favor as a result of changes in the membership of the Supreme Court, and he speculates how Justice Stewart would have voted on various cases decided after he retired.  This is where the review gets most peculiar both for what he says and what he leaves out.  To understand how truly peculiar this is, it is important to have some background on the overall evolution of "the fog of confusion that is [the Supreme Court's] annually improvised Eighth Amendment, 'death is different' jurisprudence," Morgan v. Illinois, 504 U.S. 719, 751 (1992) (Scalia, J., dissenting), and Justice Stevens' role in creating it.

......the conviction.  For the same murder, and via a guilty plea, no less.  This gem was courtesy of the Innocence Project, which now might want to consider re-naming itself the Not All That Innocent Project.

Here are the first three paragraphs of today's AP story:

A Texas man who spent 21 years in prison for murder pleaded guilty to the same crime on Friday, three years after he was freed from prison and granted a new trial by DNA evidence that showed his original conviction was tainted.

Clay Chabot was sentenced to time served under an agreement that allows prosecutors to claim a conviction and the defendant to go home. He was taken into custody by sheriff's deputies but was expected to be processed out quickly.

The 51-year-old pleaded guilty to murdering Galua Crosby, who was found in her Garland home tied up and gagged with three gunshot wounds to the head. Prosecutors portrayed it as a drug deal gone bad.

The whole story is here.

Moral of story:  Abolitionists were willing to lie for at least a decade about Roger Keith Coleman, and some things never change.

Guess who has a cell phone now?  Charles Manson.  Well, he did until he was caught recently, according to this story from the L.A. Times.

Manson was justly sentenced to death for his crimes.  His sentence, along with all the others on California's death row, was overturned when the California Supreme Court decided that the death penalty violated the California Constitution.  The state high court was untroubled by the inconvenient truth that the constitutional convention had expressly decided the precise question the other way.  (A few months later, the U.S. Supreme Court wiped out the death sentences in the rest of the country, but on narrower grounds.)  The people of California then had to amend the constitution to make it say again what it said in the first place.

For the worst murderers, life in prison is just not enough punishment.

Ben Pershing has this post in the WaPo's D.C. Wire blog.  The post focuses on D.C. District Court nominees, but the assessment of "an end-of-session Senate logjam" applies across the board.

A logjam at this point is a good thing, although it may cause a few months delay for some good nominees.  Qualified and uncontroversial nominees should be confirmed early in the 112th Congress.  With 47 Republican Senators, though, it should be possible to block the bad nominations, especially President Obama's appalling plan to move the out-in-left-field Ninth Circuit even further out of the judicial mainstream. See, e.g., here.

For better or worse, the Democrats established the practice of routinely filibustering nominees based on ideological disagreement during the Bush Administration. Republicans need not and should not unilaterally disarm and give the present Administration carte blanche to fill the courts with judicial activists.  The judiciary tilts toward left-wing activism in the best of circumstances, and to have an asymmetrical standard for confirmations tilting in the same direction would make a bad situation worse.

The safest course is to just keep judicial nominations entirely out of the lame duck session and take them up first thing in January.

Victim, Killer Speak at Connecticut Sentencing:  Connecticut Judge Jon Blue today formally sentenced triple-murderer Steven Hayes to death, reports AP writer John Christoffersen.  Hayes addressed the court, claiming he was "tormented" by his actions and that death "will be a welcome relief."  Dr. Petit, fighting back tears, admitted to suffering flashbacks and suicidal thoughts, and described his immeasurable loss: "I lost my entire family.  I lost the records of our shared lives together due to the fire.  Thus I lost my past and my future."  While handing down the sentence, Judge Blue addressed Hayes:  "This is a terrible sentence, but is, in truth, a sentence you wrote for yourself in flames."

Texas Trial Judge to Hear Death Penalty Challenge:  Brandi Grissom of The Texas Tribune reports trial court Judge Kevin Fine will hear argument on Monday on whether the risk of executing an innocent person renders the death penalty unconstitutional.  The hearing was set in the case of John Edward Green, who is charged with a 2008 murder and faces the death penalty if convicted.  His defense team is pointing to the cases of Cameron Todd Willingham and Claude Jones, claiming the existence of a systemic flaw in the system.  But prosecutors are arguing they should not have to prove the innocence or guilt of defendants in other capital cases, and that in any event, a ruling on the constitutionality of a death sentence is inappropriate because Green has not been convicted.

Inmate Tax Fraud:  Inmates claimed $130 million in fraudulent tax returns by March of this year - a 37 percent increase since 2004.  The issue of inmates filing false returns was discovered in 2005 by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, prompting increased inspection and regulation of tax returns filed behind bars.  One official from the TIGTA reports these fraudulent tax returns are a "major problem," but that the IRS "is making very good progress."  The increased surveillance may account for the increase in fraudulent returns caught.  Ed O'Keefe of The Washington Post has this story.

A Plea from a Police Officer:  After 27-year-old Riverside Police Officer Ryan Bonaminio was fatally shot in November, and a parolee arrested for the killing shortly thereafter, LAPD Officer Joseph D. Marx wrote this letter (appearing in The Desert Sun (CA)) to the California parole director.  Marx highlighted Bonaminio's accomplished life, including his two tours of duty in Iraq, and asked the director to remember several things when deciding whether to grant an inmate early release: "Remember the victims they created and the reason they were sentenced to prison in the first place.  Remember that more than 70 percent of the convicts that appear in front of your board will ignore the warnings to live a law-abiding life, and will re-offend. . . Most importantly, remember Ryan and the dozens of other police officers who have been murdered in the line of duty by convicts who were granted parole by your board."