The
U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals says a 28-years-to-life penalty
for a sex offender who failed to register at the proper time is
cruel and unusual punishment.
By Carol J. Williams
12-31-08
-- California's three-strikes
sentencing law suffered a blow Tuesday when a federal appeals court
struck down as unconstitutional a 28-years-to-life sentence for a
sex offender who failed to register with local police at the correct
time of year. . . . The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals sent the
case of Cecilio Gonzalez back to federal district court in Los
Angeles for re-sentencing after finding his 2001 penalty constituted
cruel and unusual punishment, which is prohibited by the 8th
Amendment. . . . Gonzalez's harsh sentence was grossly
disproportionate to his "entirely passive, harmless and technical
violation of the registration law," the appeals court said. . . .
The California Penal Code requires a sex offender to register
whereabouts annually within five working days of an ex-convict's
birthday. Gonzalez had registered in Los Angeles County in May 2000
and confirmed his address a year later, meeting the yearly
requirement but violating the deadline of his Feb. 24 birthday.
12-30-08
-- The Supreme Judicial Court
of Massachusetts issued a pair of decisions clarifying state law
concerning criminal trials with fewer than the required number of
jurors. . . . In one of two unanimous Dec. 23 decisions, the court
affirmed that a defendant may constitutionally waive the right to a
verdict by a six-member jury, the minimum required in district court
trials in Massachusetts.
Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Nicoll,
No. SJC-10133 (Mass.). . . . The judge in the Nicoll case declared a
mistrial without giving the defendant the option to waive the
six-person requirement when a juror was disqualified because he
recognized the first witness. According to Associate Justice Robert
Cordy's opinion, the state was barred from retrying the defendant
for operating a vehicle under the influence of alcohol on double
jeopardy grounds.
Inmates'
rights questioned after man not allowed to make call
By Sean
O'sullivan • The News Journal
12-29-08
-- The death of Freddy the
parrot could be debated in federal courts. . . . It also could raise
questions about the right of the accused to get "one phone call"
after being arrested. . . . Thomas Goodrich charges in a lawsuit he
filed this month that he never got that call, causing his expensive
and beloved blue and gold macaw to starve to death. . . . Goodrich
alleges he was held on a misdemeanor warrant in Young Correctional
Institution for 12 days, unable to get word out to anyone to help
him post bail or get food to his pet parrots. . . . It took him
nearly 10 days to barter for a stamp to get a letter to a friend
about his predicament, according to the suit that Goodrich filed
without an attorney.
12-23-08
--
Federal judges across the country have lowered thousands of crack
cocaine sentences this year in a
massive resentencing effort aimed at narrowing the disparity
between penalties for the crack and powder forms of the drug. . . .
A report released last week by the
U.S. Sentencing Commission
shows that since March, courts have handled 17,168 motions for a
reduced sentence and granted 12,119 of them, or 70.6 percent. . . .
Eighty-six of those motions were made in the District of New Jersey,
where all but two were granted. . . . The slew of motions is the
result of a change in the sentencing guidelines last year. In April
2007, the sentencing commission proposed an amendment to shorten
sentences for crack cocaine offenses by lowering the base levels by
two. The commission said it acted to alleviate the "urgent and
compelling" problems resulting from penalties for crack cocaine that
are the same as those for 100 times the amount of powder cocaine.
Congress failed to act, so the change took effect on Nov. 1, 2007.
State's justices rule against free legal representation for cases
between 1994 and 2005.
George Hunter / The Detroit News
12-23-08
-- Poor defendants who want to
appeal a case after they pleaded guilty or no contest cannot get
free legal representation if they were convicted between 1994 and
2005, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled Monday. . . . The U.S.
Supreme Court in 2005 struck down as unconstitutional a Michigan law
that barred the right to an appellate attorney for defendants who
pleaded guilty or no contest. . . . On Monday, the state's High
Court ruled that the U.S. Supreme Court's decision three years ago
applies only to defendants who were convicted after the federal
ruling, or before the law barring automatic appeals went into effect
in 1994.
Defense counsel object to prejudicial impact of victim impact
videos.
Vesna Jaksic / Staff reporter
12-22-08
-- Although prosecutors
applaud the increasing use of courtroom videos and multimedia
presentations as a means to humanize victims and demonstrate the
impact of the crimes they are prosecuting, defense lawyers are
worried about the prejudicial effect of playing on jurors' emotions.
. . . Called "victim impact evidence," these presentations are
typically produced by the victim's family and shown in the
sentencing phase of a capital trial. . . . The videos — some of
which are as long as 20 minutes and feature a mix of soft music,
photography and narration — recently caused a debate among the U.S.
Supreme Court justices, who disagreed about whether they should
revisit the issue of their admissibility. . . . Because the U.S.
Supreme Court ultimately declined to hear the attempt to block the
videos' use, observers expect prosecutors in more states to start
using the tool more often.
12-11-08
-- The Cuyahoga County Jail
has no formal policy for determining which inmates get their
prescription medications shortly after arriving and which inmates
must wait up to two weeks before they get their drugs. . . .
Decisions are made case by case, with a medical assistants screening
inmates upon arrival and a registered nurse conducting a more
extensive physical, usually within two to three days. Some inmates,
like Sean Levert, have to wait as long as 14 days to see a doctor
before they're given medicine they were taking upon arrival. . . .
Levert died March 30, six days after entering the jail. He
surrendered 37 Xanax pills but was never given a new prescription. A
coroner's report determined Xanax withdrawal contributed to his
death.
Cuyahoga
County jail's practice is in sharp contrast to the largest county
jail system in the state. At the Franklin County jail, which
includes Columbus, the staff has written guidelines for dealing with
specific drugs. Inmates who arrive with a prescription psychiatric
medications, for instance, must surrender them but are given a
replacement bottle by the jail pharmacy right away.
12-6-08
-- Santa Clara County
prosecutors have learned of the existence of an estimated 3,000
videotapes of medical examinations in child sex-abuse cases dating
to 1991 that never were provided to defense attorneys — evidence
that in many of the cases could provide a basis to challenge
convictions. . . . Prosecutors said the trove of tapes came to light
after medical experts hired by two convicted defendants belatedly
discovered videotapes in their cases and concluded they contradicted
medical findings that sexual abuse had occurred. . . . In those
cases the new evidence proved crucial — one conviction has been
overturned, and the second is in jeopardy — but prosecutors say they
do not expect the new videotapes to raise doubts in many cases.
Still, the case files must be located and reviewed — a daunting task
whose extent became clear only last week.
12-4-08
-- State prison officials,
moving to address the headline-grabbing security breach caused by
smuggled cell phones, on Wednesday proposed spending nearly $66
million on high-tech gear to curb contraband. . . . The plan is more
than twice as costly as an earlier-announced plan to beef up
security at Texas' 112 state prisons and is larger than several past
programs to build prisons. . . . Smuggled cell phones have been an
issue since October, when death row convict Richard Lee Tabler was
busted for possessing a phone on which more than 2,800 calls had
been made in one month — including calls to a state senator. . . .
"We have a responsibility to Texans to stop this ... right now and
right here," Brad Livingston, executive director of the Texas
Department of Criminal Justice, told the nine-member Board of
Criminal Justice, which was meeting Wednesday at an Austin hotel. .
. . Board Chairman Oliver Bell said, "The games are over. We've just
given everyone 66 million reasons about why we're very serious about
this."
12-3-08
-- Milwaukee County Sheriff
David A. Clarke Jr. is giving inmates one hour off their sentence
for every hour they work cleaning up the blood, urine, feces,
saliva, vomit and other bodily fluids that dirties the House of
Correction and the Criminal Justice Facility, which includes the
jail. . . . "Look, somebody has to do it," Clarke told a reporter.
"It's cost-effective because the alternative is to pay a county
worker to do the job. With pay and benefits, that comes to $30 an
hour." . . . No inmate is forced to do the work, Clarke said, and
those who perform the distasteful tasks are given biohazard training
and protective gear. . . . "This isn't heart surgery, and it's not
like we're asking them to handle nuclear waste," Clarke said. "It's
janitorial work, and they do have to be trained properly because of
AIDS and hepatitis."
11-26-08
-- State prison rules say
inmates are entitled to two hot meals a day - but it's up to prison
officials to decide how hot is hot enough, a state appeals court
ruled Tuesday. . . . Observing that prisoners have no right to be
served food at "the most aesthetically pleasing temperature," the
First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco overturned a judge's
ruling that would have required Pelican Bay State Prison in Del
Norte County to turn up the heat on meals to inmates in the security
housing unit. . . . About 1,100 inmates are held in security housing
because of their crimes, prison conduct or gang affiliations. Two of
them filed suit over the food service, saying their breakfast and
dinner were usually lukewarm at best, despite a Corrections
Department regulation saying all prisoners are entitled to three
meals a day, "two of which shall be served hot." . . . The inmates
aren't allowed in the prison cafeteria but get their meals in trays
through a port in their cell doors. By that time, said J. Frank
McCabe, a lawyer for the inmates, "the evidence was uncontradicted
that (the food) was not hot."
11-26-08
-- The Georgia Supreme Court
on Tuesday struck down another provision of the state’s tough
sex-offender law, calling mandatory life sentences for offenders who
fail to register a second time “grossly disproportionate”
punishment. . . . In a 6-1 decision, written by Justice Robert
Benham, the court said the life sentence imposed upon 26-year-old
Cedric Bradshaw of Statesboro violates the Eighth Amendment’s
guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment. . . . “We conclude
the imposition of a sentence of life imprisonment is so harsh in
comparison to the crime for which it was imposed that it is
unconstitutional,” Benham wrote. . . . Georgia’s sex-offender law
has been under legal attack on a number of fronts. It requires
offenders to register their addresses within 72 hours after release
and makes it a crime for them to live within 1,000 feet of places
children congregate.
11-18-08
--
Prison companies are preparing for a wave of new business as the
economic downturn makes it increasingly difficult for federal and
state government officials to build and operate their own jails. . .
. The Federal Bureau of Prisons and several state governments have
sent thousands of inmates in recent months to prisons and detention
centers run by
Corrections Corp. of America,
Geo Group Inc. and other
private operators, as a crackdown on illegal immigration, a
lengthening of mandatory sentences for certain crimes and other
factors have overcrowded many government facilities. . . .
Prison-policy experts expect inmate populations in 10 states to have
increased by 25% or more between 2006 and 2011, according to a
report by the nonprofit Pew Charitable Trusts. . . . Private prisons
housed 7.4% of the country's 1.59 million incarcerated adults in
federal and state prisons as of the middle of 2007, up from 1.57
million in 2006, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, a
crime-data-gathering arm of the U.S. Department of Justice.
11-18-08
-- Breaking new ground in
California, a state appeal court ruled Friday that prison guards owe
their inmates a special duty of care, potentially exposing prison
officials to negligence suits if they fail to protect their charges.
. . . The subject of Friday's unanimous decision by the 1st District
Court of Appeal has been addressed by other states and federal
courts, but never before in California. . . . "Prisoners are
vulnerable. And dependent. Moreover, the relationship between
[jailers and prisoners] is protective by nature," wrote Justice
James Richman. "This, we conclude, is the epitome of a special
relationship, imposing a duty of care on a jailer owed to a
prisoner, and we today add California to the list of jurisdictions
recognizing a special relationship."
Cynthia Godsoe / Special to The
National Law Journal
11-10-08
-- New york state recently
enacted groundbreaking legislation, allowing youth younger than 18
arrested for prostitution to receive services and treatment programs
instead of being criminally prosecuted. The SafeHarbor for Sexually Exploited
Youth Act finally treats the teenaged boys and girls who are driven
to prostitution as the victims they are. . . . The act will grant
juveniles the services they deserve, bring state criminal laws in
line with federal anti-trafficking laws, and punish the true
offenders — those who patronize and pimp out juveniles. Other states
should follow suit. . . . Police across the country have noted a
growing number of juvenile prostitutes in the past decade. A recent
study estimates that there could be several hundred thousand youth
being paid for sex nationwide, and that girls most frequently enter
prostitution when they are between 12 and 14 years old. There is
overwhelming evidence that many of the young people prostituting
themselves are driven there by abuse, threats and psychological
coercion. And treating them as criminals re-traumatizes these
already wounded youth. . . . Moreover, experts and even law
enforcement agree that locking these kids up does not help them get
off the streets, but rather leads to a "revolving door" of
commercially sexually exploited juveniles. . . . These youth need
services to address the underlying causes of their behavior, such as
poverty, homelessness and family violence. They need medical and
psychological care and safe housing in order to make a fresh start.
And those who work with them agree that threatening them with
criminal prosecution to secure services is not an effective way to
reach this vulnerable population. Moreover, this "punish the victim"
attitude is morally wrong and inconsistent with other state and
federal laws.
11-11- 08
-- At age 69, after more than
three decades representing the worst of the worst, attorney Bill
Habern is ready to ease into semi-retirement. But first he's
committed to fighting for fair treatment – due process – for sex
offenders. . . . The fight is as unpopular as any rapist or murderer
he has ever represented – of which there have been many. Since
graduating from law school at Texas Tech in 1972, Mr. Habern's
clients have included the likes of an inmate accused of killing a
prison warden and officer, an infamous child killer, and inmates who
sued after being used as bait in prison dog training exercises. . .
. Mr. Habern's passion for parole law, a narrow specialty practiced
by relatively few lawyers, goes back decades.
Out
of prison on type of parole since 2002, Raul Meza suing over
confinement at Del Valle complex.
By Steven Kreytak, American-Statesman
Staff
11-9-08
-- When child killer Raul Meza
qualified for release from prison under the state's mandatory
supervision law in 1993, state officials worked to find him a place
to live despite protests that ran him out of six Texas cities. . . .
A missed curfew violation sent Meza, who killed and sexually
assaulted 8-year-old Kendra Page in Southeast Austin, back to prison
a year later. . . . Now, Meza, one of Austin's most high-profile and
notorious criminals, is again out of prison on mandatory supervision
release, which is similar to parole. But in a contrast to their push
to house Meza in the community in 1993, state parole officials
continue to confine Meza at the Travis County Correctional Complex
in Del Valle. . . . This week U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel will
consider Meza's lawsuit against state officials, in which he claims
he is being illegally deprived of the chance to reintegrate into the
community.
11-6-08
-- The Cheyenne County
District Court Judge who gained nationwide attention after
sentencing a convicted child molester to probation because of his
size, was voted off the bench Nov. 4. . . . Cheyenne County voters
decided not to retain Cecava by a 52 percent to 48 percent vote. . .
. Judge Kristine Cecava of Sidney is the eighth judge to be removed
by voters since Nebraska adopted its judicial selection plan in the
early 1960s. . . . Cecava sparked controversy in 2006 when she
sentenced 5-foot-1, 100 pound Richard Thompson to 10 years of
intensive supervised probation and commented that she feared for his
safety in prison because of his size. . . . But what was not widely
reported was that neither the Cheyenne County Attorney, who
prosecuted the case, nor the probation office requested prison time
for Thompson. The fact that a prosecutor does not ask that a
criminal be sent to prison is often a key element in a judge’s
sentencing order. . . . Thompson, 52, had faced up to 10 years in
prison after being convicted of two counts of sexual contact with a
13-year-old girl. . . . When sentencing the 5' 1" tall Thompson,
Cecava said, "So, I'm sitting here thinking this guy has earned his
way to prison but then I look at you and I look at your physical
size. I look at your basic ability to cope with people and, quite
frankly, I shake to think of what might happen to you in prison
because I don't think you'll do well in prison."
10-31-08
-- Kareem Bellamy, who was
released from prison two months ago after spending 14 years behind
bars for a murder conviction, appeared in a courtroom in Queens on
Friday morning — with his freedom again on the line. . . . Roughly
four months ago, a judge vacated Mr. Bellamy’s conviction after the
defense produced an audiotape in which another man confessed to the
crime. In mid-August, the judge, Justice Joel L. Blumenfeld,
released Mr. Bellamy on bail, pending a new trial. . . . But the
informant who supplied the tape has since told the authorities that
he staged the recording to “create this false evidence because I was
paid thousands of dollars by the attorneys for Kareem Bellamy.” Mr.
Bellamy’s lawyers acknowledged in court on Friday that the tape was
fraudulent, but said they did not know it was fake when they
received it. . . . Prosecutors asked Justice Blumenfeld, of State
Supreme Court in Queens, to reinstate the guilty
verdict and send Mr. Bellamy back to prison. The judge, however,
allowed Mr. Bellamy, 41, to remain free on bail and set a hearing
for Nov. 13 to resolve questions about the recording and to
determine whether Mr. Bellamy belonged back in prison. In the
meantime, Mr. Bellamy must wear an electronic monitoring device on
his ankle, the judge said.
10-29-08
-- The numbers are powerful
enough to cold-cock any dewy-eyed defender of Cuyahoga County
justice. So flagrant are the racial inequities in sentencing it
seems as if our criminal judiciary slept through the civil rights
movement. . . . White defendants are 55 percent more likely to face
a misdemeanor charge than black defendants arrested for the same
crime, Plain Dealer reporter Bob Paynter has found. Paynter spent
six months examining court files and data covering hundreds of the
lowest-level felony drug cases resolved between 2004 and 2007. . . .
White defendants were 35 percent more likely to receive treatment in
lieu of conviction. Out-of-town and suburban whites were at least 77
percent more likely than black defendants to walk away with
misdemeanor convictions. . . . Judges, prosecutors, probation
officers, defense attorneys -- they all need to get to work fixing a
system so out of kilter that it showers whites (who hire private
attorneys) with favoritism, and blacks (who are usually represented
by public defenders) with felonies.
10-28-08
-- A Valley defense attorney
is accused of providing more than just legal advice to his clients.
. . . In police interview transcripts obtained by 12 News through a
public records request, 34-year-old Jason Keller of Tempe admits that he served as a
middle man for incarcerated members of the Mexican Mafia. . . .
Keller says during meetings with clients and potential clients, he
smuggled CD’s, heroin, a cell phone and a charger to inmates of the
Maricopa County Jail. Keller also admits that he delivered written
notes between jailed gang members who otherwise were not allowed to
communicate with each other, according to the transcript.
10-21-08
-- Poor surveillance,
inadequate staffing and under-paid, easily-corrupted corrections
guards have allowed Texas prison inmates to easily obtain phones and
other contraband, criminal justice officials acknowledged Tuesday,
the day after three cell phones were recovered from death row. . . .
One of these phones logged 2,800 calls over the last month, and was
used by a convicted murderer to make threatening calls to Sen. John
Whitmire, who said he was “disgusted” with top prison officials at
an emergency hearing on Tuesday. . . . “We’re talking about life and
death, about a death row inmate calling me and talking about my
daughters,” Mr. Whitmire said. “I’m really disgusted with our prison
officials because this is not a secret. Contraband is rampant… It is
more secure at the Harris County Courthouse, in Houston traffic
court, than it is” on death row.
10-12-08
-- As the nation's inmate
population climbs toward 2.5 million, the U.S. Sentencing Commission
is considering alternatives to prison for some offenders, including
treatment programs for nonviolent drug users and employment training
for minor parole violators. . . . The commission's consideration of
alternatives to incarceration reflects its determination to persuade
Congress to ease federal mandatory minimum sentencing laws that
contributed to explosive growth in the prison population. The laws
were enacted in the mid-1980s, principally to address a crime
epidemic related to crack cocaine. But in recent years, federal
judges, public defenders and probation officials have argued that
mandatory sentences imprison first-time offenders unnecessarily and
disproportionately affect minorities. . . . If the commission moves
ahead with recommending alternatives to Congress, it would send a
strong signal to state sentencing commissions and legislatures, and
could pave the way for a major expansion of drug courts and adult
developmental programs for parolees, advocates said.
Bradford and Lykos emphasize reform, so many minor offenders get
treatment rather than a cell
By Alan Bernstein, Copyright 2008
Houston Chronicle
10-11-08
-- HarrisCounty voters looking for a
district attorney candidate with a "tough on crime" theme are out of
luck this fall. . . . The situation is a startling departure from
the law-and-order tone set for the last 30 years by Republican
former district attorneys John B. Holmes Jr. and Chuck Rosenthal. .
. . But Rosenthal resigned in disgrace early this year, opening the
door for Democratic candidate C.O. Bradford and Republican candidate
Pat Lykos, former police officers who have never prosecuted a
criminal case, to put the local justice system on trial instead. . .
. Bradford, the former Houston police chief, and Lykos, a former
felony court judge, make sure to mention, in a county known
nationwide for its frequent use of the death penalty, that the worst
criminal offenders should be prosecuted to the hilt. But, despite
substantive differences between the contenders, they both put
greater emphasis on reforming the system so that many minor
offenders get drug or mental illness treatment rather than a cell in
the already crowded jail.
10-10-08
-- People in jail aren't
supposed to have cell phones. . . . But across America, one way or
another, they're getting them. . . . In Maryland, inmate Patrick
Albert Byers Jr. used one to arrange the murder of a witness in a
homicide case, prosecutors say. He's facing the federal death
penalty. . . . In Canada, imprisoned drug lord Rivo D'Onofrio used
cell phones to make thousands of calls to his cronies. "He gabbed
for hours and hours," a prosecutor said. . . . In a notorious local
case, drug kingpin Ronald Whethers used cell phones to run his
narcotics empire from the Westmoreland County Prison, leading to a
state law prohibiting cell phones behind bars. . . . Corrections
officers at home and abroad are struggling with how to keep inmates
from wreaking havoc by phone.
10-5-08
-- With California struggling
to pay its bills and facing another deficit, the receiver in charge
of the state's inmate medical care will argue Monday for the right
to take $8 billion from the state treasury. . . . The federal court
hearing in San Francisco is one of two legal challenges weighing heavily on the California corrections department. In
the other, a panel of three federal judges must decide whether to
cap the state's inmate population to solve overcrowding. . . .
Addressing both will be expensive. In addition to the billions for
medical beds, the state has approved a $7.4 billion construction
plan to add more space and relieve crowded prison conditions,
although the program has been delayed amid partisan bickering in
Sacramento. . . . The state has been trying to improve its delivery
of medical services to inmates since federal courts found the system
negligent and directly responsible for inmate deaths. . . . The
court-appointed medical receiver, J. Clark Kelso, says the state has
refused to provide him with any portion of the $8 billion he wants,
with $2.1 billion of the total this year.
10-5-08
-- Just a sliver of criminal
cases in the New Jersey court system go to trial. The vast majority
-- 99 percent -- end in plea deals. . . . Yesterday, the state's
highest court listened to a debate over when judges should let
criminal defendants withdraw their pleas. For over an hour in
Trenton, the New Jersey Supreme Court quizzed lawyers about the
pressures in the court system that can lead to a person pleading
guilty rather than going to trial. . . . The arguments centered on a
pair of cases. . . . One involves Saleem Allen, a HudsonCounty man who pleaded guilty to
carjacking and drug charges, but then tried to withdraw his plea,
claiming the judge coerced him. The other had to do with the guilty
plea entered by Tony Slater, of Cumberland County, on drug
possession charges. Slater later said he was innocent and tried to
withdraw his plea at the time of sentencing. . . . Prosecutors
argued changing the way people can withdraw plea deals could slow
the court system. About 38,000 cases ended in plea deals last year;
even a small jump could be difficult to manage.
9-29-08
-- Pennsylvania leads the
nation in teen lifers -- prisoners serving life without parole for
crimes they committed as minors -- and last week legislators met to
examine the issue for the first time. . . . In a courtroom in
Pittsburgh, 18-year-old twins Devon and Jovon Knox faced exactly
that fate -- life without parole -- for killing 18-year-old Jehru
Donaldson in a botched car-jacking in July 2007, when they were 17.
. . . They join the 444 teen lifers currently held in Pennsylvania
prisons, which is about a fifth of the nation's total and 110 more
than runner-up Louisiana, according to a May 2008 report by Human
Rights Watch. . . . Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, R-Montgomery, who chairs
the Senate Judiciary Committee and called the hearing, said he was
startled to learn that Pennsylvania held the No. 1 spot and that the
United States is the only country in the world that regularly
imprisons youths for life. . . . "That got my attention," he said.
"I felt a responsibility to look at [the issue] ... which is why we
held the hearing." . . . Some states have considered laws that would
reduce mandatory minimum sentences for juveniles or that would
eliminate the penalty altogether. Five states and Washington, D.C., prohibit the
practice altogether. . . . Last year in Pennsylvania, nine people
were sentenced to life for crimes they committed as minors. Today,
10 people in Allegheny County await trial for crimes they committed
as minors and could wind up in prison for life. (First- and
second-degree murder are the only crimes that result in a minor
being sentenced to life in prison.)
9-25-08
-- Eugene should be jailing
more scofflaws who violate the municipal code, the city’s top judge
urged Wednesday. . . . The city’s senior municipal court judge on
Wednesday said the City Council must pay for more jail beds or risk
undermining the court’s ability to make violators face their
punishment. . . . Presiding Municipal Court Judge Wayne Allen said
the city needs 10 to 12 more jail beds to incarcerate offenders
sentenced in his court. The city doesn’t have its own jail beds, but
instead rents them at the Lane County Jail. The city already pays
for 15 beds at the county jail, which houses people convicted of
misdemeanors in municipal court and people convicted of felonies in
state circuit court. . . . With an increase in “quality of life
crimes” in Eugene, Allen told councilors, it’s more important for
municipal court judges to have the option of putting people in jail
instead of sentencing them to community service or work crews. Four
out of 10 offenders sentenced to work crews don’t show up for their
court-mandated labor, he said. . . . When residents are burglarized
or assaulted “they expect something to happen” to the offenders,
Allen said. “They don’t expect somebody to not show up for the road
crew.”
9-24-08
-- He is one of New York’s
most isolated prisoners, spending 23 hours a day for the past two
decades in a 9-by-6-foot cell. The only trimmings are a cot and a
sink-toilet combination. His visitors — few as they are — must wedge
into a nook outside his cell and speak to him through a 1-by-3-foot
window of foggy plexiglass and iron bars. . . . In this static
existence, Willie Bosket, 45, seems to have gone from defiant menace
to subdued and empty inmate. . . . It was 30 years ago this month
that a state law took effect allowing juveniles to be tried as
adults, largely in response to Mr. Bosket’s slaying of two people on
a New York subway when he was 15. He served only five years in jail
for that crime because he was a juvenile, sparking public outrage.
But shortly after completing his sentence, Mr. Bosket was arrested
for assaulting a 72-year-old man. . . . He once claimed to be at
“war” with prison officials. He said he laughed at the system and
claimed to have committed more than 2,000 crimes as a child. He set
fire to his cell and attacked guards. Mr. Bosket was sentenced to 25
years to life for stabbing a guard in the visitors’ room in 1988,
along with other offenses, leading prison authorities to make him
virtually the most restricted inmate in the state. . . . Now Mr.
Bosket, who has gone 14 years without a disciplinary violation, does
mainly three things: read, sleep and think.
9-24-08
-- Jumar Smith's past
predicted an uncertain future. . . . He had a string of convictions
when he was caught with a firearm. Under a tough federal gun law, he
ended up with 57 months in prison. . . . But after Smith was
released, he was invited into a novel program that seeks to help
ex-offenders reenter society. . . . And Smith credits it with
helping to steer his journey from ex-con to entrepreneur. . . . "It
helps to keep me focused," said Smith, 33, who currently works for
his cousin's cleaning service but is planning his own janitorial
company and has been thinking about a demolition business.
Jury: Lousy bedding violated Wisconsin felon's constitutional rights
The Smoking Gun
9-19-08
-- A Wisconsin man serving time for reckless homicide yesterday was awarded $295,000
by a federal jury that found the inmate's constitutional rights were
violated when he was forced to spend two months sleeping on a moldy,
waterlogged mattress. Reggie Townsend, 29, scored the six-figure
windfall after a U.S. District Court panel decided that he was
improperly treated while locked up in late-2004 at the New Lisbon
Correctional Institution. The jury's special verdict can be found
below. Following a jail riot, Townsend spent about 60 days in a 12'
x 6' segregation unit he shared with another state inmate. During
that period, the jury found that Townsend had to sleep on the cell
floor atop a thin mattress adjacent to the shower. The mattress,
Townsend claimed, soon became "wet, moldy and foul smelling" and was
not replaced despite his complaints to jail guards.
9-18-08
-- Maryland's chief medical
examiner has ruled that a 19-year-old suspect in the killing of a
Prince George's County police officer was the victim of a homicide inside his county
jail cell, law enforcement sources said today. . . . Ronnie L. White
was strangled with an unknown f White's death, the sources say. . .
. The report is being delivered today to State's Attorney Glenn F.
Ivey's office. Ivey has scheduled a 3 p.m. news conference to discuss the
findings of the report.
9-15-08
-- The fate of a 1995 court
decision to protect the rights of inmates awaiting trial in county
lockup is now in the hands of a federal judge. . . . U.S. District
Court Judge Neil V. Wake will decide whether to overturn or modify a
judgment that laid guidelines for a wide range of issues in Maricopa County jails, including
health care, population control and how many changes of underwear an
inmate receives each week.
9-15-08
-- California's veteran corps
of court-appointed appellate counsel knows the pain of state budget
battles. . . . When lawmakers miss the constitutional deadline for
adopting a spending plan — and they do, almost every year — the
state stops paying lawyers representing needy clients in criminal
and dependency appeals. Experienced lawyers know that they need to
stash away some extra cash, take on a federal case or two or ready a
line of credit to cover the bills while the governor and legislators
squabble. . . . But this year is different. Already a record-setting
three months late in passing a budget, the Legislature appeared
nowhere near reaching an agreement as of Friday. And the
Administrative Office of the Courts ran out of money to reimburse
appointed lawyers' expenses back in July. Claims totaling $6 million
from those attorneys have piled up at the AOC offices in San Francisco, where
court staff can only wait to courier them to Sacramento for
reimbursement at the first sign of a budget deal. . . . That's left
even the savviest of assigned appellate lawyers wondering just how
they're going to make ends meet — and what's going to happen to
their profession. . . . "It's been OK, up until now," said Calistoga
defense attorney Gordon Brownell, a veteran of numerous budget
delays who survived the summer financially because of an unexpected
payment from a federal appeal he's handling.
9-3-08 --
A judge is expected to decide
this afternoon if an attorney who might have information about a
1999 homicide in Wausau will have to reveal what he knows. . . . .
James Emerson, 44, of Wausau is scheduled to go to trial in January
on a first-degree intentional homicide charge in connection with the
Dec. 4, 1999 death of Rhonda Mertes. . . . . According to court
documents, attorney Ryan Lister spoke with another attorney who had
been contacted by a person claiming to be the killer. . . . .
“Lister was concerned about the moral dilemma of possibly seeing an
innocent man go to prison when he knew who the actual perpetrator
was,” a court document reads. . . . . Marathon County Circuit Court
Judge Greg Grau also is expected to decide if an out-of-county jury
will be used in the trial.
9-2-08 --
A Washington County man who has been sitting in local jails more
than two years after his lawyer could have gotten him released was
ordered freed today, accompanied by a judge's harsh criticism of the
man's lawyer. . . . Joseph A. Shepard Sr. was last in court August
17, 2006 for a hearing on what evidence prosecutors would be allowed
to use against him at trial. Shepard currently faces charges of
possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute, conspiracy
and possession of a firearm in furtherance of drug trafficking.
9-1-08 --
The BayState is “lagging behind the
rest of the country” in creating laws to preserve crucial DNA evidence and give convicts the right to use DNA to clear their names, critics said in the wake of a high-profile court
fight over a DNA sample last
week. . . . Massachusetts is among 25 states that have no written
laws requiring DNA evidence to be preserved and one of only seven
states with no laws granting inmates the automatic right to submit
DNA to exonerate themselves, said the Innocence Project, which campaigns
for DNA exonerations of the
wrongfully convicted. . . . “Massachusetts is lagging behind the
rest of the country,” said Eric Ferrero of the Innocence Project. .
. . Questions of when DNA should be stored or destroyed made headlines last week when Keith Amato
of Cape Cod won a two-year battle against the state after it failed
to return a DNA sample he
voluntarily supplied during the hunt for the killer of fashion
writer Christa Worthington.
8-31-08
-- Joseph A. Shepard Sr. sat
in local jails for almost two years, assuming that his lawyer was
making progress on his case and that drug-related charges against
him would soon be resolved in federal court. . . . His family says
lawyer Michael P. Kelly told them Shepard had pleaded guilty and
would return home soon with credit for time already served behind
bars. . . . Shepard never came home. . . . Shepard, 53, is a man the
system forgot, apparently ignored by his own attorney — and the
prosecutor and judge — as days ticked by in a municipal lockup where
he was confined to a cell 23 hours a day. . . . Shepard was
surprised when a reporter broke the news at the Jennings jail
Wednesday night that his case had been forgotten. It was more than a
month after prosecutors took steps to move the case forward, though
he still had not been told about it by his lawyer. . . . "Good.
That's what I've been hoping for — something like that," he said. "I
kind of figured that, after two years of nothing happening."
Guidelines so far wouldn't allow the marriage of fellow prisoners
Associated Press
8-29-08
-- Now that same-sex couples
can get married in California, state prison officials are trying to
figure out what that means for gay inmates. . . . No prisoners so
far have sought to arrange weddings with same-sex partners since the
state Supreme Court granted same-sex couples the right to wed as of
mid-June, according to Michele Kane, spokeswoman for the California
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. . . . Nonetheless,
department lawyers are drafting guidelines to bring the state's 33
adult prisons into compliance with the court's ruling that same-sex
couples must be treated the same as opposite-sex couples under the
California Constitution, Kane said. . . . What they have determined
so far is that would mean allowing gay inmates to marry someone on
the outside, but not a fellow prisoner — the same rules that apply
to straight inmates, according to Kane.
8-27-08
--
The Department of Justice today announced more than $10 million in
federal assistance to states to develop, implement, enhance and
evaluate reentry strategies that will ensure the safety of the
communities and the reduction of serious, violent crime throughout
the United States. Funding was awarded through the President's
Prisoner Reentry Initiative (PRI). A complete list of grant
recipients can be found at
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/BJA/grant/reentry.html.
. . . . "Supervising offenders in the community and preparing
offenders for their return to their communities is a critical
criminal justice priority," said Jeffrey L. Sedgwick, Acting
Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Justice Programs. "This
funding will be used to test and deliver new ways to meet these
reentry challenges and ultimately protect public safety." . . . .
PRI is a comprehensive effort that addresses both juvenile and adult
populations of serious, high-risk offenders and is designed to
reduce recidivism by helping returning offenders find work and
access other critical services in their communities. Specifically,
the initiative helps to develop model reentry programs that begin in
correctional institutions and continue throughout an offender's
transition to and stabilization in the community. PRI is supported
by the Office of Justice Programs' (OJP) Bureau of Justice
Assistance (BJA) and its federal partners: the U.S. Departments of
Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development
and Labor. . . . . Earlier this month, the Council of State
Governments Justice Center released an innovative web-based tool to
help states and local officials improve their prisoner and inmate
reentry efforts. This tool, which was developed with support from
BJA, will help state and local government officials access different
assessment instruments used in corrections systems across the nation
to gauge the risks and needs of someone admitted to prison or jail.
Defendants seek break under more lenient rules that came after their
sentencing
Alyson
M. Palmer, Fulton County Daily Report
8-22-08
-- Today, two of the most
controversial issues in sentencing law -- the length of sentences
for crack cocaine offenders and judges' ability to go outside the
federal sentencing guidelines -- will intersect in arguments at a
federal appeals court panel sitting in Atlanta. . . . The five cases
from the Southern District of Florida, consolidated for oral
argument at the 11th Circuit, have the potential to affect many
other cases throughout Florida, Georgia and Alabama. The appellate
chief at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Atlanta, Amy L. Weil, said
she'd seen about a dozen motions by defendants in the Northern
District of Georgia alone that raise the same issue. . . . In each
case before the court today the defendant was convicted of a federal
crack cocaine offense and sentenced before more lenient crack
cocaine sentencing guidelines went into effect in November. Each is
trying to get a new sentence based on the change in the guidelines
but has been stymied because prosecutors argue they were sentenced
as career offenders. (see below for related case briefs.)
Reversing panels, full court reinstates convictions of men who
fought appointed lawyers but didn't want to go pro se
Alyson
M. Palmer, Fulton County Daily Report, Law.com
8-22-08
--
Reversing course from rulings by three-judge panels, the full 11th
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled unanimously that criminal
defendants' rejection of their appointed counsel can amount to a
waiver of their right to counsel altogether. . . . That conclusion
came in the court's reinstatement of two convictions -- one of a
man accused of making a series of bomb threats
in Macon, Ga., and another
man accused in the death of his 3-month-old daughter
in DeKalb County. . . . Prior panels had found that the defendants
had been deprived of their constitutional right to counsel when
trial judges allowed them to represent themselves despite their
indications they wanted a free lawyer -- just not the one they had
been assigned. . . . But when the full 11th Circuit reviewed the
cases, all 12 of the judges agreed to reinstate the Macon bomb
threat conviction and only Judge Rosemary Barkett dissented from the
reinstatement of the DeKalb murder conviction. In that case, she
said the defendant should get relief because there was no record the
trial judge warned him of the dangers of representing himself.
8-20-08
--
We hear Miranda rights quoted so often on prime-time television
dramas that most of us could recite it, in part, by heart: "... If
you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you ..." .
. . But providing legal representation to indigent defendants is not
a uniform system across the state of Alabama, something at least one
state judge and representative would like to rectify. In Lauderdale
and Franklin counties, judges appoint attorneys to represent
indigent criminal defendants from a pool of lawyers who have
volunteered for the duty. In
Colbert County, a team of
six attorneys handles cases for people who cannot afford to hire a
lawyer. . . . Alabama Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb worries that what
she calls a hodgepodge of methods for representing the poor prevent
some defendants from receiving adequate legal representation. She
also has concerns about the amount of money some attorneys collect
for representing indigent clients and would like the state to create
an oversight committee to look out for the interests of poor
defendants and state taxpayers.
8-20-08
-- Bedeviled this year by
negative publicity on several fronts, Corrections Corp. of America
late last week launched a public relations push to counter what it
says are biased reports. . . . The Nashville-based company has been
under the microscope since its general counsel, Gus Puryear, was
nominated for the federal judgeship of the Tennessee Middle district
in February. . . . At the same time, activists have stepped up their
work against the company, seeking the company’s contracts and other
papers under public-record laws. . . . CCA’s response includes an
advertising campaign pointing people to a new Web site that promises
an “unfiltered, full, 360-degree view of CCA.” . . . The company has
bought advertising on NashvillePost.com and the Web site of its
sister publication, The City Paper. The company also published an
open letter in The City Paper’s Monday print edition. . . . The
campaign, designed by local firm MMA Creative, accuses "a local
daily paper" of ideological bias that CCA spokeswoman Louise Grant
says has produced a media smear campaign. . . . “It’s completely
baffling,” Grant said. “We definitely think there’s a bias that’s
been there for years and years.”
8-19-08
-- The Legislature and the
governor must stop pretending that they still control spending on
prison health care. They lost that right two years ago because
California's treatment of prisoners was so awful that a federal
court ruled it violated the U.S. Constitution. Federal Judge Thelton
Henderson turned control over to a court-appointed receiver who was
given authority to put an end to the dozens of needless inmate
deaths. The receiver, Clark Kelso, has been patiently trying to work
with the Legislature to ease the burden of funding prison health
care improvements during the budget crunch. But his patience is
wearing thin -- with good reason. The Legislature should stop trying
to block Kelso's call for $8 billion in bonds to upgrade medical
facilities.
8-14-08
-- Had this been like most
nominations for federal judgeships, the chief lawyer with
Corrections Corporation of America might have been packing up his
office and heading for the courthouse by now. . . . But a determined
opponent - a former prisoner at a Corrections Corporation of America
facility in Clifton, Tenn. - has worked tirelessly
to see that would not happen. . . . And he may have succeeded. . . .
More than a year after President Bush nominated Gustavus A. Puryear
IV to become a U.S. district judge in Nashville, the 40-year-old's
appointment appears to be in serious trouble, thanks in no small
part to Alex Friedmann, a convicted armed robber turned inmate
advocate. . . . Friedmann, 39, contends Puryear is unqualified
because he lacks experience in federal courts - he's been involved
in only two federal trials - and might have a potential conflict of
interest in hearing cases that involve CCA.
8-6-08 --
A woman who was in jail awaiting trial on charges of stabbing a
Santa Cruz man escaped after a judge gave her a 12-hour pass to
attend a funeral. . . . Santa Cruz police said Denise Jones was told
to return to jail by 8 p.m. Friday, but she never returned. . . .
Investigators said the man Jones stabbed called police and reported
that he saw her in the downtown Santa Cruz area near where he was
stabbed. . . . Jones was originally arrested on June 17 after
witnesses identified her as the person who stabbed a man during a
fight outside of the Asti Café.
Some Warn That Racial Tension Will Explode as Others Predict
Increased Tolerance
By
Ashley Surdin, Washington Post Staff Writer
7-27-08
--
Male prisoners in the nation's largest corrections system, long kept
segregated by race in an effort to temper violence, will soon be
sharing cells with inmates of other ethnicities. . . . A program
aimed at integrating California's prisons for men will begin in
coming weeks at two facilities and will be extended to the state's
28 other penitentiaries over the next year or so, officials said. .
. . Segregating prison housing has long been the system's unwritten
policy. But after an inmate's civil rights lawsuit went all the way
to the U.S. Supreme Court, a mediated settlement led the state to
reverse course despite many inmates' opposition. . . . Officials now
argue that segregation perpetuated racial divisions and that
integration would lessen them.
7-27-08
-- Dan Dostart sits in a jail
cell, accused of attempting to hire a hit man to kill his ex-wife. .
. . Dostart, formerly of Waterloo and the QuadCities who now lives in
Hiawatha, was indicted last week in federal court in Cedar Rapids for using interstate commerce facilities in the commission of
murder-for-hire. He has pleaded not guilty. . . . According to the
Cedar Rapids Gazette, Dostart and his ex-wife, Jamie Mortimer, are
both 1983 Waterloo East High grads. . . . In April, in an interview
with the Quad-City Times, the retired Air Force man expressed
frustration with how his divorce attorney handled his marriage
dissolution. His attorney was Kyle Williamson, who went on to become
an associate court judge but now faces federal charges of his own:
fraud, identity theft and forgery. . . . “He just kept making
promises and not following through,” Dostart said at the time. “He
continually let me down.” . . . Dostart’s ex-wife could not be
reached for comment. Her phone number has been disconnected. . . .
The divorce wound through the courts for 3½ years. Dostart thought
the judge made a mistake in the initial disposition of the case, and
he asked Williamson to ask the judge to correct it.
7-25-08
-- A criminal defendant's
right to address the judge before sentencing and plead for mercy
without being cross-examined, a right traced back to 17th century
England, doesn't exist in California, the state Supreme Court ruled
Thursday. . . . In a case from San Mateo County, the justices ruled
unanimously that a defendant who is about to be sentenced must be
treated like any other witness - testifying under oath and subject
to cross-examination by the prosecutor - when asking for leniency. .
. . The ruling upheld a five-year prison sentence for Blaine Allen
Evans, who was convicted in 2004 of receiving stolen property - a
drill that had been taken from a van in Belmont. . . . During the
sentencing hearing, Evans' lawyer argued for probation and drug
treatment but did not call his client as a witness. Superior Court
Judge Robert Foiles denied probation and was about to pronounce
sentence when Evans asked to speak. Foiles refused and sentenced him
to prison. . . . Such a statement, known as allocution, is allowed
by statute in federal court, and was authorized by a California
appellate court in another case in 1994. The state's high court
overturned that appellate ruling Thursday and said Evans, even if he
was willing to appear as a witness, had waited too long to make his
request.
A
discovery leads to questions about whether the odds of people
sharing genetic profiles are sometimes higher than portrayed.
Calling the finding meaningless, the FBI has sought to block such
inquiry.
By Jason
Felch and Maura Dolan, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
7-19-08
-- State crime lab analyst
Kathryn Troyer was running tests on Arizona's DNA database when she stumbled
across two felons with remarkably similar genetic profiles. . . .
The men matched at nine of the 13 locations on chromosomes, or loci,
commonly used to distinguish people. . . . The FBI estimated the
odds of unrelated people sharing those genetic markers to be as
remote as 1 in 113 billion. But the mug shots of the two felons
suggested that they were not related: One was black, the other
white. . . . In the years after her 2001 discovery, Troyer found
dozens of similar matches -- each seeming to defy impossible odds. .
. . As word spread, these findings by a little-known lab worker
raised questions about the accuracy of the FBI's DNA statistics and ignited a legal fight over whether the nation's genetic
databases ought to be opened to wider scrutiny. . . . The FBI
laboratory, which administers the national DNA database system, tried to stop
distribution of Troyer's results and began an aggressive
behind-the-scenes campaign to block similar searches elsewhere, even
those ordered by courts, a Times investigation found. . . . At stake
is the credibility of the compelling odds often cited in DNA cases, which can suggest an all but certain link between a suspect and
a crime scene.
L.A. Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley and other prosecutors are urging the
state parole board to deny a 'compassionate release' to the Charles
Manson follower who is ill with terminal cancer.
By
Andrew Blankstein, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
7-14-08
-- A growing chorus of
prosecutors and others are urging state prison officials to reject
former Charles Manson follower and convicted murderer Susan Atkins'
request for "compassionate release" because of a terminal illness. .
. . A state board will take up the issue Tuesday, with officials
saying it's cost more than $1.2 million to provide medical care and
security for Atkins after her diagnosis with brain cancer in March.
. . . The state Board of Parole Hearings has received about 100
letters concerning Atkins' possible release, most of them against
the convicted killing being allowed to leave prison. . . . In a July
11 letter to the chairman of the state Board of Parole Hearings, Los
Angeles Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said Atkins' "horrific crimes alone
warrant a denial of her request" to be released because she is
dying. The board is scheduled to hold a hearing Tuesday to consider
Atkins' request, which, if approved, would then place the matter
before a Los Angeles County judge.
Mailroom employees had withheld sexually explicit books and
magazines from the prisoner under a 1996 law.
By
Felisa Cardona, The Denver Post
7-13-08
-- Mark Jordan won't be
receiving magazines or books that contain nudity or sexually
explicit material now that a U.S. district judge has decided keeping
Jordan from receiving those images in prison does not violate his
constitutional rights. . . . Jordan, a prisoner at the ultra-high
security Supermax in Florence, sued the U.S. Bureau of Prisons and
challenged the Ensign Amendment, a 1996 law designed to prevent
federal prison employees from spending resources on delivering
pornographic materials to inmates. . . . Jordan, 32, testified
before Chief Judge Edward Nottingham Jr. that he never subscribed to
Playboy, Penthouse or Hustler. Jordan, serving time for bank robbery
and murder, represented himself during the two-day trial. . . .
Jordan said he was sent a copy of a book showing images derived from
the "Kama Sutra"; D.H. Lawrence's "Divas and Lovers," which
contained images of erotic art; and a magazine, Juxtapoz, which
contained cartoon nudes. . . . Prison mailroom employees withheld
those publications from Jordan, and he sued, arguing his First Amendment and due-process rights were
being violated.
7-6-08 --
Victor Martin has been writing since he was a child, but he didn't
realize it could be a career until he became a convict. . . . A few
years ago, Martin became a published author, writing four novels
while lying in his bunk in a state prison in Elizabeth City. His
books, which feature a high-rolling criminal named Unique, have a
following among readers of what is known as "urban fiction," a
popular literary genre characterized by explicit tales of inner-city
crime life. Martin's books are available on Amazon.com. . . . But
Martin says prison officials are shutting him down, saying his
novels violate a policy that bars inmates from conducting business
behind bars. . . . Martin, a 32-year-old habitual felon with several
theft-related convictions, says the policy violates his right to
free speech. Martin's attorneys are challenging the policy, which
they say prison officials have used to confiscate Martin's
manuscripts and discipline him for writing. . . . "When I'm trying
to do something positive, they want me to stop," Martin said in a
telephone interview from the Elizabeth City prison. "The way
I see it, they want me to stay stagnant and not do anything." . . .
Martin's current publisher, Marcenia Waters of Charlotte, says
Martin plays a small role in business affairs related to publishing.
Her self-owned publishing company makes the arrangements for
printing and distribution and handles the income from Martin's
latest book, "Unique's Ending." . . . Waters said she became a fan
of Martin's writing after hearing about him through word of mouth.
She wrote to him in prison, and they developed a relationship
through letters. Eventually, she offered to publish one of his
books.
7-1-08 --
A prisoner killed in a Maryland county jail on Sunday was a victim
of "vigilante justice," Prince George's County Chief Executive Jack
Johnson said. . . . Ronnie White, 19, died of strangulation and
asphyxiation and had two broken bones in his neck, an autopsy
showed. . . . An attorney for White's family said that because White
was being held in solitary confinement at the Prince George's CountyCorrectional Center, a
corrections officer would have had to let whoever killed the
prisoner into his cell. . . . His death came two days after his
arrest in connection with the death of Prince George's County police
Cpl. Richard Findley, who died Friday after being struck by a truck.
Authorities believe that White was driving the truck, which was
thought to be stolen. Police were attempting to flag it down when
Findley was struck. . . . "The killing of the officer is absolutely
abhorrent, but also, Mr. White was presumed innocent and deserved
his day in court just like any other citizens," Johnson said Monday
night. "We live in a constitutional democracy, and no one has the
right to be judge and jury."
Mandatory sentences: Georgia's Supreme Court will consider
proportion.
By Bill
Rankin, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
6-29-08
-- The judge had only one
option when he sentenced Cedric Bradshaw: life in prison. . . .
Bradshaw had not committed murder, rape or armed robbery. His
offense was failing to properly register as a convicted sex offender
for a second time —- even though he had repeatedly tried to follow
the law. . . . "Mr. Bradshaw, the court could say a lot of things
about the law, the wisdom or not of it," Bulloch County Superior
Court Judge F. Gates Peed said as he sentenced the 25-year-old
Statesboro man on Dec. 20, 2007. But the law calls for a mandatory
life sentence, and that's what Bradshaw got. . . . On Monday, the
state's highest court will consider whether the law is
unconstitutional on grounds it is cruel and unusual punishment. . .
. No other state calls for a life sentence for failing to register
as a sex offender the second time, and even rape and armed robbery
convictions in Georgia do not carry mandatory life terms, said
Bradshaw's lawyer, Robert L. Persse, the circuit public defender in
Statesboro.
6-29-08
-- A lawyer for the Mayor's
Commission to Combat Police Corruption said she was fired when she
asked too many questions about the NYPD's use of force. . . . Willa
Bernstein, one of the commission's investigating lawyers, said she
thought her job was to critique the NYPD's Internal Affairs cases. .
. . "The real job description should have been: 'Just go along.
Don't rock the boat,'" she said. . . . Bernstein said she was fired
from her $75,000-a-year spot in October after the chief of NYPD
Internal Affairs complained to her boss that she had an
"anti-police" bias. . . . Bernstein said there was a target on her
back after she questioned why police officers Tasered a violent
teenage suspect after he was shackled and handcuffed in a police
stationhouse.
By
Jennifer Emily & Steve McGonigle / The Dallas Morning News
6-27-08
-- DNA testing could have freed Patrick Leondos Waller seven years ago from a
life sentence for armed robbery and kept the real criminal in
prison. . . . . But because former Dallas County District Attorney
Bill Hill objected, Mr. Waller's efforts to obtain genetic testing
were delayed until last fall. That was long enough for the man
science has now identified as the perpetrator to elude justice for
the crime that also included a rape and kidnapping. . . . . DNA tests have now cleared Mr. Waller. The district attorney's office said
two men who recently confessed to the 1992 crime cannot be
prosecuted because the statute of limitations has expired. One of
the men, whom DNA evidence definitively links to the crime, was paroled in February after
serving 15 years for burglary. . . . . Had Mr. Hill granted testing
earlier, the man's parole may have been denied and he could have
served the remainder of his 45-year sentence, a top prosecutor and
Mr. Waller's attorney said Thursday. . . . . "We've done all we
can," said Mike Ware, who oversees the district attorney's
conviction integrity unit. "If the test had been done earlier, we
could have confirmed it and notified the parole board."
6-25-08
-- It's nice to know that
according to the 2008 Kids Count Essay, "A Roadmap to Juvenile
Justice Reform," Georgia is making progress in measures that impact
the well-being of children. However, Georgia needs to change
policies that allow the practice of prosecuting and incarcerating
large numbers of kids in the adult criminal justice system. Children
are simply not safe in the adult corrections system. Youth
incarcerated with adults are five times more likely to be sexually
assaulted and eight times more likely to commit suicide than youth
held in juvenile justice facilities. . . . There are reasons why
children can't vote, drink or engage in contracts —- they think and
act differently, like children. While the adult system tends to
emphasize punishment over rehabilitation, rehabilitation is at the
core of the mission of the juvenile justice system. And research
shows that children can change.
6-25-08
-- Brian Nichols is accusing
Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard of covering up
misconduct by a prosecutor and is asking the trial judge to throw
out the death penalty and certain evidence. . . . Nichols has
entered a mental health defense to four killings in the Fulton
County Courthouse shooting case, which happened when Nichols escaped
from custody during his rape trial March 11, 2005. . . . Nichols
contends in a court filing Tuesday that his former prosecutor in the
rape case —- now a possible key witness in his murder case —-
engaged in criminal misconduct before his rape trial. Moreover,
Nichols and his high-powered legal team contend that Howard has
refused to hand over information about the alleged misconduct. . . .
In a statement to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution late Tuesday, the
former prosecutor, Gayle Abramson, and her husband, Rand Csehy,
accused Nichols' lawyers of trying to derail the murder case by
defaming Abramson with a wiretap conversation that concerned another
murder investigation. . . . "Not only is this document factually
inaccurate and filled with intentional falsehoods, but it is
incomplete," the two former prosecutors said.
Justices begin final week before adjourning for summer
Tony
Mauro, Legal Times
6-24-08
--
A defendant's Sixth Amendment right to counsel attaches at his first
appearance before a magistrate, whether or not the prosecutor is
also on hand, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday. . . . The Court's
8-1 decision in
Rothgery v. Gillespie County, Texas,
came as the justices began their final week before adjourning for
the summer. The justices will take the bench again on Wednesday and
possibly one other day this week. . . . The ruling in Rothgery dealt
with a Texas "magistration" procedure under which a defendant goes
before a magistrate judge, has bail set, and can be imprisoned --
all without the involvement of a prosecutor or the appointment of
defense counsel. . . . Walter Rothgery had been picked up in
Fredericksburg, Texas, based on an erroneous California police
report and was arrested as a felon with a firearm. He was jailed for
a period, but posted bail. It was not until six months after his
initial appearance before a judge that counsel was appointed -- at
which point the lawyer documented the erroneous report and got
Rothgery's indictment dismissed.
The
Prison Food That Just Might Be Unconstitutionally Bad.
By Arin
Greenwood jurisprudence
6-24-08
-- Nobody thinks prison food
is haute cuisine, but could it be so bad it's unconstitutional? The
question comes up more often than you might think, and there's one
dish in particular that so offends the palates of America's
prisoners that it's repeatedly been the subject of lawsuits:
Nutraloaf. . . . Nutraloaf (sometimes called Nutri-loaf, sometimes
just "the loaf") is served in state prisons around the country. It's
not part of the regular menu but is prescribed for inmates who have
misbehaved in various ways—usually by proving untrustworthy with
their utensils. The loaf provides a full day's nutrients, and it's
finger food—no fork necessary. . . . Prisoners sue over Nutraloaf
with some regularity, usually arguing either that their due process
rights have been violated (because they are served the punitive
loaves without a hearing) or that the dish is so disgusting as to
make it cruel and unusual and thus a violation of the Eighth
Amendment. Typical of these suits is the 1992 case LeMaire v. Maass.
Samuel LeMaire slit a man's throat before going to state prison and
attacked his prison guards and fellow prisoners with sharpened
poles, feces, and a homemade knife once inside. LeMaire was then put
in a Nutraloaf-serving disciplinary unit. Among other complaints
about the accommodations there, LeMaire argued that Nutraloaf was
cruel and unusual and thus violated his 8th Amendment rights.
By Greg
Moran and Kristina Davis, Union-Tribune Staff Writers
6-21-08
-- The San Diego County
Sheriff's Department unplugged a system this week that records all
phone calls from jail inmates after outraged defense lawyers
realized their conversations with clients also were being recorded.
. . . A lawyer for the Sheriff's Department said the recordings,
which defense lawyers say are privileged conversations protected by
law, were made because of an inadvertent glitch in the telephone
system. . . . But defense lawyers said the eavesdropping is a felony
under state law and can carry penalties of up to $5,000 per call. .
. . They are also concerned that prosecutors – who have access to
the recording system from their desktop computers – could have been
privy to conversations, too. . . . In at least one case, a defense
attorney filed a motion this week seeking to get the District
Attorney's Office removed from his case. . . . Jim McMahon, a lawyer
with the county Alternate Public Defender, said he found out that
his calls with client Robert Crouse were recorded when he heard them
on a disc provided by prosecutors. It was in a package of materials
that all prosecutors are required to turn over before trial.
6-13-08
--
The nation's juvenile justice system metes out harsher punishment to
black and Latino youths, locks up thousands of children for
relatively minor offenses and ultimately makes them more dangerous,
according to a national study released yesterday. . . . "We are
generating more violence and criminality in our effort to interrupt
it," said Douglas W. Nelson, president and chief executive of the
Annie E. Casey Foundation,
which conducted the study, during a news conference yesterday. "We
routinely fail to recognize that children are different than adults.
We need to alter the context in which we serve kids." . . . Nelson's
remarks came with the release of the foundation's annual Kids Count
report, which measures the well-being of America's children in 10
categories. The report shows reductions in the rates of child
deaths, teenage births, high school dropouts and teens who are not
in school or working. Four areas increased: low-birthweight infants,
children in single-parent homes, children in poverty and children in
families in which no parent works full time. . . . The percentage of
newborns weighing less than 5.5 pounds, who are at greater risk of
dying in infancy or having long-term problems, is the highest in 40
years. It was the only category in which Maryland worsened from 2000
to 2005, when the percentage of low-birthweight babies in the state
rose from 8.6 to 9.1.
Constitutional Dilemma: 'Severe' Budget Cuts Could Force Public
Defenders to Turn Away Thousands of Poor Defendants
By Scott
Michels ABC News
6-13-08
-- Faced with what they call
severe budget shortfalls, several public defender offices across the
country say they may soon begin turning away thousands of poor
criminal defendants. . . . Statewide public defenders in Kentucky
and Minnesota and local offices in cities such as Atlanta and Miami
say budget cuts are forcing them to fire or furlough trial lawyers,
leaving the offices unable to handle misdemeanor and, in some
instances, serious felony cases. . . . The cuts leave states
scrambling to find a solution to a constitutional dilemma: The Sixth
Amendment requires the government to either provide poor defendants
with lawyers or release them. . . . "It is an impending legal crisis
in our state," Joseph Lambert, the chief justice of the Kentucky
Supreme Court, told ABC News.
6-9-08 --
Defendants who keep child pornography on their computers make
tempting -- and relatively easy -- targets for federal prosecutors.
. . . Few offenders elicit so little sympathy from all frequencies
of the political spectrum. The cases are incredibly difficult to
fight, according to defense lawyers: So long as the feds lawfully
search the computer, stiff mandatory minimum sentences reduce plea
bargaining leverage to nil. . . . The Justice Department has
escalated its efforts since announcing
Project Safe Childhood in
2006, filing 27 percent more indictments last year. Now, the
psychological weight of child porn prosecutions -- for family
members, lawyers, judges and defendants themselves -- is beginning
to emerge. . . . In the Northern District of California alone, four
child porn targets have committed suicide over the past nine months,
according to government court filings in two separate cases. One
additional defendant tried to kill himself in February, court
records indicate. . . . "I'm not surprised the numbers are up,
frankly," said San Francisco solo Miranda Kane, a former federal prosecutor who litigated and
supervised child pornography cases for the government. "It's a
devastating thing to be exposed, and you're publicly shamed. We
would go to great effort to keep the victims' names out, but
defendants' names are right there in the [San
Francisco] Chronicle all the time."
6-4-08 --
The judicial careers of Richard Tallman and William Fletcher are
uniquely intertwined. But the next time they're in the same room,
best not bring up the "fed-a-pult" guy. . . . The two judges
ascended to the
9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
together, part of a deal whereby President Bill Clinton got
Fletcher, his relatively liberal buddy from his OxfordUniversity days, seated on the
court, in exchange for choosing a conservative. . . . Fletcher
landed on a panel reviewing a bizarre 2005 murder solicitation trial
in Idaho, which Tallman had presided over by designation. And in a
72-page opinion released Friday, Fletcher found Tallman erred when
he denied defendant David Hinkson a new trial despite evidence the
government's key witness had committed perjury. . . . "The district
court mistakenly believed that impeachment evidence may never
provide the basis for a new trial," Fletcher wrote. "Our cases do
not so hold." . . . Senior Judge Procter Hug Jr. sided with
Fletcher, while Judge M. Margaret McKeown disagreed. . . . "In
granting a new trial, the majority has assumed the role of a super
trial court rather than a reviewing court," McKeown wrote in
dissent. "The bottom line is that nowhere does the majority give any
deference to the district court's detailed findings." . . . Tallman
is regarded as one of the most reflexive law and order judges on the
court. And for any law enforcement booster, the facts of this case
are decidedly red meat.
6-4-08 --
An all-star panel of criminal justice system participants— including
Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins and University of
Texas Criminal Defense Clinic Director William Allison
— were announced today as part of a broad call for criminal justice
reform in Texas.
. . . What has not been determined is exactly how the group will go
about pursuing goals such as improved quality of representation for
indigent defendants, improved crime lab reliability and eliminating
improper interrogations. . . . Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Judge
Barbara Hervey announced in a
press release today the
establishment of the Texas Criminal Justice Integrity Unit. . . .
“This is a call to action,” Hervey
said in the release, “…it is time to act now and move for reform.”
6-3-08 --
Attorneys argued Tuesday morning why an inmate beaten at the
Sedgwick County Jail should be let out. Edgar Richard was
hospitalized with a broken jaw and several skull fractures in
February. . . . The Sedgwick County Sheriff's Department says a
guard tried to give Richard his medication, but he refused it and
tried to leave his cell. . . . Richard was returned to the jail last
week, and his attorneys say he should be moved back to a health care
facility. They've already discussed temporary solutions like Via
Christi's Good Shepherd facility in east Wichita. . . . Larry Wall,
Richard's civil attorney, says the man suffers from short-term
memory loss now and still needs to relearn how to chew, eat, and
swallow.
6-2-08 --
A lawyer who represents a Massachusetts man charged in the killing
of Greenwich developer Andrew Kissel has set up a Web site he hopes
will generate leads to clear his client. . . . Mark Sherman, the
lawyer for Leonard Trujillo of Worcester,
Mass., said his client was not involved in the stabbing death of
Kissel in April 2006 in his Greenwich mansion. . . . Sherman said
Trujillo, 21, plans to plead not guilty to charges of murder and
conspiracy to commit murder. . . . Police also charged Trujillo's
cousin, Carlos Trujillo, Kissel's driver, with conspiracy to commit
murder. Trujillo, 47, of Bridgeport, pleaded not guilty. . . . The
two men were charged in March. . . . Kissel, 46, was tied up and
stabbed to death in his Greenwich mansion in April 2006, just days
before he was to plead guilty in a multimillion-dollar real estate
fraud case. . . . The Web site,
http://www.whokilledandrewkissel.com,
solicits tips to provide leads confidentially through e-mail and
also includes discussion boards where visitors may leave comments
about the case.
Four years is justice delayed to a ridiculous extreme
Vindy.com
5-17-08
-- If the case of convicted
murderer Joseph P. Nazarini had dragged on much longer, he might
have been sentenced to time served and walked out of court a free
man. . . .That is, of course, an exaggeration, but it is no
exaggeration to say that no one should sit in a county jail for four
years before being brought to trial. . . .And it is a statement of
fact that if Nazarini has been brought to trial within six months
and shipped off to a state penitentiary, the county would have saved
about $95,000, enough to keep a deputy sheriff on the road for more
than two years. . . .The saga of Nazarini, now 59, begins with the
Feb. 5, 2004, stabbing death of his wife, Denise, 52, in their
Boardman home. He delayed calling police for 24 hours after the
stabbing, but he quickly gave police a confession. . . .Nazarini’s
initial pleas of innocent by reason of insanity was a contributing
factor in much of the delay. . . .Hospitals balked when asked to
produce records of Nazarini’s previous psychiatric treatment. They
even ignored court orders for the records.
By Keith
B. Richburg and Ashley Surdin, Washington Post Staff Writers
5-5-08 --
Reversing decades of tough-on-crime policies, including mandatory
minimum prison sentences for some drug offenders, many cash-strapped
states are embracing a view once dismissed as dangerously naive: It
costs far less to let some felons go free than to keep them locked
up. . . . It is a theory that has long been pushed by criminal
justice advocates and liberal politicians -- that some felons,
particularly those convicted of minor drug offenses, would be better
served by treatment, parole or early release for good behavior. But
the states' conversion to that view has less to do with a change of
heart on crime than with stark fiscal realities. At a time of
shrinking resources, prisons are eating up an increasing share of
many state budgets. . . . "It's the fiscal stuff that's driving it,"
said Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, a
Washington-based group that advocates for more lenient sentencing.
"Do you want to build prisons or do you want to build colleges? If
you're a governor, it's kind of come to that choice right now." . .
. Mauer and other observers point to a number of recent actions,
some from states facing huge budget shortfalls, some not, but still
worried about exploding costs.
5-4-08 --
STAPLES HUGHES, a North Carolina lawyer, was on the witness stand and about to disclose a secret he
believed would free an innocent man from prison. But the judge told
Mr. Hughes to stop. . . . “If you testify,” Judge Jack A. Thompson
said at a hearing last year on the prisoner’s request for a new
trial, “I will be compelled to report you to the state bar. Do you
understand that?” . . . But Mr. Hughes continued. Twenty-two years
before, he said, a client, now dead, confessed that he had acted
alone in committing a double murder for which another man was also
serving life. After his own imprisoned client died, Mr. Hughes
recalled last week, “it seemed to me at that point ethically
permissible and morally imperative that I spill the beans.” . . .
Judge Thompson, of the Cumberland County Superior Court in Fayetteville, did not see it that way, and some experts in legal ethics agree with
him. The obligation to keep a client’s secrets is so important, they
say, that it survives death and may not be violated even to cure a
grave injustice — for example, the imprisonment for 26 years of
another man, in Illinois, who was freed just last month. . . . A
lawyer’s broad duty to keep clients’ confidences is the bedrock on
which the justice system is built, they argue. If clients did not
feel free to speak candidly, their lawyers could not represent them
effectively. And making exceptions risks eroding the trust between
clients and their lawyers in future cases. Experts in legal ethics
are quick to point out that the various players in the adversary
system have assigned roles and that lawyers generally must tend to a
limited one. . . . “Lawyers are not undercover informants,” said
Stephen Gillers, who teaches legal ethics at New York University. Indeed, said
Steven Lubet, who teaches legal ethics at Northwestern, few clients
would confess to their lawyers if they knew the lawyers might some
day choose to disclose that information.
By
Jennifer Emily & Steve McGonigle / The Dallas Morning News
5-4-08 --
The DallasCounty district attorney who has
built a national reputation on freeing the wrongfully convicted says
prosecutors who intentionally withhold evidence should themselves
face harsh sanctions – possibly even jail time. . . . "Something
should be done," said Craig Watkins, whose jurisdiction leads the
nation in the number of DNA exonerations. "If the harm is a great harm, yes, it should be
criminalized." . . . Wrongful convictions, nearly half of them
involving prosecutorial misconduct, have cost Texas taxpayers $8.6 million in
compensation since 2001, according to state comptroller records
obtained by The Dallas Morning News. DallasCounty accounts for about
one-third of that. . . . Mr. Watkins said that he was still
pondering what kind of punishment unethical prosecutors deserve but
that the worst offenders might deserve prison time. He said he also
was considering the launch of a campaign to mandate disbarment for
any prosecutor found to have intentionally withheld evidence from
the defense.
The
United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But
it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners. . . . Indeed, the
United States
leads the world in producing
prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely
distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are
locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that
would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in
particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in
other nations. . . . Criminologists and legal scholars in other
industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the
number and length of American prison sentences. . . . The United
States has, for instance, 2.3 million criminals behind bars, more
than any other nation, according to data maintained by the
International Center for Prison Studies at King’s College London.
Miscarriages of justice cannot be rectified by allowing lawsuits
against prosecutors.
The Los
Angeles Times Editorial
4-19-08
--
It's hard to imagine a more sympathetic plaintiff than
Thomas L. Goldstein, a Long
Beach man who spent 24 years in prison for a murder he didn't
commit. But the U.S. Supreme Court would be making a mistake if it
allowed Goldstein and other wrongfully convicted defendants to sue
prosecutors for management decisions that may have contributed to
their convictions. . . . This week, the court agreed to review a
decision by the U.S. 9th
Circuit Court of Appeals that Goldstein may seek damages from former
L.A. County Dist. Atty. John Van de Kamp on the theory that the
district attorney failed to institute procedures to make sure that
trial prosecutors knew if their witnesses had received favors from
the government. . . . One such witness, Edward Fink, had testified
that Goldstein, his cellmate, had confessed to shooting a neighbor.
Fink denied that he had received favors from county officials for
incriminating Goldstein, but years later it emerged that Fink had
served as a police informant and had received reduced sentences.
That fact was known to some officials in the district attorney's
office, but not to the trial prosecutors.
4-18-08
--
The state Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that a person can be
charged with enticing a minor simply by sending online messages. . .
. Lawyers for a man appealing his conviction on a child enticement
charge argued that he never engaged in anything more than “sending
words” over the Internet. They argued that the law required the man
to do something more, such as travel to an agreed rendezvous
location. . . . Ruling in the case of Commonwealth v. Richard Disler,
the SJC disagreed, saying that a person can be charged with
enticement, if, with criminal intent, they “employ words, gestures,
or other means” to induce a minor to enter or stay in a vehicle,
building, or outdoor space. . . . “There is nothing in the language
[of the law] that supports the defendant’s contention that, in
addition, there must be an overt act in order for the crime of child
enticement to occur,” the court said. . . . Disler was convicted
after exchanging a series of instant messages with undercover police
officers who were posing as a 14-year-old girl.
By Ellen
Nakashima and Spencer Hsu, Washington Post Staff Writers
4-17-08
-- The U.S. government will
soon begin collecting DNA samples from all citizens arrested in connection with any federal crime
and from many immigrants detained by federal authorities, adding
genetic identifiers from more than 1 million individuals a year to
the swiftly growing federal law enforcement DNA database. . . . The policy will
substantially expand the current practice of routinely collecting
DNA samples from only those convicted of federal crimes, and it will build
on a growing policy among states to collect DNA from many people who are arrested. Thirteen states do so now and turn
their data over to the federal government. . . . The initiative, to
be published as a proposed rule in the Federal Register in coming
days, reflects a congressional directive that DNA from arrestees be collected
to help catch a range of domestic criminals. But it also requires,
for the first time, the collection of DNA samples from people other than
U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents who are detained by U.S.
authorities.
4-14-08
-- On Friday, April 11, State
Senators Eric Schneiderman (D-Manhattan/Bronx), Velmanette
Montgomery (D-Brooklyn), John Sabini (D-Queens), John Sampson
(D-Brooklyn), Eric Adams (D-Brooklyn) and Bill Perkins
(D-Manhattan), Assemblymember Charles Lavine (D-Glen Cove), and
leading criminal justice advocates took part in a public forum to
address wrongful convictions and Mandatory Electronic Recording of
Interrogations. . . .
At the forum, expert testimony was presented by Barry Scheck of The
Innocence Project, which is affiliated with the Benjamin N. Cardozo
School of Law, Nicholas A. Gravante, the attorney who represented
Frank Esposito in People v. Esposito, the representatives for Long
Island native Martin Tankleff, who was present at the forum, Thomas
P. Sullivan, a former United States attorney and national expert on
recording custodial interrogations, Jeffrey Szabo, Deputy County
Executive and Chief of Staff to Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy,
and Jeffrey Deskovic, who was exonerated in 2006 after serving 15
years in prison for a murder and sexual assault that he did not
commit.
4-14-08
-- States are dramatically
expanding controversial DNA sampling. . . beyond convicted felons to
include tens of thousands of suspects arrested on felony charges
before they are tried. . .. Twelve states have laws that permit
sampling for some or all felony arrests, up from five in 2006, the
National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) says. Another 21
are considering such proposals, according to DNAResource.com, which
tracks DNA-related laws. . . . Provisions in most of the new laws call for
destroying samples if suspects are acquitted or charges are dropped.
After a sample is destroyed, the DNA cannot be matched to other crimes
in the database. . . The fast-growing legislation, once applied
narrowly to sex offenders and convicted felons, worries civil
liberties advocates who believe the testing amounts to a clumsy
forensic dragnet. . . . "In our system, you are supposed to be
innocent until proven guilty," says Maryland state Sen. Lisa
Gladden, a Democrat, who opposed a DNA sampling plan offered by Gov. Martin O'Malley, also a Democrat. . . .
Despite such objections, the technique is gaining popularity as a
law-enforcement tool. The expansion "is definitely picking up
steam," says Donna Lyons, criminal justice director at NCSL. . . .
Beginning in July, South
Dakota and Kansas will require all felony suspects to provide DNA samples. In January, California
and North Dakota will do so. In California alone that could double
the number of state samples in the federal DNA data bank from 1
million to 2 million, state Attorney General's Office spokesman
Gareth Lacy says.
I am
starting this group, A Search for Justice, on behalf of my dear
friend Kevin Garner. In February 2007, Kevin was arrested for
vehicular manslaughter in Fairbanks; he was convicted in October
2007. It is now April, and he has not yet been sentenced.
His case
was very controversial because the victim was laying in the road at
3 in the morning when Kevin hit her. She also had three times the
legal limit of alcohol in her system, plus twice the recommendation
of cold medicine in her. She was either passed out in the road dying
of hypothermia or dead when Kevin hit her.
I have
had no choice but to accept his conviction, and I am not saying that
he should not be punished. I believe it is cruel and unusual
punishment to let him sit in jail for over a year — six months since
he has been convicted — without knowing his sentence. I believe
justice has not been served here, and though it infuriates me, all I
can do is write about it. The presiding judge, Judge Olsen, passed
sentencing on to a three-judge panel because he believes Kevin has a
higher chance of rehabilitation than most. The panel could have
given him a lesser sentence than the minimum according to Alaska
law; but yesterday (April 4, 2008) the panel gave the case back to
Judge Olsen, prolonging Kevin’s sentencing.
Can you
imagine, after being convicted of a crime, sitting in jail for over
a year, having one judge give it to a three-judge panel, having
those judges give it back to the original judge, and six months
after being convicted still not knowing your sentence? Is that
justice? Please join if you feel you or a loved one has been
unjustly treated by our criminal justice system.
To take
a closer look at this support group simply follow this link:
Of
the 19,500 drug offenders eligible over the next 30 years to apply
for early release, 3,417 have had their sentences reduced as of
Monday.
By
Alexandra Marks | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
4-9-2008 --
In an effort to eliminate a legal inequity – one that has hit
African-Americans especially hard – federal judges have begun
reducing the sentences of thousands of crack-cocaine offenders. . .
. Some police groups and prosecutors, as well as US Attorney General
Michael Mukasey, assert that in trying to right a historic wrong,
violent criminals are headed en masse back to the streets. . . . So
far, indications are that this is not the case because the release
process has safeguards built in. Statistics from the US Sentencing
Commission, as well as interviews with federal public defenders and
criminal-justice experts, indicate that federal prisoners who are to
be released early are predominantly nonviolent and have good conduct
records while in prison. Of the 19,500 drug offenders eligible over
the next 30 years to apply for early release, 3,417 have had their
sentences reduced as of Monday. Of the 1,500 inmates eligible for
immediate release, dozens so far have been let go in the past month.
. . . "There has been no release of a flood of violent criminals,"
says Michael Nachmanoff, federal public defender for the Eastern
District of Virginia. "The people who are being released ...
overwhelmingly had cases where there was no violence whatsoever and
who were given unduly harsh sentences. And now, their sentences are
being reduced by a modest amount." . . . Critics worry the crime
rate, which has already ticked upward, will continue to increase as
more prisoners apply for a sentence reduction. The Justice
Department, for example, has pointed out that according to the
Sentencing Commission's own analysis, nearly 80 percent of the
19,500 who would be eligible for early release had prior criminal
records. Of the 1,500 eligible for immediate release, about
one-quarter carried a weapon or were with someone who carried a
weapon when they were arrested. . . . "This tells us those who are
eligible for early release are very likely to commit another crime,"
Attorney General Mukasey told the Fraternal Order of Police earlier
this year.
04-08-08
-- As domestic homicides more
than doubled in Massachusetts, judges across the state sent only
about half as many batterers to abuse intervention programs last
year as they did in 2003, according to public health officials. . .
. The plunging numbers are raising concerns among victims' advocates
that judges are too readily accepting plea bargains that allow
offenders to attend shorter anger management classes instead of the
more rigorous batterer-intervention programs. . . . Beyond that,
state officials and advocates worry that fewer victims are taking
their cases to court, for a variety of reasons. Among them: victims
afraid of retaliation, illegal immigrants who are afraid to become
involved in the criminal justice system, and a key Supreme Judicial
Court ruling that puts more pressure on victims to provide often
difficult testimony in their cases. . .. "If there are fewer
prosecutions and fewer people being ordered to batterer
intervention, it all starts to look like a pattern of lack of
accountability for perpetrators," said Mary Lauby, executive
director of Jane Doe Inc. "It should then be no surprise that there
are more homicides."
04-06-08
-- Nonviolent offenders could
avoid prison through an alternate court system being pushed by
Attorney General Henry McMaster as both a better way to rehabilitate
people and save the state money. . . . McMaster says nonviolent
offenders are often turned into hardened criminals by jail
sentences. He is suggesting a combination of counseling, drug
treatment, school, work and restitution to help those offenders make
up for their crimes and turn their lives around.
04-02-08
-- One after another,
advocates for the erasure of criminal records urged state lawmakers
yesterday to give people a second chance, free of their sometimes
messy pasts. . . . “By passing this legislative bill, you’re giving
people opportunities to find better jobs so that they can get off
the dole,” said Ramon Martinez, president and chief executive
officer of the Hispanic advocacy group Progreso Latino. . . . Even
Albert E. DeRobbio, chief judge of the Rhode Island District Court,
sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee urging support for
one in a trio of bills up for a hearing yesterday that were aimed at
cleansing criminal records so people can tell prospective employers
they have never been convicted, or giving judges discretion to lift
the prohibitions against people with records obtaining licenses to
work, for example, as travel agents, movers, auto mechanics and
nursing assistants. . . . Current law allows the expungement of a
single, nonviolent offense from the record of a first-time offender
five years after he or she has completed a sentence for a
misdemeanor; 10 years after completing a sentence for a felony.
By
Christine Clarridge, Seattle Times staff reporter
03-19-08
-- The U.S. Supreme Court has
agreed to consider whether to reinstate the murder conviction of the
driver in a fatal drive-by shooting of a Ballard High School student 14
years ago. . . . The Supreme Court is slated to hear oral arguments
this fall in the case of Cesar Sarausad II, who was a 19-year-old
University of Washington engineering student when Melissa Fernandes was fatally shot at Ballard
High on March 23, 1994. . . .
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco had
overturned Sarausad's second-degree murder conviction because it
determined that King County Superior Court Judge Larry A. Jordan
erred when he told jurors Sarausad could be convicted of murder
regardless of whether he knew of any plan for a killing. . . . The
appeals panel ruled that the jury should have been told Sarausad
could be convicted of murder only if he knew the triggerman had a
gun and planned to kill. . . . The state appealed the 9th Circuit
decision, and the Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear the case.
High School Dropout Prevails at Pr. George's Trial
By Ruben
Castaneda, Washington Post Staff Writer
03-17-08
-- It's an axiom known by
every lawyer and judge in every courthouse in the land: A man who
represents himself in court has a fool for a client. . . . Try
telling that to Harold J. Stewart. . . . Last month, Stewart, a
42-year-old high school dropout, defended himself in a murder case
in Prince George's County, where he was accused of beating a
sleeping man to death with a baseball bat. . . . The trial lasted
three days. Stewart called no witnesses. The jury deliberated less
than an hour. . . . The verdict: Not guilty of first-degree murder.
Not guilty of second-degree murder. . . . "Everybody told me I was
crazy to represent myself," Stewart said in an interview. "I had no
choice. They were obstructing my rights." . . . The obstructionists,
in Stewart's view, included county prosecutors, the trial judge, the
assistant public defender who represented him at his first trial
(which ended in a mistrial), the private defense lawyer who
represented him between the two trials, jail officials he says
unfairly denied him access to the law library and the state Attorney
Grievance Commission. . . . "Oh, wow," Montgomery County State's
Attorney John McCarthy said when told of the case. McCarthy said he
was not aware of a pro se defendant in Montgomery winning an
acquittal in a serious felony in his 27 years as a prosecutor there.
Dr. B.
Cayenne Bird is an ordained minister and a 37-year
veteran op-ed journalist and publisher. She volunteers
her time as founder and director of United for No
Injustice, Oppression or Neglect UNION. The UNION is
active in prison reform and criminal justice issues. She
is a mother and grandmother and focuses on human rights
and restorative justice. She is also the host of
television series "Cayenne Common Sense" and publishes a
daily online newsletter to subscribers.
It
certainly is good to see ordinary people in action registering
voters and getting behind candidates that are really going to
represent the will of the people. . . . Since we won our campaign to
get the legislators to pass a bill that could release frail elderly,
terminally ill and medically incapacitated people in October, many
people have written to me begging UNION members for help with their
campaigns, . . . There are no rescuers, no group representing
prisoners in California can call 1,000 or more people to the Capitol
to show the lawmakers we are intelligent enough to organize. This is
where we need to focus on building up our troops so that we can do
initiative campaigns because we have enough funds and volunteers
lined up in advance. . . . No group has this in place except for
Drug Policy Alliance who spent ten years building up to 25,000
members and raised $9 million dollars. This is the right way to do
it folks. Having 500 small, fractured groups out there, especially
those that just pass email and don't do any real campaign is not as
smart as having one or two large ones. . . . The state runs on
groups, if you haven't built yourself a voting machine, no one hears
your voice. . . . Within the UNION network, we have some dynamic
people who are working for reform without enough funds and
volunteers. People on the sidelines who don't write to editors, post
at the news sites, show up to important hearings three times a year
at least in Sacramento, who never register voters or bring new
people into the movement are blocking reform. . . . Everyone wants
to win so this is how we need to break it down right now because
permanent decisions are being made which impact all of us involved
in prison reform, education or nursing.
02-29-08
--
More than one in
100 adults in the United States is in jail or prison, an
all-time high that is costing state governments nearly $50
billion a year and the federal government $5 billion more,
according to a report released yesterday. . . . With more
than 2.3 million people behind bars, the United States leads
the world in both the number and percentage of residents it
incarcerates, leaving far-more-populous
China a distant second, according to a study by
the nonpartisan
Pew Center on the States. . . . The growth in
prison population is largely because of tougher state and
federal sentencing imposed since the mid-1980s. Minorities
have been particularly affected: One in nine black men ages
20 to 34 is behind bars. For black women ages 35 to 39, the
figure is one in 100, compared with one in 355 for white
women in the same age group. . . . The report compiled and
analyzed data from several sources, including the federal
Bureau of Justice Statistics and Bureau of Prisons and each
state's department of corrections. It did not include
individuals detained for noncriminal immigration violations.
. . . Although studies generally find that imprisoning more
offenders reduces crime, the effect may be less influential
than changes in the unemployment rate, wages, the ratio of
police officers to residents and the proportion of young
people in the population, report co-author Adam Gelb said.
02-27-08
-- Every day, judges
send mentally ill people to prison for crimes they committed
without taking their medication or visiting mental health
professionals on a regular basis. . . . Lawmakers and the
criminal justice system in North Carolina are struggling to
address this complicated problem in a political climate that
lends little priority to mental health issues. . . . As some
of the state’s most vulnerable people have fallen through
the cracks of society and had difficulty getting the
treatment they need, many have found themselves in trouble
with the law. . . . State-run mental hospitals have more
admissions than ever, and North Carolina’s overcrowded prisons and jails have become treatment centers by
default. When a person with mental illness is arrested for a
crime, law enforcement officers aren't always prepared to
deal with a mentally unstable person. The mentally ill
person moves through the system along with criminals
considered lucid and sane.
California’s registry for
life may soon include promiscuous kids
By Hanna Ingber Win
02-25-08
-- When Ricky was 16,
he went to a teen club and met a girl named Amanda, who said
she was the same age. They hit it off and were eventually
having sex. At the time Ricky thought it was a pretty normal
high school romance. . . . Two years later, Ricky is a
registered sex offender, and his life is destroyed. . . .
Amanda turned out to be 13. Ricky was arrested, tried as an
adult, and pleaded guilty to the charge of lascivious acts
with a child, which is a class D felony in Iowa. It is not
disputed that the sex was consensual, but intercourse with a
13-year-old is illegal in Iowa. . . . Ricky was sentenced to
two years probation and 10 years on the Iowa online sex
offender registry. Ricky and his family have since moved to
Oklahoma, where he will remain on the state’s public
registry for life.
02-25-08
-- State prosecutors
cannot obtain a sentence of life in prison without parole
against someone who rapes a child unless they are seeking
the death penalty, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled Monday. .
. . In a 4-3 opinion, the court said a GradyCounty judge lacked the
authority to sentence Rodolfo Lopez Velazquez to life
without parole for the June 2005 rape of a 7-year-old girl.
Velazquez, who must now be resentenced, faces a sentence of
life in prison with the possibility of parole. . . .
Prosecutors told the court that they hadn't sought the death
penalty in the case because were barred from doing so in a
case involving rape when the victim is not murdered. . . .
But Justice Harris Hines, writing for the majority, said
that the U.S. Supreme Court in 1977 ruled the death penalty
unconstitutional only for the rape of an adult woman.
Neither the U.S. Supreme Court nor the Georgia Supreme Court
"has yet addressed whether the death penalty is
unconstitutionally disproportionate for the crime of raping
a child," Hines wrote.
Earning
a living as a criminal defense attorney is a tough job and
often not very lucrative. . . . Over the years, some local
lawyers have diversified their legal businesses and taken on
the role of bail bondsmen. . . . It is a practice frowned
upon by the American Bar Association because of the ethical
implications, but it remains legal in Texas. . . . An
investigation into the dual legal roles played by some local
lawyers by Express-News reporter Karisa King revealed that
more than 250 lawyers in Bexar
County posted bonds for their
clients last year. . . . A handful of lawyers represented
the bulk of the lawyer bond business with 18 lawyers each
signing bonds totaling more than $1 million.
02-10-08 --
Private companies that run diversion
programs administered by dozens of California district attorneys are
now open to legal attack. . . . A 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
panel ruled Wednesday that state sovereign immunity does not extend
to
American Corrective Counseling Services, a private
contractor hired by the Santa Clara County DA's office to go after
individuals who passed bad checks. . . . Because ACCS is a private
contractor, the 9th Circuit should not even undertake the test it
uses when various government bodies seek immunity, Judge Marsha
Berzon wrote. Extending sovereign immunity to a private company
would be a "category error," she wrote. . . . "Examples of category
errors include inquiring into the gender of a rock or into which day
of the week is reptilian," Berzon added in a footnote. . . . Ninth
Circuit Senior Judge A. Wallace Tashima and 8th Circuit Judge John
Gibson, who sat by designation, joined Berzon's opinion in Del Campo v. American Corrective Counseling, 08
C.D.O.S. 1647. . . . Deepak Gupta, an attorney with the Washington,
D.C.-based
Public Citizen Litigation Group who argued the
plaintiff's case, said the opinion is especially important in an age
of increased privatization of governmental functions.
02-06-08
-- The United States leads the
world in a shameful category: the number of people it has locked up
for life without parole for crimes committed by juveniles. Juvenile
crime should not be taken lightly, but young people should not be
completely written off. . . . According to Human Rights Watch, 2,380
people in this country are serving life sentences for crimes they
committed before they turned 18. That makes the United States an
extreme global outlier. Sentencing juveniles to life without parole
is at odds with international law; the vast majority of the world’s
countries ban the practice. . . . Some juvenile criminals commit
horrible crimes, and the justice system should punish them
accordingly. Juveniles, though, are not adults. Even their brain
development is different, making them less able than older people to
resist impulses. Consideration should also be given to the nature of
the crime. In some cases, juveniles have been imprisoned for life
for acting as accessories or lookouts for adults. Putting a
16-year-old who played such a role in jail for perhaps 65 years is
an extraordinarily harsh, and expensive, societal response.
02-06-08 --A Rhode Island judge ruled Tuesday
that felony cases brought while state law briefly treated
17-year-olds as adults would be dismissed or transferred to Family
Court. . . . The judge, Daniel A. Procaccini of Superior Court,
ruled that about 100 pending cases would be dismissed. Cases in
which a grand jury has returned an indictment will be transferred to
Family Court, but they can be returned to Superior Court if the
attorney general thinks the crime is egregious and should be
elevated to the adult level. . . . “It is apparent that defendants’
rights were violated by their direct placement in the adult criminal
system,” Judge Procaccini wrote. . . . The dismissed cases can be
refiled in juvenile court, according to the ruling. . . . Attorney
General Patrick C. Lynch appealed the ruling Tuesday, saying in a
statement that it puts cases that should be in Superior Court in
limbo. . . . “This state of uncertainty is not fair to victims and
their families,” Mr. Lynch said.
02-04-08 --
Massachusetts judges and juries
released 37 of 60 convicted sex offenders between July 2006 and June
2007 over the objections of prosecutors who said they were too
dangerous to set free, according to court records. . . . The rate of
sex offenders released is in sharp contrast to the outrage expressed
yesterday by police and prosecutors after the arrest of a sex offender
who allegedly raped a 6-year-old boy in a New Bedford library. . . . A
judge released Corey Saunders in 2006, even though prosecutors and two
court-appointed psychologists had argued that he posed a threat to
children. . . . "It certainly disturbs me when people the court has
had an opportunity to hold [are released] instead, and they commit
additional crimes," said Michael O'Keefe, district attorney for the
Cape and Islands and president of the Massachusetts District Attorneys
Association. . . . When a convicted sex offender is about to be
released after serving a prison sentence, prosecutors are
automatically notified. If they think the offender is a risk to commit
a new crime, they can recommend that a judge or jury send the offender
to the state facility in Bridgewater reserved for men declared to be
sexually dangerous.
02-04-08 --
If you see former Gov. Jane
Swift this weekend campaigning for John McCain, be sure to thank her
for the 2002 appointment of the sex offender-friendly Superior Court
Judge Richard Moses. . . . Moses is the 62-year-old judge who cut
loose a filthy pervert sex offender named Corey Saunders a year ago
over the vociferous objections of a prosecutor and three
psychologists. The extremely compassionate judge noted that young
Corey once had a teddy bear, and what was the big deal anyway? He had
a low IQ and hadn’t attacked any little boys for seven years. . . .
The fact that the Level 3 sex offender had spent those seven years
locked up, with no little boys available, apparently didn’t register
with the judge. You know the rest of the story: The pervert Moses
released now stands accused of raping a 6-year-old boy in the stacks
of the downtown New Bedford Public Library. . . . Would it surprise
you to learn that, as a law student, this Moses was a legal intern for
the Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts? He was.
The
first batch of convicted crack cocaine dealers will be getting out
this year, and Virginia will feel the brunt.
By Emma
Schwartz
01-28-08 --
The first batch of convicted crack cocaine dealers will getting out
this year, and Virginia will feel the brunt. . . . In the coming
months the first trickle of convicted crack cocaine dealers is
expected to head home from prison months, if not years, earlier than
expected—a result of recent changes in the sentencing guidelines that
will retroactively lower the punishment for most defendants convicted
of peddling the addictive drug.
01-23-08 --
Abdus-Shahid M.S. Ali's lawsuit against prison guards was based on
allegations of harassment and mistreatment. But the Supreme Court's
decision yesterday that he is barred from suing rests on an
ambiguous federal statute that has confounded the courts and sharply
divided the justices. . . . It involves the word "any." . . . Ali's
lawsuit alleging a missing Koran and prayer rug is barred under the
Federal Tort Claims Act, the court said in a 5 to 4 ruling, because
the law includes prison guards among those immune from suit. . . .
The confusion in the courts comes because the immunity is mentioned
in a section of the law that blocks lawsuits against the government
over the "loss of goods, merchandise or other property" detained by
customs or excise officers. The law then adds "or any other law
enforcement officer."
01-18-08 --
An Iowa grandmother has been banished to jail,
including a night in isolation, after refusing to
give in to a judge's demand that she submit to a
psychiatric exam and take psychotropic drugs if
prescribed to mitigate her opposition to abortion,
her husband has confirmed. . . . "It is not 'my
body, my choice?'" Donna Holman told Johnson County
District Court, giving new meaning to a common
pro-abortion slogan, in her pleadings submitted in
support of her request for a reconsideration of her
sentence. . . . "I find it especially strange and
abhorrent that a female judge would somehow think it
is normal for Planned Parenthood to systematically
kill babies in the womb, but abnormal for me to
oppose these serial killers," the court pleading
said. "Is it not hypocritical for this court to
acknowledge a women's purported right in seeking
medical help for destroying her child, while denying
me the basic right to refuse 'medical help?'' . . .
"This court is apparently questioning my morality!"
she wrote.
U.S. Seeks to Force
Suspect to Reveal Password to Computer Files
By Ellen Nakashima,
Washington Post Staff Writer
01-16-08 --
The federal government is asking a U.S. District
Court in Vermont to order a man to type a
password that would unlock files on his computer,
despite his claim that doing so would constitute
self-incrimination. . . . The case, believed to be
the first of its kind to reach this level, raises a
uniquely digital-age question about how to balance
privacy and civil liberties against the government's
responsibility to protect the public. . . . The
case, which involves suspected possession of child
pornography, comes as more Americans turn to
encryption to protect the privacy and security of
files on their laptops and thumb drives. FBI and
Justice Department officials, meanwhile, have said
that encryption is allowing terrorists and criminals
to communicate their plots covertly.
California can
sentence criminals under 18 to life without parole.
It's cruel and unusual punishment.
Los Angeles Times
Editorial
01-16-08 --
California is paying a heavy price for its
get-tough-on-crime attitude, with an underfunded and
overcrowded prison system, the nation's worst
recidivism rate and a rotten international image as
the state with the highest death row population. But
of all the inequities of a dysfunctional penal
system and harsh state laws, few can touch our
predilection for discarding the lives of children
who commit crimes before they're old enough to fully
understand the consequences of their actions. . . .
Sentencing youths under 18 to life without the
possibility of parole is a violation of
international law that has been banned in nearly
every country in the world except this one. A recent
report by Human Rights Watch identified just seven
people outside the United States who have been
subjected to this cruel and unusual punishment --
but it found 227 in California, which leads the
nation in juvenile injustice.
SCOTT A. GOMEZ:
Removable ceiling tiles and sub-par door locks were
"an open invitation," his suit says. . . . He fell
and hurt himself while trying to rappel down the
side of a Colorado jail. He blames his injuries on
inadequate security.
By DeeDee Correll,
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
01-13-08 --
Scott Anthony Gomez Jr. made his first break from
the Pueblo County Jail two years ago. . .. He
pushed up a ceiling tile, hoisted himself into the
ventilation system and climbed until he reached a
roof. Then he shinnied down the wall on bedsheets
fashioned into a rope. . . . Caught two days later,
he was back in his cell. . . . The next time, Gomez
again pried loose a ceiling tile and vanished into
the guts of the building. But as he tried to rappel
on bedsheets down the side of the 85-foot building,
he fell. . . . Now the would-be Houdini is suing the
sheriff of the southern Colorado county, saying
authorities caused his injuries by making it too
easy to fly the coop.
'Unsuitable for release,' Curtis Harris still got out. He apparently
shot his wife, then himself.
By
Andrew Blankstein, Mitchell Landsberg and Paloma Esquivel, Los
Angeles Times Staff Writers
01-08-08 --
There was no lack of warning. Curtis Bernard Harris had a long
history of violent, abusive, criminal behavior, including twice
seizing his estranged wife and terrorizing her. . . . Still, a judge
in Pomona released Harris from jail late last month, allowing him to
tie up any loose ends before being sentenced to prison in the most
recent of those cases. The judge freed him even though the Los
Angeles County Probation Department said he was "unsuitable for
release." . . . On Saturday, a maid cleaning a Whittier motel room found the
bodies of Monica Thomas-Harris, 37, of Upland and Harris, 34, of
Chino. Harris apparently shot and killed his wife before turning the
gun on himself, West Covina Police Lt. Ron Mitchell said. . . . The
deaths immediately raised questions about Harris' being freed on his
own recognizance -- a decision by L.A. County Superior Court Judge
Tia Fisher that was not opposed by prosecutors.
In its brief, state
concedes judge may have gone too far in imposing
banishment from all but one county as parole
condition
Alyson M. Palmer,
Fulton County Daily Report,
Law.com
01-08-08 --
Justices of the Georgia Supreme Court on Monday
wrestled with the case of a man who claims to have
been unconstitutionally banished from all of Georgia
except rural ToombsCounty. . . . At issue was
Gregory Mac Terry, who has spent the past 12 years
in prison after pleading guilty on allegations that
he had threatened his estranged wife. Terry's
lawyer, McNeill Stokes, says his client had an
opportunity for parole in 2001, but he was returned
to prison because his banishment from all but one of
Georgia's 159 counties meant he couldn't complete a
work release program that was not available in
ToombsCounty. . . . Terry has a
tentative parole date for 2009.
Panels split in
upholding sentences in child pornography and bribery
cases that fell below sentencing guidelines
Alyson M. Palmer,
Fulton County Daily Report
01-03-08 --
To many, the justices from the U.S. Supreme Court
last month sent a simple message to appeals courts
around the country: When reviewing the sentencing
decisions of trial judges, back off. . . . But last
week a judge on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals signaled that he's not rolling over. . . .
Judge Joel F. Dubina's response to the high court
came in a case in which federal prosecutors in
Florida had challenged as too lenient a seven-year
sentence for a distributor of child pornography. The
sentence was more than five years under the
sentencing range outlined in the federal sentencing
guidelines, but over Dubina's dissent, two other
judges affirmed the seven-year term. . . . That
decision appears to follow the deferential approach
adopted by the high court in a pair of major
sentencing decisions issued Dec. 10, Gall v. United States, 128 S.Ct. 586,
and Kimbrough v. United States, 128 S.Ct.
558. . . . Dubina complained the seven-year sentence
was "substantively unreasonable" under Gall.
Support Prison
Reform
"We
lay it
down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give a reciprocation
of right; that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct,
founded in force, and not in conscience." -- Thomas Jefferson--
(Notes on the state of Virginia, 1782)
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Updated 01/13/2010
