Wednesday, July 31, 2024

Creators: President Biden Pushes For Supreme Court Reform

Matthew T. Mangino
Creators Syndicate
July 30, 2024

The first paragraph of this week's Washington Post op-ed by President Joe Biden declared, "This nation was founded on a simple yet profound principle: No one is above the law. Not the president of the United States. Not a justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. No one."

President Biden's declaration is a condemnation of the United State Supreme Court's recent decisions and the conduct of some of its members. This may be the most aggressive effort to reform the court in nearly a century.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted to implement a curious age formula for expanding the court. The Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937, commonly referred to as the "court-packing plan," was Roosevelt's attempt to appoint up to six additional justices to the Supreme Court for every justice older than 70 years, 6 months, who had served 10 years or more.

According to History.com, Roosevelt's plan was "seen as a political ploy to change the court for favorable rulings on his New Deal legislation." Roosevelt's court-packing plan failed.

Biden's plan, according to Newsweek, includes a constitutional amendment ensuring presidents have no immunity for crimes committed while in office, introducing term limits for Supreme Court justices, and establishing a "binding" code of ethics for the court.

The president's concern is the result of the court's recent decision granting presidents broad immunity from prosecution for crimes they commit in office. Biden said that the ruling, which was made in favor of former President Donald Trump's criminal prosecution for election interference, provides a president expansive immunity from criminal conduct while in office.

Biden also proposed term limits for justices, ensuring that the court's membership changes with some regularity, rather than the current system, in which the opportunity to nominate justices can be unpredictable.

It is ridiculous that federal judges do not have a mandatory retirement age. Twelve percent of active federal judges are over 80 years of age, and about a dozen judges over the age of 90 are still working. As it is, a Supreme Court justice stays on the bench for life.

According to the National Center for State Courts, 32 states plus the District of Columbia have a retirement age for judges; most use 70 as the threshold, and the remaining states use either 72, 74, 75, or in the case of Vermont, 90.

Biden said that he supports an updated system in which the president "would appoint a justice every two years to spend 18 years in active service on the Supreme Court."

The president also lamented that the court has been "mired in a crisis of ethics." The court's approval rating is at an all-time low as the court deals with ethical indiscretions by longtime members of the court.

I wrote here recently, "Can a justice who had a flag flying over his home that symbolized the false narrative that a president's reelection was stolen and an attack on the Capitol was essential to 'stop the steal,' avoid even the appearance of impropriety?"

The rules of conduct that govern every judge in the United States do not apply to the Supreme Court. When the flag flew over Justice Samuel Alito's home, there were no codified rules of conduct for Supreme Court justices.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas accepted millions of dollars' worth of gifts over his past two decades on the bench, "a total nearly 10 times the value of all gifts received by his fellow justices during the same time," according to a CNBC report.

Biden's proposal would require justices to disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity, and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have conflicts of interest.

The newly minted lame-duck president is not sitting back and cruising into the sunset. This may be some of the most important work that Biden does before he leaves office.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book "The Executioner's Toll, 2010" was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.

To visit Creators CLICK HERE

Tuesday, July 30, 2024

President Biden pushes for SCOTUS term limits and ethics code

 President Joe Biden is unveiling a long-awaited proposal for changes at the U.S. Supreme Court, calling on Congress to establish term limits and an ethics code for the court’s nine justices, reported The Associated Press. He also is pressing lawmakers to ratify a constitutional amendment that would limit presidential immunity.

The White House on Monday detailed the contours of Biden’s court proposal, one that appears to have little chance of being approved by a closely divided Congress with just 99 days to go before Election Day.

Still, Democrats hope it will help to focus voters as they consider their choices in a tight election. The likely Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, has sought to frame her race against Republican former President Donald Trump as “a choice between freedom and chaos.”

The White House is looking to tap into the growing outrage among Democrats about the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, issuing opinions that overturned landmark decisions on abortion rights and federal regulatory powers that stood for decades.

Liberals also have expressed dismay over revelations about what they say are questionable relationships and decisions by some members of the conservative wing of the court that suggest their impartiality is compromised.

“I have great respect for our institutions and separation of powers,” Biden argues in a Washington Post op-ed set to be published Monday. “What is happening now is not normal, and it undermines the public’s confidence in the court’s decisions, including those impacting personal freedoms. We now stand in a breach.”

The president planned to speak about his proposal later Monday during an address at the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, to mark the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act.

Biden is calling for doing away with lifetime appointments to the court. He says Congress should pass legislation to establish a system in which the sitting president would appoint a justice every two years to spend 18 years in service on the court. He argues term limits would help ensure that court membership changes with some regularity and adds a measure of predictability to the nomination process.

He also wants Congress to pass legislation establishing a code of ethics for justices that would require justices to disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest.

Biden also is calling on Congress to pass a constitutional amendment reversing the Supreme Court’s recent landmark immunity ruling that determined former presidents have broad immunity from prosecution.

The decision extended the delay in the Washington criminal case against Trump on charges he plotted to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss and all but ended prospects the former president could be tried before the November election.

The last time Congress ratified an amendment to the Constitution was 32 years ago. The 27th Amendment, ratified in 1992, states that Congress can pass a bill changing the pay for members of the House and Senate, but such a change can’t take effect until after the next November elections are held for the House.

Trump has decried court reform as a desperate attempt by Democrats to “Play the Ref.”

“The Democrats are attempting to interfere in the Presidential Election, and destroy our Justice System, by attacking their Political Opponent, ME, and our Honorable Supreme Court. We have to fight for our Fair and Independent Courts, and protect our Country,” Trump posted on his Truth Social site earlier this month.

There have been increasing questions surrounding the ethics of the court after revelations about some of the justices, including that Clarence Thomas accepted luxury trips from a GOP megadonor.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who was appointed during the Obama administration, has faced scrutiny after it surfaced that her staff often prodded public institutions that hosted her to buy copies of her memoir or children’s books.

Justice Samuel Alito rejected calls to step aside from Supreme Court cases involving Trump and Jan. 6 defendants despite a flap over provocative flags displayed at his home that some believe suggested sympathy to people facing charges over storming the U.S. Capitol to keep Trump in power. Alito says the flags were displayed by his wife.

Trump, at the time, congratulated Alito on his social media site for “showing the INTELLIGENCE, COURAGE, and ‘GUTS’” in refusing to step aside. “All U.S. Judges, Justices, and Leaders should have such GRIT.”

Democrats say the Biden effort will help put a bright spotlight on recent high court decisions, including the 2022 ruling stripping away women’s constitutional protections for abortion, by the conservative-majority court that includes three justices appointed by Trump.

Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said in a Sunday interview with CNN’s “State of the Union” that Biden’s reform push is about reminding Americans that “when they vote in November, the Supreme Court is on the ballot.”

She added: “That is a good reason to vote for Kamala Harris and to vote for Democrats in both the Senate and the House.”

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina pushed back that Democrats didn’t complain when a more liberal-leaning court “was pumping out opinions they liked.”

“Only when we brought constitutional balance back from having a conservative court was the court a threat to the country,” Graham said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “What’s been a threat to the country is an out-of-control liberal court issuing opinions that basically take over every phase of American life based on nine people’s judgment.”

The announcement marks a remarkable evolution for Biden, who as a candidate had been wary of calls to reform the high court. But over the course of his presidency, he has become increasingly vocal about his belief that the court has abandoned mainstream constitutional interpretation.

Last week, he announced during an Oval Office speech that he would pursue Supreme Court reform during his final months in office, calling it “critical to our democracy.”

Harris, in her unsuccessful bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, had expressed being open to a conversation about expanding the nine-member court. The proposals unveiled on Monday do not include such an effort, which is something Biden as a candidate viewed skeptically.

As a vice presidential candidate, Harris notably dodged questions about her earlier stance on the issue during her October 2020 debate with Vice President Mike Pence.

The Harris campaign and aides to the vice president did not respond to queries about Harris’ involvement in shaping the Biden proposal and whether she would pursue any other court reform efforts should she be elected.

The White House in a statement said, “Biden and Vice President Harris look forward to working with Congress and empowering the American people to prevent the abuse of Presidential power, restore faith in the Supreme Court, and strengthen the guardrails of democracy.”

To read more CLICK HERE

Monday, July 29, 2024

Fourth Amendment victory at the border

A federal court has held that the government must obtain a warrant based on probable cause before searching travelers’ electronic devices at the border, according to the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. The ruling came in a case in which a criminal defendant, Kurbonali Sultanov, moved to suppress evidence obtained from a search of his cellphone when he entered the U.S. at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. In October 2023, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press filed an amicus brief in the case, arguing that warrantless searches of travelers' phones violate the First Amendment’s protection of the freedoms of the press, speech, and association, as well as the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. The judge relied heavily on the amicus brief in issuing her ruling.

“As the court recognizes, warrantless searches of electronic devices at the border are an unjustified intrusion into travelers’ private expressions, personal associations, and journalistic endeavors—activities the First and Fourth Amendments were designed to protect,” said Scott Wilkens, senior counsel at the Knight First Amendment Institute. “The ruling makes clear that border agents need a warrant before they can access what the Supreme Court has called ‘a window onto a person’s life.”

Sultanov was stopped for questioning at John F. Kennedy Airport in March 2022. He initially refused to provide the password to his cellphone but complied when officers told him he had no choice. The officers searched the cellphone manually at JFK, and subsequently searched the phone forensically after obtaining a warrant. In a subsequent criminal case in the Eastern District of New York, Sultanov filed a motion to suppress the evidence obtained from his phone, arguing that the warrantless search of the device at JFK, and the later forensic search, violated his Fourth Amendment rights. 

The court held that the warrantless search of Sultanov’s cell phone at JFK violated the Fourth Amendment, but ultimately denied his motion to suppress because the court concluded that the government acted in good faith.

The court also held that border searches of electronic devices burden core First Amendment rights, including freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association, and freedom of the press. In reaching this conclusion, the court relied on records obtained by the Knight Institute through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, which describe travelers’ experiences with electronic device searches at the border. Read more about that lawsuit here.

The court also explained that these searches chill communications between reporters and their sources, again pointing to the amicus brief filed by the Knight Institute and Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which detailed the experiences of numerous journalists who when entering the U.S. were flagged for secondary inspection and were required to surrender their electronic devices for warrantless searches.

“As the court recognized, letting border agents freely rifle through journalists' work product and communications whenever they cross the border would pose an intolerable risk to press freedom,” said Grayson Clary, staff attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. “This thorough opinion provides powerful guidance for other courts grappling with this issue, and makes clear that the Constitution would require a warrant before searching a reporter's electronic devices.”

Read the ruling here.

Sunday, July 28, 2024

VP Kamala Harris opposes the death penalty

"My entire career I have been opposed -- personally opposed -- to the death penalty," Vice-President Kamala Harris said in 2019, according to ABC News. "And that has never changed."

Harris has consistently voiced that view. But advocates on both sides say her actual approach to cases involving the death penalty -- long a politically treacherous issue in California -- has been far more complicated.

"There's a mixed record," said Robert Dunham, at the time executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. "There are instances where as district attorney she decided not to seek the death penalty and there are other instances where she as attorney general took steps that made it more difficult for a potentially innocent person to get access to evidence that could get to the truth."

"Ultimately," Dunham told ABC News, "the judgment for the voter is to try to determine whether the candidates' beliefs are genuine."

To read more CLICK HERE

Saturday, July 27, 2024

Texas judge strikes down Biden restriction on modified semiautomatic guns

A federal judge recently struck down a Biden administration ban on forced reset triggers, devices that allow semiautomatic guns to fire at faster rates, citing the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn a ban on bump stocks last month, reported the Washington Post.

Judge Reed O’Connor of the Northern District of Texas ruled in favor of guns-rights groups that had sued the U.S. Justice Department and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in 2023 challenging the ban.

O’Connor’s ruling took the same approach that the Supreme Court’s conservative majority did in overturning the Trump administration’s ban on bump-stock devices in June by focusing on ATF’s interpretation of laws restricting the possession of machine guns. It stated that although forced reset triggers enable a user to fire weapons at a faster rate than normal triggers, they do not meet the statutory definition of a machine gun because they do not enable guns to fire multiple rounds with a “single function of the trigger.”

Dudley Brown, president of the National Association for Gun Rights, one of the groups that challenged the ban, wrote in a statement that Tuesday’s decision — along with the Supreme Court’s ruling on bump stocks — forces ATF “to return to their Constitutional boundaries.”

Attorneys for the Justice Department and ATF did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday evening.

Forced reset triggers are devices that forcibly return the trigger of a firearm to its reset or ready-to-fire position after a bullet is fired, which allows a user to more quickly fire successive shots.

In a 2022 letter to federal firearms licensees, ATF said that certain forced reset triggers, which were being marketed as replacement triggers for AR-style rifles, allowed shooters to “automatically expel more than one shot with a single, continuous pull of the trigger” and were subject to a ban.

The National Association for Gun Rights and Texas Gun Rights, another advocacy group, sued the Justice Department and ATF in August 2023, arguing that the agencies had wrongly characterized forced reset triggers to ban them.

In court filings, ATF said that its testing found that a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a forced reset trigger could fire at an average rate of 840 rounds per minute, and that guns with forced reset triggers can be fired with a “single, constant pull of the trigger.”

In his ruling, O’Connor sided with the National Association for Gun Rights and Texas Gun Rights in arguing that forced reset triggers still only fire a single round with “a single function of the trigger.” He likened the characterization to the Supreme Court’s decision on bump stocks. The Supreme Court in June similarly ruled against banning those devices on the argument that they did not alter the semiautomatic action of firearms despite facilitating a much faster rate of fire.

O’Connor’s ruling referenced the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas that spurred the Trump administration’s ban on bump stocks and a polarizing debate on the legality of devices that increase the rate of fire of semiautomatic weapons.

O’Connor acknowledged the “tragic nature” of the shooting but said that “no matter how terrible the circumstances, there is never a situation that justifies a court altering statutory text that was democratically enacted by those who are politically accountable.”

To read more CLICK HERE

Friday, July 26, 2024

Mangino discusses 'Med Student Goes Missing In Bar' on Crime Stories with Nancy Grace


 To watch the interview CLICK HERE

Creators: Susan Smith, Infamous Killer of Her Children, Is Where She Belongs

Matthew T. Mangino
Creators Syndicate
July 23, 2024

In the summer of 1994, O.J. Simpson engaged in his infamous low-speed chase with a parade of Los Angeles squad cars loaded with police officers who wanted to take him into custody for the alleged murder of his wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. Three months later, on the other side of the country, Susan Smith put her children in a vehicle, strapped them into their car seats and started them on a slow roll to the bottom of John D. Long Lake.

Although Smith's case started after and ended before O.J.'s case, it certainly didn't live in the shadow of the so-called trial of the century. When Smith let her car roll into a lake in Union County, South Carolina, she kicked off a media frenzy that has served as a harbinger of things to come. A throng of media descended on Union County and didn't leave until Smith was shipped down state to prison.

Smith was 22 years old when she told investigators that a Black man had carjacked her while the two boys were still inside the car. The man let her out and sped off with her children. The man who prosecuted Smith, Tommy Pope, is now a member of the South Carolina legislature. He recently told Angenette Levy of the Law and Crime Network that Smith's first assertion that "a Black man carjacked the vehicle with her sons inside" stirred international interest in the case.

She wept on national television, pleading for the children's safe return. "Your mama loves you so much," she said during one news conference, according to Fox News.

Smith was convicted of murdering her children. She has been behind bars for nearly three decades and now has a parole hearing scheduled for Nov. 4.

Her adjustment in prison has been anything but stellar. According to ABC News, Capt. Alfred R. Rowe Jr., a supervisor at the Women's Correctional Institution, was terminated and charged with having sex with Smith while she was incarcerated. A second guard, Lt. Houston Cagle, admitted to also having sex with Smith.

More recently, Smith has been hard at work courting her admirers — according to recorded phone calls from Leath Correctional Institution reviewed by the New York Post, Smith carried on romantic and sexual conversations with at least 12 men over the past three years.

"It's time for me to get out," Smith told one of her admirers over the phone earlier this year. "I've done my time. I'm ready to go."

How will her conduct impact her chances at parole?

Some state parole decision-makers use various assessments including risk, sex offending, mental health and drug and alcohol. Risk assessment tools coupled with parole criteria are thought to provide uniformity to a board's decision-making process.

The South Carolina Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services has a list of criteria it considers when an individual is eligible for parole. Although the board has absolute discretion with regard to parole, there are 16 factors that the board may consider.

Three of those factors weigh heavily against Smith's parole. First, the seriousness of the offense. It is difficult to think of a more callous act than drowning your children. Second, the inmates conduct while in prison. Sex with guards and phone sex with potential financial supporters is not a good look for someone who wants the board's mercy. Finally, a fact that will play a significant role in the board's decision is the position of the judge, prosecutor and victim's family with regard to parole. Pope, Smith's prosecutor, has already said that he believes in truth in sentencing, "life should mean life."

Parole in South Carolina is a privilege, not a right. Smith may be ready to go, but she is likely to remain behind bars for the foreseeable future.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book "The Executioner's Toll, 2010" was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.

To visit Creators CLICK HERE

Thursday, July 25, 2024

The Supreme Court is on the ballot this fall

America is facing an assault on our democracy, carried out by the Court’s supermajority, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, and lower court judges, reported the Washington Monthly. Democrats must respond to this attack, no matter their nominee, even if the Court is out of the headlines with its term concluded earlier this month. We’re glad to see reports that President Biden will soon propose term limits and a binding ethics code for Supreme Court justices.

It’s time. In February 2017, shortly after Trump took office, The Washington Post, which first reported the Biden-Harris looming reforms, adopted its slogan: “Democracy dies in darkness.” But democracy can die in broad daylight. Witness Federal District Court Judge Aileen Cannon casting aside long-standing precedents this week to rule that the appointment of Special Counsel Jack Smith is unconstitutional in the Mar-a-Lago documents case over which she’s presiding in Florida. Then there’s the Supreme Court’s stunning decision this month finding the president virtually immune from prosecution. The opinion, authored by Roberts, may scuttle the remaining federal and state cases against Trump, even if Trump loses the election. In New York State, where Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts related to his hush money and election interference scheme, sentencing has been delayed because of the Court’s ruling and may never be carried out.

It’s a familiar but still trenchant observation: There is nothing “conservative” about the Court’s supermajority. It is radical and untethered by conservative respect for precedent or the historic prerogatives of branches besides the executive.

While the Court issued questionable decisions when Chief Justices Warren Burger and William Rehnquist led it—Bush v. Gore—it never strayed so far from respecting constitutional consensus as it has under Roberts, despite his posture as an institutionalist only interested in “calling balls and strikes.”  

Things changed in 2005 when President George W. Bush nominated, and the Senate confirmed Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Court. It created a 5-4 precedent-smashing majority that discovered a Second Amendment right to private ownership of guns (District of Columbia v. Heller, 2008), equated money and speech in extremis (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 2010), and invalidated the pre-clearance requirements of the Voting Rights Act which Congress had almost unanimously extended. (Shelby County v. Holder, 2013) Thanks to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell’s manipulation of the confirmation process to confirm Trump’s three nominees—Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—the 5-4 Court wielding a sledgehammer became the 6-3 radical court swinging a wrecking ball.

Although the Trumpified Court’s abortion and presidential immunity decisions received the most attention, equally radical are its evisceration of the ability of states and localities to regulate guns, elimination of affirmative action in university admissions, and reversal of the 40-year precedent requiring deference to administrative agencies when statutes are ambiguous. So, too, were its decisions breaching the wall between church and state where even the flimsiest claim of religious liberty sent the justices running to grant a license to discriminate.

“The least dangerous branch,”—Alexander Hamilton’s famous description of the courts—has become the most dangerous, even without the sword or purse.

Trump and McConnell gave us this Supreme Court supermajority to change our country in ways that would be difficult to undo. Taking a victory lap when Barrett was confirmed days before the 2020 presidential election, McConnell boasted: “A lot of what we have done over the last four years will be undone sooner or later by the next election. They won’t be able to do much about this for a long time.”

He’s right. The Constitutional five-alarm fire lit by the Supreme Court supermajority illuminates the only way to respond to this attack on democracy. Whoever the Democrats nominate in Chicago must fiercely counterattack the Supreme Court, putting it front and center in their presidential campaign. They must detail the damage done and offer a clear response. The voters must know that if they elect a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress—very big “if”s, to be sure—the chief executive will fight to enlarge the Supreme Court from nine to 13 members, impose term limits on the justices, and pass a binding ethics code.

The case for these changes has been compelling for many years. Of the advanced democracies, America has the smallest number of jurists on its high court. We also have the only high court whose members are not constrained by age or term limits. Their replacement is a matter of the vicissitudes of death and resignation rather than any predictable timetable, leaving some one-term presidents like Trump with three nominations and others, like Jimmy Carter, with none.

Ignoring this antiquated and arbitrary system was possible when the Court commanded widespread respect. That is no longer the case, and “we the people” need not stand by while six justices remake our country, some while enriching themselves. When the Civil Rights Act neared passage in the summer of 1964, a very different Senate Republican leader, Everett Dirksen, who backed Lyndon Johnson’s historic legislation, quoted the French novelist Victor Hugo: “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” The next Democratic president needs to act on that truth.

To read more CLICK HERE

Wednesday, July 24, 2024

Law & Crime: These cases will go away faster than you can say ‘President Trump’: For Trump’s legal team, it’s all about delay

Matthew T. Mangino
Special for Law and Crime News
July 8, 2024

The U.S. Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity is already having an impact on the pending criminal cases against Donald Trump. The former president’s lawyers are trying to apply the ruling in Trump v. United States to the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case. In a 10-page motion, lawyers have asked U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon to allow them to file additional briefings on immunity and to freeze nearly all pretrial activity until she resolves the issue.

“Resolution of these threshold questions is necessary to minimize the adverse consequences to the institution of the presidency arising from this unconstitutional investigation and prosecution,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in the July 5 filing.

The second look proposed by Trump’s legal team was made possible by the Supreme Court’s recent ruling. The high court found “at least a presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for a President’s acts within the outer perimeter of his official responsibility.” The Court ruled that the former president has absolute immunity with regard to his discussions with the Department of Justice about leveraging power to have states replace their legitimate electors and investigating sham allegations of election fraud.

The court found that the president is presumptively immune for allegedly “attempt[ing] to pressure the Vice President to take particular acts in connection with his role at the certification proceeding.”

What’s more, the majority of the justices found that Trump’s communication by tweet and public address on Jan. 6 may be protected.

“The president possesses ‘extraordinary power to speak to his fellow citizens and on their behalf,” the decision said. “[T]he President’s] communications are likely to fall comfortably with the outer perimeter of his official responsibilities.”

Trump’s lawyers will likely seek to toss all of the federal charges for subversion of the 2020 election. The Supreme Court has remanded the case to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan to determine which allegations in Smith’s indictment would be barred under the decision, and the justices said that additional briefing will be needed for the trial court to do so.

The portion of Smith’s prosecution dealing with scheming with the Department of Justice to pressure Georgia to investigate the election is dead in the water. Trump’s team will use the court’s opinion to fight evidence in the case still standing after Chutkan completes her analysis — like meetings Trump had with his top advisers and Vice President Mike Pence.

Some portion of the fake electors case might survive the court’s scrutiny and also the classified documents case which occurred after Trump left the White House.

Smith’s prosecutions have taken a blow, but it’s certainly not a knockout. However, Trump’s strategy from the beginning in dealing with the various criminal charges was delay. To that end he has been successful. Smith’s prosecutions will not be tried before Election Day, and if Trump ultimately wins in November these cases will go away faster than you can say “President Trump.”

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. and the former District Attorney of Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, His book “The Executioner’s Toll, 2010” was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino

To read more CLICK HERE

 

Tuesday, July 23, 2024

Former GOP AG concerned about 'abuse of power'

 As the onetime White House counsel and attorney general under President George W. Bush, Alberto Gonzales was known as an energetic and sometimes controversial supporter of expansive presidential powers, particularly in the realm of national security. He’s also no fan of Donald Trump, reported POLITICO.

So what would he make of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling granting broad immunity to the president, including significant protection to Trump from prosecution in the Justice Department’s case alleging that he tried to steal the 2020 election?

In an interview with POLITICO Magazine conducted over the phone, and in an email follow-up after the assassination attempt on Trump, Gonzales largely sought to square the circle: Even as he suggested the Supreme Court’s ruling largely affirmed the need for a president to make tough decisions, he expressed dismay about how Trump might use the authority for malign purposes if he returns to the White House.

“Why would anyone think, given his record, that he would not abuse the power of the office?” Gonzales said. “I think everyone should have concerns about possible abuse if he becomes president of the United States again.”

To read more CLICK HERE


Saturday, July 20, 2024

Oklahoma executes man for raping and killing his 7-year-old former stepdaughter

 The 9th Execution of 2024

Oklahoma executed Richard Rojem on June 27, 2024. He was convicted of kidnapping, raping and killing his 7-year-old former stepdaughter in 1984.

Rojem, 66, received a three-drug lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester and was declared dead at 10:16 a.m., prison officials said. Rojem, who had been in prison since 1985, was the longest-serving inmate on Oklahoma’s death row.

When asked if he had any last words, Rojem, who was strapped to a gurney and had an IV in his tattooed left arm, said: “I don’t. I’ve said my goodbyes.”

He looked briefly toward several witnesses who were inside a room next to the death chamber before the first drug, the sedative midazolam, began to flow. He was declared unconscious about 5 minutes later, at 10:08 a.m., and stopped breathing at about 10:10 a.m.

A spiritual adviser was in the death chamber with Rojem during the execution.

Rojem had denied responsibility for killing his former stepdaughter, Layla Cummings. The child’s mutilated and partially clothed body was discovered in a field in rural Washita County near the town of Burns Flat on July 7, 1984. She had been stabbed to death.

Rojem was previously convicted of raping two teenage girls in Michigan, and prosecutors said he was angry at Layla Cummings because she reported that Rojem sexually abused her, leading to his divorce from the girl’s mother and his return to prison for violating his parole.

Rojem’s attorneys argued at a clemency hearing this month that DNA evidence taken from the girl’s fingernails did not link him to the crime.

“If my client’s DNA is not present, he should not be convicted,” attorney Jack Fisher said.

In a statement read by Attorney General Gentner Drummond after the execution, Layla’s mother, Mindy Lynn Cummings, said: “We remember, honor and hold her forever in our hearts as the sweet and precious 7-year-old she was.

“Today marks the final chapter of justice determined by three separate juries for Richard Rojem’s heinous acts nearly 40 years ago when he stole her away like the monster he was.”

Rojem, who testified at the hearing via a video link from prison, said he wasn’t responsible for the girl’s death. The panel voted 5-0 not to recommend to the governor that Rojem’s life be spared.

“I wasn’t a good human being for the first part of my life, and I don’t deny that,” said Rojem, handcuffed and wearing a red prison uniform. “But I went to prison. I learned my lesson and I left all that behind.”

Prosecutors said there was plenty of evidence to convict Rojem, including a fingerprint that was discovered outside the girl’s apartment on a cup from a bar Rojem left just before the girl was kidnapped. A condom wrapper found near the girl’s body also was linked to a used condom found in Rojem’s bedroom, prosecutors said.

A Washita County jury convicted Rojem in 1985 after just 45 minutes of deliberations. His previous death sentences were twice overturned by appellate courts because of trial errors. A Custer County jury ultimately handed him his third death sentence in 2007.

Oklahoma, which has executed more inmates per capita than any other state in the nation since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, has now carried out 13 executions since resuming lethal injections in October 2021 following a nearly six-year hiatus resulting from problems with executions in 2014 and 2015.

To read more CLICK HERE

Alabama executes man for 1998 robbery and murder

 The 10th Execution of 2024

Keith Edmund Gavin was executed by lethal injection on July 18, 2024, making him the third man Alabama has executed in 2024.

Gavin was sentenced to death on the 10-2 recommendation of a jury, Alabama and Florida are the only states that authorize execution with less than a unanimous vote of the jurors.

The 64-year-old was put to death for the March 1998 murder of William “Bill” Clayton Jr. in Cherokee County. Clayton was gunned down near an ATM while getting cash to take his wife on a date that evening.

Gavin’s execution was scheduled for 6 p.m. It happened at the scheduled time, after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case around 5:15 p.m.

That denial came after he filed a handwritten appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday evening challenging a state judge’s dismissal of his motion to stay the execution because the judge would not waive the filing fees - finding that Gavin had enough money in his prison account.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall commented on the execution, sending a statement to the media: “There is no doubt about Gavin’s guilt for this heinous offense. In 1998, Gavin was identified by four witnesses, including his own cousin, for walking up to a Corporate Express van outside a Regions Bank, where he shot and killed the driver, William Clayton. He subsequently stole the van and drove off with the victim as Clayton’s life slipped away.”

“William Clayton was a devoted father of seven who had just finished his workday and had stopped to get cash for a date with his wife. He was slain in cold blood by a repeat murderer. I cannot imagine the shock, pain, and frustration that William’s family has endured over the last 26 years. I pray his family finds solace in the long-awaited justice by the State of Alabama.”

Gov. Kay Ivey also made a statement. “After a Cherokee County courier, William Clayton, Jr., finished his day’s work, he stopped at an ATM so he could treat his wife to dinner, only to be robbed of his life by Keith Gavin. After receiving a death sentence, Mr. Gavin appealed time after time for years to avoid justice, but failed at every attempt. Today, that justice was finally delivered for Mr. Clayton’s loved ones.”

She continued, “I offer my prayers for Mr. Clayton’s family and friends who still mourn his loss all these years later.”

Execution

The curtains to the three viewing rooms opened 6:09 p.m.

When the curtain opened, Gavin was in the execution chamber and strapped onto the gurney in a standard white sheet. His imam, dressed in a black robe, was speaking and Gavin’s lips were moving. Their conversation couldn’t be heard in the viewing rooms.

At 6:11 p.m., Holman warden Terry Raybon read the state’s death warrant as Gavin’s lips continue to move.

When the warden offered him the microphone to say his last words, Gavin said, “I love my family.” He then followed that statement with several words in Arabic.

His lips continued to move as he stretched both hands against the straps on the gurney with his index fingers pointed upward.

Gavin then leaned his head back and closed his eyes. His mouth fell slightly open as his imam appeared to continue speaking or in prayer. Shortly after, the imam stepped back from the gurney.

At 6:19 p.m., a corrections officer performed a standard consciousness check by yelling Gavin’s name, brushing his eyelid, and pinching his left arm. The check is intended to make sure an inmate is unconscious from the first drug before administering the two other drugs that stop the heart and lungs.

At 6:20 p.m.., Gavin appeared to take his last breath.

The curtains closed at 6:25 p.m.

Matthew Clayton, the youngest of Bill Clayton’s seven children witnessed the execution and talked to reporters following an Alabama Department of Corrections press conference.

He called his dad “the last victim of Keith Edmund Gavin.”

Gavin committed the fatal shooting while on parole for another murder in Illinois.

On behalf of his family, Matthew Clayton thanked Ivey for standing for principles and “creating a line in the sand to let violent criminals know that taking the life of innocent individuals will not be tolerated in the state.”

He thanked the Attorney General’s Office for their dedication and hard work, and law enforcement for their apprehension of Gavin.

Matthew Clayton described his father as a large man 6 feet and 6 inches, weighing about 280 pounds. He was a gregarious, fun person, said Matthew Clayton, and a devoted husband of 38 years to his mother. Bill Clayton was in the Army in the Korean War, and was a man with rural American values.

“I have often described him as a slice of Americana,” said Matthew Clayton. “He had an incredible work ethic from his roots as an Alabama farm boy.”

“It’s quite unfortunate his final years were taken from him in such a brutal way.”

Matthew Clayton said his family was told Gavin was indoctrinated to gang violence at an early age in Chicago. They were told that when Gavin was a teenager he killed another gang member, but that killing didn’t result in a conviction. Gavin then committed another murder at 19 -- which was the crime he was on parole for when he fatally shot Bill Clayton.

“For us it’s always been a question as to, could the state of Illinois done a better job at protecting their citizenry and protecting the people of this country. Could that have prevented the murder of Bill Clayton...”

Final hours

Earlier Wednesday, prison officials gave a rundown of Gavin’s past 24 hours, including visitors and final meals.

On Wednesday his visitors were spiritual advisor Aswan Adul Addarr, attorneys Neil Conrad and Daniel Epstein. He refused breakfast, but had snacks of Ruffles Cheddar and Sour Cream Potato Chips, Lay’s Plain Potato Chips, and a chocolate Hersey Bar with almonds. He refused his lunch and dinner meals. He had no phone calls on Wednesday.

Thursday, he was visited by friend Lauren Gill, attorneys Kelly Huggins, Neil Conrad and Daniel Epstein. Gavin refused his breakfast, but had ice cream and Mountain Dew.

He accepted his lunch meal and refused his final meal. He did not make any special requests.

Prison officials also said Gavin’s execution witnesses were attorneys Neil Conrad and Daniel Epstein, friend Lauren Gill, and spiritual advisor Aswan Abdul Addarr.

Earlier Thursday, the Alabama Attorney General’s Office responded to Gavin’s appeal to the nation’s high court. The office said the appeal was “purely a state-law issue.”

“Second, a stay of execution would only serve to delay Gavin’s execution and not result in relief, as the claims he raises are meritless. Finally, the public interest weighs in favor of allowing the State to carry out his execution, and Gavin’s multi-decade delay should not be excused.”

Gavin, whose attorneys have not responded to repeated requests for comment from AL.com, was executed via Alabama’s three-drug lethal injection procedure. He did not opt-in to dying by nitrogen gas—a novel method Alabama first tried in January with the execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith—when inmates on Alabama Death Row had the opportunity to do so in June 2018.

Alabama’s lethal injection protocol requires two intravenous lines for the three-drug lethal injection cocktail. Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Hamm said the execution team stuck Gavin three times for the required two IV lines.

The process did not cause delays in the execution, as executions prior have stretched into the night and early morning hours because of issues with IV lines.

He was the second lethal injection this year. Jamie Ray Mills was executed in May. And, the Alabama Attorney General’s Office is seeking execution orders for at least two more men later this year.

The state is set to have its second nitrogen execution in September. Alan Miller, who survived a lethal injection attempt in 2022, is set to be suffocated using nitrogen gas. So far, Alabama is the only state in the country to have used the new method.

Lawsuits

While Gavin did not specifically challenge Alabama’s fatal injection cocktail in the courts leading up to his execution, he did argue that his devout Muslim faith requires his body to be kept intact after his death and that he didn’t want a state autopsy.

After a brief legal battle in state court, the state obliged his request. “No autopsy will be performed on Keith Edmund Gavin,” said a statement from the Alabama Department of Corrections. “His remains will be picked up by the attending funeral home.”

And, despite that same lawsuit saying Gavin wouldn’t be fighting his impending death, days later Gavin filed a handwritten motion to another judge. He asked for a stay of execution, without involving his attorneys, and for a status that allows poor people to have court filing fees waived.

Cherokee County Circuit Court Judge Shaunathan C. Bell on July 10 ruled that Gavin had more than enough in his prison account to pay the filing fee and denied his request. The judge also dismissed Gavin’s motion for a stay.

That was the case that Gavin later appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Crime

William C. “Bill” Clayton Jr. was a Korean War veteran who retired after working 15 years for L&N Railroad and another decade at AmSouth Bank, according to his obituary. In retirement, the father of seven took a contract job making deliveries for Corporate Express Delivery Systems, Inc.

Just after 6:30 p.m. on March 6, 1998, the 68-year-old Birmingham man’s life ended when he crossed paths with Gavin, who had just arrived in downtown Centre. He had come from Illinois, where he had recently been paroled after serving 17 years of a 34-year sentence for murder.

Clayton had just finished making his deliveries for the day and had stopped in his work van at the Regions Bank in downtown Centre to get cash from the ATM. He was planning to take his wife on a date that evening.

He never got to take his wife to dinner.

Gavin shot Clayton while attempting to rob him at the ATM, according to court records. Then, Gavin pushed him into the passenger seat of the van and drove off.

Several witnesses, including Gavin’s cousin that had traveled from Illinois with him, identified Gavin as the gunman.

Gavin’s cousin testified that when they stopped at the intersection near the courthouse and the Regions Bank Gavin got out of his cousin’s vehicle and approached a van that was parked nearby. The cousin testified he thought Gavin was going to ask the driver of the van for directions. However, when he looked up, he saw that the driver’s side door of the van was open, and Gavin was holding a gun. The cousin stated that he watched as Gavin fired two shots at the driver of the van. The cousin testified he fled the scene.

An investigator with the Cherokee County District Attorney’s Office testified at Gavin’s trial that he was returning to Centre from Fort Payne when he heard over the radio that there had been a shooting and that both the shooter and the victim were traveling in a white van with lettering on the outside. As he proceeded toward Centre, the investigator said, he saw a van matching the description given out over the radio and followed it.

At one point the van stopped, a man the investigator identified as Gavin got out and fired a round of shots.

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Thursday, July 18, 2024

Creators: Let History Be Our Guide in These Tumultuous Times

Matthew T. Mangino
Creators Syndicate
July 16, 2024

Our country suffered a horrific tragedy in Butler, Pennsylvania. A former president, and current candidate for president, narrowly escaped assassination. A husband and father in the crowd lost his life, and two others were seriously wounded.

There is no question our country is in the midst of unsettling political strife. Americans are clearly divided, but violence should play no role in our elections and our governance.

We would be naive to think we are living in an era of unprecedented political violence. It has been 43 years since the last attempt on the life of a president or presidential candidate in the United States.

A brief review of history shows us that by today's standards, politics, at times, has been extremely volatile. Between 1865 and 1901, three presidents were killed while in office.

In 1861, Abraham Lincoln had to be secreted into Washington D.C. for his inauguration due to threats on his life. In 1865, Lincoln was assassinated in Ford's Theatre. There was a conspiracy to not only assassinate President Lincoln but to also murder Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward at the same time. Johnson's would-be assassin, George Atzerodt, backed out at the last minute, and Secretary Seward received serious injuries at the hands of Lewis Payne.

Lincoln's successor, Johnson, was later impeached as a result of his disregard for black civil rights, which emboldened white mobs to wage increasingly violent terror campaigns against black people throughout the South. The increasing political vitriol was a by-product of Johnson's failure to condemn the violence and his willingness to pardon thousands of secessionists.

Immediately after the presidential election of 1876, between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden, it became clear that the outcome of the race hinged largely on disputed election returns from Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina — sound familiar?

Tilden won the popular vote by 250,000. On the first count of the Electoral College, Tilden led 184 to 165. The three Southern states' electors were in dispute. A congressional commission was created and debated over the outcome of the election well into the year 1877.

In clandestine meetings between Republican candidate Hayes and Southern Democrats, a deal was made to make Hayes president and to end reconstruction in the South. Although Tilden won the popular vote, and probably the Electoral College, Hayes became president.

President James Garfield was shot while boarding a train at the Baltimore and Potomac railroad station in Washington, D.C. on July 2, 1881. He died from his wounds 11 weeks later on Sept. 19.

On Sept. 6, 1901, William McKinley was shot by an assassin at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. He died eight days later. Garfield's vice president and successor was Theodore Roosevelt.

After completing Garfield's term, Roosevelt was elected to a full term as president of the United States. He retired and William Howard Taft was elected president. Roosevelt, disenchanted with the direction of the country, decided to run against Taft and Woodrow Wilson in 1912.

While campaigning in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the same position as Donald Trump — a former president, running for president — Theodore Roosevelt was shot in the chest before giving a campaign speech. His life was saved by the bullet only slightly penetrating his folded 50-page speech, which he carried in his breast pocket. He then proceeded, bloody and injured, to deliver his speech to the raucous crowd.

Twenty years later, in February of 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt, having been elected but not yet taken the oath of office, was attacked by a would-be assassin while driving in a motorcade in Miami, Florida. Although FDR was unharmed, a passenger in his vehicle, Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, was killed.

Our current political unrest is enhanced by the unprecedented ability of candidates, and their supporters, to publish their thoughts and opinions in real time; an insatiable appetite for the 24-hour news cycle; and the pre-occupation, of some, with conspiracy theories.

As we try to make sense of what we see and hear, we would do well to look back at history to understand that our problems are not necessarily unique, and certainly not beyond our ability to solve.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book "The Executioner's Toll, 2010" was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.

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Tuesday, July 16, 2024

Surprise! Trump appointee Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed all charges in classified document case

Surprise!  Just in time for the GOP National Convention, United States Federal District  Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed all charges against Donald Trump in a case alleging the former president mishandled classified documents after leaving office, reported Jurist. The ruling centered on Senior Counsel Jack Smith, whose appointment to prosecute the case was ruled unconstitutional.

In November 2022, US Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith to serve as special counsel with oversight of two investigations related to Trump. Clear conflict-of-interest issues would have marred prosecutorial efforts by the Justice Department of current US President Joe Biden, Trump’s two-time opponent for the White House. In such politically sensitive cases, or where it would otherwise be in the public interest to do so, US law provides for the appointment of a special counsel — an independent officer who is authorized to investigate and, if appropriate, prosecute politically divisive allegations.

First, Smith was tasked with investigating whether Trump attempted to interfere with the 2020 election that ended his presidency, and the subsequent transfer of power to Biden. Second, he was to continue an investigation that had turned up multiple classified documents in various unsecured locations throughout Trump’s primary Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago. In the summer of 2023, Smith unveiled indictments in both investigations.

Trump moved to dismiss the classified documents indictment, arguing Smith’s appointment by Garland violated the Appointments Clause of the US Constitution, which states in relevant part that the president has the authority to:

…nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate … appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

The clause serves as a check on executive power by ensuring key government officials are vetted by both the executive and legislative branches, thereby preventing either branch from wielding unchecked authority to fill key positions. Notably, its use of the general term “all other Officers of the United States,” paired with the specific use of “such inferior Officers, as [Congress thinks] proper” leaves room for interpretation.

If Smith were considered among the “other” group, his appointment would have required presidential nomination and legislative consent. If he were in the “inferior” group, the requirements could be more flexible. Smith argued he qualified as an “inferior” officer, thus validating his appointment by the US Attorney General.

In Monday’s ruling, District Judge Aileen Cannon reluctantly, and only for limited purposes, accepted Smith’s claim that as special counsel he was an “inferior” officer, but found his appointment violated the clause regardless:

the Appointments and Appropriations challenges as framed in the Motion raise the following threshold question: is there a statute in the United States Code that authorizes the appointment of Special Counsel Smith to conduct this prosecution? After careful study of this seminal issue, the answer is no. None of the statutes cited as legal authority for the appointment … gives the Attorney General broad inferior-officer appointing power or bestows upon him the right to appoint a federal officer with the kind of prosecutorial power wielded by Special Counsel Smith. Nor do the Special Counsel’s strained statutory arguments, appeals to inconsistent history, or reliance on out-of-circuit authority persuade otherwise. … The bottom line is this: The Appointments Clause is a critical constitutional restriction stemming from the separation of powers.

Cannon suggested that for such an appointment to be valid, the Special Counsel would need to be nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate, or Congress would need to pass new legislation consistent with the Appointments Clause.

Trump’s latest court victory follows a Supreme Court decision granting him sweeping prosecutorial immunity for acts considered to be in the outer bounds of his official duties as president. In May, he was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. US law does not prevent a convicted felon from holding the nation’s highest office. Trump has long maintained that all cases pending against him are the product of political persecution. Following the release of Monday’s decision, he wrote via social media that all cases pending against him should be dismissed:

The Democrat Justice Department coordinated ALL of these Political Attacks, which are an Election Interference conspiracy against Joe Biden’s Political Opponent, ME. Let us come together to END all Weaponization of our Justice System, and Make America Great Again!

The news comes days after Trump was shot in an apparent assassination attempt.

His chief opponent in the 2024 White House race, Biden, was separately accused of mishandling classified materials after his tenure as vice president to Barack Obama. The Justice Department announced its decision not to prosecute earlier this year. That case was also led by a special counsel, Robert K. Hur, who concluded prosecution would be inappropriate because the evidence failed to establish the president’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

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Thursday, July 11, 2024

The Sentencing Project: Media Guide for reporting on crime

 From The Sentencing Project:

Misleading news coverage of crime and criminal legal policies has played an integral role in the over 50-year history of mass incarceration. Following is The Sentencing Project’s guidance to newsrooms and journalists on how to accurately cover crime and justice. News coverage that adds context, mitigates biases, and ensures veracity can inform the public and policymakers on how to pursue the most effective and humane public safety policies.

  • Situate crime trends and policies within their broader historical and geographic context.Nationwide, crime rates reached their peak levels in the 1990s then fell roughly 50% by year end 2019—a trend to which mass incarceration contributed only modestly. Then, the economic, social, and psychological turbulence of the COVID-19 pandemic created a seismic shift for the most serious crime: homicide. Homicides spiked up 27% in 2020 and remained at elevated rates until beginning a substantial decline in 2023. Reported rates of violent and property crime exhibited typical fluctuations amidst the pandemic, although household surveys of violent victimization showed a more dramatic increase across the country. Motor vehicle thefts, which were at near-historic lows by 2019, also increased in the subsequent years, as did carjackings.The country’s experience with mass incarceration has shown clearly that ratcheting up harmful police and prison policies is a counterproductive response to upticks in crime. Well-framed stories about crime increases should consider the following questions: Is the shift unique to one form of crime and is it attributable to a change in crime reporting or recording? How does the uptick compare to historical crime peaks and lows, and how does it compare with crime trends in other jurisdictions? If crime rates increased in several otherwise unrelated jurisdictions, this should inspire skepticism that a particular local reform is to blame. Be sure to also request and assess evidence of the effectiveness of proposed solutions. What broader policy shortcomings does the crime uptick point to and what broader solutions are being implemented? (E.g., access to mental health care and effective drug treatment programs, community-based violence prevention programs, gun control, summer youth programs, affordable housing, underemployment and low wages, unaddressed residential segregation, etc.).U.S. crime rates increased dramatically beginning in the 1960s, but between 1991 and 2019 crime rates fell by about half, just as they did in many other countries around the world. The decline has been especially steep for youth, whose arrest rate fell by 80% from 1996 to 2020. Polls show that throughout most of this crime drop, the majority of Americans continued to believe that crime was increasing nationwide. Sensationalist coverage does not advance public safety and distorts public understanding. Given longstanding public misperceptions about crime trends, consider: Why cover a crime incident at all? Routinized crime coverage and click chasing promote punitive and ineffective crime policies. As the Center for Just Journalism recommends, also consider whether you’re giving adequate attention to broader forms of harm caused by violations of civil or criminal law by powerful people.Media coverage should also test causal claims about the effectiveness of past crime policies by comparing local crime trends with regional and national patterns. The nationwide crime drop between the 1990s and 2019 challenges any claim that a particular local policy brought down crime rates. Do not award credit for crime declines to particular leaders, laws, or tactics without a rigorous assessment.
  • 2.      Recognize the limited role of youth crimes and evidence on appropriate responses to adolescent crime.For much of the past quarter century, both youth crime and incarceration levels have fallen dramatically. Between 1999 and 2020, the youth arrest rate fell by 80%. Meanwhile, the number of youth held in juvenile justice facilities fell from 107,000 to 25,000 – a 77% decline – during roughly the same time period. The recent uptick in certain youth crimes has occurred alongside other promising trends. The most recent data show 32% fewer youth arrests in 2022 than in 2019, the year before the pandemic began. This general trend masks increases in youth arrests for homicide (up 45% from 2019 to 2022) and weapons offenses (up 19%). However, youth arrests for other serious offense categories fell over this period, such as for aggravated assault (down 14%) and robbery (down 36%). Overall, youth’s share of total arrests nationwide reached 9% in 2022. These trends have been misrepresented in a recent wave of alarmist youth crime coverage.In the mid-1990s, media reports, relying on unqualified sources, trumpeted “a ticking time bomb” of adolescent crime perpetrated by a new wave of allegedly remorseless and morally impoverished young “superpredators.” These predictions were based on faulty science and proved wildly inaccurate: youth crime rates began a sizable and prolonged downturn in the mid-1990s. Yet the coverage helped spark a wave of counterproductive, punitive laws that contradicted all available evidence on what works to address delinquency. In 2020, NBC News reviewed this history and concluded: “Though it failed as a theory, as fodder for editorials, columns and magazine features, the term ‘superpredator’ was a tragic success—with an enormous, and lasting, human toll.” Avoid repeating this history: double-check the data to verify an alleged trend, interview multiple experts, and ask hard questions before feeding a crime wave/surge narrative. Be aware that voluminous research finds that over-responding to adolescent misbehavior typically damages young people’s futures and harms public safety. Youth do better and reoffend less when they’re diverted from the court system rather than prosecuted, and incarceration likewise leads to worse public safety and youth development outcomes.
  • 3.      Avoid amplifying false or unsupported claims: fact check police, prosecutors, and legislators. “Man Dies After Medical Incident During Police Interaction,” the Minneapolis police department reported after its officers killed George Floyd. Video of the incident contradicted their account, reinforcing that police reports cannot be trusted as facts. Relatedly, there’s a growing understanding that prosecutors don’t just enforce laws, but play an active role in creating them, making them active players in many legislative debates. This is why it’s important to verify claims about crime incidents and trends, and to include sources beyond criminal legal practitioners to ensure that you are reporting the truth. Seek out the perspective of currently and formerly incarcerated people as both sources and journalists. Also, remember that not all numbers are equally reliable: apply a critical lens to internally-conducted polls whose questions and sampling methods are obscure, such as those conducted by some police unions of their members. Finally, report verifiable facts as facts, rather than as claims. For example, did an expert claim that people with violent convictions leaving state prisons have lower recidivism rates than others, or does data show it to be a fact? (See #8.)
  • 4.      Reassess the newsworthiness of crimes and identities.Given the racial biases in criminal legal enforcement and the lasting harm of being named in media stories that are easily accessible on the internet, some outlets including The Boston Globe are scaling back their coverage of petty crimes and trimming the long tail of these stories by amending or erasing their archives. The Associated Press will stop naming individuals involved in stories about low-level arrests. “A consensus appears to be emerging among newspaper publishers,” writes The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple, “that crime coverage and its stickiness in a search-engine world need a systemic update.” News outlets should emulate these “right-to-be-forgotten” initiatives and ensure that they are accessible and fair. As a rule, news media should not reveal the names or include photos of young people who are involved in the juvenile court system, which seeks to protect their identities to minimize the long-term consequences of youthful misbehavior.
  • 5.      Avoid creating backlash bait with partial coverage of reforms and recidivism.Situate the impact of sentencing reforms within the massive scale of mass incarceration. For example, 448,000 people were released from prison in 2022 (see Table 9 here for a state breakdown). If a particular reform expedites the release of some hundreds or thousands of people, contextualize that within the much larger number of people that are typically released from prison each year. Unless the pace of decarceration dramatically increases, it will take over seven decades to return to 1972’s prison population, before the era of mass incarceration. If you have identified unfairness in the reform process, be sure to also hold government officials accountable for the persistent unfairness and ineffectiveness of current prison sentences, which scholars have shown to be too long, imposed too frequently, and racially imbalanced.Even the best policies that dramatically reduce recidivism rates cannot get these rates to zero. If policies are evaluated by the recidivism of the few, then elected officials and practitioners will be pressured to abandon effective policies in the face of public opinion misinformed by skewed media coverage. As The Marshall Project explains, furloughs and work release programs in prisons were otherwise hugely successful but news coverage of “Willie” Horton brought that to an end. Avoid turning one tragic incident into the harbinger of tragic criminal legal policies by informing your audience about the relative infrequency of such incidents, and by asking what preventative policies—beyond further incarceration—might avert another similar tragedy. If an arrest you’ve covered results in a dismissal or finding of innocence, ensure that your coverage follows through to the conclusion of the case.
  • 6.      Conduct a racial equity audit on the quantity of your crime coverage.Media coverage often overrepresents crime committed by Black males and victimization experienced by white females. Researchers have shown that journalists gravitate to unusual cases when selecting homicide victims (white women) and to more common cases when selecting people who have committed homicide (Black men), suggesting that newsworthiness is not a product of how representative or novel a crime is, but rather how well it can be “scripted using stereotypes grounded in White racism and White fear of Black crime.” Homicide victims were more likely to make the news if they were white or killed in majority-white neighborhoods, according to a Chicago study. Media outlets should therefore conduct an audit comparing how their crime coverage compares to the community’s crime and victimization rates, with awareness that arrest rates oversample crimes committed by people of color. Such audits should also be conducted of headlines and push notifications. Examine also whether your coverage reflects the fact that immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than native-born citizens. Also ensure diversity among sources and news staff, in terms of racial and other identities including exposure to the criminal legal system.
  • 7.      Conduct a racial equity audit on the quality of your crime coverage.Ensure that your crime coverage is treating people of color—both those accused of crime and those who are victims—as humanely and fairly as it is treating white people in similar circumstances. Chicagoans killed in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods were less likely to be treated through the “lens of complex personhood,” such as by noting the victim’s family and community roles. White mass shooters have been presented more sympathetically, such as by recognizing underlying mental illnesses, than Black counterparts. News images of people—often white—impacted by the opioid crisis have depicted well-lit spaces, stressed domesticity, and emphasized close-knit communities while past drug crises tended to depict nighttime scenes on seedy streets or portrayed individuals—often Black—interacting with the police, courts, or jails, and often using starker black and white photography. Past research on television news found that Black individuals accused of crime were presented in more threatening contexts than whites: Black individuals were disproportionately shown in mug shots and in cases where the victim was a stranger. Black and Latino individuals were also more often presented in a non-individualized way than whites—by being left unnamed—and were more likely to be shown as threatening—by being depicted in physical custody of police. Regular audits can help to catch and correct biased coverage. To correct these disparities, level up rather than down: reassess whether crimes are newsworthy (see #4) and present the nuance and humanity of everyone.
  • 8.      Be cognizant that growing prison terms for violent crimes are a key driver of mass incarceration and its racial disparities, and that an abundance of evidence has proven these sentences to be largely ineffective.Over half of the prison population was convicted of a violent offense, which ranges from assault and robbery to sexual assault and murder. Growing sentence lengths for this population has been a major driver of mass incarceration. Over 200,000 people in U.S. prisons were serving life sentences as of 2020—more people than were in prison with any sentence in 1970. Nearly one in five imprisoned people have already served at least 10 years, the maximum duration of most “criminal careers” and a point at which recidivism rates fall measurably. Racial disparities in sentencing also grow with sentence length. People released after decades of imprisonment for the most serious crimes have extremely low recidivism rates. This fact indicates that they have been imprisoned long past the point at which they pose an above-average public safety risk. More generally, when the Bureau of Justice Statistics examined individuals released from state prisons in 2008, it found that those with violent convictions were less likely to be arrested than those with drug or property convictions. Consider these facts when reporting on reforms impacting, or omitting, people convicted of violent crimes. Since most coverage focuses on people at the time of their crime and not years later, profiling people released after spending many years in prison is an important contribution.
  • 9.      Accurately present crime victims and survivors as having a complexity of views.Crime survivors are not monolithic and many have unmet needs that go beyond extreme punishment. Increasingly, victim services and advocacy organizations are supporting criminal legal reforms, noting that incarcerated people are often victims of crime and trauma, and are calling for effective investments to prevent future victimization. Black and Latino people have been far more likely than white people to be serious crime victims, and to be more fearful of becoming crime victims, and yet they have been less supportive of punitive criminal legal practices while being more supportive of investments in rehabilitation and crime prevention. Be mindful of the impact of your reporting on crime survivors and assess whether your coverage includes a spectrum of views. Ultimately, a survivor’s desire for punishment must be balanced with societal goals of advancing safety, achieving justice, and protecting human dignity.
  • 10.  Use humanizing language and toss doublespeak and the exonerative tense.Remember that crime coverage is fundamentally about people. Using person-first language (e.g., people in prison, people with criminal records, youth) impacts public perception of these individuals and supports humane policies. Using shorter labels or bureaucratic jargon (e.g., prisoner, inmate, felon, juvenile) in headlines or stories comes at the expense of casting stigma on a vulnerable population by defining them based on a negative dimension of their lives. Destigmatizing language regarding substance use disorders supports public health solutions, instead of the failed War on Drugs. More precise and accurate language for people convicted of a crime of a sexual nature can also support their rehabilitation.Many punitive criminal legal concepts have Orwellian names that downplay their harm and exaggerate their efficacy, such as “truth in sentencing” and “sentencing enhancements.” The catchall “tough on crime” label is also a form of doublespeak. While such policies are certainly tough on people accused or convicted of crime, why echo this term for policies that often contribute little to community safety?Finally, the “exonerative tense” replaces “police shoot and kill man” with “man struck by officer’s bullet.” The noun “officer-involved shooting” is no clearer than “officer shooting” in conveying who did the shooting and who was shot. Strive for clarity and precision, especially with headlines. According to the AP Stylebook: “Avoid this vague jargon for shootings and other cases involving police. Be specific about what happened. If police use the term, ask for detail. How was the officer or officers involved? Who did the shooting? If the information is not available or not provided, spell that out.”