The Cautionary Instruction: NTSB pushing for lower drunk driving threshold

Matthew T. Mangino
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/Ipso Facto
May 24, 2013

One drink may soon be the limit if you’re driving. One standard drink, on average 14 grams of alcohol, will increase the average person’s blood-alcohol content (BAC) to roughly 0.02 percent to 0.05 percent. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) wants .05 percent to be the legal limit.

Alcohol related crashes account for nearly a third of all U.S. traffic deaths and 146,000 injuries each year. Impaired driving fatalities have dropped sharply since the early 1980s; however, the death rate has remained flat between 30 and 32 percent since 1995.

A study recently cited by the NTSB found crash risk jumps with a BAC as low as 0.04 percent and the risk doubles at 0.08 percent. “More recent studies have shown that risk is significantly higher when a driver’s BAC is 0.05, and that crash risk climbs rapidly at BAC levels that exceed 0.08,” the report said.

As a result, the NTSB has recommended that states reduce the BAC that qualifies as drunken driving to 0.05 percent. "This is critical because impaired driving remains one of the biggest killers in the United States," said Deborah Hersman, the NTSB chairman. "To make a bold difference will require bold action. But it can be done."

In 1982, the NTSB recommended that states reduce the drunken-driving limit from 0.10% to 0.08%. Utah became the first state to lower its limit in 1983, but it was 21 years before all 50 states fell in line.
At the time, about half of all highway deaths involved alcohol-impaired driving and killed 21,113 people. The number of deaths has been cut in half since then. "We have made progress…but not nearly enough," Hersman said.

Not everyone is on board with the NTSB. Republicans in Congress have a message for those who want to dramatically lower the legal alcohol limit for drivers: Washington needs to butt out.
GOP leaders on Capitol Hill said the legal limit on BAC should be left to state legislatures. And while the NTSB’s recommendations are nonbinding, Republicans are warning the government against withholding federal funding to push states to lower the BAC threshold.

Tying federal highway dollars to states’ drunken driving laws is a bipartisan practice that goes back decades. The Reagan administration used the threat of lost money to get states to raise their drinking age to 21 in the 1980s, and Congress used similar leverage to prod states to reduce the BAC threshold to 0.08 percent.

Michigan is considering raising the BAC threshold. The state was one of the last to reduce the BAC threshold to .08, passing the law in 2003. The reduction had a sunset clause. The legal blood alcohol level will return to .10 on October 1 unless a new law is passed.

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Prison Officials Rethink Solitary Confinement

A growing number of prison professionals around the country are having a dimming view of the effectiveness and expense of solitary confinement, as well as the realization of its mental and physical toll on inmates, reported CBS News.

"Ninety-five percent of them are going to be released and live in your and my neighborhood," Mississippi Prison Commissioner Christopher Epps said. "We're in the business of corrections. We're in the business or rehabilitation."

Evidence that solitary confinement controls violence or curbs misbehavior has been scarce, while solitary confinement makes matters even worse for the increased number of people with mental illnesses who are incarcerated.

Mentally ill crowd America's jails.

In the old days, anytime an inmate misbehaved, Epps said, prison officials didn't take any chances and placed him in a single cell away from the general population. An inmate would then have to prove his good behavior for a very long time to be transferred back.

The reasons for being sent to solitary were varied and subjective -- from refusing work assignments on Parchman's sprawling 1,800 acres of farm land, to fighting with other inmates. Six-month or year-long stints in solitary were not unusual. Epps knew one inmate who was held in solitary for five years.

"They change physically," Epps said. He saw one inmate's hair go completely gray in six months. "It is my belief it affected them mentally."

To read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57585177/mississippi-rethinks-solitary-confinement/

Arias changes mind, asks jury for life

Convicted killer Jodi Arias asked an Arizona jury to spare her life during the penalty phase of her trial.  The jury is now deliberating.

After her conviction, Arias told a local Fox television news affiliate she preferred a death sentence to life in prison: "I believe death is the ultimate freedom, so I'd rather just have my freedom as soon as I can get it," she said.  She has obviously changed her mind.

Arias was found guilty earlier this month of the murder of Travis Alexander, whose body was found slumped in the shower of his Phoenix-area home in 2008. He had been stabbed 27 times, shot in the face and had his throat slashed.

Asking for her life to be spared, Arias told the jury this week that she planned to use her time in prison to bring about positive changes, including donating her hair to be made into wigs for cancer victims, helping establish prison recycling programs and designing T-shirts that would raise money for victims of domestic abuse.

The chances of Arias being executed are slim even if she asked for the death penalty.

While women account for about one in eight of the arrests for murder in the United States, less than 2 percent of death row inmates are women, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Only one woman has ever been executed in Arizona, one-time Alaska cabaret singer Eva Dugan. Convicted of killing a wealthy Tucson chicken farmer, she was hanged and accidentally decapitated in 1930.

There are two women and 122 men currently on death row in the Arizona. Of the more than 1,300 murderers executed nationwide since 1976, only 12, or fewer than one percent, were women.

Arizona, which is among 32 U.S. states that have the death penalty, has executed 11 people since 2010, most recently in December when Richard Stokley was put to death for killing two girls in 1991.

To read more:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/21/us-usa-crime-jodiarias-deathpenalty-idUSBRE94K0FU20130521

Man released from prison after 27 years is sent back

Barry Beach had spent 27 years in prison for the 1979 murder of a teenage classmate.  He became a cause celebre among some influential state and national advocates who say his murder confession was coerced.

Years of calls for his release culminated in a 2011 judge's order freeing him and laying the groundwork for a new trial, with testimony expected from witnesses who allege Nees was killed in an out-of-control fight among girls.

Last week, the Montana Supreme Court ordered him back to prison and took away his brief taste of normal life. Beach had been settling into a new life in Billings, with a house and a job.

The state Supreme Court's reversal of the 2011 order puts Beach back in prison for what will likely be the rest of his life barring some kind of intervention. Almost nothing about the Barry Beach case has been routine — and advocates promised they will find other ways to prove his innocence.

To read more: http://news.yahoo.com/mont-man-custody-release-1979-slaying-174259874.html

Pennsylvania Court Rules Miller v. Alabama Not Retroactive

Erie County Judge Shad Connelly -- in the first decision of its kind in Erie County -- ruled last week that, based on current law, the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Miller v. Alabama is not retroactive, reported the Erie Times-News.

The U.S. Supreme Court said mandatory life sentences without parole are unconstitutional for defendants convicted of murder as juveniles. The court did not prohibit all life sentences with no parole for juvenile offenders but said such sentences cannot be automatic.

If it were retroactive, it would apply to cases, such as those of all the juvenile lifers in Erie and Crawford counties, that were filed before Miller.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has not issued an opinion with regard to Miller's retroactivity, although Commonwealth v. Ian Cunningham, a case dealing with the issue of retroactivity was argued before the court last fall

"There is nothing in Miller which either explicitly or impliedly sets forth that it is to be applied retroactively," Connelly wrote in a four-page opinion. In addition, he wrote, "neither the Pennsylvania Supreme Court nor Pennsylvania Legislature has recognized the Miller decision as retroactive."

The ruling could affect eight other juvenile "lifer" inmates from Erie County who were convicted of committing murder as juveniles and sentenced to automatic life terms with no parole. Crawford County has four such inmates, and Pennsylvania 373 overall.

To read more: http://www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130516/NEWS02/305169922/-1/NEWSSITEMAP

It’s time to padlock Ohio debtor prison

Matthew T. Mangino
The Vindicator
May 19, 2013

Some Ohio counties, in defiance of state and federal law, are locking away indigent defendants who are too poor to pay off their fines and costs.

Some states apply “poverty penalties,” such as late fees, payment plan fees and interest, when people are unable to pay all their debts in a lump sum, reported CBS News’ “Moneywatch.” Alabama charges a 30 percent collection fee. In North Carolina people are charged for using a public defender, so indigent defendants who cannot afford an attorney are forced to face jail time without counsel. Florida allows private debt collectors to add a 40 percent surcharge to the original debt.

CASH-REGISTER JUSTICE

In 2010, the Brennan Center for Justice issued a report on Florida’s reliance on fees to fund its courts. Since 1996, Florida added more than 20 new categories of financial obligations for criminal defendants and, at the same time, eliminated most exemptions for those who cannot pay. The process of cranking up fees to pay for courts became known as “cash- register justice.”

The report concluded that the “current fee system creates a self-perpetuating cycle of debt for persons re-entering society after incarceration.” Not to mention the court-related debt that lands some people in prison for the first time.

In a number of Ohio counties, things are even worse.

According to a recent report prepared by the ACLU, “The Outskirts of Hope,” the inability to pay a fine in Ohio is “the beginning of a protracted process that may involve contempt charges, mounting fees, arrest warrants and even jail time.”

In some Ohio counties offenders are being jailed because they are too poor to pay fines. That is a violation of federal and state law and the perpetuation of an antiquated and draconian process known as “debtors’ prison.”

In the second half of 2012, more than 20 percent of all bookings in Ohio’s Huron County Jail were related to failure to pay fines, according to the ACLU.

During the same time period, Erie County jailed 75 people for failure to pay, and Parma Municipal Court in Cuyahoga County jailed 45 people.

Nearly 30 years ago, the United States Supreme Court ruled that courts cannot properly revoke a defendant’s probation for failure to pay a fine and make restitution, absent evidence that the defendant was willfully refusing to pay.

If a court initially determined a fine was the appropriate penalty for a crime, the court could not later imprison a person solely because he lacked the resources to pay the fine.

While jail is an option for an individual willfully refusing to pay a fine, jail is never an option in Ohio for failure to pay court costs and restitution. The Ohio Supreme Court has ruled that fines are criminal sanctions, and costs and restitution are civil. Yet, according to the ACLU, some Ohio counties regularly incarcerate people for failure to pay court costs.

A CRITICAL DISTINCTION

It appears that some courts fail to make the crucial distinction between defendants who have the means to pay their debts but refuse to pay, and those who are too poor to pay. Some suggest that the failure derives from the lack of consistent legal standards for determining willful nonpayment of court imposed-fines.

That is not the case in Ohio. The Ohio Constitution explicitly prohibits debtors’ prison, and the concept is further prohibited by statute and case law. The procedure is clearly defined in Ohio. Before jailing an individual for failure to pay fines, a judge must conduct a hearing where the individual is represented by counsel and has the opportunity to present evidence regarding her ability to pay the fine.

In spite of those clear directives, Ohioans are regularly jailed because they are simply too poor to pay.

(Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly and George and the former district attorney for Lawrence County, PA. You can read his blog at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on twitter @MatthewTMangino)

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GateHouse: Debtors’ prison thriving in America

Matthew T. Mangino
GateHouse News Service
May 17, 2013

As policymakers look for ways to generate revenue to fund the growing costs of the criminal justice system, an insidious practice has taken root in courtrooms across the country.

Indigent offenders are being strapped with enormous debt and then being jailed if they don’t pay. In 2010, the Brennan Center for Justice issued a report on Florida’s reliance on fees to fund its courts.

Since 1996, Florida added more than 20 new categories of financial obligations for criminal defendants and, at the same time, eliminated most exemptions for those who cannot pay. The process of cranking up fees to pay for courts became known as “cash register justice.”

The report concluded that the "current fee system creates a self-perpetuating cycle of debt for persons re-entering society after incarceration." Not to mention the court-related debt that lands some people in prison for the first time.

Some states apply "poverty penalties," such as late fees, payment plan fees and interest, when people are unable to pay all their debts in a lump sum, reported CBS News Moneywatch. Alabama charges a 30 percent collection fee, for instance, while Florida allows private debt collectors to add a 40 percent surcharge on the original debt. In North Carolina people are charged for using a public defender, so indigent defendants who cannot afford an attorney are forced to face jail time without counsel.

Things are even worse in some Ohio counties.

 

According to a recent report prepared by the ACLU, The Outskirts of Hope, the inability to pay a fine in Ohio is “the beginning of a protracted process that may involve contempt charges, mounting fees, arrest warrants and even jail time.”

 

In some Ohio counties offenders are being jailed because they are too poor to pay fines.  That is a violation of federal and state law and the perpetuation of an antiquated and draconian process known as “debtors’ prison.”

 

In the second half of 2012, over 20 percent of all bookings in Ohio’s Huron County Jail were related to failure to pay fines, according to the ACLU.  During the same time period Erie County jailed 75 people for failure to pay and Parma Municipal Court in Cuyahoga County jailed 45 people.

 

Nearly 30 years ago, the United States Supreme Court ruled that courts cannot properly revoke a defendant's probation for failure to pay a fine and make restitution, absent evidence that the defendant was willfully refusing to pay. If a court initially determined a fine was the appropriate penalty for the crime, the court could not later imprison a person solely because he lacked the resources to pay the fine.

 

It appears that some courts fail to make the crucial distinction between defendants who have the means to pay their debts but don’t, and those who are too poor to pay. Some suggest that the failure derives from the lack of consistent legal standards for determining willful nonpayment of court-imposed fines.

 

That is not the case in Ohio. The Ohio Constitution explicitly prohibits debtors’ prison, and the concept is further prohibited by statute and case law.  The procedure is clearly defined in Ohio and many other states. Before jailing an individual for failure to pay fines a judge must conduct a hearing where the individual is represented by counsel and has the opportunity to present evidence regarding her ability to pay the fine.

 

These practices are not just now being revealed. A 2010 report, In For a Penny: The Rise of America's New Debtors' Prisons lamented,  "[D]ay after day, indigent defendants are imprisoned for failing to pay legal debts they can never hope to manage." Three years later in Ohio, and across the country, people continue to be jailed because they’re simply too poor to pay.

 

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly and George and the former district attorney for Lawrence County, Pa. You can read his blog at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter at @MatthewTMangino.

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