Biden issues executive order targeting 'emerging firearms threats'

President Joe Biden is creating a federal task force to target “emerging firearms threats,” including cheap devices that can convert commonly owned semiautomatic pistols into fully automatic machine guns, reported The Trace. 

The executive order, signed by Biden during an event on September 26, also seeks to crack down on 3D-printed guns and improve school active shooter drills. It likely marks one of the last gun violence initiatives of his presidency, with a little more than a month to go before the 2024 election and four months before the inauguration of his successor.

“The streets are flooded with machine gun conversion devices because the parts are small, cheap, and easy to make. The impact of these devices is devastating,” Biden said. “It’s about sending a clear message to local law enforcement, and cities across the country, that we’re here to help, and together we can save lives.”

The new Emerging Firearms Threats Task Force — composed of leaders from several federal departments and agencies — will be responsible for developing a plan to combat machine gun conversion devices. The devices, also known as Glock switches, auto sears, or trigger activators, have been showing up at crime scenes in increasing numbers.  

One recent example was in Birmingham, Alabama, where four people were killed and 17 injured in a mass shooting on September 21. Law enforcement recovered more than 100 shell casings and believe machine gun conversion devices were used. While the devices are illegal on the federal level, Alabama and some other states do not have state-level bans, leaving local law enforcement with few tools to arrest and prosecute people caught with the devices.

Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin was among dozens of gun violence prevention advocates, law enforcement officials, and others who attended the September 26 signing ceremony. 

 “We’ve been working with our U.S. attorney, with the Justice Department, to get machine gun conversions like Glock switches off our city streets,” Woodfin said. “But still, my community, and I imagine other communities, are still finding the use of these devices at crime scene after crime scene.”

The ceremony marked the first time that Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, now the Democratic nominee for president, have appeared together at a gun violence-focused event since Biden placed Harris in charge of the new White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention one year ago.

“For as much as we have accomplished, more must be done,” Harris said. “We need more leaders like the leaders in this room, in Congress, who have the courage to take action, to stand up to the gun lobby, and to put the lives of our children first.”

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Alabama conducts second execution by nitrogen gas in the U.S.

 The 18th Execution of 2024

Alabama conducted the second execution in the United States using nitrogen gas on September 29, 2024, with media witnesses describing the prisoner shaking and gasping for several minutes before dying on the gurney, reported The New York Times.

Alan E. Miller, who was convicted in the 1999 murders of three men he believed were spreading rumors about him, was pronounced dead at 6:38 p.m. Central time in Atmore, Ala.

Reporters who witnessed the execution said that Mr. Miller shook on the gurney for about two minutes and appeared to gasp periodically for roughly six minutes as the nitrogen gas flowed.

The state prisons commissioner, John Hamm, responded that officials had been expecting “involuntary body movements as the body is depleted of oxygen.” He said the execution had gone “just as we had planned.” He declined to say whether Mr. Miller had been sedated.

Gov. Kay Ivey said in a statement that Mr. Miller had acted with “pure evil” in carrying out the murders, and she declared that “justice was finally served for these three victims.”

In January, the state carried out what was described as the first nitrogen execution anywhere in the world, and other states have said they are looking into doing so as well as they continue to experience problems obtaining lethal injection drugs.

Several witnesses to that execution said that the prisoner, Kenneth Smith, shook violently as the nitrogen gas was administered and then writhed before his body eventually stopped moving. Witnesses told The New York Times that the gurney had shaken in the execution chamber and that Mr. Smith had appeared to be gasping for air.

But the state’s attorney general, Steve Marshall, has hailed the execution, calling it “textbook” and saying that Alabama had become a pioneer that other states could follow. “Alabama has done it, and now so can you,” he said.

Nitrogen, a colorless, odorless gas, is not harmful in itself and makes up about 78 percent of the air. But when it is used in an execution, a prisoner is strapped to a gurney and a mask is placed over the head, after which a stream of pure nitrogen gas, absent life-sustaining oxygen, produces a fatal but supposedly painless form of suffocation known as nitrogen hypoxia. The method has been used in some medically assisted suicides.

Deanna Smith, wife of Kenneth Smith, was comforted by Jeff Hood after the execution of Mr. Smith in January in Atmore, Ala.Credit...Edmund D. Fountain for The New York Times

Lawyers for the state said Mr. Smith might have moved on the gurney during the execution in January because he tried to hold his breath once the nitrogen had begun flowing.

Thursday’s execution was the second time that the state had tried to carry out the death penalty for Mr. Miller, 59. In September 2022, Mr. Miller fought his planned execution by lethal injection, arguing in court that he had opted for a nitrogen execution but that the state had lost his request.

The U.S. Supreme Court sided with the state, allowing the lethal injection to proceed, and Mr. Miller was taken to the execution chamber. Workers spent more than an hour unsuccessfully trying to insert an intravenous line into his veins, and the execution was called off sometime before midnight, when his death warrant expired.

Later that year, after several problems with executions, Governor Ivey temporarily stopped all executions in the state and called for the prison system to review its procedures. A handful of changes were made, including lengthening by 12 hours the window during which officials can carry out death warrants. Executions resumed in 2023.

Death penalty opponents have warned of a litany of potential problems with using nitrogen gas, including the possibility that the prisoner could suffer a seizure, vomit under the mask or experience other problems if the mask’s seal were broken, diluting the nitrogen and prolonging the prisoner’s suffering.

Maya Foa, an executive director of Reprieve US, a nonprofit that targets human rights issues, said Alabama’s decision to execute Mr. Miller a second time was part of a long, recent history of problematic attempts to carry out the death penalty, both by lethal injection and nitrogen.

“These methods of execution have two things in common: They are human experimentation that risks causing horrific pain, and failed attempts to hide the violent reality of the state taking a human life,” Ms. Foa said.

Across the United States, 18 people have been executed this year. Seven more are scheduled to die in five states before the end of the year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. On Thursday, Oklahoma executed Emmanuel Littlejohn, who was convicted in a 1992 convenience store robbery in which the store owner was fatally shot. A state parole board had recommended that he be granted clemency, but Gov. Kevin Stitt rejected the advice and allowed the execution to go forward.

Executions have been on a general decline since 1999, when a modern peak of 98 were carried out, and death sentences have dropped dramatically as well.

This month so far, five people have been executed in five states. South Carolina carried out the state’s first execution in more than a decade last week, with a lethal injection to Freddie Owens. And Missouri and Texas each executed a person on Tuesday.

This week’s execution of Marcellus Williams in Missouri took place over the objections of the local prosecutor’s office that had convicted him of murder. The prosecutor there had argued in recent months that Mr. Williams could be innocent and that his prosecution had been mishandled.

In Alabama, Mr. Miller’s lawyers argued in court earlier this year that it was “difficult to overstate the mental and physical anguish” that he had endured during the failed attempt in 2022. They said men in scrubs had tried unsuccessfully to insert intravenous lines in his arms, his hands and one of his feet.

They asked in that lawsuit that a medical professional be present during the nitrogen execution and hold the mask on Mr. Miller’s face. It was not clear whether the state had agreed to that, as a settlement reached last month was confidential.

Mr. Miller was convicted in the murders of three men on Aug. 5, 1999, at two Alabama businesses where he had worked, a plumbing company and a warehouse operation that sold oxygen canisters. He was 34 at the time of the shootings. The victims were Lee Holdbrooks, 32; Christopher Yancey, 28; and Terry Jarvis, 39.

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Oklahoma carries out execution for 1992 murder

 The 17th Execution of 2024

Oklahoma executed a man on Thursday for his role in the 1992 fatal shooting of a convenience store owner.

Emmanuel Antonio Littlejohn, 52, was sentenced to death for his role in the shooting death of 31-year-old Kenneth Meers, the co-owner of of the Root-N-Scoot convenience store in southeast Oklahoma City.

Littlejohn was declared dead at 10:17 a.m. after receiving a lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, the Associated Press reported.

Littlejohn had looked toward his mother and daughter, who witnessed the execution, while strapped to a gurney and with an IV line in his right arm.

"Mom, you OK?" Littlejohn asked, according to the AP. "I'm OK," his mother, Ceily Mason, replied.

Emmanuel Littlejohn in February 2023. Littlejohn was executed on Thursday for his role in the 1992 fatal shooting of a convenience store owner. Oklahoma Department of Corrections/AP

"Everything is going to be OK. I love you," he said.

The execution began shortly after 10 a.m. Littlejohn's breathing became labored before a doctor declared him unconscious at 10:07 a.m., the AP reported. He was pronounced dead 10 minutes later.

Littlejohn was one of five inmates executed over the past week, including Alan Eugene Miller who was put to death using nitrogen gas in Alabama on Thursday. Their deaths bring the U.S. to 1,600 executions since the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), despite support for the death penalty declining nationwide over the past two decades.

Littlejohn was executed after Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt, a Republican, rejected a recommendation from the state's parole board to spare his life.

Read more Oklahoma

Oklahoma's Pardon and Parole Board voted 3-2 to recommend clemency in August after Littlejohn's lawyers raised questions about whether he or a co-defendant fired the shot that killed Meers. Littlejohn acknowledged his role in the robbery but denied killing Meers.

Those "who prosecuted Mr. Littlejohn also prosecuted his co-defendant and alleged that they were both were the shooter, so they used inconsistent theories, arguing to each of those juries that the person on trial was the actual shooter," Robin Maher, the executive director of the DPIC, recently told Newsweek. "And so Mr. Littlejohn has basically been convicted of a crime that someone else has been convicted of."

In a statement, Stitt stated why he declined to commute Littlejohn's sentence to life in prison without parole.

"These decisions are very difficult and I do not make them lightly," he said. "Mr. Littlejohn murdered an innocent man 32 years ago while robbing a convenience store. A jury found him guilty and sentenced him to death. The decision was upheld by multiple judges. As a law and order governor, I have a hard time unilaterally overturning that decision. Today, justice for this life lost was carried out. I hope this brings closure to the families impacted by this murder."

Stitt has only once granted clemency to an inmate out of the five times that the parole board has recommended it during his time in office when he commuted Julius Jones' sentence just hours before he was set to be executed in 2021.

Oklahoma has carried out 14 executions under Stitt, after resuming capital punishment following a six-year hiatus in 2021. Littlejohn was the third inmate put to death in Oklahoma this year.

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Handing your phone to police could expose you to unintended problems

No matter what, teaching people they can add their IDs to their phones means some people will inevitably leave the house without physical ID, and that means creating the opportunity for cops to demand phones — which you should never, ever do, reported The Verge. Technical details of your digital ID aside, handing your phone to a police officer grants law enforcement a lot of power over some of your most intimate personal data.

In Riley v. California, the Supreme Court unanimously held that police need a warrant to search through cell phones, even during otherwise lawful arrests. But if you hand over your unlocked phone to a police officer and offer to show them something, “it becomes this complicated factual question about what consent you’ve granted for a search and what the limits of that are,” Brett Max Kaufman, a senior staff attorney in the ACLU’s Center for Democracy, told The Verge. “There have been cases where people give consent to do one thing, the cops then take the whole phone, copy the whole phone, find other evidence on the phone, and the legal question that comes up in court is: did that violate the scope of consent?”

If police do have a warrant to search your phone, numerous courts have said they can require you to provide biometric login access via your face or finger. (It’s still an unsettled legal question since other courts have ruled they can’t.) The Fifth Amendment typically protects giving up passcodes as a form of self-incrimination, but logging in with biometrics often isn’t considered protected “testimonial” evidence. In the words of one federal appeals court decision, it requires “no cognitive exertion, placing it firmly in the same category as a blood draw or fingerprint taken at booking.”

The court said its ruling shouldn’t necessarily extend to “all instances where a biometric is used to unlock an electronic device” because Fifth Amendment questions “are highly fact dependent and the line between what is testimonial and what is not is particularly fine.” And as Recode pointed out in 2020, a defense attorney could argue that any evidence found this way is illegal and should be suppressed — but that’s a risky bet. “It’s fair to say that invoking one’s rights not to turn over evidence is stronger than trying to have the evidence suppressed after the fact,” Andrew Crocker, a senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Recode for that piece.

You might be thinking at this point: you’ve got nothing incriminating on your phone! And an officer may well come to that conclusion. But they could also find something you didn’t even realize was there. “There are a lot of laws on the books, and if a prosecutor or police officer decides to go after you, are you sure you didn’t do anything?” Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told The Verge. “You’re only opening yourself to abuse, to errors, to mistakes. There could be a coincidence that placed you at the scene of a crime that you weren’t even aware of.” Even if you assume most officers are acting in good faith, there are plenty of documented instances of officers abusing their power and facing no legal repercussions. There’s no reason to preemptively hand over something that could be used against you.

There are some minor protections built into Apple and Google’s current systems — you can display an encrypted ID without fully unlocking your phone, and various authorities can scan your ID wirelessly if they have special readers. But you don’t want to be in a situation where you’re searching the web for the technical and policy details of your digital ID system when a cop demands your phone — you’re much better off handing over your physical ID card.

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Texas man waives appeal rights and volunteers to be executed for death of 3-month-old son

 The 16th Execution of 2024

A Texas man, Travis Mullis, who had waived his right to appeal his death sentence received a lethal injection on September 24, 2024 for killing his 3-month-old son more than 16 years ago, one of five executions scheduled within a week’s time in the U.S., reported The Associated Press.

Travis Mullis, 38, was pronounced dead at 7:01 p.m. CDT following the injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. He was condemned for stomping to death his son Alijah in January 2008.

“I’d like to thank everyone ... that accepted me for the man I became during my best and worst moments,” Mullis, while strapped to the death chamber gurney, said after his spiritual adviser offered a brief prayer over him.

He also thanked prison officials and staff for “changes made across the system” that allowed “even the men on death row to show it is possible to be rehabilitated and not deemed a threat and not the men we were when we came into this system.”

He added that while he “took the legal steps to expedite to include assisted suicide, I don’t regret this decision, to legally expedite this process. ... I do regret the decision to take the life of my son.” He apologized to his son’s mother, to her family and said he had no ill will toward anyone involved in the punishment.

“It was my decision that put me here,” he said.

The execution was delayed about 20 minutes while technicians worked to find a suitable vein. One needle carrying the lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital was inserted in his right arm, the usual procedure. A second needle, rather than entering his left arm, was inserted in his left foot.

He closed his eyes as the drug began taking effect and took seven barely audible breaths before his breathing abruptly stopped. He was pronounced dead 20 minutes late

Mullis was the fourth inmate put to death this year in Texas, the nation’s busiest capital punishment state. Another execution was carried out Tuesday evening in Missouri, and executions were also scheduled to take place Thursday in Oklahoma and Alabama. South Carolina conducted an execution Friday.

Authorities said Mullis, then 21 and living in Brazoria County, drove to nearby Galveston with his son after fighting with his girlfriend. Mullis parked his car and sexually assaulted his son. After the infant began to cry uncontrollably, Mullis began strangling the child before taking him out of the car and stomping on his head, according to authorities.

The infant’s body was later found on the roadside. Mullis fled the state but was later arrested after surrendering to police in Philadelphia.

Mullis’ execution proceeded after one of his attorneys, Shawn Nolan, said Tuesday afternoon that he planned no late appeals in a bid to spare the inmate’s life. Nolan also said in a statement that Texas would be executing a “redeemed man” who has always accepted responsibility for committing “an awful crime.”

In a letter submitted in February to U.S. District Judge George Hanks in Houston, Mullis wrote that he had no desire to challenge his case any further. Mullis has previously taken responsibility for his son’s death and has said “his punishment fit the crime.”

At Mullis’ trial, prosecutors said Mullis was a “monster” who manipulated people, was deceitful and refused the medical and psychiatric help he had been offered.

Since his conviction in 2011, Mullis has long been at odds with his various attorneys over whether to appeal his case. At times, Mullis had asked that his appeals be waived, only to later change his mind.

The U.S. Supreme Court has prohibited the application of the death penalty for the intellectually disabled, but not for people with serious mental illness.

If the scheduled executions in Alabama and Oklahoma are carried out as planned, it will mark the first time in more than 20 years — since July 2003 — that five were held in seven days, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, which takes no position on capital punishment but has criticized the way states carry out executions.

The first took place Friday when South Carolina put inmate Freddie Owens to death. Also Tuesday, Marcellus Williams was executed in Missouri. On Thursday, executions are scheduled for Alan Miller in Alabama and Emmanuel Littlejohn in Oklahoma.

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Missouri executes man in spite of prosecutor's concerns

 The 15th Execution of 2024

A Missouri man, Marcellus Williams, convicted of breaking into a woman’s home and repeatedly stabbing her was executed on September 24, 2024 over the objections of the victim’s family and the prosecutor, who wanted the death sentence commuted to life in prison, reported The Associated Press.

Marcellus Williams, 55, was convicted in the 1998 killing of Lisha Gayle, who was stabbed during the burglary of her suburban St. Louis home.

Williams was put to death despite questions his attorneys raised over jury selection at his trial and the handling of evidence in the case. His clemency petition focused heavily on how Gayle’s relatives wanted Williams’ sentence commuted to life without the possibility of parole.

“The family defines closure as Marcellus being allowed to live,” the petition stated. “Marcellus’ execution is not necessary.”

As Williams lay awaiting execution, he appeared to converse with a spiritual advisor seated next to him. Williams wiggled his feet underneath a white sheet that was pulled up to his neck and moved his head slightly while his spiritual advisor continued to talk. Then Williams’ chest heaved about a half dozen times, and he showed no further movement.

Williams’ son and two attorneys watched from another room. No one was present on behalf of the victim’s family.

The Department of Corrections released a brief statement that Williams had written ahead of time, saying: “All Praise Be to Allah In Every Situation!!!”

Republican Missouri Gov. Mike Parson said he hoped the execution brings finality to a case that “languished for decades, revictimizing Ms. Gayle’s family over and over again.”

“No juror nor judge has ever found Williams’ innocence claim to be credible,” Parson said in a statement.

The NAACP had been among those urging Parson to cancel the execution.

“Tonight, Missouri lynched another innocent Black man,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a statement.

It was the third time Williams faced execution. He got reprieves in 2015 and 2017, but his last-ditch efforts this time were futile. Parson and the state Supreme Court rejected his appeals in quick succession Monday, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene hours before he was put to death.

Last month, Gayle’s relatives gave their blessings to an agreement between the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney’s office and Williams’ attorneys to commute the sentence to life in prison. But acting on an appeal from Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s office, the state Supreme Court nullified the agreement.

Gayle, 42, was a social worker and former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter. Prosecutors at Williams’ trial said he broke into her home on Aug. 11, 1998, heard the shower running and found a large butcher knife. Gayle was stabbed 43 times when she came downstairs. Her purse and her husband’s laptop were stolen.

Authorities said Williams stole a jacket to conceal blood on his shirt. His girlfriend asked him why he would wear a jacket on a hot day. She said she later saw the purse and laptop in his car and that Williams sold the computer a day or two later.

Prosecutors also cited testimony from Henry Cole, who shared a cell with Williams in 1999 while Williams was jailed on unrelated charges. Cole told prosecutors that Williams confessed to the killing and provided details about it.

Williams’ attorneys responded that the girlfriend and Cole were both convicted of felonies and wanted a $10,000 reward. They said that fingerprints, a bloody shoeprint, hair and other evidence at the crime scene didn’t match Williams’.

A crime scene investigator had testified the killer wore gloves.

Questions about DNA evidence also led St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell to request a hearing challenging Williams’ guilt. But days before the Aug. 21 hearing, new testing showed that DNA on the knife belonged to members of the prosecutor’s office who handled it without gloves after the original crime lab tests.

Without DNA evidence pointing to any alternative suspect, Midwest Innocence Project attorneys reached a compromise with the prosecutor’s office: Williams would enter a new, no-contest plea to first-degree murder in exchange for a new sentence of life in prison without parole. A no-contest plea isn’t an admission of guilt but is treated as such for the purpose of sentencing.

Judge Bruce Hilton signed off, as did Gayle’s family. But Bailey appealed, and the state Supreme Court blocked the agreement and ordered Hilton to proceed with an evidentiary hearing, which took place last month.

Hilton ruled on Sept. 12 that the first-degree murder conviction and death sentence would stand, noting that Williams’ arguments all had been previously rejected. That decision was upheld Monday by the state Supreme Court.

Attorneys for Williams, who was Black, also challenged the fairness of his trial, particularly the fact that only one of the 12 jurors was Black. Tricia Bushnell of the Midwest Innocence Project said the prosecutor in the case, Keith Larner, removed six of seven Black prospective jurors.

Larner testified at the August hearing that he struck one potential Black juror partly because he looked too much like Williams — a statement that Williams’ attorneys asserted showed improper racial bias.

Larner contended that the jury selection process was fair.

Williams was the third Missouri inmate put to death this year and the 100th since the state resumed use of the death penalty in 1989.

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Creators: Remember When the Trump Administration Started Executing Federal Inmates?

Matthew T. Mangino
Creators Syndicate
September 23, 2024

Imagine a candidate seeking reelection to the office of president of the United States who would systematically start executing condemned prisoners in the midst of an election. Using the death chamber to curry favor with a segment of the electorate is callous and unconscionable.

Are there no limits to what a political candidate will do to get elected? Let's look back at 2020. In the second half of that year, amid a pandemic and a reelection campaign, the Trump administration decided to start executing federal prisoners.

After 17 years without an execution, the federal government carried out 13 executions in a little more than six months. To put those numbers into context, there have been 14 executions in all death penalty states so far this year. In 2020, there were only seven executions in five states. In 2021, there were eight executions in the same number of states — all below the Mason-Dixon line.

The Trump administration conducted more executions in five months than any other presidency since the turn of the 20th century and carried out six executions during a presidential transition period, more than any other administration in the history of the United States. Prior to 2020, the federal government carried out only three executions in the modern era of the death penalty, most notably Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber.

Whether it was a ploy to bolster his tough-guy bona fides or a lowbrow pitch to his "law and order" constituency, then-President Donald Trump's bloodlust saw no boundary.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, those executed by the federal government included the first Native American ever executed by the federal government for the murder of a member of his own tribe on tribal lands.

The Trump administration oversaw the first federal execution in 68 years of an offender who was a teenager at the time the crime was committed.

The federal executions of 2020 included the first federal execution in 57 years for a crime committed in a state that had abolished the death penalty, as well as executions carried out against the wishes of the victims' families and the first lame-duck executions in more than a century.

As the president faced an unprecedented second impeachment trial, his machinery of death kept chugging along. After Trump incited his "law and order" supporters to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, resulting in death and mayhem, Lisa Montgomery was executed. She was the first woman executed in the federal system in nearly seven decades.

Montgomery committed a very heinous crime. In 2004, she cut an unborn fetus from the womb of the mother. According to NBC News, Montgomery's lawyers did not argue that she didn't deserve to be punished, but rather that the jury never fully learned of her severe mental illnesses as diagnosed by doctors. One day after Montgomery's execution, Corey Johnson, with an IQ of 69, was executed.

With only days left in his "reign," Trump had one more execution to carry out. A U.S. circuit court overturned a stay from a lower court to allow Dustin Higgs to recover from COVID-19. He was executed on Jan. 16, 2021, only days before Trump "unwillingly" left office.

There has not been a federal execution since. Executions in this country are almost exclusively in the South, the number of annual executions has dramatically declined since the 1990s, and the number of death sentences are at an all-time low.

Yet, if a candidate wants to flex his "law and order" muscles, the death penalty is an easy choice, and nobody has demonstrated that in a more frightening manner than Donald Trump.

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 X @MatthewTMangino.

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Homicide down 11.6% nationally the largest single year decline since record-keeping began

Gallup poll last year found that 77 percent of Americans believed crime was rising, even though it was actually falling

The number of murders reported in the United States dropped in 2023 at the fastest rate on record, continuing a decline from the surge in homicides during the pandemic, according to The New York Times.

The F.B.I.’s report, which is the agency’s final compilation of crime data for 2023, showed that there were about 2,500 fewer homicides in 2023 that year than in 2022, a decline of 11.6 percent. That was the largest year-to-year decline since national record-keeping began in 1960, according to Jeff Asher, a crime data analyst based in New Orleans.

Overall, violent crime fell 3 percent and property crime fell 2.6 percent in 2023, with burglaries down 7.6 percent and larceny down 4.4 percent. Car thefts, though, continue to be an exception, rising more than 12 percent from the year before.

The latest data is consistent with earlier preliminary reports from the F.B.I., and with research from other organizations and criminologists, all showing continuing declines in most crime, including murder.

Even so, crime remains a point of contention in the presidential race, with the Republican nominee, former President Donald J. Trump, describing American cities as crime-ridden dystopias. Polling shows that Americans remain concerned about crime, and that there is a consistent gap between crime data and the public perception of the problem. For instance, a Gallup poll last year found that 77 percent of Americans believed crime was rising, even though it was actually falling.

“Perceptions of safety are not driven by numbers in spreadsheets,” said Adam Gelb, the chief executive of the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonprofit policy research group that produces its own reports on crime in America. “They are about what people see and hear and feel on the streets, on TV and in their social media feeds. They are not sitting around studying the F.B.I.’s website.”

Some states, most notably California, are weighing tougher criminal justice measures in the face of public concern over crime. In November, voters in the state will decide whether to roll back one of the state’s landmark criminal justice measures, known as Proposition 47. The measure, approved in 2014, lowered penalties for theft and drug crimes and was responsible for a sharp reduction in the state’s prison population.

As residents of all political stripes express frustration with shoplifting and the role of fentanyl and other drugs in perpetuating disorder, polls are showing overwhelming support in California for rolling back Proposition 47.

At the same time, two progressive district attorneys in California who pursued policies to reduce imprisonment are in tough fights to keep their jobs. Both were elected in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis and the social justice protests it provoked. One, Pamela Price in Oakland, faces a recall election driven by concerns about crime. The other, George Gascon in Los Angeles, is in an uphill battle against a more conservative challenger, polling shows.

 

Though the overall trend in crime is downward, there were still 19,252 murders last year in the United States, according to the F.B.I. And the progress was not uniform, with some cities, like Washington D.C., Greensboro, N.C., and Memphis, Tenn, showing big increases in homicides last year, Mr. Asher noted in an analysis he published on Monday.

“The caveat is that these are national numbers,” said Alex Piquero, a professor of criminology at the University of Miami and the former director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics said of the F.B.I. report.

Pointing to a mass shooting in Alabama over the weekend that killed four people, Mr. Piquero said: “When you hear what happens in Birmingham, or you hear what happens in some cities in the United States that still are experiencing firearm violence the way it is, the national numbers won’t mean a lot for those people or those communities. So we have to always remember that we are moving in the right direction, but now is not the time to stop doing what all the people who are invested in crime prevention are doing.”

Criminologists attribute the drop in violent crime to a number of factors, all related to the country emerging from the pandemic: more social services coming back; investments in violence-prevention initiatives; social bonds being re-established; more proactive policing.

“All of those things that were turned off, from a crime prevention point of view, have now been turned on,” Mr. Piquero said.

In a statement, President Biden cited the reduction in crime and pointed to investments in community anti-violence groups that were part of Covid stimulus legislation, saying, “Americans are safer now than when we took office.” He also urged more funding for police departments.

While the F.B.I.’s new report covers crime in 2023, more recent research shows the trend of falling homicides continuing into 2024. A report released in July by the Council on Criminal Justice found that many major U.S. cities had seen sharp drops in homicides this year, and that rates of homicide had returned to prepandemic levels.

And in a database kept by Mr. Asher that tracks murders in nearly 300 American cities, homicides in those cities have declined by nearly 18 percent so far this year — equating to more than 1,200 fewer murders then last year.

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Three mass killings of four or more in Alabama this year

A late night shooting in Birmingham’s Five Points South neighborhood left four dead and 17 injured is one of three quadruple homicides in the city thus far in 2024, according to AL.com.

On July 13, a drive-by shooting at an adult birthday party left four people dead and nine others injured. The victims were Angela Weatherspoon, 56, of Center Point, Markeisha Gettings, 42, of Birmingham, Stevie McGhee, 39, of Birmingham, and Lerandus Anderson, 24, of Center Point.

On Feb. 16, four men were killed in a drive-by shooting in the Smithfield neighborhood. Talton “TJ” Tait, 36, Cortez Ray, 32, Terrell Edwards, 38, and Kevin McGhee, 38, were killed in that shooting.

It also the most recent mass homicide in the state.

The FBI defines mass killings as incidents in which four or more people die within a 24-hour period, not including the killer, according to The Associated Press.

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Overdose deaths declined by about 10 percent in the last year

 Drug overdose deaths are decreasing sharply across the country, according to recent state and federal data, a dramatic improvement in the nation’s efforts to reverse the consequences of fentanyl’s spread in the illicit drug supply, reports The New York Times.

Between April 2023 and April 2024, overdose deaths declined by about 10 percent nationally to roughly 101,000, according to preliminary data published recently by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That amounted to the largest decrease on record, according to the Biden administration. Nonfatal overdoses are also down more than 10 percent.

The data suggests that some of the tools used to combat opioid overdoses, such as naloxone, the overdose-reversing medication, were having a significant impact. But researchers and federal and state health officials have puzzled over the exact reasons for the decrease, including why overdoses have fallen so much in recent months.

The pace of the decline “is such an anomaly in the last 20 years,” said Nabarun Dasgupta, a leading drug policy expert at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who published an analysis this week of the state and federal data.

Some states have reported even greater decreases than the national rate. In Kentucky, overdose deaths dropped by more than a third between April 2023 and March 2024. Arizona, Maine and Vermont all recorded recent decreases of around 15 percent.

North Carolina’s fentanyl overdose rate fell by more than 30 percent from May 2023 to May 2024, Dr. Dasgupta said, a figure that prompted him to call the state’s health department to confirm that the number was real.

Drug overdoses have amounted to one of the most intractable public health crises in modern times, increasing almost every year since the 1970s and peaking at roughly 111,000 in 2022. They declined slightly last year to around 108,000, according to preliminary data.

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South Carolina resumes executions after 13 year pause

 The 14th Execution of 2024

South Carolina put inmate Freddie Owens to death as the state restarted executions after an unintended 13-year pause because prison officials couldn’t get the drugs needed for lethal injections, reported The Associated Press.

Owens was convicted of the 1997 killing of a Greenville convenience store clerk during a robbery. While on trial, Owens killed a person incarcerated at a county jail. His confession to that attack was read to two different juries and a judge who all sentenced him to death.

Owens, 46, made no final statement. His last meal was two cheeseburgers, french fries, well-done ribeye steak, six chicken wings, two strawberry sodas and a slice of apple pie.

When the curtain to the death chamber opened, Owens was strapped to a gurney, his arms stretched to his sides. After the drug was administered, he said “bye” to his lawyer and she said “bye” to him.

He smiled slightly and his facial expression did not change much before he appeared to lose consciousness after about a minute. Then his eyes closed and he took several deep breaths. His breathing got shallower and his face twitched for another four or five minutes before the movements stopped.

A doctor came in and declared him dead a little over 10 minutes later at 6:55 p.m.

Owens’ last-ditch appeals were repeatedly denied, including by a federal court Friday morning. Owens also petitioned for a stay of execution from the U.S. Supreme Court. South Carolina’s governor and corrections director swiftly filed a reply, stating the high court should reject Owens’ petition. The filing said nothing is exceptional about his case.

The high court denied the request shortly after the scheduled start time of the execution.

His last chance to avoid death was for Republican South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster to commute his sentence to life in prison. McMaster denied Owens’ request as well, stating that he had “carefully reviewed and thoughtfully considered” Owens’ application for clemency.

First execution in 13 years

Owens may be the first of several people to die in the state’s death chamber at Broad River Correctional Institution. Five other people are out of appeals, and the South Carolina Supreme Court has cleared the way to hold an execution every five weeks.

South Carolina first tried to add the firing squad to restart executions after its supply of lethal injection drugs expired and no company was willing to publicly sell them more. But the state had to pass a shield law keeping the drug supplier and much of the protocol for executions secret to be able to reopen the death chamber.

To carry out executions, the state switched from a three-drug method to a new protocol of using just the sedative pentobarbital. The new process is similar to how the federal government kills people on death row, state prison officials said.

South Carolina law allows condemned people to choose lethal injection, the new firing squad or the electric chair built in 1912. Owens allowed his lawyer to choose how he died, saying he felt if he made the choice he would be a party to his own death, and his religious beliefs denounce suicide.

Owens changed his name to Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah while in prison, but court and prison records continue to refer to him as Owens.

The crimes

Owens was convicted of killing Irene Graves in 1999. Prosecutors said he fired a shot into the head of the single mother of three who worked three jobs when she said she couldn’t open the store’s safe.

Hanging over his case was another killing: After his conviction, but before he was sentenced in Graves’ killing, Owens fatally attacked Christopher Lee, whom he was incarcerated with at a county jail.

Owens gave a detailed confession about how he stabbed Lee, burned his eyes, choked and stomped him, ending by saying he did it “because I was wrongly convicted of murder,” according to an investigator’s written account.

The confession was read to each jury and judge who went on to sentence Owens to death. Owens had two different death sentences overturned on appeal only to end up back on death row.

Owens was charged with murder in Lee’s death but was never tried. Prosecutors dropped the charges with the right to restore them in 2019 around the time Owens ran out of regular appeals.

Final appeals

In his final appeal, Owens’ lawyers said prosecutors never presented scientific evidence that Owens pulled the trigger when Graves was killed and the chief evidence against him was a co-defendant who pleaded guilty and testified that Owens was the killer.

Owens’ attorneys provided a sworn statement two days before the execution from Steven Golden saying Owens was not in the store, contradicting his trial testimony. Prosecutors said other friends of Owens and his former girlfriend testified that he bragged about killing the clerk.

Owens’ lawyers also said he was just 19 when the killing happened and that he had brain damage from physical and sexual violence while in a juvenile prison.

“Mr. Owens’s childhood was marked by suffering on a scale that is hard to comprehend. He spent his adulthood in prison for a crime that he did not commit,” attorney Gerald “Bo” King said in a statement following Owens’ execution. “The legal errors, hidden deals, and false evidence that made tonight possible should shame us all.”

South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty held a vigil outside the prison about 90 minutes before Owens was scheduled to die.

South Carolina restarts the death penalty

South Carolina’s last execution was in May 2011. It took a decade of wrangling in the Legislature — first adding the firing squad as a method and later passing a shield law — to get capital punishment restarted.

South Carolina has put 43 people to death since the death penalty was restarted in the U.S. in 1976. In the early 2000s, it was carrying out an average of three executions a year. Only nine states have put more people to death.

Since the unintentional execution pause, South Carolina’s death row population has dwindled. The state had 63 condemned people in early 2011. It now has 31 after Owens’ death Friday. About 20 people have been taken off death row and received different prison sentences after successful appeals. Others have died of natural causes.

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Mangino joins Jesse Weber on Law and Crime's Sidebar

Watch my interview with Jesse Weber on Law and Crime's Sidebar discussing Pennsylvania couple's arrested for video taping children being sexually abuse.

To watch Sidebar CLICK HERE

Kentucky sheriff allegedly shoots and kills judge in courthouse

 A Kentucky sheriff allegedly shot and killed a district judge after the two had an argument inside the judge’s chambers, according to CNN.

District Judge Kevin Mullins, 54, was found around 3 p.m. Thursday with multiple gunshot wounds and he was pronounced dead at the Letcher County courthouse in Whitesburg, Kentucky, Kentucky State Police Trooper Matt Gayheart said at a Thursday evening news conference.

Letcher County Sheriff Shawn M. Stines, 43, shot Mullins after an argument inside the judge’s chambers, a preliminary investigation revealed. Stines is now facing a first-degree murder charge, state police said. CNN is trying to determine whether Stines has retained an attorney.

Stines turned himself in after the shooting and was arrested at the scene without incident on Thursday, authorities said. He is cooperating with authorities, Gayheart said. It is unclear who will take over as the county sheriff following the arrest of Stines, who had been sheriff for about eight years.

“This community is small in nature, and we’re all shook,” Gayheart said about the shooting.

While other people were in the building at the time, no one else was inside the judge’s chambers and no other injuries were reported. There’s no threat to the public, Gayheart added.

Law enforcement has yet to release details about the argument that led up to the shots being fired, and the motive remains under investigation, Gayheart said, adding that the incident was “isolated.”

“We’re still trying to get answers to what led up to the actual shooting itself and the moments prior to the shooting,” Gayheart said.

The killing came less than two weeks after southeast Kentucky was rocked by a shooting at an interstate that wounded five people in Laurel County earlier this month. And just three days ago, a Russell Countydeputy had been killed in the line of duty, officials said.

“There is far too much violence in this world, and I pray there is a path to a better tomorrow,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said in a social media post.

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Chief Justice Roberts pushed SCOTUS decision on immunity

Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern writing for Slate this week: 

On Sunday, New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Adam Liptak published a blockbuster article about the conservative justices’ efforts to shield Donald Trump from any consequences for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. This is what Supreme Court reporting needs to become: less credulous academic translating of a handful of judicial opinions and more cultivation of inside sources, procuring of confidential memos, and production of massive scoops. More to the point, their piece—about how the three Jan. 6 cases decided last year in favor of Donald J. Trump came together—contains several remarkable news bombshells, including the fact that Justice Samuel Alito had the opinion in the Capitol assault case, Fischer v. United States, taken away from him by Chief Justice John Roberts; that the liberal justices were working to try to get the majorities to moderate maximalist positions in all three cases; and that Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch would have pushed the immunity case to be decided after the 2024 election. But the biggest revelation here is that the character John Roberts plays as an affable centrist steward of the court’s reputational interests—created largely in the press and played to the hilt by him—is a total fiction. It was Roberts who decided that Trump and Trumpism would prevail in all three insurrection cases and he did not, in this instance, follow in the wake of the court’s aggressive conservative maximalists. He was the aggressive conservative maximalist. And he created majority opinions in his own image.

A singular revelation in the Times’ reporting is a memo Roberts produced in February of 2024, after a cross-ideological panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit handed down a decision rejecting Trump’s claims that he was almost wholly immune from criminal liability for actions taken during his time as president. In his confidential memo, the chief justice “offered a scathing critique” of that opinion, complaining that the lower court judges “failed to grapple with the most difficult questions altogether.” He inveighed that the Supreme Court should take the case—which would hold up Trump’s criminal trial slated for the summer—but also previewed how the justices would reverse the lower-level ruling. “I think it likely that we will view the separation of powers analysis differently” from the appeals court, he warned. From that point onward, it appears he was committed to a sweeping decision for the former president—and never seemed to wonder if a massive victory for Trump might imperil American democracy.

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The Pride of Portage County: Elected Sheriff overtly intimidates Harris supporters

A sheriff in Ohio who made disparaging remarks about Vice President Kamala Harris and immigrants on social media suggested that residents compile a list of addresses where they see yard signs in support of the Democratic presidential nominee, reported NBC News.

In a public Facebook post, Portage County Sheriff Bruce Zuchowski used anti-immigrant rhetoric and denounced both Harris and her supporters.

"When people ask me...What’s gonna happen if the Flip — Flopping, Laughing Hyena Wins?? I say...write down all the addresses of the people who had her signs in their yards! Sooo...when the Illegal human ‘Locust’ (which she supports!) Need places to live...We’ll already have the addresses of the their New families...who supported their arrival!" the post said.

Zuchowski, the sheriff’s office and the Harris campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday afternoon.

The post Zuchowski shared also included TV images mentioning Aurora, Colorado, and Springfield, Ohio — towns that have become flashpoints in the immigration debate.

Springfield in particular has been subject to security threats amid baseless claims about Haitian immigrants living there. former President Donald Trump amplified the claims at Tuesday's presidential debate, which drew more than 67 million viewers, when he said, “They’re eating the pets.” 

Trump's running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, has made similar remarks on social media, and he doubled down on them in an interview Sunday on NBC News' "Meet the Press."

Springfield Mayor Rob Rue has said "a lie" is tearing apart the city of nearly 59,000 residents. "We'd like that to stop," he said Saturday.

Springfield is a little less than 200 miles southeast of Portage County.

Zuchowski's Facebook page includes a photo of him with Vance and other pictures of him with Trump allies such as former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

The photo with Vance is dated July 15. One of the photos with Flynn is dated June 13, and the other is dated March 30 and includes Ramaswamy.

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Creators: When a Hunch Leads to a Constitutional Violation

Matthew T. Mangino
Creators Syndicate
September 16, 2024

Bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell wrote about a concept he called "thin-slicing." This idea suggests that spontaneous decisions are often as good as — or even better than — carefully deliberated decisions.

His book "Blink" begins with the story of the Getty kouros, a statue purchased in 1985 by the J. Paul Getty Museum in California. Many experts thought the kouros was authentic, but others who just looked at the statue were skeptical. George Despinis, head of the Acropolis Museum in Athens, said after viewing the kouros, "Anyone who has ever seen a sculpture coming out of the ground could tell that that thing has never been in the ground."

Thin-slicing suggests that intuitive judgment is developed by experience, training and knowledge.

Intuitive judgment, in layman's terms, is a hunch. In the criminal justice system, a hunch is the lowest level of what is referred to as a standard of proof. To make a traffic stop, obtain a search warrant or make an arrest, the police must have probable cause. Probable cause means that a reasonable person would believe a crime was in the process of being committed, had been committed or was going to be committed.

In the context of the Fourth Amendment, a mere hunch refers to a situation in which the police have an intuitive feeling that a suspect is engaging in criminal activity, but they do not have any specific evidence to support that feeling.

The Fourth Amendment protects individuals from unreasonable searches and seizures. Thin-slicing in the criminal justice system, and acting on it, would violate the U.S. Constitution. A hunch is suspicion without articulable facts.

"On October 31, 1963 while walking the beat through downtown Cleveland," an ACLU of Ohio article reads, "Cleveland Police detective Martin McFadden with 39 years of police experience noticed three men acting suspiciously and pacing in front of a jewelry store on Euclid Avenue."

McFadden was thin-slicing; based on his years of experience, he was concerned the men were "casing a job, a stickup," and carrying weapons. "McFadden identified himself as a police officer ... asked them their names" and searched the three men for weapons.

Unfortunately for McFadden at the time, a hunch was not enough to overcome a constitutional violation. The searches resulted in John W. Terry's arrest for possessing a firearm without a license. He was convicted, and he appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Although the court, in Terry v. Ohio, acknowledged that a hunch was not enough, the court carved out a new standard of proof — reasonable suspicion.

Reasonable suspicion was defined by the U.S. Supreme Court as "the sort of common-sense conclusion about human behavior upon which practical people ... are entitled to rely." According to an article on the Maricopa County, Arizona, website, "Further, it has defined reasonable suspicion as requiring only something more than an 'unarticulated hunch.' It requires facts or circumstances that give rise to more than a bare, imaginary, or purely conjectural suspicion."

Terry v. Ohio did not provide blanket authority to intrude on an individual's rights. However, it did radically expand police authority to investigate crimes where there is a reasonable articulable basis for suspicion.

To paraphrase a well-known sardonic commentary, no good decision goes unpunished. The Terry decision led to the controversial policy allowing police officers to stop, interrogate and search New Yorkers to find illegal guns, on the sole basis of reasonable suspicion. According to The New York Times, the New York Police Department made 4.4 million stops under the citywide stop-and-frisk policy between January 2004 and June 2012. "More than 80 percent of those stopped were Black and Latino people," according to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

In 2013, New York Judge Shira A. Scheindlin ruled that NYPD's stop-and-frisk tactics violated the U.S Constitution's Fourth Amendment prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures. She didn't say that Terry v. Ohio was unconstitutional but that the NYPD's tactics were unconstitutional. Many New Yorkers of color were arrested, convicted and jailed as a result of NYPD's unconstitutional conduct.

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 X @MatthewTMangino.

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Project 2025 proposes to go after prosecutors who fail 'to prosecute criminal offenses in their jurisdictions'

Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s far right policy agenda, proposes dismantling democratic institutions to reshape American life. Tucked in the middle of the nearly 1,000-page document lies a striking plan — to prosecute locally elected officials who do not adhere to the priorities of a potential second Trump administration, reported Truthout. Specifically, page 553 calls for the Department of Justice to “initiate legal action against local officials,” namely district attorneys, who fail to “prosecute criminal offenses in their jurisdictions.”

Donald Trump often threatens to prosecute his political opponents. This rhetoric offers a glimpse into why experts fear that Project 2025’s plan to leverage the DOJ could lead a new administration to broadly target elected officials.

“The DOJ section, specifically, is one of the scariest because it really outlines a way for the DOJ to be used as an enforcement arm of the White House,” said Brianna Seid, a lawyer in the justice program at NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice. “At the heart of it, it’s just very anti-democratic, and it presumes that a few actors at the federal level know what an individual community wants and should have a say in what an individual community wants.”

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Mangino discusses school threats on WFMJ-TV21 Weekend Today

Watch my interview on WFMJ-TV21 about the wave of school threats in the area with the return to the classrooms.

 

To watch the interview CLICK HERE and scroll to "Wave of School Threats"

Book Review: Shielded How the Police Become Untouchable

Shielded 

How the Police Become Untouchable

By: Jonna Schwartz

Viking (2023)

Reviewed for Champion Magazine

by Matthew T. Mangino       

              Professor Joanna Schwartz brings the U.S. Constitution and the U.S Supreme Court’s interpretation of it, to life in “Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable.” Through a series of stories that Schwartz warns, “you are unlikely to have heard of  . . .” she provides a handy primer on constitutional law.

            If you’re a Supreme Court junkie, you have come to the right place. Schwartz deftly burrows through high court decisions—simplifying the legalese and adding context. She provides readers with a view of the system from 30,000 feet.

            Schwartz’s most important contribution in Shielded is her examination of qualified immunity. Most readers would be surprised to learn that the U.S. Supreme Court created qualified immunity “out of thin air.”

            Although “Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable,” published in 2023 by Viking, expands on a problem plaguing the criminal justice system right here and right now, its origins can be traced to the postbellum south.

            Qualified immunity grew out of reconstruction-era laws.  The Civil Rights Act of 1871 known at the time as the Ku Klux Klan Act –better known today as Section 1983, permitted people to sue in federal court if their constitutional rights were violated by the government or someone acting under color of law. As Schwartz noted, “Section 1983 was enacted to provide some measure of justice and accountability in the court for people whose rights have been violated.”

            The author points out; in 1967 the U.S. Supreme Court granted Mississippi police officers immunity under Section 1983 when acting in good faith.  Then in 1982, the court ruled that police should be granted immunity as long as they didn’t violate “clearly established law.” What did that mean? The court didn’t say.

            Schwartz wrote that while the court didn’t define the decision over the next 40 years, the Supreme Court “created a standard that seems virtually impossible to meet.”

            Shielded paints a vivid picture of a wide spectrum of people who have been harmed by the police and then harmed again by the courts.  Schwartz points out how easy it would have been to apply qualified immunity to the suit filed by George Floyd’s family, but for the national furor that arose out of Derek Chauvin’s murderous conduct.

            The stories of Onree Norris, James Monroe, Alonzo Grant and Tony Timpa, to name a few, paint a picture of a system that does everything it can to foreclose police accountability.

            What Schwartz does that is different is she not only points out the problems she offers solutions.  Schwartz, a professor of law at UCLA, has the bona fides to suggest ways to ease the endless pain of qualified immunity.

            One suggestion is, just as the Supreme Court invented qualified immunity out of whole cloth they could undo it just the same.  Even with a Court that does not seem beholden to stare decisis, it’s unlikely this right-leaning court would go in that direction.

            Second, she suggests making police officers who are found liable for violating a person’s constitutional rights pay a portion of any verdict against a police department or municipality. 

            In addition, she suggested that more cities pass initiatives to have unarmed people respond to those having a mental health crisis. I’d take it a step further; many of these tragic police encounters are traffic-related. How about creating a traffic force, that isn’t doing anything more than providing traffic citations.  No high speed chases, no vehicle searches, no immigration investigations—just a traffic ticket and you’re on your way.

            “Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable” provides an easy-to-read history of the evolving treatment of the Bill of Rights by the U.S. Supreme Court. Schwartz’s book is filled with explanations of important decisions of the high court.  However, the reader doesn’t feel as though they’re slogging through a series of law school lectures.  Professor Schwartz’s writing is sharp, her examples are vivid and her conclusions are thought provoking.

(Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly and George. P.C. in New Castle, PA.   He is the author of The Executioner’s Toll and a columnist for Creator Syndicate. You can follow him on twitter @MatthewTMangino or contact him at mmangino@lgkg.com)

There have been 13 executions this year in the US, there are 8 scheduled in the next month

There have been 13 executions carried out so far in 2024.  Between now and October 17, there are eight executions scheduled in five states. According to the Death Penalty information Center, there are three executions scheduled in Texas, two in Alabama and one in South Carolina, Missouri and Oklahoma.

There will be a flurry of activity as the execution dates get closer, judging by the latest decision out of Missouri it may not be good news for the condemned.

A judge in Missouri rejected inmate Marcellus Williams’ attempt to overturn a murder conviction and death sentence on the basis of updated DNA evidence. Circuit Judge Bruce F. Hilton stated in his rejection of the bid that “none of this evidence is ‘new’ as it was available at trial,” reported Jurist.

Williams’ legal team filed a motion to vacate his conviction and death sentence in January. The motion was filed to provide the court evidence that had not been available at trial. It included updated evidence from three experts concerning DNA found on the murder weapon. All three experts concluded the DNA was not from Williams. One expert stated, “DNA evidence now shows Mr. Williams did not likely wield the knife that was used.”

In rejecting the motion, Judge Hilton emphasized Missouri’s innocence analysis, the first step of which is determining “whether the new evidence is new in the sense that it was not available at trial.” He stated that the “new” DNA evidence was “consistent with the trial testimony,” citing testimony by an expert at the trial that the DNA could not conclusively be linked to Williams, and a crime scene report that stated that “the suspect wore gloves.”

Additionally, Judge Hilton rejected Williams’ claims of ineffective counsel, exclusion of evidence and racial prejudice. He stated the claims were “repackaged” arguments that had already been processed and rejected by previous courts.

Missouri’s Supreme Court upheld Williams’ conviction and death sentence in July. He must now apply to Missouri’s governor for executive clemency before his scheduled execution later this month.

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Games Police Play, The Pervasive Role of Deceit in American Policing

While at times an effective tool, deception is ethically dubious and can result in severe negative consequences for suspects

Sanctioned by the courts and taught in police manuals, deceptive tactics are employed by virtually every police department across the country, according to a new report by the Cato Institute. Officers seeking to elicit a confession will routinely lie to suspects about the evidence and make statements that imply leniency. While effective at times, deception is ethically dubious and can result in severe consequences for suspects. The United States is an outlier in allowing police to deceive suspects, as the practice is prohibited or highly restricted in most peer nations, including England, France, Germany, and Japan.

First, deceptive interrogation tactics frequently induce false confessions, which are a leading cause of wrongful convictions in the United States. Further, the acceptability of lying to suspects during interrogations seems to encourage deception in other, more troubling contexts. Research shows that testimonial lies, such as perjury in court and falsifying police reports, are commonly employed by officers to secure convictions and circumvent constitutional protections. While such practices remain illegal, testimonial lies are rarely identified or punished. As a result, the justifications and skills cultivated through deceiving suspects in interrogations naturally bleed over into other police work.

Ultimately, the pervasiveness of police deception undermines the integrity and legitimacy of the criminal justice system. It leads to wrongful convictions, weakens civil liberties, and erodes public trust in law enforcement. While there are difficult trade-offs in regulating police deception, its negative consequences require policy responses. Contrary to contentions that deceit is a necessary tool of law enforcement, experiences in other nations suggest that restricting police deception does not hamper criminal investigations. Policymakers should consider measures to curtail police deception, such as requiring that interrogations be recorded, banning or limiting certain deceptive tactics, and increasing judicial scrutiny of interrogation practices.

Introduction

In interrogating a suspect, police often seek to extract an admission of guilt. Officers have found that deceit can be a remarkably effective tool in eliciting confessions from even the most hardened suspects. Since the Supreme Court has put few limits on the practice, the varieties of deceptive techniques police may use are limited chiefly by officers’ ingenuity.1 Officers learn deceptive techniques from interrogation manuals and rely heavily on these practices, often to the exclusion of using other strategies.2

While at times an effective tool, deception is ethically dubious and can result in severe negative consequences for suspects. First, deceptive tactics have been shown to frequently result in false confessions, which are a leading cause of wrongful convictions in the United States. Additionally, training and encouraging officers to lie to suspects during interrogations likely promotes an unduly permissive attitude toward deceitful behavior that carries over into testimonial lying. This includes perjury in court, lying on warrant applications, and falsifying police reports. While lying to suspects in theory (though not always in practice) pursues the truth, testimonial lying subverts justice by creating a false record meant to deceive authorities and courts. Yet from the officer’s perspective, the goal of each type of lie is generally the same: achieving criminal convictions.

Research shows that testimonial lies told by police are commonplace, routinely used to circumvent constitutional protections, and rarely punished due to systemic biases and close relationships between prosecutors, judges, and police. Since officers rarely face consequences for their testimonial lies, the justification for lying and the deceitful skills learned in interrogations naturally spill over to other policing contexts where prevarication remains illegal.

Policymakers may face difficult trade-offs in regulating police deception, but its negative consequences nonetheless require policy responses designed to promote justice, protect civil liberties, and maintain public trust in law enforcement.

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