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).