Results matching “first”

The Golden Gate Bridge is not for sale, but nearby you can make a bid on the California Supreme Court. Well, not actually the Court as an institution, but its building. You then have to lease it back to a tenant of dubious credit, the State of California. Marisa Lagos has this story in the SF Chron.

Selling off paid-for assets and then incurring lease expenses in perpetuity sure sounds like kicking the financial can down the road, which is what got us in this mess in the first place.

There is, however, a good reason for a different change regarding the California Supreme Court. It does not belong in San Francisco, which is not the capital of California. Having it there is like having SCOTUS in New York. The Supreme Court belongs in Sacramento. Along with symbolic reasons, SF is a much more expensive place to live and work. Moving Cal. Supreme and all its staff to the capital city would save money in the long run. Doesn't look like anybody's talking about that.

The Ninth Circuit today agreed to reconsider en banc its astonishing decision that federal law requires a state to let convicted felons vote while still in prison. Last January's panel decision in Farrakhan v. Gregoire is here. The three-judge panel had split 2-1, with fringe Judges Tashima and Reinhardt forming the majority and the more rational Judge McKeown (author of the cross decision reversed today by SCOTUS) in the dissent.  Prior posts are here and here.

It had been reported in the press that Wash. AG was going to skip rehearing en banc and go straight to the Supreme Court. However, on February 12 the court called for briefing on whether to hear the case en banc, apparently without being asked.

Meanwhile, back at SCOTUS, the First Circuit's rejection of the same claim in Simmons v. Galvin is on conference for Friday. The docket has an entry for today, saying, "Letter received from counsel for the respondent. (Distributed)." I can pretty much guess what the letter says.

Update: Lyle Denniston has this post at SCOTUSblog with a link to the letter. I guessed correctly.

Kent reports that Judge Ann Williams of the Seventh Circuit is now on the famous short list.  I know nothing of Judge Williams' work.  But there is reason to believe she would get serious consideration.

As I noted about two weeks ago, the President's strategy will revolve around politics.  He faces a mid-term election that could significantly curb his agenda, and right now he's in trouble.  Having lost the independents according to numerous polls, his best strategy is to energize and unify the Democratic base without further antagonizing moderate voters.

In my view, Secretary Clinton is the shrewdest choice to fill these criteria, but Judge Williams, to look at her biography, isn't bad.  She is black  --  the first black appointed to the Seventh Circuit  --  and would therefore be looked upon by the White House as likely to energize a core Obama constituency that otherwise might be relatively apathetic in a mid-term.  At the same time, she could be portrayed as a moderate, certainly on the issues that concern us here at Crime & Consequences.  She spent nine years as an Assistant US Attorney and was appointed to the district bench by President Reagan. 

The Chicago Tribune had this report about her today:

I received an email from Curt Levey of the Committee for Justice who wishes to clarify a comment he made about the Goodwin Liu nomination. Here is the full quote:

Everybody expected Obama to nominate liberals to the federal courts, and that's what he's done, but Goodwin Liu is not your typical liberal. He's very far out on the left wing, even in academia. He is an unabashed defender, really advocate, of judicial activism, and add on top of that, the fact that I think everyone knows that Obama would love to groom him for a spot on the Supreme Court. Obama would love to, you know, be able to say that he nominated the first Asian to the Supreme Court. As you know, it's been almost forty years since somebody who was not a judge was appointed to the Supreme Court. So I think you could think of Liu as the Democratic Clarence Thomas. I think everyone knows that he's being groomed to be on the Supreme Court, and you know, that scares people because he's to the left of even Justice Ginsburg.

And here is the NPR version:

"Goodwin Liu is not your typical liberal," says Curt Levey, director of the conservative Committee for Justice. "He's very far out on the left wing, even in academia. So I think you could think of Liu as the Democratic Clarence Thomas."

In the original, Levey compares Liu with Thomas in the sense of being groomed for a Supreme Court appointment down the line. In the NPR version, it appears that he is comparing the two in the sense of being off on one ideological fringe.

Update: If you are going to quote two sentences together that were not together in the original, as an absolute minimum you must indicate that material was deleted with "...".  As of 2:40 p.m. PDT April 20, well over a day after Levey pointed out the misleading nature of the quote, the NPR site has not corrected it.

As noted in Bill's post, the Supreme Court in United States v. Stevens struck down 18 U.S.C. §48. Like everyone else with sense, I have nothing but contempt for both the producers and the consumers of "crush videos." Unfortunately, this is a seriously incompetent bit of legislative drafting. Congress needs to reenact this statute and do it right this time.

Here is what Congress intended to ban, from House Report 106-397:

At a hearing on the bill before the committee's Subcommittee on Crime, a California State prosecutor and a police officer described how they came to learn about a growing market in videotapes and still photographs depicting insects and small animals being slowly crushed to death. While most of this material featured torture to mice, hamsters, and other small animals, their investigation did find depictions of cats, dogs, and even monkeys being tortured. Much of the material featured women inflicting the torture with their bare feet or while wearing high heeled shoes. In some video depictions, the woman's voice can be heard talking to the animals in a kind of dominatrix patter. The cries and squeals of the animals, obviously in great pain, can also be heard in the videos.

No dispute there. Unfortunately, Congress defined "animal cruelty" in a way far broader than any sensible definition of that term. Any wounding or killing of an animal that is illegal in the place where the depiction is possessed, even if perfectly legal where it takes place, is included in the definition of animal cruelty. So possessing Field and Stream becomes a crime in D.C., where all hunting is illegal? How about if you take a trip to Spain, go to a bullfight with your video camera, and bring your home video back into the U.S.?

The statute does have an exception for "serious religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historical, or artistic value." Such exceptions make the legality of conduct dependent on a prosecutor's or judge's post hoc determination of what is "serious."  That is passing the buck, and it makes the law vague.

Be careful when you write criminal laws, legislators.  And be particularly careful with those definitions. The legislative definition of a word needs to be reasonably congruent with the general understanding of that word. Sometimes it needs to be somewhat broader to avoid vagueness problems, but it shouldn't be so broad as to include vast swaths of conduct far beyond the normal meaning. And passing the buck to prosecutors and judges is not an adequate solution.

The Supreme Court today announced its decision in United States v. Stevens, http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-769.pdf.  I have not yet read the opinion.  The Wall Street Journal gives a quick summary:

The Supreme Court struck down a federal law banning depictions of animal cruelty, voting 8-1 that the measure violated the First Amendment.

 The law was inspired by sadistic "crush" videos, where women kill chicks or mice, but was written far more broadly to outlaw depictions of any animal cruelty that is unlawful.

 Although the law included exceptions for serious journalistic or artistic works, Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the court, said the measure stretched too far....

 Justice Samuel Alito was the lone dissenter. "The harm caused by the underlying criminal acts greatly outweighs any trifling value that the depictions might be thought to possess," he wrote of the dog-fighting videos.

My quick reaction is (1) I agree with Alito, and (2) it would appear a more narrowly worded statute would survive.  The notion that depictions of this sort could have any redeeming value is theoretically viable but actually far-fetched.  Although it might be heretical for a conservative to say so, we can worry too much about keeping the law stainless while the culture descends into filth.  A culture that cannot say NO to this behavior, and mean it with criminal penalties, is a culture in big trouble. 

 

"Do you favor, oppose or neither favor nor oppose the complete legalization of the use of marijuana for any purpose?" 33% favor, 11% neutral, 55% oppose, according to a new AP-CNBC poll.

Assuming it were legalized, who should sell it? The government, 36%, private business, 54%. Of course, the question did not inform the respondents that private business sellers would have a First Amendment right to advertise and otherwise promote weed.

According to a Pew poll released Sunday night, trust in the federal government to do the "right thing" most of the time has fallen to a near all-time low of 22%.  According to the LA Times report, "The current level of public skepticism was matched previously only...from 1992 to 1995 (reaching a low of 17% trusting in government in the summer of 1994) and from 1978 to 1980 (bottoming out at 25% in 1980)."

Interestingly, trust in the federal government now  --  in the era of "hope and change"  --  is lower than at any point in the presidency of George W. Bush (or Richard Nixon for that matter).  Also notable is that, according to the LAT, "When the National Election Study first asked the question in 1958 [when Eisenhower was President], 73% of Americans said they trusted the government to do what was right most of the time."

From 73% to 22%.  Yikes.

The implications for criminal law are dire.  The prosecution of criminals is exclusively a government function, and its overall success depends in part  --  perhaps in large part  --  on public confidence in the judgment, honesty and good faith of prosecutors.  It also depends on confidence that prosecutorial decisions will not be political.  When public confidence is this low, sooner or later that is going to be reflected in skepticism and raised eyebrows in the jury pool and on the bench.

I would like to say this dim view of the federal government is unjustified, but I can't.  I'm not going to get into the reckless spending, the debt and weakness abroad, since they are not the subjects of this blog.  But distrust is what we have to expect when the Administration (1) supports giving Constitutional rights, civilian trials and Miranda warnings to alien terrorists; (2) nominates a radical to the already far-left Ninth Circuit; (3) endorses passage of the Crack Dealers Relief Act (i.e., lowering sentences for crack cocaine, as envisioned in legislation currently before the House); (4) nominates yet another radical to head the pivotal OLC; and (5) dismisses a voting rights case against Black Panthers in mufti, and carrying billy clubs, "patrolling" a polling station in Philadelphia.

Is that a government you would trust?

UPDATE:  This entry has been picked up by the blog Powerline, http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/04/026111.php

FURTHER UPDATE:  The Powerline blog that picked up this entry has itself been picked up in the "Best of the Blogs" section of the widely read "RealClearPolitics,"  http://www.realclearpolitics.com/best_of_the_blogs/.

The latest buzz from Washington is that no, Hillary Clinton is not on the short list for SCOTUS. (See Bill's post here.) But wait, there's more. Sheryl Gay Stolberg reports on the NYT's political blog, "an administration official said that Judge Sidney Thomas of the federal appeals court in Montana is under consideration."

What are they smoking in the White House?

Sidney Thomas is the author of what is quite possibly the worst opinion ever to issue from the Ninth Circuit, and that is saying quite a lot.  The opinion is Summerlin v. Stewart, 341 F.3d 1082 (CA9 2003) (en banc), reversed sub nom. Schriro v. Summerlin, 542 U.S. 348 (2004). It is a case study in twisting the law to achieve a desired result.

The title of this post, minus the question mark, is the headline of this column by Ruth Marcus in the WaPo. She predicts, "The court that convenes on the first Monday in October is apt to be more conservative than the one we have now." She finds that prospect "unsettling." I disagree on both counts, of course. I would be delighted if that happened, but I consider it unlikely.

In the NYT Saturday, Linda Greenhouse had this opinion piece, appropriately designated as such. Her thesis is that Justice Stevens "learned on the job." She cites his participation in the 1976 Gregg cases as showing a "conservative bent," ignoring the fact that he provided the fifth vote that struck down the mandatory laws enacted in North Carolina, Louisiana, and, by implication, by Congress, California, New York, and several other states. This is followed by the "learning," in her view, that leads to Stevens' opinion in Baze v. Rees.

Greenhouse's designation of Stevens' 1976 opinions as having a "conservative bent" demonstrates once again the problem of perspective. Persons who are waaay off to one side themselves cannot correctly see where the middle is, and they don't know a middle-of-the-roader when they see one. To one who is 2 sigma to the left of the median, the median looks conservative, and a moderate conservative (i.e., 1 sigma right of the median) looks "extreme right."

Of course, the paragraph above assumes a simple, one-dimensional left-right model of political viewpoint, and the world is more complicated than that. The model is useful to illustrate the point, but we should always be aware of its limitations.

Hillary Clinton.

This is what you have to figure if you look at Obama's real criteria for making his first selection, Sonia Sotomayor.  The criteria were fairly obvious:  First, find someone politically beneficial; second, find a liberal who could be cast as a moderate, more-or-less, and who therefore would sell, in the Senate and the country, without too much fuss.

Secretary Clinton meets these criteria. She is politically beneficial because she appeals to a part of the Democratic Party that has never been enthusiastic about the President (and thought she rightly deserved the nomination).  This is particularly important now, as the President faces a mid-term election that could significantly curb his agenda.  Having lost the independents according to numerous polls, his best strategy is to energize and unify the Democratic base without further antagonizing moderate voters.  Ms. Clinton would do this far more effectively than any other choice.  In addition, by putting Ms. Clinton on the Court, Obama almost certainly neutralizes her as a possible challenger in the 2012 Democratic primaries.  A primary challenge is an unlikely but not a trivial possibility given the way things are going.  At this point, Obama's presidency most closely resembles that of Jimmy Carter.  The country is in the economic doldrums, and there is a perception that Obama is weak and irresolute abroad.  Carter, of course, faced a stiff primary challenge from a popular and charismatic Democrat, Teddy Kennedy. The chances that Obama has forgotten this are zero.

Clinton would also be easy to portray as a "moderate."  She ran somewhat to Obama's right in 2008, and has been reported to be slightly more aggressive in foreign policy than he.  She is associated with the more-or-less moderate administration of her husband (albeit that the moderation was forced by having an opposition-controlled Congress for three-quarters of his term).  She is a seasoned politician.  She has baggage, but it's increasingly yesterday's news, and White House Counsel's Office can be pretty sure there are no skeletons, or at least no new skeletons, in the closet.

 

Kent and I do not agree on everything, but on this there is no daylight between us:  Crime must have consequences.  This is so first because it is just, and second because, without consequences, the criminal will have no incentive to change his behavior.  Justice for the future victim is no less imperative simply because he cannot be identified by name today.

The defense bar thinks differently.  Decency toward the victim  --  present and future  --  is out.  "Compassion" for the criminal is in.  We've all heard it.  Jails are crowded and expensive.  The USA is "incarceration nation."  Racism is rampant.  Today's defendant, whoever he is, is a victim of circumstance and of an uncaring society.

Too often judges buy this line.  Underneath it all, one reason they do is that they believe the next victim will be somebody else.  That is a harsh thing to say, but it's true.  If the judge thought that tomorrow, he would be the street victim of the criminal he put on probation today, there would be no probation.  There would be jail.  Kneejerk "compassion" stops where ordinary prudence starts.

This is all by way of prologue to a story in today's Washington Post.  In a case a few years ago, a Maryland judge gave probation to a drunk driver, even though the man had been arrested on DUI or DWI charges twice in the preceding three months.  Last August, that same driver, drunk as ever, rammed the judge's car, causing serious injuries to the judge and life-threatening injuries to his 82 year-old wife.  The crime without consequences had turned out to have consequences after all.

 

Former death row inmate Timothy Hennis, listed as "exonerated" on the "innocence list" maintained by the Death Penalty Information Center, was found guilty of three counts of premeditated murder by a military jury today. The Fayetteville Observer has this story.

This is the smoking gun that proves what we have been saying all along.  The so-called innocence list is nothing of the sort.

The Los Angeles Times features an editorial condemning the city's prosecutors for seeking, and getting, the death penalty 13 times last year.  The editorial's concluding paragraph states:

The [death penalty's] cost, of course, isn't the best reason to end  [it] -- it's that an imperfect justice system cannot provide 100% certainty of guilt, making us all guilty of state-sanctioned murder when the courts get it wrong.  That's why most developed nations have done away with capital punishment.  In that context, L.A. prosecutors aren't just being overzealous, they're being inhumane.

It would take more than the length of a readable entry on this blog to spell out everything that's wrong with the editorial, so forgive me for going after the low-hanging fruit.

First, the paper discusses the "inhumanity" of the death penalty without describing a single fact in a single case in which the jury imposed it.  One might suspect that the omission is a deliberate attempt to hide the horrifying details that convinced 12 normal citizens to choose capital punishment.

Second, the editorial doesn't even make a pretense of acknowledging, much less addressing, the arguments that have convinced California (and national) voters to support the death penalty by 2-1.  Has it struck the editorial writers as odd that such a large swath of humanity is "inhumane"?

Third and relatedly, the only advocacy groups cited are, guess what,  the ACLU and the DPIC.  Indeed, the editorial is little more than a cheering section for the ACLU report it cites.  It's perfectly proper, though mistaken in my view, for a paper to oppose the death penalty.  But it's cheap journalism just to echo someone else's press release.

Fourth, the paper repeats what I'm sure it does not intend to be the racist canard that most "developed countries" have ended capital punishment  --  never mentioning that culturally well developed but non-caucasian countries like Japan, India and South Korea retain it, not to mention most of the world's population.

Last for now, the editorial astonishingly labels as "inhumane" the city's prosecutors for applying state law and  making good on their professional obligation to represent their client.  That's not what we heard from liberals when the question was the propriety of the lawyers comprising the "DOJ Seven" when, in private practice, they represented their clients, notwithstanding that the clients were jihadists.

Where you stand depends on where you sit, and this post by Jordan Weissmann at BLT describes an epiphany of one lawyer who has looked at consent decrees from both sides now.

Peter Nickles is the Attorney General of D.C. He wants to get the government out from under a consent decree regarding "a 34-year-old class action dealing with the quality of support services that the District of Columbia provides to the mentally disabled." The consent decree problem is also common in prison litigation, and was the subject of a CJLF Brief in the case of Valdivia v. Schwarzenegger. The Evans case

is one of several cases in which the city is attempting to escape settlements known as consent decrees, which require historically troubled agencies to meet ambitious performance targets. Nickles, who spearheaded one of the first such cases while in private practice, has publicly criticized the settlements as unrealistic and burdensome to the city.

*                               *                           *

Eventually Nickles launched into something of a monologue (he objected when Huvelle called it a "speech") on the evils of consent decrees, recalling his own "30 years suing the District," and the problems the cases had created for the city.

"You have too many lawyers trying to run the city," he said. Along the way, he brought up one of his favorite books, "Democracy By Decree," a critical take on, yes, consent decrees.

*                               *                           *

"I take the position, your Honor, that elected officials should be able to run the city's agencies," Nickles said.

Right. And also the state's prisons.

In the U.K., they are going to have a one-month election campaign, in contrast to the long, drawn-out affair we are having here. Will crime be a major issue? The conservative challengers want to make it one. Andrew Porter reports for the Telegraph,

David Cameron believes Labour's record on crime and anti-social behaviour will feature heavily in the general election campaign....

The Tory leader will demand that police "harass" troublemakers, as he distances himself from the party's recent "hug-a-hoodie" reputation.

In the National Journal, dated Saturday:

The president's nominee had "a brilliant legal mind" and a charming manner, the critic wrote in an op-ed. But his record was "resolutely conservative." This made the Supreme Court nomination "a seismic event that threatens to deepen the nation's red-blue divide." It should be rejected, the critic implied.

The nominee was John Roberts, now the chief justice. The critic was the comparably brilliant and charming Goodwin Liu, a University of California (Berkeley) law professor. He is now the most resolutely liberal of President Obama's judicial nominees.

Taylor captures well what is so very peculiar about the supporters of Liu's nomination. Calling for confirmation on his qualifications and intellect despite his way-out-of-the-mainstream ideological bent, they flatly contradict the position taken by Liu himself on both the Roberts and Alito nominations.

Regarding the filibuster question, Taylor has a proposal:

Third, many Republican senators forcefully denounced as unconstitutional the Democratic filibusters of Bush's nominees. Could they unblushingly turn around and filibuster Obama's nominees?

Yes, they could. Republican senators cannot be expected to disarm unilaterally. Not unless Democratic leaders first make a meaningful pledge not to filibuster future Republican presidents' nominees absent truly extraordinary circumstances.

Good luck with that.

BTW, isn't a "resolutely liberal" nominee to a court that is already out of the mainstream, out of the river, and over the left embankment a "truly extraordinary circumstance"? If not, what is?

Victoria Kim reports in the LA Times,

Lloyd Earl Jackson once appeared to be first in line for the gas chamber after California reinstituted capital punishment in 1977.

The 19-year-old had beaten two elderly Long Beach women to death and raped one with a wine bottle. The brutality of his crime and his lack of remorse made Jackson the "model candidate for death in the gas house," one columnist wrote after his death sentence was upheld by the state's highest court.

But Jackson's short walk from San Quentin's death row to the execution room has taken a long detour through numerous courts and appeals over the last three decades. On Thursday, a Long Beach jury once again found that Jackson, now 52, should be put to death.

Daniel Friedman reports in Forbes:

Also, in a move to fix America's finances, President Obama will pardon crooked financier Bernie Madoff and appoint him head of the Treasury. His first mission will be to China, in the president's words, "to offer the Chinese a new scheme to buy back their Treasury bills."

Check the date. Hat tip, Eugene Volokh.

Notable Supreme Court Petition:  On SCOTUSblog, Erin Miller posts details on "two noteworthy" Petitions for Certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court.  The first case, Wong v. Smith (09-1031) asks whether habeas relief is available under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d) when petitioner claims that a state judge unconstitutionally "coerced" jurors to return a guilty verdict by identifying specific evidence in the case as important and instructing them to consider it.  The case involves the conviction of Anthony Smith for burglarizing the home of an aging couple in Sacramento, CA, robbing them, and forcing oral copulation on the wife.  Smith had a co-defendant, James Hinex, and at the conclusion of their joint trial, the jury was deadlocked over the identity of who committed the sex offense.  The judge brought to the jurors' attention the previously-admitted tape-recordings of defendants' post-arrest statements, and advised them to "consider and discuss how this comparison affects your finding" on the question of identity."  Smith was convicted of the sex offense, and the California Court of Appeal concluded the judge had not coerced the jury.  The Ninth Circuit disagreed, and granted Smith habeas relief. 

Sentencing Cases in the Court:  At Sentencing Law and Policy, Doug Berman reports that today, the Court heard oral argument on two fascinating and important "back end" sentencing cases: Dillon v. US (09-6338) and Barber v. Thomas (09-5201).  SCOTUSblog has posted transcripts here. Dillon addresses whether, when considering a motion for a sentence reduction under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2), the district court is bound by Sentencing Guidelines policy statements purporting to limit the availability of relief under Section 3582(c)(2).  Barber, on the other hand, addresses what a single phrase within 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b)(1) means when used by the Bureau of Prisons to calculate "good time" sentence reductions for federal inmates.

Three Sixth Circuit Habeas Reversals This Term:  Jonathan Adler notes on Volokh Conspiracy that the "Sixth Circuit is 0-3 in Habeas Cases This Term."  With today's unanimous decision in Berghuis v. Smith, the Court held that the Sixth Circuit had again erroneously concluded that the lower court's decision involved an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law.  This is the third reversal of a Sixth Circuit decision granting a criminal defendant's habeas petition this term.  The first two were Smith v. Spisak and Bobby v. Van Hook.  With the exception of Justice Stevens' opinion concurring with part of Spisak's judgment, Van Hook and Spisak were also unanimous.  In his post, Adler adds that the Court has yet to rule on two cases where the Sixth Circuit granted habeas relief, Renico v. Lett and Berghuis v. Thompkins.  CJLF's Thompkins' brief can be found here.   

Victim Fights for Right to Prosecute: Jordan Weissman reports on National Law Journal that tomorrow, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Robertson v. U.S. ex rel Watson, "a little-noticed U.S. Supreme Court case that they say could make it much harder for battered women and men to enforce restraining orders against their abusers."  In Washington D.C., victims may bring criminal contempt charges when abusers infringe on a court order.   Petitioner John Robertson seeks to change the rule, and overturn his conviction for violating a restraining order taken out by his ex-girlfriend, Watson.  Robertson's lawyers argue that defendants have a "right to be prosecuted by the government," grounded in the Fifth Amendment's due process clause. Watson's lawyers disagree, they contend there's never been "an established common law requirement -- let alone a constitutional requirement -- that [this type of proceeding] be brought in name of the sovereign."

"Every time a killer is sentenced to die, a school closes."

That is the title of a new piece on Doug Berman's Sentencing Law and Policy.  As Doug notes, it's also the first sentence in what he calls this effective FoxNews article, which is headlined, "Just or Not, Cost of Death Penalty Is a Killer for State Budgets."

Having massively lost the battle for public opinion about whether the death penalty is just, and seeking to exploit well-grounded anxiety about excessive government debt, abolitionists are now focusing on capital punishment's expense.  Omitting to mention that their own efforts are largely responsible for said expense, they claim that paying for death penalty litigation is driving state budgets to ruin.  State budgets are in deep trouble, for sure, but it has almost nothing to do with the death penalty.  The major cause by far is the uncontrolled growth of social spending.

But that is a question for another forum.  More to the point for the present assault on the death penalty, I did a few minutes' research on the proposition the abolitionists are pushing.  Is it true that every time a killer is sentenced to die, a school closes?

As you will not be surprised to learn if you followed abolitionist mendacity about the (not) innocent Roger Keith Coleman, their current claim is  --  well, how should I put it?  --  an outright lie.

See below.

Six weeks ago, I wrote a post titled, "Why We Have the Death Penalty."  The underlying story, passed on to me by commenter federalist, concerned an unimaginably cruel and sadistic murder of a mentally impaired, and therefore overly trusting, young woman named Jenny Daugherty.

Today I was browsing the news sites, as I sometimes do, and found the following story, which could be titled, "Why Britain Should Bring Back the Death Penalty and Will Soon Enough."

The story is about the murder of a young person.  I would say that it is horrible beyond belief, but unfortunately the capacity to believe that such things can and do happen is the price of growing up.

The story is not for the faint of heart.  I ask you to think twice before reading it.  For those with the stomach, it follows the break.

 

D.C.'s Firearm Restriction Upheld:  Tony Mauro reports on Blog of Legal Times, that Judge Ricardo Urbina has upheld the D.C. firearm ordinances enacted after the U.S. Supreme Court announced its decision in D.C. v. Heller.  In this case, Dick Heller challenged the District's firearms registration process, its ban on assault weapons, and its prohibition of "large capacity ammunition feeding devices," claiming they violated the Second Amendment.  Judge Urbina's decision stated that the right to bear arms is "not unlimited," and cited Justice Antonin Scalia's acknowledgment that Heller did not "cast doubt" on a range of firearms regulations.  An attorney representing Heller said he would be surprised if they did not appeal.

Correlating Criminal Records with Car Accidents:  On New York Times Freakonomics Blog yesterday, Eric A. Morris posted on "a hidden force" that may interconnect criminal aggression and bad driving.  According to a study by Marianne Junger, Robert West, and Reinier Timman that examined police data of 1531 persons involved in car accidents to determine if the reckless driver in each crash had a criminal record. The study revealed that persons who displayed risky traffic behavior leading to the accident had an odds ratio of 2.6 for having a police record for violent crime; of 2.5 for vandalism, 1.5 for property crime, and 5.3 for having been involved in traffic crime.  The authors attribute the apparent link between lawlessness and risky driving to "a general disregard for the long term adverse consequences of [one's] actions [which] could be labeled risk-taking, impulsiveness, or lack of self-control."

South Carolina Moves to Reduce Inmates:  Doug Berman writes on Sentencing Law and Policy that "significant proposed changes to South Carolina's sentencing laws seem to be close to becoming a reality."  According to an article by Seanna Adcox in the Sun News, the South Carolina Senate approved a bill designed to reduce the number of people in prison.  The bill deletes mandatory minimum sentences for a first conviction on simple drug possession, allows the possibility of probation or parole for certain second and third drug possession convictions, and removes sentencing disparities between crack and cocaine possession.  The bill also allows for home detention for third-offense driving under suspension, and changes the status of two dozen crimes from nonviolent to violent - including sex crimes involving children. 

Upcoming Court Actions:  Ed Whalen reports on NRO's Bench Memos, that he has been "reliably informed" that Goodwin Liu's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing will be rescheduled for mid-April.  (Update: It's April 16 at 10:00 a.m. ET.) Howard Bashman also links to a report that Arizona Federal Judge Mary H. Murguia has also been nominated to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.  On SCOTUSblog, Lyle Denniston reports that court watchers can expect opinions from the U.S. Supreme Court next Tuesday and Wednesday.  Orders will be released on Monday.

Parole Reforms Upheld:  A story in today's Los Angeles Times reports on yesterday's unanimous Ninth Circuit decision, in Valdivia v. Schwarzenegger, upholding the tougher parole revocation procedures adopted by California voters in 2008 as part of Proposition 9, the Crime Victim's Bill of Rights Act.  The decision vacated and remanded Federal District Judge Lawrence Karlton's earlier ruling striking down the procedures.  A story on the same decision in the Sacramento Bee mistakenly reports that the appeal of Judge Karlton's ruling had been filed by Attorney General Jerry Brown, with support from Proposition 9's backers.  Jerry Brown was not involved.  Governor Schwarzenegger engaged private counsel to file the appeal.    

Effort to Delay Murder Trial Rejected:  In a divided ruling announced Wednesday, the Georgia Supreme Court rejected a capital defendant's claim that he should be acquitted because his trial was delayed over a dispute regarding who would represent him.  New York Times writer John Schwartz reports that the trial of Jamie Ryan Weis, for the 2006 robbery and murder of a 73-year-old woman, was delayed for two years over the dispute. The first two attorneys assigned to represent Weis withdrew because the agency that provides funds for defense lawyers in death penalty cases could not pay them.  When two new public defenders were appointed, Weis argued that he should be represented by his first legal team. The court's decision notes that the second pair of defense attorneys were experienced, had tried death penalty cases in the past, and had agreed to make his case a priority.  They finally asked to withdraw because Weis would not work with them.  In rejecting Weis' claim the court noted that "Weis' own behavior, and the behavior of his attorneys, also contributed to the delay."   

Maybe he thought it was a groundhog. Near Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, state troopers arrested Donald Wolfe for public intoxication after he was seen attempting mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on a very dead possum. Sam Wood has this story in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The Nebraska Legislature killed a bill to do a cost study on the death penalty, JoAnne Young reports in the Lincoln Journal Star.

Doug Berman at Sentencing Law and Policy posts about an interview the Dallas Morning News had with abolitionist law professor Mark Osler of Baylor University.  Professor Osler last year published a book, Jesus on Death Row, summarizing his reflections on a mock trial he organized to see how Jesus would fare in the Lone Star state. 

Against my better judgment, I read the interview. 

Some observations.

1.  The title of the interview is, "What if Jesus had been tried under Texas law?"  Of course the answer is easy:  He would have not have been given the death penalty, since Texas law provides capital punishment only for murder, and Jesus was not charged with murder.

Thus one need read no further than the title to understand just how deceptive and biased Osler's presentation is.  The premise is that, under Texas law, Jesus could wind up on death row.  The suggestion beneath the premise is:  "How could we be so awful as to even think about executing the Son of God??!!"  But the whole thing is a fraud, from the first word on.

2.  One of the commenters on the Morning News blog raised that obvious point.  The response was that this was a thought experiment, and the reader should just imagine that Jesus was on death row.  I found this a wonderfully concrete illustration of how abolitionists insist on disconnecting an inmate's being on death row from the behavior  --  namely some grisly murder or murders  --  that put him there.

This is an almost comic reflection of the fantasy that we routinely execute the innocent.  The theory behind this fantasy  --  if it can be called a "theory"  --  is that people show up on death row by magic. 

3.  Professor Osler repeats the false and insulting bromide that retentionists are moved by anger, while abolitionists are moved by humanity and a higher wisdom.

I wonder what it feels like to regard one's self as so superior.

It's natural, I suppose, to feel anger toward cruelty and and sadism, but that is not what lies behind retentionism.  What lies behind it is principally the view that a prison sentence, no matter its length, is not justice for such crimes as drawn out child rape and murder, or calculated mass murder such as McVeigh's.  For many, the deterrent value of the death penalty, and its consequent saving of many innocent lives, is also a strong reason.

To belittle retentionists as foot-stomping children is arrogant and mendacious, and abolitionists know it.  Will they ever stop?

There is more news from California today on the unending battle of Krishnas in the airport.

The Hare Krishnas have long supported their organization by in-person solicitation of funds. The federal district court in International Society for Krishna Consciousness v. Barber, 506 F.Supp. 147 (NDNY 1980) described fraud, subtle and not-so-subtle forms of duress, and even outright theft as among the methods they employed.

One of the Krishnas' preferred venues for their activities is airports. When Los Angeles imposed restrictions on soliciting in LAX, the Krishnas sued in federal district court. They had one small problem, however. A U.S. Supreme Court precedent in their own case, International Society for Krishna Consciousness v. Lee, 505 U.S. 672 (1992), held that airports are not a public forum for First Amendment purposes, so "restrictions ... need only satisfy a requirement of reasonableness."

Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in Magwood v. Patterson (09-158), to address whether a 1997 habeas claim brought by a convicted murderer was a "second or successive petition" under 28 U.S.C. §2244(b), when he could have raised the claim in his first habeas petition in 1985. 

In 1979, Magwood lay in wait to shoot and kill Sheriff Grantham in the parking lot of the Coffee County, Alabama, Jail.  He shot Sheriff Grantham three times, once each in the head, face, and chest. He then fled.  As Magwood sped away, he exchanged gunfire with Deputy Thomas Weeks, who witnessed the murder.  Magwood is not challenging his conviction for the murder.  Since 1997, Magwood has been challenging whether he was correctly resentenced to death under Alabama law.  Today's News Scan provides some more details on the procedural history of Magwood's case. 

Request For DNA Testing Halts Texas Execution: Los Angeles Times writer David G. Savage reports on the Supreme Court's block of the scheduled execution of convicted murderer Hank Skinner.  Skinner was convicted and sentenced for killing his girlfriend, Twila Busby, and her two sons, in 1993.  Police and prosecutors said the blood on Skiner's clothes came from the victims, and that he left bloody palm prints in the house.  His trial lawyer did not seek DNA testing of the crime-scene evidence at the time of the trial.  Skinner has maintained his innocence, and has sought DNA testing of key evidence for a decade.  The justices issued a stay of execution and said they wanted more time to consider Skinner's appeal.  It will probably be several weeks before the Court decides whether to hear the case.  Last year, the Court ruled 5 to 4 that the Constitution does not give convicts the right to demand DNA testing of crime-scene evidence.  The case, however, did not involve a prisoner facing execution.  Kent's post on "Eleventh Hour DNA Testing" briefly discusses the Court's stay.

"F.B.I.'s Crime-Fighting Web Site Focuses on Bank Robbers": New York Times writer C.J. Hughes reports on a new website being used by the F.B.I. to track down suspects of robberies.  The site is called BanditTracker NorthEast and features images of robbers in New Jersey and New York culled from security cameras over the past few years.  In a modern take on the "wanted" notices on post office walls, the site also includes information about the suspect in question, including height, sex, race and build.  Telephone numbers are also provided so people can call if they think they know the whereabouts of the suspect.  Now, through the use of this site, images and information can be posted within hours of the crime, diminishing the lag that law enforcement has experienced when information can take days to post. 

"Court Weighs Timing of Death Row Appeal": New York Times writer Adam Liptak reports on inmate Billy Joe Magwood's attempts at successive federal habeas corpus petitions, and his argument before the U. S. Supreme Court.  Mr. Magwood shot and killed an Alabama sheriff in 1979.  At the time, Alabama law allowed defendants to be sentenced to death only if they had committed murders in connection with at least one of several listed "aggravating circumstances." Though Magwood's crime did not fit any of those circumstances, he was sentenced to death in 1981.  In 1985, a federal judge ordered Mr. Magwood resentenced for unrelated reasons, and he was sentenced to death the next year.  Over the years, Mr. Magwood's lawyers have challenged his sentence on various grounds, but it was not until 1997 that they raised the question of whether he had technically committed a capital crime under Alabama law in the first place.  In 1996, AEDPA imposed strict limits on successive federal habeas corpus petitions.  Under the law, a second petition challenging Mr. Magwood's original 1981 death sentence would almost certainly be barred.  Jeffrey L. Fisher, a lawyer for Mr. Magwood, said his client was challenging his 1986 resentencing for the first time.  Mr. Fisher suggested that the new sentencing of Mr. Magwood restarted the litigation clock allowing for a new habeas petition.  Justice Scalia disagreed, stating that the same underlying crime as well as surrounding circumstances were present in both sentencings.  Justice Alito appeared to side with Justice Scalia when he reminded Fisher, "the only thing that is relevant [in habeas] is the judgment pursuant to which the Petitioner is held in custody."  The case is Magwood v. Patterson.

Court Hears Successive Petitions Case: Today, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in Magwood v. Patterson (09-158), a case addressing whether a federal habeas petition challenging a new sentence is a "second or successive" claim under 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b) if the petitioner could have challenged his first sentence on the same constitutional grounds.  On SCOTUSblog, Erin Miller posts podcasts from counsel for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Professor John Blume, and the Solicitor General of Alabama, Corey Maze.  Blume argues that the courts should consider Magwood's due process claim, because this is the first petition challenging his 1986 death sentence.  He says the argument is supported by the language of 28 U.S.C. §2244(b).  Solicitor General Corey Maze disagrees.  He begins by asserting that we "are listening to a podcast that never should have been recorded."  According to Maze, Magwood was ordered to raise the claim at issue today in a habeas petition in 1983, "which would have resolved this issue conclusively in 1986."  Maze argues that petitioners get one, but only one, full and fair opportunity to litigate a habeas claim-- they cannot wait 14 years (as Magwood did) to raise a claim.

A Bill To Ban Sex Offenders from Social Networking Websites:  On Sex Crimes, Corey Rayburn Yung reports on California Assembly Bill 2208, which would make it a misdemeanor for any person required to register as a sex offender to use any Internet social network, such as Facebook.  According to a San Francisco Gate article written by Marissa Lagos, the California bill is similar to legislation recently passed in Illinois, and less severe than a New York law that also requires sex offenders to register their e-mail addresses and online aliases with state authorities, who can then turn over the names to the companies that run the social networking sites.  Facebook attorney Chris Kelly notes that it is often difficult for social networking sites to identify sex offenders without knowing how they identify themselves online.  He says the bill is "a good start.  But it needs to be strengthened."

"Active Liberty" vs. Originalism:  At Blog of Legal Times, Tony Mauro reports that last night, Justices Scalia and Breyer "reprised their debate" over how to interpret the Constitution.  According to Mauro, in a debate hosted by the Supreme Court Historical Society, Justices Scalia and Breyer challenged each other over statutory construction, "with Scalia insisting that looking to the words of the law and nothing else is the best way to discern its meaning."  Justice Breyer disagreed, and according to Ashby Jones on Wall Street Journal's Law Blog, asserted that the Constitution allows the Court "to better carry out that initial intent that this document will in fact govern a changing society as society changes over the course of centuries."  Josh Blackmun posts "a (near) transcript" from the debate on his blog.

More On Goodwin Liu:  At NRO's Bench Memos, Ed Whelan posts a link to his NRO essay, Unsound and Unfit: Goodwin Liu is President Obama's worst judicial nominee . . . so far.  Howard Bashman also rounds up media coverage on Liu's postponed hearings on his website, How Appealing. Senator Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, commented on the delayed hearings in this Press Release.     

The kiddie porn defense bar tells us that obscenity law threatens the First Amendment.  Thus, it would seem, we're all in danger of being muzzled unless we give a pass to people who want to sell pictures of children being forced into sexual encounters with animals.

I have yet, however, to hear any member of the civil liberties industry rise up against the actual attack on free speech that happened yesterday at the University of Ottawa.  Here's how the MSNBC story starts:

Coulter speech canceled after protesters' threats
Ottawa University talk off amid fears for safety of right-wing pundit

Ann Coulter supports resolute law enforcement and the death penalty.  She has other strident and controversial views on social issues, and I am neither endorsing nor denouncing them here.  That's not what this post is about.  It's about the censorship-by-intimidation practices that some on the Left undertake when they shed the civil liberties tutu and don the Political Correctness police mufti that fits them so much better.

A question:  When will others of us who support the death penalty in academic debates be accused of racist "hate speech" and threatened with getting beaten up?  Or, as happend to Ms. Coulter, also threatened  --  by university officials, no less  --  with criminal prosecution?