Results matching “first”

The Gallup Poll shows support for the death penalty essentially steady, with 65% answering "yes" to Gallup's traditional question, an insignificant change from last year's 66%. (As we have noted before, the traditional question understates public support by implying that the respondent is being asked to specify a single punishment for all murderers, not just the worst.) This report by Lydia Saad of Gallup, free for a limited time, emphasizes the racial differences in responses. The myth that the death penalty is imposed disproportionately on black defendants, despite the opponents' own studies showing the contrary, is doubtless a large part of the lack of support among black Americans and the resulting lesser justice and protection for black victims of crime. More on this is available in Kent Scheidegger's 2003 article on the racial studies.

Gov. Signs Warrant for Killer’s Execution
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports here that on Wednesday, Gov. Ed Rendell signed a warrant authorizing the execution of a man convicted of killing four members of a family, including the fetus of the pregnant daughter. Mark Duane Edwards, Jr. is scheduled to die by lethal injection on September 19th for the April 2002 murders of the Bobish family, after breaking into their mobile home to avoid a drug debt. However, the case has only finished the first round of appeals, direct appeal through denial of certiorari by the Supreme Court, so this date will doubtless be stayed.

Supreme Court "too conservative”? An article in the Washington Post on Sunday reports that although half of Americans think that the Court is balanced, a growing number of Americans say that the Supreme Court has become “too conservative” in the two years since President Bush began nominating justices. An ABC News story by Gary Langer has a link to the actual poll results. Overall, 47% think the Court is about right, 31% too conservative, and 18% too liberal.

New Hampshire collecting DNA from parolees: The Boston Globe reports that New Hampshire's Corrections Department will begin collecting DNA samples from sexual or violent offenders on parole or probation so that police around the country can compare samples in criminal investigations.

Sex Offenders in Kentucky sentenced before July 2006 may not have to comply with a state law which prohibits offenders from living within 1,000 feet from a school, daycare facility or park according to this story from the Louisville Courier-Journal by Jason Riley. A state District Judge ruled yesterday that applying the new restriction to those sentenced prior to the law's enactment was unconstitutional. Other Kentucky judges have handed down similar rulings, with an appeal pending before the State Supreme Court.

Execution Update: Shortly after the U. S. Supreme Court denied his appeals, Lonnie Earl Johnson was executed yesterday evening in Texas. Johnson was pronounced dead at 6:44 p.m. CDT reports AP staff writer Michael Graczyk.

State officials last week were told that Myspace.com found more than 29,000 sex offender profiles on their website. In May, Myspace had removed 7,000 profiles of sex offenders who had violated their parole. North Carolina AG Roy Cooper is proposing a new law that would block offenders from using social websites, such as Myspace, Facebook or Xanga reports April Bethea with the Charlotte Observer. Cooper is also teaming up with other state law officials in an attempt to urge Myspace to “use age and identity verification methods voluntarily.”

Not Your Ordinary Deck of Cards: In an attempt to help solve statewide cold-case homicides and missing persons cases, law enforcement officials in Florida are giving prison inmates cold-case playing cards. Each playing card has the victim(s) name(s), picture(s), date, location, homicide and/or last seen information, followed by a crime stoppers tip number. Inmates in Polk County jails were first given the cards in 2004, and helped lead authorities to the arrest of 2 people involved in a May 2004 homicide, Marc Caputo reports for the Miami Herald.

Getsy Decision: An en banc panel of the Sixth Circuit has rejected a proportionality claim in a murder-for-hire case which had been upheld by a three-judge panel last year. The Associated Press story describes the case. The decision in Getsy v. Mitchell is here. The good news is that eight of the fourteen judges acknowledged that Supreme Court and circuit precedent and federal law prohibited the lower court's holding. The bad news is that the other five and a senior circuit judge did not.

Today the Sixth Circuit issued an interesting little decision called Helms v. Zubaty that reminds us once again of the distinction between acquitted and actually innocent.

The Ninth Circuit partially fixed one of its own errors today. The case involves extradition, sentencing, and the doctrine of specialty. In another case decided Friday, we saw a stunning display of how far some lawyers will go making "disproportionality" arguments.

South Dakota's first execution in the modern era went smoothly, according to this article in the Argus Leader. "From the time the lethal injection began until [Elijah] Page stopped breathing took around 30 seconds, [the Attorney General] said."

Inmate states his case is “mistaken identity”
Troy Davis is scheduled to die by lethal injection tomorrow in Georgia for the death of a police officer. The state Board of Pardons and Paroles is meeting today to decide whether Davis’ execution should be carried out tomorrow as planned or if he should be granted a reprieve. Davis has maintained his innocence the whole time, contending that he did not shoot Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail in August 1989, but was at the scene of the shooting. Davis’ lawyers have specifically complained about the AEDPA and argued that new evidence has not been considered by the courts. Prosecutors, on the other hand, have argued that witness-signed affidavits from 1996 and 2003 were included in prior appeals and should not count as new evidence. Three signed affidavits by those who did not testify stated that a man by the name of Sylvester Coles confessed to shooting the officer. Coles later identified Davis as the shooter, as reported in today’s Washington Post AP story. The Georgia Attorney General's summary of the case is here.

Texas Governor Rick Perry is expected to sign Jessica’s Law today. Mark Lunsford, Jesssica’s father, will be present today for the signing of the law that will go into effect September 1, 2007. After September 1, prosecutors will now be able to ask for capital punishment for second-time offenders in child rape cases, reducing the re-offending chances. Bettie Cross of CBS42 News in Austin, Texas reports more on the story here. 30 states have established some type of Jessica’s Law, reports The Jessica Marie Lunsford Foundation website.

D.C. Gun Ban: The District of Columbia will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Court of Appeals decision striking down the District's handgun ban, David Nakamura reports for the WashPost.

Earlier this year, I debated the death penalty with Timothy Ford at Seattle University. As usual, I cited the new generation of deterrence studies, including the Dezhbakhsh, Rubin, and Shepherd study at Emory University and the Mocan and Gittings study at University of Colorado, among others. Mr. Ford responded with an allegation I had never heard before. He stated that studies I was relying on had been funded by right-wing organizations with a pro-death-penalty agenda.

Never having heard this claim before, I did not immediately have the facts to refute it. I do now.  The claim is false.

The Terrorists' Court is the title of this NYT op-ed by former AAG Jack Goldsmith and Georgetown Prof. Neal Katyal. "The two of us have been on opposite sides of detention policy debates, but we believe that a bipartisan solution that reflects American values is possible. A sensible first step is for Congress to establish a comprehensive system of preventive detention that is overseen by a national security court composed of federal judges with life tenure."

The House Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing on the Libby commutation. Of course, clemency is an entirely discretionary power vested in the executive branch, so any claim to an oversight responsibility here is bogus. However, there may be some interesting points made on federal sentencing generally. All but one of the witness statements are on the site as of this writing, and the last will probably be added later.

Ninth Circuit - To Split or Not to Split? Vanderbilt Law School professor, Brian T. Fitzpatrick has an interesting article in today’s Los Angeles Times titled “Disorder in the court.” Fitzpatrick, a former clerk on the Ninth Circuit and U. S. Supreme Court points out that the justices spent an undue portion of the Court’s last term overturning Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals cases. In the last term, the Supreme Court reversed or vacated a total of 19 times out of 22 cases that were reviewed. As reported, lawyers, judges and legal scholars are in favor of splitting the Ninth Circuit because it “is so large and unwieldy.” Some who also propose the split do not see a relation between the size of the Ninth Circuit and the rate of reversals, but Fitzpatrick provides a mathematical explanation for a connection between size and the likelihood of out-of-the-mainstream results.

Cockfighting and Free Speech: Advanced Consulting and Marketing, which airs cockfights online, filed suit yesterday in Miami federal court claiming a ban on video of cockfighting violates the First Amendment. The company operates an online website that airs cockfighting that takes place in Puerto Rico, where it is legal. A lawyer for the company is arguing that the airing and selling of this video online is not crime. As reported by Adam Liptak with The New York Times, legal experts stated, “the question of whether the First Amendment allows the government to ban depictions of illegal conduct, as opposed to the conduct itself, is a difficult one.” Eugene Volokh is quoted saying the statute is unconstitutional, and he has a post on it at VC.

A scheduled execution in Texas was postponed yesterday evening for death row inmate Rolando Ruiz. A three-judge panel voted on the stay in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals for Ruiz. Two judges stated more time was needed in determining whether Ruiz’s argument that jurors should of been allowed to take into account the fact that he had a poor childhood and suffered from a substance abuse problem in the determination of his sentence. In prior appeals, Ruiz’s state appointed attorney failed to indicate this information to the jury. Ruiz would of become the 19th death row inmate executed in the state of Texas for this calendar year. AP writer Michael Graczyk has the story here and an earlier story here. On Monday, Crime and Consequences first reported on this murderer, who was hired to kill the victim by her husband and brother-in-law in a scheme to collect insurance money of the deceased.

I previously noted here an article by Charles Keckler in the Journal of Law, Economics, and Policy. I said that we would not be adding it to our deterrence abstracts list because JLEP is not a peer-reviewed journal. Turns out that although JLEP is published by a law school and run by students, the articles are peer-reviewed. We stand corrected and have added the article to our collection of abstracts.

For those who like to keep track of these things, the last docket numbers for the term just ended were 06-1723 on the paid docket and 06-12132 on the in forma pauperis (IFP) docket, which began with 06-5001. Thus, there were 8855 cases filed, with about 80% being IFP. The Court decided 75 cases, 12 IFP and 63 paid. If we overlook the timing difference (cases are sometimes decided in the term they are filed and sometimes not), that means certiorari is granted in about 1 of 27 paid cases and 1 of 594 IFP cases.

The Clerk begins numbering incoming cases with the new term as soon as the Court adjourns for the summer, even though the new term does not formally begin until the first Monday in October.

Can Scott Panetti be executed for the murder of his wife's parents, Joe and Amanda Alvarado? We don't know. What is the standard for determining mental competence for execution? We don't know. Can a condemned murderer omit any claim of incompetence in his first federal habeas petition and then claim incompetence in a new petition without meeting the stringent requirements set by Congress for "second or successive petitions"? Yes, but he probably has to ask the state court first, and Congress's limits on relitigation will apply if the state court doesn't blow it.

That's pretty much what today's decision in Panetti v. Quarterman says. Procedural issues are resolved largely as expected, but the substantive Eighth Amendment question is not resolved. Justice Thomas in dissent calls this decision "half-baked."

The bright side of today's opinion is that Justice Kennedy makes clear we are talking about psychotic disorders, not the broad sweep of "mental illness" as including every collection of behaviors that has a code in the APA's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). Here is the best part:

Someone who is condemned to death for an atrocious murder may be so callous as to be unrepentant; so self-centered and devoid of compassion as to lack all sense of guilt; so adept in transferring blame to others as to be considered, at least in the colloquial sense, to be out of touch with reality. Those states of mind, even if extreme compared to the criminal population at large, are not what petitioner contends lie at the threshold of a competence inquiry. The beginning of doubt about competence in a case like petitioner’s is not a misanthropic personality or an amoral character. It is a psychotic disorder.

Here are articles on the case by Pete Yost of AP and Charles Lane of the WashPost.

DNA test under fire by Atlanta Child Murderer
CNN reports that the notorious Atlanta Child Murderer is still fighting against DNA test conducted by a UC Davis lab. The result, which showed a significant match to the seven hairs found on the bodies, containing the same DNA sequence as Williams' dog Sheba. Wayne Williams terrorized Atlanta's African-American neighborhoods from 1979 to 1982 when more than 25 children were missing or found murdered. He was later convicted of murdering Jimmy Ray Payne 21, and Nathanial Cater, 27. His arrest put a sudden halt to the string of murders, however, Williams continues to deny his guilt to this day and will likely never confess to the gruesome Atlanta Child Murders that occurred 25 years ago.

Death Row inmate "deserves" another hearing to determine retardation says the 8th Circuit
Jill Zeman of The Pine Bluff Commercial reports that the 8th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that an Arkansas death row inmate convicted of killing two grocery store clerks should have a chance to prove he is mentally retarded. Since the 2002 case of Daryl Atkins "created a previously unavailable claim based on the unconstitutionality of executing the mentally retarded" the court is sending the case back to the Arkansas federal court.

Appeal rejected for Police killer
A three-judge panel of California's First Appellate District unanimously rejected Joseph Teitgen's appeal from the Solano County trial court which sentenced him to serving multiple life prison terms for murdering a police officer and attempting to murder two other officers on the afternoon of April 12, 2000. The decision pointed out that "As our Supreme Court has stated: 'Lengthy criminal trials are rarely perfect, and this court will not reverse a judgment absent a clear showing of a miscarriage of justice.' " Brian Hamlin of The Reporter has more on the story here.

The new issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law is now available on-line and is freely available for the time being. There are two articles worth noting.

The first profiled here is a new paper examining the myth surrounding the notion of antipsychotic drugs as "mind controlling" agents. That paper has been published here.

The second paper by Thomas Grisso, Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts Law-Psychiatry Program titled "Progress and Perils in the Juvenile Justice and Mental Health Movement" explores the ever-changing field that is the juvenile justice system.

New Mexico Death Row: Stanley Bedford kidnapped and murdered Odis and Doris Newman in March of 2005. Today the jury will meet once again to decide Bedford’s fate, a phase that will take roughly a week. Bedford was convicted of two counts of murder, two counts of kidnapping, and unspecified charges relating to the crime. If the death penalty is imposed on Bedford, he will become New Mexico’s third death row inmate, alongside Timothy Allen and Robert Ray Fry. As reported by the Clovis News Journal, the last inmate sentenced to death spent 14 years on appeals before being executed in 2001. That was the first execution in the state in 45 years. The Freedom Newspaper in the Portales News-Tribune has this mug shot of Stanley Bedford.

Earlier this week in another case, a judge had accepted the strained argument that New Mexico's death penalty is unconstitutional because jurors sometimes conclude that a crime warrants death during the guilt phase. According to this AP story, the DA in the case decided to forgo the death penalty in that case rather than appeal. Setting this ruling straight will have to wait for another case. Perhaps Bedford will make the argument on appeal.

2nd Execution in Texas this Week: Gilberto Reyes is scheduled to die by lethal injection this evening, bringing the state's total for the year to 17 (following last night’s execution). Reyes kidnapped, raped, and strangled his ex-girlfriend, 19-year-old Yvette Barraz in March of 1998 in Texas. According to a brief story by KCBD Channel 11 News, Reyes was charged with aggravated assault for chasing and firing a gun at Barraz a month prior to her murder. More information on this murderer is on the Texas Department of Criminal Justice website.

Another Insanity Defense: Clifford Anthony Davis, 19, murdered his mother and grandfather in November 2005. He was charged with one count of abuse of a dead human body, two counts of robbery and one count of grand theft of a firearm. The State of Florida is seeking the death penalty and Davis’ attorneys are planning an insanity defense for the confessed killer as reported by The Herald Tribune. John Martin of the Washington Post wrote a piece back in 1998 titled The Insanity Defense: A Closer Look that poses some interesting and still relevant questions regarding the insanity defense.

The New York Senate yesterday "approved legislation to reinstate New York’s death penalty in all cases of first-degree murder," reports the Elmira Star-Gazette. The Senate had previously passed cop-killer-only legislation. The bill is probably DOA in the Assembly, where anti-justice forces remain in control.

Five years ago, CJLF submitted a brief in Bell v. Cone, 535 U.S. 685 (2002), stating:

On August 10, 1980, Gary Cone murdered Shipley O. Todd, age 93, and his wife Cleopatra Todd, age 79. State v. Cone, 665 S. W. 2d 87, 89-90 (Tenn. 1984). Over twenty-one years later, justice remains on hold, even though Cone’s identity as the perpetrator has never been in doubt. See id., at 90.

Justice is still on hold, but the Sixth Circuit decided Cone's case for the third time yesterday, finally getting it right. The first time they were reversed 8-1, cited above. The second time, they were reversed summarily, without dissent.

On the third round, Judge Merritt dissents, wanting to reopen a claim the court has already rejected, i.e., that the state withheld evidence of Cone's own drug use. Withheld evidence claims are particularly strange when the underlying fact to be proved involves the defendant himself, not the crime, and the defendant is well aware of the fact. As the majority notes, in this case the jury had ample evidence that Cone was a drug user. They just didn't find it all that mitigating.

This case is a perfect example of taking way too long and spending way too much in resources litigating issues that have nothing to do with guilt. Perhaps the end is finally near.

Duke & Scottsboro: John Steele Gordon has this op-ed in the WSJ comparing the Duke lacrosse case with the notorious "Scottsboro boys" case of 1931.

The Victim’s Side of the story: Victims of crime and their families have the right to participate and to be heard in the criminal justice system through the use of Victim Impact Statements. Abby Simons of the Des Moines Register reports in this article how important it can be to a family who has lost loved ones in a cruel and heinous manner. Shawn Bentler, the 22-year-old father of two who gunned down his parents and three sisters in a massacre, was given a life sentence on Tuesday. If only the general public could see more of this side of the story.

Cal. Parole: The California Rehabilitation Oversight Board held its first meeting yesterday. Chairwoman Joan Petersilia indicated that intermediate sanctions for parolees who violate their terms but do not commit new crimes will be an important part of the group's recommendations. Andy Furillo reports for the Sacramento Bee.

Georgia Lethal Injection: In 1987, John Washington Hightower snorted cocaine and drank the day he shot and killed his wife Dorothy Hightower and his two-stepdaughters, Evelyn and Sandra Reaves over marital problems he and his wife were having. 3-year-old Kisha Reaves was found unharmed in their Georgia family home. Hightower will be the first Georgia inmate executed by lethal injection on June 26, after a nearly two year drought. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution story reports that the Georgia Department of Corrections has recently updated their “execution protocols,” but did not change the chemicals used in their three-drug cocktail.

Federal Gun Control Law: A voice vote by the House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a gun control bill in response to the Virginia Tech shootings. The bill would be the first significant gun control law in over 10 years, since the 1994 banning of some assault weapons by Congress. States would be required to share and report information to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System database, putting a stop to gun purchases to criminals, mentally ill persons, or persons not authorized to own firearms. The bill is sponsored by gun control advocate Rep. Carolyn McCarthy but also endorsed by the NRA. The bill now proceeds to the Senate, reports Jim Abrams with the Associated Press. Crime and Consequences first reported on this story in April.

Crack Case: David Savage has this article in the LA Times on Kimbrough v. United States, No. 06-6330, the crack cocaine sentencing case accepted by the Supreme Court on Monday. The Fourth Circuit opinion is here.

Heard this before?: "As she awaited sentencing Tuesday for assaulting a Rochester woman, self-proclaimed anti-violence activist Joy Powell blamed everyone but herself. She said the victim lied, the police were out to get her, the judge hated her, her lawyer failed her and a jury that didn't reflect her race wrongly convicted her of first-degree burglary and second-degree assault." She got 16 years. Michael Ziegler reports for the Rochester (NY) Democrat and Chronicle. Hat tip: James Taranto, Best of the Web at OpinionJournal.com.

Jailhouse Grub: Stacy Finz reports for the SF Chron, it's actually better than most people think.

The growing stack of evidence that the death penalty does, indeed, have a deterrent effect and save innocent lives has been largely ignored by the general-public press and unknown to most people. The Gallup Poll has showed public belief in deterrence declining just as the scientific evidence was mounting. Now comes a pleasant surprise in this article by Robert Tanner of the Associated Press.

The article notes the studies that we have mentioned on this blog before.

What gets little notice, however, is a series of academic studies over the last half-dozen years that claim to settle a once hotly debated argument -- whether the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder. The analyses say yes. They count between three and 18 lives that would be saved by the execution of each convicted killer.

The article also notes the position of "well-known liberal law professor, University of Chicago's Cass Sunstein" that if the death penalty really does deter it may be morally required, not just morally acceptable. The article discusses the criticism of the studies. Paul Rubin, co-author of the Emory study, is quoted saying of the critics, "Instead of people sitting down and saying 'let's see what the data shows,' it's people sitting down and saying 'let's show this is wrong.'"

Particularly curious is the quote from one of the critics, Justin Wolfers, that the studies showing deterrence appear in "second-tier journals." Are the Journal of Law and Economics and American Law & Economics Review second-tier journals? That's news to me. What is a first-tier journal in this field? The Stanford Law Review? That is where Professor Wolfers published his critique. The SLR may be a first-tier law review, but it is a no-tier publication as far as review of the methodology of these kinds of studies goes. Articles in it are selected for publication and edited by law students, not by professionals in this field. Are the editors of SLR capable of distinguishing valid methodology from invalid? Very doubtful.

The Dezhbakhsh, Rubin, and Shepherd article and the Mocan and Gittings article, the two most often cited, are both published in peer-reviewed journals. Donahue and Wolfers chose to skip the peer-review process and publish their critique in a law review. Given that fact, for Professor Wolfers to criticize the others on the basis of where their articles are published seems very odd. Bearing in mind that newspaper article quotes sometimes leave out information that the person quoted considered important, we won't accuse Professor Wolfers of anything at this point, but an explanation is in order.

On this page, we have a listing of abstracts of studies published in peer-reviewed journals on the question of the deterrence and the death penalty. Working papers that appear to be intended for publication in such journals are listed in a separate section. Unlike the deterrence pages of the "nonpartisan" Death Penalty Information Center, the list is not filtered to exclude those who do not support our preferred result. The critics are there too, so long as they meet the neutral criteria for inclusion.

Some anti-death-penalty folks are all in a lather about a AP story by Julie Carr Smyth quoting CJLF President Michael Rushford on the ACLU's role in the lethal injection controversy. See, e.g., NCADP here.

One of the statements is, "They [the ACLU] were against the gas chamber 30 years ago - they said there was only one humane alternative and that would be lethal injection." It is surprising that this statement generates any controversy at all among people knowledgeable in the capital punishment debate. We commented on this history in this blog six months ago, noting that in the Robert Alton Harris case, Justice Stevens based his dissent regarding the gas chamber on the availability of lethal injection and the opinions of experts that it was the more humane alternative. We gave the citation in case anyone doubted it, Gomez v. U.S. District Court, 503 U.S. 653 (1992).

So where did Justice Stevens get his information on the expert consensus regarding the humane alternative? From the briefing submitted for Harris, of course. See footnotes 6 and 7 of the dissent. Who was representing Harris?  The ACLU.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

The opinion of the Supreme Court today in Uttecht v. Brown is mainly about the review of trial court decisions excluding jurors in capital cases. Although this case comes under the rule of deference to state reviewing courts under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), it seems clear that the case would have been decided the same way on direct appeal. Part III B begins, "From our own review of the state trial court's ruling, we conclude that the trial court acted well within its discretion in granting the State's motion to exclude Juror Z."

The new issue of the Carlat Report (subscription required) reviews a number of new studies suggesting major psychometric flaws in the construct of PTSD. From the first page:

A recent issue of the Journal of Anxiety Disorders (Vol. 21, 2007) focused on the troubling possibility that the PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder) construct is not nearly as valid as has been assumed. The articles are both fascinating and provocative and are well worth reading.

These findings are troubling since PTSD is frequently cited by defendants for diminished capacity defenses and in civil claims ranging from disability claims to sexual harassment cases.

Cunningham Aftermath: Bob Egelko reports in the SF Chron on the oral argument in the California Supreme Court yesterday in the Black and Sandoval cases, regarding how to cope with Cunningham v. California for sentences presently pending on appeal. The Legislature passed a fix for new cases.

Micro-stamping Guns? Measure AB1471 written by Mike Feuer (D) of Los Angeles was passed yesterday by the California state Assembly. The bill would impose that all semiautomatic pistols be fit with a mechanism that would micro-stamp the make, model and serial number on every single shell casing every time the pistol is fired starting with pistols sold in 2010. The bill now proceeds to the state Senate and if passed, California would be the first in the nation that would require such measure as published in this AP story by Don Thompson.

Indiana Supreme Court: Yesterday, the Indiana Supreme Court reinstated Ronnie Dontell Drane’s 85-year sentence for the rape and murder of Tamarra Taylor in 2002 (opinion here). Last year, the Indiana Court of Appeals reversed Drane’s February 2005 sentence because the case lacked sufficient evidence. Drane's murder spree continued and in October 2002, he murdered his 50-year-old aunt Delores Buchanan and 27-year-old cousin Larry Peaches, Jr., and six months later murdered another cousin, 31-year-old Herman Marcel Buchanan. Drane’s trial for the October 2002 murders will begin on July 30 according to today's Post-Tribune story by correspondent Ruth Ann Krause.

Sex Offender Registration regulations have been published in the Federal Register by US DoJ.

The Kevin Cooper case remains undecided 5 months after oral argument, notes Rod Leveque in this article in the Inland Daily Bulletin (Ontario, CA). This is the case that the concurring judges assured us "can be quickly and definitively determined by means of a simple test...." That was over three years ago, and every test he has demanded has confirmed his guilt. What is so hard to decide?

"Yet this Administration has refused to take any steps to address our concerns about the need to maintain balance on the D.C. Circuit." So said Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) in this press release in 2003. Okay, Senator Leahy believes federal courts of appeals should be balanced. Got it.

Further, Senator Leahy believes that the Judicial Conference is correct that more appellate judges are needed, especially in the Ninth Circuit. According to this story in the L.A. Daily Journal, available through How Appealing, Senator Leahy will introduce legislation to add 67 district judgeships and 15 appellate ones, 7 of the latter on the Ninth.

To reach the logical conclusion, we need one more premise, but one that is not genuinely debatable among objective court watchers. The Ninth is presently out of balance, listing badly to the left. It is undebatable, that is, if one defines balance relative to the objective standard of the American median. Some people define balance subjectively, relative to themselves, so hard-core conservatives think the median voter is liberal, and hard-core liberals think the median voter is conservative. Objectively, the median is by definition the median.

So, the way to fix the judge shortage and simultaneously restore the balance that Senator Leahy says is needed, and is painfully obviously lacking, is to allow President Bush to name the 7 new judges.

According the story, the bill postpones the appointments until the next administration. One other proposition is perfectly clear. If President Obama, H. Clinton, or Edwards fills the seven new slots, the Ninth will be irretrievably lost for another generation, not just to the left but to the fringe. It was a similar expansion in the Carter Administration that created the problem in the first place.

You were saying something about "balance," Senator Leahy?

Prisons New York's Fishkill prison may be the first in the nation to maintain a dementia unit for inmates suffering from the mental illness according to this Associated Press story by Michael Hill. The average age of inmates in the unit is 62.

Night Stalker The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal challenging the conviction and death sentence of Richard Ramirez, as reported in this Associated Press story. Ramirez, nicknamed the "night stalker", was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of thirteen people in the Los Angeles area between 1984 and 1985. The California Supreme Court's 2006 affirmance on the first appeal of this 1989 judgment (yes, really) is here.

Cop Killer The Supreme Court declined to review a Ninth Circuit decision which overturned the conviction and death sentence of Jackson Daniels, Jr. Daniels had been found guilty of the 1982 murders of two Riverside, CA police officers according to this Associated Press story. A Ninth Circuit panel concluded that his two trial attorneys were too inexperienced to effectively represent him, and that Daniels should have received a change of venue due to pretrial publicity.

Ohio Execution: James Taranto at OpinionJournal.com has this comment (halfway down the page) on the Ohio execution of Christopher Newton and the press coverage of its 16 minute duration. He notes that is at least 11 times more swift than Jason Brewer's death at Newton's hands.

The Panetti case hasn't been decided yet, but a minor detail like that won't stop The Onion from reporting on the decision. "The entirely indeterminate ruling is a first for the high court." Oh, if only that were true. (h/t SL&P)

Supreme Speculation: In the Washington Post, Robert Barnes compares opinion-author prediction to the board game Clue. Tom Goldstein compares it with Sudoku.

As discussed here, the hotly contested topic of criminal behavior among those with mental illness has endured a long and winding path among researchers, advocacy groups, and policymakers. For many years the standard mantra was that those with mental illnesses were no more likely to be violent than people in the general population. New studies have challenged that idea. Likewise, as discussed here, the prevailing notion of a mental health crisis in our jails and prisons is also under scrutiny. Yet, there is little doubt that some people with severe mental illnesses cycle through our criminal justice system. The question many ask is why? With intensive services like Assertive Community Treatment in existence since the early 1960s, some have begun to question whether management of psychiatric symptoms is enough for prevention's sake. A new article (subscription required) published in this month's issue of Psychiatric Services provides a new conceptual framework for thinking about the mentally ill offender. While some ardently argue against notions of legal leverage for persons with severe mental illness who cycle through the criminal justice system, such leverage appears effective and, as author Lamberti points out, suggests other mechanisms are at play besides untreated psychiatric symptoms among this subpopulation.

New Jersey: The Times of Trenton printed this letter to the editor by CJLF Legal Director Kent Scheidegger, responding to their anti-death-penalty editorial.

Update: The Enquirer reports that Judge William Walker of Ohio sentenced 67-year-old Charles G. Martin yesterday to life in prison without the eligibility of parole for 18 years. Martin shot and killed 15-year-old Larry D. Mugrage, Jr. in March of 2006 for walking on his lawn. Crime & Consequences first addressed this story on April 27th after Martin was found guilty of murder.

Death Penalty: Ohio executed habitual criminal Christopher Newton today for the 2001 murder of his cellmate according to an Associated Press story by Julie Carr Smyth. The execution took longer than expected due to Newton's obesity which made it difficult for the medical team for locate a suitable vein.

Goodbye Charlie: For the 11th time, California has denied parole to Charles Manson, the murderer who masterminded the Tate-LaBianca murders in 1969. An Associated Press story reports that Manson was also convicted of killing members of his Spahn Ranch commune Gary Hinman and Donald "Shorty" Shea. Manson will receive his next parole hearing in 2012. Manson's death sentence was overturned after the California Supreme Court "interpreted" the state constitution to forbid capital punishment, despite an explicit vote of the constitutional convention on the precise question.

The Florida Supreme Court has overturned the death sentences of two murderers as reported by Associated Press writer Bill Kaczor. Both murderers had killed their estranged wives. Christopher Offord's sentence was reduced to life without parole due to his long history of mental illness. The Court ordered a new trial for William Kopsho because his trial judge failed to dismiss a juror who believed that Kopsho should have been required to testify. The opinion in the Kopsho case is here, the opinion in Offord's case is here.

California State Senator Carole Migden (D-SF) has been a threat to public safety and to the lives and limbs of innocent people for some time now, but she carried it to a new level of directness Friday. The AP story by Don Thompson is here. Driving east from the Bay Area on always-crowded Interstate 80, she was driving so erratically that a half dozen motorists called 911. This was not multiple calls from one incident. The calls were spread over a 30-mile stretch from Berkeley to Fairfield. At one point she even hit the concrete barrier that divides the traffic in opposite directions.

Finally, on a surface street in Fairfield, Migden's state-owned SUV rear-ended a Honda sedan, pushing it into the van in front of it and sending Ellen Butawan and her 3-year-old daughter to the emergency room. Ms. Butawan's face is black and blue, but apparently neither she nor her daughter was seriously injured. Supposedly, Senator Migden was distracted by a ringing cell phone, but that doesn't explain the preceding 30 miles of reckless driving. Nor does it explain what Bob Jordan, driver of the van, reports happened next.

First Arizona Execution in 7 Years
In 1987, Larry Pritchard, a disabled emergency medical technician from Florida, was camping at Apache Lake in Arizona. Robert Comer murdered him, taking his "gear, his money, and even his dog." He also kidnapped and raped a 19-year-old woman. The Arizona Republic had this story Sunday on the crime and Comer's subsequent decision to drop his federal habeas proceeding. Their site also has the original story of Comer's capture in 1987. The Ninth Circuit decision is discussed here. Comer was executed this morning. He was the first inmate to be put to death in Arizona since November 2000 and smiled throughout his execution, as reported by kpho.com.

In Louisiana, the state high court upheld the death sentence of Patrick Kennedy for rape of a child, Kevin McGill reports for AP. The opinion is here. In Coker v. Georgia, 433 U.S. 584 (1977), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutionally disproportionate for the crime of rape of an adult woman but reserved the question of child rape.

OC Mother found beaten and daughter found dead
The San Jose Mercury News reports that the burned body of a young woman was found on a hiking trail hours after her bludgeoned, unconscious mother was discovered in the driveway of their burning Anaheim home early this morning. The father is missing and is at the center of an unfolding mystery involving arson, assault and murder.

AGs or AsG?: Peter Lattman at the WSJ law blog announces a campaign to change "attorneys general" to "attorney generals." His other pet peeves include the punctuation of law firms and the name of New York's high court. Second the motion.

The Big Q: The Governator's staff forgot to include $117M for a new death row in their budget submission, reports Greg Lucas of the SF Chron. But if we are going to build a new one, why build it at San Quentin? "Because of the Bay Area's high labor and material costs and the engineering challenges of unstable soil at the proposed site the project would cost significantly less if built elsewhere, the legislative analyst concluded."

Thrill Killer: Also in Cal., the state supreme court unanimously upheld the death sentence of Eric Leonard. He was dubbed the "thrill killer" by Sacramento media because he killed robbery victims for no apparent reason. The state high court decided this first appeal nearly 11 years after the judgment, or about twice as long as the entire review process should take. Hudson Sangree reports for the Sacto Bee.

Deputy Sheriff Tim Hudson, then 61, was murdered in the line of duty 19 years ago. Long-overdue justice for this crime was finally carried out today. The AP report is here.

Charles Smith escaped from a Kansas prison, stole a truck, and headed for Texas. Deputy Hudson pulled over Smith and his cousin to investigate a report they had gotten gasoline and driven off without paying. Smith's first two death sentences were reversed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, but the third one stuck.

Earlier, Deputy Hudson's daughter, Gwynn Hudson Simmons, wrote on the Officer Down Memorial Page,

I will be at the execution without a doubt and considering the murderer Charles Edward Smith has bragged about killing a cop since the day it happened, I will have no problem with justice being finally served for my Dad. It will not be a happy occasion for either family but this does uphold the message that we DO NOT tolerate cop killers in Texas. Now all we have to do is change laws the require us to feed and house and educate these criminals for 18 years before justice is served.

Update: Commenters over at SCOTUSblog suggest that Justice Stevens' dissent in Landrigan was originally the majority opinion, but Justice Kennedy switched over.

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Here is some press coverage on Schriro v. Landrigan, previously discussed here. First, Michael Doyle of McClatchy Newspapers notes the case as "the latest illustration of the conflicted relationship between the Supreme Court and the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals." David Savage of the L.A. Times notes that angle as well as the close division on the Supreme Court and that Justice Kennedy sided with one group of four in the Texas cases and the other group of four in this case. Robert Barnes in the Washington Post writes, "The court's docket this term is heavy with death penalty cases, and the decisions have shown a court starkly divided on the issue."

James Vicini at Reuters emphasizes Landrigan's rejection of mitigation. Linda Greenhouse in the New York Times looks at Justice Alito's role. She notes that he wrote the Third Circuit decision in Rompilla v. Beard, in which his predecessor Justice O'Connor cast the fifth vote to reverse. It is true, as she says, that Justice O'Connor was the fifth vote to reverse in several capital cases involving ineffective assistance claims, but this case was easier than the others. Whereas Rompilla was merely unhelpful to counsel's efforts to find mitigating evidence, Landrigan actively opposed introduction of any mitigation. Justice O'Connor might very well have joined with yesterday's majority if she were still on the Court.

Michael Kiefer of the Arizona Republic notes that the decision puts Landrigan on Arizona's "execution short list," which also includes "volunteer" Robert Comer and Ronald Williams, presently in a West Virginia prison for two other murders.