CVMR Will Return Soon

. . . when the hard drive gets replaced.

Leaving Paradise, More Work Than Expected

More paperwork to leave paradise than I’d thought.  Crime Victims Media Report will resume on May 10.

Goodbye backyard:

Moving On

Crime Victims Media Report will resume next week, with new topics:

• Florida’s fight to lift the statute of limitations on child molestation.
• Atlanta’s Rodney King Riots
• What New York City’s council speaker Christine Quinn Won’t Tell You About Hate Crimes Prosecution

Radio Program on Eric Holder

Thursday morning, 9 a.m. (Eastern), I will be on the Doc Washburn show, WFLA Panama City talking about Attorney General Eric Holder.

Three Strikes Laws: The Myth of Jerry DeWayne Williams and His Pizza Slice

As California begins emptying prisons over the protests of voters, a powerful coalition of anti-incarceration activist groups are declaring victory over the quaint notion that people should be punished for crime:

Prison reform advocates such as Jim Lindburg, a lobbyist for the Friends Committee on Legislation, hope that the state’s first significant corrections-policy change in decades ushers in a whole new mind-set on crime.  “There’s really nothing scientific or magical about the length of prison sentences,” Lindburg said. “Those are political calculations made in a political environment. It seems preposterous to me to suggest that letting people out a little bit early is going to have any kind of (negative) impact on crime rates. I think we just need to change the way we think about public safety.”

Well, actually, there’s already been at least one disturbing crime committed by one of the first men released a “bit early,” so scratch the “no negative impact” thing.

Also, there’s nothing “magical” about the length of prison sentences.  To the contrary, imprisonment works in the most mundane and predictable way: it keeps non-reformable offenders away from fresh victims for a set amount of time, and schools others in the consequences of offending again.

What hubris, accusing the public of “magical thinking” because they want offenders off the streets.  Why is it that those who trumpet loudest about their own peace-loving natures and non-hierarchical ways always come off as angry, insufferable elitists?

The Friends Committee on Legislation of California  (FCLCA) , guided by Quaker values, advocates for California state laws that  are just, compassionate and respectful of the inherent worth of every  person.

Make that the inherent worth of offenders, full stop.  Oh please, just do it.  You know you want to.  The Friends do not waste their breath or stationary advocating for the inherent worth of people who aren’t convicts, or ex-cons.  Ditto all those activist nuns getting their jollies on death row.  There’s no thrill in standing alongside ordinary people who fear for their safety — no thrill, and generally no microphones, either.

~~~

As the anti-incarceration movement gears up to exploit the financial crisis, expect more mass early releases and the gutting of three-strike and other recidivism laws.  Consequently, alongside all the faux-Buddhist arguments about one hour in prison being the same as 100 or 1,000 days (the real magical thinking), academic cheerleaders have now exhumed that all-time sorriest argument against three strikes laws: the fake-life-for-stealing-a-slice-of-pizza guy.

Why fake?  Because Jerry DeWayne Williams didn’t get life.  He didn’t serve 25 years under three strikes.  His sentence, like the sentences of 25% to 45% of the offenders who qualify for three-strikes, was downgraded to a “second-strike” offense . . . because judges and prosecutors have that discretion and use it every day.

Here is professor Jennifer Walsh, writing in late 2002:

[S]tatistics indicate that discretion in three strike cases is invoked frequently and consistently. A 1998 survey of California District Attorneys revealed that prosecutors in urban jurisdictions use discretion in approximately 20-40 percent of eligible cases [now higher] . . . An evaluation of judicial discretion exercised in San Diego County found that judges exercised discretion in 29 percent of eligible three strike cases. They were also 100 percent more likely to use discretion if the triggering offense was minor. Moreover, judges were more likely to strike a prior strike if the defendant had no history of violence and no history of weapons possession or weapons use.  Perhaps most reassuring is the data that shows that in San Diego County, over half of the initial third strike filings that involved a minor third strike offense were later downgraded to second strike offenses. This exercise of discretion by prosecutors and judges prevented these defendants from receiving the enhanced sentence when they were perceived as undeserving.  Findings like these confirm that the judicious exercise of discretion under the California three strikes law creates a safeguard for defendants who are technically eligible for the mandatory sentence, but whose past and present conduct is considered to be outside the spirit of the law.

Read that paragraph carefully, because you’re not going to see it in the news, where reporters simply cut and paste rhetoric from various activist groups, wildly misrepresenting the law itself.  Professor Walsh notes that those subjected to California’s three-strikes law generally had violent or serious crimes as their third offense:

State statistics indicate that the third strikers in prison include 294 for murder; 34 for manslaughter; 1,408 for robbery; 356 for assault with a deadly weapon; 416 for other assaults or battery; 136 for rape; 241 for lewd act upon a child; 136 for other sex offenses; 83 for kidnapping; 776 for residential burglary; 288 for possession of drugs for sale; 191 for sale of drugs, 28 for manufacturing drugs; 356 for weapons-possession; and 25 for arson.

First and second offenses must be for serious or violent felonies to trigger the enhancement, another little-noted fact.

But facts simply don’t matter to the activists.  If facts mattered to them, they wouldn’t be holding up Jerry DeWayne Williams as an example of a person who was sent away for 25 years for stealing a piece of pizza, because he wasn’t.

And it’s very much worth asking why criminologists and reporters cling so eagerly to this one story, repeating it endlessly when it is not true in the first place and is also decades old now: can’t they produce a better tale of woe?

But it gets worse.

This week, the Los Angeles Times ran a bizarre feature on Jerry DeWayne Williams.  The gist is that Williams is a victim of three-strikes even though he was not subjected to it.  It is apparently enough that the law exists for Williams to continue to feel victimized by it.  The reporter calls this serving a “life sentence” of having to abide by the law:

“I walk on eggshells,” [Williams] said. “Any little thing that I do, I could be back for the rest of my life.”

Strangely, however, not even that claim holds up under scrutiny.  Williams has received lenience repeatedly since the pizza incident, a fact that neither he nor the reporter seem to view as a contradiction of his profound feeling of victimization.  One of his subsequent crimes was even a threat of violence:

in September 2003, his girlfriend called 911 and reported that Williams was verbally abusing her. A police officer arrived to find Williams moving out after a fight and demanding $150 he had paid toward the bills.  As the officer looked on, Williams told his girlfriend: “I’m going to put a bullet in your ass if I don’t get my money.”

A prosecutor and a judge let him off:

Williams, who was unarmed, was arrested and charged with making a criminal threat, a felony that could have landed him back in prison for life. But Kings County prosecutors did not treat the crime as a third strike. Williams pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor and was released from jail after 17 days.

And then he immediately broke the terms of his probation upon leaving prison, again with no consequences:

As part of his sentence, he was barred from leaving Kings County without permission. Nevertheless, Williams moved to Moreno Valley to live with another sister. An arrest warrant was issued and remains active.

And then again:

Since landing in Moreno Valley, he has been arrested once — for being drunk in public — but was released without charges being filed.

How on earth does the reporter square such facts with his depiction of Williams as a desperate, haunted man peering nervously over his shoulder, terrified of the slightest slip-up?  He was not afraid to violate his probation.  Twice.  He was not afraid to threaten to murder someone — in front of a policeman.  He doesn’t sound particularly frightened at all.  He sounds as if he knows that he can avail himself of a passel of silk-stockinged civil liberties attorneys any time a knucklehead cop dares to take him in for attacking a woman, or some other offense.

He sounds as if he knows that his notoriety has placed him above the law.

In one of the many courtrooms, Williams has been sentenced in, a prosecutor “unfurled a computer printout of Williams’ criminal history that extended from his outstretched arm to the floor,” and yet Williams is not behind bars.  Considering the gang and drug activities that consumed his earlier years, the threat of three-strikes has probably saved his life, but he is far too busy whining to be grateful.

~~~

What the criminologists and the activists will not admit, will not acknowledge, let alone discuss, is this: for every Jerry DeWayne Williams, there is a John Floyd Thomas, arrested repeatedly in California over the span of more than two decades for sex crimes and burglaries but released repeatedly, to rape and (now we know) kill again.

Jerry DeWayne Williams may owe his life to the three strikes law, but it did not arrive in time to save the lives of the thirty women in Los Angeles Thomas is now suspected of raping and strangling.

Thirty murdered women.

Funny, you never hear Quakers (or most criminologists) talking about that.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To read more factual material about California’s three-strikes law, go to the Three Strikes and You’re Out: Stop Repeat Offenders website.  Rather than trumped-up anecdotes and accusations of fascism, you’ll find data on California’s three-strikes offenders, statistics on use of judicial discretion, examples of dangerous offenders who would have been out of prison, but for the law, and studies evaluating the effect of the law on California’s crime rate.

Crime Victims Media Report Will Return Dec. 28 — No, January 4

Crime Victims Media Report will return in its new format Dec. 28 (sorry, January 4). Merry Christmas and happy holidays.

Interesting Editorial on Criminal Defense by Judge Dan Winn

Hat tip to Dan, who passed along the following must-read editorial from the Rome News-Tribune on funding criminal defense.

I found this editorial in today’s paper and thought you would like to read it. I do not know anything about the judge but it sounds like an interesting proposal and a fair assessment of the anti-capital lawyers.  — Dan

Judge Winn has many interesting things to say about the problems with our current system of criminal, and especially, capital defense.  I would add that in other Western court systems, the responsibilities for criminal defense are more frequently spread out among lawyers, as they used to be here.  Unfortunately, in some of those countries, they’re moving closer to a system like ours, with its abuses, excess, and “cult of the defense bar.”

Today, I Am Appearing on Doc Washburn’s Show

Doc Washburn and I talked about Mike Huckabee’s record of commuting the sentences of violent felons this morning at Fox News Radio Panama City,  94.5 WFLA.

I don’t know if there is a way to catch a re-play of the show on-line.  Luddite, I am.

More Proof of Mike Huckabee’s Lifetime Membership in the Empathy/Leniency Cabal

Mike Huckabee made a troubling appearance on Bill O’Reilly’s show yesterday, where O’Reilly praised him for his forthcomingness.

Only . . . he wasn’t.

Journalists in Arkansas and Washington state are raising serious questions about Huckabee’s version of events regarding cop-killer Maurice Clemmons’ release from an Arkansas prison, among other things.

The Arkansas Leader says Huckabee misrepresented Clemmons’ actual record on O’Reilly’s show:

Clemmons, who killed the four officers in Tacoma, wrote Huckabee in 2000 that he had discovered Jesus and he prayed that God would move the governor to reduce his 108-year sentence to time served. . .

To tell his side, Huckabee on Monday arranged to go on the Bill O’Reilly show, where his friend questioned him ever so gingerly. He fudged the details, claiming that Clemmons had gotten those 108 years in prison for only two crimes (there were eight).

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has more details of the real circumstances leading up to Clemmons’ 2000 release:

Pulaski County Prosecutor Larry Jegley, whose office opposed Clemmons’ parole in 2000 and 2004, said Huckabee created a flaw in the Arkansas justice system by freeing the number of prisoners he did. . . Huckabee . . . noted local prosecutors didn’t object to Clemmons’ commutation. Jegley said his office doesn’t have any record that the governor notified him of the intention to grant clemency.

So did Huckabee lie about the prosecutor’s position on O’Reilly’s show?  Here is what he said on O’Reilly:

We didn’t have any information from the prosecutors. We sent notices, which is the practice in Arkansas, to five different people: the attorney general, secretary of state, the prosecutor, the judge, and law enforcement. The only official that we have record of getting notification from is the judge who agreed with the recommendation of the parole board. So that’s what we acted upon, what I acted upon.

Did the dog eat the letter Huckabee was supposed to send to the prosecutor?  The prosecutor says outright that he didn’t receive notification, whereas Huckabee is resorting to time-honored low-bar legalisms about ‘the records he did receive’ and ‘the standard practice being notifying the prosecutor.’

In other words, he’s saying he did not not send that letter to that prosecutor.

Huckabee also claimed that nobody else objected to Clemmons’ release.  The Arkansas Leader reports that the victims objected.  So what are they, non-persons?

~~~

Details of Clemmon’s pre-release record, which included aggravated robbery, firearms possession, and burglary, are still emerging.  Bear in mind that criminal records often represent only a fraction of the crimes a defendant has been involved in: others get “disappeared” in a variety of ways — permanently shelved when one crime is charged, horse-traded into oblivion through pleas, or sealed and abandoned if the defendant is a juvenile, as Clemmons was.  And whenever I see a burglary charge for someone later charged with rape, I wonder if it was an attempted rape, a fishing expedition for victims, or a rape pleaded down to a lesser offense.

For, DNA database hits are uncovering scores of serial rapists whose only prior convictions were for burglary and other lesser offenses.

In any case, he must have been a real monster to garner such a sentence in the first place — though Huckabee saw things differently:

In 1990, the then 18-year-old Clemmons was sentenced as a habitual criminal to 60 years in prison for burglary and theft of property.  Just before he was sentenced Clemmons reportedly took a padlock off his holding cell and tried to throw it a court bailiff, but accidentally struck his mother, who had come to bring him street clothes. . . . Clemmons was found guilty of breaking into the home of a state trooper and taking more than $6,000 in valuables, including the trooper’s gun.  In May of 1989, Clemmons was arrested for allegedly carrying a weapon on a Little Rock, Ark., high school campus. Clemmons, then 17, reportedly told officers he brought a .25-caliber pistol to school because he had “been chased and beaten by ‘dopers,’ ” and if they got after him again he “had something for them.”

Prosecutors say the record was bad:

[T]he Pulaski County prosecutor’s office twice objected to parole recommendations for Clemmons.”For us to prosecute a 17-year-old, and for him to get a 95-year sentence without a homicide — you’ve got to be a bad little dude to draw that kind of a sentence,” said Mark Fraiser, who prosecuted the earlier cases against Clemmons in Pulaski County.

“He had an obvious propensity for future violence,” Fraiser said today. “To wake up this morning and turn on the news and hear his name, I can’t even imagine the suffering of those families and the suffering of people in those communities.”

~~~

Details about the prosecutor’s position on clemency and Clemmon’s criminal record aren’t the only things Huckabee fudged on O’Reilly’s show.

Simultaneously, he insinuated that there were too many clemency appeals to look at them closely:

I looked at every case file, and I had 1,200 of these a year. This is what people need to understand.

but that he nevertheless looked at this one very carefully:

O’REILLY: Now, did you study it? Did you study it? I mean, look, governors have a lot of this stuff.

HUCKABEE: Yes.

O’REILLY: Did you study this guy? Did you spend a lot of time on it, or did you just take the advice of your advisers?

HUCKABEE: No, I looked at every case file, and I had 1,200 of these a year. This is what people need to understand. Ninety-two percent of the time they were denied. But in this case, the judge in the case was also recommending and the parole board on a 5-0 vote, because at the age of 16, the sentence he got for the crimes he committed back in 1989 was excessive for anything else that was in Arkansas.

Is there anything he won’t say?  That doesn’t even make any sense.

Huckabee might have had 1,200 commutation requests every year, but so do other governors who don’t behave as if releasing violent offenders is a badge of honor.  Or a hobby:

Saline County Circuit Judge Robert Herzfeld, who as a prosecutor successfully sued Huckabee over clemency practices, said Huckabee’s decision to give Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards a pardon for a 1975 traffic offense after meeting him at a concert showed how lightly the ex-governor approached the practice.

“That just said volumes about how he considered this serious ultimate power over freedom as a joke,” Herzfeld said.

Having 1,200 commutation requests doesn’t mean a thing — it certainly doesn’t mean you should go beating the bushes to let rapists off easy.  If you read one thing about Huckabee, read this detailed and damning expose on his efforts to cover-up his role in the release of rapist and murderer Wayne DuMond:

New sources, including an advisor to Gov. Mike Huckabee, have told the Arkansas Times that Huckabee and a senior member of his staff exerted behind-the-scenes influence to bring about the parole of rapist Wayne Dumond, who Missouri authorities say raped and killed a woman there shortly after his parole [DNA confirmed Dumond's guilt].  Huckabee has denied a role in Dumond’s release . . . Huckabee has shifted responsibility for Dumond’s release to others, claiming former Gov. Jim Guy Tucker made Dumond eligible for parole and saying the Post Prison Transfer Board made the decision on its own to free Dumond.  But the Times’ new reporting shows the extent to which Huckabee and a key aide were involved in the process to win Dumond’s release. It was a process marked by deviation from accepted parole practice and direct personal lobbying by the governor, in an apparently illegal and unrecorded closed-door meeting with the parole board (the informal name by which the Post Prison Transfer Board is known).  After Huckabee told the board, in executive session, that he believed Dumond got a “raw deal,” according to a board member who was there, and supported his release, board chairman Leroy Brownlee personally paved the way for Dumond’s release, according to board records and former members. During that time — from December 1996 to January 1997 — Brownlee regularly consulted with Butch Reeves, the governor’s prison liaison, on the status of his efforts, two state officials have told the Times.

Read the rest here.

~~~

Meanwhile the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports this appalling exchange.  I think it says everything that needs to be said about Huckabee’s real attitude towards crime victims:

A county prosecutor in Arkansas, Robert Herzfeld, wrote Huckabee arguing that his clemency policy was “fatally flawed” — and would later sue to overturn a Huckabee decision to set free a murderer who bludgeoned his victim.

The reply to his letter came from Huckabee’s chief of staff: “The governor read your letter and laughed out loud. He wanted me to respond to you. I wish you success as you cut down on your caffeine consumption.”

Huckabee “laughed out loud” at an urgent plea to keep a convicted murderer behind bars.  Now he says he’s “heartbroken” at the four officers’ deaths.  What a difference a little negative publicity makes.

And what a shame Bill O’Reilly is covering for Huckabee.  O’Reilly is usually one of the only people in the media who speak up for crime victims, as he did last year in this truly appalling case.  O’Reilly says he’s going after the judges — presumably the one who helped get Clemmons off and then officiated at his wedding:

“I figure young people make some mistakes,” [Judge Marion Humphrey] said. Also a Presbyterian minister, Humphrey said he believes in giving people a second chance.  Humphrey in 2004 also officiated Clemmons’ wedding when he married his fiance Nicole Cheryleen Smith, according to a copy of the marriage certificate [this, after how many additional offenses?].  “It would be the furthest thing from my mind that he would go out and kill four police officers, if in fact he did,” Humphrey said.

~~~

It’s this mindset that’s the problem. Huckabee, like far too many politicians, parole board members, judges, and even prosecutors (who are often defense attorneys-in-training) work hard to minimize criminals’ records at every turn, endlessly seeking any golden ring to justify releasing them back onto the streets.

They are abetted, and praised for this by a wide variety of extremely influential people — law professors, criminologists, academic and foundation leaders, religious leaders, and, of course, virtually everyone in the media: the Empathy/Leniency Cabal.  Our legal system is suffused with empathy for the worst offenders, and a culture of extreme leniency that gets cops, and other living things, killed with chilling regularity.

This was the worldview Huckabee chose, and to deny that now is simply dishonest.

Peter Hermann (Baltimore Sun) Sheds Some Light on the Murder Rate, Looks for Light in the Courts

If you read nothing else this week, read the following two articles by Peter Hermann.  Baltimore struggles with crime and court issues very similar to Atlanta’s.  More severe, in their case:

Delving More Deeply Into Shooting Stats

Here are some statistics about recent killings in Baltimore:

The 107 people charged with murder last year had accumulated a combined 1,065 prior arrests – 380 related to guns and 99 related to drugs.

The 234 people killed last year had a combined 2,404 prior arrests – 162 related to guns and 898 related to drugs.

That’s an average of 10 arrests per suspect and 10.3 arrests per victim.

If murderers and their victims have been arrested, on average, ten times, then nothing will reduce the murder rate more dramatically than taking recidivism seriously.  Unfortunately, in Baltimore, as in Atlanta, there’s little of that:

Police repeatedly complain that the people they put in handcuffs only return to the streets to do more harm. Here are the number of times some murder suspects and victims from last year had been arrested: 74, 71, 49, 40, 38, 34, 29. … The list goes on.

These numbers don’t say anything about conviction rates, and there’s a sad tale behind each case, a book-length reason why someone can get arrested 74 times before dying on a street corner or get arrested 71 times before being charged with murder.

I wonder who has the highest number of arrests in Atlanta?  Hermann offers a list of factors that result in multiple arrests without significant prison time:

Many are hopelessly sick addicts arrested on petty charges, such as loitering, or involving small amounts of drugs, which tend to pile up but don’t result in much jail time. Cases fall apart in Baltimore for a myriad of reasons that include an overwhelmed court system, distrust of police, jury nullification and witnesses and victims who are too scared or just don’t care to testify. [italics added]

Read the rest here.

~~~

Hermann on transparency in the courts:

Time for Open Records

I had hoped that a video of a juvenile court hearing would help explain how a teenager with a long criminal record who had just been arrested in a drug bust could be sent home from a detention center only to be charged with killing a man two hours later in the front seat of a Buick Park Avenue.

Unfortunately, what I saw not only fails to explain why state officials freed 17-year-old Maurice Brown, but it raises new questions about the case, while revealing proposed procedural changes that would make it easier for more young offenders to avoid detention. . .

The story of Maurice Brown — released to his mother’s custody, committing murder two hours later, could be any one of a dozen recent cases in Atlanta, or more than a dozen.  How many more?  Nobody knows.

Read the rest here.