Results matching “first”

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is an influential work that comes up in nearly every criminal case with a mental issue. In Saturday's Wall Street Journal, Paul McHugh of Johns Hopkins U. reviews Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness, by Christopher Lane. McHugh credits Lane with a revealing look at how the DSM-III (1980) was prepared and how it was a reaction to Freudian psychoanalysis. "He is also right in observing that the [DSM] errs by designating [shyness and] other kinds of normal human variation as mental disorders and so exaggerates the incidence of mental illness." This is, in part, a product of the DSM's "field guide" approach to mental diagnosis, identifying mental disorders with checklists of characteristics similar to those used by birdwatchers to identify birds.

McHugh parts company with Lane on where to go next. He says that Lane, a professor of literature, not psychology, has a fondness for psychoanalysis and thinks the profession should return to it. Absurd, says McHugh. "Today, Freud is deader than Elvis. Nobody investigating psychiatric disorders is dancing to Freud's tunes." Overdiagnosis is a real problem and needs to be addressed, McHugh says, but not by going backward.

Of course, the DSM and its "field guide" approach identified by Lane and McHugh are not the only reasons for diagnosing normal human variation -- both variation between people and the ups and downs of one person's life -- as mental disorders. Here are a few others:

Yesterday the Supreme Court of Florida upheld Florida's Lethal Injection Protocol. The decision, Lightbourne v. McCollum, can be found here.

Lightbourne reached the Florida Supreme Court when the Governor put a halt to all Florida executions in 2006, after an inmate's lethal injection execution took "34 minutes, which was substantially longer than in any previous lethal injection in Florida." The Governor then created the Governor's Commission on Administration of Lethal Injection which held hearings and made recommendations to the Florida Department of Corrections ("DOC"). The DOC revised its procedures in May 2007. When a trial court found these procedures inadequate, the DOC issued new procedures in August 2007. It is the August 2007 procedures that Lightborne challenged.

The Florida Supreme Court has rejected the Eighth Amendment challenge to the revised Florida lethal injection protocol. The opinion is "per curiam," meaning it is the opinion of the court as a whole with no designated author. Six of the seven justices joined the opinion. The seventh concurred in the result without a written opinion. The revised protocol provides for medically trained personnel to perform the needle insertion and for confirmation that the first drug has rendered the inmate unconscious before proceeding with the second and third.

Yesterday, Mark Sherman of the Associated Press, reported on the ABA's recently published Death Penalty report. The story can be found here.

The report was issued Sunday, October 28, by the ABA's Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project, and according to the article, justifies a nationwide freeze on executions.

The report was based on the ABA's study of 8 state death penalty systems (Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee). The study reviewed each state's: collection of DNA data and other evidence; law enforcement interrogation tactics; crime lab offices; prosecutorial professionalism; defense services; direct appeal process; post-conviction process; clemency process; jury instructions; judicial independence; treatment of minorities; and mental retardation and mental illness practices. In the end, the study concluded that only 3 out of the 8 states - Arizona, Florida, and Pennsylvania - sufficiently complied with the ABA standards for death penalty procedures. The report can be viewed here.

There are several problems with the ABA's report. First, as Mark Sherman noted at the bottom of his article, the report is prepared by death penalty opponents. In fact, the director of the project is an ABA attorney who uses her position to encourage state bar associations to press for moratoriums within their jurisdictions - no wonder every state these attorneys have studied has a flawed death penalty process! Bios for the attorneys can be found at the Project's homepage.

Second, the ABA does not finance a project to counter the Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project's findings. For example, there is no project devoted to studying the merits of death penalty sentencing and its implementation. There is no ABA study that demonstrates the deterrent effect of the death penalty in jurisdictions. This makes any death penalty report issued by the ABA one-sided, and counterintuitive to the ABA's mission of pursuing justice, particularly justice for the victims and their families.

Finally, the ABA report does not address the issue before the Supreme Court in Baze v. Rees. The report does not cover the effects, or the procedure, used by most states who have chosen to execute through lethal injection. So, while the study may find process to be lacking in every jurisdiction it has studied, it has not addressed whether the implementation of lethal injection warrants a nationwide moratorium of the death penalty.

I guess we'll have to wait for a more evenhanded report from the Supreme Court for that.

At first, I thought we had a "patchwork moratorium" on the death penalty, where some states would have stays pending Baze and some wouldn't. Then the nonstay decisions were all reversed, so I decided we didn't.

Well, now it looks like Mississippi is on track again. Earl Berry, scheduled for long overdue justice October 30 (he committed murder twenty years ago), has been denied a stay by both the Mississippi Supreme Court and the Fifth Circuit. The latter's opinion is here.

Unless the Fifth Circuit en banc intervenes, this case should require the Supreme Court to tell us if there is a nationwide moratorium or not. Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog has this post on Berry's cert. petition from the state court case. Here are the dockets for the stay application and petition for certiorari.

Memo to SCOTUS: whatever you do, please give us a reasoned explanation this time.

Update: Natalie Chandler has this story in Saturday's Jackson Clarion-Ledger. (Hat tip: How Appealing.) Berry's lawyers intend to file a stay application with the Supreme Court on Monday. (Technically, it goes to Justice Scalia as Circuit Justice for the Fifth, but he will refer it to the full court.) The article doesn't mention any en banc request.

Update3 (10/18 1:30): The Georgia Supreme Court changed its mind. So, apparently the moratorium is no longer a patchwork.

Update2: The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles has refused to stay the execution of Jack Alderman, scheduled for Friday, reports Rhonda Cook for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Update: AP reports the Supreme Court has granted a stay in the Emmett case: "The stay granted by the [Supreme] court will last until [the Fourth Circuit] takes another look at the case. The justices did not comment further on their order." The order is here. It actually says "stayed pending final disposition of the appeal by the ... Fourth Circuit...." Not very illuminating. If the Fourth summarily affirms tomorrow for the same reasons it denied the stay, a new execution date can be set.
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When the Supreme Court agreed to review the lethal injection controversy in Baze v. Rees, the question was breathlessly asked all over, "Does this mean a moratorium on executions." At first it appeared the answer was no, as the high court denied a stay to Michael Richard in Texas and he was executed. Then the court granted a stay to another Texas inmate, Carlton Turner. The cases may well have been distinguishable, but I commented here that an explanation was warranted. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals then began staying executions. More recently, we have had some action in other states.

Not much newsworthy out of the Supreme Court today. Friday's conference didn't include any of the cases we are following. The orders list is here. The Court took a money laundering case, Cuellar v. United States, 06-1456, discussed at SCOTUSblog and SL&P.

In Smith v. Arizona, Justice Breyer has a dissent from denial of certiorari on the perennial Lackey claim, that long delays before execution are cruel to the defendant. It is more than a little weird than a judge can opine, presumably with a straight face, that something caused by the defendant and the courts over the state's vehement objection can entitle the defendant to set aside the state's judgment against him.

If you really want to do something about this, Justice Breyer, the path is quite clear. First, dismantle the system of federal micromanagement of the penalty phase of state capital cases that followed in the wake of Gregg v. Georgia. Keep Gregg itself, requiring the states to adopt systems that fix the Furman problem, but leave the details of administration of those systems to the state courts.

Second, genuinely enforce the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. If Lindh v. Murphy had been correctly decided, AEDPA would have applied to Smith's 1999 federal habeas case. In that case, the Ninth Circuit overturned the decision of the state courts because 2 of the 4 federal judges who heard the case disagreed with the state court. The district judge and the dissenting judge in the Court of Appeals thought the state court was right. The state decision was reasonable and shouldn't have been overturned under AEDPA. This execution should have been carried out seven years ago.

Medellin Argument: Mark Sherman has this AP story on the argument. The Court extended the argument time to 90 minutes, an unusual step. Lyle Denniston has this report of the argument at SCOTUSblog. Melissa Underwood of Fox News has this preargument story.

Witness Protection: Bob Egelko has this story on a a federal case where reputed gang members are seeking the identity of witnesses before trial. The Supreme Court denied certiorari Tuesday in Fort v. United States, No. 07-31. The Ninth Circuit panel opinion is here, and the denial of rehearing en banc with concurrence and dissent is here. Although the Supreme Court has authority to take federal cases before trial, it rarely does, and the interlocutory nature of the appeal was the first argument in the Solicitor General's brief in opposition.

Harmless and cumulative error are discussed in the Ninth Circuit's decision today in Parle v. Runnels. No mention of Fry v. Pliler, the most recent Supreme Court opinion on harmless error in habeas cases.

In a comment to our previous post, "federalist" points us to this story on curious case of denial of a stay to Texas murderer Michael Richard on Sept. 25. The Supreme Court granted a stay to Carlton Turner on Sept. 27, and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted one Tuesday to Heliberto Chi.

The story says that Richard's lawyers asked the Texas CCA to stay open after 5:00 p.m., and they refused. I don't practice in that court, so I don't know if that is credible. What I do not find credible is this statement in the article:

The legal move [going to the U.S. Supreme Court] delayed the execution by a few hours, but since the convict did not file his appeal with a local court first, his arguments were not accepted in Washington.

Now, Rule 23 generally requires seeking a stay from a lower court first, but it makes an express exception for "extraordinary circumstances," which the events related in the story, if true, would certainly be. SCOTUS has a full time emergency applications clerk whose job is to deal with issues like this, and I am quite sure he is familiar with the rule.

How does the reporter know what the reason for denial was? The orders, at the end of the Sept. 25 orders list, are unexplained. The story doesn't say. I find it difficult to believe that the Court would have denied a stay on that basis in these circumstances, especially without dissent.

Is this just speculation from defense counsel being reported as fact? It wouldn't be the first time. This is bad press for both the Supreme Court and the Texas CCA, and the resulting loss in public confidence in the courts is a good reason not to issue unexplained orders in cases such as this. The Court should issue a postmortem opinion explaining why it denied relief, as it did in Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1 (1942).

There is lots of excitement over the Supreme Court's grant of certiorari on the lethal injection issue in Baze v. Rees, noted in our cert. grant post this morning. I even got a call from Australian Broadcasting. They asked me if this case would mean the end of the death penalty. Hardly.

Gitmo Habeas: Senate Democrats yesterday failed to muster enough votes to cut off debate on repealing the portion of the Military Commissions Act that repealed habeas corpus jurisdiction for the detainees in Guantanamo, reports Jonathan Weisman of the WashPost. The Supreme Court will decide in the Boumediene and Al Odah cases if that repeal was constitutional. "Bottom side" briefs are due October 9. Argument in December(?).

Anti-Gang Injunctions in San Francisco have created a rift between public defender Jeff Adachi and City Attorney Dennis Herrera according to this SF Chronicle story by reporters Jonathan Curiel, John Cote' and Marisa Lagos. Herrera, the first Hispanic to hold the City Attorney's post, is using injunctions identifying specific Latino streets gangs as public nuisances, to restrict named members from gathering, displaying their colors or flashing gang signs in designated neighborhoods. Such injunctions, which have been used to break up gangs throughout California, allow police to arrest and search known gang members who violate the restrictions. More serious charges can be brought against gang members caught with drugs or weapons in their possession. Adachi says his office has received reports that police are engaging in racial profiling, Herrera has responded that such claims are inflammatory and inaccurate.

Bong Hits 4 Roberts: Tony Mauro of Legal Times reports on the BLT that a someone held up a sign reading "Bong Hits 4 Roberts" as the CJ led a procession to a ribbon-cutting ceremony, following his First Amendment speech at Syracuse. In Morse v. Frederick, the CJ wrote the opinion holding that a principal did not violate the First Amendment in taking down a student's banner reading "Bong Hits 4 Jesus".

The transcript of the President's announcement of the nomination of Judge Michael Mukasey to be Attorney General is now available. Devlin Barrett of AP has this long story.

Judge Mukasey's best known cases during his judicial tenure are both terrorism related. He presided over the trial of the first World Trade Center bombing case. He also handled the Padilla case, which eventually went to the Supreme Court. His opinion in that case is in the appendix to the government's certiorari petition, which we have uploaded here. The opinion is pages 76a-162a of the petition, which are pages 111-201 of the PDF file. The published version is Padilla v. Bush, 233 F. Supp. 2d 564 (DC SDNY, 2002).

It is a thoughful and well-written opinion. We at CJLF disagreed with Judge Mukasey's conclusion on jurisdiction in this brief, and the Supreme Court overturned it in Rumsfeld v. Padilla, 542 U.S. 426 (2004). However, the issue was unsettled until the Supreme Court's decision, so it was within the realm of reasonable disagreement at the time.

Pending confirmation of Judge Mukasey, AAG Peter Keisler will be acting AG, so SG Paul Clement can go back to his main job.

Update: AP has this collection of Mukasey musings. My favorite is refusal to accept a mental mitigation argument in sentencing for a terrorist plot. "Forgive me if it sounds coldhearted, but people who are killed by people with limited capacity are just as dead as people killed by geniuses."

Scott Horton at Balkinization calls for confirmation.

The LA Times has this story today by Garrett Therolf and Maura Dolan. Apparently there are some discussions under way about Chemerinsky getting the dean's job after all. Further down the story, we finally have the first awareness in the media that Chemerinsky printed falsehoods in his Aug. 16 article, not just that he expressed opinions. Turns out I wasn't the only one horrified at his claims and not the only one who wrote the LA Times about them. Add the Chief Justice of California in the same column.

A Death Penalty documentary currently in production will focus on the penalty's appropriateness for an absolutely guilty multiple-murderer. New York School of Law Professor Robert Blecker is the subject of the documentary. According to this story by Clint Confehr in Tennessee's Times Gazette, the program features yesterday's execution of Daryl Holton, who was convicted of four counts of premeditated first degree murder for killing his four children in 1997. All four children, twelve-year-old Stephen Edward Holton, ten-year-old Brent Holton, six-year-old Eric Holton, and four-year-old Kayla Marie Holton, were shot to death with a Russian SKS semi-automatic assault rifle. A USA Today story on the execution by reporter Sheila Burke is here. Prior to the killings, Holton had been engaged in an ongoing fight with his ex-wife over custody of the children. He confessed to the murders and did not agree with defense efforts to spare him from the death penalty. The producers plan to air the documentary on cable.

Murders In San Francisco may reach a new high this year and city leaders are hoping that a gadget called the shotspotter will help police catch the killers according to this San Francisco Chronicle story by Cecilia M. Vega. The device uses global positioning to transmit the location of a gunshot to the police within 15 seconds. San Francisco has had 81 homicides so far this year and may exceed 2005's 96 homicides, which was the highest in a decade. The murderers who do get caught with the help of the shotspotter can take comfort in the fact that so long as Kamala Harris is District Attorney, they will not face a death sentence.

Update: An updated version of the LA Times story is here. It mentions the op-ed but leaves out the fact of Professor Chemerinsky's patently false assertions of fact in that article. He is quoted saying, "Shouldn't we as academics be able to stand up for people on death row?"

Stand up, yes. Misrepresent facts, no.

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The blogosphere is abuzz with the news that the new law school at UC Irvine has withdrawn its offer for Erwin Chemerinsky to be its first dean. WSJ Law Blog has this post. Garrett Therolf and Henry Weinstein have this story in the LA Times.

In the WSJ post, Professor Chemerinsky is quoted as saying it is sad he was booted because of opinions he has expressed. For our part, we were sharply critical in this post of an op-ed he wrote recently. As we made very clear, though, it was not his opinions that raised our ire but his blatantly false statements of fact, statements he either knew were false or would have known were false with the most elementary checking.

Los Angeles police have resumed the impounding of vehicles belonging to unlicensed drivers according to this Associated Press story. The practice had been suspended two weeks ago due to concerns about a 2005 Ninth Circuit ruling in the Oregon case of Miranda v. City of Cornelius, which Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton has since determined does not affect the local law. The story reports that most of the cars impounded belong to illegal immigrants.

A South Carolina woman was arrested yesterday when she arrived at the courthouse to pay a traffic ticket in what police discovered was a stolen car. The Associated Press reports that Amber Helton was found guilty of driving without a license last week. Police were tipped off that she would show up to pay the fine in a car stolen last month in Tennessee.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's legal challenge to federal judicial consideration of inmate releases has been dismissed by the Ninth Circuit as reported in this San Francisco Chronicle story by Bob Egelko. The three judge panel will hold its first inmate release hearing on September 24.

South Africa made bad policy choices on crime, according to a researcher with the Institute for Security Studies. Antony Altbeker "said the wrong crime strategies were chosen from the outset thanks in part to the 'naive notion' that prevention was better than cure and that the police could be employed as 'armed social workers'." Deon de Lange reports for the Independent Online.

NYDP: The New York Daily News has this editorial on the case of People v. Taylor noted yesterday. "The high court must respect the jury's determination, no matter how much the judges personally oppose the death penalty."

Today, in Fields v. Brown, No. 00-99005, the Ninth Circuit en banc upheld the murder conviction and death sentence of Stevie Lamar Fields for a murder committed twenty-nine years ago. The excessive time and resources expended on this case and the unconscionable delay of justice illustrate vividly how we spend far too much on issues having little to do with the justice of the case.

The current issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings (Sept., vol. 82, no. 9) has three articles on physician participation in executions.

David Waisel argues that doctors should be permitted, though not required, to participate in executions for the benefit of the condemned inmate. "I argue that it is honorable for physicians to minimize the harm to these condemned individuals and that organized medicine has an obligation to permit physician participation in legal execution." He also goes through and refutes a number of arguments against physician participation.

Waisel also notes that doctors sometimes do things for the good of society rather than the individual patient. His example is quarantine of a contagious patient. Another example I can think of is when a psychiatrist, who is an MD, involuntarily commits a mental patient on the ground he is dangerous to others. Under the Tarasoff decision, psychiatrists must also warn people threatened by their patients, even though that may mean breaking confidentiality and the arrest of the patient. These actions are accepted as medically ethical.

In Faretta v. California, 422 U.S. 806 (1975), the Supreme Court held that a criminal defendant has a constitutional right to reject counsel and represent himself. Justice Blackmun, dissenting, wrote, "If there is any truth to the old proverb that 'one who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client,' the Court by its opinion today now bestows a constitutional right on one to make a fool of himself." In Faretta's case, "The record affirmatively shows that Faretta was literate, competent, and understanding, and that he was voluntarily exercising his informed free will." Id., at 835. The difficulty comes when competence is not so clear. Does the constitutional right to be a fool include the constitutional right to be a crazy fool?

One day for Nifong. AP reports here.

Construction resumes on the execution chamber at San Quentin, after the California Legislature finally passed the budget, Reuters reports.

The Supreme Court has issued the last of its summer orders lists. Nothing interesting.

Norman Hsu, the big time political fundraiser who "forgot" to show up for sentencing for theft in California, has turned himself in, Paul Elias reports for AP. Bail is $2M. Unlike the typical megabuck bail, this defendant might actually post it with his own money.

Attorneys Dispute Robbery Charges for Killer Taking Body Parts
AP reports on the bizarre case of Sean Vincent Gillis. He is facing first degree murder charges, which could end in the death penalty, for killing eight women between 1994 and 2004 pending prosecutors' proof of aggravating circumstances. The prosecution states that the death of one of the women, Donna Johnston, meets the definition because Gillis took one of the victim’s arms and a tattoo from one of her legs. The Crime Library has chronicled this serial killer’s murderous rampage here. Note to Louisiana Legislature: killing more than one person should be death-eligible by itself.

Manson Follower is Denied Parol for 18th Time
The Associated Press reports here that Leslie Van Houten, who was convicted of murder and conspiracy for her role in the 1969 slayings of Leno and Rosemary La Bianca, was denied parole for the 18th time. Van Houten, now 58, will not be allowed to petition for release until 2009.

Crime and Punishment in Sin City
Larry McShane of AP reports that a new series, "Sin City Law" airing on Mondays starting September 10 on the Sundance Channel. The series will cover four cases and offers a harrowing tour of the Clark County legal system documentary-style, delving into the stories as seen by the various participants: the prosecutors, the public defenders, the killers, the victims, family members, investigators and includes Courtroom footage. "Unlike the typical TV crime show, the true-life crime dramas aren't neatly wrapped up — everything is messy, from the crimes to the conclusions. A life sentence is considered a victory; are there any winners when a death sentence is imposed?"

On second thought: A rape victim in the East Bay area of California set up a phony job interview for the rapist. Her original plan was to "exact vigilante justice." On reflection, she made the wiser choice and had him arrested. Why did she consider the other in the first place? "The victim was afraid the suspect would not be sent to prison for the crime," Henry Lee reports for the SF Chron.

Execution: DeRoyce Mosley was put to death in Texas late Tuesday night. As reported Monday, a jury found him guilty of murdering a woman during a robbery that left four people dead. An Associated Press story by Michael Graczyk discusses tonight's scheduled execution of John Amador for the 1994 murder and robbery of a San Antonio cab driver and the attempted murder his female passenger. The robbery netted $100. At the time, Amador was on parole for his involvement in the murder of his stepfather. The news story also discusses the scheduled Thursday execution of Kenneth Foster, the getaway driver in a robbery which left the victim lying dead on his own driveway.

British Conservative leader David Cameron has this article in the Daily Mail, making clear that crime will be a major election issue. He calls for policing reforms citing those used in New York (i.e., the "broken windows" thesis). He also calls for greater deterrence through stronger punishment of serious crime. "The problem today is that we do not convict and lock up enough criminals. Why? Because we don't have enough space." The Mail also has this article of its own.

Rebuilding New Orleans: The biggest obstacle is crime and local officials' refusal to do what needs to be done, writes Nicole Gelinas in OpinionJournal.com

The "bottom side" briefs are in for Medellin v. Texas. All except the not-yet-filed reply brief are collected here. The summary of argument from the CJLF brief is after the jump.

Tim and Karen Scanlon have this letter in the Morning Call of Allentown, Pennsylvania. Tim's father was murdered by Ronald Rompilla, whose death sentence was overturned by the Supreme Court, incorrectly, in our view. The Scanlons asked the prosecution not to seek the death penalty again. They had had enough. "Pennsylvania needs to exercise the wishes of juries and limit the appeals process. Stop victimizing the victims."

A National Sex Offender Registry is now available on the internet from a Houston-based company as reported by John Pospisil in this story from Tech.Blorge.com. The story includes a link to the website which allows a user to type in a street name, city, state and zip code to locate registered sex offenders.

Execution: Texas murderer DaRoyce Mosley is scheduled to be executed Tuesday for killing a woman in a bar during a robbery as reported by AP writer Michael Graczyk. Just before midnight on July 21, 1994, Mosely and his uncle burst through the door at Katie's Lounge In Kilgore, robbed the bartender, Sandra Cash, of $308 and then shot her and four others. Cash survived but Patrica Colter 54, her husband Duane 44, Alvin Walker 54, and Luva Congleton 68, were killed. Mosley, who confessed, now claims that he ran out after the first shot, but ballistics show that two guns were used in the shootings.

Solicitor General Paul Clement will take over for Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General until the President appoints a replacement according to this AP story by Mark Sherman.

"One juror noted afterward: 'Someone had to speak up for those two little girls.'" A Florida jury recommended the death penalty, for the second time, for Howard Steven Ault for the murder of DeAnn Mu'min, 11, and her sister, Alicia Jones, 7, Diana Moskovitz and Jennifer Lebovich report for the Miami Herald. Ault's first death sentence was overturned for Witherspoon-Witt error, excluding an anti-death-penalty juror. The Florida Supreme Court opinion is here.

Ault's attorney claimed mental illness, but most of the jurors didn't buy it. " 'He knew what he was doing,' said Daniel Polier, 23, of Parkland."

In a videotaped confession, recorded two days after the murders, Ault said he gained the girls' trust by visiting them at Easterlin Park, where they lived out of a station wagon with a camper with their mother and a younger sister, Nyssa, about 2.

Ault, in a chillingly calm voice, described matter-of-factly how he raped DeAnn on the floor of his Fort Lauderdale living room as Alicia watched helplessly from the couch. When he was done with DeAnn, he smoked a cigarette, then strangled Alicia.

When asked why he killed both children, Ault said: ``I was afraid of getting caught.''

The jury vote was 9-3 for the murder of DeAnn and 10-2 for the murder of Alicia, illustrating once again why jurisdictions with single-juror veto rules need to repeal them immediately.

A full-scale disinformation campaign is underway in response the U.S. Department of Justice's belated regulations to implement the amendments to the death penalty "fast track" of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. Much of what we have seen is political spin, trying to tie the regulations personally to AG Gonzales, who has actually shown little interest in the subject. An op-ed by Erwin Chemerinsky printed last Thursday in the Los Angeles Times takes the grand prize, though. Along with the predictable opinion, this article is riddled with blatantly false assertions of fact.

Many death penalty proponents are quite skeptical of social scientists and this article (subscription required) in the current issue of Psychology, Public Policy, and the Law should add to that skepticism. The article, titled, Brain Imaging, Culpability, and the Juvenile Death Penalty by Jay D. Aronson of Carnegie Mellon University, at first blush, appears to offer a refreshing opposing view of the death penalty in a journal notorious for its bias on the death penalty issue (more on that in a moment). The abstract begins thusly:

In Roper v. Simmons (2005), the U.S. Supreme Court banned the death penalty for offenders under the age of 18 years. Central to Simmons’s defense was new brain imaging evidence suggesting that the regions of the brain responsible for decision making and impulse control are not as well developed in adolescents as in adults, thereby rendering adolescents less culpable for the crimes they commit. Although these images were not explicitly cited in the Court’s decision, they were hailed by anti-death penalty advocates as the wave of the future. However, legal advocates and scientists should be cautious in using cutting-edge neuroscience for criminal justice purposes for several reasons. First and foremost, no definitive link between brain structure and deviant behavior has been established. Furthermore, very little is known about the developmental threshold that separates juvenile decision-making ability from adultlike decision-making ability.

Sounds promising? But once the reader delves into the details of the actual article, one realizes that this is just one more one-sided, uncritical, biased view of neuroscience and the law. Why? Let's count the ways:

In the Patriot Act renewal bill, Congress took the decision as to whether states have adopted mechanisms for state habeas counsel appointment, so as to qualify for the federal habeas fast track, away from the habeas courts (with their painfully obvious conflict of interest) and gave it to the US AG and the DC Circuit. DoJ then dragged its feet for 15 months before promulgating the proposed regulations on how to apply. Given that everyone knew this was coming for over a year, the 60 days allowed for comment was more than generous. But the capital habeas crowd did what they do best -- call for more delay -- and DoJ caved. The comment period is extended another 45 days.

The announcement is here, 72 Fed. Reg. 44816 (Aug. 9, 2007). I've also copied the pertinent text into this post after the jump. The excuse of malfunction in the system for viewing other people's comments is really weak. Commenters on regs have no right to see others' comments first. After all, nobody sees in advance comments submitted on the last day, as many are.

John Couey, "the man convicted of kidnapping and raping 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford is not mentally retarded and is eligible for the death penalty, a Citrus County [Florida] judge ruled Tuesday" says this AP report. "The conclusion is inescapable and irrefutable that the defendant John Evander Couey, is not retarded by any legal or societal standard,'' Judge Ric Howard wrote in a 16-page ruling. Retardation litigation has followed a predictable pattern. The first step was to get the Supreme Court to draw a categorical line of exclusion. The second step is to blur the line to include within the excluded class people who would never previously have been considered retarded. Fortunately, it appears most judges and juries are rejecting the bogus retardation claims. Unfortunately, a few are buying it.

Death Penalty: The California Supreme Court has unanimously affirmed the death sentence given fifteen years ago to an Anaheim woman, according to this Orange County Register story by Larry Welborn. Maria del Rosio Alfaro murdered a nine-year-old girl by stabbing her 57 times during a residential burglary. The Court's opinion is available here.

Murderer Registry: The Chairman of Hawaii's Senate Public Safety Committee plans to introduce a bill which would post the names and addresses of convicted murderers who have been released from prison, according to a story by Honolulu Advertiser reporter Dan Nakaso. The idea for the registry, which would be patterned after the state's sex offender registry, follows the arrests of two convicted murderers who were free on parole. Peter Bailey was sentenced to life with parole for the murder of a 17-year-old girl in 1979. He was arrested last month for raping a 12-year-old girl. Darnell Griffin has been charged with the rape and murder of a 20-year-old woman. He had a previous conviction for murdering another woman and was released from prison in 1996.

Death of a Journalist is the subject of an editorial in today's San Francisco Chronicle. It focuses on Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey, who was gunned down while walking to work last week. Bailey was doing investigative reporting on corruption at a black Muslim center when he was killed by shotgun fire. Seven other murders have occurred in Oakland since Bailey was killed. The Chronicle wants lawmakers to "get guns off the streets and bring perpetrators to justice and to get at the root causes of violence." This crime raises several serious questions about law enforcement policies in the Bay Area, which appear not to have changed much since the 1960s. The editorial reads like it was written then.

California Prisons: The Chief Judge of the Ninth Circuit has announced her selections for the three-judge panel which will decide if the release of up to 37,000 felons from California prisons is necessary to alleviate overcrowding as reported in this story by San Francisco Chronicle reporter Bob Egelko. The two District Judges who had requested that the panel be formed, Thelton Henderson of San Francisco, and Lawrence Karlton of Sacramento, will be joined by Ninth Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt, to consider the release order. An initial appeal to block the formation of the panel by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, rejected earlier this week by the two district judges will be appealed to the Ninth Circuit according to Jurist reporter Michael Sung's story here. The odds that the Governor will prevail are poor.

Study Claims Race Influences Executions: Eve Conant with Newsweek reported yesterday on a study in the August issue of American Sociological Review regarding the disparity in race when it comes to executions. Conant reports that the released study “claims to be the first of its kind to study whether the race of murder victims affects the probability that a convicted killer gets the ultimate punishment.” In part of Conant’s interview with David Jacobs, the co-author and professor of sociology and political science at Ohio State University, Jacobs states, “The findings, in short, show that we clearly value white lives more than those of blacks or Hispanics.”

Inmate breaks Record: Illinois’ longest serving inmate was unanimously denied parole earlier today by the Illinois Prisoner Review Board. William Heirens plead guilty to killing two women in 1946 and strangling to death a 6-year-old girl, who afterwards was dismembered. Heirens, who was charged with 3 back-to-back life term sentences, has spent more that 60 years in prison, setting a new record for longest serving inmate in history. Although Heirens attorney has stressed he should be released because of failing health, the victims’ families say they live in fear of him being released one day. The story reported by Michael Higgins with the Chicago Tribune, indicates that Gov. Ryan denied Heirens clemency back in 2002.

Shortsighted on Judges is the title of this National Journal article by Stuart Taylor. He contends that the Democrats' blocking of the nomination of the well-qualified Leslie Southwick for the Fifth Circuit may backfire if and when their party gets the White House back. (Hat tip: How Appealing.)

Cutting inmate population in Missouri: A supervision center for qualified inmates is cutting down the amount of inmates in prison, while giving inmates a second chance. Inmates must serve 85% of their sentence under the new law, for those convicted of second-degree murder, rape, sodomy, kidnapping, first-degree assault, arson and first-degree robbery, reports Virginia Young and Tim O’Neil with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The center offers a program for qualified inmates leaving prison, but not quite ready for the real world, by providing them with transitional housing units. In the center, inmates are provided help in applying for jobs, writing resumes and given state issued identification cards. Non-violent offenders are offered employment workshops, drug treatment, and are given the opportunity to take a GED test to gain a high school diploma.

New Sex offender laws in Florida: Tomorrow sex offenders in Florida will be required to obtain a new driver’s license or ID card that will have a special statute number printed on the front, indicating the offense. Effective October 1, 2007, offenders will have to register any e-mail addresses and/or instant message names with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Starting February 1, 2008 any offender or predator who has failed to obtain a new card will be charged with a third-degree felony. As reported in the Scripps Treasure Coast Newspaper “60% of boys and 80% of girls sexually victimized are abused by someone known to the child or his or her family.”