March 2019 Archives

Marc Klaas posted on Facebook, and gave permission to repost here, his response to an insufferable email from Gov. Newsom's office.

The State may not carry out Murphy's execution pending the timely filing and disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari unless the State permits Murphy's Buddhist spiritual advisor or another Buddhist reverend of the State's choosing to accompany Murphy in the execution chamber during the execution.

SCOTUS Stays Texas Execution:  A Texas man sentenced to death for the murder of a police officer eighteen years ago won a stay of execution last night from the U.S. Supreme Court.  The Associated Press reports that Patrick Murphy sought the stay because state corrections officials would not allow a Buddhist priest to be in the death chamber during his execution, which he claimed discriminated against his religion.  Hours before the execution was carried out, a divided Supreme Court held that by allowing Christian or Muslim religious advisors in the execution chamber, but not a Buddhist advisor, the state violated the murderer's constitutional rights.  Murphy was among 7 prison inmates that escaped in 2000 and went on a crime spree resulting in the murder of Officer Aubrey Hawkins. 

In a City Journal piece with that title, Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald lays out the unusual circumstances by which Cook County prosecutors dismissed an open and shut case of falsely reporting a hate crime.  Noting that Michelle Obama's former Chief of Staff contacted Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx on Jussie Smollett's behalf prior to her office's decision to drop all charges "is rather the latest example of the incursion of academic identity politics into the workings of government."  The decision in the Smollett case, like the one last month to dismiss aggravated battery charges against a 16-year-old black male who attacked two Chicago police officers, suggests that "Foxx operates in a cultural milieu that holds that the fact that a hate crime is a hoax is less important than the fact that it could have been true. Prosecuting Smollett could have sent another black man to prison."  While everyone involved in the Smollett case knows that he was guilty, Smollett told reporters that he has been vindicated and "is still availing himself of the rhetoric of academic victimology, vowing to `fight for the justice, equality, and betterment of marginalized people everywhere.'"  The ability to orchestrate a fake hate crime, escape the consequences and become a national "social justice" celebrity will undoubtedly inspire others to follow suit, with the gullible complicity of the major media and academic elites

John Malcolm of the Heritage Foundation has this article in the National Interest with the above title.

In a recent post Fordham Law Professor John Pfaff asks the question "How many studies show that severe sanctions are an effective way to deter crime?"  He answers his own question, "None."   In his piece today in Liberty Unyielding, attorney Hans Bader begs to differ, citing university and government studies that indicate that the level of punishment has a strong effect on criminal behavior.  To illustrate this point Bader compares the level of crime in Fairfax County, Virginia and Montgomery County, Maryland.  The two neighboring counties are demographically and economically similar but Fairfax County has a much lower crime rate.  Is this the result of this Maryland's more permissive sentencing and parole policies compared to Virginia's tough sentencing and limits on parole?  One study found that in 2008 the rate of violent crimes per 100,000 residents in Montgomery County was 235 compared to 78 in Fairfax County.  Comparing the states, the FBI Uniform Crime Report indicates that in 2017 the violent crime rate per 100,000 in Maryland was 500, with homicide at 9.  That same year in Virginia violent crime was 208 per 100,000 and homicide was 5.3.  In which state would Professor Pfaff like to live?  

To anyone who figured the path of legalizing recreational marijuana use ran along blue state-red state lines, a sudden setback for pot advocates in New Jersey may show the issue isn't so black-and-white.

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"It's a good illustration that even in a state that's entirely Democratically controlled, it's not obvious that it would be passed -- or that it would be easy," says Daniel Mallinson, a Penn State Harrisburg professor who studies how marijuana legalization and other policies spread among states.

Smollett Sprung:  In a unscheduled hearing this morning, Cook County prosecutors agreed to drop the charges for falsely reporting a hate crime by actor Jussie Smollett in exchange for already performed community service and the forfeit of his $10,000 bail.  Charlie De Mar of CBS Chicago reports that while Smollett's attorney told reporters that no deal had been made with prosecutors in exchange for the dismissal, the state's attorneys office issued the following statement:  "After reviewing all of the facts and circumstances of the case, including Mr. Smollett's volunteer service in the community and agreement to forfeit his bond to the City of Chicago, we believe this outcome is a just disposition and appropriate resolution to this case."  Jessica Sager of Fox News reports that at a press conference later today Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Police Commissioner Eddie Johnson called the dismissal of charges a "whitewash of Justice"  with Emanuel telling reporters "[This case] sends a clear message that if you're in a position of influence and power you'll be treated one way and if youre not you'll be treated another way."   When Smollett was charged, Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx announced that she would recuse herself from the controversial case citing a contact with a Smollett family member which might raised questions about her impartiality.  Sam Charles of the Chicago Sun Times also noted that Vic Henderson, a member of Smollett's legal team, had contributed to Foxx's campaign in 2016. 

We are having technical difficulties with the Yahoo method of logging in to comment. I have opened the native Movable Type system to registration.

Illegal Kills Washington Cop:  One Sheriff's Deputy died and another officer was wounded Tuesday in a shootout with an illegal alien near the college town of Ellensburg, Washington.  Eric Lacitis of The Seattle Times reports that Juan Manuel Flores Del Toro, a citizen of Mexico, led the officers responding to a road-rage incident on a chase that ended at a trailer park.  Flores Del Toro exited the car and opened fire on the officers, killing deputy Ryan Thompson and injuring officer Benito Chavez.  Flores Del Toro was also fatally wounded in the shootout.  Thompson was the married father of three.  It was the first murder of a police officer in the county since 1927.    

Rafael Mangual has this article in the City Journal with the above title. The subtitle is "Left-leaning urban prosecutors are working to undo the successes of the crime-fighting revolution."

Is Newsom's Moratorium Legal?  In the wake of California Governor Gavin Newsom's blanket reprieve of all of the murderers on the state's death row, supporters of capital punishment are asking if he actually had the power to issue such an order.  Michelle Hanisee who heads up the Association of Deputy District Attorneys in Los Angeles reports that the Governor's order, which actually consisted of three orders, is mostly legal.  The Governor has the power to grant the reprieves (which he intends to leave in place as long as he is in office).  The order to rescind the state's execution protocol and dismantle the execution chamber conflict with provisions of Proposition 66 that state voters approved in 2016.  The initiative "requires the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to maintain at all times the ability to execute such judgments. The governor's orders to repeal the execution protocol and close the execution chamber are in direct contradiction of that law."  But from a practical standpoint, in light of the blanket reprieve, those orders were mostly for show and could quickly be reversed if the reprieve were lifted.  The fact remains that shortly after assuming office the Governor did something he told Californians he would not do....disrespect the will of the voters regarding capital punishment.

A lot of the flak being directed at the Supreme Court today for its decision in Nielsen v. Preap is more properly directed at Congress. The Court correctly interpreted the law. See yesterday's post. Statutes dealing strongly with aliens who commit "aggravated felonies" are, in my opinion, good policy as a general matter. However, as I have noted for years on this blog (see, e.g., this post), Congress has botched some aspects, including the definition of "aggravated felony."

A few candidates are embracing ideas long seen as on the edge of liberal politics: abolishing the Electoral College and adding up to a half-dozen justices to the Supreme Court.

Justice Stephen Breyer was concerned that, if the House of Delegates were not allowed to appeal in a case like this one, partisan divisions in government might lead to inertia in redistricting challenges. Here, for example, the Republican-controlled legislature drew the challenged map, but the state's Democratic attorney general decided not to appeal the district court's decision striking it down. If you have a Democratic legislature and a Republican governor, or vice versa, Breyer posited, "nobody's going to be able to attack it." "It's the House's plan," Breyer emphasized, and the governor won't attack it "because he likes it politically."

Congress has provided that the government must detain aliens convicted of certain crimes immediately upon their release from prison or jail and hold them for the duration of their deportation/removal proceedings. The exact terms have varied over this law's long history, traced in CJLF's amicus brief, but the basic idea has remained.

Although his opposition to capital punishment was no secret, Newsom on several occasions had pledged to honor those two votes.

In a 2016 interview with the Modesto Bee's editorial board, Newsom said he would "be accountable to the will of the voters" if elected governor. "I would not get my personal opinions in the way of the public's right to make a determination of where they want to take us."

While campaigning last year, Newsom said that while he was fervently opposed to the death penalty, he didn't "want to get ahead of the will of the voters" and wanted to "give the voters a chance to reconsider."

So last week's action was definitely a flip-flop. He justified it by saying, "The will of the voters is also entrusted in me on the basis of my constitutional right" as governor to grant a reprieve to condemned prisoners.

In California, 14- and 15-year-old psychopathic killers will no longer be "punished" as adults, condemned death row inmates will not be put to death, and sanctuary city policies prevent local law enforcement agencies from working with ICE to prohibit the release of violent criminal illegal aliens back into the communities. Did California law makers secretly convene and vote to make California the location of a reality show adaptation of the "Purge" movies?  (Quick movie summary: Once a year, Americans are given a 12-hour window in which anyone can commit any crime without facing any criminal charges.)

Daniel Marsh, who openly expressed his desire to kill, was 15 years old when he viciously stabbed and mutilated a randomly selected elderly couple as they slept in their Davis, California, home.  "By his own admission his main objective was to remain undetected and to become a serial Killer."  SB 1391, signed by former Governor Jerry Brown on Sept. 30, 2018, became law on January 1, 2019.  Under this new law, no 14 or 15 year old can ever be tried as an adult.  All crimes, including first-degree murder, committed by a 14 or 15 year old must be adjudicated in juvenile court.  The California juvenile justice system is designed to "rehabilitate" minors, not punish them.  The sanctions imposed upon a minor do not "include retribution."  (W&I Code §202(e)).  In fact, according to California law makers, "When the minor is no longer a ward of the juvenile court, the guidance he or she received should enable him or her to be a law-abiding and productive member of his or her family and the community." (W&I Code §202(b)). 

Personally, I would join in the cheering of Newsom if I weren't haunted by the heinous details of unspeakable crimes committed by some of the men spared by Newsom's pen and his flair for the dramatic.

But in 1996, Michael Lyons was murdered at the age of 8. And honestly, Lyons wasn't just murdered. To call what happened to Michael Lyons in a wooded area near Yuba City a murder is a misuse of the word. In truth, Michael Lyons was abducted, ravaged and tortured. His killer - an already convicted, violent sex offender named Robert Boyd Rhoades - did things to him that I cannot write here because they are too horrific.

The last time I wrote about Michael Lyons in 2012, I had long debates with my editors about what we could and could not share. My argument was this: That we in the media sanitize the crimes involving death row inmates by strictly hewing to industry norms of "good taste."

And by sanitizing these crimes, we give the public a distorted picture of death row inmates. To hear Gov. Newsom talk on Wednesday, one might have thought that death row was populated by men who could be played by Denzel Washington or Bradley Cooper in a movie.

Illegal Arrested For Woman's Murder:  A illegal alien will be arraigned today for the murder of a San Jose, CA woman in her home last month.  Nico Savidge, Mark Gomez and Jason Green of the San Jose Mercury News report that 24-year-old Carlos Eduardo Arevalo-Carranza, an El Salvadorian national, was arrested Monday for the stabbing murder of 59-year-old Banbi Larson after his DNA matched evidence uncovered at the murder scene.  At the time of the arrest, items stolen from the victim's home were found with Arevalo-Carranza, who has several prior arrests on drug, theft and burglary charges.  ICE officials report that they had asked local law enforcement to detain Arevalo-Carranza for deportation at lease nine times, but because Santa Clara is a sanctuary county, police were prohibited from honoring the requests.   A member of the county Board of Supervisors, who supports the policy, told reporters that ICE should have secured a warrant rather than requesting a two-day hold.  Regardless of the county policy, California's Sanctuary State law also prohibits police agencies from holding illegal aliens for ICE.   

CA Governor Reprieves All Condemned Murderers:  In an Executive Order announced today, newly elected California Governor Gavin Newsom has granted reprieves to all 737 murderers on the state's death row.   Sofia Bollag of the Sacramento Bee reports that the order comes just 2 1/2 years after California voters rejected Proposition 62, a death penalty repeal initiative Newsom supported, and adopted Proposition 66, an initiative to speed enforcement of the death penalty he opposed.  In a press conference he told reporters that the death penalty is "ineffective, irreversible, and Immoral."   While campaigning for the measure to repeal the death penalty in 2016, Newsom told The Modesto Bee editorial board he would "be accountable to the will of the voters," if he became governor, saying  "I would not get my personal opinions in the way of the public's right to make a determination of where they want to take us" on the death penalty.  OMG...he fibbed.  In an interview earlier this month CJLF Legal Director Kent Scheidegger told the Bee that the governor's clemency powers are designed to correct individual cases of injustice.  "It's not supposed to be a weapon for blocking the enforcement of the law that the people have passed just because the governor disagrees with it," he said.  

Algorithms Solving Crime in NY:  A pattern-recognizing algorithm called Patternizr is being utilized by the NYPD to identify and apprehend criminals.  Michael Sisak of the Associated Press reports that the software, which analyzes incident reports in the department's database is much faster at spotting patterns than the standard process of staff sifting through paperwork looking for similar modus operandi to isolate specific offenders. The software took analytics experts two years to develop before it was rolled out in December of 2016.  In addition to the increased speed in detecting patterns, the algorithm reviews data for the entire city as opposed to manual analysis which is limited to precincts.  While the reporter suggests that this software is a valuable tool even though crime rates are "falling sharply," which is correct for the state, the FBI Preliminary Crime Report for 2018 showed increases in both violent and property crime in NYC over the first six months of last year.

Ronald Reagan emptied the psychiatric hospitals and Jerry Brown emptied the prisons, or so some people say. Although neither statement is completely true, there are elements of harsh reality in both. And they are connected.

Reagan and Brown, two of the most consequential governors ever in California, led the state during two of the most well intended but poorly executed movements in this state's history.

The first was the de-institutionalization of the mentally ill starting in the 1960's. The movement, started in Europe, was supported by President Kennedy and ultimately complicated by a U.S. Supreme Court opinion and civil liberty concerns over forced treatment.

The second in recent years was fueled by concerns about perceived mass incarceration, and the reality that our jails and prisons had become the de facto mental facilities.

The result: fewer inmates, and significant increases in homelessness and untreated mental illness.

I have witnessed this as a county prosecutor, deputy attorney general and El Dorado County District Attorney. As someone with more than 27 years in the pursuit of justice, I worry for the people on the streets, and for the future victims of crime.

The Benefits of Proactive Policing:  One of the legacies of the Obama Administration has been a decline in proactive policing, particularly in larger cities like Chicago, Milwaukee, Baltimore and New York.  Federal consent decrees, based on claims of racially biased policing, have forced many big city police departments to abandon stop-and-frisk, and other self-initiated police contacts and warned off police agencies in smaller cities with protests and threats of lawsuits.  Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald calls this the "Ferguson Effect,"  resulting from the nationally publicized riots and political response to a Ferguson, Missouri police officer shooting of an unarmed black man in the summer of 2014.  Although both state and federal investigations later found that the shooting was justified, the race-baiting of police has not declined and it vigorously continues today.  But in at least one city, where the police are not under a federal consent decree, proactive policing is being revived and the results are positive.  Last Summer, Josh Crawford of the Pegasus Institute released a study of shootings and homicides in Louisville, Kentucky, as what he calls self-initiated policing was abandoned in 2013 and then restored in 2017.   In one year, shootings and homicides were down well over 50% in the city's three highest crime districts.  An update released on March 4 shows that this positive trend is continuing.  This percipitous drop in major crime is similar to what happened in the early 1990s when New York Transit Police Chief Bill Bratton cracked down on fair beating, vagrancy and petty offenses in the city's crime-ridden subways.  

Both the Sacramento County D.A.'s Office and the California Attorney General's Office announced that neither will pursue charges against two Sacramento police officers who were involved in the 2018 shooting death of Stephon Clark.  Both the Sacramento County D.A. and the Attorney General found that the "officers believed they were in danger when they shot and killed Clark."  The DOJ's report can be found here.

In 2018 and 2019, 62 law enforcement officers were killed by gunfire while in the line of duty.  Officer Natalie Corona just started her career with the Davis (California) Police Department when she was shot and killed by a man who rode up on a bike as she was investigating a minor traffic accident.  She was 22 years old.  Sergeant Steve Hinkle had been with the Sullivan County (Tennessee) Sheriff's Office for 27 years when he was shot and killed as he was conducting a welfare check.  He was 67 years old.  Just a few days ago, Officer Nathan Heidelberg was shot and killed while responding to a residential burglar alarm in Midland, Texas.  He was 28 years old.  Like these three, 59 other men and women were killed by gunfire while carrying out their duty to serve and protect over the last 15 months.

FBI Preliminary Crime Report for 2018.  The Preliminary Crime Report for 2018 was released last week.  The report tracks violent and property crimes reported to police for U.S. cities with populations of 100,000 or more during the first six months of the year.  The report makes general findings for the nation as a whole, noting a decrease in violent crime in three of the nation's four regions, the Northeast, the Midwest, and the South, with a slight increase in the West. Property crimes were down nationally with the West experiencing the smallest decrease. In California, of the 72 cities included in the report, 42 (58%) had increased violent crime. Notably, in Los Angeles violent crime was slightly down (1.1%), San Francisco (0.2%), and Sacramento (4.2%), but was up 4.5% in San Diego. Cities with the largest increases in violent crime, included Sunnyvale (45%), Simi Valley (35.8), Freemont (34.6%), Fullerton (30.8), and El Cajon (30%).  Reported property crimes were down in the state. This is probably because the most commonly committed property crimes were downgraded from felonies to misdemeanors in 2014 by Proposition 47 which, according most to District Attorneys, Police Chiefs, and Sheriffs, makes them far less likely to be reported. A more thorough analysis of these new statistics will be reported in a few weeks.

AG Becerra Joins Murderers to Preserve Execution Delay:  In court papers filed on Friday, March 1, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has asked the federal court of appeals to reject a motion by the families of murder victims seeking to stay an illegal injunction that prevents the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) from making itself able to carry out executions of the state's worst murderers.  In January CJLF filed a petition in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals asking it  to vacate 24 illegal stays granted since 2006 by a federal district judge in San Francisco.  On February 19, CJLF  moved for a more limited order allowing the state to go forward with the preparation needed to be ready to carry out executions when the stays are lifted. In orders without precedent anywhere in the country, the district court has blocked CDCR from such routine activities as training the execution team and acquiring the needed drugs. "These orders are blatant violations of the Prison Litigation Reform Act," said CJLF's Legal Director Kent Scheidegger. "The Attorney General knows it and has briefed the law in the district court, yet he will not appeal and opposes the victims' and district attorneys' efforts to do something about it."