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Criminal Law

Crime and Consequences

Criminal law issues from the perspective of victims of crime and the law-abiding public.
By Kent Scheidegger et al.

Post Frequency: 1.8/day

Last Entry: November 25, 2008 at 18:31:33

News Scan

Posted on February 22, 2008
Murder Victim's Note Helps Convict Husband. A trial court in Wisconsin has convicted Mark Jensen of the 1998 murder of his wife, Julie, based, in part, on a note she left to her neighbor with instructions to give it to police only if she were to die. AP writer Carrie Antlfinger reports in the Washington Post that Julie had grown suspicious of her husband, Mark Jensen, and wanted someone to look into her death after she died...

Enhancement

Posted on February 22, 2008
From AP in Cincinnati: A federal court jury on Friday found the owner of a company that sells "male enhancement" tablets and other herbal supplements guilty of conspiracy to commit mail fraud, bank fraud and money laundering. Steve Warshak, whose conviction was reported Friday by The Cincinnati Enquirer, is founder and president of Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals, which distributes Enzyte...

News Scan

Posted on February 21, 2008
Call to Restore England's Death Penalty: The relatives of a victim murdered by a British man found guilty today of killing five women are asking the government to restore the death penalty. A report by Angela Balakrishnan in today's Guardian quotes a statement by the family of Tania Nicol, Suffolk sex predator Steve Wright's last victim,"...

CLS Conference on Campus Violence

Posted on February 21, 2008
Looks like an interesting event at Columbia Law School: The Health, Law and Society Program of the Columbia Law School is pleased to announce a one day conference on Violence on Campus: Prediction, Prevention and Response to be held on Friday, April 4, 2008 at the Law School...

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News Scan

Posted on February 20, 2008
Juvenile Offenders are going Home for Punishment in New York City according to this story by Leslie Kaufman in today's New York Times. The alternative sentencing program, called the Juvenile Justice Initiative, sends medium risk offenders back home, where the family and offender receive intensive therapy...

Retroactivity, Remedies, and AEDPA

Posted on February 20, 2008
Nineteen years ago this Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court virtually eliminated the retroactive application of newly created rules of criminal procedure on federal habeas corpus in its landmark decision in Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288 (1989). Today, in Danforth v...

A "Free Spirit" Mitigation

Posted on February 20, 2008
From Fox News comes the story of 24 year old Allenna Ward convicted and sentenced for having sex with several of her high school students. According to the story, forensic psychiatrist Donna Schwartz-Watts offered this supposed characterization of Ward: Schwartz-Watts said Ward is not a pedophile, but rather a childlike victim suffering from personality disorders and a repressed childhood...

SCOTUS Take Exclusionary Rule Case

Posted on February 19, 2008
The U.S. Supreme Court has issued its order list from last Friday's conference. The one criminal case granted is Herring v. United States, No. 07-513. The Question Presented is: Whether the Fourth Amendment requires evidence found during a search incident to an arrest to be suppressed when the arresting officer conducted the arrest and search in sole reliance upon facially credible but erroneous information negligently provided by another law enforcement agent...

Thinking Carefully About Sex Offender Policies

Posted on February 19, 2008
When one reads stories like this, it's easy to understand the public sentiment for strong punishments against sex offenders. Likewise, the horrific story of Megan Kanka which spurred the development of the various sex offender registries is another reminder why public and legislative sentiment is so inclined to favor restrictive measures against sex offenders...

News Scan

Posted on February 19, 2008
FISA: The Wall Street Journal has this editorial on the FISA legislation stalled by the House. "What we have here is a remarkable display of the anti-antiterror minority at work." Mumia Abu-Jamal had his third state postconviction petition denied by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court...

A Short Note on Antidepressants, Violence, and Kazmierczak

Posted on February 16, 2008
Ed Silverman at Pharmalot has this post on the emerging (albeit very preliminary) evidence that gunman Stephen Kazmierczak had stopped taking his psychiatric medication before the killings at Northern Illinois University. As ABC news reports, there's evidence that Kazmierczak had a history of mental illness, which seems to have included depression, violence, and self mutilating behaviors...

Policing Priorities

Posted on February 15, 2008
Chip Johnson has this commentary in the SF Chronicle on city government priorities in Oakland, California: On the heels of the city's eighth homicide in four days, [City Administrator Deborah] Edgerly's office announced that the city, in response to complaints from local florists, would enforce a zero-tolerance policy on illegal street vendors on Valentine's Day...

SCOTUS Notes

Posted on February 15, 2008
The U.S. Supreme Court held a conference today. As expected, no grants or denials of certiorari were announced. The Court did issue an orders list of routine orders regarding briefing and argument. Announcement of the cases granted and denied today will be made in Tuesday's orders list...

News Scan

Posted on February 15, 2008
Judge Joseph Sneed: Today services were held for Judge Joseph Sneed, who served for over thirty years on the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Bob Egelko has this story in the San Francisco Chronicle. Judge Sneed died in his home Saturday at the age of 87...

News Scan

Posted on February 13, 2008
Tax/Crime Protest: In Oakland, California, shopkeeper Scott Silvera has tried for months to get mayor Ron Dellums' attention on the crime problem. "Finally, fed up, he vowed to stop paying sales taxes until he heard from the mayor's office," reports Phillip Matier in the SF Chron...

Strange Bedfellows Call for Limiting Faretta

Posted on February 12, 2008
The "top side" amicus briefs have been filed in Indiana v. Edwards, No. 07-208. The briefs to date and other pertinent documents are available here. Along with the expected amici of CJLF, other states, and the federal government, we have some unusual players...

News Scan

Posted on February 12, 2008
NJ Supreme Court Approves Passenger Criminal Checks An AP Story by Jeffrey Gold reports that the New Jersey Supreme Court has ruled 6-0 that police can run a criminal check on a passenger during a traffic stop. The driver and any passengers are seized when an officer stops a vehicle according to the ruling which reinstated the conviction of a passenger with outstanding warrants, a suspended license and carrying crack cocaine...

Crime and the Presidential Race

Posted on February 10, 2008
Bob Egelko has this story in the SF Chron. "Crime is seldom a prominent issue in presidential primaries, largely because the front-runners in each party typically take similar positions. But the subject can explode on Democrats in a November election...

Can Nebraska Restore Its Death Penalty Without Legislation?

Posted on February 09, 2008
In its decision yesterday in State v. Mata, S05-1268, the Nebraska Supreme Court affirmed the judgment, including the death sentence, of child-killer Raymond Mata. However, as noted in yesterday's News Scan, the court declared the sole method of execution prescribed by statute in that state, electrocution, to be unconstitutional...

News Scan

Posted on February 08, 2008
Electrocution: Cruel and Unusual? Currently, Nebraska is the only state that utilizes the electric chair as their sole means of execution. However, Nate Jenkins from the Associated Press writes today that the Nebraska Supreme Court has ruled electrocution to be cruel and unusual...

News Scan

Posted on February 07, 2008
Daryl Atkins: A Virginia circuit judge, who had previously commuted the death sentence of murderer Daryl Atkins, has announced that he will stay his order while the state's appeal is pending. A story by AP writer Sonja Barisic reports that in the appeal, the state contends that a local trial judge lacked the authority to commute Atkins' sentence...

Ding Dong, the Witch Has a Short Life Expectancy

Posted on February 06, 2008
First the good news. When California's Legislature convenes for its next session after the November election, the criminal-friendly persons presently running both houses won't be running them. The voters of California have once again shown that they have much better judgment when they vote directly on issues than they do in electing legislators...

The Ubiquity of Substance Abuse in the Calculus of Crime and Mental Illness

Posted on February 06, 2008
As mentioned previously, the recent National Institute of Mental Health's CATIE study suggested a link between schizophrenia and violence. That conclusion generated a lot of controversy from folks who assert that there is no link between mental illness and violence, touting the frequent mantra that those with mental illness are no more likely to become violent than the general population...

News Scan

Posted on February 06, 2008
Brooklyn Police Scandal: Four Brooklyn narcotics officers have been charged with misconduct and falsifying records. Christine Hauser of the New York Times reports that Gravesend and Bay Ridge are the two areas in Brooklyn where cases have been affected the most...

McCain, Judges, and the Great Question

Posted on February 04, 2008
With John McCain's emergence as the front-runner for the Republican nomination, there has been much discussion about the kind of judicial appointments he would make. For issues related to crime, judicial appointments are the single most important aspect of presidential authority...

News Scan

Posted on February 04, 2008
Crime and Politics: In Olympia, Washington, lawmakers are now targeting drunk drivers and sex offenders with new bill proposals. With 2008 being an election year, officials are now trying to get tough on crime. According to Curt Woodard, an AP writer in the Seattle Post?Intelligencer, officials seem to be focusing on areas such as privacy and free speech...

News Scan

Posted on February 01, 2008
An Arsonist Turns to Stalking. Today on sfgate.com Gene Johnson, from Associated Press, writes that Allen Parmelee is spending the remainder of his 24-year sentence digging up information on the judges, lawyers and police officers that put him behind bars...

Japan Executions

Posted on February 01, 2008
The sun set on three murderers in the Land of the Rising Sun today, the AP reports. What kind of crime gets one executed in Japan? Pretty much the same as here: (1) murder of a prior rape victim in retaliation for reporting the crime; (2) rape and murder in two separate cases; and (3) murder of two people and attempted murder of a third...

Injection Developments

Posted on January 30, 2008
The Eleventh Circuit vacated a stay of execution granted on an injection claim in McNair v. Allen. The court found that the � 1983 claim was barred by the statute of limitations. There are two plaintiffs in the case. The one with an imminent execution date (tomorrow) is James Callahan...

News Scan

Posted on January 30, 2008
The name says it all according to Kevin Johnson in this story in USA Today. The Caston Brothers aka ?James Gang? from Lake Providence, LA had their lives planned for them at birth. Their father named all three sons, Jesse, Frank and Sonny after the outlaw James Gang...

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