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with Taylor Walker

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SUPREME COURT COULD OPEN THE DOOR FOR HUGE NUMBERS OF DEPORTED IMMIGRANTS TO HAVE THEIR CRIMINAL CASES RECONSIDERED.

In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled in a case called Padilla vs. Kentucky, that a an immigrant who is a permanent legal resident but who, after being charged with a felony, agreed to a guilty plea on the bad advice from a defense attorney without being told that his or her plea will result in automatic deportation, can have that guilty conviction vacated.

Now the court is set to decide this year whether or not Padilla should be made retroactive.

Michael Strickland from UPI has more of the details. Here’s a clip:

Is the U.S. Supreme Court about to open the appeal floodgates for legal aliens who committed crimes in the United States, pleaded guilty but weren’t told they would face deportation under federal law?

Maybe. Argument on the issue will be heard next term, which begins on the first Monday of October.

The genesis of the dispute arose in 2010, when the Supreme Court ruled in Padilla vs. Kentucky that non-citizens who pleaded guilty to felonies, but weren’t advised by their lawyers they automatically would be deported, were unconstitutionally deprived of their Sixth and 14th Amendment rights to effective counsel.

The vote was 7-2.

Now the Supreme Court has agreed to review whether the Padilla ruling should be made retroactive. In other words, should it be applied to any non-resident who pleaded guilty to a felony without effective counsel from 1996, when the deportation law was passed, to 2010, when the decision was handed down.

How big a universe would be affected is up for speculation….

One thing: although Strickland implies otherwise, a guilty plea does not always mean the person pleading actually committed the crime. Most times it does, of course. But far from always. These days 90 percent of all criminal cases are settled by plea bargain and people take pleas for all kinds of reasons, a common one being someone who has already spent a year or two in jail waiting to go to trial when his attorney tells him if he just pleas out, he will be released for time (already) served. So he takes the plea—whether he committed the crime or not.. And, if he’s a perfectly legal resident, but not a US citizen, he (or she) will be immediately deported for the rest of his or her life.

In any event, this will be an interesting matter to watch.

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HORRIBLY ABUSED WOMAN WHO SHOULD HAVE BEEN RELEASED AFTER 12 YEARS FOR MANSLAUGHTER, FINALLY GETS OUT AFTER 27

SF woman Wanda Brown was released after serving fifteen years longer than the maximum she should have spent behind bars. Her release was based upon a new retroactive law that allows domestic abuse testimony to be considered in old cases. Getting out also required the work of a young but determined pro bono attorney.

San Jose Mercury News columnist, Scott Herhold has the story:

Here’s how it opens:

Wanda Brown killed Willie Kelley. There was never any question. In a frenzy in 1984, the 22-year-old woman stabbed the San Francisco shopkeeper 64 times with a pocket knife. As lawyers say, it looked like bad facts. She pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. A judge gave her 16 years to life.

With no evidence of premeditation, her lawyer, a San Francisco public defender, told her she’d likely be out in eight and a half years. That was the standard back in the mid-’80s.

Then California politics lurched toward an unforgiving stance on crime. More than 27 years later, Wanda Brown was still at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, rejected three times for parole.

On this one, you really do need to read the rest.

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SHOULD PROSECUTORS BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE WHEN THEIR MISCONDUCT CAUSES INNOCENT PEOPLE TO LOSE YEARS OF THEIR LIVES?

With more and more innocence cases turning up evidence of prosecutorial misconduct, the fact that prosecutors are legally protected from accountability in most of such cases is becoming an increasingly pressing matter.

The Innocence Project’s Barry Scheck has an essay on the issue in Sunday’s Austin Statesman.

Here’s a clip:

In February, Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson affirmed the finding of state District Judge Sid Harle that there was probable cause to believe former Williamson County prosecutor Ken Anderson had violated the criminal laws of Texas by disobeying a court order to disclose evidence pointing to the innocence of Michael Morton, who in 1987 was wrongly convicted of murdering his wife. A court of inquiry will now try Anderson on these charges.

The case against Anderson (who is now a state district judge and denies wrongdoing in the Morton case) made national headlines because, as a recent article in the Yale Online Law Review thoroughly documents, our system rarely disciplines, much less brings criminal charges against, prosecutors who have engaged in acts of intentional misconduct. Far too often, prosecutors, who wield enormous power over our lives, aren’t investigated at all, even for intentional misconduct that has led to a wrongful conviction, much less “harmless” intentional misconduct in cases in which the defendant was guilty.

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TWO SMALL TOWN NEWSPAPER REPORTERS BRING DOWN A CORRUPT SHERIFF—AND GET DEATH THREATS

Be sure to watch this 60 Minutes story about how a small town newspaper did what even the feds couldn’t manage. (Video link here.)

And here’s a clip from the written version:

Prescription drug abuse has become an epidemic in America. Few places have been hit harder than Kentucky, a state that has also been ravaged by addiction to crystal meth. In Whitley County, Kentucky – in the heart of Appalachia — matters were made worse when the man suspected of being at the center of the drug trade was the county’s top law enforcement officer, Sheriff Lawrence Hodge.

There had long been suspicions that Sheriff Hodge was dirty, but nobody – not even federal agents – could prove it.

That’s when two local journalists — both in their 20s — launched their own investigation. And they soon discovered poking into the affairs of a powerful county sheriff can be risky business.

Adam Sulfridge: You know you’re 20 years old, and you’re taking a shower one day and getting ready for class and you get a call from a federal agent because there’s a credible threat against your life. Everything about it is just so surreal. You know. You don’t– you don’t think a whole lot about it. Then later that night you start thinking, you’re like, “Geez, somebody wants to kill me. That’s a little odd.”

And it’s the sheriff. The sheriff wants to kill you.

Read and or watch the rest.

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CAN CANDY SALES TRANSFORM LIVES? CRITICS AREN’T SO SURE

Ex gang-leader-turned-pastor Jesse Sanchez’s Coachella Valley group home requires hours of candy sales by parolees and recovering addicts without providing any rehabilitative programs for the residents.

The Desert Sun’s Rebecca Walsh has the story. Here’s a clip:

At Victory Life, treatment for as many as two dozen men seems to consist of days of chocolate-selling punctuated by church services Sunday morning and Tuesday evening. There is no counseling, no job or life skills training. Residents simply beg, day in and day out, for their upkeep.

“That would never happen in any of our programs,” says Bill Sessa, spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. “Where a parolee goes to find comfort with a church is their business. But that is very different from what we consider rehabilitation.”

Read on. It’s an interesting tale.

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by Celeste Fremon and Taylor Walker

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LAPD SAYS IT WILL HAVE SEPARATE AREA FOR TRANSGENDERED INMATES IN POLICE LOCK-UP

Last Thursday night, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck announced a newly crafted, and hearteningly enlightened policy toward transgender people—including a separate LAPD lock-up, the first in the nation. The new policy takes a hugely significant step in healing the problem-laced relationship between the transgender community and the criminal justice system in general.

(According to a study by UC Irvine commissioned by the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, nearly 60 percent of transgender inmates in California lock-ups reported being sexually assaulted by other inmates, a rate 13 times higher than for a random sample of the general inmate
population.)

The LA Times’ Sam Quinones has the story. Here’s how it opens.

Responding to incidents of violence against transgender arrestees, the Los Angeles Police Department plans to open a segregated lockup for biologically male and female suspects who identify themselves as members of the opposite sex, officials said.

By early May, a 24-bed transgender module will open at the LAPD women’s jail downtown, the first such police lockup in the nation, according to Capt. Dave Lindsay, the jail division commander.

“This is a major change,” Lindsay said. It will allow for “an environment that’s safe and secure, as there’s been a history of violence against transgender people.”

City jails are for holding people only until they are arraigned in court on the charges on which they were arrested, typically a maximum of three days; then they are transferred to the Los Angeles County Jail, run by the Sheriff’s Department. The county jail will not be affected by the changes.

Go, Chief Charlie. This is a very good thing.

HOWEVER, AFTER YOU READ THE TRANSGENDER STORY, READ THIS BY THE LAT’S JOEL RUBIN ABOUT HOW THE POLICE COMMISSION IS CRUCIALLY AT ODDS WITH PART OF BECK’S DISCIPLINE POLICY

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SCOTUS WILL HEAR ARGUMENTS THAT THE FAIR SENTENCING ACT—REGARDING THE CRACK AND POWDER DISCREPANCY—SHOULD BE RETROACTIVE, AT LEAST IN PART

ON Tuesday the US Supreme Court will hear arguments regarding whether or not the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 should be, in any way, retroactive If you’ll remember, the FSA is the law that (mostly) rectified the horrific 1-100 sentencing discrepancy between the prison terms handed down for powder cocaine sales convictions and sentences for convictions for crack sales. (The FSA changed the ratio to 1-20-ish.) The problem is that the new law implied —but did not implicitly say— that it would retroactively apply to crimes committed before the act was passed—but sentenced after the act was passed.

The twinned cases of Dorsey v. the United States, and Hill v. the United States are about that retroactivity issue.

Lyle Denniston over at SCOTUSBLOG has a very complete rundown of the finer points of the cases and the law. While he may be a little on the wordy side for non-wonks, his post is quite fascinating and informative if you take the time.

Here are some clips:

Blacks more often got punished for buying or selling the “crack” or “rock” variety of cocaine, which can be easily processed into a smoked version; conviction carried a much heavier prison sentence. Whites more often got punished for dealing in the “powder” or “blow” version, which can be snorted; conviction carried a far more lenient sentence.

[Snip]

For cocaine, that [1986 Anti-Drug Abuse] Act required judges to punish an individual convicted of a crack crime 100 times more severely than one convicted of trafficking in the powder form. In other words, every gram of crack was treated as the same, for punishment purposes, as 100 grams of powder.

[The Fair Sentencing Act] adopted a ratio that works out to about 18 to 1, crack to powder. A crime involving 28 grams of crack would draw a five-year minimum sentence, as would a crime with 500 grams of powder. A crack crime with 280 grams would be sentenced to ten years, as would a powder crime with 5000 grams. The Justice Department has explained the choice of 28 grams as the bottom amount of crack for sentencing on the premise that wholesale distribution of crack usually involves one-ounce quantities — that is, close to 28 grams.

Although only one lawyer will appear Tuesday for the two Illinoisians, the lawyers for each have filed their own merits brief. The brief for Corey Hill (whose lawyer will be arguing) put its main emphasis upon congressional intent in 2010: “Once Congress completed its historic overhaul of crack sentencing policy,” the brief said, Congress “wanted those amendments to apply immediately….The clear implication….was that the new mandatory minimums should take effect rapidly so that the Guidelines would have a model against which to ‘conform’ and be consistent.”

[Snip]

The Dorsey-Hill cases almost certainly will revive within the Court the long-running dispute over how to read federal statutes — to stay focused only on their language, or to look at legislative history, too. If the Court were to use the former approach, it would seem that the Court-appointed amicus has the better of the argument. The 1871 law is quite specific in requiring Congress, if it wants a new criminal law to have retroactive effect, to say so explicitly; Congress did not do that in 2010. But if the Court were to take the latter approach, there is much that went on during the process of passing the 2010 law that suggests that Congress did want retroactivity to the extent being advanced by the government and counsel for the two Illinois men — not least, the removal of the anti-retroactivity provision from the bill.

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BALTIMORE POLICE ABOUT TO JOIN OTHER DEPARTMENTS WHO VIDEOTAPE INTERROGATIONS

The Baltimore PD, which is the 8th largest department in the nation, plans to begin videotaping interrogations in serious cases like shootings and murders. Criminal justice advocates across the country have been pushing for the move due to the now recognized prevalence of false confessions in innocence cases. Baltimore PD’s dithering—and their determination to make the change—is emblematic of similar policy shifts taking place in agencies all over the U.S.

Justin Fenton of the Baltimore Sun has the story. Here’s a clip:

The department, the eighth-largest in the country, recently began using video as part of a series of reforms of its sex-offense unit. Now officials are exploring equipment options and the policy impact of videotaping homicide and shooting interrogations. Detectives are being trained on subtleties such as where to stand and how their demeanor will play to a jury.

I’m committed to doing this, and I have a bunch of really smart guys working on getting this done,” said police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III, who has studied videotaping since he was chief of detectives. “But it’s not as simple as going to Radio Shack and bolting a camera into the wall.”

[SNIP]

Hundreds of jurisdictions across the country now videotape interrogations, and it is required by law in several states and the District of Columbia. The shift has been spurred by increasing affordability, as well as by questions of coercion and false confessions as DNA testing has led to the release of scores of inmates.

In Harford County, the sheriff’s department says it has long recorded interviews in major cases and recently got funding to add interrogation rooms to neighborhood precincts.

“It’s pretty much a standard for progressive law-enforcement agencies,” Sheriff L. Jesse Bane said. “People are finding out that the things Hollywood portrays really don’t take place.”

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STRANGE, IMPRACTICAL MARRIAGE FOR LAPD? OR CONVENIENT HOOK-UP?

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is expected to propose a merger between the LAPD and the General Services’ Office of Public Safety cops in his budget, to be presented Friday. The rather curious melding of the officers who guard libraries and courthouses with the LAPD may be a cost-efficient way for Villaraigosa to uphold his promise to add 1,000 officers to the LAPD ranks by the end of his mayoral term—or not.

Here’s a clip from the Daily News’ Dakota Smith’s report:

As part of his budget being released Friday, Villaraigosa is proposing to shift the Department of General Services’ Office of Public Safety into the Los Angeles Police Department, according to City Council members familiar with the proposal.

Under the proposal, some or all of the city’s 250 security officers and sworn officers who guard the city’s parks, zoo, and City Hall would move under the command of the LAPD.

City budget chief Miguel Santana is expected to release a report on the costs, advantages, and risks of moving the department to the LAPD next week.

Additionally, the LAPD is doing its own feasibility study on absorbing the department.

“There’s a lot of homework to do before this can occur,” said City Councilman Dennis Zine, adding he has questions about the plan.

For instance, Zine said the OPS and LAPD officers have different salaries and pension plans.

In any case, at this point, it’s far from a done deal.

The L.A. Times also reported on the issue.

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CAN AN UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANT WOULD-BE LAWYER GET ADMITTED TO THE FLORIDA BAR?

Rafael A. Olmeda of the Sun-Sentinel has the intriguing story. Here’s a clip:

Can an immigrant without a green card get a Florida Bar card?

Aspiring lawyer Jose Godinez-Samperio, 25, a Tampa-area resident, is hoping the answer is yes.

A native of Mexico who entered the United States legally with his parents 16 years ago on a tourist visa, Godinez-Samperio is a graduate of the Florida State University College of Law, the valedictorian of the Armwood High School class of 2004, an Eagle Scout — and an undocumented immigrant.

The Florida Board of Bar Examiners, which grants membership to the Bar, has asked the state Supreme Court to determine whether it can accept someone who is not in the country legally. The Supreme Court flagged the case as “high profile” last week.

Similar cases are pending in NY and California.

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Original illustration by Scott McPherson

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by Taylor Walker

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TO CLOSE OR NOT TO CLOSE CA’S COSTLY JUVENILE PROGRAMS?

SF Chronicle’s Marisa Lagos reports on the advantages (and disadvantages) of the state’s controversial juvenile justice programs that the governor proposes to close and the effect that closure could have on the programs’ resident youth.

Here’s a clip:

This is California’s solution to dealing with its juvenile offenders with the most serious criminal backgrounds, who need intensive treatment that county juvenile halls could not provide. The program is expensive, costing state taxpayers $179,400 a year per offender.

Now, the state is contemplating pulling the plug on O.H. Close and three other state-run facilities that serve this population, which represents less than 1 percent of the more than 225,000 youths arrested in California each year. Earlier this year, Gov. Jerry Brown proposed closing the institutions and sending these offenders back to county juvenile halls. [Editors' note: Actually it would be County probation camps. But no matter.]

The move would fall in line with Brown’s broad goal of shifting state services to the county level, in part to cut back on state spending. But staff members at O.H. Close say the closures would be devastating, and some youths here agree, saying they have received far more effective treatment than they ever got in county juvenile halls.

[SNIP]

Staff and wards at both O.H. Close and N.A. Chaderjian Youth Correctional Facility next door say closing the state facilities – which would save the state more than $100 million a year – would set California back, and experts warn it could result in far more juveniles being charged as adults and sentenced to state prison.

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HOW REHABILITATION ALL BUT VANISHED FROM CALIFORNIA’S PRISONS

California’s prison system has drastically cut its inmate rehabilitation programs and inmates have few incentives to participate in those that remain. As a consequence, most are paroled with no new skills or education, and those with drug or mental health problems don’t have them addressed. The East Bay Express’ Joaquin Palomino examines how all of the above contributes to the states’ disastrously high recidivism rate.

Here’s a clip:

….Under the Determinate Sentencing Law that [Jerry] Brown signed [in 1977], most inmates receive a fixed sentence, and are released from prison after a specified time period. As a result, most inmates no longer need to prove to a parole board — like Bolar did — that they are ready to reenter society, and so they don’t have to work for their freedom. Because of this, participation in reform-oriented prison programs has dropped substantially. “The general prison population doesn’t do shit no more,” Bolar noted. “No jobs, no classes, no therapeutics, no nothing … and when it’s time to go home they go home.”

In addition, funding for prison rehabilitation has been systemically cut from the California Department of Corrections’ budget. In the 1990s, the legislature went so far as to officially change the penal code to say that the purpose of prison was punishment — period. “They took rehabilitation out of it entirely,” noted UC Berkeley law professor Barry Krisberg. “So for the past three decades the system has been guided entirely by retribution. The main problem with the punitive approach is that the vast majority of prisoners are released.”

And today, released inmates are much less prepared for free society. They usually commit new crimes and end up back in prison. According to the most recent state statistics, an astounding 65 percent of released inmates now return to prison. In the past 25 years, that number has fluctuated between 60 and 80 percent.

At the same time, California voters and state political leaders have made it much more difficult for lifers to win their release. During the past three decades, California governors have routinely overturned parole-board decisions, forcing prisoners to spend even more time behind bars, thereby further diminishing the role of rehabilitation.

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WHEN A GEORGIA TOWN UNWISELY GAMBLED ITS FUTURE ON AN ICE PRISON

A privately run detention center in a remote Georgia town attempted to revive it’s prison population (and in turn, boost the town’s economy) with immigrant detainees, courtesy of ICE. Now that the prison is again on the brink of closure, Irwin County’s immigrant prisoners endure disturbingly inhumane conditions.

The Nation’s Hannah Rappleye and Lisa Riordan Seville have the story.

Here’s how it opens:

About a mile from the center of Ocilla, Georgia, a two-stoplight town nearly 200 miles south of Atlanta, sits a bleak boxy building surrounded by barbed-wire fencing. A hand-painted sign reads “Irwin County Detention Center.” With 1,200 beds, this private prison is the largest employer in Irwin, a county of 10,000 people. For years it did good business, bringing much-needed jobs to this impoverished part of south Georgia.

But by the middle of 2009 the prison sat nearly half empty. It needed more inmates to keep the business afloat. The facility’s private management company, and the county, began to court today’s most lucrative detention market: Immigration and Customs Enforcement, otherwise known as ICE.

ICE runs the world’s largest immigration detention system, relying heavily on local jails and private facilities in far-flung communities like Irwin County. Rather than operating them itself, the agency leases beds from local jails or contracts with private corporations, such as Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO Group, billion-dollar companies that spend millions on federal lobbying to ensure that the market stays strong. Private companies also inspect and monitor prospective and contracted prisons on ICE’s behalf. These entities are responsible for the health and welfare of more than 33,000 immigrant detainees each day. Immigrants who are detained before deportation can spend anywhere from a few hours to years in custody….

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EDITOR’S UPDATES:

*ANNENBERG’S NEON TOMMY IS THE BEST PLACE TO GO for rounded coverage of the tragic shooting death of two USC grad students.

*NBC HAS A VIDEO OF WEDNESDAY NIGHT’S HIGH SPEED PURSUIT AND OIS SHOOT OUT DEATH OF A 19 YEAR OLD on the 101 Freeway near Canoga Avenue in Woodland Hills.

Dennis Romero of the LA Weekly also reports.

The video is harrowing to watch as the kid, after reportedly speaking to his mother and to police on the cell phone, suddenly throws a skidding U-turn with patrol cars on his tail, then gets out of his car and sprints out onto the freeway. As he runs, really, to nowhere across lanes, he turns around and twice points something at police, a move that could only have one logical ending.

The video also makes clear how important air support is for officers on the ground in highly volatile instances like this one.

UPDATE: Dennis Romero at the LA Weekly is keeping up to date on this story, which is playing out more and more tragically with additional information.

DIGITAL SELF INCRIMINATION

So, let’s say you’ve been arrested, and you’ve been told by the cops (or the assistant district attorney, or whomever) that you have to decrypt the hard drive of your laptop, which law enforcement has been unable to hack. Let’s also say that you know that the material on said hard drive will not be….um…helpful to your legal situation (not that any of you would ever find yourself in such a nasty dilemma; we’re speaking hypothetically here). Anyway, would you have to do it—legally speaking?

Or does that fall in the category of self incrimination, thus you cannot be made to do the decrypting?

On Thursday, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, located in Atlanta, GA, said nope. You cannot be forced into digitally confessing your sins.

Joe Palazzolo of the Wall Street Journal has more.

In a ruling that could have broad ramifications for law enforcement, a federal appeals court has ruled that a man under investigation for child pornography isn’t required to unlock his computer hard drives for the federal government, because that act would amount to the man offering testimony against himself.

The ruling Thursday appears to be the first by a federal appeals court to find that a person can’t be forced to turn over encyption codes or passwords in a criminal investigation, in light of the Fifth Amendment, which holds that no one “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.”

The Atlanta-based U.S. Court of Appeals of the 11th Circuit ruled that “the Fifth Amendment protects [the man’s] refusal to decrypt and produce the contents of the media devices,” which the government believes contain child pornography.

The ruling could handcuff federal investigators, as more data are secured behind sophisticated encryption software. A Justice Department spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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SHERIFF BACA JOINS CHIEF BECK IN SAYING YES TO LICENSES FOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS

Robert Faturechi, Joel Rubin and Paloma Esquivel report for the LA Times:

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca said he supports the idea of allowing illegal immigrants to have driver’s licenses as long as they have been in the United States for a number of years without committing other crimes.

Baca’s comments Thursday come as Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck has also expressed support for driver’s license for illegal immigrants.

Baca said such licenses should only be issued after illegal immigrants fill out comprehensive applications, similar to those for citizenship. The sheriff also said the licenses should be up for renewal annually, and be noticeably different than those issued to citizens.

“There’s enough potential for Chief Beck’s idea for it to be explored,” Baca said Thursday.

The sheriff has expressed openness to illegal immigrants being issued driver’s licenses before. In 2002, he supported a proposal to allow the licenses, but to imprint them with a special marker such as the letter “I” for immigrant so police could determine immediately if they were dealing with someone in the country illegally.

At the time, the sheriff was the head of a task force helping then-Gov. Gray Davis craft a plan to allow certain unlawful immigrants to get licenses, a proposal that eventually was scuttled.

Baca emphasized then that many illegal immigrants were already driving without having passed a driver’s test or buying auto insurance.
“At some point in time, we will allow illegal immigrants to have a driver’s license as long as they are trustworthy and non-criminal people,” Baca said at the time.

Good for the Sheriff. Now if the state legislature would just show some common sense and understand that this is less about immigration policy, than it is about public safety.

The Times editorial board put it well when it wrote:

….critics will argue that granting driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants condones their presence in this country and makes it easier for them to stay. That makes sense in theory but not in practice. The reality is that undocumented immigrants are already here, and they are already driving to jobs taking care of children, mowing lawns and working in factories, among other things. Doesn’t it make sense to ensure that every driver, regardless of immigration status, is trained, capable and insured?

As Beck wisely points out, California’s push to keep undocumented immigrants from obtaining driver’s licenses hasn’t reduced the problems on the road

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SCOTUS APPEARS TO BE HEADED TOWARD AFFIRMING THE STOLEN VALOR LAW

The New York Times’ Adam Liptak has a good summary of what went on in the court when the Supremes heard the Stolen Valor case. Here’s a clip (that includes in back story, in case you’re not up to speed:

Over the course of an hourlong argument on Wednesday, the Supreme Court seemed gradually to accept that it might be able to uphold a federal law that makes it a crime to lie about military honors, notwithstanding the First Amendment’s free speech guarantees. The justices were aided by suggestions from the government about how to limit the scope of a possible ruling in its favor and by significant concessions from a lawyer for the defendant.

The case arose from a lie told in 2007 at a public meeting by Xavier Alvarez, an elected member of the board of directors of a water district in Southern California.

“I’m a retired Marine of 25 years,” he said. “I retired in the year 2001. Back in 1987, I was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. I got wounded many times by the same guy.”

That was all false, and Mr. Alvarez was prosecuted under a 2005 law, the Stolen Valor Act, which makes it a crime to say falsely that one has “been awarded any decoration or medal authorized by Congress for the armed forces of the United States.” Mr. Alvarez argued that his remarks were protected by the First Amendment.

But for the personality of the SCOTUS discussion go to the report from Slate’s Dalia Lithwick, in which she details the kinds of lies that worry each of the justices.

Here’s a clip:

Most interesting to me is what judges think people lie about. So, for instance, amid the flurry of opinions written as the 9th Circuit tried to decide whether to review the Stolen Valor decision as a full court came this gem from Judge Alex Kozinski:

So what, exactly, does the dissenters’ ever-truthful utopia look like? In a word: terrifying. If false factual statements are unprotected, then the government can prosecute not only the man who tells tall tales of winning the Congressional Medal of Honor, but also the JDater who falsely claims he’s Jewish or the dentist who assures you it won’t hurt a bit. Phrases such as “I’m working late tonight, hunny [sic],” “I got stuck in traffic” and “I didn’t inhale” could all be made into crimes.

In so doing, Judge Kozinski launched a weird little judicial Rorschach test one might call Lies Federal Judges Worry About. Entries fly fast and furious this morning.

The LA Times reports that, Wednesday afternoon, in a meeting with the paper’s editorial board and reporters, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck expressed what he saw as the need for some kind of driver’s licensing for California’s undocumented residents.

While Beck’s thoughts on the topic are exceedingly practical and steeped in…oh, I don’t know…logic and facts, his stand will likely illicit a firestorm of criticism. Nevermind that undocumented people are driving anyway—to get to work and drive their kids to school—thus licensing our residents, legal or not, will make us all safer.

In any case, here’s what the Times reports about what Beck had to say:

“My personal belief is that they should be able to” have licenses, Beck said in response to a question during a meeting with Times’ reporters and editorial writers. “The reality is that all the things that we’ve done – ‘we’ being the state of California – over the last 14, 16 years have not reduced the problem one iota, haven’t reduced undocumented aliens driving without licenses. So we have to look at what we’re doing. When something doesn’t work over and over and over again, my view is that you should reexamine it to see if there is another way that makes more sense.”

Beck said he does not believe licenses for illegal immigrants should be identical to regular ones. Saying “it could be a provisional license, it could be a nonresident license,” he acknowledged that state officials would have to find ways to address widely held concerns that offering licenses to people in the county illegally could make it easier for terrorists go undetected.

For Beck, however, such concerns are outweighed by what he said would be improved safety on California roads and the ability of police to identify the people they encounter. “Why wouldn’t you want to put people through a rigorous testing process? Why wouldn’t you want to better identify people who are going to be here?” he said. “It doesn’t make any sense to me. And we could increase safety on the roads. When you make things illegal you cause a lot of other things by chain reaction.”

What he said.

Thank you, Chief Charlie.

Chief of Police Charlie Beck’s proposed changes to the LAPD’s automobile impound policy will be voted on by the Los Angeles Police Commission on Tuesday. It is pretty much preordained that the change will pass through the commission without a hitch.

While the new policy is all but a done deal, what remains open to question— according to critics of the change—is whether or not the proposed new interpretation of the LAPD’s policy is legal. City attorney Carmen Trutanich’s office has told the chief, that the change is not only permissible under the law, it is more correct than the old procedure.

However, according to a statement released Monday afternoon by the LAPPL (the LAPD union) California’s Legislative Counsel says it’s not legal. (The Legislative Counsel is what CA lawmakers and others use to sort out such matters.)

(And, indeed, that’s what the letter from William Chan, Deputy Legislative Counsel, says.)

For those of who have somehow missed this controversy, here’s the deal. Last Spring LAPD Chief Charlie Beck announced that the department was changing its rules for impounding cars of unlicensed drivers at sobriety checkpoints.

The old policy requires that the cops impound a car for 30 days if it is being driven by an unlicensed driver, whether the driver has been drinking or not. For years immigrant rights advocates have rightly pointed out that the policy cuts unfairly against undocumented immigrants, who often need cars to go to work and take their kids to school, but are prohibited from getting a driver’s license under California law. (Thank you, Arnold Schwarzenegger.)

Bothered by the fact that the impound procedures scooped up and penalized so many otherwise-law abiding undocumented residents, Chief Beck made a change that allows the unlicensed driver to call a licensed driver to pick up the car, as long as driver A has ID and car insurance. The unlicensed driver also cannot have caused an accident, or have prior conviction for the same offense. Otherwise the full 30 days kicks in.

Critics of the policy point out that unlicensed drivers are significantly more likely to be involved in fatal crashes and more likely to drive drunk and other reckless behaviors than are validly-licensed drivers.

Of course, all this would be a moot point if undocumented folks were allowed to get drivers’ licenses— then only the unlicensed scofflaws, who are so statistically dangerous, would be at risk of impounds. But, hell, why be practical? (I’m talking to you, California state legislature.)

Okay, back to the question raised in the beginning: is the change legal or not?

Beck makes it clear he has accepted the opinion of City Attorney Trutanich, whose reading of the law centers around the fact that there are two dueling sections in the CA Vehicle code, one of which mandates a 30-day impound, (that costs the poor car owner about $1,300 or more in fees)—while the other Vehicle Code Section allows a car to be released the next day, with proper documentation, (at an approximate cost of $250). Beck explains that he is perfectly within the law when ordering his officers to enforce the second, less onerous section, rather than the first.

The Legislative Analyst says, to the contrary, that the local cops can’t pick and choose between the two Vehicle Code sections; that the one that specifies the mandatory 30-day rule for those who have never had a California DL, legally holds sway. (If you’re not put to sleep by all this and are curious, you can look it up here. The relevant opinion is in the last full paragraph at the bottom of page 6.)

Beck counters that a number of court decisions back his and the City Attorney’s reading of the matter:

Commonly referred to as the Community Caretaking Doctrine, the courts have determined that the decision to impound any vehicle should be based on the totality of circumstances and must be reasonable and in the furtherance of public safety. Statutory authority alone is not sufficient to deprive someone of their vehicle.

In any case the commission votes today and, barring any force majeure, the chief’s proposal will pass.

UPDATE: Blogger Ron Kaye has found an interesting twist on the City Attorney’s opinion on the impound issue. It seems that civil rights attorneys in a federal lawsuit filed in behalf of undocumented immigrants who had their cars impounded for 30 days, argued that the cops had no right to do all this impounding, and to back up their claim, they cited the aforementioned Community Caretaking Doctrine. [See Above], Mr. Trutanich’s office countered that, according to previous decisions upheld by the 9th Circuit the police could absolutely impound the cars of drivers who never had a license, that the Community Caretaking Doctrine did not apply.

So which is it?

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AND IN OTHER LAW ENFORCEMENT NEWS—-THE SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT IS HOPING TO IMPLEMENT A NEW 2-TRACK CAREER SYSTEM THAT ALLOWS SOME DEPUTIES TO NOT HAVE TO SERVE YEARS IN THE JAILS

The sheriff’s department’s insistence that all deputies have to work the jails for their first years out of the LASD academy has long been a source of criticism for reformers, yet the department has resisted change. Now, it seems that, Sheriff Baca is embracing the notion of a two-track career system—parole OR custody, with custody duty offering a fast track to promotion.

Ari Bloomekatz and Robert Faturechi have the story for the LA Times.

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AND SOME GOOD NEWS: AS EXPECTED, THE TRUANCY FINE ISSUE MOVED OUT OF COMMITTEE AT THE CITY COUNCIL

Rick Orlov of the Daily News/Contra Costa Times has lots of the details.

School Board prez, Monica Garcia, approved the move.

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DID RADIO SHOW THIS AMERICAN LIFE MOVE APPLE TO SEND OUTSIDE INSPECTORS TO FOXCONN?

On Monday, in response to a growing upset from its devoted customers, Apple announced that it had asked an independent inspecting entity to assess conditions at Foxconn and the other main factories where our shiny new i-things are made.

The outcry has been building for a while, but many believe the turning point was the January 6, 2012, brilliant and devastating broadcast by NPR’s This American Life about the Foxconn plant.

By the end of last month, the NY Times followed up with its own affecting report on the awful conditions. But it was the amazing Mike Daisy’s adaptation for TAL of his one-man show on the topic, combined with the TAL staff’s own follow-up—from which there was no going back—especially when, a few days later, there were horrifying reports of a threatened mass suicide among Foxconn workers.

You really are missing something if you don’t listen to the podcast.

May Apple’s audit genuinely stimulate change.

SO CAL CONNECTED EXPOSES OUTRAGEOUS HOUSING AUTHORITY CORRUPTION, HEAD GUY IS OUSTED—AND WALKS AWAY WITH $1.2 MILLION

This is just incredible.

Earlier this year, investigations by KCET’S So Cal Connected exposed corruption and fraud at the Los Angeles Housing Authority—or HACLA—the agency responsible for providing shelter for the city’s poorest residents, and for overseeing LA’s Federal public housing projects. Then this past week, the show broadcast a whole new round of investigations into the shocking level of waste and abuse of tax payer money by top managers at the agency..

So Cal Connected’s investigation, plus audits by City Controller Wendy Gruel, resulted in the ouster of HACLA head guy Rudolf Montiel. However, it turns out that, instead of being sanctioned, Montiel was given a $1.2 million departure package by the HACLA board, reports the LA Times.

KCET has an interactive database here that allows you to check out the HACLA managers’ thousands of dollars worth of dinners, gifts and “employee incentives.”

There’s lots more to this story, so stay tuned.

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PRESIDENTIAL PARDON’S: YOU’RE WA-A-A-AAAY MORE LIKELY TO GET ONE IF YOU’RE WHITE—AND WELL CONNECTED

Dafna Lindzer and Jennifer LaFleur of ProPublica did this important 2-part series that it co-published with the Washington Post

Here’s how Part 1 opens:

White criminals seeking presidential pardons over the past decade have been nearly four times as likely to succeed as minorities, a ProPublica examination has found.

Blacks have had the poorest chance of receiving the president’s ultimate act of mercy, according to an analysis of previously unreleased records and related data.

Current and former officials at the White House and Justice Department said they were surprised and dismayed by the racial disparities, which persist even when factors such as the type of crime and sentence are considered.

“I’m just astounded by those numbers,” said Roger Adams, who served as head of the Justice Department’s pardons office from 1998 to 2008. He said he could think of nothing in the office’s practices that would have skewed the recommendations. “I can recall several African Americans getting pardons.”

The review of applications for pardons is conducted almost entirely in secret, with the government releasing scant information about those it rejects.

ProPublica’s review examined what happened after President George W. Bush decided at the beginning of his first term to rely almost entirely on the recommendations made by career lawyers in the Office of the Pardon Attorney.

The office was given wide latitude to apply subjective standards, including judgments about the “attitude” and the marital and financial stability of applicants. No two pardon cases match up perfectly, but records reveal repeated instances in which white applicants won pardons with transgressions on their records similar to those of blacks and other minorities who were denied.

And here’s Part 2, a fascinating piece which tracks the circuitous process of trying to get a pardon for a well-connected, well-off guy who eventually did get the 12th pardon of George W. Bush’s presidency.

ProPublica’s editors write that this is “the kind of journalism that demands action.” Yep.

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WHEN LOS ANGELES SHERIFF’S DEPUTIES ASSAULT INMATES, THEY MAY GET FIRED, BUT THEIR CASES OFTEN DON’T GET PASSED ALONG TO THE DA’S OFFICE FOR PROSECUTION

The LA Times’ Jack Leonard and Robert Faturechi, who have been covering the jail abuse scandal for the Times, report that the “L.A. County Sheriff’s Department does not always share with prosecutors the results of investigations of possible inmate abuse.”

Here’s a clip:

Even as a sergeant shouted, “Stop hitting him! Stop hitting him!,” Deputy Marcos Stout continued punching an inmate in the head. Then, with the inmate on the concrete floor, Stout landed his knee on the man’s skull.

Lawyers for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department described the deputy’s actions as “callous and brutal behavior toward a helpless and unresisting person.”

Though Stout’s excessive force was egregious enough to get him fired, prosecutors did not charge him with a crime — but not because they concluded that the violence wasn’t criminal, according to interviews. They never knew about it.

In several cases in recent years, deputies who were disciplined or even fired for abusing inmates escaped criminal scrutiny because Sheriff’s Department officials chose not to give the evidence to the district attorney’s office, opting to handle the cases internally.

Law enforcement experts interviewed by the Los Angeles Times said the department should routinely conduct criminal investigations of brutality claims and forward the results to prosecutors to determine whether criminal charges should be filed.

“Just because you’re part of the Sheriff’s Department doesn’t mean you can commit battery with impunity,” said Dennis Kenney, a former Florida police officer and current professor studying police use of force at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

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U.S. CITIZEN FLORIDA STUDENTS ARE REFUSED INSTATE COLLEGE TUITION PRICES IF THEY CANNOT PROVE THEIR PARENTS ARE LEGAL IMMIGRANTS

This story by NYTimes Opinionator contributor Linda Greenhouse truly falls into the You’ve-Got-To-Be-Kidding category.

Here’s how it opens:

In the current race to the bottom to see which state can provide the most degraded and dehumanizing environment for undocumented immigrants, Arizona and Alabama have grabbed the headlines. But largely unnoticed, it is Florida, home to nearly one million Cuban refugees and their descendants, that has come up with perhaps the most bizarre and pointless anti-immigrant policy of all.

Beginning last year, the state’s higher education authorities have been treating American citizens born in the United States, including graduates of Florida high schools who have spent their entire lives in the state, as non-residents for tuition purposes if they can’t demonstrate that their parents are in the country legally.

Yes, you read that correctly – although when I first came upon a description of the policy a few weeks ago, I was sure that I had misunderstood something. It’s a basic tenet of equal protection law that the government can’t single out citizens for disfavored treatment without a good reason. The Supreme Court is serious about this, even ruling unanimously a decade ago that an Illinois village violated an individual homeowner’s 14th Amendment right to equal protection by demanding from her a bigger easement than it required of her neighbors as the price of connecting her home to the municipal water supply.

A few feet of land more or less may not have made a life-changing difference to the plaintiff in that case. But consider the difference between in-state and non-resident tuition at the University of Florida: $5,700 a year versus $27,936. The disparity is similar at the state’s community colleges, although the price tags are lower. It is the difference between a college education and none.

It seems grossly unfair, as the Supreme Court acknowledged 30 years ago in Plyler v. Doe when it held that Texas could not deprive undocumented children of a free public K-through-12 education, to blame children for the wrongdoing of their parents. Unfair and, as Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. observed in his concurring opinion, socially self-destructive, in creating a permanent underclass of uneducated people.

“CRIME AFTER CRIME” – THE STRUGGLE TO FREE BATTERED WOMAN, DEBORAH PEAGLER

The feature-length documentary film, “Crime After Crime,” traces the legal battle to free Deborah Peagler from a California prison 20 years after she was connected to the murder of the man who had abused her and forced her into prostitution.

It premiered Thursday night on OWN, the Oprah Winfrey network, but it will encore, so power up your DVRs. It’s an incredible California criminal justice story and points beyond itself to a discussion we should be having about whom we incarcerate.

Here’s what WitnessLA posted about the case of Deborah Peagler two years ago.

And here’s an interview with Yoav Potash, the film’s director.

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ICE SHATTERED FAMILIES

In the first six months of 2011, the US government removed more than 46,000 mothers and fathers of U.S.-citizen children.

Some of those kids stayed with other family members. But, many end up in the foster care system.

In a new study, the Applied Research Center estimates that there are approximately 5,100 children living in foster care whose parents have been either detained or deported.. If the same rate holds true for new cases, writes ARC in their report, in the next five years, 15,000 more children will land in the foster care system when their moms and/or dads are detained or deported.

Here’s what ARC recommends:

Federal, state and local governments must create explicit policies to protect families from separation. These polices should stop the clock on the child welfare process and the immigration enforcement process to ensure that families can stay together and allow parents to make the best decisions for the care and custody of their children.

The whole study is a worthwhile read.

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CAMERAS, COPS AND THE FIRST AMENDMENT

Journalists and activists and citizens have the Constitutional right to photograph or video officers making an arrest as long as the picture taking doesn’t interfere with the police. But a lot of law enforcement see the matter otherwise.

The Crime Report has an interesting story by Jeremy Kohler about the conflict over this right that is being played out on many streets in the U.S.

Here’s a clip:

Walking by the Boston Common one afternoon in October 2007, Simon Glik saw three police officers forcing a young man face down on a park bench and heard a bystander say, “You’re hurting him.”

Concerned that officers were using unreasonable force to arrest the man, Glik, a young lawyer, used his cell phone to film the incident from 10 feet away.

After placing the suspect in handcuffs, an officer told him he’d taken enough pictures. Glik responded, “I am recording this. I saw you punch him.”

An officer asked Glik if his cell phone recorded audio. Glik said yes. The officer cuffed Glik, and arrested him on a charge of violating Massachusetts’s wiretap law, aiding in the escape of a prisoner, and disorderly conduct.

They also erased some of the recording, according to news accounts.

Glik was part of a trend that is riling journalists and activists…..

Read the rest.