Criminal Law

Another Exoneration

Posted on May 14, 2009
(CNN) -- Former death row inmate Paul House woke to laughter and cries of joy from his mother on Tuesday, the day he learned he was a free man. "You've been exonerated," his mother, Joyce House, told him, shaking him awake. "Took 'em long enough," he replied, after taking a moment to process the information...

Texas police shake down drivers, lawsuit claims

Posted on May 06, 2009
TENAHA, Texas (CNN) -- Roderick Daniels was traveling through East Texas in October 2007 when, he says, he was the victim of a highway robbery. Police in the small East Texas town of Tenaha are accused of unjustly taking valuables from motorists...

President Obama's Opportunity re: SCOTUS

Posted on May 02, 2009
Conservative activists are already planning their campaigns to derail President Obama's pick to replace retiring Justice Souter.Read more....Read more on the politics of the process...The rallying cry of "No more Souters" is taken to mean no more stealth nominees...

How should nations respond to crimes against humanity?

Posted on April 21, 2009
On May 23, 1960, then- Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion stood at the podium in the Knesset and solemnly said: "A short time ago one of the most notorious Nazi war criminals, Adolf Eichmann, was discovered by the Israeli security services. Adolf Eichmann is already under arrest in Israel and will shortly be placed on trial...

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Marital Rape

Posted on April 16, 2009
What do Idaho and Afghanistan have in common? Both governments permit marital rape.Read more...Chapter 18 of the Idaho criminal code states that18-6107. RAPE OF SPOUSE. No person shall be convicted of rape for any actor acts with that person's spouse, except under the circumstances cited inparagraphs 3...

A Racial Shift in Drug-Crime Prisoners

Posted on April 15, 2009
For the first time since crack cocaine sparked a war on drugs 20 years ago, the number of black Americans in state prisons for drug offenses has fallen sharply, while the number of white prisoners convicted for drug crimes has increased, according to a report released yesterday...

More Progress

Posted on March 26, 2009
New Hampshire's state House of Representatives voted Wednesday to abolish the state's death penalty, which has not been carried out in nearly 70 years.Read more...The fate of this bill is uncertain in the senate. The governor has stated that he will not sign the bill into law...

Almost 2400 Executed in 2008

Posted on March 24, 2009
With China, four other nations -- Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United States -- accounted for 93 percent of the 2,390 executions, according to the Amnesty International's report "Death Sentences and Executions in 2008."Read more...The U.S. should be embarrassed that it continues to be a party to this "axis of evil...

The Down-Side of the Prison-Industrial Complex

Posted on March 22, 2009
Both property and violent crime rates continue to decline. In this context, it is interesting to note that the prison population has exploded. Now faced with declining revenues, states are scrambling to make adjustments in correctional spending.This article in the Washing Post describes the problems faced by states in closing down prisons...

Breaking News - New Mexico Will Abolish Death Penalty

Posted on March 18, 2009
Gov. Bill Richardson says he will sign a bill repealing New Mexico's death penalty.Read more...Fantastic news! Another state has realized that capital punishment is failed public policy.

No Drug War in Portugal

Posted on March 15, 2009
In 2001, Portugal became the only EU-member state to decriminalize drugs, a distinction which continues through to the present. Last year, working with the Cato Institute, I went to that country in order to research the effects of the decriminalization law (which applies to all substances, including cocaine and heroin) and to interview both Portuguese and EU drug policy officials and analysts (the central EU drug policy monitoring agency is, by coincidence, based in Lisbon)...

The tide is slowly turning

Posted on March 15, 2009
The State Legislature voted Friday to repeal the death penalty, meaning New Mexico could become the 15th U.S. state without capital punishment if the governor signs the bill into law.Read more...Wow! This is good news for those of us who understand that the death penalty is flawed public policy...

It's About Time

Posted on March 12, 2009
The White House said yesterday that it will push for treatment, rather than incarceration, of people arrested for drug-related crimes as it announced the nomination of Seattle Police Chief R. Gil Kerlikowske to oversee the nation's effort to control illegal drugs...

Utah Death Penalty Amendment Defeated

Posted on March 12, 2009
A visibly upset Attorney General Mark Shurtleff left the House Thursday morning after representatives shot down a constitutional amendment that would streamline the post-conviction death penalty appeals process. Read more....The citizens of Utah don't know how fortunate they are that this proposed policy was defeated...

Access to DNA Evidence

Posted on March 03, 2009

We're Number 2!

Posted on March 02, 2009

Failure of the Drug War

Posted on February 22, 2009
Mexico is not a failing state, as it has become fashionable to say. What has failed is our "war on drugs." That failure and the drug-related violence wracking Mexico suggest it is time to open a national discussion on legalizing drugs.Read more...It is clear that our current drug polices are failing to reduce demand, availability, quality, and crime...

Regulatory Failure

Posted on February 17, 2009
These Washington Post and New York Times editorials outline a brief history of the crimes of the Peanut Corporation of America and proposed legislation to improve food safety. While these bills would be step in the right direction, they do not go far enough...

I've lost count...

Posted on February 12, 2009
of the number of states that have bills pending that would abolish the death penalty until I ran across this article.Read more....It seems that the current budget/revenue crisis is having some positive effects as states are considering the millions of dollars squandered on death sentences...

Reducing the Prison Population

Posted on February 10, 2009
As as result of the decline in state revenues and the explosion in the prison population, several states are now looking at ways to reduce the number of inmates.Inmates Who Should WalkJudges Back a 1/3 Reduction in State Prison PopulationStates should be concerned with the ruling in California...

When will it end?

Posted on February 08, 2009
Here are two more stories in the seemingly never ending saga of wrongful convictions:For Inmate Seeking Vindication, Freedom Can WaitTexas: Dead Inmate is ExoneratedThe Death Penalty Information Center reports that 130 individuals have been exonerated from death row in 26 states since 1973...

Shoddy Work in Forensic Labs

Posted on February 05, 2009
New York Times - Forensic evidence that has helped convict thousands of defendants for nearly a century is often the product of shoddy scientific practices that should be upgraded and standardized, according to accounts of a draft report by the nation?s preeminent scientific research group...

This is Murder

Posted on January 28, 2009
The Georgia peanut plant linked to a salmonella outbreak that has killed eight people and sickened 500 more across the country knowingly shipped out contaminated peanut butter 12 times in the past two years, federal officials said yesterday.Read more...

Compensation for the Wrongfully Convicted

Posted on January 25, 2009
OMAHA (AP) ? Three people imprisoned for nearly 20 years for a murder they did not commit could each be entitled to $1 million if state lawmakers approve a bill. Senator Kent Rogert of Tekamah introduced the bill, LB260, that would provide for a minimum of $50,000 for each year an innocent person is incarcerated...

Immigrant Deaths in Detention

Posted on January 16, 2009
NY Times - Federal immigration officials investigating the death of a New York computer engineer from China who died in their custody last summer said Thursday that supervisors at a Rhode Island detention center had denied the ailing man appropriate medical treatment on multiple occasions and that employees had dragged him from his cell to a van as he screamed in pain...

Gov O'Malley Leads on Abolition of Death Penalty

Posted on January 16, 2009
Washington Post - Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) said yesterday that he will for the first time personally sponsor a bill and do "everything in [his] power" to abolish capital punishment in Maryland, signaling his desire to make the issue a chief accomplishment as he enters the second half of his term...

Report Calls Online Threats to Children Overblown

Posted on January 15, 2009
The Internet may not be such a dangerous place for children after all. A task force created by 49 state attorneys general to look into the problem of sexual solicitation of children online has concluded that there really is not a significant problem...

Ann Coulter and Single Parents

Posted on January 07, 2009
Ann Coulter is at it again in her new book Guilty: Liberal "Victims" and Their Assault on America. .msnbcLinks {font-size:11px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #999; margin-top: 5px; background: transparent; text-align: center; width: 425px;} ...

Death Penalty Controversy in Idaho

Posted on December 21, 2008
The Idaho Supreme Court unanimously decided that the victim impact statements admitted by 4th District Judge Thomas Neville during the capital sentencing of Darrell Payne exceeded the scope permitted by existing case law. The result is a new sentencing trial for Payne...

Should Justice Be Rationed?

Posted on December 10, 2008
In an editorial regarding the prospects of abolishing the death penalty, I ran across this comment:?Justice is not a cost-benefit analysis. Justice is doing the right thing, no matter how much it costs,? Joseph Cassilly, a state?s attorney in Harford County, Md...

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