Illegal to Say Illegal Alien in NY: The New York Commission on Human Rights (NYCHRL) has announced in a recent immigration guidance that "It is illegal for a person's employer, coworkers, or housing provider
such as landlords to use derogatory or offensive terms to intimidate,
humiliate, or degrade people, including by using the term 'illegal
alien,' where its use is intended to demean, humiliate, or offend
another person." It also cites tenants as an example of people whose
speech is restricted. Hans Bader has this piece in Liberty Unyielding reporting that the city also is trying to forbid most if not all reporting of illegal
aliens to the federal government. The Commission forbids such reports if
the person making the report is "motivated" by the illegal alien's
"immigration status." "But what other motive could a reporting party
legitimately have? The whole reason to report an illegal alien to the
federal government is precisely because of their immigration status." Finding that this is a clear violation of the First Amendment Bader also notes that the Commission proposes fines up to $250,000 for violations. "The specter of such huge fines and no safe harbor for reporting will
have a huge chilling effect on citizens, discouraging them from
exercising their First Amendment right to petition federal officials to remove illegal aliens." Which undoubtedly is what was intended. The First Amendment does not include a blanket "harassment" exception, nor does the fact that federal law and numerous Supreme Court decisions frequently use the term "illegal alien," to describe so-called undocumented immigrants constitute harassment.
September 2019 Archives
As previously noted on the blog, I wrote a review of Locked In by John Pfaff for the Federalist Society Review. I have recently been reminded of a previous review of the same book at Law & Liberty by Barry Latzer, whose invaluable work I have noted several times on this blog.
John F. Pfaff's Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform is probably the best book on so-called mass incarceration to date. Its great strength is that it is empirically grounded. Pfaff, a professor of law at Fordham, doesn't cherry-pick data to support some a priori theory, he grapples with the hard realities that the data present. As he well understands, this makes his argument for reducing imprisonment a very tough sell.
After all, if violent crime and other serious offenses are the primary reasons for incarceration then why should we reduce imprisonment? And if we still wish to disincarcerate, despite the compelling reasons for all the lockups, then how might this be achieved? Unfortunately, Pfaff's answers to these questions are the least persuasive portions of his book.
That is consistent with my view of the book.
Talal Ansari reports for the WSJ:
More than three-quarters of people who have developed severe lung illness after vaping reported using THC-containing products, a new report found, as officials continue to piece together a picture of the mysterious disease.
Continue reading Black-Market THC Products Are Major Source of Vaping Illness.
Texas Executes Triple-Murderer: A Texas man convicted of the brutal murders of his wife and two young stepsons was put to death Wednesday. The Associated Press reports that in September of 2007 Robert Sparks stabbed his wife 18 times as she lay in her bed, then took his 9-year-old and 10-year-old stepsons separately into the kitchen and stabbed them to death. He then raped his 12-year-old and 14-year-old stepdaughters. At trial Sparks attempted a mental defense, claiming that he believed that his wife and stepsons were trying to poison him. No word on what induced him to rape the two stepdaughters. In a last minute appeal, his attorneys claimed that Sparks was intellectually disabled, arguing this his trial attorney failed to present sufficient evidence of the disability. The Court of Appeals and Supreme Court refused to grant a stay. The Texas Attorney General called the killings "monstrous crimes" and noted that, at trial, Sparks' own expert testified that he was not intellectually disabled.
Ignoring the Evidence to Preserve the Narrative: The claim that America is fundamentally racist has become the central focus of virtually any discussion involving leading Democrats on issues ranging from climate change to crime. In a recent article in the City Journal, Heather MacDonald noted that while there appears to be a consensus among Democrat candidates for President that white supremacy is driving systemic racism, particularly with regard to law enforcement, actual data completely refutes that narrative. "Just this month, the Bureau of Justice Statistics released its 2018 survey
of criminal victimization. According to the study, there were 593,598
interracial violent victimizations (excluding homicide) between blacks
and whites last year, including white-on-black and black-on-white
attacks. Blacks committed 537,204 of those interracial felonies, or 90
percent, and whites committed 56,394 of them, or less than 10 percent," writes MacDonald. "Blacks are also overrepresented among perpetrators of hate crimes--by 50 percent--according to the most recent Justice Department data from 2017; whites are underrepresented by 24 percent. This is particularly true for anti-gay and anti-Semitic hate crimes." Somehow, these facts are not being acknowledged by leading Democrats or progressives, and are ignored by the major media. In 2008, Barack Obama was able to connect such lawlessness to family
breakdown during a speech in Chicago. "Children who grow up without a father are five times more
likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to
drop out of schools and twenty times more likely to end up in prison." In today's political environment that statement would be characterized as bigoted and insensitive.
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson has sent this letter to California Governor Gavin Newsom and others in response to their request for more federal dollars to deal with the homelessness problem. His response, in a nutshell, is that California needs to clean up the misguided policies that are aggravating the problem before they ask the feds for more money.
Here are a few of the paragraphs:
Continue reading Ben Carson on Homelessness in California.
The maxim "if you repeat a lie often enough it becomes the truth"* often serves our opponents well. In the case of the Big Lie about the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, though, it may be unraveling. Candidates' lies about that incident are so clearly contrary to the now-well-known facts that even left-leaning media are calling them out on it. William Saletan reports for Slate:
Last week, in a Democratic presidential debate, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro read a list of black Americans killed by police violence. Alongside Laquan McDonald, Walter Scott, and Eric Garner, Castro named Michael Brown, who was shot dead five years ago in Ferguson, Missouri. Several of the current Democratic candidates have accused the officer who shot Brown of murder. Brown's death was a tragedy, but it wasn't a murder. When Democrats claim it was, and when they refuse to correct that mistake, they cast doubt on their commitment to truth. And they undermine the cause of criminal justice reform.
Continue reading The Big Lie About Ferguson.
California Man Charged In Pittsburgh Drug Deaths: Three people died and four others overdosed after ingesting what police now believe was fentanyl-laced cocaine in a Pittsburgh apartment early last Sunday. Torsten Ove and Shelly Bradbury
of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette report that suspected California drug dealer Peter Rene Sanchez Montalvo has been charged with distributing the drugs to a group attending an after-party in his apartment, following a concert at a local club. Sanchez Montalvo, who had a California driver's license, was renting the apartment under a fictitious name, which is common among drug dealers. A witness reported that, after bragging about how much money he was making, he pulled out a box, scooped out some white powder with a knife and walked around the room letting his guests snort some of it. The witness provided police with a video showing Sanchez Montalvo serving the powder to people at the party.
In recent years we have seen the word "treason" thrown around loosely by people all over the political spectrum. The most recent, and among the most absurd, misuse of the term comes from someone who most certainly should know better, former United States Attorney and Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division William Weld. Barbie Latza Nadeau reports in the Daily Beast:
Former Massachusetts Governor and Republican presidential challenger Bill Weld said Monday that President Donald Trump's "acts of treason" in pressuring Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden deserved the death penalty.
"That is treason. It's treason pure and simple, and the penalty for treason under the U.S. code is death," Weld told MSNBC's Morning Joe. "That's the only penalty."
How is this wrong? Let us count the ways.
Continue reading Treason Nonsense, Yet Again.
Matt DeLisi and John Paul Wright have this article in the City Journal on the actual "root cause" of crime, poverty, and "mass incarceration": bad behavior.
Pointing out this inconvenient truth is a sure-fire way to get savagely attacked.
Continue reading Behaving Badly.
Illegal Weed Booming in CA: A study by the United Cannabis Business Association (UCBA) has found that, since recreational marijuana became legal in California, illegal pot sales have reached $8.7 billion, while legal pot generated an estimated $3.1 billion. Jeffery Cawood of the Daily Wire reports that while the state is home to the largest legal marijuana market in the world, consumers are three times more likely to buy their marijuana products from an illegal source than a government regulated dispensary. The UCBA, which describes itself as the leading voice for legal cannabis, complains that state laws requiring licensing are not being adequately enforced and that illegal shops are currently able to advertise on Weedmaps, which shows customers where they can buy the drug. Over the past two years the state's Bureau of Cannabis Control has sized about $30 million of marijuana products from unlicensed dealers.
Mass Decarceration Will Increase Crime: Rafael A. Mangual of the Manhattan Institute has this piece describing his research on the impact of releasing criminals from U.S. jails and prisons and reducing the penalties for new crimes. "The size of America's prison population is driven by the incarceration of violent felons...and the vast majority of them---even those incarcerated for nonviolent drug and property offenses---will go on to re-offend, sometimes by committing serious or violent crimes." While 60% of state prisoners are serving time for violent or serious crimes, less than 15% of state felony convictions result in more than two years in prison. 20% of murderers and nearly 60% of those in prison for rape or sexual assault serve less than five years. A longitudinal study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics tracking over 400,000 ex-cons across 30 states found that 83% were rearrested for a new crime over a nine year period, some multiple times. The data disproves the narrative that drug offenders present a low risk for violent crimes. The article cites a recent report by the Baltimore Sun which found that the average murder suspect in that city had 9 prior arrests and 70% had prior arrests for drugs.
Racial Disparity Among Murder Victims: Every year since the early 1990s, nearly half of all U.S. homicide victims have been black men. Considering that black men represent only about 7% of the U.S. population, their disproportionately high victimization rate represents a staggering and often-ignored figure. Eric Siddall, Vice President of the Association of Los Angeles Deputy District Attorneys, has this piece discussing how much the decline in homicides between 1991 and 2014 improved the life expectancy of African-American males, while conceding that, even with reduced murders the disproportion among victims remains. Siddell cites the 23% increase in homicides between 2013 and 2017 reported by the FBI, at a time when the country is dramatically changing or experimenting with our criminal laws. He sees this as evidence that the drop in murders may be coming to an end, erasing two decades of progress, at an increased cost in the lives of black men.
Setting the Stage for Another Parkland: The father of a student killed by Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz believes that California's newly-enacted ban on suspensions of willfully defiant students creates an enabling environment for another mass shooting. Andrew Pollack's article in National Review notes that the Broward County school district had adopted the Obama Administration's lenient discipline policy based on the "school to prison pipeline" narrative that allowed the deeply disturbed Cruz to remain on campus. "The state of California has just lurched far harder on leniency than
Broward, by banning suspensions and expulsions for nonviolent offenses," writes Pollack. For evidence, he cites the Los Angeles school district's ban on suspensions, resulting in a 145% increase in referrals to law enforcement and a 70% increase in threats of violence last year. "I sent my daughter to public school thinking she was safe. I had no idea
there was a kid there so dangerous that they frisked him every day. I
had no idea that the school was systematically covering up threats and
violence. I didn't know."
Today's News Scan notes that Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner is once again making the tired and obviously fallacious argument that simple percentages of the racial composition of death row somehow implies that the death penalty is administered discriminatorily. As we have noted many times on this blog, comparison of the percentage on death row with the general population is completely irrelevant because death row is for murderers, while the general population is almost all non-murderers.
As a crude first cut, we can easily compare the composition of death row with the composition of the population of known murderers. Those numbers are available in the very handy "Easy Access to the FBI's Supplementary Homicide Reports: 1980-2016" at https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/ezashr/
For Pennsylvania from 1980 to 2016, about 1/3 of homicides in which the perpetrator is known were committed by white perpetrators, a little less than 2/3 by black perpetrators, less than 1% each by American Indian and Asian/Pacific Islanders, and 1.4% where the race is not in the database. So the percentage of black murderers on Pennsylvania's death row (about half) is considerably less than the percentage of black murderers overall.
This is only a first cut because we don't know how many of the homicides are even legally eligible to be considered for the death penalty (called "aggravated murder" in Penn.) or the circumstances that make actual imposition of the penalty appropriate or not. More sophisticated studies along those lines, nationwide, have almost always come up with the result that no "race of defendant bias" can be demonstrated by the data. See my 2012 OSJCL article for details.
PA Supreme Court Hears Death Penalty Challenge: The Pennsylvania Supreme Court is considering a petition by two murderers on the state's death row to abolish the death penalty for its disproportionate impact on poor black defendants. The Associated Press reports that attorneys representing murderers Jermont Cox and Kevin Marinelli are encouraging the court to convert the sentences of the state's 137 condemned murderers to life in prison. Cox, a low level drug dealer, was convicted of murdering two men in 1992. Marinelli was convicted of the 1994 murder of man in Kulpmont, PA during the burglary of his home. The Washington Times reports that Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner,who opposes the death penalty, is a driving force behind the court challenge. Krasner told reporters that 82% of Philly's death row inmates are black, while statewide, blacks make up about half the inmates on death row. Left unanswered is whether blacks disproportionately commit aggravated murder. If most aggravated murderers in the state are black, it is not surprising that most murderers sentenced to death will be of the same race.
In a couple of weeks, the Supreme Court will hear arguments
in the case of Kahler v. Kansas. The
central question is whether there is a federal constitutional right to the insanity
defense. It is my view that the Court
should find such a right and I would like to explain why.
The cornerstone of our criminal justice system is responsibility. We presume that people are responsible for their conduct and should be punished when they violate the law. Punishment and social condemnation are reserved for the criminal justice system. A system of crime control without blame and punishment is merely a civil system of behavioral management (which we now see with the various civil sex offender statutes).
For someone to be responsible, he must be a rational agent. To be rational is to have reasons based on accurate perceptions and the ability to form sound judgments. Only humans are capable of being guided by reasons, and the law presumes that people can and should be judged by their reasons. The capacity for rationality is a necessity for legal and moral responsibility, which is why young children and those with profound intellectual disabilities have long been considered not responsible for their conduct.
Continue reading A Watershed Right to the Insanity Defense.
Some people believe that kids who engage in school shootings
are often under the influence of psychiatric medications and that this drives
their behavior. A new study sheds some light onto that theory finding about
half of the school shooters had been prescribed these medicines before their
crimes. The authors' conclusion is that is insignificant to suggest a causal
link. Perhaps so.
What is unsurprising is that so many of these kids had received mental health treatment before their crimes. These are deeply troubled individuals. We should also not be surprised that the mental health professionals did not foresee the risk of violence that these kids posed to their communities. Many kids get mental health treatment and do not engage in mass shootings. Red flag laws may have their place but it is important to keep in mind that separating the the typical patient from the dangerous one is tricky business.
David French has this article in the National Review, with the above subhead, on the new and old allegations against Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Among other issues, the New York Times (according to its own correction) simply left out of its article the fact that one of the people supposedly abused "declined to be interviewed and friends say that she does not recall the incident." Didn't think that was important to mention? "All the news that fits our agenda."
The U.S. Supreme Court announced its December oral argument calendar Friday. Several criminal and related cases are on the docket.
NY State Rifle & Pistol v. City of New York, No. 18-280 leads off on Monday, December 2, and will get the most press if it is not canceled. Subsequent changes in state and local law gun control laws provide substantial grounds to believe the case is moot.
McKinney v. Arizona, No. 18-1109 closes out the session on Wednesday, December 11. The case involves the Arizona practice of the Supreme Court reweighing the aggravating and mitigating circumstances itself rather than sending the case back to the trial court for a new sentencing hearing. Current Arizona law for new trials requires the jury to do the weighing as well as find the aggravating circumstance that makes the case eligible for the death penalty. The murderer and his friends have filed copious briefing to the effect that the state court must apply current law with only scant attention to whether current federal law (the only law SCOTUS has jurisdiction to review) requires the jury to do the weighing at all. In Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584, 597-598, n. 4 (2002), the question decided was unambiguously limited to the finding of the aggravating circumstance, not the weighing.
Continue reading SCOTUS December Arguments.
The 29th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony was held yesterday. The winners are listed here. The Biology Prize went to "Ling-Jun Kong, Herbert Crepaz, Agnieszka Górecka, Aleksandra Urbanek,
Rainer Dumke, and Tomasz Paterek, for discovering that dead magnetized
cockroaches behave differently than living magnetized cockroaches."
Continue reading Ig Nobel Prizes Awarded.
Admitted Murderer Executed: A Texas man who apologized for murdering a 61-year-old woman during an eight day crime spree was put to death Wednesday. The Associated Press reports that on June 29, 2010 Mark Anthony Soliz shot Nancy Weatherly in the back of the head as she begged for her life after he and an accomplice forced their way into her home. Earlier that day the pair killed a deliveryman and stole a car as part of a spree that involved at least 13 crimes in the Fort Worth area. Evidence supporting Soliz's conviction included his confession, fingerprints and ballistics. His attorneys claimed that Soliz was not eligible for a death sentence because he was intellectually disabled, suffered from fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and a troubled childhood. Soliz was pronounced dead eighteen minutes after receiving a lethal dose of pentobarbital.
Death Sentence for Ohio Double-Murderer: An Ohio judge accepted a jury's recommendation Thursday and sentenced 26-year-old Kristofer Garrett to death for murdering his ex-girlfriend and 4-year-old daughter. John Futty of the Columbus Dispatch reports that on January 5, 2018, Garrett ambushed Nicole Duckson and their daughter Kristina in their back yard, stabbing them repeatedly then leaving them to die in the snow. An earlier Dispatch story reported that Garrett murdered the victims after receiving an email saying that he could face jail time if he failed to make his child-support payments. Forensics indicated that Garrett stabbed Nicole 49 times during the attack and that the little girl was stabbed in the face. Both victims had defensive wounds. Faced with overwhelming evidence of guilt, including Garrett's confession, his attorneys claimed he was not guilty by reason of insanity. No murderer in Franklin County has been sentenced to death since 2003.
The on-again, off-again nationwide stay in the asylum regulation case is off again. The Supreme Court issued this order in Barr v. East Bay Sanctuary Covenant, 19A230:
Application (19A230) granted by the Court. The application for stay presented to JUSTICE KAGAN and by her referred to the Court is granted. The district court's July 24, 2019 order granting a preliminary injunction and September 9, 2019 order restoring the nationwide scope of the injunction are stayed in full pending disposition of the Government's appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and disposition of the Government's petition for a writ of certiorari, if such writ is sought. If a writ of certiorari is sought and the Court denies the petition, this order shall terminate automatically. If the Court grants the petition for a writ of certiorari, this order shall terminate when the Court enters its judgment. JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, with whom JUSTICE GINSBURG joins, dissenting from grant of stay.
At the end of this post, I suggest a solution to the nationwide stay problem.
Continue reading Nationwide Stay in Asylum Case Is Off Again.
Six Illegals Held in Maryland Stabbing: Six of the seven young men charged in the brutal stabbing murder of a 21-year-old Maryland man are illegal aliens, according to ICE. Travis Fedschun of Fox News reports that the body of Daniel Alejandro Alvarado Cuellar was found on July 31, outside his apartment building, with multiple stab wounds. All of the suspects are members of the violent MS-13 gang, which has terrorized the DC area. Earlier this year MS-13 members executed a 14-year-old girl with machetes and a baseball bat and a 16-year-old boy, who was stabbed over 100 times and set on fire in Virginia. Last year President Trump was roundly criticized for call members of the gang "animals."
U.S. Attorney General William Barr has this op-ed in the WSJ with the above title. The subhead is "The Dreamers case shows how willful courts can ruin the chance for political compromise."
Texas Double-Murderer Put to Death: A Texas man who stabbed an elderly mother and her daughter to death in 2003 was executed Wednesday. Frank Miles of Fox News reports that Jack Crutsinger died 13 minutes after receiving a lethal injection as observes counted 29 snoring sounds before he stopped moving. Crutsinger had been hired by the two victims to do some repairs on their Forth Worth home, when he stabbed them both to death, then stole the daughter's car and credit card. DNA evidence and his confession, among other evidence, convinced a jury of his guilt. In appeals to overturn his death sentence, he claimed that his heavy drinking diminished his responsibility for the murders, and that his appellate attorney was incompetent.
Three Homeless Die Each Day in LA: A column by Steve Lopez in the Los Angeles Times discusses the fact that roughly 1000 homeless people will die this year on the streets of Los Angeles, up from 407 in 2012. Homicide, illness, drug overdoses, heart conditions, suicide and exposure are the primary causes of death. Bodies are being found in virtually every corner of the county. While it has been suggested that enough shelter space be created to house all of the county's homeless, "these are big, expensive difficult challenges." This piece by Edward Ring published last May in the California Globe exposes the waste and ineffectiveness of most government-subsidized homeless programs, which have done nothing to reduce homeless population. A rational approach to homelessness is discussed in a piece by Craig Powell, published in Eye on Sacramento, focused upon the Haven for Hope program in San Antonio, Texas, which operates a come-as-you-are transformational campus which consolidates services and provides housing to thousands of homeless every year. The goal there is to help them to rejoin society and stay off the streets.
ICE to Deport Criminal Aliens Arrested in MA: ICE agents have arrested several illegal aliens wanted for serious crimes in a sweep of Boston area communities. The Boston Herald reports that while sanctuary cities such as Boston have made it more difficult to apprehend criminal aliens for deportation, agents were able to capture three serious offenders over the past month. Sergio De Almeida, who entered the U.S. after being convicted of murder in Brazil, was arrested on August 5, and will be deported. Nelson Jeovanny Pena-Escobar, a citizen of El Salvador who had been deported twice in 2008, has been arrested for two counts of aggravated rape and assault and battery on a child under 14. Santo Martire Baez-Arias of the Dominican Republic, who was deported last year, was arrested on Aug. 7 for trafficking fentanyl and is awaiting deportation again. Commenting on the arrestees, an ICE official said "We're not talking about someone coming here trying to make a better life."
Undocumented Kenyan Faces Death Penalty for 12 Murders: Texas prosecutors will seek the death penalty for an illegal alien from Kenya facing trial for smothering 12 elderly women to death. Charles Scudder of the Dallas Morning News reports that Billy Chemirmir was arrested last March for the killings at senior living complexes mostly in Dallas and Plano between May 14, 2016 and March 20, 2018. Two women who survived his attacks told police that he posed as a maintenance worker in order to gain access to the victim's apartments. All of the victims were smothered to death with a pillow before Chemirmir stole their jewelry. The Kenyan is also suspected of killing 7 additional women during the same period. If convicted of the charged 12 murders, Chemirmir will become among the worst serial killers in Texas history.
SF Business Hiring Cops as Security Guards: In the face of skyrocketing property crime and increasing threats to the safety of workers, San Francisco businesses are hiring off-duty police officers to increase security. Michael Cabanatuan of the San Francisco Chronicle reports that police records show 203,000 hours in off-duty overtime was logged in the city over the past year, up by 32,000 hours from the previous year. Unlike private security guards, off-duty officers carry firearms and maintain direct contact with the police department via radio. Retailers have been impacted by increased thefts since the 2014 adoption of Proposition 47, which basically made the theft of goods valued at less than $950 a misdemeanor that is rarely charged. Instead suspects are ticketed and released. According to the former head of the San Francisco Peace Officers Association the increased crime "..goes hand and hand with the homeless problem and the drug epidemic in the city."
