Criminal Law

Idaho Senators Nix Idea of Early Inmate Release

Posted on February 18, 2010
Legislative leaders threw water on the notion Idaho should follow states including Oregon and California by releasing inmates from prison early to accommodate budget cuts. Read more... The citizens of Idaho should be concerned with the current sentencing policies of this state...

Reported Crime Down in Boise for 2009

Posted on February 17, 2010
Boise Chief of Police Michael Masterson presented the city?s 2009 Statistical Crime Report to Mayor Bieter and the Boise City Council this afternoon. The Chief announced: 2.6% drop in major crimes for Boise in 2009, including: 19.5% drop in reported rapes, 6% drop in burglaries, 2...

An Appeal to Fear

Posted on February 17, 2010
Gov. Jennifer Granholm's proposal to let an estimated 7,500 Michigan inmates out of prison early and save the cash-strapped state money is coming under fire from prosecutors worried about public safety. Granholm wants to cut more than $130 million from state prison spending in the budget year starting Oct...

Overincarceration is Us

Posted on February 16, 2010
Justice Anthony Kennedy spoke out against excessive prison sentences this month in California, criticizing the state?s deeply misguided three-strikes law. It was a welcome message, delivered with unusual force. Much of the blame for the law, however, lies with the Supreme Court, which upheld it in a decision on which Justice Kennedy cast the deciding vote...

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Can the Criminal Justice System Be Reformed?

Posted on February 13, 2010
The nation?s criminal justice system is in need of an overhaul. This is particularly true of its incarceration policies. Too many people are being put behind bars who do not need to be there, at great cost to the states, and not enough attention is being paid to helping released prisoners re-enter society...

The Problem With Sex Offender Registries

Posted on February 11, 2010
As a teenager, Ricky Blackman carried an Oklahoma driver's license with the words "sex offender" stamped in red below his picture. His crime? Having sex with a 13-year-old girl when he was 16. The offense occurred when he lived in Iowa, and the label followed him to Oklahoma...

A Difficult Decision

Posted on February 10, 2010
The family of slain state Constable Robert Bailey decided months ago that they would prefer his killer remain behind bars forever than for them to endure an emotional trial and subsequent appeals necessary for the state to put Walter Fayall III to death...

Pandering

Posted on February 09, 2010
Representative Duncan says Oklahoma courts should show repeat sex offenders no mercy. "I want the local prosecutors and local jurors and judges to have the option available if the facts meet a death sentence for them to consider it," said Duncan. Read more...

More Problems for US and the Underclass We've Built

Posted on February 05, 2010
Because of intravenous drug use, unprotected sex and tattooing with unsterile needles, rates of H.I.V. infection are nine times higher in prison populations than in the public, according to a 2009 report from the RAND Corporation. The rates of hepatitis C were found to be at least 10 times higher, and probably much more...

More Evidence on How the Death Penalty Fails as Public Policy

Posted on February 04, 2010
Nearly 50 years ago, as concern grew in the country about the fairness of death penalty laws, the American Law Institute published a "model statute" aimed at helping state lawmakers draft laws to ensure that death sentences were meted out fairly and consistently...

Incompetence

Posted on January 24, 2010
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) ? Nearly six weeks after Gov. Patrick J. Quinn halted an early release program that freed hundreds of potentially violent inmates, his administration is still struggling to identify which criminals ? and even how many ? were released...

Idaho Meth Project

Posted on January 23, 2010
The Idaho Meth Project is claiming success in changing the attitudes of teens regarding the effects of using methamphetamine. Governor Otter is proposing spending $500,000 in FY 2011. Social scientists like myself are skeptical of claims of causality...

Why Police Misconduct Matters

Posted on January 23, 2010
Last week I was a juror in the trial of a man accused of selling a $10 bag of heroin to an undercover police officer. At the end of the two days of testimony, I concluded that the defendant was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. I also concluded that he should be acquitted...

Lewd gift from jury to judge calls death sentence into question

Posted on January 22, 2010
"From beginning to end," the Supreme Court intoned Tuesday, "judicial proceedings conducted for the purpose of deciding whether a defendant shall be put to death must be conducted with dignity and respect." And so a majority of the court decided that a trial in which jurors presented the judge with an "edible chocolate penis" and the bailiff with a pair of chocolate breasts deserved a closer look...

Juvenile Waivers = Bad Policy

Posted on January 19, 2010
(CNN) -- A year ago, Maydellyn Lamourt watched her 16-year-old son's dreams fall apart. The outgoing sophomore who enjoyed playing sports was charged and sentenced as an adult in Connecticut for third-degree assault. The crime: He and a friend stole a pack of gum from another teen...

A Silent Killer

Posted on January 10, 2010
About eight years ago, a company called Beef Products Inc. had the novel idea of injecting its ground beef with ammonia to kill deadly E. coli and salmonella. The Agriculture Department pronounced the idea effective and exempted Beef Products Inc. from routine tests...

Spinelss Not Just in California

Posted on January 08, 2010
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California was on the mark when he said this week that the state needed to change policies that spend more money on prisons than on the state?s once-vaunted higher education systems, which are being bled to death in budget cuts...

Controversy Remians Over Ohio's Use of 1-Drug Execution Method

Posted on January 08, 2010
LUCASVILLE, Ohio (AP) -- Another successful execution using a lethal injection of just one drug instead of the traditional three has fueled debate over whether the state's unique approach should be adopted elsewhere. Read more... This system is still flawed in that it still requires an intravenous injection...

Schwarzenegger Seeks Shift From Prisons to Colleges

Posted on January 07, 2010
SACRAMENTO ? With his state strapped and his legacy looming, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed on Wednesday to greatly reduce the amount of money California spends on its prisons and to funnel that sum to the state?s higher education system instead...

China Executes Foreign National

Posted on December 29, 2009
(CNN) -- The British government condemned China's execution of a British national Tuesday on drug smuggling charges. "I ... am appalled and disappointed that our persistent requests for clemency have not been granted," Prime Minister Gordon Brown said...

THREE DAYS after Donald E. Gates

Posted on December 27, 2009
THREE DAYS after Donald E. Gates was released from prison after serving 28 years for a murder he didn't commit, federal prosecutors acknowledged that they received, but failed to act on, information discrediting testimony key to his conviction. In the same week, a Florida man imprisoned for 35 years for kidnapping and rape was freed after DNA tests proved his innocence...

The End of a Stupid Policy

Posted on December 26, 2009
Public health advocates held an understandably muted celebration when President Obama signed a bill repealing a 21-year-old ban on federal financing for programs that supply clean needles to drug addicts. The bill brought an end to a long and bitter struggle between the public health establishment ? which knew from the beginning that the ban would cost lives ? and ideologues in Congress who had closed their eyes to studies showing that making clean needles available to addicts slowed the rate of infection from H...

Nursing Homes with Razor Wire

Posted on December 24, 2009
Sometime in the 1970s, the United States began a love affair with incarceration that continues to this day. After holding nearly steady for decades, our prison population began to climb as criminal justice policy took a sharply punitive turn, with the massive criminalization of drug use, "three strikes" laws and other harsh sentencing practices...

How Many Innocent People Can Dance of the Head of a Pin?

Posted on December 19, 2009
Bartow, Florida (CNN) -- After more than three decades in prison, a Florida man was set free Thursday after a DNA test showed he did not kidnap and rape a 9-year-old boy in 1974. Read more... It seems that nearly everyday we read about another inmate being released from prison because they are innocent (not just not guilty)...

Executions Up, Death Sentences Down in 2009

Posted on December 18, 2009
More death row convicts were executed in the United States this year than last, but juries continue to grow more wary of capital punishment, according to a new report. Death sentences handed down by judges and juries in 2009 continued a trend of decline for seven years in a row, with 106 projected for the year...

For Judges on Facebook, Friendship Has Limits

Posted on December 17, 2009
In a recent opinion, the state?s Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee decided it was time to set limits on judicial behavior online. When judges ?friend? lawyers who may appear before them, the committee said, it creates the appearance of a conflict of interest, since it ?reasonably conveys to others the impression that these lawyer ?friends? are in a special position to influence the judge...

U.S. Prison Population Cintinues to Increase

Posted on December 09, 2009
The prison population in the United States edged up slightly last year, but the total number of inmates dropped in 20 states, including New York, Georgia and Michigan. Justice Department figures released Tuesday showed the overall state and federal prison population is at an all-time high of 1...

Huckabee's pardons at issue after police killings

Posted on December 01, 2009
The shooting deaths Sunday of four police officers near Tacoma, Wash., and the ensuing manhunt for the suspect have renewed scrutiny of the pardon record of former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who commuted the suspect's prison term nine years ago, leading to his release...

Why Religion and Politics Should Never Mix

Posted on November 30, 2009
Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) has taken at least 20 "missionary" trips overseas since he's been in office, allegedly paid for by U.S. taxpayers, using military transport.  He is especially fond of Uganda, boasting that he has "adopted" the East African nation...

College and the Former Inmate

Posted on November 25, 2009
The spartan dorm room where Mario Rocha spent his first semester at George Washington University felt a little like solitary confinement. He should know. He once spent a summer in solitary confinement. In some ways, Rocha is a typical student at GWU, where he enrolled in January as a freshman...

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