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Friday, October 17, 2014
ProPublica urges next AG to "Fix Presidential Pardons"
The title of this post is drawn from the headline of this strong new piece from the Editor-in-Chief of ProPublica. The full headline and subheadline provides the basics: "For the Next Attorney General, a Modest Suggestion: Fix Presidential Pardons; More than two years ago, a ProPublica series showed that white applicants were far more likely to receive clemency than comparable applicants who were black. Since then, the government has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a study, but the pardons system remains unchanged." And here are a few excerpts from a piece that is styled as an open letter to the next Attorney General:
Dear Possible Attorney General Nominees (You Know Who You Are),...
More than two years ago, ProPublica reporters Dafna Linzer and Jennifer LaFleur revealed that white applicants were nearly four times as likely to receive a presidential pardon as were comparable African Americans. The story appeared on the front page of The Washington Post, our publishing partner. I know, I know, this seems improbable but LaFleur spent many months doing a statistical analysis that eliminated every other factor we could imagine that might explain this disparity. We sent our findings and methodology to several leading experts in the field. All agreed that race was the only factor driving the vast difference. We published our methodology and you can read it here. Linzer's reporting on the pardons process suggested that it was far more subjective than you might have thought. We wrote about how race creeps into decision-making even when no one is overtly biased. It's worth a look.
Given the starkness of these findings, we at ProPublica thought, naively, that your predecessor and his boss would move immediately to address this problem. As I'm sure you're aware, a president's authority to grant pardons is one of the only unchecked powers in our constitutional system of checks and balances. When it comes to pardons, President Obama can do whatever he wants.
We were told by several political insiders that the pardon stories did not prompt reform because of their timing. They appeared in late 2011, just as the president was gearing up for what was expected to be a bruising campaign for a second term. It was not considered the politically ideal moment for the nation's first African-American president to make the justice system fairer for people of color. And so the government did what it so often does in such circumstances: It commissioned a study to see if our findings were correct....
If history is any guide, you'll be getting a tsunami of pardon requests in the last months of the administration. It might be nice to have come up with some serious reforms by then to fix a process that is so demonstrably flawed. There are lots of ideas about what could done, from setting up an independent pardons commission to taking the pardons office out of the Justice Department.
Good luck with the confirmation hearings. And remember, two years can fly by a lot quicker than you'd ever imagine....
Best Regards,
Stephen Engelberg/Editor in Chief, ProPublica
October 17, 2014 in Clemency and Pardons, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Race, Class, and Gender, Who Sentences? | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Thursday, October 16, 2014
"Risk and Needs Assessment: Constitutional and Ethical Challenges"
The title of this post is the title of this timely and notable new paper by Melissa Hamilton recently posted on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Across jurisdictions, the criminal justice system is enamored with the evidence-based practices movement. The idea is to utilize the best scientific data to identify and classify individuals based on their potential future risk of reoffending, and then to manage offender populations according to risk and criminogenic needs. Risk-needs tools now inform a variety of criminal justice decisions, ranging from pre-trial outcomes, to sentencing, to post-conviction supervision. While evidence-based methodologies are widely exalted as representing best practices, constitutional and moral objections have been raised.
Risk-needs tools incorporate a host of constitutionally and morally sensitive factors, such as demographic and other immutable characteristics. The constitutional analysis herein engages equal protection, prisoners' rights, due process, and sentencing law. In addition, the text examines the philosophical polemic aimed uniquely at sentencing as to whether risk should play any role at all in determining punishment.
The Article then appraises potential alternatives for risk-needs methodologies if the concerns so raised by critics prove legitimate. Any option comes with significant consequences. Retaining offensive variables incites political and ethical reproaches, while simply excising them weakens statistical validity of the underlying models and diminishes the promise of evidence-based practices. Promoting an emphasis on risk at sentencing dilutes the focus of punishment on blameworthiness, while neglecting risk and needs sabotages a core objective of the new penological model of harnessing the ability to identify and divert low risk offenders to appropriate community-based alternatives.
October 16, 2014 in Data on sentencing, Offender Characteristics, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Purposes of Punishment and Sentencing, Race, Class, and Gender, Reentry and community supervision | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Thursday, October 02, 2014
Notable new empirical research on citizenship's impact on federal sentencing
I just came across this notable new empirical article on federal sentencing patterns published in American Sociological Review and authored by Michael Light, Michael Massoglia, and Ryan King. The piece is titled "Citizenship and Punishment: The Salience of National Membership in U.S. Criminal Courts," and here is the abstract:
When compared to research on the association between immigration and crime, far less attention has been given to the relationship between immigration, citizenship, and criminal punishment. As such, several fundamental questions about how noncitizens are sanctioned and whether citizenship is a marker of stratification in U.S. courts remain unanswered. Are citizens treated differently than noncitizens — both legal and undocumented — in U.S. federal criminal courts? Is the well-documented Hispanic-white sentencing disparity confounded by citizenship status? Has the association between citizenship and sentencing remained stable over time? And are punishment disparities contingent on the demographic context of the court?
Analysis of several years of data from U.S. federal courts indicates that citizenship status is a salient predictor of sentencing outcomes — more powerful than race or ethnicity. Other notable findings include the following: accounting for citizenship substantially attenuates disparities between whites and Hispanics; the citizenship effect on sentencing has grown stronger over time; and the effect is most pronounced in districts with growing noncitizen populations. These findings suggest that as international migration increases, citizenship may be an emerging and powerful axis of sociolegal inequality.
October 2, 2014 in Data on sentencing, Detailed sentencing data, Federal Sentencing Guidelines, Offender Characteristics, Race, Class, and Gender | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Intriguing new research on criminal justice impact of distinct marijuana reforms
The Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice has produced this interesting new research report titled "Reforming Marijuana Laws: Which Approach Best Reduces The Harms Of Criminalization? A Five-State Analysis." Here is what the report's Introduction:
The War on Marijuana is losing steam. Policymakers, researchers, and law enforcement are beginning to recognize that arresting and incarcerating people for marijuana possession wastes billions of dollars, does not reduce the abuse of marijuana or other drugs, and results in grossly disproportionate harms to communities of color. Marijuana reforms are now gaining traction across the nation, generating debates over which strategies best reduce the harms of prohibition.
Should marijuana be decriminalized or legalized? Should it be restricted to people 21 and older? Advocates of the latter strategy often argue their efforts are intended to protect youth. However, if the consequences of arrest for marijuana possession — including fines, jail time, community service, a criminal record, loss of student loans, and court costs — are more harmful than use of the drug (Marijuana Arrest Research Project, 2012), it is difficult to see how continued criminalization of marijuana use by persons under 21 protects the young. Currently, people under 21 make up less than one-third of marijuana users, yet half of all marijuana possession arrests (ACLU, 2013; Males, 2009).
This analysis compares five states that implemented major marijuana reforms over the last five years, evaluating their effectiveness in reducing marijuana arrests and their impact on various health and safety outcomes. Two types of reforms are evaluated: all-ages decriminalization (California, Connecticut, and Massachusetts), and 21-and-older legalization (Colorado and Washington). The chief conclusions are:
• All five states experienced substantial declines in marijuana possession arrests. The four states with available data also showed unexpected drops in marijuana felony arrests.
• All-ages decriminalization more effectively reduced marijuana arrests and associated harms for people of all ages, particularly for young people.
• Marijuana decriminalization in California has not resulted in harmful consequences for teenagers, such as increased crime, drug overdose, driving under the influence, or school dropout. In fact, California teenagers showed improvements in all risk areas after reform.
• Staggering racial disparities remain— and in some cases are exacerbated — following marijuana reforms. African Americans are still more likely to be arrested for marijuana offenses after reform than all other races and ethnicities were before reform.
• Further reforms are needed in all five states to move toward full legalization and to address racial disparities
Cross-posted at Marijuana Law, Policy & Reform
October 2, 2014 in Marijuana Legalization in the States, Pot Prohibition Issues, Race, Class, and Gender | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Noting the dynamics and debate over risk-assessments at sentencing
This new Wall Street Journal article, headlined "Judges Turn to Risk-Evaluation Tools in Sentencing Decisions: Many Are Adopting More Systematic Approach to Assessing Likelihood of Reoffense," discusses the always interesting issue of using risk-assessment measures at sentencing. Here are excerpts:
Judges have always considered the risk of reoffending in meting out sentences, and they generally follow guidelines that dictate a range of punishment for a given offense. [More recently], however, [there is] a broad effort to bring a more scientific approach to decisions made by judges, parole officers and corrections officials working in a system that often relies on gut instinct. Risk-evaluation tools have emerged as a centerpiece of efforts to reduce the U.S. inmate population, which jumped from around 200,000 in the early 1970s to over 2 million today.
Many parole boards now weigh risk scores when considering early release, and prison officials use them to determine the level of security offenders need during their stay. But the adoption of such tools has sparked a debate over which factors are acceptable. Attributes such as age or sex, which employers are generally forbidden from including in hiring decisions, are considered by criminal-justice experts to be strong predictors of whether an offender is likely to commit a crime in the future.
The measures vary widely but generally are based on an offender's criminal history and, in addition to age and sex, may include marital status, employment and education, according to Sonja Starr, a law professor at the University of Michigan.
Pennsylvania, one of the latest states to turn to actuarial tools in sentencing, is building a test that weighs the nature of offense, criminal history, age, sex and county of residence. The last factor is the most controversial as it could be considered a proxy for socioeconomic status. Missouri takes into account current offense and criminal history, age, whether the offender has a history of substance abuse, education level and employment.
Judges aren't bound by the evaluations, but there is evidence they are taking them into account. Virginia officials attribute a more than 25% drop in the number of nonviolent offenders sent to prison annually to the assessments, used to score felons convicted of fraud, larceny and drug crimes since 2003. In the past decade, the percentage of offenders serving prison terms for violent crime has risen to 74% from 61%, said Chief Judge Bradley B. Cavedo of Richmond Circuit Court. "It doesn't really control the outcome, but it is useful information," he said of the measures.
The efforts have drawn skepticism from Attorney General Eric Holder, who told a group of defense lawyers in Philadelphia last month that basing sentencing on factors such as a defendant's education level "may exacerbate unwarranted and unjust disparities."
There is no research yet on whether the use of risk evaluations in sentencing has aggravated, for example, the gap between sentences for black and white men for similar crimes. Ms. Starr said the disparities created by risk measures are evident. "When it comes down to it, these assessments stand for the proposition that judges should sentence people longer because they were in foster care as children or had too many bouts of unemployment," she said.
Christopher Slobogin, a Vanderbilt University law professor, said the alternative was potentially worse. "At least these risk-assessment instruments don't explicitly focus on race or poverty, unlike what might occur in a sentencing regime where judges are making risk assessments based on seat-of-the-pants evaluations," he said.
Recent related posts:
- "Attorney General Eric Holder to Oppose Data-Driven Sentencing":
- Three distinct takes on AG Eric Holder's recent reservations about risk-based sentencing
- Senator Whitehouse defends risk-assessment tools for some sentencing determinations
September 23, 2014 in Offender Characteristics, Offense Characteristics, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Purposes of Punishment and Sentencing, Race, Class, and Gender | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Two folks working on criminal justice issues get MacArthur "genius" Fellowships
The MacArthur Foundation announced its 2014 Fellowships (which are often called "genius grants"), and two recipients work on criminal justice issues. Here is an overview of their work via the MacArthur announcement (with a link for more information):
Jennifer Eberhardt is a social psychologist investigating the subtle, complex, largely unconscious yet deeply ingrained ways that individuals racially code and categorize people, with a particular focus on associations between race and crime. Through collaborations with experts in criminology, law, and anthropology, as well as novel studies that engage law enforcement and jurors, Eberhardt is revealing new insights about the extent to which race imagery and judgments suffuse our culture and society.
Jonathan Rapping is a lawyer and legal defense advocate addressing failures of the U.S. criminal justice system to provide client-centered representation for indigent Americans. A large and growing number of those accused of felonies (by some estimates as high as 80 percent) cannot afford to pay for legal counsel. Though provided lawyers at no charge by the court system, often the accused are represented by public defenders burdened with too many cases and too few resources, resulting in over-incarceration or wrongful convictions that irreparably disrupt the lives of not only the indicted individuals but of their families and communities as well.
September 17, 2014 in Race, Class, and Gender, Who Sentences? | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
Texas poised to execute a second female murderer in one year
As reported in this local AP piece, headlined "Court Declines To Stop North Texas Woman's Execution," it appears as though Texas is not facing any impediments to completing a notable execution on Wednesday. Here are the basics:
When paramedics responding to a 911 call arrived at a North Texas apartment, they found on the bathroom floor a dead boy clad only in bandages and a disposable diaper. He appeared to be 3 to 5 years old. Further investigation determined Davontae Williams actually was 9.
His emaciated body weighed only 36 pounds, about half of what a boy his age should weigh. Evidence showed he had been restrained repeatedly at his wrists and ankles. A pediatrician later would testify that he had more than 250 distinct injuries, including burns from cigarettes or cigars and scars from ligatures, and that a lack of food made him stop growing.
On Wednesday, Lisa Ann Coleman, the live-in girlfriend of Davontae's mother, is set to be executed for the child's July 2004 death in Arlington. Coleman's trial lawyers said his death was an accident, that the boy had mental health issues, was difficult to handle and she and Marcella Williams, his mother, didn't know how to deal with him in a positive manner.
Coleman, 38, would be the ninth Texas inmate to receive a lethal injection this year. She would be the sixth woman put to death in the nation's busiest capital punishment state since executions resumed in Texas in 1982 and the second this year.
Nationally, she would be only the 15th woman executed since the Supreme Court in 1976 allowed the death penalty to resume. During that same time, nearly 1,400 men have been executed.
After a Tarrant County jury in 2006 convicted Coleman and gave her a death sentence, Marcella Williams, facing similar charges, took a plea deal and accepted a life prison term. Now 33, she not eligible for parole until 2044.
Attorneys for Coleman argued in appeals that prosecutors improperly defined Davontae's restraints and confinement in a closet as kidnapping to find an aggravating factor so Coleman could be eligible for the death penalty. They also argued that jurors who convicted her of capital murder did so because her trial lawyers were deficient. "It has never been Lisa Coleman's position that she should not be punished for what she did," attorney John Stickels said in an appeal the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which was rejected Tuesday....
Photos of Davontae shown to jurors were "horrendous" and illustrated his suffering, trial defense attorney Fred Cummings acknowledged, but he believed a life sentence also would have been appropriate for Coleman. "It just doesn't seem that the system was fairly applied here," Cummings said last week.
Evidence showed child welfare officials repeatedly investigated Marcella Williams but would lose track of her because she kept moving to evade them, fearing they would take away her son and two younger daughters.
The Death Penalty Information Center has this effective webpage that assembles information about the handful of women who have been executed in the modern death penalty era. That page reveals that it has been more than a decade since two female murderers were executed in the same calendar year. It also shows that Texas will still lag behind one other state for the most executions of women in a single year: in 2001, Oklahoma completed executions of three women.
September 16, 2014 in Death Penalty Reforms, Offender Characteristics, Race, Class, and Gender | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
"Misdemeanor Decriminalization"
The title of this post is the title of this notable and interesting new paper by Alexandra Natapoff now available via SSRN. Here is the abstract:
As the U.S. rethinks its stance on mass incarceration, misdemeanor decriminalization is an increasingly popular reform. Seen as a potential cure for crowded jails and an overburdened defense bar, many states are eliminating jail time for minor offenses such as marijuana possession and driving violations, and replacing those crimes with so-called "nonjailable" or "fine-only" offenses. This form of reclassification is widely perceived as a way of saving millions of state dollars — nonjailable offenses do not trigger the right to counsel — while easing the punitive impact on defendants, and it has strong support from progressives and conservatives alike.
But decriminalization has a little-known dark side. Unlike full legalization, decriminalization preserves many of the punitive features and collateral consequences of the criminal misdemeanor experience, even as it strips defendants of counsel and other procedural protections. It actually expands the reach of the criminal apparatus by making it easier — both logistically and normatively — to impose fines and supervision on an ever-widening population, a population who ironically often ends up incarcerated anyway when they cannot afford the fines or comply with the supervisory conditions.
The turn to fine-only offenses and supervision, moreover, has distributive implications. It captures poor, underemployed, drug-dependent, and other disadvantaged defendants for whom fines and supervision are especially burdensome, while permitting well-resourced offenders to exit the process quickly and relatively unscathed. Finally, as courts turn increasingly to fines and fees to fund their own operations, decriminalization threatens to become a kind of regressive tax, turning the poorest populations into funding fodder for the judiciary and other government budgets. In sum, while decriminalization appears to offer relief from the punitive legacy of overcriminalization and mass incarceration, upon closer inspection it turns out to be a highly conflicted regulatory strategy that preserves and even strengthens some of the most problematic aspects of the massive U.S. penal system.
September 10, 2014 in Criminal Sentences Alternatives, Fines, Restitution and Other Economic Sanctions, Purposes of Punishment and Sentencing, Race, Class, and Gender, Scope of Imprisonment | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Sunday, September 07, 2014
"Race and Punishment: Racial Perceptions of Crime and Support for Punitive Policies"
The title of this post is the title of this notable new report from The Sentencing Project. Here is how The Sentencing Project summarizes its content on this overview webpage:
This report examines how racial perceptions of crime are a key cause of the severity of punishment in the United States. Race and Punishment: Racial Perceptions of Crime and Support for Punitive Policies, authored by Nazgol Ghandnoosh, Ph.D., research analyst at The Sentencing Project, synthesizes two decades of research revealing that white Americans' strong associations of crime with blacks and Latinos are related to their support for punitive policies that disproportionately impact people of color.
Coming on the heels of the tragic events in Ferguson, Missouri, the report demonstrates that the consequences of white Americans' strong associations of crime with blacks and Latinos extend far beyond policing.
Key findings of the report include:
White Americans overestimate the proportion of crime committed by people of color, and associate people of color with criminality. For example, white respondents in a 2010 survey overestimated the actual share of burglaries, illegal drug sales, and juvenile crime committed by African Americans by 20-30%.
Studies have shown that whites who associate crime with blacks and Latinos are more likely to support punitive policies – including capital punishment and mandatory minimum sentencing – than whites with weaker racial associations of crime.
These patterns help to explain why whites are more punitive than blacks and Latinos even though they are less likely to be victims of crime. In 2013, a majority of whites supported the death penalty for someone convicted of murder, while half of Hispanics and a majority of blacks opposed this punishment.
Racial perceptions of crime not only influence public opinion about criminal justice policies, they also directly influence the work of criminal justice practitioners and policymakers who operate with their own often-unintentional biases.
The report recommends proven interventions for the media, policymakers, and criminal justice professionals to reduce racial perceptions of crime and mitigate their effects on the justice system. These include addressing disparities in crime reporting, reducing the severity and disparate impact of criminal sentencing, and tackling racial bias in the formal policies and discretionary decisions of criminal justice practitioners.
September 7, 2014 in Offender Characteristics, Race, Class, and Gender, Who Sentences? | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Monday, September 01, 2014
Gendered perspective on Ohio's challenges with opioids and prison growth
As reported in this recent Toledo Blade editorial, headlined "Women in prison: A big increase in female inmates should prompt changes in how Ohio's courts deal with addiction," Ohio has struggled of late with an increase in its prison population. And this reality has prompted at least one prominent paper to urge reforms focused on a particular demographic:
A stunning rise in the number of women entering Ohio prisons should encourage elected officials to seek better ways of managing the state's $1.5-billion-a-year prison system.
Driven largely by a growing number of drug-addicted offenders from rural counties, Ohio prisons now hold nearly 4,200 women. From 2012 to 2013, the number of women coming to state prisons increased by 11 percent, from 2,580 to 2,854, said JoEllen Smith, spokesman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
Ohio's opioid and heroin epidemic is largely to blame for the increase, as more low-level female drug offenders are sent to prison. "That population is very much nonviolent and drug-addicted, often with male co-defendants leading the case," state prisons Director Gary Mohr said recently.
At the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville, which holds more than 2,600 prisoners, the top three offenses for women entering the prison are drug possession, theft, and trafficking, said public information officer Elizabeth Wright. Moreover, the statewide share of women prisoners coming from rural counties — those with fewer than 100,000 residents — has nearly doubled in the past decade. Altogether, Ohio's 28 prisons hold more than 50,000 inmates....
Mr. Mohr has prudently called for diverting more low-level drug offenders from prison to community-based treatment programs. To do that, Ohio will need more adult drug courts. Most counties, including Lucas County, still don't have a drug court. The state also needs more community programs to serve as effective alternatives to incarceration.
Ohio's prosecutors and judges also must get better educated on addiction. Too many of them still don't understand that chemical addiction is a compulsive disease, not a moral choice. "A big part of the problem is that a number of people, including judges and prosecutors, see addiction as a state in which people have more control than they actually have," Orman Hall, the director of Gov. John Kasich's Opiate Action Team, told The Blade's editorial page. "Opioid and heroin addiction is a compulsive disorder. In the early stages, people have very little ability not to relapse."
Finally, prisons must expand the amount of effective drug treatment they provide, even as Ohio courts continue to send them people who would be better served in community programs. The growing number of women entering prison in Ohio is more than a demographic shift. It's a grim reminder that the state's criminal justice system is failing to deal effectively, and humanely, with its heroin and opioid epidemic.
September 1, 2014 in Drug Offense Sentencing, Offender Characteristics, Offense Characteristics, Purposes of Punishment and Sentencing, Race, Class, and Gender, Scope of Imprisonment | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
Based on Burrage, split Sixth Circuit panel reverses federal hate crime convictions for Amish beard-cutters
Regular readers may recall lots of coverage early last year concerning the unusual federal hate crime prosecution and sentencing of a group of Amish who assaulted others in their community in the midst of a religious dispute. The convictions were appealed to the Sixth Circuit, and a panel this morning reversed the convictions based on the intervening Supreme Court decision in the Burrage mandatory sentencing case. Here is how the majority opinion, per Judge Sutton, in US v. Miller et al., Nos. 13-3177 et al. (Aug. 27, 2014) (available here), gets started:
A string of assaults in several Amish communities in Ohio gave rise to this prosecution under Section 2 of The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009. The assaults were not everyday occurrences, whether one looks at the setting (several normally peaceful Amish communities), the method of attack (cutting the hair and shaving the beards of the victims), the mode of transportation to them (hired drivers), the relationship between the assailants and their victims (two of them involved children attacking their parents), or the alleged motive (religious-based hatred between members of the same faith). A jury found that four of the five attacks amounted to hate crimes under the Act and convicted sixteen members of the Bergholz Amish community for their roles in them.
At stake in this appeal is whether their hate-crime convictions may stand. No one questions that the assaults occurred, and only a few defendants question their participation in them. The central issue at trial was whether the defendants committed the assaults "because of" the religion of the victims. 18 U.S.C. § 249(a)(2)(A). In instructing the jury on this point, the district court rejected the defendants' proposed instruction (that the faith of the victims must be a "but for" cause of the assaults) and adopted the government's proposed instruction (that the faith of the victims must be a "significant factor" in motivating the assaults). Regrettably for all concerned, a case decided after this trial confirms that the court should have given a but-for instruction on causation in the context of this criminal trial. Burrage v. United States, 134 S. Ct. 881, 887–89 (2014). Because this error was not harmless, and indeed went to the central factual debate at trial, we must reverse these convictions.
Here is how the dissent, per Judge Sargus sitting by designation, gets started:
This is the first appellate case involving a religious hate crime under the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, 18 U.S.C. § 249. While I respect the majority's efforts to construe a deceivingly simple, but actually complex, statute, I dissent. In my view, the majority has adopted an unduly restrictive interpretation of the statute.
Since this case was tried, the Supreme Court decided the case of Burrage v. United States, 134 S. Ct. 881 (2014). The majority correctly holds that the "because of" phrase used in § 249(a), similar to "results from," requires proof that one act would not have happened "but for" the other. I disagree, however, with the majority's conclusion that the trial court's causation-instruction error was not harmless. This disagreement stems not from a dispute over the standards governing a harmless error analysis, but rather is from a disagreement over statutory construction.
Related prior posts:
- Ohio Amish hair-cutting incidents now a federal hate crimes sentencing matter
- Stark extremes for forthcoming debate over federal sentencing of Amish beard-cutters
- Interesting defense arguments for sentencing leniency in Amish beard-cutting case
- Feds request LWOP for Samuel Mullet Sr., leader of Amish beard-cutting gang
- Are tough sentences sought in Amish beard-cutting case part of a DOJ "war on religion"?
- "Amish beard-cutting ringleader gets 15 years"
- Guest post on Amish sentencing: "A Travesty in Cleveland"
August 27, 2014 in Offense Characteristics, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Race, Class, and Gender, Who Sentences? | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack
Thursday, August 21, 2014
After Ferguson, can and should marijuana legalization and drug war reform become a unifying civil rights movement?
The question in the title of this post is prompted in part by my own uncertainty concerning the fitting public policy responses to the events in Feguson this month and in part by this potent and provocative new Huffington Post piece by Jelani Hayes headlined "Ending Marijuana Prohibition Must Take a Historical Perspective." Here are excerpts from the commentary (with links from the original):
Underlying marijuana prohibition is a familiar philosophy: to preserve social order and white supremacy and secure profits for an influential few, it is permissible, even advisable, to construct profit-bearing institutions of social control. Historically, this philosophy has been advanced by governmental action, guided by special interests. The traditional tactics: manufacturing mass fear, criminalizing the target or demoting them to a sub-citizen status, and profiting from their subjugation.
Cannabis prohibition did all three. The [New York] Times editorial board dedicated an entire article to explaining this phenomenon. Part 3 of the series begins, "The federal law that makes possession of marijuana a crime has its origins in legislation that was passed in an atmosphere of hysteria in the 1930s and that was firmly rooted in prejudices against Mexican immigrants and African-Americans, who were associated with marijuana use at the time. This racially freighted history lives on in current federal policy, which is so driven by myth and propaganda that it is almost impervious to reason."...
Additionally, business interests play a part in keeping cannabis illegal. Some pharmaceutical companies, drug-prevention nonprofits, law enforcement agencies, and the private prison industry have an economic interest in criminalization, what is known as the drug control industrial complex. It pays big to help fight the war on drugs, and marijuana prohibition is a crucial facet of that effort. The Nation has recently called these interests "The Real Reason Pot is Still Illegal."
The United States should legalize marijuana. It should also end the drug war, which would be a tremendous and beautiful accomplishment, but it would not be enough.
The war on drugs is a mechanism of social control — not unlike African slavery, Jim Crow, alcohol Prohibition, or the systematic relegation of immigrants to an illegal status or substandard existence. Different in their nature and severity, all of these institutions were tools used to control and profit from the criminalization, regulation, and dehumanization of minority communities. Legalizing marijuana will not alone rid society of the tendency to turn fear into hatred, hatred into regulation, and regulation into profit. To address this cycle, we must put cannabis prohibition (and the drug war) in its historical context and connect the dots where appropriate.
Already we have seen that the reality of legalization does not alone ensure justice or equality. As law professor and best selling author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness Michelle Alexander points out, thousands of black men remain in jail or prison in Colorado (where licit weed has been on the market since January) while white men make money from the now legal marijuana market -- selling the drug just as the incarcerated men had done. She warns that legalization without reparation is not sufficient, drawing the parallel to what happened to black Americans post-Reconstruction. "And after a brief period of reconstruction a new caste system was imposed — Jim Crow — and another extraordinary movement arose and brought the old Jim Crow to its knees...Americans said, OK, we'll stop now. We'll take down the whites-only signs, we'll stop doing that," she said. "But there were not reparations for slavery, not for Jim Crow, and scarcely an acknowledgement of the harm done except for Martin Luther King Day, one day out of the year. And I feel like, here we go again."
Alexander's historical perspective is warranted because despite the size and intensity of marijuana prohibition, of the drug war in its entirety, its purpose is not unlike that of Jim Crow or other structural forms of social control and oppression. The drug war was never about drugs. Therefore, our solution to it can't be either.
We must frame the campaigns for cannabis legalization across the states as civil rights movements — as institutional reform efforts — so that the public might demand justice oriented outcomes from the campaigns....
In order to undue the damage — to the extent that that is possible — that the criminalization of marijuana specifically and the war on drugs more broadly have caused, we must pay reparations and retroactively apply reformed drug laws. More importantly, we must undermine the philosophies that allow for the construction of institutional harm, and we must be able to identity them when they creep up again and be ready to take action against them, to arm our minds and our bodies against the next wave of social oppression — whatever and wherever it may be and to whomever it may be applied. This is my plea to make history matter so that it doesn't repeat itself — again, and again, and again.
Regular readers likely know that I see marijuana and drug sentencing reform efforts as tied to a broader civil rights movement (and not just for people of color). But, especially in the wake of what has transpired this month in Ferguson, I am getting especially drawn to the idea that appropriate public policy response is to connect criminal justice reform efforts to civil rights messages and history as this HuffPo commentary urges.
A few (of many) recent and older related posts (some from Marijuana Law, Policy & Reform):
- Senator Rand Paul blames ugliness of Ferguson on the ugliness of big CJ government
- Is an end to the modern drug war the only real way to prevent future Fergusons?
- "The New Jim Crow? Recovering the Progressive Origins of Mass Incarceration"
- Senator Rand Paul talking up restoring voting and gun rights for felons, as well as sentencing reform
- Do (and should) marijuana reform advocates consider themselves civil rights activists like MLK?
- Is pot already really legal for middle-aged white folks?
- Fittingly for MLK day, Prez Obama laments class and race disparities from pot prohibition
August 21, 2014 in Criminal justice in the Obama Administration, Drug Offense Sentencing, Marijuana Legalization in the States, Pot Prohibition Issues, Purposes of Punishment and Sentencing, Race, Class, and Gender | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
"An Empirical Evaluation of the Connecticut Death Penalty System Since 1973: Are There Unlawful Racial, Gender, and Geographic Disparities?"
The title of this post is the title of this notable new article recently posted on SSRN and authored by John J. Donohue III. Here is the abstract:
This article analyzes the 205 death-eligible murders leading to homicide convictions in Connecticut from 1973-2007 to determine if discriminatory and arbitrary factors influenced capital outcomes. A regression analysis controlling for an array of legitimate factors relevant to the crime, defendant, and victim provides overwhelming evidence that minority defendants who kill white victims are capitally charged at substantially higher rates than minority defendants who kill minorities, that geography influences both capital charging and sentencing decisions (with the location of a crime in Waterbury being the single most potent influence on which death-eligible cases will lead to a sentence of death), and that the Connecticut death penalty system has not limited its application to the worst of the worst death-eligible defendants. The work of an expert hired by the State of Connecticut provided emphatic, independent confirmation of these three findings, and found that women who commit death-eligible crimes are less likely than men to be sentenced to death.
There is also strong and statistically significant evidence that minority defendants who kill whites are more likely to end up with capital sentences than comparable cases with white defendants. Regression estimates of the effect of both race and geography on death sentencing reveal the disparities can be glaring. Considering the most common type of death-eligible murder — a multiple victim homicide — a white on white murder of average egregiousness outside Waterbury has a .57 percent chance of being sentenced to death, while a minority committing the identical crime on white victims in Waterbury would face a 91.2 percent likelihood. In other words, the minority defendant in Waterbury would be 160 times more likely to get a sustained death sentence than the comparable white defendant in the rest of the state.
Among the nine Connecticut defendants to receive sustained death sentences over the study period, only Michael Ross comports with the dictates that "within the category of capital crimes, the death penalty must be reserved for 'the worst of the worst.'" For the eight defendants on death row (after the 2005 execution of Ross), the median number of equally or more egregious death-eligible cases that did not receive death sentences is between 35 and 46 (depending on the egregiousness measure). In light of the prospective abolition of the Connecticut death penalty in April 2012, which eliminated the deterrence rationale for the death penalty, Atkins v. Virginia teaches that unless the Connecticut death penalty regime "measurably contributes to [the goal of retribution], it is nothing more than the purposeless and needless imposition of pain and suffering, and hence an unconstitutional punishment." Apart from Ross, the evidence suggests that the eight others residing on death row were not measurably more culpable than the many who were not capitally sentenced.
Moreover, Connecticut imposed sustained death sentences at a rate of 4.4 percent (9 of 205). This rate of death sentencing is among the lowest in the nation and more than two-thirds lower than the 15 percent pre-Furman Georgia rate that was deemed constitutionally problematic in that "freakishly rare" sentences of death are likely to be arbitrary.
August 19, 2014 in Data on sentencing, Death Penalty Reforms, Detailed sentencing data, Offense Characteristics, Race, Class, and Gender | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Senator Whitehouse defends risk-assessment tools for some sentencing determinations
The New York Times today published this letter-response by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse to this recent NYT commentary expressing concern about the use of risj-assessment tools in sentencing decision making. Here is the full text of the published letter:
In "Sentencing, by the Numbers" (Op-Ed, Aug. 11), Sonja B. Starr highlights concern over judges' use in sentencing of predictive tools to gauge an offender's risk of recidivism. But let's not overlook the important role that risk-assessment tools can play in helping identify the factors that make sentenced inmates more likely to commit crimes after they are released.
The most useful tools emphasize dynamic factors — those the inmate has the ability to change — including things like substance abuse, lack of education or antisocial attitudes.
States as different as Rhode Island and Kentucky have found that risk-assessment tools, when coupled with appropriate in-prison programs, can help inmates prepare to re-enter society with less likelihood that they'll reoffend. That reduces spending on prisons, keeps us safer and also benefits the prisoners themselves.
Recent related posts:
- "Attorney General Eric Holder to Oppose Data-Driven Sentencing"
- Three distinct takes on AG Eric Holder's recent reservations about risk-based sentencing
August 19, 2014 in Prisons and prisoners, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Race, Class, and Gender, Sentences Reconsidered, Who Sentences? | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Is an end to the modern drug war the only real way to prevent future Fergusons?
The question in the title of this post is prompted by this provocative new commentary by John McWhorter in The New Republic. The piece is headlined "There Is Only One Real Way to Prevent Future Fergusons: End the War on Drugs," and here are excerpts:
At times like this, with the raging protest in Ferguson, an implication hangs in the air that these events are leading somewhere, that things are about change. The saddest thing, however, is that this is, indeed, a "time like this" — one of many, before and certainly to come. It is impossible not to conclude that what happened to Michael Brown in Ferguson is now status quo, not a teaching lesson to move us forward....
We don't know the details yet, but it's apparent that, in spite of all we went through with [Trayvon] Martin so recently, in a clinch — the mean, messy place where these things always happen — the Ferguson cop Darren Wilson assumed that a big black guy was trouble, serious trouble, and shot him dead. It's what happens in that clinch that matters, and we can now see that no amount of articulate protest can cut through such visceral human tendencies as bias and fear....
So, what will really make a difference? Really, only a continued pullback on the War on Drugs. Much of what creates the poisonous, vicious-cycle relationship between young black men and the police is that the War on Drugs brings cops into black neighborhoods to patrol for drug possession and sale. Without that policy — which would include that no one could make a living selling drugs — the entire structure supporting the notion of young black men as criminals would fall apart. White men with guns would encounter young black men much less often, and meanwhile society would offer young black men less opportunity to drift into embodying the stereotype in the first place.
But that's the long game. In the here and now, we are stuck. Michael Brown was not "it." The journalists assiduously documenting the events in Ferguson can serve as historians, but not as agents of change.
Recent related post:
August 19, 2014 in Drug Offense Sentencing, Race, Class, and Gender, Who Sentences? | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Friday, August 15, 2014
Senator Rand Paul blames ugliness of Ferguson on the ugliness of big CJ government
Senator Rand Paul, who has made notable efforts to push notable reforms of the federal criminal justice system, has penned this provocative Time op-ed about the sad and ugly situation that has unfolded in Ferguson, Missouri in the aftermath of the police shooting of teenager Michael Brown. Here are excerpts:
If I had been told to get out of the street as a teenager, there would have been a distinct possibility that I might have smarted off. But, I wouldn't have expected to be shot. The outrage in Ferguson is understandable — though there is never an excuse for rioting or looting. There is a legitimate role for the police to keep the peace, but there should be a difference between a police response and a military response.
The images and scenes we continue to see in Ferguson resemble war more than traditional police action....
Most police officers are good cops and good people. It is an unquestionably difficult job, especially in the current circumstances.
There is a systemic problem with today's law enforcement.
Not surprisingly, big government has been at the heart of the problem. Washington has incentivized the militarization of local police precincts by using federal dollars to help municipal governments build what are essentially small armies — where police departments compete to acquire military gear that goes far beyond what most of Americans think of as law enforcement.
This is usually done in the name of fighting the war on drugs or terrorism. The Heritage Foundation's Evan Bernick wrote in 2013 that, "the Department of Homeland Security has handed out anti-terrorism grants to cities and towns across the country, enabling them to buy armored vehicles, guns, armor, aircraft, and other equipment."...
When you couple this militarization of law enforcement with an erosion of civil liberties and due process that allows the police to become judge and jury — national security letters, no-knock searches, broad general warrants, pre-conviction forfeiture — we begin to have a very serious problem on our hands.
Given these developments, it is almost impossible for many Americans not to feel like their government is targeting them. Given the racial disparities in our criminal justice system, it is impossible for African-Americans not to feel like their government is particularly targeting them.
This is part of the anguish we are seeing in the tragic events outside of St. Louis, Missouri. It is what the citizens of Ferguson feel when there is an unfortunate and heartbreaking shooting like the incident with Michael Brown.
Anyone who thinks that race does not still, even if inadvertently, skew the application of criminal justice in this country is just not paying close enough attention. Our prisons are full of black and brown men and women who are serving inappropriately long and harsh sentences for non-violent mistakes in their youth.
The militarization of our law enforcement is due to an unprecedented expansion of government power in this realm. It is one thing for federal officials to work in conjunction with local authorities to reduce or solve crime. It is quite another for them to subsidize it.
Americans must never sacrifice their liberty for an illusive and dangerous, or false, security. This has been a cause I have championed for years, and one that is at a near-crisis point in our country.
August 15, 2014 in Race, Class, and Gender, Who Sentences? | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Monday, August 11, 2014
Three distinct takes on AG Eric Holder's recent reservations about risk-based sentencing
Attorney General Eric Holder's significant speech at the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers' Annual Meeting a few weeks ago justifiably made headlines based on his expressions of concern about the use of risk assessment instruments in initial sentencing determinations (as previously discussed here). Because this is such an important and dynamic topic, I am waiting until I have a big block of time to discuss with sophistication and nuance AG Holder's sophisticated and nuanced comments on this front.
In the meantime, thankfully, a number of other insightful and sophisticated folks are talking up and about what AG Holder had to say. For starters, in today's New York Times, LawProf Sonja Starr has this new commentary which starts and ends this way:
In a recent letter to the United States Sentencing Commission, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. sharply criticized the growing trend of evidence-based sentencing, in which courts use data-driven predictions of defendants' future crime risk to shape sentences. Mr. Holder is swimming against a powerful current. At least 20 states have implemented this practice, including some that require risk scores to be considered in every sentencing decision. Many more are considering it, as is Congress, in pending sentencing-reform bills.
Risk-assessment advocates say it's a no-brainer: Who could oppose "smarter" sentencing? But Mr. Holder is right to pick this fight. As currently used, the practice is deeply unfair, and almost certainly unconstitutional. It contravenes the principle that punishment should depend on what a defendant did, not on who he is or how much money he has....
Criminal justice policy should be informed by data, but we should never allow the sterile language of science to obscure questions of justice. I doubt many policy makers would publicly defend the claim that people should be imprisoned longer because they are poor, for instance. Such judgments are less transparent when they are embedded in a risk score. But they are no more defensible.
In addition, Judge Richard Kopf and defense attorney Scott Greenfield have this great new blogosphere back-and-forth on this topic:
Kopf: "Like the ostrich that buries its head in the sand, Mr. Holder is wrong about data-driven sentencing"
Greenfield: "Numbers don't lie (But People Do)"
Kopf: "Please read Scott Greenfield's post 'Numbers Don't Lie (But People Do)'"
All this is highly recommended reading!
August 11, 2014 in Offender Characteristics, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Purposes of Punishment and Sentencing, Race, Class, and Gender | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Senator Rand Paul continues making the conservative case for criminal justice reform
Regular readers know of my respect and admiration for Senator Rand Paul's modern efforts to explain to lots of folks how is modern conservative values call for modern crimnal justice reforms. This Huffington Post article, headlined "Rand Paul Tackles Prisons 'Full Of Black And Brown Kids' Amid GOP Reach For Minority Votes," reports on how potent Senator Paul's points have become as he makes the case for criminal justice reforms:
In an ongoing effort to bridge the gap between the GOP and minority voters, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) deviated from traditional party lines during a speech at the Iowa State Republican Party Convention Saturday, criticizing racist drug policies in the United States and calling for the restoration of voting rights for ex-convicts.
After conceding that his position may not "bring everybody together" and establishing that "drugs are a scourge," Paul continued:
I also think it's a problem to lock people up for 10 and 15 and 20 years for youthful mistakes. If you look at the War on Drugs, three out of four people in prison are black or brown. White kids are doing it too. In fact, if you look at all the surveys, white kids do it just as much as black and brown kids -- but the prisons are full of black and brown kids because they don't get a good attorney, they live in poverty, it's easier to arrest them than to go to the suburbs. There's a lot of reasons.
The likely 2016 presidential contender, who previously compared federal drug laws to the racist policies of the Jim Crow era, also criticized the GOP for failing to live up to its platform emphasis on family values. "If we're the party of family values, in 1980 there were 200,000 kids with a dad in prison. There's now two million," Paul said, calling on Judeo-Christian conservatives to set policies by the principle of redemption.
Some related posts:
- Rand Paul begins forceful pitch in campaign against federal mandatory minimums
- "The most interesting part of [Rand Paul's] speech was his widely anticipated defense of drug law reform."
- NAACP head recognizes Tea Party favors some progressive criminal justice reforms (and sometimes more than Democrats)
- Senator Rand Paul talking up restoring voting and gun rights for felons, as well as sentencing reform
- Senator Rand Paul telling fellow conservatives to focus on criminal justice reform
- GOP leaders now getting what Mitt missed: drug war reform may make good politics (as well as being principled) for small-government conservatives
June 18, 2014 in Elections and sentencing issues in political debates, Purposes of Punishment and Sentencing, Race, Class, and Gender, Who Sentences? | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Monday, June 09, 2014
"Retuning Gideon's Trumpet: Retelling the Story in the Context of Today's Criminal Justice Crisis"
The title of this post is the title of this notable essay by Jonathan Rapping that I just came across on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The Gideon Court recognized a truism: until we ensure that poor people have access to the same quality of counsel that people with means can pay for, we cannot have equal justice. But fifty years later, the promise of equal justice has not materialized. In so many ways, our criminal justice system is less fair; less equal; less humane. Since Gideon was decided, the U.S. imprisonment rate has nearly quadrupled, and the percentage of people charged with crimes who are poor has roughly doubled. As compared to 1963, poor people today are more likely to be arrested, convicted, and sentenced to lengthier prison terms than their wealthier counterparts.
Given these depressing developments, some have questioned whether the right to counsel has made much of a difference for indigent defendants and whether it is even worth defending as a force to end the injustices of the system. This Essay takes a different view of the problem and argues that a strong public defender system is necessary to achieve systemic reform. This is so both because of the role the public defender plays in interrupting a process that is increasingly designed to convict and punish poor people en masse, and because of the potential of a strong community of public defenders to galvanize the movement needed to push for important policy reform.
June 9, 2014 in Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Race, Class, and Gender, Who Sentences? | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Saturday, June 07, 2014
Detailing how many more women have come to discover "Orange is the New Black"
To really appreciate the popular NetFlix show "Orange is the New Black," everyone should read and reflect on the data on modern female incarceration usefully assembled in this recent Fusion piece headlined "The Real Life Stats Behind Women in Prison and 'Orange is the New Black'." Here are the data (with sources, emphasis and links included):
The series "Orange is the New Black" is based on a true experience that follows women in prison, which is one of the fastest growing prison populations. So, it's only appropriate [with] the premiere of the second season of "Orange is the New Black" we look at some of the numbers of women in prison.
The number of women in prison increased by 646 percent between 1980 and 2010, rising from 15,118 to 112,797. If we include local jails, more than 205,000 women are now incarcerated. The female prison population is increasing at nearly double the rate for men. (The Sentencing Project-PDF)
Two thirds of women in prison are there for non-violent offenses, many for drug related crimes. (Women's Prison Association - PDF)
Oklahoma is the greatest incarcerator of women. Oklahoma incarcerates more women per capita than any other state with 130 out of every 100,000 women in prison. Massachusetts has the lowest rate of female imprisonment at 13 per 100,000 women. (Women's Prison Association - PDF)
1 in 25 women in state prisons and 1 in 33 in federal prisons are pregnant when admitted to prison. Women can be shackled during labor in at least 32 states. The majority of children born to incarcerated mothers are immediately separated from their mothers. (The Sentencing Project-PDF)
Women in prison are more likely than are men to be victims of staff sexual misconduct. More than three-quarters of all reported staff sexual misconduct involves women who were victimized by male correctional staff.(The Sentencing Project-PDF)
Black women represent 30 percent of all incarcerated women in the U.S, although they represent 13 percent of the female population generally.
Latinas represent 16 percent of incarcerated women, although they make up only 11 percent of all women in the U.S. (ACLU)
Transgender inmates are almost always housed according to their birth gender. The two most common responses are housing transgender prisoners on the basis of their birth gender or placing them in isolation. (American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law)
June 7, 2014 in Data on sentencing, Prisons and prisoners, Race, Class, and Gender, Scope of Imprisonment | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack


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Properties in Misterton, Crewkerne, Somerset between £30,000 and £2,000,000
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£625,000 5 Bedrooms Misterton, Somerset, TA18
An attractive detached family home located in a quiet and private location within easy reach of local transport links. 3 well proportioned reception rooms and 5 bedrooms with annexe potential. Presented in excellent order throughout and enjoying secluded
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text:
An objective analysis of the evidence for global warming suggests little if any anthropogenic effect, consistent with a direct radiative effect from increased CO2. It is also obvious that global temperature and ocean heat content should be related, so it's somewhat surprising to see OHC rising so fast around 2002-3 when ocean temperature is relatively stable (upper line below).
Possible Error in OHC?
31 Saturday Oct 2009
Posted Allin


text:
a wombat
Senior Member
Azubu Frost = Napa
-Previously-unknown new challenger who destroys all competition and looks unbeatable, but let's face it they haven't faced a real challenge yet...
IG = Piccolo
-The closest thing we've seen to somebody who can keep up with Frost but ultimately can only slow them down at best
CLG.NA = Krillin
-He's got that one destructo disc move or something but that's about it, can't keep up in a real fight
SK = Yamcha or Tien or somebody
-Pretty much just a distraction
Azubu Blaze = Vegeta
-Nobody's really seen them do much yet but you have a feeling they might be 10x scarier than their apparently invincible partner
TSM = Goku
-The hometown favorite and "hero" who will come in and save the day at the end, but it won't be easy or a pretty fight...
M5 = ... Frieza?
-I dunno, I'm out of characters from the Saiyan Saga
edit: your downvotes make me grow stronger
edit 2: and this isn't even my final form!!
downvoting tsm fanboy
who watches that ****
r u a fggt
so at this level, m5 can annihilate everyone with a finger beam?
I am angry because you made me think of DBZ for a second.
So who's Chiaotzu?
Timid Gengar
scumbag GD
too cool for DBZ / not too cool to troll the LoL GD boards
© 2015 Riot Games, Inc. All rights reserved. Riot Games, League of Legends and PvP.net are trademarks, services marks, or registered trademarks of Riot Games, Inc.


text: This morning I came across something so adorable and inspiring, it had to be shared. It also involves reading, and the bookworm in me got really excited. Little Free Library is a free book exchange carried on through hundreds of cute, tiny libraries nationwide. I love the idea of book exchange. While Kindles and other tablet devices are making reading convenient (and green!), I still love the romance of used books, particularly when they are shared. You can learn more about where to find one of these charming exchanges near you, or even better how to start your own, by visiting the Little Free Library website. (BoingBoing)


text: I'm a total pb fan, but till today hadn't experimented too much! So I decided to begin with the flutternutter. I got the sandwich to take away, because I was on wallkabout in the Village. Good idea! The sandwich was too much for me to have in one sitting! The range of flavours of pb is fantastic... read more


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Lawrence Beesley (1878-1967) retired from his position as a science teacher in England when, at age thirty-four, he boarded the S.S. Titanic to go for a holiday in the States. He had been recently widowed and left at home his young son. His account of the epic disaster is widely regarded as one of the fairest and most comprehensive of its kind. Beesley was later portrayed in the classic Titanic film A NIGHT TO REMEMBER.
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text:
Variations in atmospheric CO2 growth rates coupled with tropical temperature
Shared by Weile Wang on Jul 24, 2013
- Author(s) :
- Weile Wang, Philippe Ciais, Ramakrishna R. Nemani, Josep G. Canadell, Shilong Piao, Stephen Sitch, Michael A. White, Hirofumi Hashimoto, Cristina Milesi, and Ranga B. Myneni
- Abstract
Previous studies have highlighted the occurrence and intensity of El Niño–Southern Oscillation as important drivers of the interannual variability of the atmospheric CO2 growth rate, but the underlying biogeophysical mechanisms governing such connections remain unclear. Here we show a strong and persistent coupling (r2 ≈ 0.50) between interannual variations of the CO2 growth rate and tropical land–surface air temperature during 1959 to 2011, with a 1 °C tropical temperature anomaly leading to a 3.5 ± 0.6 Petagrams of carbon per year (PgC/y) CO2 growth-rate anomaly on average. Analysis of simulation results from Dynamic Global Vegetation Models suggests that this temperature–CO2 coupling is contributed mainly by the additive responses of heterotrophic respiration (Rh) and net primary production (NPP) to temperature variations in tropical ecosystems. However, we find a weaker and less consistent (r2 ≈ 0.25) interannual coupling between CO2 growth rate and tropical land precipitation than diagnosed from the Dynamic Global Vegetation Models, likely resulting from the subtractive responses of tropical Rh and NPP to precipitation anomalies that partly offset each other in the net ecosystem exchange (i. e., net ecosystem exchange ≈ Rh − NPP). Variations in other climate variables (e.g., large-scale cloudiness) and natural disturbances (e.g., volcanic eruptions) may induce transient reductions in the temperature–CO2 coupling, but the relationship is robust during the past 50 y and shows full recovery within a few years after any such major variability event. Therefore, it provides an important diagnostic tool for improved understanding of the contemporary and future global carbon cycle.
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text:
Real Immigration Reform Now
Illegal immigration costs North Carolina taxpayers $1.75 billion net annually. Read the full report click here to learn more about the impact of illegal immigration on NC.
NC Listen advocates these 4 basic immigration policies to combat illegal immigration and increasing legal immigration:
- Enforce Immigration Laws and Control Our Borders
- No More Amnesties
- Return to Lower, More Sensible Legal Immigration
- No additional "Guest Worker" Programs; Require E-Verify – Americans Need Jobs
You can learn more about these policy recommendations on our Policy Page.
NC House must pass HB 318 to fix our broken State E-Verify law. Citizens need jobs, not illegals.
The NC House and the NC Senate need to move forward in the 2015 session to fix our State E-Verify law which was gutted in 2013. HB 318 will do just that and take care of an issue brought up before about farmers. In HB 318 farmers will not be required to check farm workers through E-Verify. The NC House and NC Senate passed and then overrode Governor McCrory's veto to keep H.786 as law in 2013. H.786 is state legislation that is in effect a major jobs bill to help illegal immigrants get jobs and the unscrupulous companies who hire them to get away with it, to the detriment of unemployed citizens. Ironically and sadly our State still has high real unemployment. The U.S. Department of Labor Statistics U-6 measure of unemployment for North Carolina is 10%. The labor participation rate of people working between the ages of 16 and 65 in our State is at one of the lowest levels since the federal government began tracking the rate in 1976. How will helping illegal immigrants get jobs do anything but bring harm to our own unemployed citizens?
The NC House and NC Senate have cut public benefits to our unemployed citizens to "encourage them" as they put it to "go find a job". Let's take equal time to fix our State E-Verify law and give citizens a fair chance at a job instead of illegal immigrants. Companies who abide by our labor and immigration laws are at a competitive disadvantage when they have to compete against companies who break our laws and hire illegal labor and don't withhold payroll taxes nor properly account for Workers Comp and unemployment tax, etc. And those hiring illegal labor then send their illegal workers to government agencies, our hospital emergency rooms, and non-profit groups to milk society even more, which leaves less help for poor citizens.
President Obama's unlawful amnesty for illegal immigrants
Immigration Activists and Concerned Citizens,
It is hard to remember in American history when a sitting U.S. president has had such disdain for his own citizens, and such disregard for our Constitution.
President Obama is apparently in his mind entering the Imperial Presidency phase of his second term. It is shameful the President's national priority is helping illegal immigrants remain in the USA in violation of our immigration laws and provide them work permits and Social Security numbers, while over 16 million citizens are either unemployed or are working part-time and want a full-time job but cannot find one. Unfortunately the American people are paying the price for Obama's lack of real experience and poor judgment.
Contact your U.S. House member and let him or her know what you think of President Obama's priorities and unconstitutional actions.
Illegal border surge – why it is happening and solutions
Immigration Activists and Concerned Citizens,
Immigration is not complicated in general but it can become complicated, confusing, and at times emotional. Our opponents to real immigration enforcement and reform play the emotional card on a routine basis because facts are not on their side. I have compiled more data and facts about the surge of illegal alien minors to our southern border. President Obama plans more end-runs around enforcing our immigration laws and may send illegal aliens and minors from the recent border surge to North Carolina…….
The problem began not because of political strife and fear in the primary sending countries of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala as promoted by the Obama Administration, but instead because of weak enforcement of our immigration laws, a loosening of asylum procedures pushed by the Obama administration within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and actual amnesties (i.e. DACA, etc) implemented unconstitutionally by President Obama and his ink pen. Honduran President Juan Hernandez recently said, "border crossers believe they can get amnesty……..and Obama administration rhetoric provides this belief".
Below is testimony from the U.S. House Judiciary committee on this matter:
Eric Cantor told the truth and lost, but Renee Ellmers lied and earlier won
Immigration Activists and Concerned Citizens,
Republican U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor told the truth in general about his immigration positions of advocating for more foreign workers and openly supported a partial amnesty for illegals, and he lost in the Republican primary last night. On the other hand, Congresswoman Renee Ellmers' campaign spent hundreds of thousands of dollars (not including Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook bankrolling more campaign ads for her) lying about her real immigration positions of large scale amnesty, support for even more foreign workers, and citizenship for the newly amnestied illegals and she won the 2nd District Republican primary.
Eric Cantor outspent his Republican primary opponent, David Brat, by times 24, and was supported by the open borders U.S. Chamber of Commerce…….but Cantor for the most part was trying to win with his immigration positions being known. As pointed out, Congresswoman Renee Ellmers openly lied about her immigration positions. Her Republican primary opponent, Frank Roche, was unable to generate enough campaign contributions to fund TV ads to point out her lies. And too many conservatives in the 2nd District decided in error that Frank couldn't win and held their nose and voted for Ellmers in the primary. The conservatives in the 7th Congressional District of Virginia didn't make that mistake and supported Republican conservative and true immigration reformer David Brat, not the incumbent Republican. David Brat had agreed to all 12 of the immigration reform and enforcement principles of NumbersUSA to include reducing legal immigration, just as Frank Roche had done.
Also the Republican establishment and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have been active in trashing and cashing (funding candidates who do their bidding) against Tea Party supported candidates in general. Even though the national Tea Party movement provided only modest support to David Brat, local conservatives with Tea Party beliefs made a HUGE difference in helping Brat to win.
NC LISTEN meets with Renee Ellmers – she says citizens won't work, calls us racist
Immigration Reformers and Concerned Citizens,
It took me months to setup a meeting in person with Congresswoman Renee Ellmers. The day of our meeting an email was sent after 10 am asking for us to move the meeting from Dunn to Asheboro. I was told by her assistant there was less seating in the Asheboro office so I said some of us can just stand, and I scrambled and contacted all ten attendees who were constituents, some already on their way to Dunn but we met in Asheboro. Congresswoman Ellmers already in Asheboro arrived 17 minutes late and said we had only until 4 pm (13 minutes) to speak with her. As she arrived she said only 3 persons could meet in her office, even though there were four chairs and plenty of standing room. I mentioned how we scrambled to meet her in Asheboro with her last minute change and all ten attendees are her constituents and her reply was, "I am in charge and only three can be in the meeting", so the others had to wait in her small lobby just outside her office and to add insult to injury they closed the door on the 7 constituents.
I have arranged 11 group trips to Washington, DC over the last 12 years to meet with US House members and US Senators from North Carolina to discuss immigration reform, not to mention other trips I made to DC myself and local trips, so I have had a lot of experience meeting with members of Congress. Today's meeting with Congresswoman Ellmers was the most contemptible meeting with a member of Congress I have taken part in. From the beginning she showed a sense of arrogance and disdain for meeting with us. If you heard the audio clip from the Laura Ingraham radio show of Laura interviewing Renee Ellmers, today was deja vu. When she wasn't interrupting me she was constantly changing the subject, with a look of glee in her eye as if she thought she was being clever. I have studied immigration and immigration policies for nearly 20 years, and she was the most misinformed and uninformed member of Congress I have ever spoken with on the matter of immigration reform…..and that is saying something.
Just as Congresswoman Ellmers called Laura Ingraham ignorant during their interview, Congresswoman Ellmers went a few steps further by calling me ignorant, a racist, and dense during our meeting…….these insults were sprinkled through our discussion which was about immigration policies and her own statements about immigration reform. I refrained from any personal name calling. As we know, these kinds of insults are usually used by those who have weak arguments or are under the age of ten.
Below is a recap of some of the matters I tried to discuss as she attempted to change the subject approximately every 30 seconds. Our meeting eventually lasted about 40 minutes.
I stated that NC LISTEN believes we need real enforcement of our immigration laws first without any legal work permits for illegals nor an amnesty. Ellmers believes we must give legal work permits to illegal immigrants. She denied stating the following but in an op-ed piece in the Fayetteville Observer on January 18, 2014 she wrote, "only after this legal work status is obtained (by illegals) can they have the opportunity to begin the naturalization process". The naturalization process is a path to citizenship. I pointed out again that she wrote this and she denied it again.
I asked her why she was for giving legal work permits to illegal immigrants when we have 20 million citizens in the USA who are either unemployed or are working part-time but want and cannot find a full-time job (also called the U-6 rate) and that the U-6 unemployment rate in North Carolina is near 14%. Even with her attempting to change the subject, I asked her repeatedly and she NEVER would answer that question.


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Texas Legislature
Texas Legislature Passes Roads Bill, Adjourns 3rd Special Session
The third time is a charm for Texas lawmakers, as the Texas Legislature ends the third special session of the year after passing a major transportation measure.
Texas Legislature Debates Road Funding
The Texas Legislature has convened to debate new funding for roads and bridges by diverting money from the state's Rainy Day Fund.
Texas Filibuster Star Davis Raises Nearly $1M
State Senator Wendy Davis, who staged a filibuster that helped delay approval of sweeping abortion restrictions, says she raised nearly $1 million in the final two weeks of June.
Texas Dems See Chance To Become Relevant Again
It would seem that Texas Republicans have never been stronger. Behind the scenes, however, anxious Republicans and hopeful opponents are poring over data suggesting that the GOP hegemony may end.
Texas Senate On Track To Pass Tough Abortion Rules
This time when the Texas Senate takes up tough new abortion restrictions, the chamber's top Republican is determined not to let anything — or anyone — derail a vote.
Texas Senate Prepares Final Vote On Abortion Bill
The Texas Senate was poised to cast a final vote on tough new abortion restrictions after a committee approved the measure Thursday, and top Republicans and Democrats acknowledged there is little to stop it from becoming law this time.
Abortion Debate Leads To Women's Health Funding Questions
With the Republican-led Texas legislature expected to pass new restrictions on abortions, Democrats believe the measure will be challenged in court.
Hundreds Attend Abortion-Rights Rally In Dallas
A rally organized to condemn a restrictive abortion measure has drawn more than 200 people to downtown Dallas. Planned Parenthood took its Stand With Texas Women campaign to City Hall Plaza Wednesday.
Texas House Debates Abortion Limits Before Vote
The Texas House is debating a bill that will impose tough new restrictions on abortions, as activists announce plans to take their opposition campaign across the state.
Texas House Schedules Abortion Bill Vote
Texas Republicans on Monday pushed on with aggressive efforts to pass tough new abortion restrictions they were prevented from passing last month.
Texas Legislators On Verge Of Passing Abortion Law
The Republican-dominated Texas Legislature pushed Monday to enact wide-ranging restrictions that would effectively shut down all abortion clinics in the nation's second most-populous state.
Texas Senate Approves Abortion Restrictions
The Republican-led Texas Senate has voted to place new restrictions on abortion, but abandoned an effort to ban the procedure after 20 weeks into pregnancy.


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CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) of Saline County has canceled its Holiday Home Tour scheduled for Sunday, December 8th from 2 to 4 p.m. due to impending winter weather.
The Board canceled the Tour Wednesday out of concern for the homeowners, who were so graciously opening their homes, the Tour attendees and the CASA volunteers.
HASKELL -- After losing its first two games of the season, Harmony Grove (2-2) has made statements out of its last two opponents, winning by a combined 112-35. The Lady Cardinals put a hurt on the Woodlawn Lady Bears to open the Bill Gibbs Memorial Tournament on Tuesday, winning 55-26.
"I thought we had really good effort in the second half," Head Coach John White said. "The shot selection was better and the effort in general helped us pull away with a big third quarter."
Though the score was heavily weighted in Harmony Grove's favor, the first half was a much closer game.
HASKELL – Senior Allison Tackett and junior Holly Willmon scored 22 points each in a 51-39 Bauxite Lady Miner victory over the Poyen Lady Indians in the Bill Gibbs Memorial Tournament on Tuesday in Daniel Henley Fieldhouse.
Behind her 22 points, Tackett pulled down 13 rebounds, dished out four assists, many to the 6-2 Willmon down low, adding a steal and block to her resume.
Dennis Wayne Wormington, 39, of Texarkana, Texas, passed away Saturday, Nov. 30, 2013. Dennis was born April 19, 1974 in Texarkana, Texas.
He is survived by his wife, Kathryn Wormington of Texarkana, Texas; three sons, Austin, Zachary and Hayden, all of Texarkana, Texas; his mother and step-father, Judy and Howard Pittman; his father and stepmother, David and Lucky Wormington, all of Texarkana, Texas; one sister and brother-in-law, Susan and Stacy Starrett of DeKalb, Texas; one niece, Taylor Pickle; and one nephew, Tyler Pickle, both of DeKalb, Texas; and other family and friends.


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Ardesia Testing the Ardesia sketchpadApr 24, 2012
The Ardesia sketchpad software and compositing manager allow you to draw freehand on the desktop, so you can quickly sketch a presentation and give the audience an extra dash of information on top.more »
Calligra: The Other Office Suite Narrows the GapApr 23, 2012
On April 11, Calligra Suite announced its first release, version 2.4. This release takes Calligra several steps closer to being an alternative to LibreOffice, especially in its graphical applications.more »
Knoppix 7.0 ReleasedMar 15, 2012
Knoppix v7.0, 32- and 64-bit versions, with ADRIANE v1.4 and cellphone support.more »
Write Access Letters to the editorAug 03, 2011
more »
Linux Mint 11 Fresh Release: KatyaMay 26, 2011
The Linux Mint team announces its cool new version 11, aka "Katya."more »
Kdenlive 0.8 Now AvailableApr 27, 2011
Jean-Baptiste Mardelle of the Kdenlive team, announces the release and availability of Kdenlive 0.8, a free and open source video editor for Linux.more »
Fedora 15 Beta Available: Feedback WantedApr 19, 2011
Announced today on the Fedora announce mailing list, the Fedora 15 (Lovelock) beta is now available for download.more »
GNOME 3.0 Hits Desktops TodayApr 06, 2011
"In the face of constant change, both in software technology itself and in people's attitudes toward it, long-term software projects need to reinvent themselves in order to stay relevant. I'm encouraged to see the GNOME community taking up this challenge, responding to the evolving needs of users and questioning the status quo," says Matt Zimmerman, Canonical CTO.more »
Issue 174/2015
Buy this issue as a PDF
Microsoft Frees Code for .NET Build Engine
MSBuild is now just another GitHub project as Redmond continues its path to the light.
Researchers Demonstrate Hack by Heat
Malware could pass data and commands between disconnected computers without leaving a trace on the network.
Kernel Developers Adopt Code of Conflict
New rules emphasize collegiality in coding.
Ubuntu Switches to systemd
Upstart lands in the dust bin as a new era begins for Linux.
Old Vulnerabilities Are Kept Alive Through Bad Configuration
HP's annual Cyber Risk report offers a bleak look at the state of IT.
Linus Torvalds Announces Linux 4.0
But what do the big numbers really mean?
Microsoft Frees CoreCLR
.NET Core execution engine is the basis for cross-platform .NET implementations.
New Trojan Attacks Linux Servers
The Xnote trojan hides itself on the target system and will launch a variety of attacks on command.
Cisco Releases Annual Security Report
Spammers go low-volume, and 90% of IE browsers are unpatched.
Zero Day Exploits Target Flash
Adobe scrambles to release patches for vulnerable Flash Player.


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Help with paint colors!
trtmomDecember 7, 2011
We recently added a small(very small) powder room in our home. I'm having trouble deciding on a paint color. The hallway outside this bathroom is wallpapered in a very old (but still very good shape) golden color with white throughout. We plan to keep this because it's represents the Victorian style of the home. For the bathroom color, I'm stuck between a chocolate brown, a gold similar to that in the hallway, or even a deep rose/red. Suggestions please!!