Crime and Consequences Blog

News Scan

2010-09-02T18:57:58Z

Chicago Gang Leaders Unhappy with Police: The AP has this story about Chicago's recent "gang summit," during which police met with the city's gang leaders in an attempt to crack down on gang violence. At the summit, the police superintendent explained that if gang violence continued, police efforts would be directed straight at the gang's leaders, who "are in the position to stop the killing." Some activists criticized Chicago's strategy by questioning whether the gang leaders should be held accountable for the actions of their subordinates, and the gang leaders themselves complained during a news conference held after the summit that the police tactics were unfair.

CA Court Reverses Juvenile's Sentence: A California appellate court today reversed the 84-year sentence of a juvenile offender, finding the term to be the equivalent of LWOP and therefore unconstitutional under the circumstances. Victor Manuel Mendez, who has an extensive criminal record dating back to age 10, was tried and convicted as an adult for a series of gang-related robberies and carjackings he committed when 16. He was sentenced to 84 years in prison, which he claimed was a violation of his Eighth Amendment rights in light of Graham v. Florida (no LWOP for juveniles convicted of non-homicide offenses). The court agreed, finding that his sentence did not afford him "some meaningful opportunity to obtain release" as required under Graham, and was also unconstitutional under the traditional "proportionality" test. The case was sent back to the trial court for resentencing. Read the San Francisco Chronicle's article here.

Ohio Governor Spares Death Row Inmate: Ohio convicted murder Kevin Keith, who also appeared in yesterday's news scan, was spared the death penalty today after Governor Ted Strickland commuted his sentence to life in prison, reports the AP. The decision overrides last month's unanimous decision by the parole board to deny Keith clemency. Although Governor Strickland made clear he believes Keith is guilty of the four murders that landed him on death row, the governor cited "legitimate questions" about evidence used at trial as a basis for his decision.

California's "Dark Ages" Continue

2010-09-01T21:03:17Z

The LA Times has this unsurprising editorial about the California Assembly's recent defeat of SB399, or in their words, the Assembly's refusal "to lead California out of the Dark Ages by banning sentences of life without the possibility of parole for juveniles." (Read Kent's previous posts about the bill here, here, and here.) Characterizing the bill as "extremely modest," the article implores Senator Yee to push again for such a law in the future in the hopes that "[a]t some point, the Assembly with find the courage to do the just thing." The article implies that LWOP for juveniles serves neither of the two functions of incarceration - punishment and protection of the public - based on general studies of juvenile delinquency patterns. Notably, the article omits the fact, noted in Sacramento District Attorney Jan Scully's press release, that LWOP is only available to juvenile offenders ages 16 to 18, convicted of first degree murder with special circumstances - not, as the article seems to suggest, to "children ... capable of reform" who find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The Supreme Court Reporter

2010-09-01T19:53:34Z

Tony Mauro has a two-part interview, here and here, with Frank Wagner, who is retiring as the U.S. Supreme Court's Reporter of Decisions. Among the esoteric topics discussed are whether there should be space between and word and a long dash.

News Scan

2010-09-01T17:52:03Z

Executions to Resume in California?: According to California prison officials, new lethal injection procedures went into effect on Sunday for executions in the state. After scheduling of executions in California was put on hold in 2006, the state was required to undergo a time consuming regulatory adopting process - which it completed on Sunday. A superior court judge, however, ordered an indefinite ban on executions "unless and until" she says otherwise. Prison officials claim they plan on going forward with any planned executions - the first of which has been scheduled for September 29th - but will honor the judge's order if it remains in effect at that time. Read the AP's story here.

Solidarity on Ohio's Death Row: One Ohio death row inmate is seeking to keep a fellow death row inmate alive long enough to testify on his behalf, reports the AP. Inmate #1, Danny Lee Hill, was sentenced to death for raping and killing a 12-year-old boy in 1985. He has argued - unsuccessfully - for years that he is mentally disabled and thus cannot be constitutionally executed. He is now asking a federal judge to delay the execution of inmate #2, Kevin Keith, who is scheduled for execution on September 15th for killing three people, including a 4-year-old girl, in 1994. (Read CJLF's previous post about Keith here.) Hill claims that as his fellow inmate, Keith can attest to Hill's mental disability by providing information about Hill's infrequent bathing and cell-cleaning habits.

"Victims Visitors' Day": The Daily Citizen (GA) has this story about Georgia's countywide "Victims Visitors' Days," at which crime victims and their relatives have the opportunity to speak one-on-one with members of the state parole board. Victims can receive information about the offender's current status, "have input" into the parole process, and meet with victim service providers. One former member of the state's pardons and parole board said that the events often provide some relief to victims and help them on their paths to recovery. Since 2006, 13 Victims Visitors' Days have been held in Georgia.

Cal. Supreme Reaffirms Death Penalty Delays

2010-08-31T23:27:08Z

The California Supreme Court yesterday issued a pair of companion cases addressing state habeas claims by death row inmates. Despite the state's argument to the contrary, the court reaffirmed its practice of accepting "shell petitions" in order to toll the statute of limitations for federal habeas petitions.

In both cases, the inmates were sentenced to death and shortly thereafter requested habeas counsel, for which there is a statutory right in California. In both cases, the court's appointment of counsel took a significant amount of time - in one case (In re Jimenez), it took the court eight and a half years for the court to appoint counsel, and in the other (In re Morgan) the court still had "not found qualified counsel willing to accept the appointment" after 13 years. The court stated that these delays are common because "[q]uite few in number are the attorneys who meet this court's standards for representation and are willing to represent capital inmates in habeas corpus proceedings." (The court's standards are listed in a footnote on page 6 of the In re Morgan opinion.) Until the court finds suitable counsel, the court reaffirmed that the inmate may file a cursory "shell petition" to preserve his right to seek later relief in the federal courts. The court also upheld its practice of, upon appointment of counsel, allowing the counsel to amend the habeas petition for up to 36 months.

Justice Corrigan wrote separately against the practice, noting that the practice of allowing shell petitions only burdens the court and the public by permitting capital inmates to "languish without representation for several years." Justice Corrigan also stated that while the court is charged with the obligation to provide habeas counsel to these inmates, it "is not, however, [the court's] proper role to help one class of convicted inmates evade a federal statute of limitations."

News Scan

2010-08-31T20:15:50Z

21 Life Terms... Plus 433 Years: After being convicted earlier this month of 22 felony counts, a Los Angeles man was sentenced yesterday to 21 life terms (10 of which were stayed) and a base term of 433 years, reports the AP. In 2008, Charles Juan Proctor's use of a razor blade during his attacks of six women in the Long Beach area gave him the nickname "box cutter." One victim testified that Proctor dug a blade into her neck and cheek and twisted it to make the wound deeper. During sentencing, presiding Judge Gary Ferrari referred to the Proctor's crime spree as "unconscionable" and told him "I can say absolutely ... you deserve each of these 433 years."

Federal Judge Holds Hearing in MA Death Penalty Case: A federal judge yesterday held a hearing in the case of Gary Lee Sampson, the first person to be scheduled for execution in Massachusetts since 1947. After Sampson pleaded guilty to the stabbing deaths of two men in 2001, a federal jury recommended a sentence of death - rejecting his proferred defense of mental disease or brain damage. After imposing the sentence, presiding U.S. District Court Judge Mark Wolf angered some family members of the victims by stating that he believed Sampson was indeed mentally ill. Judge Wolf is now also the presiding judge over Sampson's federal habeas proceeding, and family members are concerned that he will get a second chance to avoid imposing a death sentence for Sampson. Read the Boston Globe's story here.

Tired of Being Called a Racist?

2010-08-30T16:37:13Z

Well get used to it. Those who enthusiastically support the death penalty and other forms of serious punishment for serious crime are just the latter-day Klan, according to one sort of thnking -- the sort briliantly described in the "oikophobia" essay to which Kent made reference earlier today.

It's well worth the read, as is this column by Charles Krauthammer. Krauthammer's piece is titled, "The Last Refuge of a Liberal." You will not be surprised to learn that the refuge is the reflexive but still snarling charge of racism.

Krauthammer does not discuss the culture war about the death penalty, but he might as well have. To abolitionists and a distressingly large number of other liberals, there is no such thing as principled or good faith support for capital punishment. There is only the fact that blacks make up a much larger share of death row than they do of the population, and that suffices to show that, if you support the "barbarism" of capital punishment (as do two-thirds of the American people), you are a racist (as they are).

The fact that the great bulk of recent scholarship shows that the death penalty saves innocent lives by its deterrent effect (abstracts collected here), or that for some especially gruesome murders a mere prison term could not possibly be thought of as justice by a normal person -- these things don't count.

As I said last week, abolitionism and the go-easy approach to crime in general can no longer be thought of as "arguments" as traditionally understood. They have become a Test of Righteousness and a cult religion, and have a cult religion's certainty and venom.

A Strange End to a Capital Case

2010-08-30T15:17:07Z

George Smithey murdered Cheryl Nesler in 1988. He was sentenced to death the next year. The California Supreme Court unanimously upheld his conviction and sentence on appeal in 1999, 20 Cal.4th 936. Last week, "a Calaveras County Superior Court judge last week vacated Smithey's death sentence and resentenced him to life in prison without parole," AP reports.

Before the resentencing paperwork arrived at the Big Q, Smithey hanged himself with bedsheets.

Great Job, You're Fired

2010-08-30T12:08:47Z

The murder rate in the District of Columbia is down substantially. The District's dismal schools (a "root cause") are getting better, though they still have a very long way to go. So naturally the people of the District are poised to fire the mayor. Robert McCartney reports for the WaPo on "Adrian Fenty, Vincent Gray and the politics of race and class in D.C."

At 39, [incumbent Mayor] Fenty is a post-civil-rights leader who prides himself on being color-blind. It doesn't matter whether you're black or white, rich or poor; the key is that your trash is picked up, your potholes are filled and your kid's teacher is qualified.

That doesn't sit well with some of the old-timers.

Part of the controversy is school chief Michelle Rhee. She has taken on a very tough job and done it very well, but she's Korean. Well, if the people dump Fenty, and the new mayor dumps Rhee, she can come to Sacramento. She gets along pretty well with our mayor.

Oikophobia

2010-08-30T11:18:51Z

James Taranto at the WSJ has found a word for an attitude that often comes up in debates on crime, especially capital punishment, although the focus of Taranto's column is the Ground Zero mosque dispute. The word is "oikophobia." It is the opposite of xenophobia. It is contempt and loathing of the familiar. The source is this essay at Civitas in England by Roger Scruton: "the disposition, in any conflict, to side with 'them' against 'us', and the felt need to denigrate the customs, culture and institutions that are identifiably 'ours.' " Taranto explains the American variant of this attitude:

Yet the oiks' vision of themselves as an intellectual aristocracy violates the first American principle ever articulated: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . ."
This cannot be reconciled with the elitist notion that most men are economically insecure bitter clinging intolerant bigots who need to be governed by an educated elite. Marxism Lite is not only false; it is, according to the American creed, self-evidently false. That is why the liberal elite finds Americans revolting.

Fiona Ma on SB 399

2010-08-28T01:37:07Z

Tim Redmond at the San Francisco Bay Guardian is very upset with California Assemblywoman Fiona Ma for voting against the bill to effectively abolish life without parole for the very worst 17-year-old murderers. We have a different take, of course. We will put aside our disagreements with Ms. Ma on other issues and give her a Profile in Courage award on this one. The pressure from the soft-on-crime crowd was intense, and the major newspapers had lined up, repeating Senator Yee's vignettes without verification. Here is the statement from Ms. Ma's office, as quoted in the SFBG story:

I did not come to my decision on SB 399 easily - it's legislation that I have carefully reviewed and considered for months. While I acknowledge that some juveniles in the correctional system may have the capacity to be rehabilitated after decades of being incarcerated, I feel that we cannot reset a defendant's clock 25 years later expecting a victim's family will reset their hearts.

]]> I know our District Attorneys do not take life sentences lightly. These crimes are limited to first and second degree murder offenses with a special circumstance which include the most troublesome crimes: murdering a peace officer, murdering to achieve a hate crime, committing a murder that's especially heinous, murdering for financial gain, and murdering while escaping lawful custody.

All of these sentences were handed down after murder victims' families had the chance to speak out and address the court on the impact of these murders. To re-open these closed cases to new sentencing hearings would re-open the wounds already suffered by murder victims' families, forcing these victims to re-visit and re-live cases they were told had been closed forever. I think it would be unfair to these victims' families to have to re-live these horrific crimes and for that reason I felt compelled to oppose this legislation.

There are already deliberative checks in place throughout the system where prosecutors, defense attorneys, jurors, and particularly our judges, have the ultimate discretion to choose a lesser juvenile sentence when sentencing a juvenile murderer. In addition, the Governor has the power to grant pardons and commute sentences. This already provides an avenue for juveniles to seek extraordinary relief if justice calls for it.

While I appreciate Senator Yee's intent to create opportunities to rehabilitate juvenile criminals, these particular crimes rise to a standard in which we need to hold those responsible accountable for their actions.

Life = Life in North Carolina

2010-08-27T22:03:34Z

The Supreme Court of North Carolina today rejected a claim brought by dozens of North Carolina lifers that their life sentences must be reduced by good time credits. See News 14 Carolina's story here.

The claims were filed by NC inmates who were sentenced to life terms between April 1974 and June 1978. At that time, the relevant state statute defined a "sentence of life imprisonment" to mean a term of 80 years. With earned good time and merit credits, the inmates claimed that they had completed their sentences and were entitled to immediate release. The Department of Corrections countered that under their policy, credits earned by lifers was not for the purpose of reducing the inmate's sentence, but rather to calculate a release date in the event the sentence is commuted. Alfred Jones - a convicted murderer originally sentenced to death and one of the complaining inmates - successfully challenged this policy in the state trial court. After calculating his credits, the court ordered his immediate release.
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While this case is certainly not monumental given its narrow application, it is refreshing to see a court resist the temptation to replace the prudence of the corrections department - who is charged with and ultimately responsible for administration of the prisons - with its own purported wisdom.

News Scan

2010-08-27T17:03:49Z

Blago Holdout Juror Talks: Juror JoAnn Chiakulas - the holdout juror in former Governor Rob Blagojevich's trial - recently told the Chicago Tribune that she stands by her decisions. This AP story reports that Chiakulas found Blago's recorded statements about allegedly selling President Obama's former Senate seat too disorganized to constitute a criminal conspiracy. Chiakulas also expressed concerns about the credibility of some of the government's key witnesses, who had cut deals with prosecutors before the trial. A judge announced yesterday that Blago's retrial will begin the week of January 4th.

Escaped NC Convict Charged with Murder in CA: The San Diego Union Tribune reports prosecutors yesterday charged Michael Eugene Richardson with two counts of special-circumstance murder for the deaths of his wife and mother-in-law, who were found in a wrecked car in what appears to be a staged auto accident. Before her death, Richardson's wife reported to authorities her discovery that Richardson had been maintaining a sexual relationship with his 17-year-old niece. Richardson's run-ins with the law date back to the '80s and reach coast-to-coast - in 1982, he escaped from a North Carolina prison after serving only a few years of a 30-year sentence for armed robbery. He was captured in 2000, but was paroled back to California after serving only a few years.

AZ Governor Files Brief in Appeal: Lawyers for Arizona Governor Jan Brewer yesterday filed their first brief in the appeal of last month's ruling putting the state's controversial immigration law on hold, reports the AP. The state is appealing to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that the district judge improperly relied on speculation that the law would place an unconstitutional burden on legal immigrants in the U.S.

Trial for USS Cole Bomber Delayed: Approaching the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attack of the USS Cole, during which 17 sailors were killed and dozens more injured, the DOJ this week indicated that there "are not charges either pending or contemplated" for Adb al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the suspected bomber. The Department of Defense claims, however, that prosecutors in the Office of Military Commissions are actively investigating a case and developing charges against him. In any event, friends and families of those killed aboard the Cole remain frustrated with the government's delay in seeking justice. Read the Washington Post's article here.

Felony Stupid: The AP has this story about a Washington state man who appeared in court to face a methamphetamine charge... with a bag of meth in his pocket. He now faces an additional felony possession charge after a guard discovered the drugs during a pat down.

Postconviction Discovery

2010-08-26T19:21:10Z

The California Supreme Court today decided Barnett v. Superior Court, resolving some questions regarding California's postconviction discovery statute, Penal Code §1054.9. The Court had previously rejected the attack on the statute itself by a couple of trouble makers in People v. Superior Court (Pearson) (2010) 48 Cal.4th 564.

In summary, we conclude that, to be entitled to receive discovery beyond merely recovering items that the prosecutor had provided to defense counsel before trial, defendants must show they have a reasonable basis to believe that the specific materials they seek actually exist. To obviate one concern that petitioner has expressed, we note that a reasonable basis to believe that the prosecution had possessed the materials in the past would also provide a reasonable basis to believe the prosecution still possesses the materials. Petitioner need not make some additional showing that the prosecution still possesses the materials, a showing that would be impossible to make. (However, as we explained in Steele, 1054.9 "imposes no preservation duties that do not otherwise exist." [Steele, supra, 32 Cal.4th at p. 695.].) We disapprove People v. Superior Court (Maury), supra, 145 Cal.App.4th 473, and Curl v. Superior Court, supra, 140 Cal.App.4th 310, to the extent they are inconsistent with this opinion.

* * *

Accordingly, we conclude the prosecution is not required to provide discovery of materials from the out-of-state law enforcement agencies of this case that the prosecution does not itself possess.

Congrats to Ward Campbell and Eric Christoffersen, who mostly won this case.

"Women's Values"?

2010-08-26T14:35:47Z

I go past the California State Capitol twice a day, so I see a lot of silly demonstrations and displays. This one goes in the Hall of Infame.

The banner says "1920 -- Votes for Women; 2010 -- Vote for Women's Values."

So let me get this straight. Barbara Boxer and Ann Coulter are both women. So in terms of values, they have more in common with each other than Boxer does with Barack Obama or Coulter does with Glenn Beck, right?

It seems like the message here is similar to the one directed at black conservatives such as Clarence Thomas and Thomas Sowell. Don't think for yourself. Don't stray from the script. If you do, you are not "authentic."

This kind of stereotyping is a betrayal of the drive for equal rights, not a celebration of it.

So what are "women's values" on issues of crime and punishment? I haven't seen any strong correlation between sex and positions on this issue.

Update: It's worse than I thought. The rally was staged by the California Nurses Association for the purpose of taking cheap shots at the person who is at least even money to be the first woman governor of California. Jack Chang has this story in the SacBee.

CNA Executive Director Rose DeMoro said, "We're basically here to call attention to the hypocrisy of her running and to say just because you're female, that doesn't make you a woman."

Yep. That's pretty much the same as the "not authentic" comments noted above.