Once again in California, those in the state with any kind of experience and/or knowledge of juvenile justice, are trying to persuade California lawmakers to please, please, please pass a law that gives kids sentenced to prison for life a chance—just a chance, no kind of guarantee—to one day make the case that they are worthy of parole.

So far, as was true last year and the year before, nearly all the Republicans and far too many spineless Democrats, are unwilling to pass the thing. Thus SB9—as the bill is numbered—still is a few votes shy of being able to pass.

And while advocates are not giving up, the fact that our supposedly liberal state cannot pass this watered down bill is discouraging.

As I’ve stated here a zillion times, the United States is the only country in the world that puts kids in prison for life without parole—LWOP. The only one. Really. Nobody else does it. Nobody.

And….as that battle goes on in Sacramento, it is instructive to read this investigation by three reporters from the New England Center for Investigative Reporting about the discrepancy in sentencing in Massachusetts for juvenile murders. It is likely that California could use such an investigation.

Read the whole thing, but here’s how it opens:

Shrewsbury teen Valerie N. Hall pushed her mother down a flight of stairs in 2000, smashed her head in with a hammer and left Kathleen Thompsen Hall to die while she went for a ride with her boyfriend. For her mother’s murder, Hall, a depressed and suicidal 16-year-old at the time, served nine years in prison.

Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School student John Odgren, who suffers from depression and other mental ailments, fatally stabbed schoolmate James Alenson in the boy’s bathroom in 2007 when he was 16, and after realizing what he had done, tried to get help. Odgren is serving life without the possibility of parole at Bridgewater State Hospital.

Both crimes were ghastly. Both teens suffered from mental illness. Both were charged with first-degree murder.

But their punishments could not have been more different.

The dispositions of the Hall and Odgren cases illustrate the profound inequities that have grown up in the Massachusetts juvenile justice system since the passage of a tough sentencing law enacted 15 years ago and designed to punish the most depraved “super-predators” among teen killers.

An investigation by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting reveals, for the first time, that that law is not being applied consistently to the most horrific juvenile murder cases, as it was intended. The findings come as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares this spring to tackle whether it is “cruel and unusual” punishment to sentence juveniles 14 and under to life without parole for murder.

As the investigation points out, even law-and-order Texas has repealed life without parole for juveniles. But not Massachusetts…..and not California.

AND WHILE WE’RE ON THE TOPIC—SOME WISE WORDS ABOUT CALIFORNIA’S JUVENILE PRISONS FROM JAMES BELL

Juvenile crime reached an all time low in California in 2010.

For this and other reasons, Jerry Brown wants to shut down the state’s incarceration facilities for kids by 2014, and move all of those juveniles to camps or other facilities at a county level.

Most of the juvenile justice experts I know see this idea as a damned if you do, damned if you don’t proposition.

On one hand the facilities we used to call CYA (California Youth Authority), that we now call DJJ (Department of Juvenile Justice) are lousy places, where kids don’t get what they need. What is more they’re insanely expensive to run.

On the other hand, some of the kids sent to DJJ are mentally ill and very difficult to handle. To toss them into, say, Los Angeles County’s already troubled probation camps, would be difficult.

James Bell, the founder and executive director of the W. Haywood Burns Institute, talks to KALW News about whether or not it’s practical or not for the young people in DJJ to be brought back to their home counties.

Here’s a couple of clips from the transcript for the broadcast:

The whole point of juvenile justice system is to make sure that we do some habilitation and some rehabilitation, so that you won’t go on to be an adult chronic offender. You are supposed to be there to be getting needs addressed that you have expressed as a juvenile, as a young person. Essentially, this was the place where it was guards in a pod, hundreds of young people in dorms, and if anything happens the guards would throw tear gas left, throw tear gas right, and call for backup or the SWAT team. So, you would have to declare a gang affiliation to be protected. It was just horrible!

There was no real interactive model between the young people and the people that were supposed to be serving them. So it just became custody and control. And as we know, there were beatings, there were deaths. There were absurd instances where kids with special education needs were supposed to get education but the facilities people thought they were too dangerous. So your classroom was just cage! Literally, you can imagine the absurdity that has to happen when you are non-interactive and you go to custody and control. That’s what it was.

KERNAN: Now the call is to shut down the DJJ altogether. Why is that happening now do you think?

BELL: There have been calls to shut down these facilities for many, many years. And the reasons were what we’ve just talked about: Treatment wasn’t right, it was extremely expensive for that kind of treatment. Recidivism rates were crazy – between 60-70% range. It was like, why are we doing this? But those arguments had no salience because of fear, the way politicians frame public safety… it just got no traction. Literally, the state’s fiscal crisis is the reason because folks are looking at why shouldn’t we do something differently.

Now in fairness, the populations were going down and I believe that’s because the locals were beginning to see that sending their young people away to the Youth Authority as it was then, wasn’t productive, wasn’t helpful. And so there is a movement out there in the youth justice field to look at rational policies, to become less anecdotal, more based on data and objective screens and probation violation grids and those kinds of things. That resulted in less counties sending their people anyway.

And you could really see a north-south split. Southern California being the one that are most sending, and northern California sending least….

Read or listen to the rest. Bell is very good at laying things out.

DEAR CALIFORNIA, I KNOW WE NEED MONEY, BUT PLEASE DON’T SELL OUR PRISONS TO THOSE SMILING GUYS WITH THE BAGS FULL OF MONEY

Chris Kirkham, writing for the Huffington Post has the story (actually two stories) on this new and alarming trend that brings with it a moral conundrum: If prisons become privatized is there not a budget incentive for prison inc. to get or keep customers?

In any case, here’s how Kirkhan opens his story:

As state governments wrestle with massive budget shortfalls, a Wall Street giant is offering a solution: cash in exchange for state property. Prisons, to be exact.

Corrections Corporation of America, the nation’s largest operator of for-profit prisons, has sent letters recently to 48 states offering to buy up their prisons as a remedy for “challenging corrections budgets.” In exchange, the company is asking for a 20-year management contract, plus an assurance that the prison would remain at least 90 percent full, according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Huffington Post.

The move reflects a significant shift in strategy for the private prison industry, which until now has expanded by building prisons of its own or managing state-controlled prisons. It also represents an unprecedented bid for more control of state prison systems.

Corrections Corporation has been a swiftly growing business, with revenues expanding more than fivefold since the mid-1990s. The company capitalized on the expansion of state prison systems in the ’80s and ’90s at the height of the so-called ‘war on drugs,’ contracting with state governments to build or manage new prisons to house an influx of drug offenders. During the past 10 years, it has found new opportunity in the business of locking up undocumented immigrants, as the federal government has contracted with private companies in an aggressive immigrant-detention campaign.

And Corrections Corporation’s offer of $250 million toward purchasing existing state prisons is yet another avenue for potential growth. The company has billed the “corrections investment initiative” as a convenient option for states in need of fresh revenue streams: The state benefits from a one-time infusion of cash, while the prison corporation wins a new long-term contract. a businessl

Kirkham also reports that the state of Florida just narrowly escaped selling a bunch of it’s prison facilities to a large prison corp.

This death penalty case about returned mail and multiple oversights on the part of lackadaisical court clerks and ball-dropping lawyers seemed to get a positive hearing from everyone but Scalia who reportedly was the only obvious contra.

The AP’s Mark Sherman has the story.

Here’s how it opens:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The tale of returned mail and a missed deadline might seem comical if it did not involve a man trying to stave off execution. Supreme Court justices had harsh words Tuesday for lawyers who abandon their clients and a state legal system that does not seem overly concerned.

At the end of a lively hour of arguments, it appeared the court would order a new hearing for Alabama death row inmate Cory Maples, who had lost the chance to appeal his death sentence because of a mailroom mix-up at the New York law firm Sullivan and Cromwell and the diffidence of a local court clerk.

Two Sullivan and Cromwell lawyers had been pressing Maples’ claim that his earlier legal representation was so bad that it violated the Constitution – until they both left the firm without telling him or the Alabama courts.

Deadlines usually matter a lot at the Supreme Court, where a few years back a defendant who was late to file an appeal because the judge gave his lawyer the wrong date still lost his case. Another principle the court often holds dear is that it’s tough luck for defendants whose lawyers make mistakes.

But Tuesday’s case, perhaps because it involves the death penalty, was the rare instance when the court seemed prepared to grant some leeway on both counts.

Justice Samuel Alito is a former federal prosecutor who often votes for the government in criminal cases. But he said he did not understand why Alabama fought so hard to deny Maples the right to appeal when the deadline passed “though no fault of his own, through a series of very unusual and unfortunate circumstances.”

FYI: Maples isn’t arguing innocence at this point, only basic fairness in being allowed an appeal. Nice to see the Supremes responding.

The NY Times has this editorial on the case.

FEDS: NO GUNS OR AMMO FOR MED MARIJUANA USERS…..MONTANA: OH, REALLY? SEZ YOU!

Oh, how, I love the folks in my other home state.

This is by Charles Johnson from the Missoulian. A clip to get you started.

Attorney General Steve Bullock voiced his objection Monday to the U.S. Justice Department over its recent memo banning the sale of guns or ammunition to licensed medical marijuana users and urged the agency not to prosecute anyone for now.

Bullock wrote U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder about the Sept. 21 memo from the Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to licensed gun dealers. The memo said it is illegal for medical marijuana cardholders to buy guns and ammunition, and illegal for dealers to sell these products to them.

The letter from Bullock followed criticism of the policy last week from all three members of Montana’s congressional delegation, Sens. Jon Tester and Max Baucus, and Rep. Denny Rehberg. A firearms advocacy group and a medical marijuana group had earlier blasted the memo.

Bullock told Holder said he’s willing to work with the U.S. Justice Department staff “on exploring a reasonable solution to the problems created by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives letter.”

The goal, he said, is to find an approach that works for the Montana and the other 15 states and the District of Columbia that have legalized medical marijuana.

“This would be much better than the type of unilateral proclamation represented by the ATF letter, which was issued without any advance notice or discussion with the elected officials who represent more than one-fourth of this nation’s population and one-third of its states,” Bullock wrote.

“In the meantime, I respectfully request that the Department of Justice not pursue any criminal prosecutions against law-abiding citizens in Montana who exercise their constitutional rights to possess guns and enjoy hunting, or the licensees who are implicitly threatened by ATF’s letter.”

Bullock said Montana had about 200,000 hunters last year, and the state Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks sold more than 580,000 hunting licenses. As Montanans purchase guns and ammunition from sporting good stores, some of them may also have medical marijuana cards, he said.

Go Big Sky!

(For the record, I’m a wine drinker, not a toker—med or otherwise. And I don’t like guns. However, that isn’t the point. But thank you for inquiring.)

SHERIFF BACA HOLDS “TOWN HALL-STYLE MEETING INSIDE MEN’S CENTRAL JAIL

It is welcome news that Sheriff Lee Baca talked with inmates at Men’s Central Jail in a town hall-style meeting on Saturday and asked those at the meeting to be candid about what was wrong at CJ.

At the same time, the move doesn’t in any way lessen the need for a large scale federal investigation into inmate abuse by deputies in the County Jail system.

For one thing, the problems are far deeper than anything inmates are likely to be willing to share in any public setting, for fear of reprisal.

On the other hand, the Sheriff is giving a signal that he is paying attention, which is a move forward from last week’s stance.

Rong-Gong Lin II of the LA Times has the story. Here’s a clip:

More than 100 prisoners, many shaved and tattooed, crowded into the hard pews of the Men’s Central Jail chapel and craned their necks to get a good look at “The Man.”

Sheriff Lee Baca, the top authority figure in Los Angeles County’s troubled jail system, had summoned them for a rare town-hall-style meeting Saturday morning. The reason for the gathering? Allegations of abusive behavior on the part of jail guards and the disclosure of a federal law enforcement probe into Baca’s jails.

“I want to hear your concerns,” the sheriff told the men, all denizens of the aging jail’s infamous third floor, where many use-of-force incidents occur. “Don’t hold it back.”

In an appeal that sounded more like Oprah Winfrey than Wyatt Earp, Baca urged the inmates to open up to him, and at the same time ordered his jail commanders to take note. …

Read on.

LA SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT INVESTIGATES SELF AND FINDS DRUG-SUPPLYING DEPUTIES INSIDE JAILS

Getting one’s hands on narcotics inside California’s correctional institutions, be they state prisons or LA’s jails, isn’t even a teensy bit difficult. Ask any inmate. One merely has to have to have the money to pay for the stuff.

The LA Times’ Robert Faturechi and Jack Leonard have report that the Sheriff’s Department has been investigating guards for bringing drugs into the jails in return for money. (In simple parlance we call this drug dealing.)

Here are a couple of clips from their story:

Los Angeles County jail inmates have used corrupt guards to penetrate tight security at lockups, helping fuel a lucrative drug trade behind bars, according to interviews and documents reviewed by The Times.

Three sheriff’s guards have been convicted and a fourth fired in recent years for smuggling or attempting to smuggle narcotics into jail for inmates. Sheriff’s investigators are probing allegations that at least three more deputies took drugs or other contraband into the jails.

The porous nature of the jails was highlighted last week when The Times revealed that FBI agents conducted an undercover sting in which a deputy was accused of taking $1,500 to smuggle a cellphone to an inmate working as a federal informant. Federal authorities are investigating reports of brutality and other misconduct by deputies in the nation’s largest jail system.

[SNIP]

Sheriff Lee Baca said employees caught up in smuggling schemes are usually facing financial hardship. The deputy at the center of the FBI sting had six children from two prior marriages, commitments that consumed about 70% of his salary, Baca said.

“There are people who will falter,” he said.

James E. Blatt, an attorney who represented a sheriff’s custody assistant caught trying to smuggle five grams of heroin and two syringes into jail, said his client was a 19-year-old who lacked the training necessary to deal with wily criminals.

A couple of points about those last two statements: While we all feel for the child-support-and-alimony-hobbled deputies who get nailed for bringing in drugs or other contraband, one cannot help but observe that the same standard of emotional leniency is not applied to some ordinary Joe who gets popped for possession with intent to sell in order to buy food for his family and diapers for his baby.

As for attorney James Blatt’s contention that “wily criminals” made the sheriff’s custody assistant start dealing heroin to inmates…. ditto.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND FREE SPEECH THE BIGGEST THEMES ON SCOTUS’ NEW DOCKET

The NY Times’ Adam Liptak
reports. Here are some clips:

The Supreme Court, which has been focused in recent terms on the rights of corporations and on curbing big lawsuits, returns to the bench on Monday with a different agenda. Now, criminal justice is at the heart of the court’s docket, along with major cases on free speech and religious freedom.

[SNIP]

…the shift in focus toward criminal and First Amendment cases will soon be obscured if, as expected, the justices agree to hear a challenge to the 2010 health care overhaul law. That case promises to be a once-in-a-generation blockbuster.

In the meantime, the justices will hear an extraordinary set of cases that together amount to a project that could overhaul almost every part of the criminal justice system.

The court will decide whether the police need a warrant to use advanced technology to track suspects, whether jails may strip-search people arrested for even the most minor offenses, whether defendants have a right to competent lawyers to help them decide whether to plead guilty, when eyewitness evidence may be used at trial, and what should happen when prosecutors withhold evidence.

“The Supreme Court has positioned itself to improve the quality of the criminal justice process from beginning to end,” said Eric M. Freedman, a law professor at Hofstra University.

The court will continue its intense engagement with the First Amendment. But where earlier cases involved quirky issues like dog fights, funeral protests and the Seven Aphorisms of a fringe church called Summum, the marquee First Amendment cases this term involve issues of sweep and consequence.

In one, the court will rule on whether the government may ban swearing and nudity on broadcast television. In another, the justices will decide for the first time whether there is a “ministerial exception” to employment laws that allows religious institutions to discriminate in ways others employers cannot.

Read on. There is an intriguing line-up of criminal justice and free speech cases that could be of consequence.

“PROHIBITION” NEW KEN BURNS DOCUMENTARY SERIES HAS IMPLICATIONS ABOUT PRESENT DAY WAR ON DRUGS, PARTICULARLY MARIJUANA

Doug Berman at Sentencing, Law and Policy has this commentary:

I highly recommend everyone join me in setting the DVR to record the new PBS three-part documentary “Prohibition.” In my town, this terrific-looking program begins airing [Sunday, Oct. 2]; I am hopeful that even those without TVs can find ways to watch the whole series via this official website. Here is a preview from that site:

****

PROHIBITION is a three-part, five-and-a-half-hour documentary film series directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick that tells the story of the rise, rule, and fall of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the entire era it encompassed. The culmination of nearly a century of activism, Prohibition was intended to improve, even to ennoble, the lives of all Americans, to protect individuals, families, and society at large from the devastating effects of alcohol abuse.

But the enshrining of a faith-driven moral code in the Constitution paradoxically caused millions of Americans to rethink their definition of morality. Thugs became celebrities, responsible authority was rendered impotent. Social mores in place for a century were obliterated. Especially among the young, and most especially among young women, liquor consumption rocketed, propelling the rest of the culture with it: skirts shortened. Music heated up. America’s Sweetheart morphed into The Vamp.

Prohibition turned law-abiding citizens into criminals, made a mockery of the justice system, caused illicit drinking to seem glamorous and fun, encouraged neighborhood gangs to become national crime syndicates, permitted government officials to bend and sometimes even break the law, and fostered cynicism and hypocrisy that corroded the social contract all across the country. With Prohibition in place, but ineffectively enforced, one observer noted, America had hardly freed itself from the scourge of alcohol abuse — instead, the “drys” had their law, while the “wets” had their liquor.

The story of Prohibition’s rise and fall is a compelling saga that goes far beyond the oft-told tales of gangsters, rum runners, flappers, and speakeasies, to reveal a complicated and divided nation in the throes of momentous transformation. The film raises vital questions that are as relevant today as they were 100 years ago: about means and ends, individual rights and responsibilities, the proper role of government and finally, who is — and who is not — a real American.

****

I do not think one needs to be a committed critic of the modern war on drugs to be worried that, now in 2011, the enduring national prohibition on marijuana often “turn[s] law-abiding citizens into criminals, [makes] a mockery of the justice system, [causes] illicit [drug use] to seem [comical] and fun, encourage[s] neighborhood gangs to become national crime syndicates, permit[s] government officials to bend and sometimes even break the law, and foster[s] cynicism and hypocrisy.”

I am rooting not only for this documentary to be a stark reminder of the failures of alcohol prohibition, but also for it to encourage new persons ask hard questions “about means and ends, individual rights and responsibilities, the proper role of government” and American virtues and values in conjunction with modern federal pot prohibition.

STEVE COOLEY SAYS REALIGNMENT WILL CAUSE RISE IN CRIME

I like Cooley, but this is not helpful—nor do most people directly involved with the realignment process believe it’s true. From CBS:

District Attorney Steve Cooley says with thousands of new, convicted felons coming into the jail system and 8,000 or more nonviolent felons being released early on parole; it’s a prescription for disaster.

“I’m also predicting in connection with that population, we’re going to experience the greatest spike in crime of the last several decades,” Cooley said.

NEW STUDY SHOWS MORE WHITES USE WEED, BUT MORE MANY BLACKS ARE ARRESTED FOR IT

The LA Times has an editorial on the new study that shows that blacks are far more likely to be arrested for pot than whites—even though whites consume the stuff at a much more rapid clip. For instance, in LA blacks are 7 times more likely to be arrested for pot; in Pasadena and Inglewood, 12 times more likely.

The glaring disparity has gotten the NAACP and the National Black Police Association—among others— to support Prop 19.

However, the LAT editorial board harrumphs that it’s still not enough of a reason to pass the measure.

IF PROP 19 PASSES, HOW WILL CALIF. LOOK THE DAY AFTER? (LEGALLY SPEAKING)

Julia Dahl of the Crime Report has a snapshot of what post-Prop-19 changes will and won’t take place, should the measure win.

Here’s the opening:

One week from tomorrow, the nation’s most populous state may decriminalize marijuana. Polls indicate that California’s Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010, otherwise known as Proposition 19, is supported by between 39 and 44 percent of likely voters.

But even if the proposition becomes law, California’s 338 separate police departments and 58 county sheriffs are likely to have the final word.

Several of the state’s law enforcement authorities, such as Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, have already signaled they will continue to enforce federal laws against possession and cultivation of marijuana—no matter what happens.

“You’re going to have massive confusion,” predicts Rodney Jones, Chief of Police in Fontana, California, a city of 200,000 located 50 miles east of Los Angeles.

Read on.

NINTH CIRCUIT REQUIRES AZ TO FOLLOW THE CONSTITUTION, ET AL (AGAIN) WHEN IT COMES TO VOTING REQUIREMENTS

Tuesday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated much of Arizona’s 2004 Proposition 200, which required proof of citizenship in order to register to vote.

A legal ID will do fine, said the court. Here’s a clip from the Arizona Daily Star:

The split decision by a three-judge panel determined that the requirement to show proof of citizenship — passed by voters in 2004 — is not consistent with the National Voter Registration Act.

[SNIP]

The majority noted that Congress was well aware of the problem of voter fraud when it passed the voter act, and built in sufficient protections, including applying perjury penalties to applicants who lie about their eligibility.

The court determined Arizona’s polling place photo identification requirement, however, is a minimal burden and does not violate the Equal Protection Clause in the 14th Amendment.

And, by the way, before anyone starts nattering about the liberality of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, one of the justices sitting on the three-judge panel (and one of the two who voted with the majority) was an Arizona-raised Republican girl named Sandra Day O’Connor.

WHAT MEG WHITMAN COULD HAVE DONE WITH THE $140 MILLION—INSTEAD

Steve Lopez has been having much too good a time with this, in case you’ve missed it.

SCOTUS IS WA-A-AAAY MORE BIZ-FRIENDLY THAN IN THE PAST, STUDY SAYS

Really? Ya, think? (cough) Citizens United (cough, cough)

Greg Stohr of Bloomberg has the story:

The U.S. Supreme Court is more business-friendly today than it was 25 years ago, according to a study conducted by a group that advocates for environmental safeguards and civil rights.

The study by the Constitutionality Accountability Center in Washington takes issue with comments by Justice Stephen Breyer in a Bloomberg News interview earlier this month. Breyer said business groups aren’t doing any better than they have historically……..

“Justice Breyer’s flat wrong in suggesting that the chamber has always done well before the court,” said Doug Kendall, the Constitutionality Accountability Center’s president. “The Supreme Court’s modern pro-corporate tilt — and particularly its sharp ideological split in favor of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — are relatively new developments, traceable to the court’s current conservative majority.”

By the way, the conservative-leaning justices haven’t given us all the worst of our biz-oriented decisions. (Not that every business-centric decision is bad.) It was the liberal-leaning side of the court that handed us: Kelo v. City of New London. (Look up that fun puppy here, in case you don’t remember.)

LA COUNTY TEENAGERS WEIGH IN ON THE ELECTION

LA’s wonderful youth-driven publication, LA Youth, has a number of elections-related articles.

In one article, 15-year-old Aaron Schwartz decides to research both gubernatorial candidates to find out whom he would vote for (if he was old enough to vote). After his examination, he eventually does select a candidate, but finds himself uninspired by either.

When it comes to Prop. 19, in another article called The Lows of Getting High , a formerly-pot smoking teenager (the author withholds her name for reasons of privacy) talks about the negative effect weed had on her life.

GREG BOYLE’S TATTOOS ON THE HEART WINS SO CAL INDY BOOKSELLERS AWARD!

The Southern California Independent Booksellers (SCIBA) had their big awards dinner Saturday night and gave out six awards. Father Greg Boyle’s luminous and unforgettable “Tattoos on the Heart” won first in the nonfiction category. (Wooo-hooo! And really, I’d feel that way even if I wasn’t totally partisan.)

Other winners included, the marvelous Aimee Bender for fiction, and my pal David Ulin, as part of a trio who won for Art, Architecture and Photography.

The full list is below:

Children’s Picture Book: “All the World“ by Marla Frazee and Liz Garton Scanlon (Simon & Schuster)

Children’s Novel: “This Book is Not Good for You“ by Psuedonymous Bosch (Little, Brown)

Fiction: “The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake” by Aimee Bender (Doubleday)

T. Jefferson Parker Mystery Award: “The First Rule“ by Robert Crais (Putnam)

Nonfiction: ” Tattoos on the Heart” by Father Gregory Boyle (Free Press)

Glenn Goldman Art, Architecture and Photography Award: “Los Angeles: Portrait of a City” by Jim Heimann, David L. Ulin and Kevin Starr (Taschen)

A SERIOUS NOTE ABOUT CARLY FIORINA

All good wishes for very quick healing to Carly Fiorina who was admitted to the hospital Tuesday morning for observation and treatment of an infection related to her reconstructive surgery in July. Fiorina was diagnosed with breast cancer in February 2009, and had a double mastectomy as part of her treatment.

I don’t like Fiorina as a candidate, but facing the rigors of the campaign trail this soon after her various surgeries and treatments, ain’t easy. I wish her a speedy recovery.

GEORGE SOROS WILL PUT $$$ INTO PROP 19

Gazillionaire George Soros is about to donate some big bucks to Proposition 19, the pot legalization initiative. He explains why in an op ed that appears in, of all interesting places, the Wall Street Journal. Since it’s the WSJ, Soros leads his reasons with those relating to the fiscal side of the initiative.

Here are some clips:

Our marijuana laws are clearly doing more harm than good. The criminalization of marijuana did not prevent marijuana from becoming the most widely used illegal substance in the United States and many other countries. But it did result in extensive costs and negative consequences.

Law enforcement agencies today spend many billions of taxpayer dollars annually trying to enforce this unenforceable prohibition. The roughly 750,000 arrests they make each year for possession of small amounts of marijuana represent more than 40% of all drug arrests.

Regulating and taxing marijuana would simultaneously save taxpayers billions of dollars in enforcement and incarceration costs, while providing many billions of dollars in revenue annually. It also would reduce the crime, violence and corruption associated with drug markets, and the violations of civil liberties and human rights that occur when large numbers of otherwise law-abiding citizens are subject to arrest. Police could focus on serious crime instead.

[SNIP]

Who most benefits from keeping marijuana illegal? The greatest beneficiaries are the major criminal organizations in Mexico and elsewhere that earn billions of dollars annually from this illicit trade—and who would rapidly lose their competitive advantage if marijuana were a legal commodity. Some claim that they would only move into other illicit enterprises, but they are more likely to be weakened by being deprived of the easy profits they can earn with marijuana.

FLORIDA 23-YEAR-OLD CASUALTY OF THE DRUG WAR

This story by Vince Beiser isn’t directly related to Prop 19, but there’s a thin thread of relationship. In any case, it’s upsetting—and worth reading.

Here’s the opening.

She should have been scared. Rachel Hoffman, a slim, pretty redhead freshly graduated from Florida State University, had $13,000 in cash and a police wire in her purse. She was about to make a major buy from two armed drug dealers.

Rachel, 23, had never done anything remotely like this before. She was in her silver Volvo S40, way out in the thickly-wooded outskirts of Tallahassee, following the grey BMW of the two men who were going to sell her a pile of cocaine, Ecstasy, and a gun. But she felt safe. Once the deal went down, all she had to do was say “looks good,” and the dozen-plus cops tailing her would pounce. It would be a thrill, like a real-life episode of one of her favorite shows, DEA.

But what mattered most was that the police had promised that if she did this sting, they wouldn’t prosecute her for the marijuana they’d found in her apartment…..

AUTOMATED POLLS SHOW HIGHER PERCENTAGE FOR PROP 19

Or so the YES on Prop 19 folks say of their internal polls, according to FireDogLake:

Yes on Proposition 19 has just released a set of internal numbers for polling they conducted last week, which compared responses given to live interviewers versus automated telephone polling. Interestingly, there is a huge divide between the level of support expressed for Prop 19 with the two methodologies. They find that if an individual is responding only to a computer program, they are much more likely to express support for Prop 19.

In other words, people are more likely to admit their support for weed to a machine (that won’t have a judgment) than to an actual person (who people imagine might have a judgment).

Or so they say.

And earlier LA Times/USC poll showed Prop 19 losing support.

ON BEING A DEPUTY IN HUMBOLDT COUNTY

The LA Times Sam Quinones follows a deputy sheriff through the slightly unreal world of law enforcement in Humboldt County:

Fantasy often mixes with reality in the work life of Deputy Sheriff Robert Hamilton of Humboldt County, the center of California’s marijuana outback.

It happened again a few months ago in the isolated coastal resort of Shelter Cove, where Hamilton lives and patrols. The deputy came upon nine young men tending a marijuana plantation….

AND ON AN UNRELATED ISSUE…

Turns out it’s not out of policy for the LA County Sheriff’s Department to use department resources to do special investigations for big campaign donors.

Um, really?

The LA Times is as perplexed as I’m guessing the rest of us are about that little policy.

THIS WEEK SCOTUS DECIDES WHETHER A MAN EXONERATED OF CAPITAL MURDER CAN SUE THE PROSECUTOR WHO HID EVIDENCE TO CONVICT HIM

John Holloway at Slate has the sobering tale behind the case involving John Thompson, who was nearly executed for the crime of capital murder, his conviction based on paid-off “witnesses,” and evidence made to vanish, all under the watch of a dapper New Orleans district attorney and sometimes singer named Harry Connick Sr. (And, yes, the DA’s son is that other Harry Connick.)

Here’s one of the better paragraphs from the Holloway story.

How is new evidence uncovered? This is how: a private investigator hired by lawyers looking for a miracle charms her way into a lab and flips through thousands of pieces of microfiche looking for a blood test whose existence has been repeatedly denied by the DA’s office. She doesn’t blink, or wander, or doze off at the wrong time. And when she finds it, she makes several copies of it and gets the hell out of Dodge to call the lawyers.

Tenacity, boobs, and luck.

The Supremes will hear arguments in Connick v. Thompson, on Wednesday.

SECOND SUICIDE IN LA COUNTY JAIL IN TWO DAYS

What in the worlds is going on? Here’s a link to the LA Times story.

An inmate killed himself Tuesday at Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles, the second suicide at the facility in as many days.

In Tuesday’s incident, the 29-year-old was pronounced dead at the jail after he was discovered around 5:20 a.m., the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said.

The man, described as a gang member, pleaded guilty last year to assault with a deadly weapon and received a 21-year sentence. He was also found guilty of robberies and carjacking and was scheduled to be sentenced Friday for those crimes, the department said. His name was not released…..

These back-to-back jail suicides call to mind a July 2010 report by the Office of Independent Review, which noted there was an uptick in suicides in the county’s jail system and, while many suicides were prevented by deputy vigilance, the OIR documented a terrible case of neglect and falsified records that arguably allowed a young man named John Horton to kill himself last year, when it was well known he was at risk.

It is hard to know what if anything these two suicides signify. But the issue bears watching.

LA TIMES ENDORSES COOLEY FOR AG AND MAKES AN INTERESTING CASE AS TO WHY.

The endorsement is here. As much as have disagreed with Cooley on certain issues, I think they have a point.

NY TIMES’ DAVID CARR WRITES ABOUT A “BANKRUPT CULTURE” AT ZELL’S TRIBUNE CO, AND BOOB-GAWKER, RANDY MICHAELS, FIRES BACK WILDLY AT THE MESSENGER

Okay, first the opening of David Carr’s devastating story about the Tribune Co, which runs in Wednesday’s NY Times (and which many say shows only the tip o’ the iceberg in terms of the cringe-making craziness of Zellworld):

In January 2008, soon after the venerable Tribune Company was sold for $8.2 billion, Randy Michaels, a new top executive, ran into several other senior colleagues at the InterContinental Hotel next to the Tribune Tower in Chicago, David Carr writes in The New York Times.

Mr. Michaels, a former radio executive and disc jockey, had been handpicked by Sam Zell, a billionaire who was the new controlling shareholder, to run much of the media company’s vast collection of properties, including The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, WGN America and The Chicago Cubs.

After Mr. Michaels arrived, according to two people at the bar that night, he sat down and said, “watch this,” and offered the waitress $100 to show him her breasts. The group sat dumbfounded.

“Here was this guy, who was responsible for all these people, getting drunk in front of senior people and saying this to a waitress who many of us knew,” said one of the Tribune executives present, who declined to be identified because he had left the company and did not want to be quoted criticizing a former employer. “I have never seen anything like it.”…

Now read Randy Michaels’ whacked-out preemptive memo about the Carr story, courtesy of LA Observed.

CALIFORNIA SUPREMES HEAR FIGHT OVER UNDOCUMENTED STUDENTS AND STATE TUITION

The SF Chronicle has the story:

The issue of benefits for illegal immigrants landed at the state Supreme Court on Tuesday, as out-of-state students challenged a law allowing anyone who has graduated from a California high school to pay in-state tuition at a public university, regardless of immigration status.

The 2002 law, intended to encourage youngsters to attend college, enables undocumented students to pay the same lower fees as other state residents – at the University of California, $11,300 instead of $34,000 a year.

A lawyer for 42 non-Californians who pay the higher fees at UC, state university and community college campuses argued that the statute is discriminatory and violates federal immigration law…..

LA MAG HOSTS LAW & ORDER’S DICK WOLF FOR EARLY MORNING SALON/CHAT

I meant to be at this event but was horridly cold ridden so didn’t go at the last minute. Fortunately, Kevin Roderick has a report.

Los Angeles moved its periodic breakfast series to Kate Mantilini in Beverly Hills for this morning’s session with the creator of “Law and Order: Los Angeles.” Wolf regaled the likes of City Council president Eric Garcetti, exiting Bon Appetit editor Barbara Fairchild and NBC correspondent Josh Mankiewicz with behind-the-scenes stories from the show….

DOES TEA PARTY = POT PARTY?

Josh Harkinson from Mother Jones says it does.

Here’s a clip:

Last month in the nation’s capital, Gary Johnson, a former governor of New Mexico and outspoken critic of big government, took the podium at Glenn Beck’s 9/12 rally to talk up economic issues. He warmed up the crowd of tea partiers with tales of how he’d fended off unnecessary state spending through liberal use of the veto stamp, and how he’d boosted educational competition through charter schools. Then Johnson dropped a bomb. “Half of what we spend on law enforcement, the courts, and the prisons is drug related,” he proclaimed. “I suggest that legalizing marijuana will make this country a better place.”

The crowd erupted in a clash of boos and applause—evidence, Johnson told me later, that the tea party is ripe for debate on the issue. “What the tea party talks about is wise spending,” he said, adding that the war on drugs was certainly no better a deal than Social Security or Medicare. The tea party’s libertarian elements, he noted, have already led to the unthinkable: “You find more Republican candidates right now espousing legalization of marijuana than you do Democrats.”