Missouri felons not entitled to self-defense

 Missouri is one of only four states where there are no limits on which felonies can trigger a felony-murder charge, and, once prosecutors invoke the law, defendants can no longer claim they acted in self-defense, reports The Appeal. Having previous felonies means having a gun for self-defense is a felony for illegally possessing a gun. In the eyes of the law, the rest of what happens no longer mattered.

There are at least 10 men in the state of Missouri who are serving sentences for felony murder in cases where they maintain that they killed someone in self-defense, according to a three-month investigation by The Appeal and the Yale Investigative Reporting Lab. The Appeal also spoke to 10 public defenders across the state. Eight said they either had such a case in their district or knew of one nearby.

Of the 10 men who say they shot someone to save their own lives, seven had prior felony convictions at the time of the shooting.

According to a study by the Sentencing Project, there were at least 67,800 felons on parole or probation in Missouri in 2020. The situation raises questions about who Missouri believes deserves the right to fight back if someone is trying to kill them.

“If you are a convicted felon in Missouri, you have lost your right to self-defense,” Hatley told The Appeal.

Ruth Petsch, the district defender in Kansas City—Missouri’s largest city—seethed as she spoke about the law’s impact in her district.

“Once you become a felon, you lose all these rights to keep a job. It’s harder to get housing. It’s harder to get assistance,” she said. “You’re left in a neighborhood where you’re more likely to have someone put a gun in your face like that. But in Missouri, once you become a felon, you just have to get shot.”

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Protection orders in Pennsylvania may soon extend to pets

 John L. Micek writing in the Pennsylvania Capital-Star:

You might have missed it during the hubbub over the state budget earlier this month, but a bill providing important protections to Pennsylvanians’ four-footed friends is on its way to the state Senate.

That’s because lawmakers in the lower chamber voted 130-73 last week to approve legislation expanding protection from abuse orders to include animals and house pets, thus “ensuring the safety and well-being of both domestic violence victims and their beloved animal companions,” the legislation’s sponsors, Reps. Christina Sappey, D-Chester, and Natalie Mihalek, R-Allegheny, said in a joint statement.

The legislation comes in response to the sadly unsurprising news that abusers often target pets when they’re trying to get back at someone who has filed a protection from abuse order. That finding is backed up by “extensive research,” the lawmakers said.

The bill has the backing of more than 70 law enforcement, domestic violence, and animal welfare organizations, pointing to the very real need for its enactment, Sappey and Mihalik said.

“Pets are family members and play an essential role in offering comfort to individuals experiencing abuse,” Sappey said. “It is imperative that we take action to safeguard animals in conjunction with the well-being of those suffering from domestic violence. I’m pleased to see the bipartisan support this legislation has received.”

Mihalik echoed that sentiment.

“The decision to leave an abusive environment is difficult enough. Making certain that a pet can live free from abuse needs to be part of the PFA system, so it doesn’t further complicate the victim’s decision and also safeguards a loyal part of the family,” Mihalek said. “I want to thank Representative Sappey for working with me on this and seeing it as high as a priority as I do.”

Animal welfare advocates called on the state Senate to approve the measure.

“Victims of domestic abuse often delay leaving an abusive situation because they fear the abuser will harm their animals. By permitting the inclusion of pets within a protection order, [the bill] would make it easier for victims to leave a dangerous situation with their entire family, including their pets,” Kristen Tullo, the Pennsylvania state director of the Humane Society of the United States, said.

Natalie Ahwesh, the executive director of Humane Action Pittsburgh, called the bill a “commonsense, bipartisan issue.

“Abusers often use family pets as leverage in their torment of their victims, threatening to harm or kill them if victims leave. With this bill, we can protect both animals and humans,” Ahwesh said.

To read more CLICK HERE

 

Changes may soon be coming to Pennsylvania's probation system

Recently, a bipartisan reform package passed the upper chamber 45-4. Senate Bill 838 would make exiting the probation program easier for people who reach educational or employment goals. It would also end the practice of prolonging an individual's participation in the program for minor offenses, such as a traffic ticket, reported the Erie Times-News.

“I’ve said this before, and I will continue to say it — people deserve second chances,” state Sen. Anthony Williams (D-Philadelphia) said in a press release. 

Williams co-sponsored the bill with several fellow Democrats and Republican colleagues as well, including state Sen. Lisa Baker (R-Luzerne), chair of the Judiciary Committee, and state Sen. Camera Bartolotta (R-Washington), secretary of the GOP caucus. The four opposing votes came from conservative Republicans.

For likely dissimilar reasons, Senate Bill 838 is opposed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

"It continues to permit judges to stack probation sentences and to impose probation 'tails' — a term of probation imposed after a period of incarceration," the ACLU has written of the bill. "It fails to provide an automatic, or even efficient, way to terminate probation early — doing little to reduce the number of people under supervision."

Jessica Jackson, chief advocacy and operations officer at the REFORM Alliance, said this criticism ignores several substantial improvements to the system.

"A vote 'no' is a vote for the status quo," Jackson told the USA TODAY Network. "Did we get everything we wanted? No. But this is a compromise effort."

"This isn't the end of reforms in Pennsylvania," she added, "but it's an incredible first step."

The bill represents an evidence-based modernization of the system that's partly modeled after a successful York County pilot program implemented in 2016, according to Jackson. Stringent conditions — such as being confined to one county, prohibited from being in the presence of a felon and barred from being around alcohol — would no longer be automatically applied.

"We're limiting the number of things that a person could be incarcerated for under a technical violation," Jackson said.

The bill's fate is unclear in the lower chamber. Beth Rementer, press secretary for House Majority Leader Matt Bradford (D-Montgomery), said the reform package is still under review.

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SCOTUS decides reckless satisfies intent for threat

The First Amendment does not, and never has, protected threats of violence, and this week the Supreme Court clarified the standard for criminalizing “true-threats,” resolving a circuit split in the process. In Counterman v. Colorado, the Court, in an opinion written by Justice Elena Kagan, held that although a person needs to intend for words to be threatening to rise to the level of criminality, a showing that a person was acting recklessly when they made the statement would satisfy the intent requirement, reported Lawfare.  

What Is a “True-Threat”?

The Court began by defining a “true-threat” as a “‘serious expression’ conveying that a speaker means to ‘commit an act of unlawful violence.’” The Court reiterated, however, their distinction that a true-threat is different from “jests, ‘hyperbole,’ or other statements that when taken in context do not convey a real possibility that violence will follow.”  

he Court decided between three different mens rea standards for the prosecution to be able to convict someone under a true-threats theory: (a) The defendant wanted his words to be perceived as a threat (purposeful); (b) he knew to a practical certainty that his words would be taken as a threat (knowledge); and (c) he consciously disregarded a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the conduct would cause harm to another (recklessness). Out of these three standards, recklessness prevailed as the path forward: “In the threats context, it means that a speaker is aware ‘that others could regard his statements as’ threatening violence and ‘delivers them anyway.’” The Court noted that reckless defendants have done more than make a bad mistake, but have consciously accepted a substantial risk of inflicting serious harm. Their formulation of the path forward took into consideration the “competing value” found in “protecting against the profound harms, to both individuals and society, that attend true threats of violence—as evidenced by this case” against chilling protected speech.  

Therefore, the Court ruled that, to find that someone communicated a true-threat, a party must prove the defendant at least acted recklessly when he or she conveyed the threat to another.  

To read more CLICK HERE

 

Mangino discusses life or death for former boarder patrol agent convicted of double murder

Watch my interview with Judge Ashley Willcott and Matt Johnson on Court TV discussing the penalty phase of convicted double murderer Ronald Anthony Burgos-Aviles a former border patrol agent in Texas.

To watch the interview CLICK HERE and CLICK HERE

Alabama gears up for dangerous nitrogen hypoxia execution

It is not unusual for the rollout of a new execution method to be bumpy, but what is happening with Alabama’s effort to begin using nitrogen hypoxia is setting a new standard for incompetence and disarray in the death penalty system, reported Slate. After botching three lethal injection executions last year, state officials have sent mixed signals about whether the state would be ready to use nitrogen hypoxia when it plans to execute James Barber on July 20.

Barber was convicted of the 2001 beating death of 75-year-old Dorothy Epps. Prosecutors said Barber confessed to killing Epps with a claw hammer. Jurors voted 11–1 to recommend a death sentence, which the judge then imposed.

Barber’s would be the first execution after Gov. Kay Ivey paused executions for the state Department of Corrections to review execution procedures. In February, she announced that the review was finished and that the state was ready to get back in the execution business.

On June 20, the state attorney general’s office seemed to signal that Alabama could use nitrogen hypoxia to execute Barber in its reply to a suit he brought seeking an order to stop the state from putting him to death by lethal injection. Barber asked the court to require Alabama to “carry out the execution of Mr. Barber only by nitrogen hypoxia.” His lawsuit said that the method was a “readily available alternative.”

According to an article in Reason, “Barber wants to die by nitrogen hypoxia—which involves suffocating the inmate in a gas chamber by increasing the proportion of nitrogen in the air—rather than lethal injection … because [he claims] it will be more humane than death by lethal injection, especially considering the state’s recent record.”

In its brief in Barber’s suit, the attorney general’s office told the court that if it issues an injunction in this case, the judge should  limit its “scope so as to permit Barber’s July 20, 2023, execution to be conducted by nitrogen hypoxia.” However, a spokesperson for the Alabama Department of Corrections quickly confused matters by saying that the department was not ready to carry out a nitrogen hypoxia execution and would not be by July 20. 

 “The Alabama Department of Corrections has completed many of the preparations necessary for conducting executions by nitrogen hypoxia,” the spokesperson continued. “The protocol for carrying out executions by this method is not yet complete. Once the nitrogen hypoxia protocol is complete, ADOC personnel will need sufficient time to be thoroughly trained before an execution can be conducted using this method.”

Further muddying the issue, the commissioner of ADOC, John Hamm, when speaking to reporters after a legislative committee meeting, referred questions about the protocol to the attorney general’s office. “You’d have to ask the AG’s office on the actual protocol,” Hamm said. So, is Alabama ready to carry out executions using nitrogen hypoxia, or not?

Nitrogen hypoxia’s on-again, off-again status in Alabama began in 2018 when it became the third state to add it to its menu of execution options. At the time, state Sen. Trip Pittman, who sponsored the nitrogen hypoxia legislation, made familiar promises and followed the usual playbook used when officials propose new methods of execution.

Echoing what proponents had said about the electric chair the 1880s, the gas chamber in the 1920s, and lethal injection in the 1970s, Pittman said, “I believe [nitrogen hypoxia] is a more humane option … One that is less invasive, and one that I think needs to be an option for the condemned.” He compared the method to the way that passengers on a plane pass out when the aircraft depressurizes.

Alabama was following the lead of Oklahoma, which in 2015 became to first state to authorize execution by nitrogen hypoxia. Mississippi followed suit in 2017. But right from the start, there was little to inspire confidence that this method would deliver the humane executions that other execution methods have also falsely promised.

The idea of using nitrogen hypoxia in executions came from Michael Copeland, then an assistant professor of criminal justice at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma, who co-authored a white paper on the subject with two of his colleagues at the university. Even though neither he nor his co-authors had any medical training or scientific expertise, Copeland proposed it to Mike Christian, a state legislator who had been a high school classmate.

According to a report from the Equal Justice Initiative, Oklahoma state Rep. Mike Christian became interested in the method after he “reportedly saw a documentary about killing humans that included a segment on nitrogen inhalation.” The process, Christian claimed, “is fast and painless. It’s foolproof.”

But so far, none of the states that adopted it have actually used nitrogen hypoxia in an execution. And even if they were ready to do so, it is not clear that they will be able to obtain the nitrogen needed to carry it out.

The Equal Justice Initiative further reports that “Airgas, an industrial gas distributor that is one of Alabama’s largest suppliers, has announced it will not supply gas for executions. ‘Supplying nitrogen for the purpose of human execution is not consistent with our company values,’ the company said in a statement.”

The company’s CEO added that Airgas is not “working with the state of Alabama, or anyone else, to develop nitrogen hypoxia as an execution method.”

Thus it is not surprising that Alabama has had trouble developing and finalizing a protocol for executions by nitrogen hypoxia. And unlike other methods, any error in the process could be fatal for anyone participating in or witnessing those executions, so getting the protocol right is especially high-stakes.

As Robert Dunham, who is the former executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, warns, “Nitrogen is colorless, and it is odorless, and the same thing that led the Oklahoma legislature to think that this would be swift and painless—the fact that people were unaware that they were being poisoned at depth or at altitude—those very same factors could make it potentially lethal if gas leaks into areas where the execution team was.”

Or as Joel Zivot, an expert on methods of execution, puts it: Execution by nitrogen hypoxia “may be bloodless, but it won’t be simple.”

There is no room for error in executions by nitrogen hypoxia, which cannot be reassuring in a state like Alabama, with its ghoulish history of botched executions. The state’s recent bureaucratic snafus and grotesquely comedic miscommunications between the agencies responsible for carrying out its executions only add to the sense that if Alabama really were to use it in Barber’s execution, it could turn into a tragedy for him and for everyone who so casually and irresponsibly touted it as a fix for this country’s broken death penalty system.

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Texas: Child protective services required to mirandize parents

Starting this September, child protective services agents across Texas will be required to read parents their constitutional rights, the same way that police do for criminal suspects, reports ProPublica. Under a new law enacted by the state Legislature, caseworkers there will be informing parents under investigation that they have the right to remain silent, to have a lawyer present and to decline searches of their home or of their children without a court order.

The legislation will in many cases benefit Black, Hispanic and low-income families who often have their lives and homes upended by CPS officers. It was signed by Gov. Greg Abbott, a conservative Republican who previously has been criticized for pushing policies detrimental to those groups.

Meanwhile in New York state, an almost identical bill was blocked by state Senate majority leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, a liberal Democrat. She prevented the measure, which had dozens of co-sponsors and a groundswell of grassroots support, from even getting a vote — showing how child welfare issues often defy typical partisan binaries.

Stewart-Cousins’ office declined ProPublica’s requests for comment about her reasoning.

The legislation was not advanced by leadership on the Assembly side either, though it did pass unanimously out of committee there.

Earlier this year, Stewart-Cousins and other top lawmakers in Albany received proposed changes to the bill from New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services, which is under the control of Mayor Eric Adams. The agency suggested removing the word “rights” from the bill text and watering down the list of rights that its caseworkers would have had to read to families.

The legislative efforts in both states came in the wake of a ProPublica investigation finding that child welfare workers — overwhelmingly without warrants — inspect the homes of roughly 3.5 million children nationally every year. Despite the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, these government officers ransack families’ refrigerators and medicine cabinets and inspect kids’ bodies without informed consent.

They do so even if the allegation of potential child neglect that they are investigating, such as a kid missing too many days of school, has nothing to do with the condition of the home. They also sometimes use manipulative tactics, including threatening child removal or calling the police, to get inside residences, according to dozens of interviews with caseworkers, families and attorneys.

Nationwide, the searches ultimately reveal child abuse less than 5% of the time, federal data show.

The new Texas law has gotten little attention but will have a major impact on vulnerable families around the state, said Andrew Brown, associate vice president of policy at the right-leaning Texas Public Policy Foundation.

To read more CLICK HERE