Watch my appearance on Law & Crime Daily on the Law and Crime Network.
To watch the segment CLICK HERE
* Criminal Defense Attorney * Former Prosecutor * Former Parole Board Member * 724-658-8535
Watch my appearance on Law & Crime Daily on the Law and Crime Network.
To watch the segment CLICK HERE
Since the nationwide homicide rate jumped 25 percent in 2020, taking it back to where it was in the late 1990s, many cities this year are on track to be even worse than last year, prompting questions into the idea of focused deterrence and how it resulted in years of lowered crime rates in Philadelphia, reports ProPublica. Modeled on criminologist David Kennedy’s work in Boston, Cincinnati and other cities, focused deterrence involves authorities focusing outreach on the small groups of young men deemed most troublesome or at risk, reported The Crime Report. The idea, and others associated with it, was embraced by then-Mayor Michael Nutter and Commissioner Charles Ramsey.
As police became more restrained in their stops, the city’s homicide tally fell to levels not seen in decades. Caterina Roman, a professor of criminal justice at Temple University in Philadelphia, remains convinced that the gains in Philadelphia were partly the result of the evidence-based approaches being taken. For Roman, it all comes down to leaders and their policies. “These strategies were just phased out with new leadership there,” she said.
See also: Reducing
Violence: Why Simple Solutions Won’t Work.
To read more CLICK HERE
State lawmakers across the country made sweeping changes to policing this year on a wide array of issues, following last summer’s worldwide protests after the murder of George Floyd. Racial justice activists say far more change is needed, but 2021 has proven to be a groundbreaking year for police accountability, reported Stateline.
Many states passed laws to limit police use of force and
mandate more detailed data collection of police activity, making those issues
the most common areas of action this year, said Brandon Garrett, director of
the Duke Law Wilson Center for Science and Justice. The center, which has been
tracking state proposals, found that other laws covered topics such as
training, body cameras, disciplinary records, decertification procedures,
investigations, qualified immunity and biometric data.
“I’ve never seen a surge of legislative activity like this,”
Garrett said. “What made this past year exciting was not just the number of
bills, but legislators touching on subjects that have never been touched
before.”
Duke Law’s project found that seven states and the District
of Columbia took a “comprehensive” approach to the issue, passing wide-ranging
packages. All—Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, New York, Maryland,
Massachusetts and Washington state—have Democratic-led legislatures.
Many other states have acted as well. Since May of 2020,
when Floyd’s death became a national cause, more than 3,000 law
enforcement-related bills have been introduced by state lawmakers, according to
the National Conference of State Legislatures. Nineteen states have limited or
eliminated neck restraints. Fifteen states addressed statewide standards for
the use of force, and 15 created a duty to intervene for officers who witness a
fellow officer using excessive force.
Eleven states empowered state officials to investigate
misconduct after incidents, and five gave their attorneys general the authority
to investigate patterns and practices at police agencies. Five states have
provided guidance for state agencies on decertifying officers, along with five
that now require publication of disciplinary records after an officer’s
decertification.
At least six states have mandated statewide adoption of body
cameras. And four states have passed legislation limiting government immunity
as a defense for civil rights claims, known as “qualified immunity.”
Statehouses also saw a surge in police-related bills after
the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, “but not like this,” said Amber
Widgery, program principal with NCSL’s Criminal Justice Program.
“There’s been a tremendous uptick in volume overall, but the
bigger story is the number of bills that have gotten traction,” Widgery said.
“Police accountability has been a big priority in a lot of different states.”
The most sweeping changes came in states with Democratic
majorities, but even some red states such as Florida, Indiana and Utah enacted
bipartisan measures. In some places, though, GOP majorities stifled attempts at
broader accountability laws. Some even passed laws to further empower police,
banning local governments from cutting their budgets and cracking down on
protesters.
In some states, police groups worked with lawmakers on
measures they said would improve their profession, such as legislation to weed
out bad cops. In others, law enforcement leaders say they’ve been playing
defense, and legislators are no longer interested in what they have to say.
“There’s room to make some changes without destroying the
criminal justice system, but nobody's asking us,” said Peter Kehoe, executive
director of the New York State Sheriffs’ Association. “We have many progressive
legislators who just don’t like police.”
‘The Tide Is Shifting’
Even before the surge of bills this year, Virginia lawmakers
last fall held a special session focused on police policy changes. State Sen.
Mamie Locke, a Democrat, sponsored the package to restrict no-knock warrants
and chokeholds, and to create a process for decertifying officers for
misconduct.
Locke said Democrats’ newfound majorities in the Virginia
statehouse helped enable the changes, noting that some lawmakers and activists
had called for similar measures for years.
“It was time,” she said. “The tide is shifting in terms of
the need for reform.”
In Florida, a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers passed a law
that forces officers to disclose if they left their previous agency while under
investigation. The measure also requires departments to retain employment
records for five years after an officer leaves, and it updates police training
and tactics with provisions on chokeholds, use of force, de-escalation and a
duty to intervene.
“It was important to strike while the iron was hot,” said
state Rep. Fentrice Driskell, a Democrat who sponsored the bill. “The entire
world was paying attention to this, and that was a very important factor in us
being able to get this done.”
Oregon lawmakers passed 22 bills aimed at changing policing.
The measures will strengthen misconduct reporting mandates, limit the release
of booking photos, prevent officers from obscuring identification numbers and
limit the ability of police to charge someone for interfering with an officer.
Much of the legislation came from the House Judiciary Committee’s Equitable
Policing Subcommittee, led by Democratic state Rep. Janelle Bynum.
Bynum said the Oregon legislature’s fast-growing Black,
Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) Caucus brought perspective and momentum
to the issue.
“We’d never had numbers like that before,” she said. “We
also got record injections of cash from the federal government, which also made
funding some of these priorities possible. If we were scaling back and having
to cut our budget, that puts people in a completely different mindset.”
In other states, though, Republicans stymied proposed
policing changes. A package in Texas known as the George Floyd Act never
received a full vote in the House or Senate, much to the dismay of Democrats
and activists.
“This was a terrible session for police reform,” Lauren
Johnson, a policy strategist with the American Civil Liberties Union of
Texas, told
the Houston Press.
And some Minnesota activists have decried a compromise
measure passed by lawmakers there, calling it a “slap in the face,” the Minneapolis
Star-Tribune reported.
The Police Role
In some states, law enforcement leaders worked alongside
legislators. Indiana state Rep. Greg Steuerwald, a Republican, credited police
groups for the success of his measure, which the legislature unanimously
approved earlier this year. The new law limits chokeholds, mandates
de-escalation training and penalizes officers who turn off their body cameras.
Most importantly, Steuerwald said, the law makes it easier
to decertify officers for misconduct and requires that agencies review the
employment files of officers who apply at their departments.
“I heard many stories from law enforcement that they brought
disciplinary action against an officer, then found out that he had applied
elsewhere,” Steuerwald said. “Law enforcement thought the General Assembly
should address that to enhance their ability to provide proper public safety.”
Elsewhere, though, police say the desire to make big changes
cut them out of the conversation.
“It almost seems like folks see something on TV in another
state and they feel there needs to be a law,” said Brian Marvel, president of
the Peace Officers Research Association of California. “There's been so much
legislation, we have no idea what the ultimate ramifications are going to be.”
Marvel said his group supports efforts to create a
decertification process for rogue officers, but that the bill California lawmakers
are currently considering would create an advisory board with an anti-police
bias. The association also opposed a bill to eliminate neck restraints, which
Marvel called “a very effective tool.”
In New York, police leaders are warily watching several
proposals that came forward this session but did not pass.
“They don’t really seek our opinion on anything,” said
Kehoe, the sheriffs’ leader. “We don't have much of an affirmative agenda right
now, because there's nobody listening to us. We're trying to stem the tide.”
Kehoe said proposals to expunge criminal records and ease
punishments for parole violations would lead to an increase in crime and make
police officers feel devalued. The group also opposes a qualified immunity
bill.
The Work Ahead
Lawmakers, activists and researchers say that many
police-related policies will likely be revisited in future sessions. For now,
many states are attracted to employment-related measures, said Widgery, the
state legislative expert.
“One of the biggest areas where states have direct influence
is certification, decertification and training of officers,” she said. “There
hadn't been a lot of change in that area of the law for a while, and we're
seeing a lot of new requirements and state-level oversight.”
Locke, of Virginia, said lawmakers still need to address
reforms on sentencing minimums and expungement for past offenders. In Oregon,
Bynum wants to expand training and accountability provisions and improve
transparency for misconduct and use of force records. Remmu, the Washington
activist, wants to see community oversight commissions and changes to qualified
immunity.
“We have a foothold now,” she said. “It was important for
the people to see the return on their blood and sweat equity, because that
hasn’t been happening. It would be a shame if it’s a one-and-done, but I don’t
see that as the reality.”
To read more CLICK HERE
Homicides and shootings are up and the number of cops is down in cities from Atlanta to Seattle. Crime, as a result, is dominating the discourse in mayoral races — driving candidates to talk about beefing up police patrols and bolstering depleted departments’ ranks, reported Politico.
“When I talk to people, they’re scared,” said Atlanta City
Council President Felicia Moore, who’s running against Reed for mayor. “We have
seen and experienced on a daily basis crime that we just haven’t seen before.
People know that something has to happen — and they know the first responders
to a crime situation are police officers.”
It’s a far cry from the calls to “defund the police” that took
center stage in these cities just last summer. But the sobering reality of
rising gun violence and flagrant theft is changing the conversation, pushing
candidates to get tougher on crime in Democratic-leaning cities.
Eric Adams seemingly mastered this new, delicate balance in
New York City, where the long-ascendant progressive call to cut police funding
and end the “carceral state” landed with a dull thud this spring amid a surge
of shootings and hate crimes.
Poll after poll showed crime as the top concern on the minds
of Democratic voters, and that was the message Adams — who retired as a captain
in the NYPD before entering politics — hammered home almost exclusively from
the start of his campaign. Adams balanced that by promising reforms to abusive
policing, surging late in the game to clinch the Democratic nomination over
another pro-police candidate and progressive rivals who favored shifting funds
away from the cops.
Yet Adams’ victory is less a model to be replicated than an
example of a shift that’s been taking place on the ground for months as
candidates already being pushed to tackle police reform are simultaneously
being forced to confront crime head-on.
There’s been a wholesale shift on policing in Seattle, where
just last summer cries to defund the police were so forceful that the majority
of the City Council supported a plan to slash the police department’s budget by
50 percent. One year later, with homicides and gun violence on the rise and
a “staffing crisis” spurred by a record number of
officer departures, almost none of the major candidates running to replace
outgoing Mayor Jenny Durkan is outright backing defunding.
To read more CLICK HERE
Pope Francis said recently during the Pre-Summit of the UN Food Systems Summit that the existence of hunger in a world that produces enough food for everyone is “a crime that violates basic human rights,” reported Jurist.
Earlier in July, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said that the COVID-19 pandemic “pushed” an additional
124 million people into extreme poverty, so that about one in three people
around the world did not have access to adequate food in 2020. As many as 811
million people faced hunger in 2020. According to Guterres, global poverty
is expected to be at about seven percent by 2030.
The Pre-Summit
of the UN Food Systems Summit, which is taking place this year from July 26
through 28, focuses on evidence-based and scientific approaches to food systems
transformation. Pope Francis addressed the meeting Monday, stating that the
pre-summit participants had the responsibility of “realizing the dream” of a
world where those in greatest need of basic necessities such as food, water,
and medicine were able to get them first.
Pope Francis said:
We develop new technologies with which we can increase the
planet’s capacity to bear fruit, and yet we continue to exploit nature to the
point of sterilizing it, thus expanding not only external deserts but also
internal spiritual deserts. We produce enough food for everyone, but many
are left without their daily bread. This “constitutes a true
scandal,” a crime that violates basic human rights. Therefore, it is
everyone’s duty to root out this injustice through concrete actions and good
practices, and through bold local and international policies.
To read more CLICK HERE
Jamelle Bouie writes in The Washington Post:
It is old hat to note that Americans have deified their
“founding fathers” as saints — secular or otherwise. What is a little less
obvious is how that deification has frozen them in time.
We hail the Thomas Jefferson of 1776, not the one of 1806;
the James Madison of 1787 rather than the one of 1827. We remember George
Washington the triumphant military leader of 1783 more than George Washington
the reluctant president of 1793.
The extent to which the founders are frozen in time is most
apparent in how they’re used for present-day political purposes. Truth of the
matter aside, when speakers say, “This is what the founders intended,”
they tend to mean, “This is what the founders intended at the Philadelphia
Convention.”
The problem is that the men we call the founders did not
stop thinking or writing or acting in politics with ratification of the Constitution.
Nor did they stop after serving in office. Even when retired from public life,
they continued to comment on current affairs, to express their highest hopes
and aspirations as well as their deepest fears and apprehensions.
Those fears and apprehensions are the subject of a recent
book by Dennis C. Rasmussen, a political scientist at
Syracuse University. In “Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of
America’s Founders,” Rasmussen walks readers through the later-in-life
correspondence of Jefferson, Washington, Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, each
of whom feared for the fate of the American republic following their service in
the government they created. And for good reason.
“There were few precedents or fixed poles to guide the
nation’s lawmakers,” Rasmussen writes, “and the very fate of republican liberty
seemed to them to hinge on their every decision.” A “sense of crisis pervaded
the era” and the founders’ correspondence was “littered with predictions of
imminent collapse.”
Washington, Rasmussen notes, was consumed with fear of
“faction” — political parties and their consequences for the future of the
republic. “Until within the last year or two,” he told Jefferson in a July 1796
letter, “I had no conception that Parties Would, or even could go, the length I
have been Witness to.”
Over the previous year, Washington had been embroiled in a
swirling political storm over the Jay Treaty. Negotiated by John Jay, then the
chief justice of the United States, the treaty attempted to resolve a number of
issues still outstanding after the end of the Revolutionary War. Attacked as a
brazen giveaway to Britain, the treaty inspired furious reaction from
Washington’s Republican opposition, which emerged in his second term under the
leadership of Jefferson and Madison. “The backlash against the treaty,”
Rasmussen writes, “was like nothing” Washington “had experienced before.”
The Republican press turned its sights squarely on the
once-untouchable president, using every term of abuse it could muster and
leveling every charge it could concoct, no matter how implausible. Washington
was senile; he was a blasphemer; he was a womanizer; he had embezzled public
funds; he was a tool of the British crown or desired a crown of his own;
Hamilton not only controlled him behind the scenes but was somehow also his
illegitimate son; Washington had been a secret British agent during the Revolutionary
War, and his efforts to betray the patriotic cause were foiled by Benedict
Arnold beating him to the punch.
Washington’s famous farewell address — in which he warned
against faction — was as much about the circumstances of his own administration
as it was a warning to future Americans. In his final year, however, Washington
seemed to surrender to the reality of parties and factionalism. Asked to
consider a third term for president, he told the governor of Connecticut,
Jonathan Trumbull, that he was “thoroughly convinced I should not draw a single vote
from the Anti-federal side” and that character was irrelevant to the outcomes
of elections. “Let that party set up a broomstick, and call it a true son of
Liberty, a Democrat, or give it any other epithet that will suit their purpose,
and it will command their votes in toto!”
John Adams, who devoted his life to the republic and the
revolutionary cause, feared the consequences of peace and prosperity for the
moral fiber of the American people. Writing to his son, John Quincy, in October
1814, he remarked that
human Nature cannot bear Prosperity. It invariably
intoxicates Individuals and Nations. Adversity is the great Reformer.
Affliction is the purifying furnace. Prosperity has thrown our dear America
into an easy trance for 30 years. The dear delights of Riches and Luxury have
drowned all her intellectual and physical Energies.
But this was in the midst of the second war with Britain,
and the nation’s willingness to fight had made Adams cautiously optimistic that
“the Germ of Virtue” was not destroyed and that “The Root of the matter is
Still in us, and alive.”
For the remainder of his years, Rasmussen notes, Adams would
oscillate between a kind of optimism and a disillusionment with the American
experiment: “I fear there will be greater difficulties to preserve our Union,
than You and I, our Fathers Brothers Friends Disciples and Sons have had to
form it,” Adams wrote to Jefferson in 1816. During the administration of James
Monroe, Adams wrote on an even darker note to John Quincy that, “If there is
any Thing Serious in this World, the Selfishness of our Countrymen is not only
Serious but melancholy, foreboding ravages of Ambition and Avarice which never
were exceeded on this Selfish Globe.”
The “distemper in our Nation is so general,” he concluded,
“and so certainly incurable.”
Whereas Washington was worried about the politics of the
nation, and Adams the character of its people, Hamilton was worried about its
institutions. He feared the national government would be too weak — too weak to
stand as an equal on the international stage and too weak to rebuff greedy and
self-interested state governments. With the decline of John Adams and the
Federalists — who favored a powerful executive and strong federal authority —
and the ascension of Thomas Jefferson and the Republican Party, Hamilton became
convinced that the republic’s days were numbered.
Here’s Rasmussen:
Because of the underlying weaknesses of the political order,
even the greatest successes of the Federalists had proven fleeting: “What will
signify a vibration of power, if it cannot be used with confidence or energy,
& must be again quickly restored to hands which will prostrate much faster
than we shall be able to rear under so frail a system?”
To Rufus King, Hamilton wrote that “the prospects of our
Country are not brilliant. The mass is far from sound.”
Jefferson was practically defined by his optimism about and
enthusiasm for the American experiment. But he too saw dark tidings as he came
to the end of his life, spurred on by the nation’s mounting conflict over
slavery. “The source of Jefferson’s frustration and despondency,” Rasmussen
writes, “was not the continued failure of the South to finally put slavery on
the road to extinction, but rather the North’s opposition to its expansion.”
That opposition flared during the Missouri statehood crisis
of 1820. The white majority in Missouri had approved of slavery in its
constitution when it applied for statehood. If Congress admitted Missouri into
the union with slavery intact, it would break the sectional balance in favor of
the South. Northern lawmakers tried to stop this outcome with an amendment to
the statehood bill that would have forced a system of gradual emancipation on
existing slaveholders in the state.
Jefferson, who backed the South’s position, saw the conflict
in apocalyptic terms. Here’s Rasmussen again:
If Congress could impose a gradual emancipation scheme on
Missouri as a condition of statehood, [Jefferson] reasoned, then it “may, and
probably will next declare that the condition of all men within the U.S. shall
be that of freedom, in which case all the whites South of the Patomak and Ohio
must evacuate their states; and most fortunate those who can do it first.”
After Congress passed its compromise on the issue —
admitting Missouri as a slave state, admitting Maine as a free state and
prohibiting slavery in the remaining territories of the Louisiana Purchase
north of the of the 36°30′ parallel — Jefferson expressed his belief that the
divide, represented by that line, would prove intractable:
“A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle,
moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men,
will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and
deeper,” he wrote in an April 1820 letter to John Holmes, a Republican from
Maine.
Jefferson went on:
I am now to die in the belief that the useless sacrifice of
themselves, by the generation of ’76. to acquire self-government and happiness
to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of
their sons, and that my only consolation is to be that I live not to weep over
it.
If there was a counterpoint to all of this pessimism,
Rasmussen points out, it came from James Madison, who outlived his peers to see
the union survive political crisis, partisan rancor and social transformation.
“I have never despaired,” he said in his final public speech, nine months into
the presidency of Andrew Jackson, “notwithstanding all the threatening
appearances we have passed through. I have now more than a hope, a consoling
confidence that we shall at last find that our labors have not been in vain.”
Madison was no Pollyanna. What he had was a strong sense of
the possible and a willingness to live with imperfections. “No Government of
human device, & human administration can be perfect; that which is the
least imperfect is therefore the best government,” he wrote in 1834. Or, as
Rasmussen puts it, “Long experience had persuaded Madison beyond a doubt that
the American form of government was preferable to the alternatives.”
Millions of Americans are, at this moment, fearful for the
future of their democracy. Millions more are deeply dissatisfied with the
nation’s institutions and skeptical of its ability to tackle the challenges
ahead of us. It is clarifying to confront both facts knowing that the founders
themselves were as pessimistic about their future as we are about ours. It is
nice to have perspective.
The American republic survived against their expectations,
but that does not mean their pessimism was unwarranted. Jefferson’s fear of
disunion, in particular, was prophetic.
What, then, is there to take from the founders, knowing what
we know now about their fear and disillusionment? Perhaps we can take some of
that despair and channel it toward critique rather than defeat. And perhaps,
from Madison, we can take the faith that American democracy still holds the
resources to revitalize itself — and us along with it.
To read more CLICK HERE
The spike plaguing many American cities this year has lawmakers reeling and police scrambling, though homicide rates are not rising as high as the double-digit jumps seen in 2020, reported The Associated Press. Still, according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, 316 people are shot every day in the U.S. and 106 of them die. It’s even prompted President Joe Biden to order federal strike forces in to help catch gun traffickers who are supplying weapons used in the shootings.
Read about five victims and their families.
To read more CLICK HERE
CNN Chief Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin writes:
In the waning days of Donald Trump's presidency, Amy Coney
Barrett won confirmation to the Supreme Court and Clarence Thomas received an
equally consequential promotion -- to Chief Justice of the United States.
Not officially, of course. John G. Roberts, Jr., retains the
title and the middle seat on the Supreme Court bench. But the Chief Justice has
just one essential power that differentiates his role from that of the other
Justices. The Chief has the right to assign the court's opinions when he is in
the majority. When the Chief Justice is in the minority, though, the assignment
power goes to the senior Associate Justice who is in the majority.
Thomas, who was confirmed in 1991, is now the longest
tenured Justice on the court. More notably, he is now the leading figure among
the five solid conservatives on the court -- Thomas himself, Samuel Alito, Neil
Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Barrett.
In crucial, contested cases, Chief Justice Roberts has
increasingly been voting with the three remaining liberals -- Stephen Breyer,
Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. If Roberts continues this pattern, that means
Thomas will be the senior Justice in several significant 5 to 4 cases and thus enjoy
the right to assign majority opinions, including, of course, to himself.
Thomas has long occupied a peculiar niche on the court. He
has been a part of the conservative majority in a mostly conservative era, but
he has written few important majority opinions himself. Roberts gave himself
blockbusters like Shelby
County v. Holder, the 2013 case that eviscerated the Voting Rights Act, and
when liberals cobbled together winning coalitions, they usually gave the big
assignments to Anthony Kennedy, as in the 2015 case Obergefell
v. Hodges, which guaranteed the right to same-sex marriage.
There's little doubt why Roberts and, before him, Chief
Justice William H. Rehnquist declined to give Thomas important assignments.
Even among conservatives during Thomas's earlier years on the court, his views
were seen as extreme and eccentric. Like the late Antonin Scalia, Thomas is an
originalist, which means he believes the Constitution should be interpreted as
its words were understood to mean when it was ratified, in the 18th century.
But Thomas and Scalia differed in their approach to stare decisis -- the law of
precedent. Scalia joined with virtually all Justices who have served on the
court in believing that the Justices should usually respect the court's
precedents, even if he himself would not have joined the majority in the
original case.
The idea behind this approach is that it's important for the
law to project stability and allow citizens to order their lives according to
predictable rules. Thomas disagrees. He thinks precedents that conflict with
his understanding of the Constitution should be overturned -- immediately and
en masse. As Thomas put it in a concurring opinion in 2019, "When
faced with a demonstrably erroneous precedent, my rule is simple: We should not
follow it." In an appearance at a New York synagogue, I once heard Scalia
give a memorable quip when he was asked about the difference between his
approach and Thomas's. "I'm an originalist," Scalia said, "but
I'm not a nut."
Even more that his fellow conservatives, Thomas believes
in prohibiting virtually all forms of gun regulation
under the Second Amendment ; restricting press freedoms; allowing unlimited campaign contributions and spending
under the First Amendment; banning all forms of affirmative action based on race
and allowing virtually all forms of executions, no
matter how painful.
In addition, of course, Thomas has long favored
overturning Roe v. Wade, which he regards as "grievously wrong," and allowing states to ban
abortion. It appears that Roberts and Rehnquist knew that, in major cases,
Thomas' singular views and approach to precedent could not command a majority
of even his conservative colleagues, so they assigned him relatively
unimportant majority opinions -- the dogs, in Supreme Court argot. But Thomas
will not give himself the dogs. He will have the right to keep the big opinions
to himself and the opportunity to hold on to the votes of the four other
conservatives.
Thomas has already exercised his assigning power in a
consequential case. On November 25 last year, the court ruled, 5 to 4, that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo violated the
First Amendment's guarantee of free exercise of religion when he banned
religious gatherings of more than 10 people in some areas, as a means of
containing the Covid-19 pandemic. With Roberts in the minority, Thomas assigned
the opinion, directing that it be published "per curiam," or by the
court, which the Justices usually reserve for routine or non-controversial
matters.
The message of the assignment was that this was an easy
case, one in keeping with the conservatives' push on the Supreme Court to allow
religious people to exempt
themselves from rules that apply to others, like the obligation of
employers to pay for health insurance, including birth control, for their
employees. Over the course of the Supreme Court's term that began last October,
according to Adam Feldman of the Empirical Scotus blog, Thomas was
the senior Justice in the majority at least five times.
Next term promises to showcase Thomas's leadership in even
more consequential areas. In the fall, the court will hear a challenge to Mississippi's new abortion law,
which would ban almost all abortions after the 15th week of a woman's
pregnancy. Ever since Roe, in 1973, the court has held that states cannot ban
abortions before a fetus is viable -- well after 15 weeks -- but legislators in
Mississippi passed the law in hopes that the Supreme Court would use it as a
vehicle to overturn Roe.
In 2020, Roberts sided with the four liberals then on the
court (including Ruth Bader Ginsburg) to overturn a restrictive abortion law
from Louisiana. In his separate opinion, Roberts said the principle of stare
decisis dictated his vote in the case. Thomas, joined by Justices Alito,
Gorsuch, and Kavanagh, dissented.
Next term, of course, the four dissenters in the Louisiana
case will be joined on the court by Barrett, whose anti-abortion views may have been the key factor that led Trump to
nominate her. In other words, there will likely be a majority of Justices
opposed to abortion rights, even if Roberts dissents. In that case, Thomas will
have the right to assign the opinion. And his views on Roe could not be
clearer. "Our abortion precedents are grievously wrong and should be
overruled," Thomas wrote in his 2020 dissent. "The idea that the
Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment understood the Due Process Clause to
protect a right to abortion is farcical." Thanks to the arrival of
Barrett, on abortion and a host of other cases, Thomas may soon have the power
to make such a view the law of the land.
To read more CLICK HERE
George Thomas the Wohlford Professor of American Political Institutions at Claremont McKenna College wrote for the Bulwark:
The American founding was imperfect. America’s founders
weren’t just aware of the point, they insisted on it: “I never expect to see
a perfect work from imperfect man.” This bit of wisdom was central to the
founding. In contrast, today, Republicans, continuing their departure from any
serious understanding of American
ideas and history,
have taken to insisting that teaching about a flawed founding threatens the
very foundations
of the republic.
That would be news to the founders, who were often the
Constitution’s most perceptive critics.
In his closing speech at the Constitutional Convention, the only speech from
the Convention to be published at the time, Benjamin Franklin confessed that he
“did not
entirely approve of this Constitution at the present.” Yet he acknowledged
his own fallibility, noting that in time he might come to change his mind, and,
given the circumstances, it wasn’t clear the Convention could “do better” than
it had. This is no small thing, but inherent in the political philosophy of
leading founders. To insist on a perfect founding is to misapprehend the
thought of the founders themselves. The founders rejected the notion of a
perfect political order. They built from low but solid ground by insisting on
imperfection as an inescapable feature of political institutions crafted by
human beings. And they built from experience, learning from the past, but
knowing full well that the future was likely to require adjustments and improvements
to our political institutions.
Championing the Constitution to the citizenry in The
Federalist Papers, James Madison insisted we must make a choice for “the GREATER, not the
PERFECT good.” In the closing paper, Alexander Hamilton reiterated
the point, noting the Constitution was “the best which our
political situation, habits, and opinions will admit.” It is not simply, in
Madison’s famous words, that men are not angels.
Nor is it, again in Madison’s words, that we cannot always trust that
enlightened statesmen
will be at the helm. Both points are true. The deeper point echoes
Franklin’s insight that perfection is an impossibility in crafting political
institutions, which inevitably require
compromises that bow to reality. And there will always be gaps between
political practices and political aspirations, as well as contingencies that
the Constitution’s framers simply did not anticipate.
Adjustments to the Constitution were needed almost
immediately. The Twelfth Amendment stipulated separate electoral votes for the
president and vice-president after the problematic election of 1800 where Aaron
Burr, Thomas Jefferson’s running mate, got the same number of electoral votes
as Jefferson throwing the presidential election into the House of
Representatives. As the founding generation learned how elections actually
operated under the new Constitution, innovations like political parties came to
be defended as a necessary constitutional development even if the Constitution
had tried to rise above them. Such adjustments were expected to be—and have
been—a fairly routine feature of American politics.
Yet far and away the most evident constitutional shortcoming
was the reality of American slavery. An emerging republic that insisted that
all men were created equal, creating a self-governing polity based on that
principle, also allowed for the enslaving of fellow human beings. To call
slavery an imperfection or flaw is a colossal understatement.
The struggle over slavery has been at the root of American
constitutionalism from the beginning. Slavery presented a constitutional
disharmony between the idea of equality and the reality of slavery. As the
Princeton historian Sean Wilentz frames it in No Property in Man, “the
paradox—of a Constitution that strengthened and protected slavery yet refused
to validate it—created what have been perceived as the Constitution’s
confounding ambiguities over slavery.” If American ideas pointed to equality
and anti-slavery—at the Constitutional Convention Madison called American
slavery “the
most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man”—American political
institutions empowered slavery and thereby perpetuated a brutal and violent
inequality.
Many of the leading founders were in principle opposed to
slavery—and particularly slavery rooted in race—but this was often an abstract
position, with little actual political effort to undo slavery. They seem to
have given even less thought to what equality and citizenship would entail for
Black Americans (Franklin
being a possible exception here). The difficult work of anti-slavery
constitutionalism had to be taken up by others, and often against our deeply
imperfect political institutions that empowered the proslavery position, giving
its voice more weight in constitutional terms than it would have had absent the
three-fifths compromise and the Electoral College.
The new birth of freedom that Abraham Lincoln extolled in
the Gettysburg
Address required the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments,
which amounted to a second founding. It was this second founding that made the
first founding worthy of being saved. Much like the founders before them, those
who ushered in a second founding learned from experience, working to improve an
imperfect Constitution. At Gettysburg, Lincoln cast the nation as
“conceived in liberty” and “dedicated to the proposition that all men were
created equal.” Lincoln’s effort was to complete the “unfinished work” of the
founding generation. If Lincoln cast this “unfinished work” as an effort to
restore America to its foundations, to a nation dedicated to the proposition
that all men are created equal, this was an effort to return to something real,
but that never actually existed—only the promise of it did.
Making this promise real has been the work of generations.
Our pluralistic constitutional democracy is an outgrowth of
the constitutional republic launched by the founders. Madisonian constitutionalism,
in particular, paved the way for a vibrant and pluralistic constitutional
democracy that was not defined by religious, racial, or ethnic identity. But
that project was imperfect and incomplete at the founding. It has been carried
forward by Americans who sought to make a deeply imperfect union more perfect.
This work continues in our day, and we are better prepared for this work as we
make our way in the present if we have a genuine sense of our (imperfect) past.
To read more CLICK HERE
Watch a clip from my appearance on Law and Crime Network discussing the ongoing trial of Robert Durst.
To watch CLICK HERE
Gasoline stations in New Mexico can be liable for selling fuel to drivers they know or have reason to know are intoxicated, the New Mexico Supreme Court ruled, according to the ABA Journal.
The state supreme court ruled that the tort of negligent
entrustment of chattel extended to gasoline sales.
“Providing gasoline to an intoxicated driver is like
providing car keys to an intoxicated driver,” the court said in the July 19
opinion.
Previously, no New Mexico decision applied the doctrine of
negligent entrustment outside the context of vehicles entrusted to someone who
is incompetent to drive.
The New Mexico Supreme Court is the second top state court
to extend liability to gasoline stations for injuries to third parties caused
by drunken drivers, according to the opinion. Tennessee’s top court was the
first.
The Associated Press has
coverage of the New Mexico Supreme Court’s 3-1 decision, which is
summarized in a press release, available
here, by the New Mexico Administrative Office of the Courts.
The New Mexico Supreme Court ruled in response to a
certified question by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Denver. The
suit was filed in New Mexico state court by the estate of Marcellino Morris Jr.
and removed to federal court. The defendant is Giant Four Corners Inc.
According to the lawsuit allegations, Andy Denny was
intoxicated when he ran out of gas and walked to the gas station in the early
morning hours of Dec. 30, 2011. At first, the clerk refused to sell anything to
Denny because he appeared intoxicated but then agreed to sell him a gallon of
gas. After he and a companion took the gas to Denny’s car, they drove back to
the gas station and bought another nine gallons of gas.
Denny dropped off his passenger and got on the highway,
where he crossed the center line and crashed with Morris’ oncoming vehicle.
Morris died in the collision.
Justice C. Shannon Bacon wrote the majority opinion.
“We conclude that under New Mexico law and the doctrine of
negligent entrustment of chattel, a commercial gasoline vendor owes to a third
party using the roadway a duty of care to refrain from selling gasoline to a
driver the vendor knows or has reason to know is intoxicated,” Bacon said.
Retired Justice Barbara Vigil, sitting by designation,
dissented. She described the majority’s decision as a “sea change in the law
[that] could have far-reaching consequences for retail businesses.” She argued
that regulating businesses is a legislative function that should not be imposed
by judicially created common law duties.
“The majority creates a sweeping new duty based on atypical
facts—gasoline purchased from an attendant—then fails to address how this rule
is to be applied in the typical scenario when gasoline is purchased at the
pump,” Vigil wrote. “It is unclear whether erratic behavior observed through a
window gives rise to a duty to investigate, for example, and the majority
provides no guidance as to how that investigation should occur.”
Vigil also said the majority reasoning could extend
liability to any vendor that enables drunken driving, including auto parts
stores, tire shops and mechanics.
Victims of childhood sexual abuse suffered a setback when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court reversed a lower court’s decision that could have allowed dozens of lawsuits over decades-old sexual abuse claims to move forward against the Catholic Church, including the Allentown Diocese, reported the Allentown Morning-Call.
In a 5-2 decision, the court ruled that the state’s 12-year
statute of limitations for people abused as children to file civil lawsuits
bars a western Pennsylvania woman from suing the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown
over abuse by a priest she claims she suffered between 1974 and 1981. Renee
Rice claimed in her suit that church officials’ silence amounted to fraudulent
concealment.
An appeals court decision that Rice should be allowed to
persuade a jury the cover-up prevented her from pursuing her claims revived her
case after a county judge dismissed it and buoyed hope for justice for others
with similar experiences.
In an opinion overturning that decision, Justice Christine
Donohue wrote that whether “the courthouse doors should be opened for suits based
on underlying conduct that occurred long ago is an exercise in line drawing
that includes difficult policy determinations.” The courts are “ill-equipped to
make that call.”
Donohue added that the Legislature is better able to examine
such issues and determine an appropriate balance of competing concerns and that
the state constitution bars courts from doing so.
“Even in view of the reprehensible circumstances depicted in
this case, and others like it, we must follow the rule of law and enforce the
value judgments expressed by the General Assembly,” Donohue said in her opinion
for the majority.
Richard Serbin, the Altoona attorney who represents Rice,
said the decision is a disappointing defeat for hundreds who hoped to pursue
abuse claims under the legal precedent in Rice’s case. It also increases
pressure on lawmakers to act on legislation that would create a limited period
for abuse victims whose claims are too old to seek compensation.
“Until our legislature creates a path for justice, survivors
of child sex abuse in Pennsylvania will have none,” Serbin said.
Eric Anderson, a Pittsburgh lawyer who represented the
Altoona-Johnstown Diocese, said the Supreme Court’s decision was correct.
“They applied the law to the facts of the case and they came
out with the appropriate decision,” Anderson said. “The Superior Court
stretched the law in certain ways and the Supreme Court said no.”
Victims of childhood abuse in Pennsylvania currently have until
age 30, or 12 years after they legally become adults, to sue.
Serbin estimated that more than 250 lawsuits by people whose
abuse claims were too old had been filed against Catholic dioceses in
Pennsylvania since the Superior Court decision in Rice’s case. In Lehigh County
alone, at least 25 lawsuits were filed against the Allentown Diocese.
Spokesperson Paul Wirth said the diocese is reviewing the Supreme Court’s
opinion.
Since 2019, the Allentown Diocese has paid more than $16
million to 97 people who claimed they suffered abuse by clergy. It received 106
applications for its Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program, which
required claimants to waive their rights to litigate against the diocese. Six
people rejected offers and three claims were deemed ineligible.
Allentown was one of five Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania
that established compensation funds after a 2018 state grand jury report
revealed sexual abuse accusations against 301 priests, who had abused hundreds
of children over several decades. The report named 37 priests from the
Allentown Diocese, and the diocese added 15 names to the list.
Rice alleged the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese and two bishops
tried to cover up her abuse to protect their reputations and that of the Rev.
Charles F. Bodziak, the parish priest who Rice accused.
As a child, Rice was brought in to clean Bodziak’s living
space, and was a church organist. Rice alleges Bodziak abused her at St. Leo’s
Church in Altoona, including attacks in the choir loft, a car and a cemetery.
Bodziak denies the allegations.
After a county judge dismissed her lawsuit as untimely in
2017, Rice appealed and the Superior Court found there were enough facts for a
jury to decide whether the actions of church officials prevented her from seeking
compensation for her abuse.
Rice argued that a separate 2016 grand jury report on sexual
abuse in the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese alerted her to allegations church
officials tried to cover up Bodiziak’s actions that amounted to fraudulent
concealment. She claimed that the statute of limitations should be extended to
when she learned of the church’s efforts to conceal the priest’s actions.
The Supreme Court reversed the Superior Court, finding that
in order for fraudulent concealment to extend the statute of limitations, Rice
was required to make an effort to investigate but did not.
“What the Supreme Court said is you have that duty even if
there is a claim of fraudulent concealment,” Anderson said.
Victims’ hopes to overcome the time limits on civil litigation
now rest in the Pennsylvania Senate, where Majority Leader Kim Ward,
R-Westmoreland, has signaled no interest in moving legislation similar to a
bill that passed the House in April. The proposal would allow now-adult victims
of child sexual abuse to sue the perpetrators or institutions that did not
prevent it when it happened years or decades ago.
A constitutional amendment to provide a two-year litigation
window was badly fumbled by Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration this
year, putting it years behind schedule.
To read more CLICK HERE
For most purposes — signing contracts, entering the military, marrying without parental permission and living independently — an American is legally an adult at age 18. But a panel of federal appellate judges erred last week in deciding that this also should extend to the purchase of handguns.
Buying a gun isn’t like signing up for a gym membership. A
handgun’s main purpose is to kill or injure, and a study in Los Angeles County
found that 18- to 20-year-olds are far more likely to commit violent acts with a firearm than older people. We know
much more about the maturing brain than we used to; it is still undergoing
major change in the first years of “adulthood.” A rash decision with a handgun
carries far more serious consequences than eloping to Vegas.
According to the U.S. Justice Department, “the age at which
people most frequently commit homicide was 18.” And the youngest adults — ages
18 through 20 — ranked first among all age groups for the number of homicides
committed with guns, at 24%.
It can be a tricky matter, this business of deciding when a
person is an adult. Anyone charged with a crime who is 18 is charged as an
adult. Yet, decades ago, the legal drinking age was 18; now it’s 21. At the end
of 2019, federal legislation pushed the legal age to purchase tobacco products to 21 as well.
As an editorial board, we opposed that move on tobacco. It seemed to us that
people old enough to hold down a job and buy a house were certainly old enough
to make bad decisions about their own health.
In general, the age of majority — 18 — should be the
dividing line used in allowing young adults to make momentous decisions about
their lives. But it’s not inconsistent to say that no single bright line is
needed to determine a responsible age for all activities. Given the purpose for
which handguns and ammunition were made, and how quickly and rashly a person
can make a decision that can end or forever damage a human life, it makes a lot
more sense to impose a minimum age of 21 for a firearm purchase than for a
cigar.
The case will be returned to U.S. District Court, and might
well be appealed to the full 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, where the panel’s
split decision should be reversed.
True, the right to puff on cigarettes or drink alcohol is
not written into the U.S. Constitution. But neither is a guarantee that the
right to bear arms goes with being a particular age. There already are multiple
restrictions on gun possession, including for the mentally ill. An age
restriction is one more sensible way to cut back dramatically on gun violence
in this country.
To read more CLICK HERE
America’s criminal legal system is rooted in the nation’s history of legalized slavery and racial oppression, according to The Brennan Center for Justice. Our current system of punishment is still founded on a basic conception of outsider-hood that continues to create and perpetuate racial, ethnic, and class inequality. Criminal legal reform efforts must engage directly with this sordid lineage to unmoor the inequitable impacts and outcomes of our current system of “justice.”
As Cornell William Brooks, former president and CEO of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, wrote:
“Communities of color are over policed, over-prosecuted, over-incarcerated and
yet underemployed.” The racial disparities throughout our criminal legal system
are considerable. For example, one in three Black men are incarcerated in their
lifetimes compared to one in 17 white men. When it comes to policing, these
disparities are even greater, as evident in the number of Black men and women
who are killed without justification by law enforcement officers. A mapping of
police violence illustrates that Black Americans are three times more
likely to be killed by police officers than white Americans, while nearly twice
as likely to be killed as a Latinx person. Black Americans are also about 30%
more likely to be unarmed in fatal interactions with police than white
Americans.
Can the federal government do anything to transform the
American criminal legal landscape and reduce racial disparities? This is a
genuine question. So many of these challenges exist at the local and state level.
For instance, local jails and state prisons account for 91% of the nation’s
incarcerated population. To put it just a bit differently: There are about 2.2
million people behind bars in this country, but only about 175,000 of
them are in federal prison. Additionally, there are more than 10 million
admissions in and out of the nation’s colossal network of local jails
each year; more than 4.5
million people on probation or parole; and more than 70
million people have conviction histories that subject them to lifelong
consequences to their lives and livelihoods. And when it comes to policing,
there are 18,000 local police departments dotting the United
States.
Yet still, the federal government is uniquely situated to
incentivize systemic reforms for state and local-level criminal legal systems.
Consider the many forms that federal involvement in local
criminal justice affairs can take. Federal agencies can and do enforce federal
law against localities. For example, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights
Division and U.S. Attorneys’ offices have the statutory authority to bring
civil rights actions against corrections agencies and local police departments
in addition to criminal prosecutions against individual officers to enforce
federal rights law when police violate those rights. And through the federal
government’s grantmaking powers, it can shape state and local criminal justice
policy.
Federal funding schemes have long encouraged states to focus
their resources on law enforcement interventions to deal with social problems,
often resulting in our government locking up ever more people for ever longer
periods of time. This has resulted, in part, in today’s bloated carceral state.
In fact, since the 1960s, the federal government has played a central role in
shaping the nation’s criminal justice landscape through outlays of grant money
to states. For decades, federal grants encouraged states to increase arrests,
prosecutions, and imprisonment. Federal funds have supported the expansion of
local jails, including paying jails to house federal incarcerated individuals
as well as ICE detainees.
One example of how federal dollars incentivized the growth
of the carceral state that only exacerbated racial disparities is through
the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (The
1994 Crime Bill), which authorized incentive grants to build or expand
correctional facilities. Grants totaling $12.5 billion were authorized for
incarceration, with nearly 50% earmarked for states that adopted tough
“truth-in-sentencing” laws that required people to serve substantial portions
of their custodial sentences. Other examples over the last half century include
the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Street Act of 1968, which
provided $400 million for law enforcement purposes; and the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which increased federal
funding for law enforcement to fight the drug war. Then in 2005, when
reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), Congress created the
Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant program (JAG). All 50 states,
territories, and more than 1,000 local governments rely on JAG dollars, whose
funding level for the entire program averages between $300 to $500 million
yearly. Those dollars support almost any criminal justice activity covered by
the federal statute, yet about 60% of state-level JAG dollars support law enforcement
and corrections functions. In his 2013 book, “Rise of the Warrior Cop: The
Militarization of America’s Police Forces,” journalist Radley Balko
encapsulated this crime fighting incentive well: “As local police departments
were infused with federal cash, members of Congress got press release fodder
for bringing federal money back to the police departments in their districts.”
The federal government should no longer subsidize mass
incarceration and should instead incentivize states to reverse the era of
excess punitiveness and shrink the carceral state. One powerful way to do so
would be for the president to champion and Congress to pass the Reverse Mass
Incarceration Act (RMIA) to unwind these incentives by ensuring that federal
grants are sent only to states that reduce incarceration. Designed to undo the
damage inflicted by federal policies incentivizing states to lock up more
people and to lock them up for longer periods of time, the RMIA would establish
a grant program rewarding states for lowering their prison populations.
For states to obtain funding under the RMIA, they would have
to submit plans describing how they would reduce incarceration; the RMIA would
set an across-the-board reduction target for all states to meet. The grant
would encourage states to take numerous steps to undo mass incarceration, like
changing sentencing laws, establishing new programs diverting people away from
the system, or improving wraparound services for individuals reentering their
communities after incarceration. Leaders on both sides of the political
spectrum all agree: The United States must end mass incarceration, which
highlights and exacerbates racial inequality in America’s criminal punishment
system. And we believe the RMIA can serve as a vehicle for reigning in state
prison populations, while vastly reducing racial disparities in the system.
As calls for racial justice continue ringing in the air, the
federal government should use its powers to realize the humanity, equality, and
dignity of all. Black and Brown people deserve more. And anything less
threatens to make our justice system anything but.
To read more CLICK HERE
Maine became the fourth state in the nation to abolish civil asset forfeiture, a practice where law enforcement can seize property if they suspect it is connected to criminal activity, even if the owner is not convicted of a crime, reported Reason.
After a bill passed by the state legislature, LD
1521, took effect without the governor's signature yesterday, Maine
officially repealed its civil forfeiture laws, joining Nebraska, New
Mexico, and North Carolina.
Law enforcement groups say civil asset forfeiture is a
crucial tool to disrupt drug trafficking and organized crime by targeting their
ill-gotten proceeds. However, groups like the Institute for Justice, a
libertarian-leaning public interest law firm, say civil forfeiture provides too
few due process protections for property owners, who often bear the burden of
proving their innocence, and creates too many perverse profit incentives for
police.
"Civil forfeiture is one of the most serious assaults
on due process and private property rights in America today," Institute
for Justice Senior Legislative Counsel Lee McGrath said in a press release.
McGrath says Maine's new law "ends an immense injustice and will ensure
that only convicted criminals—and not innocent Mainers—lose their property to
forfeiture."
To read more CLICK HERE
John MacDonald of the University of Pennsylvania and Aaron Chalfin wrote recently in the New York Times:
The United States saw about 25 percent more homicides in
2020 than in 2019, based on preliminary data released by
the FBI — the largest single-year increase in the homicide rate since reliable
tracking began in 1960. The current rate — 6.2 homicides per 100,000 residents,
if the same 25 percent increase is applied to last year’s rate — is the highest
recorded in the United States in more than 20 years. In America’s largest cities and, in particular, the most
economically disadvantaged neighborhoods within those cities, the rise in
violence has been the most pronounced.
The reasons for the large increase in violence are a matter
of speculation and are likely to remain poorly understood for years to come.
During the coronavirus pandemic, a number of factors changed
simultaneously in American cities, making it difficult to isolate the precise
combination of ingredients behind the surge in violence. But we do have enough
data to judge the strengths and weaknesses of some competing theories.
The U.S. homicide rate was rising, albeit slowly and without
much media attention, before the pandemic. From 2014 to 2019, the rate increased
by 13 percent, reversing a long decline of 54 percent that had begun in
1991. The rapid growth in homicides during the pandemic appears to have sped up
that increase.
The question is, why?
One set of explanations has to do with the economic hardship,
social disruptions and uncertainty that the pandemic has caused, especially for
communities already strained by poverty and structural disadvantage. But there
is little evidence that violence increases markedly
during economic downturns: Murders declined during deep recessions in 1980-1982
and 2008-2010. While the economy has been a significant stressor for millions
of Americans who have found themselves out of work, lethal violence is largely driven by the actions of a
small number of men who are only tenuously tied to formal labor markets —
and not immediately affected by job cutbacks.
Social disruptions that change patterns of human activity
and social control provide a more promising explanation. When community
institutions are weakened, people feel they’re on their own and may respond to
uncertainty by assuming the worst, carrying weapons and reacting to aggression
with even greater aggression. This theory is buoyed by recent
analyses of police searches, which show that starting in March 2020,
authorities found more firearms during street and traffic stops. The data
suggests what many police officers have been saying based on their personal
experiences: More people are carrying guns than before.
But the problem with these explanations is that unlike the
coronavirus, the jump in lethal violence has been a uniquely American
phenomenon. As Zaid Jilani notes, homicides did not rise in Western Europe
in 2020, nor did they increase in our two closest neighbors, Canada and Mexico.
Even in El Salvador, one of the most violent and lawless countries in the
world, there is no indication that homicides have spiked. American
exceptionalism does not mean the challenges of the pandemic have little to do
with the rise in violence — but it does indicate that this is, at best, an
incomplete explanation.
Lethal violence didn’t rise immediately after the
coronavirus reached our shores and governors imposed lockdowns. Overall crime
appeared to drop in many cities as businesses closed, people stayed home and
routine social activities were disrupted. But unlike street crimes such as
robbery and retail theft, homicides didn’t decline, suggesting that activities
among the young men most prone to committing homicide weren’t affected as much
by lockdowns.
In June 2020, not long after the killing of George Floyd and
the ensuing protests, shootings and homicide rates began to climb nationwide.
The close connection between the rise in violence and the groundswell of public
outrage at law enforcement last summer makes it natural to wonder whether the
increase in violence can be explained by a decline in funding for police
departments, a reduction in police morale or a fraying of police-community
relations rather than the pandemic.
One popular narrative has it that cuts to police funding
have contributed to the growth in homicide rates. There is a great deal of
scientific evidence that when cities hire more police officers, violence tends to decline, and that when high-crime blocks are
subject to greater police presence, crime falls in those areas. But while there is some evidence
that the pandemic challenged departments and there were fewer officers on the
streets in some places, most cities maintained their required levels of patrol
in 2020.
Was public safety decimated by the “defund the police”
movement? Despite the intense media coverage of the idea, only a handful of cities actually cut police
budgets substantially. Some of these cities — such as Minneapolis, Portland, Ore., and Seattle — experienced an
explosion in shootings, but the rise in homicide has been broad-based and also
affected cities that didn’t change police funding levels, including Detroit,
Phoenix and Omaha. A reasonable argument can be made that the movement to
defund the police created greater discontent among officers, but
reductions in police funding don’t seem to explain the violence.
Some have hypothesized that the rise in homicide rates is
specifically a result of the June 2020 protests — that the demonstrations
emboldened offenders and fractured already tenuous ties between officers and
the communities they serve. This seems like a simple way to explain why the
United States has seen violence increase so much more than other nations have.
But theories about the role of the protests must contend with several
challenges. Violence typically climbs during the summer, and in 2020, that
happened to correspond not only with the protests but also with an end to the
most intensive lockdowns in many cities — making it hard to pin blame on any
one cause without more examination. And the rise in gun seizures by law
enforcement — which proponents of the theory say is a marker of gun-carrying by
emboldened criminals — appears to have begun in March
2020, long before anyone had heard of George Floyd or Derek Chauvin. In
other words, the groundwork for the surge in gun violence was laid well before
the protests.
A more nuanced hypothesis is that violence increased because
police “pulled back” and took fewer proactive measures, a trend that coincides
with the beginning of the pandemic and predates the protests. While some of
this pullback and the resulting reduction in arrests can be explained by
lockdowns, which kept fewer people from venturing outdoors, there is anecdotal evidence that police, both
officially and unofficially, wanted to minimize unnecessary contact with the
public during a global health crisis.
But do reductions in proactive policing lead to more crime
and violence? High-quality evidence on the public-safety value of low-level
“quality of life” arrests is surprisingly thin. When police have engaged in
intentional work slowdowns in the past, increases in crime have not always followed.
At the same time, recent research suggests that federal and state
investigations of local police agencies after incidents that attract widespread
attention are followed by de-policing and a rise in homicide rates.
While the “protests caused the violence” narrative appears
far too simple, it is difficult to reject the hypothesis that less-inspired
policing — whether prompted by public health concerns, reduced output from
dedicated anti-crime units or lower morale after the summer protests — may have
played a role. As the Princeton sociologist Patrick Sharkey has noted, even if the protests did not directly
cause the rise in violence, the sudden absence of police from spaces that had
been policed intensively may have created an opening for violence to accelerate
after the increase in gun carrying during the spring of 2020.
Whether the criminal justice system’s response to the
pandemic affected crime is also unclear. Beginning in March 2020, prosecutors,
judges and corrections officials in most cities moved to send fewer defendants
to jail while cases were pending and to reduce jail populations as much as
possible. This wasn’t part of a progressive political agenda — it was a
reaction to the fear that covid-19 would spread like wildfire in jails,
endangering not only inmates but also corrections officers and ultimately the
wider community.
In many places, the pandemic has also caused criminal courts
to slow down considerably. Cases have taken longer to adjudicate, which means
longer spells when individuals awaiting charges, including for gun crimes,
remain at large. Police officials have pointed to cases in which some of these
people ended up involved in shootings, either as perpetrators or as victims.
The intense concentration of gun crimes within a low number of social networks
and the tendency for violence to become retaliatory mean that even a small
change in the efficiency of the criminal justice system could have a large
impact on shootings and homicides.
One of the more obvious differences between the United
States and most other developed nations is the wide availability of guns. Is
gun proliferation to blame for the violence of 2020? While it’s too soon to
fully sort this out, we can at least devise a framework for thinking about the
role guns play.
There is evidence that gun purchases rose considerably
during the pandemic. The FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check
System processed more than 39 million firearm background checks in 2020,
a 40 percent increase from the year before. While the
vast majority of these newly purchased guns have not been used in crimes, even
if a small number end up in communities suffering from endemic violence, the
effects could be sizable. Indeed there is compelling evidence that gun
proliferation can drive more violence in economically
distressed pockets of large cities than in suburban and rural areas.
But gun proliferation isn’t necessarily responsible for last
year’s violence. Gun sales rose for years as homicide rates fell. From 2000 to
2014, the FBI processed more than 100 million firearms background checks,
while the national homicide rate dropped by 18 percent. The large 2020 increase
in background checks represents only a 10 percent rise in the stock of firearms
in the United States. And guns used in crime tend to be surprisingly old — at least 10 years
old, on average. It is relatively uncommon for newly purchased guns to be used
in homicides.
Ultimately, the evidence doesn’t paint a simple picture of
why homicide rates surged in 2020. The rise in violence during the pandemic
appears to be a problem that is uniquely American, so broad explanations that
emphasize economic strife, social stresses and disruptions to public services
are, at best, incomplete. The evidence suggests that gun-carrying increased
sharply shortly after pandemic-induced lockdowns began, either because police
withdrew from public spaces or because people expected an arms race in
communities suffering from endemic violence. The summer protests reignited a
long-brewing legitimacy crisis for law enforcement and may have made it more
difficult for police to reassert control over spiraling violence and
retaliation.
Beneath it all, the ready availability of guns looms. Put
simply, social disruptions and de-policing probably have higher stakes in
American cities — where a small but persistent number of criminal offenders
carry guns — than they do in countries where firearms are not as easy to get.
To read more CLICK HERE
The 5th Execution of 2021
John William Hummel, 45, received a lethal injection for the
2009 killings at the state penitentiary in Huntsville in Texas on June 30, 2021, reported Newsweek.
Hummel said a brief prayer while strapped to the gurney in
the death chamber.
"Yes, when they lay me down to sleep, for I am to die
for justice, the Lord my soul to take. I'll be with Jesus when I wake," he
said, according to a prison transcript provided to Newsweek.
His last statement included remorse for the killings.
"I truly regret killing my family," he said. "I am thankful for
all the thoughts and prayers for my family over the last few days. I love each
and every one of you."
He took a half-dozen breaths as the lethal dose of
pentobarbital took effect, then began snorting quietly, the Associated Press
reported. All movement stopped about a minute later, but his eyes didn't fully
close. Hummel was pronounced dead at 6:49 p.m. CDT, 15 minutes after receiving
the lethal injection.
The authorities said Hummel stabbed his wife, Joy Hummel, 35
times on the night of December 17, 2009, then beat to death his 5-year-old
daughter Jodi Hummel and wheelchair-bound father-in-law Clyde Bedford with a
baseball bat.
He then set their home, in the Fort Worth suburb of
Kennedale, on fire and fled to California. Prosecutors said Hummel, a hospital
security guard at the time, killed his family because he wanted to be with a
woman he met in a convenience store.
After the killings, he fled to California, but was arrested.
He later confessed to the killings, the authorities said.
Hummel was convicted of capital murder in the deaths of his
wife and father-in-law in 2011. He was not tried for his daughter's killing.
Bedford's brother Cecil Bedford watched Hummel die on
Wednesday.
"It was too easy. It was like going to sleep," he
told the AP afterwards.
He added that a more severe punishment would have been
appropriate for Hummel, like being put to death with "a rope, a
guillotine, a firing squad."
"There's all kinds of good stuff to kill people,"
Cecil Bedford said. "They should get what they deserve. An eye for an eye.
I'm sorry. I'm old school."
Executions Delayed by Pandemic
Hummel's execution had been scheduled for March 18 last
year, but was postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic.
He's the second inmate put to death since Texas resumed
executions in May after almost a year.
Quintin
Jones was put to death on May 19 for the 1999 killing of his
great-aunt, Berthena Bryant, but experts
and death penalty opponents condemned the authorities for going ahead
without any media witnesses present.
Last week, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice announced
that an
investigation into Jones' execution had found "a culmination of
factors" had caused the "preventable and inexcusable"
error, including new personnel and procedures. The department said several
steps had been taken to ensure that such a mistake doesn't occur again.
The American Civil Liberties Union had called
for Hummel to receive a 30-day stay of execution, arguing that putting him
to death on Wednesday would be "irresponsible and cruel."
To read more CLICK HERE
The Crime Report's Eva Herscowitz writes:
Cable newscasters, criminologists, and city officials have
repeatedly warned Americans of rising crime nationwide. But the “crime is up”
narrative doesn’t tell the full story, experts say.
Statistics tell a more complicated narrative than headlines,
argues Christopher
R. Herrmann, a former NYPD senior crime analyst and now professor at John
Jay College of Criminal Justice.
“The broad narrative that ‘crime is up’ is simply
incorrect,” Herrmann told Insider.
“Some crimes, mostly shootings and homicides, are up in many
cities, but again, this is a very small percentage of violent crime and even
smaller part of total crime.”
Herrmann said in New York City and Chicago, shootings and
homicides have made up 2.5 percent and 10.7 percent of total crimes this year,
respectively.
But he acknowledged that nearly every city saw an uptick in
homicides and shootings in the first quarter of 2021, a time when various
cities typically see rises, drops and steady rates of crime.
Richard
Rosenfeld, a criminologist and University of Missouri–St. Louis professor,
said he believes the uptick is connected to George Floyd’s police killing and
widespread distrust of the police.
Rosenfeld suggested that police frustrated with rising
animosity might be pulling back, or that communities distrustful of police are
taking vigilante justice into their own hands.
Some criminologists believe the national uprising over
police killings of Black people made residents of high-crime areas less likely
to assist police investigations, worsening a longstanding problem and
emboldening violent criminals, reports
Reuters.
Rosenfeld offered a nuanced explanation of crime statistics:
while homicides and shootings have been rising, property crimes and burglaries
are down or steady in many cities. While homicides increased on average 30
percent or more during the summer of 2020, Rosenfeld predicts they will eventually
decline to pre-2020 rates.
“What we’ve been seeing is just across the board increases,
both last summer and through the first quarter of this year,” he told Insider.
“And we’re going to continue to see — roughly speaking — across the board
increases [in homicides] through the first half of this year, but with a larger
number of cities not showing big increases or indeed actually showing declines
over last year.”
Crime is also connected to economic crises, and the
pandemic’s economic consequences — unemployment, housing insecurity, food
shortages — may have contributed to rising crime. In Rochester, N.Y., where
murder rates have reached a
record high, residents also say the surge reflects rising problems with drug
trafficking, criminal gangs and illegal firearms during the pandemic.
The rise though, remains significantly lower than crime’s
historical peak in the 1980s and early 1990s, reports
Reuters. Herrmann and Rosenfeld agree that crime will likely decline as the
year continues. Rosenfeld said it’s unlikely homicide and shooting rates
continue at last summer’s scale, unless an event like Floyd’s murder spurs
another protest movement.
With much of 2021 still to go, Herrmann said it’s too early
to determine or predict trends.
“We’ll have a horrible summer of shootings and homicides,
and there’s another month and a half of that, And then we’ll start to see
things settle down,” he said. “We’ll really have to wait until first quarter of
2022 to see what the trend is going to be.”
To read more CLICK HERE