Z
The Legal Monthly
Vol. 2 No. 8 Read Z the Blog at http://zlegaltimes.blogspot.com/ Oct/Nov. '07
The Uniquely Gregarious Source Of Legal News And “Divers” Contrary Information
The Costs of Justice
First Take TNR
JEC Rap Sheet
Dworkin: “The Supreme Court Phalanx”
Scotus Focus
A Prediction
Human Rights Watch Report
Oral argument
Sex Offender Residency Restrictions
Mailbag
From Z Editor (and Mail) I can't blame it on the finances this time ... it's just that I have a lot going on. With a tween and teen and a new business going up I don't know where the time goes. September was crazy.
Country Mart's doughnuts — fried fresh daily in the store — sell for just 52 cents each. That is why the "shoplifters will be prosecuted" signs are displayed in aisle 4 with the pricey pain and allergy pills, and not in aisle 5 beside the glass doughnut case with its tiger tails, jelly-filleds and eclairs. Then one man's sweet tooth got the better of him. He stole a doughnut. A single dough-nut. Authorities called it strong-arm rob-bery. The "doughnut man," as the suspect is now known, faces five to 15 years in prison for his crime. And Farmington, a town of 14,000 people about 70 miles south of St. Louis, has been buzzing about it ever since. "That someone would take just a single doughnut, not something very expensive or extravagant, that's unique," supermarket assistant manager Gary Komar said, smiling. Scott A. Masters, 41, is accused of shop-lifting the pastry and pushing a store worker who tried to stop him. The worker was un-hurt. But with that shove, his shoplifting turned into a strong-arm robbery. Masters, who appeared in court Friday, is stunned. The prosecutor shows no signs of backing down. In fact, because Masters has a prior record, he could get a sentence of 30 years to life.
The Costs of Justice, American Style
JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE TO EXAMINE ECONOMIC COSTS OF SURGE IN U.S. PRISON POPULATION AND POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS – U.S. Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) held a Joint Economic Committee (JEC) hearing to explore the economic consequences and causes of and solutions to the steep increase of the U.S. prison population.
The hearing entitled, “Mass Incarceration in the United States: At What Cost?” was Thursday, October 4, 2007 at 10:00am in Room 216 of the Hart Senate Office Building.
United States has 25 percent of the world’s prisoners,despite having only 5 percent of the world’s population. The JEC examined why the United States has such a disproportionate share of the world’s prison population, and ways to address this issue that responsibly balance public safety and the high social and economic costs of imprisonment.
Expert witnesses have been asked to discuss the costs of maintaining a large prison system; the long-term labor market and social con-sequences of mass incarceration; whether the increase in the prison population correlates with decreases in crime; and what alternative sentencing strategies and post-prison re-entry programs have been most successful at re-ducing incarceration rates in states and local communities. The witness list included:
• Dr. Glenn Loury, Economics and Social Sciences Professor, Brown University
• Dr. Bruce Western, Director Inequality and Social Policy Program, Harvard University
• Alphonso Albert, Executive Director, Second Chances
• Michael Jacobson, Executive Director, Vera Institute for Justice
The Joint Economic Committee, established under the Employment Act of 1946, was created by Congress to review economic conditions and to analyze the effectiveness of economic policy.
First Take on Hearing from TNR
It's eleven-thirty on a Thursday morning in the Senate Hart building, and the House-Senate Joint Economic Committee is doing something fairly unprecedented -- it's talking about prison reform. Not prison reform in the sense of why-we-need-to-build-more, but why-we-need-to-build-fewer.
Curious as to how this came about--as a rule, Congress only gets "tough" on crime, never "soft"-- I had asked a staffer, who explained that Chuck Schumer, the com-mittee chair, was letting each member hold his or her own hearing on whatever topic they so desired. Senator Jim Webb, who had reported on the Japanese prison system as a journalist in the 1980s, picked this critical issue. And so five experts put forward over-whelming evidence that the sprawling U.S. prison state--essentially a $200 billion per year social program that rivals the New Deal in size and scope--is devastating inner cities, deepening poverty, and making the crime problem worse, not better. But now it comes time for questions, and the congressional chairs are mostly empty. Only Webb and fellow freshman Bob Casey of Pennsylvania are still hanging around. Critical, indeed.
Back in 1958, sociologist Gresham Sykes prefaced his classic study of life inside a New Jersey maximum-security prison with a bitter note: "The 'prison problem' would seem to be a hardy perennial, unfortunately, for it has managed to survive every new storm of public indignation." Sykes was writing at a time when the U.S. prison system had only 200,000 inmates; his peers were mostly interested in what took place inside prisons. Today, after three decades of the war on drugs and harsh mandatory-minimum sentencing laws, that number has ballooned to 2.2 million, and social scientists are now focusing on how mass incarceration affects and shapes the outside world--how prisons become "engines of inequality," as Princeton sociologist Bruce Western puts it.
But will anyone listen? To be fair, Webb and Casey weren't the only members of Congress who showed up on Thursday. Four representatives exited early for a House vote--three liberal Dem-ocrats, Carolyn Maloney, Bobby Scott, and Maurice Hinchey, as well as Phil English, a Republican who has expressed interest in prisoner-rehabilitation legislation. Sam Brownback had also swung by earlier, to voice support for programs that help prisoners reenter society. That was it, though. And, watching Webb and Casey sit there, alone, one couldn't help but wonder if the "prison problem" won't weather this latest storm of public indignation just as easily.
At the heart of the case against the bloated U.S. prison system are statistics--lots of them. Staffers at the hearing inundate reporters with sheet after sheet filled with numbers and charts. A sample: The United States incarcerates 750 inmates per 100,000 persons, besting even Russia and China and dwarfing the world average of 166 per 100,000. Prison spending is now the fastest-growing item on most state budgets. Some 62 percent of black high-school dropouts born since the late 1960s have a prison record by the age of 34. Said prison record lowers one's lifetime earnings by 10 to 30 percent. So what are we getting for this staggeringly expensive social ex-periment? Not much: Criminologists mostly agree that the increased use of prison was, at best, responsible for only 20-25 percent of the crime decline in the 1990s. And, given that prisons themselves can serve as a breeding ground for criminals, while ripping apart families and perpetuating racial and income inequality, it's no stretch to say that excessive incarceration can actually increase crime in some cases.
A barrage of stats, though, is no match for personal experience, and perhaps the most compelling witness is Pat Nolan, a former Republican lawmaker in California who served 29 months in federal custody after getting caught accepting bribes in an FBI sting. Like Chuck Colson, the Watergate crook who now runs a prison ministry, Nolan had his come-to-Jesus moment behind bars. And, in the course of making his case for programs to help prisoners reenter polite society, he dips into the memory well, asking his audience to imagine a released offender who has just stepped off the bus: "Where will he live? Where will he find a meal? Where will he look for a job? How will he get a job interview?" He notes that most prisons don't even give inmates an identi-fication card upon release: "In Alabama, they give you a check for $50 but no I.D. How are you even supposed to cash the check?" Little wonder, he adds, that two-thirds of all prisoners are rearrested within three years of their release--a major reason why prisons keep swelling.
What can be changed? On the bright side, Congress is close to passing the Second Chance Act, a bill sponsored by politicians as diverse as Brownback and John Conyers that would provide $100 million to fund training and support programs for ex-prisoners. A Senate staffer told me that support for Brownback's bill on the Republi-can side is "nearly unanimous." In the past, Democrats have been wary that the GOP would try to fund faith-based prison programs with the bill, but this time around, it may well pass. Even if the bill itself is relatively modest, it does represent a break from three decades of increasingly strict sentencing laws, and an unerring faith that more prison is always the answer.
But what happens after that? During his testimony, Glenn Loury, an economist at Brown, takes a detour from discussing the social costs of mass imprisonment to broach drug laws. If prison reform has long been taboo in Congress, speaking out against the war on drugs is extra taboo. Loury goes ahead anyway and points to a graph showing that, even as drug arrests have skyrocketed, the price of heroin and cocaine has been plum-meting, while emergency room admissions for drug use continue to rise. Loury also notes, strikingly, that black men are four times as likely to be arrested for a drug offense as white men, despite the fact that drug usage is actually lower for blacks. Part of this, he explains, comes from the fact that, in urban areas, drugs tend to be sold in open-air markets, whereas suburban drug sales tend to take place indoors.
Webb is impressed by this point, but Casey raises a "devil's advocate" question: Why shouldn't the police lock up people selling drugs in public? Michael Jacobson, a former New York city corrections commissioner, chimes in to explain that "it's not appropriate to use jails for every behavior," arguing that putting a street-level dealer in prison for a few years won't solve anything--someone else will just step in to sell, and prison will only "harden" the person arrested. All of the experts agree with Loury that mandatory minimums for drug offenses do more harm than good, and other, less punitive measures would work better. But Casey, though appre-ciative, seems vaguely discomfited by where this is all heading, muttering, "I like the focus on reentry programs."
For his part, Webb doesn't seem to mind rolling up his sleeves and going beyond talk of chipping away at the recidivism rate. His questions are sharp, as when he asks whether lengthening prison sentences actually deters crime. Both Western and Jacobson agree that the length of a prison sentence is less impor-tant for deterrence than the swiftness of apprehension. "Right," Webb replies, almost as if leading a class discussion, "criminals mostly just worry about getting caught." Jacobson adds that the rise of unduly long prison terms--especially the explosion in life sentences handed out under "three-strikes" laws--keeps people in prison long past the age at which they tend to commit crimes. (Bruce Western quips that the United States is the only place where "prison geronto-logist" is a career.) To this, too, Webb seems receptive.
Reentry programs are one thing; talk of drastically reducing prison sentences, however, is still a radical notion for Con-gress. To his credit, Barack Obama recently vowed, in a speech at Howard University, that he would "review mandatory minimum drug sentencing" as president. That's about as far as any mainstream candidate can go, and Obama, perhaps wisely, kept the details vague. Webb, however, could be a convin-cing crusader here--after all, it's hard to accuse a man who once tried to bring a gun into the Senate of being a typical bleeding-heart liberal. Indeed, Webb emphasizes several times that he's not soft on crime, and, as if to prove it, reiterates his desire to "break the backs of gangs" and so forth. "But," he adds at the end, "I do hope my colleagues can better understand the impact of what we're doing here." By the time he says this, though, he's the only politician left in the room. By Bradford Plumer (an assistant editor at The New Republic).
JEC Rap Sheet
The United States has the highest reported incarceration rate in the world. While the United States currently incarcerates 750 inmates per 100,000 persons, the world average rate is 166 per 100,000 persons. Russia, the country with the second highest incarceration rate, imprisons 624 per 100,000 persons. Compared to its democratic, advanced market economy counterparts, the United States has more people in prison by several orders of magnitude. Although crime rates have decreased since 1990, the rate of imprisonment has continued to increase.
* Growth in the prison population is due to changing policy, not increased crime. Many criminal justice experts have found that the increase in the incarceration rate is the pro-duct of changes in penal policy and practice, not changes in crime rates. Changes in sen-tencing, both in terms of time served and the range of offenses meriting incarceration, underlie the growth in the prison population.
* Changes in drug policy have had the single greatest impact on criminal justice policy. The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 created mandatory minimum sentences for posses-sion of specific amounts of cocaine. The Act instituted a 100-to-1 differential in the treat-ment of powder and crack cocaine, treating possession of 5 grams of crack cocaine the same as possession of 500 grams of powder cocaine. Crack cocaine is typically con-sumed by the poor, while powder cocaine, a significantly more expensive drug, is con-sumed by wealthier users. Mandatory mini-mum sentences for low-level crack-cocaine users are comparable (and harsher in certain cases) to sentences for major drug dealers.
* The composition of prison admissions has also shifted toward less serious offenses, characterized by parole violations and drug offenses. In 2005, four out of five drug arrests were for possession and one out of five were for sales. The crime history for three-quarters of drug offenders in state prisons involved non-violent or drug offenses.
* The prison system has a disproportionate impact on minority communities. African Americans, who make-up 12.4 percent of the population, represent more than half of all prison inmates, compared to one-third twenty years ago. Although African Americans constitute 14 percent of regular drug users, they are 37 percent of those arrested for drug offenses, and 56 percent of persons in state prisons for drug crimes. African Americans serve nearly as much time in federal prisons for drug offenses as whites do for violent crimes.
* The U.S. prison system has enormous economic costs associated with prison construction and operation, productivity losses, and wage effects. In 2006, states spent an estimated $2 billion on prison construction, three times the amount they were spending fifteen years earlier. The combined expenditures of local govern-ments, state governments, and the federal government for law enforcement and cor-rections total over $200 billion annually. In addition to these costs, the incarceration rate has significant costs associated with the productivity of both prisoners and ex-offenders. The economic output of prisoners is mostly lost to society while they are impri-soned. Negative productivity effects con-tinue after release. This wage penalty grows with time, as previous imprisonment can reduce the wage growth of young men by some 30 percent.
* Prisons are housing many of the nation’s mentally ill. Prisons are absorbing the cost of housing the nation’s mentally ill. The number of mentally ill in prison is nearly five times the number in inpatient mental hospitals. Large numbers of mentally ill inmates, as well as inmates with HIV, tuber-culosis, and hepatitis also raise serious questions regarding the costs and distribution of health care resources.
* The United States faces enormous problems of offender reentry and recidivism. The number of ex-offenders reentering their communities has increased fourfold in the past two decades. On average, however, two out of every three released prisoners will be rear-rested and one in two will return to prison within three years of release.
Dworkin: “The Supreme Court Phalanx” Not last nor least, here's Ronald Dworkin (beating - not bleating) about the bleeding Supreme Court (appearing in New York Review of Books). So, from his analysis, forget about your chances for habeas relief. On the bright side there is always this: The Sixth Circuit in Stewart v. Erwin, No. 05-4635 (6th Cir. Oct. 8, 2007) grants habeas relief to a state prisoner because he was de-nied access to certain information used at his sentencing. Here are the highlights from the start of the opinion (from Doc Berman):
After exhausting his state remedies, Stewart filed a habeas petition in federal district court pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254, alleging, inter alia, that he was denied due process of law because he was not given the opportunity to review, rebut, and explain the entire body of information that the sentencing court relied upon to justify its imposition of an eight-year prison term. The district court denied the habeas petition but, on the same day, granted Stewart’s motion to expand the habeas record and ordered the State of Ohio to file, under seal, the pre-sentence report and victim impact state-ments from Stewart’s case. The custodian of these documents has thus far refused to comply with the district court’s order, and these documents do not appear in the record on appeal. The district court also subse-quently granted a certificate of appealability as to Stewart’s due process challenge, and this is the sole claim presently before us.
As explained below, we agree with the district court that there is no clearly established federal constitutional right to full disclosure of all information used by a trial judge in determining a defendant’s sentence. Nonetheless, we recognize, as did the court below, that there is a clearly esta-blished federal due process protection against a trial court’s reliance on materially false information at sentencing. Unlike the district court, we find ourselves unable to ascertain whether this latter sort of due process violation might have occurred here, where a portion of the materials used in determining Stewart’s sentence has been withheld from federal court review, and where the limited record before us suggests a reasonable possibility that at least some of this sentencing information might have been erroneous. Consequently, we reverse the district court’s order denying Stewart’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus and remand for additional proceedings, with further instructions that the writ should be granted if the State fails to supplement the record as ordered by the district court within forty-five (45) days of the date of this opinion.
1. The revolution that many commentators predicted when President Bush appointed two ultra-right-wing Supreme Court justices is proceeding with breathtaking impatience, and it is a revolution Jacobin in its disdain for tradition and precedent. Bush's choices, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, have joined the two previously most right-wing justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, in an unbreakable phalanx bent on remaking constitutional law by over-ruling, most often by stealth, the central constitutional doctrines that generations of past justices, conservative as well as liberal, had constructed.
These doctrines aimed at reducing racial isolation and division, recapturing demo-cracy from big money, establishing reason-able dimensions for freedom of conscience and speech, protecting a woman's right to abortion while recognizing social concerns about how that right is exercised, and esta-blishing a criminal process that is fair as well as effective. The rush of 5–4 decisions at the end of the Court's term undermined the prin-cipled base of much of this carefully estab-lished doctrine. As Justice Stephen Breyer declared, in a rare lament from the bench, "It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much."
It would be a mistake to suppose that this right-wing phalanx is guided in its zeal by some very conservative judicial or political ideology of principle. It seems guided by no judicial or political principle at all, but only by partisan, cultural, and perhaps religious allegiance. It urges judicial restraint and def-erence to legislatures when these bodies pass measures that political conservatives favor, like bans on particular medical techniques in abortion. But the right-wing coalition aban-dons restraint when it strikes down legis-lation that conservatives oppose, like reg-ulations on political advertising and modest school district programs to further racial integration in public education. It claims to celebrate free speech when it declares that Congress cannot prevent rich corporations and unions from evading restrictions on political contributions. But it subordinates free speech to other policies when it holds that schools can punish students for dis-playing ambiguous but not disruptive slogans at school events. Lawyers have long been fond of saying, quoting Mr. Dooley, that the Supreme Court follows the election returns.[1] These four justices seem to follow Fox News instead.
They need a fifth vote to win the day in particular cases, and they most often per-suade Justice Anthony Kennedy to join them. Kennedy has taken Sandra Day O'Connor's place as the swing vote on the Court. Twenty-four cases—a third of the Court's decisions—were decided by 5–4 votes last term, nineteen of them on a strict ideological division. Kennedy voted on the winning side in all twenty-four of them. He joined with the right-wing justices in thirteen of the ideological cases; he voted against them and with the four more liberal justices—John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Ginsburg, and Breyer— in the remaining six cases, including four death penalty appeals from Texas. He showed deplorable partisan-ship when he voted with the majority in the Court's intellectually disreputable 2000 decision to elect Bush president.[2] He wrote a poor and insensitive majority opinion this year in the Court's so-called partial-birth abortion case. (I discussed his opinion in these pages earlier this year.)[3] But in 1992 Kennedy joined O'Connor and Souter in the key opinion upholding abortion rights in principle and providing a firmer constitutional basis for them,[4] and in 2003 he wrote a strong opinion for a 6–3 majority, relying on that earlier abortion decision, ruling that states cannot make homosexual acts criminal.[5] He therefore offers hope—slim, but real—of some moderating influence on the Jacobins; lawyers who argue important cases before the Court in the next few years will presumably frame their arguments to convince him.
2. These are strong claims about the revolutionary character and poor legal quality of many of the Court's 5–4 decisions, and it is necessary to review these decisions with some care, in the remainder of this essay, to explain and defend those claims. The most important decision was the Court's 5–4 ruling striking down school student assignment plans adopted by Seattle and Louisville. . . . **** Ronald Dworkin (New York Review of Books)
Scotus Focus A 2006 law, passed by Congress and signed by Mr Bush prohibits Guantanamo Bay detainees from challenging their confinement in federal courts and states their cases can only be heard by military commissions, not civilian courts.
This term, Supreme Court justices will decide whether in doing so, the law has violated the constitutional requirement to provide habeas corpus - a procedure under which someone who holds a prisoner is required to show reason why to a court - to prisoners in the US.
The US Appeals Court for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that habeas corpus does not apply to foreign nationals being held at Guantanamo Bay because it is not US soil. Professor AE Dick Howard, of the University of Virginia School of Law, said the Guantanamo cases would be "front and centre" of the new session. Laura Smith-Spark BBC News, Washington. Nb. If the detainees "win" is that a conserative or liberal outcome? Hint: is the Consti-tutional right to habeas corpus a conservative or liberal notion? Hint 2: Is supporting tyranny conservative or liberal?
Check these for more previews: Adler; and Wittes: "it made fools of those of us who believe in it as something more elevated: an institution that aspires to rule based on principle. It was depressing, and the most depressing part is that sinking feeling that the justices will do the same thing again beginning today."
A Prediction by Tom Goldstein of SCOTUSblog: “Because the public's interest in the Court is notoriously weak and its memory short, the relevant question in deciding whether the Court can be a mobilizing force in the 2008 election for ideological groups is therefore not "how were cases decided in OT2006" (the focus of commentary so far), but instead "how will OT2007's cases be decided?" And I think that the existing and anticipated docket strongly suggests that, during OT2007, the outcomes of the highest-profile cases will be perceived as quite liberal.
As a consequence, I think it is exceptionally unlikely that next Term will end as this one did, with front-page stories and reports leading the evening news describing the Court as profoundly con-servative, with laudatory commentary by the right and howls of protest from the left. Instead, we will see (mistaken) talk of the "surprising" tack by the Court back to the left and (among the legal glitterati) the "good Kennedy, bad Kennedy" phenomenon in which his ideological views seemingly oscillate dramatically from Term to Term. In fact, this commentary will be wrong: the Justices and their views will be exactly the same come June 2008; it is the cases that will be different.
Equally or more important when considering the potential elect-oral consequences of the Term, the leading cases will be ones in which the more liberal position is distinctly - even profoundly - unpopular with conservatives, creating the prospect that the Court will serve as a rallying cry to mobilize the electorate. Even if the left ultimately does not win all of the five most significant cases of this Supreme Court Term, that wing of the Court will carry the banner for accused terrorists, crack dealers, child pornographers, child rapists, and those who want to forbid gun possession. First, consider the existing docket. The most prominent decision, by far, will come in the cases brought by detainees held at Guantanamo Bay as accused terrorists. The conventional wisdom is that the detainees will win. I agree. ***
The next-highest-profile case involves the crack-powder disparity in sentencing (Kimbrough v. United States). This is something of a "throwback" case; crack is not as prominent an issue as it once was. Nonetheless, it is one with which the public is familiar. The parti-cular question presented is whether, in the wake of the holding of Booker v. United States that the Sentencing Guidelines are advisory rather than mandatory, district judges can refuse to follow the crack Sentencing Guideline (which imposes a 100:1 ratio to cocaine sen-tences by weight) on the ground that they disagree with the policy judgment underlying it. I think that the government is over-whelmingly likely to lose. ***
A third significant and publicly accessible case involves the constitutionality of a particular federal regulation of child porn-ography (United States v. Williams). The PROTECT Act makes it a crime to distribute something in a manner that shows you believe, or causes someone else to believe, it constitutes child pornography. The case is a successor to Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, which invalidated as overbroad in violation of the First Amendment a prior statutory provision making it a crime to possess images that "appear to be" or "convey the impression" that they are child pornography. The new statute focused on the act of pandering the material, rather than its possession. A panel of the court of appeals held that the Supreme Court would not find the change significant enough to save the statute. I agree, though the question is difficult and likely to be close. The Free Speech Coalition majority was fairly sweeping on this point (the Court divided seven to two). In particular, Justice Kennedy's opinion for the five-Justice majority (himself and the left) indicated that this type of fix would be insufficient because it would still make unlawful the distribution of material that is not in fact pornographic.
So, in the three most significant cases of the Term granted thus far, the position of the Court's more liberal members will be (in the caricature that comes with much popular reporting on the Court) that accused terrorists deserve more rights, crack dealers deserve lighter sentences, and the First Amendment protects would-be distributors of child porn.
NB. But in Ditech's words "people are smart" -- I think we're beginning to see through the right-wing "conservative philosophy" yoyo bullshit, don't you? The argument is that people are stupid—too stupid to see through the spin and discern the shadow of fairness. I respectfully disagree.
A Cute, if Sardonic, Irony “RATS in robes”
sardonic: "Like sarcastic, but more in order to cause amusement than insult"
I know, relative to the other Supremes, Roberts is comparatively young, but at 52 years, "young man" seemed a stretch. But like everything else with the Supremes, it's all relative, right? Relative conservatives, relative liberals, relative moderates, relative reactionaries? Well, no -- the latter are pretty clear, the RATS of this court: Roberts, Alito, Thomas, and Scalia -- they're sure to surprise people, if only by how far they'll go to bat for a Republican president. I have no doubt that, should the Democrats actually win the White House in 2008, the RATS will work hard to oppose that new president; they know which party they represent. Rehnquist certainly set that mold for them, and Roberts will follow it. Their creed:
1 concentrated Republican executive power good,
2 unchecked corporate power good,
3 environmental law/regulation bad,
4 human rights bad,
5 property rights good,
6 free speech bad,
7 economic speech good (e.g., being able to pay for the privilege of said "free" speech, like campaign donors)
That's a pretty reliable barometer of their approach, and I doubt they'll stray from the script much, unless a Democrat wins in '08, then they might oppose concentrated, unchecked executive Democratic power. But we'll see; they might, in principle, maintain that in hopes that the GOP is able to seize power again.
-- comment by “Slackie Onassis” somewhere on the blog-a-sphere
Human Rights Watch Report on laws, registries and restrictions for sex offenders:
Laws aimed at people convicted of sex offenses may not protect children from sex crimes but do lead to harassment, ostracism and even violence against former offenders, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Human Rights Watch urges the reform of state and federal registration and community notification laws, and the elimination of residency restrictions, because they violate basic rights of former offenders. The 146-page report, “No Easy Answers: Sex Offender Laws in the United States,” is the first comprehensive study of US sex offender policies, their public safety impact, and the effect they have on former offenders and their families. During two years of investigation for this report, Human Rights Watch researchers conducted over 200 interviews with victims of sexual violence and their relatives, former offenders, law enforcement and government officials, treatment providers, researchers, and child safety advocates. (Source: Citybeat.com). Just as Ohio has toughened its sex offender registration system, evidence is building that registration causes more problems than it solves.
Retroactivity Danforth v. Minnesota (06-8273) -- a case examining state courts' authority to expand retroactivity of Supreme Court criminal procedure rulings, is scheduled for argument on October 31: the petitioner's brief is by the Minnesota Public Defender's office; Amicus briefs from the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in support of the petitioner; an amicus brief from Alaska and ten other states in support of the respondent; and an amicus brief from Kansas in support of neither party. Curiouser and curiouser.
A Sidenote on National Security Policy The white shoes at SCOTUSBLOG have written about how the revelation of our program of kidnapping and torture presents a "grave risk of injury to national security" (quote from the government's brief in opposition for writ in the Supreme Court: El-Masri v. Tenet, 437 F.Supp.2d 530, 541 (E.D.Va.2006) and El-Masri v. U.S., 479 F.3d 296 (4th Cir., 2007)).
I should think so. If true, and even if not true, the allegation alone, rumor only perhaps but not likely, presents untold harm to the reputation and moral standing of the United States among the community of nations. Cover that up, and bring lots of dirt to do it with. That's mud, as in "dragging through the mud" -- as in the reputation of the former AG, whose worst day according to his own admission, was better than his own father's best day. I'm so glad I'm not his dad. Aren't you?
Oral argument in Watson v. United States (06-571) 10/9 Federal law makes it a crime to "use" a gun during a drug offense. But what if an unloaded gun is merely payment for the drugs? That's the question set for argument at the US Supreme Court next Tuesday in the case of a Louisiana man who traded 24 doses of the prescription drug OxyContin for a .50 caliber Desert Eagle pistol. At issue in Watson is how to define the word "use" in a statute that outlaws the "use" of a gun in a drug crime. Although the case sounds unique, it is becoming increasingly common in sting operations for undercover agents to introduce or suggest a gun as a form of payment in a drug deal. Under the law as written by Congress, the gun adds an automatic five years in prison – and sometimes much more – to any drug charges. "It is a very heavy stick," says Mark Stancil, a Washington, D.C., lawyer and adviser to the University of Virginia School of Law Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, which is assisting in the Watson case.
Sentencing -- the Fourth Cir. affirms over dissent by Judge Gregory the lower court's denial of motion to withdraw plea after having conditionally accepted same pending receipt of presentencing report, and challenge to the 120 month sentence for possession of firearm. United States v. Battle (Sep 5).
Sex Offender Residency Restrictions A federal judge in Akron has ruled in favor a sex offender in a residency case. Lane Mikaloff filed a lawsuit after he was ordered out of his home because he lives too close to a school.
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