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Transmission topics
A Bibliography of the Islamic and Chinese Scientific Relationships in Classical TimesLEARN MORE
In the following bibliography of the Islamic and Chinese scientific relationships in classical times, a list...
Muezzin's tower, Yining, Xinjiang. This building is in the architectural style of Islamic buildings typical of the Hui heartlands of Shaanxi and Gansu in the mid-Qing period. This mosque was designed by a Chinese Muslim from Gansu and built in two main stages, in 1760 and 1781. From Zhang Shengyi, Xinjiang chuantong jianzhu yishu.
The Islamic Heritage in China: A General SurveyLEARN MORE
In this article, Anthony Garnaut, an expert of the Muslim Chinese culture, focuses on the Islamic heritage in...
Professor Charles Burnett.
Tracing the Impact of Latin Translations of Arabic Texts on European SocietyLEARN MORE
In this article, Professor Charles Burnett, a world expert in the history of Islamic influences in Europe at...
Figure 1: Al-Idrisi world map (ca. 1150). Displayed by Paul Bright Scott, history teacher, The Headroyce School, Oakland, California. (Source).
Bringing to Life the Islamic History of Europe: A Video DocumentaryLEARN MORE
The video documentary produced by the BBC in 2005 An Islamic History of Europe, by the famous TV presenter...
Remains of Fabriano (Italy) paper mill where handmade paper is still produced. This paper mill was one of the first to produce paper in Europe since 1276, after it was introduced by direct contact with the Muslim world (source).
Tentative Global Timeline of Contacts between the World of Islam and Western Europe: 7th -20th Cent.LEARN MORE
The following timeline presents a survey of Muslim presence in Europe from the 7th century CE until the 20th...
Figure 1: Professor Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu during his talk at Padua University. Source: http://www.unipd.it/comunicazioni/honoris_causa/20061212_4.htm.
The History of Scientific InteractionLEARN MORE
The evolution of world politics since the last decade of 20th century and several substantial events...
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The roller coaster sweeps straight over your head on one of the major walkways; it's intense.
Update: Nice! Made it to #340 in Explore on July 26th :)
IamJohnMichaels, kikalee, bioandre, and 10 other people added this photo to their favorites.
What kind of post-processing do you do to your images? I really like the feel of them. I'm trying to get into photography myself a bit.
I do about 97% of my post-processing in Adobe Lightroom 3, using a bunch of the gradient/spot tool for adding different exposure values, lighting and I do a good bit of split toning. Hope that helps!
I really appreciate it! I'm a big fan of your blog, I visit it almost everyday. Thanks for keeping it going.
I'm an architecture student, so I think some of the things you post are simply amazing. Keep it up. It's greatly appreciated.

subset: commoncrawl


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Tuesday, February 03, 2015
NACDL seeking examples of federal cases impacted by "trial penalty"
Through some of my work with folks at the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, I have learned that NACDL is now, as part of its Trial Penalty Project, actively seeking examples of the "trial penalty" federal defendants often face as they consider whether to exercise their right to go to trial based on the great discrepancy between post-trial sentences and those offered in the plea process. Human Rights Watch issued a report summarizing extensive statistical and anecdotal evidence of this trial penalty focusing on federal drug defendants, and NACDL is working toward producing a companion report focusing on the trial penalty in federal cases not involving drug prosecutions.
NACDL seeks, via a simple on-line survey, help in collecting examples and data for use in the report. NACDL is interested in examples such as (1) cases where a defendant after trial received a far more severe sentence than had been offered during plea negotiations; (2) cases where a defendant pleaded guilty principally because of a fear that any sentence imposed after trial would be dramatically higher than the plea offer; and/or (3) cases where defendant(s) convicted at trial received disproportionately severe sentences given their culpability as compared to co-defendants who pleaded guilty.
If you know of a federal case that fits these categories — or that otherwise reflects the "trial penalty" federal defendants often face in non-drug-offense settings — please take a few minutes to complete the online questionnaire at the NACDL website.
February 3, 2015 in Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Who Sentences? | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
"Black Lives Matter: Eliminating Racial Inequity in the Criminal Justice System"
The title of this post is the title of this timely new report from The Sentencing Project. Here is a partial summary of its contents from an e-mail I received earlier today:
The report identifies four key features of the criminal justice system that produce racially unequal outcomes, beyond the conditions of socioeconomic inequality that contribute to higher rates of some crimes in marginalized communities, and showcases initiatives to abate these sources of inequity in adult and juvenile justice systems around the country. In many cases, these reforms have produced demonstrable results, including:
- Indiana amended its drug-free zone sentencing laws, which imposed harsh penalties on a defendant population that was over 75% African American in Indianapolis.
- Multnomah County (Portland), OR, revised and removed bias in its risk assessment instrument for determining juvenile detention, reducing African American and Latino youth detention levels by half.
- Berks County, PA, reduced the number of youth in secure detention – who were primarily youth of color – by 67% between 2007 and 2012 in part by increasing reliance on alternatives including non-secure shelters and expanding use of evidence-based treatment programs.
- The Milwaukee County prosecutor's office eliminated racial disparity in charges of possession of drug paraphernalia by instituting case oversight and emphasizing diversion to treatment programs and dismissals.
February 3, 2015 in Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Race, Class, and Gender, Who Sentences? | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Friday, January 30, 2015
Aggressive litigation prompts federal prosecutor in Chicago to drop stash house sting
As reported in this lengthy front-page Chicago Tribune article, aggressive litigation by the federal defense bar concerning aggressive federal drug-war tactics have now resulted in federal prosecutors backing off the most aggressive federal criminal charges these tactics have generated. The article is headlined "Chicago prosecutors quietly drop charges tied to drug stash house stings," and here is how it begins:
Federal prosecutors in Chicago have quietly dropped narcotics conspiracy charges against more than two dozen defendants accused of ripping off drug stash houses as part of controversial undercover stings that have sparked allegations across the country of entrapment and racial profiling.
The decade-old strategy is also under fire because federal authorities, as part of a ruse, led targets to think large quantities of cocaine were often stashed in the hideouts, ensuring long prison terms upon conviction because of how federal sentencing guidelines work. Experts said the move by Chicago prosecutors marked the first step back by a U.S. attorney's office anywhere in the country in connection with the controversial law enforcement tactic.
In the court filings seeking the dismissals, prosecutors gave no clue for the unusual reversal, and a spokesman for U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon declined to comment. But the move comes two months after the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stinging rebuke to the policy, ordering a new trial for a Naperville man who alleged he was goaded into conspiring to rob a phony drug stash house by overzealous federal agents.
The stings, led by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, have been highly criticized for targeting mostly minority suspects, many of whom were drawn into the bogus rip-offs by informants who promised easy money at vulnerable points in their lives.
The cases are built on an elaborate ruse concocted by the ATF. Everything about the stash house is fictitious and follows a familiar script, from supposedly armed guards that need to be dealt with to the quantity of drugs purportedly stashed there. By pretending the house contains a large amount of narcotics, authorities can vastly escalate the potential prison time defendants face, including up to life sentences. Earlier this month, federal prosecutors in Chicago sought to drop drug conspiracy charges in seven of the nine pending stash-house cases, leading some of the judges to quickly approve the move without a hearing.
In each case, the defendants — 27 in all — still face weapons and other charges for the alleged scheme and potentially long prison sentences upon conviction. But without the drug conspiracy charges, the mandatory minimum sentences for most of the defendants would drop to just five years in prison from as much as 25 years, according to Alison Siegler, director of the Federal Criminal Justice Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School.
The ATF investigations have also faced legal backlash around the country, including in California, where last year two federal judges ruled the stings amounted to entrapment.
Katharine Tinto, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York, said hundreds of people nationally have been charged as part of the drug house ruse. The ATF has been using this sting for at least a decade, she said. Tinto said she believes the decision to drop the cases in Chicago is an acknowledgment of the fact that federal agents involved in the sting set the quantity of the phony drugs, a critical factor in driving the sentencing.
The dismissal of the seven cases likely "signals that the government is starting to take a critical look both at these tactics and the immense sentencing these tactics can bring," Tinto said. "In this tactic the drugs are imaginary, and the amount of the drugs is set by the government."
I have been preaching in recent years that I have come to believe that aggressive litigation taking on some of the worst extremes of the federal drug war and excesses of mass incarceration was more likely to "move the sentencing reform needle" as much, if not more, than legislative advocacy directed and a gridlocked Congress. This story reinforces my sense that more and more federal judges are growing more and more willing to criticize and seek to rein in what they more and more are seeing as federal prosecutorial overreach in the drug war and elsewhere.
January 30, 2015 in Drug Offense Sentencing, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Race, Class, and Gender, Who Sentences? | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBack
Thursday, January 29, 2015
George Toca now a free man ... and SCOTUS now lacks a live Miller retroactivity case
This local article from Louisiana, headlined "George Toca, La. inmate at center of debate on juvenile life sentences, to go free," reports on a remarkable turn of events in a case that was supposed to serve as the means for the Supreme Court to address the retroactivity of its Eighth Amendment Miller ruling. Here are the details:
A state prisoner from New Orleans who recently landed at the center of national legal debate about mandatory life sentences for youthful offenders won his freedom Thursday after 31 years in prison. Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro's office agreed to vacate his murder conviction.
George Toca, 47, is set to go free after pleading guilty instead to two counts of attempted armed robbery and one count of manslaughter from a 1984 stickup that ended with his best friend, Eric Batiste, fatally shot outside a convenience store on South Broad Street in Broadmoor.
Toca's release almost certainly means the U.S. Supreme Court will scrap a scheduled hearing this spring on whether its 2012 decision in a case known as Miller v. Alabama, barring mandatory life sentences for juvenile convicts, is retroactive. The high court in November took up Toca's case, above others, to settle an issue that affects about 1,000 convicts in Louisiana and three other states that have refused to apply the court's ruling to older juvenile lifers.
A spokesman for Cannizzaro's office said the DA will join in a motion with Toca's attorneys to withdraw the Supreme Court case.
Toca, appearing briefly in court Thursday morning, pleaded guilty to the manslaughter count under an "Alford" plea, meaning he did not admit guilt but conceded that strong evidence could have led to his conviction. He returned to Angola State Penitentiary for processing, with his release expected late Thursday or Friday.
Newly elected Criminal District Court Judge Byron Williams granted the joint motion in a case that the Innocence Project New Orleans had pursued on Toca's behalf for more than a decade. DA's Office spokesman Christopher Bowman credited a warming relationship with Innocence Project attorneys, along with Toca's productive years behind bars, for the decision to let him go free on the reduced charges.
Bowman called it "a just outcome," also citing the vehemence of Batiste's family in urging Toca's release and the fact he will remain on parole for another 30 years under the deal. "In light of all those facts, the district attorney believed he was no longer a public safety risk," Bowman said. "The District Attorney's Office ... is not afraid to take a look at older cases."...
Bowman insisted that the DA's decision to come to a deal on Toca's release was unrelated to the pending U.S. Supreme Court case, in which Cannizzaro's office had been gearing up to argue against the retroactive application of Miller v. Alabama.
The high court didn't ban states from sentencing some young killers to life without parole. But the 5-4 majority opinion insisted that courts must first weigh a defendant's youth, adding that "we think appropriate occasions for sentencing juveniles to this harshest possible penalty will be uncommon." The court said "youth matters for purposes of meting out the law's most serious punishments," citing "children's diminished culpability and heightened capacity for change" when compared with adults.
In legal filings, Cannizzaro's office argued that it would be a fool's errand to force local judges, years or decades later, to discern a long-ago juvenile's capacity for change. Advocates for juvenile lifers argued that the task would be made easier because judges can review an inmate's record while behind bars. And they saw Toca's case as a promising bellwether for what the high court justices might do....
According to the state, 272 Louisiana inmates had been sentenced as juveniles to life without the possibility of parole as of April 2013 — the bulk of them, like Toca, having been sentenced before the U.S. Supreme Court decision. State Supreme Courts in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Minnesota also have found that Miller v. Alabama does not apply retroactively, setting up the fight at the U.S. Supreme Court.
Toca's vacated conviction and release will leave the issue unresolved for now, said Cara Drinan, an associate professor of law at Catholic University of America. Still, she expects the Supreme Court to take up the retroactivity question relatively soon in some other case, now that it has signaled its interest in settling the issue. "For George Toca, this is a victory and a great thing," Drinan said. "For those of us looking at the bigger issue, and for the hundreds of people waiting for a resolution, we'll have to wait."
January 29, 2015 in Offender Characteristics, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Sentencing around the world | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack
Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Did feds just win the drug war?: kingpin twin drug dealers get kingly sentencing break thanks to cooperation
As detailed in this AP story, headlined "Trafficking Twins Get Sharply Reduced Sentences," the sentencing benefits of cooperating with the government was on full display yesterday in a Chicago federal courtroom. Here are the details:
Identical twin brothers who ran a drug-trafficking ring that spanned much of North America were sentenced Tuesday to 14 years in prison after a judge agreed to sharply reduce their penalty as a reward for becoming government informants and secretly recording Mexico's most notorious drug lord.
In a rare courtroom display, it was a federal prosecutor who poured praise on Pedro and Margarito Flores, portraying them as among the most valuable traffickers-turned-informants in U.S. history and describing the courage they displayed in gathering evidence against Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman and other leaders in Mexico's Sinaloa cartel.
With credit for time served awaiting sentencing and for good behavior in prison, the brothers, now 33, could be out in as little as six years.
Chief U.S. District Judge Ruben Castillo likened Americans' sense of security to walls and scolded the brothers for introducing drugs that fueled violence and despair. "You devastated those walls. You knocked them down," he said. The twins' cooperation was the only thing that spared them from an actual life sentence, Castillo told the brothers. But, he added, they would still serve a life sentence of sorts — having to look over their shoulders the rest of their lives in constant fear of a deadly attack by an assassin working for the cartel they betrayed.
Castillo said the twins were the most significant traffickers ever in his court. But he said he had also never seen traffickers at the height of their power and wealth come forward to offer to become government witnesses, as the siblings had.
The twins appeared in court with the same olive-green clothes and the same closely cropped haircuts. Both kept tapping one foot nervously throughout the hourlong hearing. Just before the judge imposed a sentence, each walked to a podium separately to speak, appearing uneasy. "I'm ashamed. I'm embarrassed. I'm regretful," Margarito Flores said. "There is no excuse."
So successful was their criminal enterprise that the jewelry-loving, Maserati-driving twins smuggled $1.8 billion — wrapped in plastic and duct tape — into Mexico, according to prosecutors....
Prosecutor Mike Ferrara had asked for a sentence of around 10 years. He noted the twins' cooperation led to indictments of Guzman and more than 50 others. The twins began cooperating with agents in 2008 and engaged cartel leaders for months, sometimes switching on recorders and shoving them in their pockets. They continually risked death, Ferrara said.
The 5-foot-4 twins' trafficking careers soared after they left Chicago to live in Mexico around 2004. In mid-2005, they met with Guzman in his secret mountain compound to cut major drug deals, government filings said. The brothers ran their operation from a Mexican ranch. Their network stretched from its Chicago hub to New York, Detroit and Washington, D.C., and to Los Angeles and Vancouver, British Columbia....
Later Tuesday, Chicago-based U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon announced new charges against several Sinaloa figures stemming from the twins' cooperation. Asked about their lenient sentences and the message it sent to other would-be cartel traffickers, Fardon said it should demonstrate, "You can right some of what you did wrong ... by helping the government."
So does this all mean that the federal drug war can be declared officially over, and that we can claim the good guys officially won this 50-year costly war? After all, this was a sentencing of two of the most significant drug traffickers, and they have become the "most valuable traffickers-turned-informants in U.S. history." Surely this must scare off and deter all other current and would-be drug dealers and all the trillions in taxpayer dollars spent on the drug war has now been vindicated as money well spent.
Of course, I am asking the question above and in the title of this post with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek. A key problem with the drug war, as I see it, is that even a huge drug war "victory" in catching and prosecuting some drug dealers typically will make it that much more valuable and enticing for other drug dealers to seek to replace the captured criminals. I fear that , unless and until illegal drug demand is reduced, illegal drug suppliers will be plentiful in part because the drug war makes their activities potentially much more lucrative.
January 28, 2015 in Drug Offense Sentencing, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Purposes of Punishment and Sentencing, Who Sentences? | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
"Back to the Future: The Influence of Criminal History on Risk Assessment"
The title of this post is the title of this timely new paper by Melissa Hamilton now available via SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Evidence-based practices providing an empirical basis for predicting recidivism risk have become a primary focus across criminal justice decision points. Criminal history measures are the most common and heavily weighted factors in risk assessment tools, yet is such substantial reliance fully justified? The empirical and normative values placed on criminal history enjoy such commendation by criminal justice officials, practitioners, and the public that these practices are rarely questioned. This paper fills the gap by introducing and exploring various issues from legal, scientific, and pragmatic perspectives.
As a general rule, a common assumption is that past behavior dictates an individual's likely future conduct. This axiom is often applied to criminal behavior, more specifically, in that prior offending is considered a primary driver to predict future recidivism. Criminal justice officials have a long history of formally and informally incorporating risk judgments into a variety of criminal justice decisions, ranging from bail, sentencing, parole, supervisory conditions, and programming. A more contemporary addendum represents empirically informed risk assessment practices that integrate actuarial tools and/or structured professional judgments. Various criminal history measures pervade these newer evidence-based practices as well.
Instead of presuming the value and significance of prior crimes in judging future recidivism risk, this Article raises and critically analyzes certain unexpected consequences resulting from the significant reliance upon criminal history in risk assessment judgments. Among the more novel issues addressed include: (1) creating a ratchet effect whereby the same criminal history event can be counted numerous times; (2) resulting in informal, three-strikes types of penalties; (3) counting nonadjudicated criminal behaviors and acquitted conduct; (4) proportionality of punishment; (5) disciplining hypothetical future crime; (6) punishing status; and (7) inadequately accounting for the age-crime curve. In the end, criminal history has a role to play in future risk judgments, but these issues represent unanticipated outcomes that deserve attention.
January 27, 2015 in Offender Characteristics, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Purposes of Punishment and Sentencing | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack
Monday, January 26, 2015
"Beyond a Reasonable Disagreement: Judging Habeas Corpus"
The title of this post is the title of this notable new article by Noam Biale now available via SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This Article addresses ongoing confusion in federal habeas corpus doctrine about one of the most elemental concepts in law: reasonableness. The Supreme Court recently announced a new standard of reasonableness review for habeas cases, intended to raise the bar state prisoners must overcome to obtain federal relief. This new standard demands that errors in state court decisions be so profound that "no fairminded jurist could disagree" that the result is incorrect. Scholars have decried the rigid and exacting nature of this standard, but very little interpretive work has yet been done to theorize what it means and how it should be used.
This Article develops a theoretical framework for understanding the new habeas standard and shows that the assumptions lower courts are making about its meaning are wrong. It concludes that federal courts need more data beyond the mere possibility of fairminded disagreement to find that a decision is reasonable. The Article draws on scholarship and jurisprudence in other areas of law that employ reasonableness standards, and argues that the missing data should be supplied by examining the state adjudicative process. The case for focusing on state process in federal habeas cases is not new, but this Article represents the first argument that the new habeas standard not only permits such a focus but, in fact, requires it.
January 26, 2015 in Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Sentences Reconsidered, Who Sentences? | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
The SCOTUS culture of death: "Execution Case Highlights the Power of One Vote"
The title of this post is drawn from the headline of this New York Times piece by Adam Liptak that highlights why the Supreme Court's decision on Friday to grant cert to review Oklahoma's execution protocol is so interesting and creates much death penalty drama for this coming week and the months ahead. Here is how the piece starts:
There are nine justices on the Supreme Court. It takes four votes to hear a case, but it takes five to stay an execution.
That can leave a lethal gap. A death penalty case can be important enough to claim a spot on the court's docket of perhaps 75 cases a year. But the prisoner who brought it may not live to see the decision.
In agreeing on Friday to hear a challenge to the chemicals Oklahoma uses to execute condemned prisoners, the court brought fresh attention to the life-or-death importance of a single vote. The lead petitioner in Friday's case, Charles F. Warner, was already dead. He was executed eight days earlier, after the Supreme Court refused to stay his execution. The vote was 5 to 4.
"What happened to Charles Warner was not an isolated glitch," said Eric M. Freedman, a law professor at Hofstra University and the author of a new article on the court's voting procedures in capital cases. "It was a typical, if high-visibility, example of a systemic flaw in the machinery of justice that has gone unrepaired for far too long."
The case the court agreed to hear used to be called Warner v. Gross, No. 147955. On Friday, taking account of Mr. Warner's death, the court changed it to Glossip v. Gross, No. 147955. It may change again. The new lead petitioner, Richard Glossip, is scheduled to be executed on Thursday. The other two petitioners in the case also have execution dates in coming weeks, all of them well before the court is expected to hear arguments in the case, in April.
The Supreme Court did not say on Friday whether it would stay the other three executions. In a statement, Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma's attorney general, made a pointed reference to the fact that it took only four votes to grant review. He seemed to indicate that the state was prepared to proceed with the executions.
The petitioners' lawyers will doubtless seek stays. In Mr. Glossip's case, they will have to act quickly. How the court responds will illuminate the current vitality of its fitful commitment to a procedure it sometimes uses to bridge the voting gap: the "courtesy fifth" vote to stay executions. Such votes are said to be available once the court makes a formal decision to grant review of a condemned prisoner's case.
Recent related posts:
- Oklahoma geared up to restart its machinery of death nine months after ugly execution
- Over dissent of four Justices, SCOTUS lets Oklahoma execution go forward (... and Florida executes around the same time)
- Seven years after Baze, Supreme Court takes up another lethal injection challenge
January 26, 2015 in Baze lethal injection case, Death Penalty Reforms, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Sentences Reconsidered, Who Sentences? | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
High-profile capital trials put spotlight on dynamics of death-qualification of jurors
This new AP story, headlined "Death-qualified' juror search slows marathon, theater cases," effectively reviews the distinct notable realities that attend jury selection in a capital case. Here are some excerpts:
One prospective juror was brutally frank when asked whether he could consider a sentence of life in prison for the man accused of bombing the Boston Marathon. "I would sentence him to death," he said, then added: "I can't imagine any evidence that would change how I feel about what happened." Another prospective juror said he couldn't even consider the death penalty, telling the court, "I just can't kill another person."
The two men are on opposite sides of the capital punishment debate, but both unlikely to make it on the jury for the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev: to be seated for a death penalty case a juror must be willing — but not eager — to hand down a sentence of either life or death.
The process of finding "death qualified" jurors has slowed down jury selection in federal case against Tsarnaev, who is charged with setting off two bombs that killed three people and injured more than 260 during the 2013 marathon. It is expected to do the same in the state trial of James Holmes, the man accused of killing 12 people and injuring 70 others in a suburban Denver movie theater in 2012.
The process is designed to weed out jurors who have strong feelings for or against the death penalty. A 1985 ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court said a juror can lawfully be excused if his views on the death penalty are so strong that they would prevent or substantially impair his ability to follow the law.
But death penalty opponents have long said the process is fundamentally unfair. They argue that death-qualified juries do not represent a true cross-section of the community and are less likely to be sympathetic to the defense. "You end up with a jury with less women, less blacks, less Democrats ... you end up with a jury that is skewed in ways that make it probably more conservative, more accepting of prosecution arguments, of state authority," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit organization that opposes executions.
The Capital Jury Project, a consortium of university researchers, interviewed about 1,200 jurors in 353 capital trials in 14 states beginning in the early 1990s. The group's research has shown that death penalty juries are more likely to convict and that jurors often make up their minds about what punishment to hand down long before they're supposed to, said William Bowers, director of the project....
Death penalty opponents have argued that to get around this kind of pre-judgment, separate juries should be chosen to hear evidence in the guilt phase and the punishment phase. But that idea has not gained traction....
In the Holmes case, an unprecedented 9,000 jury summonses were mailed. As of Friday, 210 prospective jurors had been excused over four days. Individual questioning is set to begin next month. In the marathon bombing case, 1,373 people filled out juror questionnaires. Individual questioning of prospective jurors has been slowed as the judge has probed people at length about their feelings on the death penalty. The judge had originally said he hoped to question 40 jurors each day, but during the first five days only averaged about 15.
Capital punishment supporters say the current system of screening out strong pro- and anti-death penalty jurors is the only fair way to choose juries in death penalty cases. "The process simply says that jurors must be willing to abide by the law," said John McAdams, a Marquette University professor who supports the death penalty.
January 26, 2015 in Death Penalty Reforms, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Who Sentences? | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Saturday, January 24, 2015
Another remarkable exoneration thanks only to NC Innocence Inquiry Commission
On this blog, I typically do not extensively cover or frequently discuss exonerations and criminal appeals based on actual innocence claims because, as some may know, I fear guilt/innocence concerns can at times distort sentencing procedures and policy debates focused only on indisputably guilty persons. But this new amazing story out of North Carolina, headlined "After 36 years, Joseph Sledge's unfamiliar feeling: normal," seemed especially blogworthy for various reasons.
Most significantly, I think, is that this remarkable NC story highlights the unique benefits resulting if (and perhaps only when) a jurisdiction has a special institution and special procedures for dealing specifically with innocence claims. Here are the basic of one remarkable story that is embedded in the broader realities of North Carolina's unique approach to innocence concerns:
Joseph Sledge looked out across Lake Waccamaw on Friday afternoon, shivering against a cold January rain and trying to embrace an unfamiliar feeling: normal. Sledge walked out of jail Friday for the first time in 36 years without the burden of handcuffs and shackles.
He is finally free. The state had been wrong about him in 1978, and in all the years since; he is no killer. At 70, he will begin again. "I'm full up on freedom," Sledge said shyly, leaning over a menu at Dale's Seafood, a lakeside restaurant in rural Columbus County.
Sledge is the eighth man freed through a unique process that forces the state to deal with prisoners' claims of innocence. The North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, created in 2006, examined Sledge's innocence claim over the last 18 months, and in December, it voted that his case merited a possible exoneration.
On Friday afternoon, a trio of judges did just that. Jon David, the Columbus County district attorney, made their decision swift and easy; David told judges he had become convinced that Sledge was innocent.
As Superior Court Judge Tom Lock announced Sledge's exoneration, a dozen photographers and reporters rushed toward Sledge and his attorneys. Sledge smiled slightly as his attorneys, Christine Mumma and Cheryl Sullivan of the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence, pulled him close. Applause erupted....
Sledge ... stole some T-shirts from a department store in the early 1970s. A judge sentenced him to four years in a prison camp in rural Eastern North Carolina. In 1976, with just a year left in his sentence, he escaped from the White Lake Prison Camp one night after a beef with another inmate.
That very night, not 5 miles away, someone brutally murdered Josephine and Ailene Davis, a mother and daughter, who lived together in rural Bladen County. That horrible coincidence set the course for Sledge's life.
Sledge's exoneration is bittersweet. It comes after dozens of mistakes and casual dismissals of his pleas for help. David, the district attorney, ticked through the justice system's blind spots in Sledge's case. The system wasn't what it is now, he said. No DNA testing was available. The best it had – microscopic hair comparison – could only determine that Sledge's pubic hair was consistent with pieces left on one victim's exposed torso. Sledge's escape and the wild testimony of two jailhouse informants made it all seem too obvious during the 1978 trial, which had been moved to Columbus County.
David said Friday that he regretted the system's weaknesses and any part that court officials played in it. "There's nothing we regret more to our values as prosecutors than to believe an innocent person is in prison," David said. He offered Sledge an apology.
Mumma, who first encountered Sledge's case a decade ago, has had a hard time swallowing all of the ways the criminal justice system failed Sledge – and the amount of time it took to make it right. Clues that should have sent investigators to other suspects were disregarded. None of the nearly 100 fingerprints taken from the crime scene matched Sledge's. Investigators also collected head hairs from the victims' bodies, but Sledge had always shaved his bare.
During two decades, Sledge sent dozens of letters to judges, police officials and prosecutors asking that they find and test evidence from his case for DNA. Yet it took nearly 20 years for a clerk to find hairs that would prove his innocence. By happenstance, a Columbus County clerk climbed a ladder in late 2012 while cleaning the evidence vault; she found an envelope flat on the top shelf with the missing hairs. The clerks had been ordered to search for that evidence as far back as 2003.
Without the state's new apparatus for testing innocence claims, Sledge might have remained in prison. The Center on Actual Innocence and the Innocence Inquiry Commission interviewed dozens of people, testing memories that had faded over decades. Commission staff discovered crime scene evidence and investigators' notes that local sheriff's deputies had said for years had been lost or destroyed. The commission spent $60,000 on forensic testing.
January 24, 2015 in Criminal Sentences Alternatives, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Purposes of Punishment and Sentencing, Sentences Reconsidered, Who Sentences? | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBack
Friday, January 23, 2015
Seven years after Baze, Supreme Court takes up another lethal injection challenge
As reported in this new USA Today piece, taking up a "case that could have broad implications for hundreds of death row inmates, the Supreme Court will consider whether a drug protocol used in recent lethal injections violates the Constitution's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment." Here is more:
The justices agreed Friday to consider a case originally brought by four death-row inmates in Oklahoma -- one of whom was put to death last week, after the court refused to block his execution with a combination of three drugs that has caused some prisoners to writhe in pain.
Because the court's four liberal justices dissented from the decision to let that execution go forward, it presumably was their votes in private conference Friday that will give the issue a full hearing in open court. Only four votes are needed from the nine-member court to accept a case. It will likely be heard in April, though it could be held over until the next term begins in October.
Lawyers for Charles Warner and three other convicts set for execution in Oklahoma over the next six weeks sought the Supreme Court's intervention after two lower federal courts refused their pleas. While the court's conservatives refused to stop Warner's execution, the request for a full court hearing had been held for further consideration.
The lawyers claim that the sedative midazolam, the first drug used in the three-drug protocol, is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration as a general anesthetic and is being used in state executions virtually on an experimental basis. They say inmates may not be rendered unconscious and could suffer painfully as the other drugs in the protocol are administered.... "States now experiment with various drug formulations that have resulted in multiple malfunctioning executions — indeed, spectacles — over the past year," the challengers' brief says....
The court's four liberal justices -- Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan -- voiced deep concern about the three-drug protocol in their eight-page dissent last week. They also dissented last September when the court rejected a stay application from a Missouri inmate executed with the same drug.
I presume this cert grant will halt all scheduled executions in Oklahoma until the Supreme Court rules. Left unclear, however, is whether other states will be able to move forward with executions while this case is pending. This DPIC page with scheduled executions suggest that at least a half-dozen states have more than a dozen serious execution dates scheduled before the Supreme Court is likely to resolve this new case from Oklahoma.
I am sure that these states will try to move forward with executions, especially if their protocols are dissimilar to what Oklahoma does in executions. But I am also sure that death row defendants and their lawyers will urge states to postpone all execution until the Supreme Court rules in this new case (as happened when the Supreme Court first took up this issue eight years ago in Baze v. Kentucky). In short, here we go again!
Recent related posts:
- Oklahoma geared up to restart its machinery of death nine months after ugly execution
- Over dissent of four Justices, SCOTUS lets Oklahoma execution go forward (... and Florida executes around the same time)
January 23, 2015 in Baze lethal injection case, Death Penalty Reforms, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Sentences Reconsidered, Who Sentences? | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBack
US Sentencing Commission essentially giving up on fixing definition of "crimes of violence"
As noted in prior posts here and here, the US Sentencing Commission earlier this month publish proposed guideline amendments with some modest but significant possible revisions to the federal fraud sentencing guidelines. One reason these modest proposed guideline changes could be the most consequential reform coming from the Commission this year is because, as noted at the very end of these remarks at by the USSC Chair Patti Saris, it appears the Commission has given up its effort to seek to improve the doctrinal problems surrounding another big part of the federal sentencing guidelines:
I did want to briefly address an issue that does not appear in the proposed amendments. As I announced at the last public meeting, the Commission held a roundtable discussion this fall on the definition of "crimes of violence" and related terms. We had hoped that we would be positioned to publish some proposals today as an outgrowth of that very informative roundtable, and we conducted considerable follow up work after that event. But ultimately, after much consideration of this issue internally and consultation with leading experts, the Commission concluded that, given the existing statutory scheme, any attempts by the Commission at this time to clarify these definitions or establish more consistency within the guidelines would likely only lead to more confusion and renewed litigation. We are currently considering whether it would be helpful for the Commission to issue a report on this issue with recommendations for legislative fixes.
I am a bit disappointed and troubled that the USSC thinks the best way now to deal with all the confusion and litigation over some key guideline terms is just to give up trying to fix these terms. But I also understand the challenge the USSC faces given that these terms are so significant in federal statutes that the Commission cannot itself amend. And, perhaps usefully, the Commission's struggles here might further embolden the Supreme Court to declare part of the Armed Career Criminal Act unconstitutionally vague as it reconsiders the pending Johnson case (as discussed here).
January 23, 2015 in Federal Sentencing Guidelines, Offender Characteristics, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Who Sentences? | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Thursday, January 22, 2015
NACDL explains the massive work behind Clemency Project 2014
As noted in this prior post, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley last week sent this letter to Attorney General Eric Holder asking a number of questions about the relationship between the Justice Department and outside groups working on "Clemency Project 2014." Though AG Holder has not yet, to my knowledge, late last week one of the key groups involved in Clemency Project 2014 described its work and the broader project.
Specifically, the NACDL on Friday sent around this lengthy news release (which I believe was a joint statement by all of the groups working together on this project) titled "Clemency Project 2014: A Historically Unprecedented and Wholly Independent Volunteer Effort By the Nation's Bar." The release merits a full read for those following closely the current activities surrounding federal clemency, and here is an excerpt:
An army of volunteer lawyers are diligently working on behalf of thousands of prisoners who have requested free legal assistance in drafting and submitting clemency petitions. This unprecedented, wholly independent effort by the bar, facilitated by the organizations which make up Clemency Project 2014, seeks to achieve justice for those prisoners. It reflects these organizations' shared commitment to the highest calling of the legal profession.
At its core, Clemency Project 2014 is a vehicle through which attorneys, responding to the Department of Justice's call for the bar to offer free assistance to potential petitioners, may participate in this important initiative. The Project has not been delegated any responsibility or authority by the Department of Justice. The Project expects the Department of Justice to treat these petitions as they would any other well-reasoned petition in making its recommendations to the President, who is the sole authority for granting clemency. Many prisoners have applied directly to the Department of Justice for clemency without using the lawyers working with Clemency Project 2014, and/or are using counsel they identified and retained outside of the Project.
Since its conception less than a year ago, Clemency Project 2014 created a training and case management infrastructure to prepare an army of volunteer lawyers. Indeed, in just a handful of months, the Project:
Provided volunteer support from each of the entities to organize a mechanism for outreach to inmates and attorneys, and to develop a technological infrastructure;
Received critical funding from the ACLU and supplemental funding from the Foundation for Criminal Justice to fund and recruit three critical staff positions to oversee the effort;
Obtained donated office space and technological infrastructure from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL);
Enabled Project administrators to efficiently review, sort, and assign prisoner requests, and created and implemented an electronic database to efficiently organize detailed prisoner requests for assistance that at last count numbered more than 26,000;
Developed and deployed an extensive, multi-hour legal education training program (available on demand to any interested attorney at no charge) to ensure that all volunteer lawyers, from any practice background, will be equipped with the tools necessary to evaluate and prepare petitions for submission to the Office of Pardon Attorney for its review and consideration;
Responded to a legal memorandum issued by the Administrative Office of the Courts that opined that federal public defenders may not provide representation in clemency matters, by recruiting additional volunteer attorneys to fill the void while federal defenders continue to assist in gathering documents on behalf of former clients, and to provide administrative support for the Project;
Worked with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law to recruit more than 50 large firms, bringing hundreds of additional lawyers to the process;
Established and implemented a multi-tier process to assist volunteer lawyers in identifying potentially eligible applicants and preparing petitions for submission to the Office of Pardon Attorney for consideration....
Assigned 5,310 cases to volunteer attorneys;
Provided individual notice to several thousand applicants with a sentence of less than ten years, a disqualifying factor under the Justice Department's criteria;
Established a website with information for the public, including family members; and
Offered ongoing, individual legal support, resource materials, and on demand training to more than 1,500 volunteer attorneys.....
This endeavor has brought in lawyers from vastly diverse practice backgrounds, more than 50 of the nation's largest and most prestigious law firms and law clinics, leading not-for-profit organizations, and the criminal defense bar to answer the call made last year by Deputy Attorney General James Cole before the New York State Bar Association.
Some prior related posts:
- Extraordinary review of messiness of Prez Obama's clemency push
- Senator Grassley queries DOJ concerning its work with Clemency Project 2014
- Defender hiccup or major headache for Clemency Project 2014?
- Nearly a year into clemency initiative, turkeys remain more likely to get Prez Obama pardon than people
- ProPublica urges next AG to "Fix Presidential Pardons"
- President Obama (aka clemency grinch) grants a few holiday pardons and commutations
January 22, 2015 in Clemency and Pardons, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Who Sentences? | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
SCOTUS rules in favor of prisoner's RLUIPA claim and capital defendant's AEDPA contention
The Supreme Court handed down a few opinions this morning, and two of them involve notable victories for criminal defendants (and notable reversals of the Eighth Circuit).
Via a unanimous ruling in Holt v. Hobbs, No. 13- 6827 (S. Ct. Jan 20, 2015) (available here), the Court explains why a rigid prison beard policy wrongfully infringes religious rights. Here is how the opinion, per Justice Alito, gets started:
Petitioner Gregory Holt, also known as Abdul Maalik Muhammad, is an Arkansas inmate and a devout Muslim who wishes to grow a 1⁄2-inch beard in accordance with his religious beliefs. Petitioner's objection to shaving his beard clashes with the Arkansas Department of Correction's grooming policy, which prohibits inmates from growing beards unless they have a particular dermatological condition. We hold that the Department's policy, as applied in this case, violates the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA), 114 Stat. 803, 42 U. S. C. §2000cc et seq., which prohibits a state or local government from taking any action that substantially burdens the religious exercise of an institutionalized person unless the government demonstrates that the action constitutes the least restrictive means of furthering a compelling governmental interest.
We conclude in this case that the Department's policy substantially burdens petitioner's religious exercise. Although we do not question the importance of the Department's interests in stopping the flow of contraband and facilitating prisoner identification, we do doubt whether the prohibition against petitioner's beard furthers its compelling interest about contraband. And we conclude that the Department has failed to show that its policy is the least restrictive means of furthering its compelling interests. We thus reverse the decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
Via a summary reversal in Christeson v. Roper, No. 14-6873 (S. Ct. Jan 20, 2015) (available here), the Court explains why lower federal courts were too quick to preclude a capital defendant from arguing a habeas deadline ought to be tolled. Here is how the Court's per curiam decision gets started:
Petitioner Mark Christeson's first federal habeas petition was dismissed as untimely. Because his appointed attorneys — who had missed the filing deadline — could not be expected to argue that Christeson was entitled to the equitable tolling of the statute of limitations, Christeson requested substitute counsel who would not be laboring under a conflict of interest. The District Court denied the motion, and the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit summarily affirmed. In so doing, these courts contravened our decision in Martel v. Clair, 565 U. S. ___ (2012). Christeson's petition for certiorari is therefore granted, the judgment of the Eighth Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings.
Notably, in Holt, Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor concurred in a little separate opinion to provide a bit of their own spin on RLUIPA. And in Christeson, Justices Alito and Thomas dissent from the summary reversal because they would have preferred full briefing concerning a "question of great importance" regarding "the availability of equitable tolling in cases governed by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA)."
January 20, 2015 in Prisons and prisoners, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Sentences Reconsidered, Who Sentences? | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBack
Should we be concerned about the economic or human costs of Colorado's efforts to get Aurora killer James Holmes on death row?
The question in the title of this post is my first reaction to this lengthy Denver Post piece discussing what to expect now that jury selection is about to begin in the Colorado's high-profile capital trial of Aurora theater shooter James Holmes. The piece is headlined "Aurora theater shooting trial could strain limits of jury service," and here are some excerpts:
After 50 days of testimony and deliberations, the jurors who decided the fate of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh emerged haunted. "Have you ever seen 12 people cry?" one juror told reporters about deliberations for the 1997 verdict, handed down in a federal courtroom in Denver. "I'm 24," another said, "But I don't feel 24 anymore."
Pummeled with horrific accounts of the attack, freighted with finding justice amid tragedy, the jurors had been pushed to near shattering. "I personally felt subject to the same sort of trauma that some of the victims and survivors went through," another said.
Now, imagine if that trial had lasted twice — even three times — as long. The trial of Aurora movie theater gunman James Holmes, which starts Tuesday with jury selection, is expected to be so lengthy and arduous that it could strain the very process of justice it seeks to uphold.
Nine thousand potential jurors — one of the largest pools in American history — have been summoned for the case. If picked, jurors will be ordered to serve for as long as five straight months, longer than any state criminal trial in memory in Colorado. They will weigh whether Holmes was sane in July 2012, when he killed 12 people inside the Century Aurora 16 movie theater and tried to kill 70 others, and, if they find he was, they will decide whether he should be executed.
For their service, they will be guaranteed a wage of only $50 a day, a rate that could plunge their income to near the federal poverty level. Even harder, during what will likely be the most stressful time of their lives, they will be forbidden from talking to anyone about the experience — not their family or fellow jurors or counselors. Until deliberations begin sometime late this year, the jurors will bear that stress in silence, despite a growing body of research that shows jury service on traumatic cases can lead to mental and physical illness and impact jurors' decision-making....
Since the 1930s, perpetrators of public mass shootings nationwide are more likely to die at the scene than to be captured, according to research by Minnesota Department of Corrections official Grant Duwe. Of the 45 percent who were arrested, only a fraction ever faced a jury. And even fewer of those were charged with killing in an attack as devastating to the community as Holmes is for the Aurora theater shooting.
William Bowers, a researcher for the Capital Jury Project at the State University of New York in Albany, likens the theater shooting trial to that currently taking place for one of the suspected Boston Marathon bombers. "There's nothing really comparable to these cases in modern experience, in terms of duration of the trial and effect on the jury," Bowers said....
But, at its most extreme limits, jury service can become less of a duty and more of an ordeal, legal experts say. Studies have shown that jurors in traumatic trials can suffer from insomnia, anxiety, anger and depression. One study documented cases of jurors who broke out in hives, developed ulcers or increased their alcohol consumption while serving at trials. And after the trial is over, some jurors have said they experienced flashbacks....
In recognition of the strains of jury service, courts across the country increasingly offer counseling to jurors. Jon Sarche, a spokesman for the Colorado Judicial Branch, said counseling will be made available to jurors in the theater shooting case once the trial is over. But — because judges routinely order jurors not to talk about the case with anyone, to protect the trial's integrity — counseling is almost never available to help jurors manage stress during the case.
While this piece effectively highlights some economic and human costs to be borne the jurors in this case, the question in the title of this post also suggests thinking about the economic and human costs sure to burden the lawyers and the court system throughout this case. And, as the question in the title of this post is meant to highlight, these costs are all endured in service now only to having Holmes sentenced to death; inevitable appeals and other factors will likely mean Holmes is unlikely ever actually to be executed by Colorado for his crimes.
I suspect these kinds of costs and uncertainties explain (and clearly justify?) why the feds were willing to cut LWOP plea deals for other mentally-challenged mass killers like Ted Kaczynski (the Unibomber) and Jared Lee Loughner (the Tucson shooter). But Colorado prosecutors in this case appear quite committed to enduring all these costs in service to trying to get James Holmes sentenced to death.
Recent and older related posts (with lots of comments):
- Largest mass shooting in US history surely to become a capital case
- Offense/offender distinctions in first-cut punishment reactions to Batman mass murder
- "For James Holmes, Death Penalty is Far from a Certainty"
- You be the prosecutor: will you accept Aurora theater shooter's plea offer and drop pursuit of the death penalty?
- "James Holmes' Victims Applaud Death Penalty Plan: 'I Want Him Dead'"
- Lawyers for Aurora shooter James Holmes attacking Colorado's death penalty again
- Intriguing sparring over victims' rights in Colorado massacre capital case
January 20, 2015 in Death Penalty Reforms, Offender Characteristics, Offense Characteristics, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Who Sentences? | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack
Friday, January 16, 2015
AG Holder announces notable new limits on civil forfeitures to fund local police
As reported in this Washington Post article, headlined "Holder limits seized-asset sharing process that split billions with local, state police," the out-going Attorney General today announce a notable new policy that ought to take some of the economic incentives out of some drug war enforcement activities. Here are the basics:
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Friday barred local and state police from using federal law to seize cash, cars and other property without proving that a crime occurred. Holder's action represents the most sweeping check on police power to confiscate personal property since the seizures began three decades ago as part of the war on drugs.
Since 2008, thousands of local and state police agencies have made more than 55,000 seizures of cash and property worth $3 billion under a civil asset forfeiture program at the Justice Department called Equitable Sharing. The program has enabled local and state police to make seizures and then have them "adopted" by federal agencies, which share in the proceeds. The program allowed police departments and drug task forces to keep up to 80 percent of the proceeds of the adopted seizures, with the rest going to federal agencies.
"With this new policy, effective immediately, the Justice Department is taking an important step to prohibit federal agency adoptions of state and local seizures, except for public safety reasons," Holder said in a statement. Holder's decision allows some limited exceptions, including illegal firearms, ammunition, explosives and property associated with child pornography, a small fraction of the total. This would eliminate virtually all cash and vehicle seizures made by local and state police from the program.
While police can continue to make seizures under their own state laws, the federal program was easy to use and required most of the proceeds from the seizures to go to local and state police departments. Many states require seized proceeds to go into the general fund. A Justice official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss the attorney general's motivation, said Holder "also believes that the new policy will eliminate any possibility that the adoption process might unintentionally incentivize unnecessary stops and seizures."
Holder's decision follows a Washington Post investigation published in September that found that police have made cash seizures worth almost $2.5 billion from motorists and others without search warrants or indictments since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
January 16, 2015 in Criminal Sentences Alternatives, Drug Offense Sentencing, Fines, Restitution and Other Economic Sanctions, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Who Sentences? | Permalink | Comments (23) | TrackBack
LawProf and federal judge propose special evidence rules for penalty phase of capital cases
This new article available via SSRN, titled "The Proposed Capital Penalty Phase Rules of Evidence," reflects a notable capital punishment reform proposal put together by Professor David McCord and District Judge Mark W. Bennett. Here is the abstract:
No person or organization has ever proposed model rules of evidence for the unique penalty phase of a death penalty trial. Now a law professor skilled in the scholarship of both death penalty jurisprudence and evidence, and a federal judge with extensive federal death penalty experience, do just that.
This work transcends the hodge-podge of evidentiary approaches taken by the various state jurisdictions and federal law. The result is the Proposed CAPITAL PENALTY PHASE RULES OF EVIDENCE — clear and uniform rules to govern the wide-ranging evidentiary issues that arise in the penalty phase of capital trials. Death penalty trials, long criticized for the arbitrariness of their results, will greatly benefit from these Rules.
January 16, 2015 in Death Penalty Reforms, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Thursday, January 15, 2015
Fifth Circuit reverses computer filter lifetime supervised release condition for sex offender
A Fifth Circuit panel yesterday handed down an intriguing little ruling in US v. Fernandez, No. 14-30151 (5th Cir. Jan. 14, 2015) (available here), reversing a notable condition of supervised release. Here is how the ruling starts and ends:
In 2013, Fernando Fernandez was convicted, pursuant to his guilty plea, of failing to register as a sex offender, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2250(a). He challenges a life-term special condition of supervised release, requiring him to "install [computer] filtering software . . . block[ing]/monitor[ing] access to sexually oriented websites" for "any computer he possesses or uses". At issue is whether the court abused its discretion by imposing the software-installation special condition in the light of, inter alia, Fernandez' neither using a computer nor the Internet in committing either his current offense (failing to register as a sex offender) or his underlying sex offense (sexual assault of a child)....
In the light of the facts at hand, the district court abused its discretion in imposing the software-installation special condition provision at issue, when, inter alia, neither his failure-to-register offense nor his criminal history has any connection to computer use or the Internet. Similar to Tang, the special condition imposed in this instance is related neither to the nature and circumstances of Fernandez' offense (failing to register as a sex offender) nor his criminal history and characteristics.
Along that line, the district court's reason for justifying the special condition is not sufficiently tied to the facts. As noted, for justifying its imposition, the court stated: "'Failure to register' means he's a sex offender in the past. Ease of access through the Internet". In the absence of evidence to the contrary, the court's general concerns about recidivism or that Fernandez would use a computer to perpetrate future sex-crimes are insufficient to justify the imposition of an otherwise unrelated software-installation special condition.
January 15, 2015 in Criminal Sentences Alternatives, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Reentry and community supervision, Sentences Reconsidered, Sex Offender Sentencing | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBack
"Should the Medium Affect the Message? Legal and Ethical Implications of Prosecutors Reading Inmate-Attorney Email"
The title of this post is the title of this timely student note by Brandon Parker Ruben now available via SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The attorney-client privilege protects confidential, legal communications between a party and her attorney from being used against her. It is among American jurisprudence's most sacrosanct evidentiary principles. Unsurprisingly, federal prosecutors cannot eavesdrop on inmate-attorney visits or phone calls, or read inmate-attorney mail. Courts are currently divided, however, on whether or not the government can be prevented from reading inmate-attorney emails.
This Note explores the incipient body of case law that addresses whether federal prosecutors can read inmates' legal email. As courts have unanimously held, the Bureau of Prison's email monitoring policy destroys the emails' privilege, thus allowing prosecutors to lawfully read them. Accordingly, despite misgivings about the practice's propriety, four courts have ruled that there is no legal basis to prevent it. Two courts, however, pursuant to no clear authority, have prevented prosecutors from reading defendants' legal email, even while acknowledging the practice's legality.
This Note argues that prosecutors should be prevented from reading defendants' legal email, because doing so unjustifiably degrades the adversary system, and that there are legal bases to so prevent them. It asserts that BOP's email monitoring policy unconstitutionally restricts inmates' Sixth Amendment right of access to counsel, a challenge prisoners' rights advocates have yet to bring. In cases where BOP's email monitoring policy is not at issue, or where a court seeks to avoid a constitutional decision, this Note concludes, federal courts should prevent prosecutors from reading inmates' legal email by exercising their congressionally delegated authority under the McDade Amendment to enforce state ethics rules. Specifically, courts should apply Rule of Professional Conduct 8.4(d), which prohibits attorneys from engaging in conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice.
January 15, 2015 in Prisons and prisoners, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
With interesting 6-3 split, SCOTUS gives habeas petitioner a little win on appeal
The Supreme Court this morning handed down a notable habeas procedure opinion today in Jennings v. Stevens, No. 13-7211 (S. Ct. Jan. 14, 2015) (available here). Here is the start and conclusion of the majority opinion by Justice Scalia:
Petitioner Robert Mitchell Jennings was sentenced to death for capital murder. He applied for federal habeas corpus relief on three theories of ineffective assistance of counsel, prevailing on two. The State appealed, and Jennings defended his writ on all three theories. We consider whether Jennings was permitted to pursue the theory that the District Court had rejected without taking a crossappeal or obtaining a certificate of appealability....
Because Jennings' Spisak theory would neither have enlarged his rights nor diminished the State's rights under the District Court's judgment, he was required neither to take a cross-appeal nor to obtain a certificate of appealability. We reverse the judgment of the Fifth Circuit and remand the case for consideration of Jennings' Spisak claim.
Justice Thomas, joined by Justices Kennedy and Alito, authored a dissenting opinion that starts this way:
The Court holds today that a prisoner who obtains an order for his release unless the State grants him a new sentencing proceeding may, as an appellee, raise any alternative argument rejected below that could have resulted in a similar order. In doing so, the majority mistakenly equates a judgment granting a conditional-release order with an ordinary civil judgment. I respectfully dissent.
Off the top of my head, I cannot think of another recent criminal case with this particular combination of Justices in the majority and in the dissent. Except for those involved in complicated habeas proceedings, the line up of the Justices is arguably the most notable aspect of this ruling.
January 14, 2015 in Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Sentences Reconsidered, Who Sentences? | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack


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November 25, 2014 Leave a comment
must be feminine for Valentine
the name which foolish lovers
carry on their breath
to kiss the lapels of blind faith
to love and to hold
(Conversation Inspired)
See behind a smile Read betweens the lines
November 25, 2014 Leave a comment
must be feminine for Valentine
the name which foolish lovers
carry on their breath
to kiss the lapels of blind faith
to love and to hold
(Conversation Inspired)
November 11, 2014 Leave a comment
Hide the moon,
that wretched heart
yearns for things
out of this world
November 10, 2014 Leave a comment
When the soul searches
the heart feels
the eyes see
the lips flutter to sing
songs of ecstasy
yesterday matters no more
(Series of conversation inspired poems.)
October 29, 2014 Leave a comment
Li'l dewdrop covets the sun
on the wings of the li'l bird
for, vapour, the sun turns it into
life, like that blink of an eye
Who cares but itself
life, in that blink of an eye
thousand rainbows, it explodes into
on the wings of the li'l bird
Li'l dewdrop covets the sun no more
March 26, 2014 1 Comment
Cozy, her voice
comforted me
over a crisis
Like a sister
she listened
Like a lover
she soothed
My soul
breaking in pieces
she gathered
with her voice
and ears
Over the Himalayas
across the ocean
she sent her voice
to hug me
to love me
to remind me
of she is there
to help bundle
me up
July 24, 2013 Leave a comment
The moon laughs
at the heart by my side.
The sun burns it to ashes.
My blood I pour and,
rises, it from ashes
and put on the wings
of a Phoenix
May 23, 2013 1 Comment
'Sometimes she is
very rude and abrupt
so don't mind
if she says
something unfavorable
'cause she has some
psychological issues'
was the letter
of introduction
a friend wrote
May 22, 2013 1 Comment
The moment when you smell
the perfect fragrance in a crowd
(the one you wanted to wear for years).
Such was the moment I met you.
'Am I nothing but an odour to you?'
What's left of us but odour?
That lasts as long as the memory of it.
What was left of me for you
when I left was odour on clothes.
And what was left of you for me
when you left was your odour on the pillow
January 10, 2013 2 Comments
The music notes rain in my hair,
assuasive notes nuzzling against my body,


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text:
BASEBALL: Bemidji State rallies to earn split with No. 22 St. Cloud State
ST. CLOUD — The Bemidji State baseball team was shut out for 15 innings during a doubleheader against No. 22 St. Cloud State Saturday in St. Cloud.
The Beavers made the 16th inning count.
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Healthy Lunch Options for Busy Working Moms
Now that you've gotten the kids back to school, why not think about doing a little better on planning for yourself?
Now that you've gotten the kids back to school, why not think about doing a little better on planning for yourself?
Each Monday, Wednesday and Friday we meet at 5pm at Mall St. Vincent in front of Dillards for our walk. Some days we have 9 or 10 ladies and some days it's just a few. But you won't be alone. There
Trouble falling asleep at night? Need to unwind after a stressful work day? This video, featuring 10 hours worth of ambient noise and sounds from deep within a forest, may help.
KVKI will be out at the Shoppes at Bellmead on Youree Drive Friday to help fight breast cancer.
Can getting good grades save your life?
On Friday, August 16, Shreveport-Bossier residents will gather at the Shoppes at Bellmead to help stamp out breast cancer with Susan G. Komen's Friday in Pink fundraiser. And if being a good citizen by donating to breast cancer research wasn't reward enough, Robert and Erin will be on-hand to reward the person who donates the most with a cool prize package. Think of it as a bonus KV-KatIon.
When it comes to tipping the scales, we'd rather have our huge bank accounts do it and not our huge bellies.
As we send our youngsters back to school for the year, is it better to pack a lunch or let them eat in the cafeteria?
The medical world is talking about this study linking Omega 3 fatty acids to prostate cancer.
If you are like me, you need motivation to do any kind of exercise. I really need motivation. Dr. Jason Maggio and Robert J. Wright promised to get me a Dillards gift card if I would walk 30 minutes 3X a week. I failed after day 2. So I tri
I've made it through 5 days of walking without coming up with some sort of lame excuse for not going. Here's the day-to-day breakdown that shows my steady improvement.


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29 year old woman | Katy, TX, USA | Seeking men 25-35 within 50 miles
My life has been inspired by family, friends, and sports. I'm pretty active on a daily basis...biking, running, swimming, etc...I used to play collegiate volleyball but I've hung up my spandex and currently coach high schoolers ;). I like to laugh! Silly humor is my preference...Bridesmaids, Dumb and Dumber, The Office. I love to cook and eat (I can cook the hell out of some ribs). Despite my appetite, I lead a healthy lifestyle and hope that my match would want to do the same. I work hard, love my job, and want to keep traveling. I'm essentially looking for someone who wants to LIVE life and can handle a strong, bit of a smart ass, caring, woman. A few extras..... I rarely match my socks (why do it...no one is going to see them) I will not listen to my music on volume 13 (unlucky people) Do not text and drive....just don't...if you catch me doing it smack my phone out of my hand I dislike slow walkers I'm addicted to coffee. You might as well just hook it to my veins. Humorous people...I adore you....it makes someone incredibly attractive. Target = my downfall....I freaking love that store I'm incredibly competitive....I can't play monopoly...EVER AGAIN! Ping Pong Skills = Forest Gump Level I take pictures of my food. Sometimes it just looks really pretty...don't judge me I wish it was still socially acceptable to build pillow forts at 27... I secretly wish I was in a bike gang...or even a dance crew Biggest fears in life...1. the blob 2. zombies 3. unstoppable diseases that cause zombies I want to buy a really old jeep and fix it up :)
Coffee and conversation , Cooking , Dining out , Movies/Videos , Music and concerts , Exploring new areas , Nightclubs/Dancing , Playing sports , Travel/Sightseeing , Watching sports
Baseball, Cycling, Dancing, Golf, Running, Swimming, Tennis / Racquet sports, VolleyBall, Walking / Hiking, Weights / Machines
I exercise 3-4 times per week.
I like Dogs
Alaska (Eagle River/Anchorage), Dominican Republic, Canada, Austin (Lake Travis), Hershey Park, California, Mexico
Houston Baptist University, Houston, TX
Music: Blind Pilot, The Head and the Heart, The Lumineers, Imagine Dragons, MGMT, Phoenix, Edward Sharpe, Ray Lamontagne, Ben Folds, The White Stripes, Of Monsters and Men
The Alchemist, "Sh*t girls say", Girl who played with fire, Lord of the Rings, Enders Game, lots of random Biology books
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I teach and coach high schoolers :)
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I double majored in Biology and Kinesiology


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Guest Information Graduate
Things to Note
- Please be seated by 5:10 pm, as the processional will begin at 5:15 pm. To show respect to the graduates, guests not seated prior to the processional will need to wait until after the processional to enter Blackwell Hall.
- Graduation is a formal academic ceremony and a special day for the graduates. Please respect this occasion and the graduates by remaining seated and quiet during the ceremony.
Parking is available throughout the campus at any open campus parking lot. If you have accessibility needs, such as accessible parking, contact the Office of Disability Resources at 434.395.2391 by May 6.
Getting Here
If you are planning to stay overnight for Commencement, options in the area are listed below:
- Our comprehensive list of places to stay in the immediate Farmville area is available here.
- Longwood Commencement Guest Housing


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Floor-to-ceiling tile visually connects the vanity and shower rooms of this bath. Cobalt inserts accent the wall tile as well as edge the mirror and countertop. Because these rooms are generous but not overscale, the architect used a series of pocket doors to establish a sense of openness.
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This is a discussion on what is NVIDIA BOOT AGENT 249.0 within the Motherboards, Bios & CPU forums, part of the Tech Support Forum category. hello , I was in my BIOS ASUS Motherboard AMI bios when I looked in the boot order section. When
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Prison Break 2005 | TV Show Watchlist
Photos | Cast & Crew | Episode Guide | Video Clips
An engineer gets himself incarcerated to engineer the escape of his death-row brother, who was framed for killing the vice president's brother. While the setup requires a leap of faith, the drama is consistently taut as Michael Scofield succeeds, only to f (more…)
Premiered: August 29, 2005
Rating: TV-14
Season 1, Episode 15 By the Skin and the Teeth
First Aired: March 27, 2006
As he awaits his execution, Linc thinks he sees someone from his past in the viewing chamber. Meanwhile, Veronica presses to have Terrence Steadman exhumed to determine if the body is in fact Steadman's. And it's back to the drawing boards for Michael, who's looking for "a new way out of here." Vice President Reynolds: Patricia Wettig.
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Editors' Picks: On TV
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit9:00 pm | NBC
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Prison Break: Season 3
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For Application Development & Delivery Professionals
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IBM's InterConnect customer conference gave us a checkpoint on IBM's progress toward becoming a leading cloud platform for enterprises. IBM has marshaled its forces to deliver this latest reinvention...
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Developer Self-Service Access Enables Rapid App Delivery
Developers judge private cloud initiatives by the degree of autonomous access they get to environments and resources that tech management provides. Few enterprises offer developer self-service to...
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Public cloud application platforms unlock the flexibility, developer-productivity, and economic advantages of cloud computing. Business technology and technology management professionals use a wide...
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For CIO Professionals
Report:TechRadar™: Cloud Computing, Q4 2014
Tools And Technology: The Cloud Computing Playbook
Customers no longer question cloud computing as a viable technology choice; in a growing number of enterprises, cloud is now the first choice. Since our 2011 TechRadar™ on cloud computing,...
- Downloads: 452
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This data chart details the full results of Forrester's Q3 2014 Global SharePoint Usage Online Survey. The results show that Microsoft's drive to move SharePoint users to the cloud is working, but...
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Application development and delivery (AD&D) leaders are facing tumultuous change in 2015 driven by people, process, and technology catalysts. Mobile and cloud alter the architectural landscape and...
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Report:Brief: Salesforce Pivots To Modern Applications
Should You Follow The Lightning? The Answer Isn't Simple
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Tools & Technology: The Application Development Strategy, Structure, And Sourcing Playbook
Application development and delivery (AD&D) leaders shifting their strategies, structures, and sourcing to customer-focused software are like acrobats performing above a flimsy net. The tools and...
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For Application Development & Delivery Professionals
Report:Don't Just Maintain Business Applications, Raise Business Responsiveness
Continuous Improvement: The Business Applications Playbook
While big projects such as delivering new off-the-shelf or custom-built applications help your organization achieve excellent business outcomes, sustaining these outcomes requires that your...
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For Enterprise Architecture Professionals
Report:Brief: Tibco's BT Moment Of Truth
Vista Deal Signals Enterprise Software Firms Must Urgently Shift To Business Technology Agenda
After an impressive growth spurt during 2010 and 2011, Tibco Software hit a wall. It grew past $1 billion in sales, but growth has slowed and stockholders are getting impatient. The solution? Get rid...
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For CIO Professionals
Report:Quick Take: Is Ellison Really Stepping Down?
Oracle's Announcement Changes Little In The Near Term, But Is Act One Of An Executive Succession
Many have interpreted Oracle's announcement on September 18, 2014 that founder Larry Ellison will now be chief technology officer (CTO), not CEO, as a major leadership change at the company. The...
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Organization: The Digital Experience Delivery Playbook
Many application development and delivery (AD&D) leaders are on the outside looking into their organizations' digital customer experience projects. Yet their role has great potential to expand as...
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For Enterprise Architecture Professionals
Report:Five Customer-Facing Scenarios Shape "Low-Code" Platform Choices
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Confronting demands to deliver customer-facing applications quickly and efficiently, some firms are seeking alternatives to custom coding on application platforms that rely heavily on Java and .NET...
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Access To Its Customer Community Is Facebook's Biggest Asset, But Login And Mobile Services Have Broader Potential
Facebook is the best-known social network in the world, but for developers it's becoming much more. Facebook's APIs and recent acquisitions position it for developing customer-facing systems of...
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Digital customer experience isn't the next big opportunity for application development and delivery (AD&D) professionals; it's here now. Business leaders responsible for marketing, sales, and support...
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Report:Accelerate Market Responsiveness With A Holistic Cloud Strategy
Executive Overview: The Cloud Computing Playbook
Cloud computing has reached an inflection point for enterprises — a comprehensive strategy for broad adoption and use is now required. Until now, most companies had adopted public cloud...
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For Application Development & Delivery Professionals
Report:New Development Platforms Emerge For Customer-Facing Applications
Firms Choose Low-Code Alternatives For Fast, Continuous, And Test-And-Learn Delivery
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Report:Microsoft Ascending
In First 100 Days, Nadella's Team Shifts To A More Open And Aggressive Posture
When Microsoft named Satya Nadella the third CEO in its history this past February, we posited 10 questions he needed to answer to ensure Microsoft's future relevance to enterprises. As Nadella's...
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For CIO Professionals
Report:Case Study: How Pioneer Is Transforming Its Portal Into An Engagement Workplace
Support Your Users With An Interactive, Integrated, And Intuitive Portal
Over the past several years, forward-thinking organizations have begun to move from intranets, which they primarily used for publishing static content, to "engagement workplaces," which add...
- Downloads: 253
For CIO Professionals
Report:Case Study: How The Council Of Europe Solved Its Portfolio Management Problem
Light-Touch Discipline Yields New Visibility And Insight
The Council of Europe's mission is to address pressing pan-continental political (e.g., democracy and rule of law) and human rights issues. Despite the importance of this work, the council faces the...
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For CIO Professionals
Report:Quick Take: IBM-As-A-Service
IBM's Impact 2014 Is A Milestone In Reshaping IBM's Core Business
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For CIO Professionals
Report:The Public Cloud Market Is Now In Hypergrowth
Sizing The Public Cloud Market, 2014 To 2020
Public cloud services continue to drive big changes in the markets for software, hardware, and IT outsourcing, while providing a foundation for age of the customer innovations. How much and when will...
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For Application Development & Delivery Professionals
Report:Brief: SharePoint Innovations Aimed At Employees, Not Customers
Intranets Get Easier, External Uses Stay Hard
In March 2014, Microsoft announced new innovations for SharePoint 2013; this brief analyzes the good and bad news. The many customers who use SharePoint for employee collaboration will find much to...
- Downloads: 299