Glossip Denied Stay: A condemned Oklahoma death row inmate's
appeals and request for a stay of execution were denied by the state Court of
Criminal Appeals, allowing the scheduled execution to move forward. Mark Berman of the Washington Post reports
that attorneys for Richard Glossip, a convicted murderer, requested that the
state appeals court halt his execution, arguing that Glossip was improperly
tried and sentenced due to reliance on witness testimony, but the court
rejected the claims with a 3-2 vote, finding that his conviction was "not based
solely on testimony of a codefendant."
Glossip was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1997 beating death
of Barry Van Treese, a motel worker. Though
he was not convicted of personally killing Van Treese, he was found guilty of
paying Justin Sneed, serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole,
to kill him. Glossip will be executed by
lethal injection Wednesday morning.
Long Island
Prosecutors Banned from Owning Guns: The
Nassau County District Attorney's Office on New York's Long Island is
prohibiting its prosecutors from possessing handguns, even at home, which some
criticize as unconstitutional. Fox News
reports that the Nassau County DA's office insists that their policy of banning
prosecutors from owning handguns "is to ensure the safety and comfort of staff,
victims, and witnesses," however, UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh says that
such a policy violates an individual's Second Amendment rights. Additionally, it contradicts an important
state statute "under which a handgun collection can be considered a lawful,
leisure-time activity, for which the employee receives no compensation and
which is generally engaged in for recreational purpose." Volokh notes that, given the nature of their
professions, prosecutors often have special reasons for wanting to carry a gun
to protect themselves and their families from harm and should have the same
constitutional rights as everyone else.
PPIC Study says Crime
Down, Costs Up since AB 109: AB 109 -
also known as realignment - California's four-year-old program enacted to
reduce the state prison population by sending low-level felons to county jails,
has not increased crime, but also has not reduced the costs of incarceration or
the rates of recidivism as intended, according to a study published Monday by
the Public Policy Institute of California.
Bob Egelko of SF Gate reports that the study, authored by Magnus
Lofstrom and Brandon Martin, says that since Gov. Jerry Brown's prison
realignment plan went into effect in 2011, the number of inmates has declined
by 40,000 in state prisons and 18,000 overall, part of which stems from 2012's
Proposition 36 (exempting some non-violent felons from life terms under
three-strikes) and 2014's Proposition 47 (reducing certain felonies to
misdemeanors). The authors claim that
rates of violent and property crime have fallen to "historic lows," with the
exception of auto theft, which is 17 percent higher under AB 109. Despite reducing the prison population, AB
109 has not reduced costs to corrections, according to the study, as California
is paying more now than before the initiative was passed. Additionally, recidivism has not decreased as
intended, and though the figures show that inmates are returning to prison
less, it is only because they are sent to county jail instead. The rate of new convictions has also
increased, due to changes in the parole system.
Note: The findings in PPIC's study are
deceptive, misleading and fail to tell the whole story. First, while AB 109 did result in a decreased
prison population, it was at the expense of county jails, which are now overcrowded
beyond manageability, with some bursting at the seams with bunk beds stacked
three-high to compensate for the immediate influx of additional offenders
following the bill's passage in 2011. To
make matters worse, many of these offenders are serving much longer sentences
for more serious crimes. Second, the study
claims that violent crime has reached "historic lows" following AB 109, though
LAPD's misclassification of nearly 1,200 violent crimes as misdemeanor offenses
last year was not factored into this finding.
Nor does the study make any mention to the statistics disclosed by
police departments themselves, such as LAPD Chief Charlie Beck reporting
earlier this year that violent crime rose 26 percent and property crimes 11
percent in Los Angeles. There are also
scores of other police chiefs and law enforcement officials in the state have reported disappointing crime rates, all of them condemning AB
109, Proposition 47 or both (see here, here, here and here).