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Today In Criminal Justice
Former Incarcerees Find Hope—and Employers—at NYC ‘Second Chance’ Job Fair
Arkansas Executions on Hold As State Files Appeals TX Death Penalty Case at High Court Raises Lawyering Issue
Will Thomas Give Trump Another High Court Vacancy? DOJ National Security Prosecutor McCord to Quit How States Protect Immigrant Data from Feds U.S. Pot Policy A Mixed Bag On Symbolic 4/20 Brennan Center: Trump May 'Chill' Sentencing Reform
Hernandez Death Reflects High MA Prison Suicide Rate Private Probation Collects $87 Million In Georgia
Prison Medical Co-Pays Can Prevent Care, Group Says Fresno Killer of Three Called ‘A Racist, Filled With Hate’
Dotson Out As St. Louis Chief With New Mayor In Office
L.A. Police De-escalation Policy Called 'Dramatic'
Chicago Officials Seek ‘Textalyzers’ to Reduce Accidents
Coulter Plans Berkeley Speech Despite Violence Fears Top Story
Former Incarcerees Find Hope—and Employers—at NYC ‘Second Chance’ Job FairDespite “ban the box” legislation in many jurisdictions, it’s still hard to get past the stigma of prison to land decent jobs. Two former NY incarcerees started a nonprofit that provides job counseling even before release, and this month they brought their clients together with prospective employers—with impressive results, reports TCR contributor Allen Arthur. The Crime Report Arkansas Executions on Hold As State Files AppealsAll executions are on hold in Arkansas after a judge issued a restraining order against the use of a key lethal injection drug yesterday, CNN reports. The state had planned to execute eight inmates over 10 days starting this past Monday, before its supply of the drug runs out at the end of the month. Court decisions both from the state and U.S. Supreme Courts had granted all eight inmates a temporary reprieve, but some were overturned.
The state Supreme Court granted Stacey Johnson a stay last night ruling 4-3 that he has a right to an evidentiary hearing after he requested DNA testing to prove his innocence. Johnson was convicted of murder in 1997, and had been scheduled to be executed today. A Pulaski County judge granted a restraining order against use of the lethal injection drug vecuronium bromide, which the state had purchased from distributor McKesson Medical-Surgical. That ruling put Ledell Lee’s execution on hold. Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge appealed the rulings to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Lee and Johnson are the only two inmates among the group of eight to consistently maintain their innocence. CNN TX Death Penalty Case at High Court Raises Lawyering IssueThe now-nine Supreme Court justices will hear arguments Monday in the death penalty case of a Texas man who killed a 5-year-old and her grandmother during a children’s birthday party, the Texas Tribune reports. The issue in the case of Erick Davila, 30, focuses on a legal distinction between ineffective lawyering in the trial court and during state appeals. New Justice Neil Gorsuch ruled against an argument similar to Davila’s when he sat on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Davila landed on death row eight years ago after the 2008 murders. He drove to the house of a rival gang member, Jerry Stevenson, and opened fire on the porch before speeding off. For a jury to have found Davila guilty of capital murder, they needed to have determined that he intended to kill multiple people. Davila’s main defense in trial was that he intended to kill only Stevenson. Davila’s lawyer, Seth Kretzer, argues that the judge used a misleading jury instruction and that lawyers in two appeals didn’t raise that issue. He says the death penalty should be voided because of ineffective appellate counsel. Texas’ top lawyer, Scott Keller, backed by 30 other state attorneys general, maintains that, “The right to appellate counsel, while surely important, is not foundational and cannot justify the same treatment as the right to trial counsel.” Texas Tribune Will Thomas Give Trump Another High Court Vacancy?Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-IA) is predicting that President Trump will get to nominate a second justice to the Supreme Court soon, reports The Hill. “I would expect a resignation this summer,” Grassley told the Muscatine Journal in his home state. Judiciary Committee member Ted Cruz (R-TX) made a similar forecast. Ohio State University law Prof. Douglas Berman said on his blog Sentencing Law and Policy, “I am inclined to guess that Justice [Clarence] Thomas is the most likely current justice to be eager to get out of D.C. and give Prez Trump another quick opportunity to shape the direction of the Court, and I also think he is the justice most likely to be, perhaps indirectly, ‘leaking’ his plans to important senators like Cruz and Grassley.”
Trump could make several nominations, allowing him to shape the direction of the court for decades. Thomas is 68 years old, young by Supreme Court standards. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Anthony Kennedy are in their 80s, and Justice Stephen Breyer is 78. Justices typically announce their retirements at the end of a court’s term in June. The Hill DOJ National Security Prosecutor McCord to QuitMary McCord, who has been helping oversee the Justice Department’s probe into Russian interference in the presidential election, is stepping down as acting head of the department’s national security division and leaving the federal government, The Intercept reports. It was not immediately clear who will take over for McCord. She will be leaving at a time when DOJ is in disarray: early all U.S. Attorney positions remain unfilled, and Rod Rosenstein, President Trump’s nominee to be Sessions’s deputy, has not been confirmed.
McCord is a career civil servant who became acting assistant attorney general in charge of the national security division in October, when John Carlin, an Obama administration appointee, resigned. In that role, McCord was responsible for counterintelligence and counterterrorism investigations at Justice. “Any major investigation related to counter-intelligence or cyber-related counter-intelligence would fall under Mary’s leadership,” said Luke Dembosky, who served as deputy assistant attorney general at the national security division until last spring. The Intercept How States Protect Immigrant Data from FedsAmid stepped-up federal deportation efforts, many unauthorized immigrants worry that state and local programs that are designed to help them could instead be used by federal agents to identify and expel them. About a dozen states have created special driver’s license programs for people who can’t prove U.S. citizenship, and more than a dozen cities have started identification programs so that unauthorized immigrants and others can complete tasks such as opening bank accounts, enrolling their children in school and receiving government services, Stateline reports. Under the programs, state and local government agencies have retained perhaps millions of documents with personal information about the applicants, such as their names, addresses and foreign identification numbers. Although there has always been a risk that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) could request the documents, immigration advocates say the information could be more vulnerable now, in a political atmosphere that is increasingly hostile to immigrants.
To ease the fear, lawmakers in states such as Hawaii, Massachusetts and Vermont have pushed various measures to prevent state and local resources from being used to enforce federal immigration law. In Vermont, Republican Gov. Phil Scott signed a law requiring local governments to get approval from the governor before assisting federal enforcement. In Washington state, Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee issued an order saying state agencies will not collect information on immigrants beyond what is necessary to perform agency duties and will not use resources to apprehend people for being in the country illegally, except as required by law. In New York City, which has the nation’s largest municipal ID program in the country, serving more than 1 million residents, a judge ruled this month that the city can destroy application documents. Two Republican legislators plan to file an appeal. Stateline U.S. Pot Policy A Mixed Bag On Symbolic 4/20Today, April 20, is an important day symbolically for marijuana. With 600,000 Americans facing pot charges every year, this year’s landscape is very much a mixed bag for backers of marijuana legalization, reports McClatchy Newspapers. The number 420 is code for smoking marijuana, dating to 1971, when five friends at California’s San Rafael High School began meeting each day at 4:20 p.m. to get high. Marijuana backers had unprecedented success at the polls in 2016, with voters in eight of nine states supporting initiatives to expand access to the drug. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last week proposed to legalize pot for recreational use by 2018, seeking to join California, Washington and six other states that have already done so.
The domestic U.S. industry remains under a cloud amid worries that President Trump’s administration may move to shut down the state operations by enforcing the federal ban against the drug. The legal limbo is expected to last at least until July 27, the deadline set by Attorney General Jeff Sessions for a Justice Department task force to review marijuana policies. Sessions, a longtime marijuana foe, called the plan part of a larger effort to reduce crime. Some legalization backers want Congress to vote to end marijuana prohibition before the Trump team takes action, but those prospects are extremely slim. To increase pressure on lawmakers, legalization backers made plans for a pot giveaway near the U.S. Capitol beginning at noon today. McClatchy Brennan Center: Trump May 'Chill' Sentencing ReformIn a critique of criminal justice policies and statements from the Trump administration during its first 100 days in office, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University predicts that the President and his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, will issue “continued warnings about a nonexistent crime wave.” The center complains that Trump and Sessions “have spoken about the imminent danger posed by rising crime in nearly every major speech” on the subject.
The center believes that “this steady drumbeat of fear could chill bipartisan attempts to reduce unnecessary incarceration at the federal, state, and local levels.” The center says several Trump’s executive orders on crime are vague and do not implement any immediate change, “but these orders entrust the attorney general with charting a new course of criminal justice.” The Brennan Center foresees “recommendations for more punitive immigration, drug, and policing actions.” It notes that a crime task force established by Sessions is scheduled to deliver its first report by July 27. The center believes the group may calls for “a rescission of Obama-era memos on prosecutorial discretion, which helped decrease the federal prison population, and diverted low-level drug offenders away from incarceration.” Brennan Center for Justice Hernandez Death Reflects High MA Prison Suicide RateTwenty years ago, a high-profile inmate suicide in Massachusetts made national news and prompted calls for reform. In the two decades since, the state has made strides to improve mental health care and deter suicides in prison, but the rate of self-inflicted inmate deaths in the state remains among the highest in the U.S., the Boston Globe reports. Yesterday’s death of former Patriots star Aaron Hernandez marked the 65th reported suicide in the state’s prisons since John C. Salvi III was found beneath his cot in in 1996, a plastic trash-can liner secured around his head. He had been convicted of opening fire inside two abortion clinics, killing two and wounding five others.
After Salvi’s high-profile death, the state made cell-design improvements and conducted more frequent screenings of inmates, even those not considered to be a suicide risk, such as Hernandez. Investments in “suicide resistant” design have focused primarily on housing for inmates already identified as suicidal or placed on mental-health watch, not those in general population cells. Hernandez’s reported method — hanging himself by a sheet secured from a window, apparently just a few feet off the ground — appeared to match a previous inmate suicide at the same prison in 2005. “I’m not sure how that happened or how that could happen, but . . . it’s not the first time,” said James Pingeon of Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts, a longtime advocate for poor and mentally ill inmates. Even design changes to make prison suicide far more difficult may not prevent them, he said. “People tend to find a way.” Boston Globe Private Probation Collects $87 Million In GeorgiaThe probation industry is booming in Georgia. Private companies supervise people sentenced to probation for misdemeanors or violating city ordinances. In exchange for collecting court fines, the probation companies are allowed to extract monthly “supervision fees” from probationers. Nearly 600 courts have adopted this “offender-funded” model, which saves courts from having to hire their own probation officers. In 2016, probation providers collected at least $87 million in fines for local governments and pocketed an estimated $34 million in supervision fees, says Slate.
For-profit probation companies have long portrayed themselves as cost-effective providers of a public service. Emails obtained via Georgia’s Open Records Act show the business model works by preying on low-income people. Georgia has more than 150,000 people on misdemeanor probation at any given time, many of whom are monitored for what the Southern Center for Human Rights calls no legitimate public-safety reason. The offender-funded scheme generates tremendous revenue because Georgia law creates so many offenders. The state has criminalized traffic violations and other minor offenses that most states treat as civil infractions. This means someone stopped for a broken tail light, changing lanes without using a turn signal, or playing her car stereo too loudly can be sentenced to a year in jail. Most offenses carry fines of up to $1,000, plus hundreds more in surcharges. Slate Prison Medical Co-Pays Can Prevent Care, Group SaysIn most states, people incarcerated in prisons and jails pay medical co-pays for physician visits, medications, dental treatment, and other health services. The fees are meant to partially reimburse states and counties for the high cost of medical care. Populations behind bars are among the most at-risk for chronic and infectious diseases. Fees are also meant to deter people from unnecessary doctor’s visits. Fees may be doing more harm than good by deterring sick people from getting the care they really do need, reports the Prison Policy Initiative, an advocacy group for inmates. A $2 to $5 medical co-pay in prison or jail may not seem expensive on its face. They can be cost-prohibitive to inmates who typically earn 14 to 62 cents per hour.
In West Virginia, a single visit to the doctor would cost almost an entire month’s pay for an incarcerated person who makes $6 per month. In Michigan, it would take over a week to earn enough for a single $5 co-pay. Thirteen states charge a medical co-pay that is equivalent to charging minimum wage workers more than $200. Texas charges inmates a $100 yearly health services fee, which some officials are trying to double. Inmates usually must rely on deposits into their personal accounts, typically from family members, to pay medical fees. In most places, funds are automatically withdrawn from these accounts until the balance is paid, creating a debt that can follow them even after release. Prison Policy Initiative Fresno Killer of Three Called ‘A Racist, Filled With Hate’Kori Muhammad is a “calloused” racist who laughed while talking to police and his mother after admitting to fatally shooting three white men north of downtown Fresno on Tuesday, says Police Chief Jerry Dyer, the Fresno Bee reports. “He’s not a terrorist, he is a racist, filled with hate,” Dyer said. “He set out to kill as many as he could. He’s not going to kill anyone else.” Muhammad told police that while he is a Muslim, he practices voodoo rituals.
The three men killed were identified as Zachary David Randalls, 34, Mark James Gassett, 37, and David Martin Jackson, 58. Dyer said Muhammad admitted to shooting the three men Tuesday, targeting them because they were white and shooting them as if he was on a game hunt. Muhammad also admitted to shooting an unarmed security guard at a Motel 6 last Thursday, saying that he felt Carl Williams had “disrespected him” during an argument when he was being asked to leave the motel. Dyer quoted Muhammad as saying “he did not like white men, white people were responsible for keeping blacks down. They needed to have their own land with their own laws.” Muhammad, 39, is expected to be in court today. In a video, Muhammad said he had belonged to a small gang affiliated with the Crips in Sacramento. He joined the Nation of Islam at 16. Fresno Bee Dotson Out As St. Louis Chief With New Mayor In OfficeSt. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson is retiring after more than four years on the job, new Mayor Lyda Krewson said yesterday on her first full day in office, reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Dotson, 47, has been chief since 2013. He met with city leaders yesterday, and they came to a mutual agreement that he retire, Krewson said.“We were talking about the future of the police department and he made the decision to retire,” Krewson said. “This will allow us to turn the page and begin anew here.”
Dotson he will serve as a consultant to the city for a year. His salary will be $129,000, the same salary he was paid as chief. He served 22 years with the police department. Deputy Chief Lawrence O’Toole becomes interim police chief. Krewson said she was interested in a national search for a new chief but would not exclude internal candidates. She made public safety the centerpiece of her campaign, and in her inauguration speech Tuesday said she would “rebuild the frayed relationships between law enforcement and our community.” Krewson, a longtime alderman, first won election to the board in 1997, two years after her husband was fatally shot during a carjacking with their two young children in the car. Dotson was selected from a field of 11 candidates in 2012. He announced in October that he was going to run for mayor, but withdrew a month later. Then-Mayor Francis Slay pressured him to resign if he wanted to run for office, saying he would not tolerate a part-time police chief. St. Louis Post-Dispatch L.A. Police De-escalation Policy Called ‘Dramatic’The Los Angeles Police Commission has approved new rules ordering officers to try de-escalating potentially violent conflicts before using their weapons. The policy change is “dramatic, and it’s long in coming, and it’s necessary,” Joe Domanick of the Center on Media, Crime and Justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice tells NPR. Domanick, author of the book “Blue: The LAPD And The Battle To Redeem American Policing,” says the rules change is “the last piece that the LAPD really has to address before we can really say the transformation that it’s been undergoing under Chief [Charlie] Beck for the last eight years is really happening and hopefully will continue when he leaves.”
Domanick says similar policies are being adopted by progressive police departments across the nation. He says the police commission and Beck believe that the rate of shootings by Los Angeles officers “remains unacceptably high.” Domanick notes that the police union vehemently opposes the rules change. “They want as much freedom as possible to act as they see fit, and they don’t want to be held accountable if they make a mistake,” he says, adding that, “There are some situations where a police officer has to shoot. What de-escalation says is, you do whatever possible so that you don’t have to shoot.” NPR Chicago Officials Seek ‘Textalyzers’ to Reduce AccidentsBecause one-fourth of U.S. traffic accidents are is caused by texting while driving, two Chicago aldermen say it’s time for police to use new technology to stop it, reports the Chicago Sun-Times. Finance Committee Chairman Edward Burke and Transportation Committee Chairman Anthony Beale are asking the police department to look into using a so-called “textalyzer” to detect whether motorists involved in injury-related accidents had been distracted by their cellphones before the crash occurred. It’s the brainchild of a New York father who turned his grief to action, leading to a push to fight distracted driving with tools similar to those used to combat drunken driving. The embryonic technology is raising red flags with some civil libertarians.
Nearly 3,500 people were killed and 391,000 injured in crashes involving distracted drivers across the nation in 2015. The “textalyzer” being developed by the Israeli mobile forensics company Cellebrite is still in the prototype stage and has yet to be implemented anywhere, but legislators are mulling the idea in several states. A bill under consideration in New York would let officers use the company’s tablet, which connects to a driver’s phone to determine if the person had been typing or swiping on their phone within minutes of a crash without giving police access to the contents of the phone. Ed Yohnka of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, said he is “leery” of the technology. Chicago Sun-Times Coulter Plans Berkeley Speech Despite Violence FearsAnn Coulter fired off an angry stream of tweets vowing to speak as planned next week at the University of California Berkeley after campus officials called off the event for security reasons, the Los Angeles Times reports. “I WILL BE SPEAKING NEXT THURSDAY,” the right-wing commentator tweeted, calling the move to cancel her planned event on April 27 a ban on free speech. Coulter was invited to speak by campus Republicans on the subject of illegal immigration. The event raised concerns of more violence at Berkeley, where masked rioters smashed windows, set fires and shut down an appearance by former Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopolous in February.
University officials sent the Berkeley College Republicans a letter this week, saying that officials and campus police had determined they could not ensure the safety of Coulter, audience members or protesters expected at the event. “We have been unable to find a safe and suitable venue,” said Vice Chancellor Scott Biddy and Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Stephen Sutton. “Given current active security threats, it is not possible to assure that the event could be held successfully.” The cancellation came a few days after violent clashes between far-right and far-left protesters Saturday at a rally supporting President Trump in downtown Berkeley. Los Angeles Times | |
| | On every business day, The Crime Report (TCR) and Criminal Justice Journalists (CJJ) provide a summary of the nation's top crime and justice news stories with links, commentary, and New & Notable research in the field. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the Langeloth Foundation and the Urban Institute. Today's report was prepared by Ted Gest and Victoria Mckenzie. Please send comments or questions to victoria@thecrimereport.org. | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
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