j u s t c r i m

neko does tom

 

"just because you're paranoid ..."

Congressional Research Service Report:  Governmental Tracking of Cell Phones and Vehicles: The Confluence of Privacy, Technology, and Law (Richard M. Thompson.  Law Clerk. December 1, 2011)

Technology has advanced considerably since the framers established the constitutional parameters for searches and seizures in the Fourth Amendment. What were ink quills and parchment are now cell phones and the Internet. It is undeniable that these advances in technology threaten to diminish privacy. Law enforcement’s use of cell phones and GPS devices to track an individual’s movements brings into sharp relief the challenge of reconciling technology, privacy, and law.

Judge Issues Tentative Decision Tossing California Lethal Injection Procedure - News - ABA Journal

A California judge issued a tentative decision on Thursday finding prison officials failed to follow the law when adopting new state procedures for lethal injection.

If the judge’s decision is upheld, the Associated Press reports, it will “throw California's stalled capital punishment system into further doubt.”

Judge Faye D'Opal of Marin County Superior Court will hold a hearing today to consider arguments by corrections officials that could change her mind, the story says.

via www.abajournal.com

"Blago Sentenced" | Forbes

Blago Sentenced: He Joins the Justice Department's Smoke-and-Mirrors Show

(Image by Getty Images via @daylife)

" ... Our prosecutorial apparatus rewards the admission of guilt and punishes declarations of innocence; even when you think you have violated no law, it is best to confess. Official contrition papers over the iniquities of the federal system as it reminds the citizenry that the person under the thumb of vague statutes really was a bad guy (indeed, a full-fledged criminal) deserving of his fate. Blagojevich, finally, is playing his part in what has become one of the quintessential morality plays of our time...

"One need only consider the regular presidential appointments of donors to ambassadorships, or the convenient use of appointments to remove political opponents, to realize how common such self-serving appointments remain [See as example, Daniel M. Rooney, Ambassador to Ireland @ http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2009/05/big-donors-bundlers-among-obam.html].

"Such actions by political incumbents have long been, and remain, an accepted part of our political culture – capable, however, of being turned into a “fraud” by an ambitious federal prosecutor utilizing the vague statutes in the federal armamentarium of criminal law..."

 

slate tebow

Slate - "Tim Tebow comeback" -- "... The Broncos started 1-4 with a conventional offense and they're now 7-1 with a guy who can't complete a 10-yard out. If it was insane to go with Tebow in the first place, it'd be even crazier for Denver to go back to playing the game the right way."

The Kentucky Death Penalty Assessment Report

Lawyers: Kentucky should suspend executions until flaws fixed | Kentucky.com

FRANKFORT — There are serious flaws in Kentucky's administration of the death penalty, increasing the chance an innocent person could be executed, an American Bar Association team said in a study released Wednesday.

The team recommended halting executions in the state until lawmakers and others correct problems cited in the study.

Those problems include a lack of protections against executing seriously mentally ill people; high case loads and low pay for public defenders who represent people accused of capital crimes; no rule to preserve evidence for as long as someone is in prison, meaning they might miss a chance for DNA tests that could exonerate them; and confusion among jurors about their role in deciding whether to recommend a death sentence.

via www.kentucky.com

States push to end the death penalty - Mackenzie Weinger - POLITICO.com

Could capital punishment be at death’s door in 2012?

That’s the goal for several states next year, say leading anti-death penalty advocates who are making a push to end the controversial practice.

Continue Reading

via www.politico.com

parody | rick perry

 

Folsom prison psychologist 'faked rape to get her husband to move to a better neighbourhood' | Mail Online

A Folsom prison psychologist faked a rape attack to persuade her husband to move to more desirable neighbourhood, police allege. Laurie Ann Martinez, 36, who works at California State Prison (formerly known as New Folsom) allegedly invented an intruder who forced himself on her, beat her and robbed her home in Sacramento. Before dialling 911, Martinez, and her friend Nicole April Snyder, 33, staged a scene which left the senior psychologist's blouse ripped, her lip bloodied and her knuckles scratched, police say. Martinez told officers who responded she had found a stranger in the house who knocked her out, raped her and fled taking two laptops, an Xbox and her purse. She even submitted to an evidential examination, the Sacramento Bee reported. But she was allegedly caught out when a colleague told police she had faked the entire event. ... [restofstory]  By Daily Mail Reporter 9th December 2011.

(http://twitter.com/#!/PrisonReformMvt)  via www.dailymail.co.uk

Occupy The Prison Industrial Complex | Prairie Fire News

Welcome to America & The poor persons “gated community”

via prairiefirenews.com

Beyond the ‘War on Drugs,’ ACS Issue Brief Examines Efforts to Reform Harsh Drug Sentencing | ACS

by Jeremy Leaming

President Obama and Congress took a significant step toward “fair and proportionate penalties” for some drug offenders with enactment last year of the Fair Sentencing Act, but additional reform legislation is needed to overcome the harsh effects of the nation’s so-called War on Drugs, a new ACS Issue Brief states.

Kara Gotsch, the director of advocacy for The Sentencing Project, details, in her Issue Brief, the effect of the “War on Drugs” on our criminal justice system, noting that two laws enacted in the late 1980s created “hefty mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses, including mandatory penalties for crack cocaine offenses that were the harshest ever adopted for low-level drug offenses.”

via www.acslaw.org

Supreme Court Spars on Use of Lab Reports in Expert Testimony - NYTimes.com

The Supreme Court is considering whether expert witnesses could offer opinions linking defendants to crimes based on lab reports that had not been admitted into evidence.

The issue was making its third appearance at the court since a groundbreaking 5-to-4 decision in 2009 that said such reports may not be used in criminal trials unless the analysts responsible for creating them provide live testimony. In a follow-up decision in June, also by a 5-to-4 vote, the court said that only the analyst who did the work, rather than a colleague or supervisor, would do.

The question for the justices on Tuesday was whether expert witnesses could offer opinions linking defendants to crimes based on lab reports that had not been admitted into evidence.

via www.nytimes.com

fourteen years

14 years is an obscenely long sentence for the crime of engaging in politics in the State of Illinois.  Fourteen years ... that's forever ...

A kid who sells just the right amount of crack, if arrested and prosecuted in federal court, may receive a mandatory minimum of 10, 15, 20 (or more!) years in federal prison ... That's forever ... And that too is an obscenely long sentence for the crime committed ... "The horror! The horror!" (Kurtz) 

Very few Americans grasp the horror the Federal Sentencing Guidelines have wrought upon countless human beings sentenced to these obscene, out of all proportion sentences, the direct result of absurdly punitive mandatory minimums and the larger War on Drugs.  Such sentences are Kafkaesque, evil.   Our prisons are full of fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters, friends and family suffering for an eternity because of our society's penchant need to punish the other.

For those sentenced to ... forever ... for dealing in drugs, politics, anything at all, I can't help but think of Philip K. Dick's epilogue to A Scanner Darkly: 

“This has been a novel about some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did. They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one after another of them being killed — run over, maimed, destroyed — but they continued to play anyhow. We really all were very happy for a while, sitting around not toiling but just bullshitting and playing, but it was for such a terrible brief time, and then the punishment was beyond belief…”

We are all criminals.

 

ABA gives ground on law schools' graduate jobs data reporting

Law School Transparency executive director Kyle McEntee

"There are still questions about [the changes] took so long and why it still falls short of providing the best consumer information..."

The American Bar Association is changing the way it collects graduate employment information from law schools. The council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar on Dec. 3 approved a new annual questionnaire intended to gather more detailed information about where recent law grads find work. The change came as law students, graduates and three U.S. senators heaped criticism on the ABA and law schools for not providing prospective law students with an accurate picture of graduate employment and salary levels. ..." 

via www.law.com

____________________

IMHO a great deal of credit for moving the ABA monolith slowly toward fairness must be given the bloggers, especially http://thirdtierreality.blogspot.com/

Congress holds hearing on televising Supreme Court arguments - Law Blog - WSJ

Earlier today, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on administrative oversight and the courts, held a hearing on cameras in the Supreme Court. The issue has snapped to life in the lead-up to the high court’s review of the Obama administration’s health-care law.

Klobuchar, who strongly supports televising court arguments, told Law Blog she doesn’t buy the argument that cameras would have a major effect on the way the justices carry out their business. Some change in�behavior�may even be�acceptable,�when weighed against the public interest in making the courtroom more accessible, she added. As it is, about 250 members of the public can watch arguments live at a given time, most of whom, Klobuchar said, must have the means and money to travel to Washington.

“It’s just not modern-day America,” she said.

via blogs.wsj.com

[ i want cameras in the SCOTUS. how about you? ]

“Was Governor Romney primarily interested in making good public policy or in advancing his political ambitions to be President of the United States?”

Murphy, Russell G., Execution Watch: Mitt Romney’s 'Foolproof' Death Penalty Act and the Politics of Capital Punishment (December, 01 2011). Suffolk University Law Review, Vol. 45, p. 1, 2011; Suffolk University Law School Research Paper No. 11-55. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1967201

Abstract:     
This article presents a legal and political analysis of the 2003 - 2005 effort of Governor Mitt Romney to make the death penalty available as a sentencing option in Massachusetts. It begins with a description of the history of capital punishment in the state as context for Mr. Romney’s creation of the Governor’s Council on Capital Punishment. The Council’s mandate, recommendations, and Final Report are set forth, followed by a summary of proposed legislation based thereon. Public, media, and academic reactions to the Governor’s plan are the basis for an analysis of the political implications of this undertaking, framed by the question “Was Governor Romney primarily interested in making good public policy or in advancing his political ambitions to be President of the United States?” The article then takes an objective look at the merits of the Romney plan in terms of current understandings about the practice and policy of capital punishment in the United States. With the defeat of the Romney bill and the strength of the legislative rejection of the death penalty in Massachusetts as a backdrop, the article concludes with a focus on what this process teaches about Mr. Romney’s governing style and the strength of his political beliefs.

[ via Sentencing Law and Policy feed ]

 

UC Irvine Feature: Kubrin

It’s rare that an academic can expound on ethnographic research and the rift between 50 Cent and Ja Rule. But UC Irvine’s Charis Kubrin can do just that.

She studies rap music in the context of social and economic forces that have influenced hip-hop artists, such as deindustrialization, the war on drugs, and punitive criminal justice policy.

An associate professor of criminology, law & society, Kubrin has written three research papers on the unorthodox subject and recently testified as an expert witness in a case involving rap lyrics.

via www.uci.edu

California Supreme Court voids two death row convictions - latimes.com

After upholding nearly 50 death sentences in a row, the California Supreme Court on Monday broke its pattern by overturning the convictions of a reputed gang leader in Los Angeles and his alleged accomplice in two killings that sent both men to death row for 15 years.

The state high court unanimously ruled that Cleamon Johnson and Michael Allen, convicted of killing rival gang members Peyton Beroit and Donald Loggins in 1991, were denied a fair trial when a judge removed a juror who appeared to be critical of the prosecution's case.

In a ruling written by Justice Carol A. Corrigan, the court cited a lack of evidence to support then-Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Charles Horan's decision to remove the juror for prejudging the case and relying on evidence outside the 1997 trial.

By Maura Dolan, Los Angeles TimesDecember 5, 2011, 10:38 p.m.

via www.latimes.com

Detroit Needs a Regime Change - Reason Magazine

This is a time of high political drama in the Motor City as Detroiters debate whether a state takeover of its books is necessary to avert bankruptcy. But in the larger scheme of things, this is a minor issue. A takeover won’t cure the root cause of Detroit’s fiscal mess: a dysfunctional government that has killed growth and made the city a living hell. Fixing that will require radical solutions, such as the one that brilliant New York University economist Paul Romer is recommending for Third World countries in a similar trap: charter cities.

An Ernst & Young audit earlier this month found that, absent drastic action, Detroit will run out of cash by April. This is no surprise to anyone familiar with the city’s perennial budgetary shenanigans.

Detroit’s current mayor, Dave Bing, a well-meaning but politically clueless former basketball star, came to office in 2009 (after his predecessor was carted off to jail) promising to eliminate Detroit’s $300 million-plus accumulated deficit. But the deficit has grown, and Detroit is drowning in debt because Bing maxed out the city’s credit card, pushing Detroit’s credit rating into junk territory. The city has used up all its borrowed cash and, come spring, it will be flat broke, since it can’t borrow more.

via reason.com

"protecting native women from violence"

The Crime Report - "Tackling Sex Abuse in Indian Country"  (By Cara Tabachnick,  Monday, December 05, 2011)

Photo by Rennett Stowe, via Flickr

"In the decade since Donna O’Brien became a law enforcement officer at the Comanche Nation Police Department in Lawton, OK, she has seen many changes in how Indian Country—the description Native Americans still use for the vast territory inside the U.S. under tribal jurisdiction—is policed.

Mostly, things have improved on her reservation, she says, including more attention to training officers to deal with substance abuse, the introduction of innovative approaches such as alternative courts, and even an expansion of tribal police forces.

Except in one glaring area: protecting native women from violence. ... [restofstory]

Chinese execution pictures: Women about to be executed for drug smuggling | Mail Online

In an unprecedented move, an unnamed civilian photographer was allowed inside No 1 Detention Centre for women in the industrial city of Wuhan, in central China. The man took a series of pictures on June 24, 2003.

But so sensitive were the photographs, that the authorities banned them from being published. The Government feared they would evoke sympathy for the female prisoners.

Facing death with a smile: Dai Donggui tries on an outfit for her to wear before her execution. Right, a female police officer feeds a lychee to condemned drug dealer Dai Donggu the evening before the execution

via www.dailymail.co.uk

Portraits of the last day on Death Row - The Independent

Amnesty International and the Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network will tomorrow call on the countries to halt executions. They will also claim that suspects struggle to obtain fair trials in many Asian nations, including China, India, Indonesia, Japan and Malaysia.

"The minority of states that continue to systematically use the death penalty were responsible for thousands of executions in 2010, defying the global anti-death penalty trend," said Amnesty's secretary general, Salil Shetty, earlier this year. "While executions may be on the decline, a number of countries continue to pass death sentences for drug-related offences, economic crimes, sexual relations between consenting adults and blasphemy, [thereby] violating international human rights law forbidding the use of the death penalty except for the most serious crimes."

The activists' demands coincide with the publication of previously unseen photographs taken inside a Chinese women's prison, documenting the hours before prisoners on death row were led away for execution.

via www.independent.co.uk

States beginning to rethink indigent defense systems

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This past August, in Nevada’s Washoe County, the second largest county in the state, the nonprofit firm Washoe Legal Services agreed to earn a fee of $80,000 over six months for handling any and all indigent defense cases that go through the county’s early case resolution program. The county estimates that there may be as many as 1,000 cases during that period, which would mean Washoe Legal Services could be making as little as $80 per case. The law firm is additionally responsible for all administrative, investigative, and insurance costs.

Flat-fee contracting for indigent defense is used in more than a dozen states around the country. Fixed-rate contracts negotiated by governments with private attorneys are a common way for counties and states to save money in hard fiscal times. But they have drawn criticism from a variety of quarters. Nevada, Idaho, Michigan and Pennsylvania have all established special commissions to look at indigent defense in general and flat fees in particular.

“This type of contract creates a direct financial conflict of interest between the attorney and the client,” says David Carroll, research director at the National Legal Aid and Defender Association. “Because the lawyer will be paid the same amount, no matter how much or how little he works on each case, it is in the lawyer’s personal interest to devote as little time as possible to each appointed case.”

via stateline.org

Norway - Killer of 77 Was Insane During Rampage, Prosecution Says - NYTimes.com

The confessed mass killer Anders Behring Breivik belongs in psychiatric care instead of prison, prosecutors in Norway said Tuesday after an evaluation declared him legally insane during a bomb-and-shooting rampage that killed 77 people in July. The court-ordered assessment by two psychiatrists found that Mr. Breivik, 32, an anti-Muslim militant, was psychotic during the attacks. It will be reviewed by a forensic panel before the Oslo district court rules on his mental state.

The conclusions contrasted with earlier comments by the head of the review panel, who said in late July that it was unlikely that Mr. Breivik would be declared insane because the attacks were so carefully planned and executed. But prosecutors insisted that the psychiatric report described a man living in a “delusional universe,” a paranoid schizophrenic who had lost touch with reality. Mr. Breivik’s trial is scheduled to begin in April. If declared mentally fit and convicted of terrorism, he would face up to 21 years in prison, or an alternative custody arrangement that could keep him behind bars indefinitely. A prosecutor, Inga Bejer Engh, said that if the courts declared him insane, he would be given three-year terms of psychiatric care that could be extended.

via www.nytimes.com

[ european justice - a distant universe from planet america ]

The Certainty of Memory Has Its Day in Court - NYTimes.com

Rather than the centerpiece of prosecution, witness testimony should be viewed more like trace evidence, scientists say, with the same fragility and vulnerability to contamination.

“That’s one of the striking findings of the studies,” said Daniel Schacter, a psychology professor at Harvard. Whether an event is real or imagined, “many structures involved in the coding and retrieving are the same.”

All this makes sense, he said, when you consider the purpose of memory. He and his colleagues believe that memory is designed not just to keep track of what has happened, but to offer a script for something that might.

via www.nytimes.com

[ via veritas initiative ]

Follow developments in execution procedures and legal challenges @ DPIC's Lethal Injection site | Death Penalty Information Center

The three-drug protocol uses an anesthetic ..., followed by pancuronium bromide to paralyze the inmate and potassium chloride to stop the inmate's heart. The one-drug protocol uses a lethal dose of an anesthetic. See Executions in 2011

"I assumed that our decision would bring the debate about lethal injection as a method of execution to a close. It now seems clear that it will not. The question whether a similar three-drug protocol may be used in other States remains open, and may well be answered differently in a future case on the basis of a more complete record. Instead of ending the controversy, I am now convinced that this case will generate debate not only about the constitutionality of the three-drug protocol, and specifically about the justification for the use of the paralytic agent, pancuronium bromide, but also about the justification for the death penalty itself..."

Baze v. Rees (2008) (Stevens, J., concurring).

via www.deathpenaltyinfo.org