PublicSource: 'The true cost of court debt'

Every week, dozens of payment determination hearings are held throughout Allegheny County, Pennsylvania for people with outstanding fines and fees on offenses ranging from serious crimes to traffic tickets, reported PublicSource.

Even for something as minor as running a red light or driving with expired inspection stickers, not paying off the citation can result in an arrest warrant, a suspended license and, in extreme cases, jail time.

Throughout the county, there is more than $350 million in unpaid court debt on roughly half a million cases dating back to 1970, according to the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts [AOPC]. The debt includes fines and fees left unpaid by people of all income levels.

Revenue from fines and fees funds multiple levels of government, due in large part to lawmakers imposing court fees as an alternative to raising taxes.

State Sen. Lisa Baker, R-Luzerne, is the Republican chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. According to Baker, there are two reasons the state has added costs and surcharges to the justice system for years. First, the belief that wrongdoers should contribute to the costs of running the legal system and supportive services. And second, the need to generate revenue outside of raising taxes. “This is one of many nontraditional means that have drawn support in enabling our state to provide necessary services and meet public expectations,” she wrote in an email to PublicSource.

Over the past six months, PublicSource spoke to people throughout Allegheny County struggling to pay their court debt on a range of offenses.

One 33-year-old woman from South Side is slowly paying off four traffic tickets from 2009. She estimates she still owes $1,100.

A 46-year-old man who lives in the East End said he owes more than $20,000 in fines and fees related to low-level drug offenses. He is in long-term recovery and is working toward a degree in social work. His last arrest was in 2014.

A 20-year-old University of Pittsburgh student had a warrant issued for his arrest after he ignored an August 2019 citation for driving a friend’s car that didn’t have valid registration or inspection. He is now on a monthly payment plan to settle the $250 charge.

Evans Moore, a Pittsburgh-based organizer for the criminal justice reform organization Families Against Mandatory Minimums [FAMM], said situations where people cannot pay their court debt are too common. “Folks’ lives are being stymied because they can’t pay their fines and fees,” he said. “You get caught in this never-ending cycle of the criminal justice system.”

In 2018, Pennsylvania courts collected $444 million in fines and fees, roughly $35 million of which came from Allegheny County. Even so, the state has some $3 billion in unpaid monies on the books.

While fines are monetary punishment for an offense, fees (also known as costs or surcharges) are administrative charges that counties and states impose as additional sources of revenue. Fees, which fund items ranging from the court’s computer system to emergency medical services, are not meant to be punitive. Yet for many offenses, the cost of fees outweighs the fine, in some cases many times over.

Pittsburgh Magisterial District Judge Richard King said very few people are unable to pay their court costs; they choose not to. Courts can administer payment plans based on what a person is able to pay, sometimes as little as $5 a month.

“They usually always have an ability to pay like $5 a month or something, but they don’t want to do it,” said King whose jurisdiction includes neighborhoods such as Allentown, Beltzhoover and Knoxville.

Yet several judges, including King, agreed that the same cost can have a drastically different impact on different individuals. To people with means, paying $300 is only temporarily inconvenient, said Magisterial District Judge Bruce Boni of McKees Rocks. “But a $300 cost for someone who is virtually indigent can be catastrophic.”

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Florida Supreme Court rules that a unanimous jury is not required for death penalty

When the Florida Supreme Court ruled last month that a unanimous jury is not required for the state to hand down a death sentence, the decision reverberated in the state prisons that house hundreds of felons already sentenced to death, reported The Crime Report. The legal wrangling over their fate overnight became “chaos,” says death penalty lawyer Marty McClain,  the Christian Science Monitor reports. Only four years earlier, Florida had struck down the power of judges, not juries, to decide whether or not to execute convicts. That ruling came after the U.S. Supreme Court said Florida’s system for capital sentencing was unconstitutional, leading nearly 100 inmates on death row to challenge their sentences.

A new conservative majority on Florida’s highest court has begun taking a shredder to this and other seemingly settled rulings, part of a national rollback of what conservatives see as an era of liberal judicial activism. With President Donald Trump’s appointment of 187 judges, three U.S. appeals courts have flipped from liberal to more conservative majorities. Critics say the Florida court’s abrupt reversal violates the concept of stare decisis, which holds that rulings that overturn established law should be “well thought-out and pretty rare,” says Prof. Kenneth Williams of the South Texas College of Law Houston. The reason for the change is the court’s makeup: Republican governors have replaced four of the justices who ruled on the 2016 case under Florida’s mandatory retirement law, tilting it to conservatives. The new judges “have a very narrow interpretation of the Constitution and they will come out with really narrow decisions,” says Stephen Harper of the Death Penalty Clinic at Florida International University in Miami. “That means the country is reverting to a much more conservative outlook and jurisprudence – more conservative than I think the public wants, or is.”

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GateHouse: Lawyers zealously advocate in face of ‘clamours of the populace’

Matthew T. Mangino

GateHouse Media

February 7, 2020

The American tradition of zealous representation of unpopular clients was established 250 years ago with John Adams’ representation of the British soldiers charged with murder during the Boston massacre. Adams’ trial summation set the standard for law and order.

Adams, who would later serve two terms as president of the United States, said of justice, “On the one hand it is inexorable to the cries and lamentations of the prisoners; on the other it is deaf, deaf as an adder to the clamours of the populace.”

Today, more than ever, the clamor of the populace - through news media and social media - can almost instantly accuse, try and convict a person in the court of public opinion. Harvey Weinstein is on trial in New York City for sexual assault. Although there are two alleged victims in his trial and another four women who may testify about Weinstein’s prior bad acts, the media has reported on as many as 80 other women who claim to be victims of Weinstein.

Lawyers are often intentionally, or unintentionally, drug into the glare of the media and no longer perceived as only representing the accused, but of siding with the reprehensible “monsters.”

A lawyer faced with the decision to take on a controversial client must legitimately ask herself, “Will I ever get any more law business in my community if I take this case?”

The Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh’s attorney, Stephen Jones, shortly after accepting the case, was asked by a CNN reporter why he took the case. He replied, “I have, throughout my professional career, believed it was a lawyer’s duty to defend unpopular cases.”

Attorneys are advocates for others. Many people understand that representing the person or issue does not equate with accepting or endorsing what a particular client does. In practice, however, many people have difficulty accepting that a pedophile, terrorist, mass killer or racist hate group is entitled to legal representation.

At times, attorneys are demonized for representing defendants charged with heinous crimes - as if there was something wrong with providing a defense to someone charged with a crime. Such conduct undermines the fundamental protections of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, “to have the assistance of counsel.”

Criminal defense attorney and Georgetown law professor Abbe Smith wrote several years ago, “My clients, no matter what they may have done, aren’t wicked. They are damaged, deprived or in distress. Their crimes can be understood as the products of awful lives, or of being young, hot-headed and lacking in judgment, or of not having the mental wherewithal to know what they were doing. There is always a story.”

Defense counsel has the responsibility to act zealously within the bounds of the law and standards on behalf of the client. There is no duty to, and defense counsel may not, execute any directive of the client which violates the law or rules of court. In representing a client, defense counsel may engage in a good faith challenge to the validity of such laws or standards if done openly. The principles embodied in American Bar Association Model Rules of Professional Conduct include “the lawyer’s obligation zealously to protect and pursue a client’s legitimate interests.”

Yet, every criminal defense attorney is asked this question, “How can you defend someone you know is guilty?”

Irving Kanarek represented Charles Manson, who was convicted in 1971 of conspiracy to murder actor Sharon Tate and six other people.

He told The Guardian, “I would defend a client who I knew was guilty of horrific crimes. They have to be proved guilty. I’ve had cases where people were guilty as hell but they couldn’t prove it. And if they can’t prove it, he’s not guilty. In that case, the person walks free. That’s American justice.”

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 at @MatthewTMangino.

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Texas executes man who killed his family

The 3rd Execution of 2020

Less than an hour after the courts denied his final appeal, Abel Revill Ochoa, a Texas man who killed five people became the state’s second prisoner in 2020 executed, reported the Houston Chronicle.

With his last words, Ochoa thanked Jesus for his salvation and apologized to his victims’ families.

“I would like to thank God, my dad, my Lord Jesus savior for saving me and changing my life,” he said, strapped to the Huntsville gurney. “I want to apologize to my in-laws for causing all this emotional pain. I love y’all and consider y’all my sister I never had. I want to thank you for forgiving me.”

He died at 6:48 p.m., 18 years after the crime that landed him on death row.

When police initially arrested him years earlier, Ochoa said he couldn’t handle the stress and had simply gotten tired of his life. So he’d killed his family.

The then-30-year-old Dallas man cooperated with police from the start, and confessed to the five murders, ultimately blaming his violent outburst on the drugs he’d smoked less than half an hour earlier.

“My body started wanting more crack,” he told police, according to news reports at the time. “I knew if I asked my wife for more money, she wouldn’t let me have it. I knew she’d argue with me about the money, just like we had in the past.”

A jury found him guilty in just 10 minutes, and in 2003 sentenced him to death. Many of his later appeals centered on claims he didn’t have good enough legal representation earlier in the case, but in the final days before his Thursday execution he raised claims about parole board procedures and the prison’s reluctance to let him film a clemency plea.

Born in Mexico, Ochoa was raised by a father who beat him with sticks and branches but, he later told the court, “not a lot.”

In the early 1990s, Ochoa married his wife Cecilia and settled in a home in South Dallas, according to Associated Press reports. It was a volatile relationship, with occasional separations. Then sometime around 2000 Ochoa became addicted to drugs, financing a crack habit with an illegal loan scheme, according to court records.

One Sunday in August two years later, Ochoa went to church with his family. On the way home, he asked his wife for money to buy drugs. She gave in, and he bought a $10 rock of crack, according to court records. He went out back to smoke it, then walked into the bedroom — and came back out with a 9mm handgun. He walked into the living room, where he systematically shot his wife, their 9-month-old daughter Anahi, his father-in-law Bartolo and his sisters-in-law Alma and Jackie. He then walked into the kitchen and shot his 7-year-old daughter Crystal four times.

Only Alma survived.

Afterward, Ochoa got in his wife’s Toyota 4Runner and drove away. When police stopped and arrested him minutes later at a nearby shopping center, he told the officer where he’d left the gun and gave a detailed written confession.

“He said he remembers it like a dream,” his brother Gilbert told a Dallas-Fort Worth TV station the next day. “He was doing that drug outside and then he went into the living room.”

When the case went to trial, his lawyers argued that he’d committed the slayings in a cocaine-induced delirium, and that he had poor impulse control due to frontal lobe damage from drug use.

Prosecutors argued that he’d simply acted out of anger.

After he was convicted and sent to death row, Ochoa filed appeals accusing his trial team of shoddy work. The defense investigator responsible for learning about Ochoa’s life and uncovering reasons to spare him didn’t speak the same language as many of the witnesses she was supposed to interview, he argued to a federal court. The judge had only approved her appointment at the last minute, and the trial attorneys didn’t ask for more time until it was too late.

But a federal district court decided that it wasn’t clear more investigating would “substantially improve” Ochoa’s chances of success, and a federal appeals court said Ochoa’s attorneys were “simply seeking to ‘turn over every stone’” when they asked for the time and money to get another investigator.

“No stones, in fact, have been turned over, because of the lack of funds,” Ochoa’s lawyers wrote. “Far from quality representation, Mr. Ochoa has only had counsel deprived of any means to effectuate his representation.”

The U.S. Supreme Court turned down Ochoa’s case in October 2019, but on Wednesday his attorneys tried again in the high court. This time, his legal team wrote that he wanted to send the parole board a video plea for clemency - but the prison system at first wouldn’t let his lawyers film him without a court order. Reporters are often allowed to film interviews, and Ochoa’s lawyers took issue with the prison’s initial reluctance to allow them the same access.

After Ochoa’s death, seven more Texas executions already are on the calendar for 2020.

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Tulsa, OK looks for bodies from huge 1921 racist massacre

Archaeologists plan to excavate part of a cemetery in Tulsa, Okla., to see if it holds the remains of black residents slaughtered by white mobs during a massacre in 1921—according to The New York Times, one of the worst instances of racist violence in U.S. history.

The mayor said it was an “unprecedented” step to address one of the worst instances of racist violence in American history, an episode that for decades was rarely acknowledged in public by city leaders.

The archaeologists plan to dig up a small section of the Oaklawn Cemetery, east of downtown, where they found evidence last year of a possible mass grave site. The excavation, announced at a committee meeting on Monday, “would establish the presence or absence of human remains, determine the nature of the interments, and obtain data to help inform the future steps in the investigation, including appropriate recovery efforts,” the city said in a statement.

“We are proposing this intermediate step to obtain just a sample and additional information — essentially a proof of concept, if you will — to demonstrate: ‘Do we, in fact, have human remains here? And do they seem to be consistent with race massacre victims?’” Dr. Kary Stackelbeck, the state archaeologist of Oklahoma, said at the meeting.

Previous investigations have identified possible locations for the mass graves and compiled historical evidence of the massacre, which for decades was rarely mentioned in textbooks or publicly acknowledged by white city officials. The excavation, which is slated for April, raises the tantalizing possibility that, after nearly a century of shame and inattention, the bodies of at least some of the victims could finally be found.

 “This step is unprecedented,” Mayor G.T. Bynum said in an interview on Wednesday. “This is the part of the search where we’re moving beyond what anyone’s ever done before.”

The effort still needs to clear some procedural hurdles, including the notification of family members of people whose graves are near the site, Dr. Stackelbeck said in an interview. But Mr. Bynum said he was confident the excavation would go forward.

Jim Goodwin, a lawyer in Tulsa and publisher of The Oklahoma Eagle, said residents had been asking city leaders to find the bodies of the victims for years. Mr. Goodwin’s grandfather was a business manager at a newspaper that was burned down in the massacre.

“The fact that our mayor is doing it when requests have been made of other mayors, the fact that he’s taking it seriously and making an effort to do something about it, to his credit, is something I think is very important rather than ignoring and trying to bury the memory,” Mr. Goodwin said.

The rampage started on May 31, 1921, after an accusation that a black man had sexually assaulted a white woman. Charges were later dropped, and it was most likely that the man had tripped and accidentally stepped on the woman’s foot, according to a 2001 report from the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921.

Crowds gathered outside the courthouse where he was held. Some black residents, concerned for the man’s safety, armed themselves to patrol the streets. A mob of white men then attacked and set fire to the predominantly black Greenwood neighborhood, including the prosperous business district known as Black Wall Street.

As many as 300 people were killed, and a whole section of the city destroyed, including more than 1,200 homes. Witnesses said they saw bodies being dumped in some parts of the city.

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School violence tip lines reveal suicide crisis

Across the country, as officials look for ways to prevent school shootings, states have started tip lines like SafeOregon — websites, apps and phone numbers that let students anonymously report concerns about classmates, reported NBC News. But in many places, reports of students self-harming or feeling suicidal have far outpaced the number of threats against schools, according to annual reports compiled by state agencies, forcing communities to confront a different kind of crisis.

Since SafeOregon launched in January 2017, it has received 540 reports of a suicidal student, compared to 278 reports of a threatened attack on a school. Pennsylvania’s Safe2SayPA took in 2,529 reports related to self-harm and 2,184 related to suicidal thoughts in its first six months last year, while threats against schools accounted for 607 reports. Nevada’s SafeVoice tip line, launched in 2018, collected 371 suicide threats, 350 reports of self-harm and 248 threats to a school in its first year. In Wyoming, suicide threats were the most common report to the Safe2Tell tip line in 2019, with 239 instances submitted, compared to 45 reports of planned school attacks.

In the aftermath of mass shootings at schools in Parkland, Florida, and Santa Fe, Texas, school districts and lawmakers have poured billions of dollars into efforts to prevent another one. Much of that work has focused on fortifying campuses, adding panic buttons and bulletproof glass, and hiring more officers in schools.

But it’s far more likely that a school will lose a student to suicide than see one die in a mass shooting on campus. Five people were killed in a school shooting in 2017, and 30 in 2018, according to NBC News’ count. The number of children who took their own lives nearly doubled from 2007 to 2017, when there were 3,008 suicides among people ages 10 to 19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Psychologists and counselors say these figures, and the data from the tip lines, should be a wake-up call to a far more likely threat that has not received the same urgent focus.

“School violence is not our only concern,” said David Lillenstein, president of the Association of School Psychologists of Pennsylvania. “We also have a bigger concern and that’s with mental health and mental well-being. Stronger locks don’t prevent a suicide.”

At first, police and school officials in Hermiston were skeptical of SafeOregon, a statewide initiative approved by the Oregon legislature. Edmiston, the police chief, said he initially viewed it as another mandate dumped on local law enforcement. Hermiston High School Principal Tom Spoo feared the tip line would be inundated with bogus reports. But after the November 2017 incident, Spoo said, “I thought, ‘Damn, this thing is going to work after all.’”

SafeOregon operates like many school safety tip lines. Once students submit a tip, whether through a call, the app or the website, a dispatch center reviews whether it’s an emergency and forwards it to police, a handful of school administrators, or both. Spoo has become used to receiving phone calls in the middle of the night warning that a student is in danger of hurting themselves.

“I knew of the mental health issues that we face in this area, and maybe even across the country, but I don’t think I understood the magnitude until you start taking those phone calls,” Spoo said.

The tip line has led to multiple interventions that may have prevented suicides, officials say. In one incident, described in a SafeOregon annual report, a crisis team visited a student’s home and discovered that she and her sister were being neglected, after a friend reported that the student had messaged her about suicide. Another student who talked about wanting to “blow her brains out” was connected with counselors after someone reported her comments through SafeOregon.

“The number of reports we get is saying that it works,” said Capt. Tim Fox, of the Oregon State Police. “The Hermiston incident says that it works.”

A key element that makes these tip lines successful, officials say, is that students don’t have to make a phone call or talk to anyone in person.

“Teens today worry about how others see them and are often afraid of being called a ‘snitch’ or fear retaliation for reporting a tip,” said Lily Brown, 16, a high school student in Roseburg, Oregon, who is a youth advocate for the tip line, helping to spread the word. “SafeOregon allows students to report tips in complete privacy.”

In Pennsylvania, 90 percent of tips come through the smartphone app, according to Brittney Kline, director of Safe2SayPA. She credits the tips with preventing multiple students from taking their own lives, including one attempted suicide that was interrupted by police. The Nevada Department of Education held focus groups prior to launching its tip line and found that students said they’d be more likely to reveal their feelings through text, said Christy McGill, director of the department’s Division of Safe and Respectful Learning.

At least 10 states now run school safety tip lines — Colorado, Florida, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah and Wyoming — and an anonymous reporting system is also available to districts nationwide from Sandy Hook Promise, a nonprofit started by parents of school shooting victims in Newtown, Connecticut. Last month, Iowa’s governor proposed creating the state’s own version.

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Lawmakers call for 'torturous' solitary confinement to end

Calling the practice torturous and degrading, a group of Pennsylvania lawmakers, clergy and prison reform advocates gathered in the state Capitol  to call for new laws limiting solitary confinement of prisoners across the state, reported The Pennsylvania Capital-Star.

The event took place the same day that advocates erected an 8×12 foot solitary confinement cell in the Capitol. Outfitted with just a sink and a bed, advocates said the replica shows the conditions inmates face when they spend months or years in so-called “restricted housing units.”

“Solitary confinement is a form of torture,” said Sen. Larry Farnese, D-Philadelphia, a sponsor of a Senate bill putting new restrictions on solitary confinement sentences. “It warehouses people with problems rather than addressing them before releasing people back to society.”

Secluding inmates is a common disciplinary tool in American jails and prisons, despite evidence that prolonged isolation causes depression, psychosis, and suicidal ideation. 

Solitary confinement is generally reserved for inmates who pose a danger themselves or others. But critics of the practice say it can be liberally doled out as a punishment for minor infractions, and that prisoners have no way to appeal a solitary confinement sentence. 

Confined inmates are also subjected to frequent strip-searches when they leave their cells to shower or eat, said Doug Hollis, a formerly incarcerated person who says he spent 30 days in isolation.

 “It’s a humiliating experience,”Hollis said. “You’re stripped of your dignity… whatever the reason [for being there], it’s dehumanizing and wrong.”

In Pennsylvania, 85 percent of inmates in solitary confinement were sent there for failing to obey an order, according to a news article shared by the state Department of Corrections. 

A 2018 report by The Appeal, a non-profit criminal justice news site, found that some of the more than 100 inmates in solitary confinement in Pennsylvania had been held in seclusion for months or years. 

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