with Taylor Walker

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A song for May Day, 2012, “Jack of All Trades”

THE FBI HEROICALLY STINGS, THEN LOCKS UP INEPT AND RIDICULOUS ANARCHISTS ON MAY DAY

This is from Alex Pareen at Salon. It will make you very sad for the FBI, very sad for the idiotic anarchists, very, VERY sad for the rest of us who are paying our hard earned tax dollars to fund this nonsense. A clip:

Happy May Day, fellow travelers! If you’re not currently disrupting capitalism and/or having your wrists zip-tied for exercising your right to freely assemble, you probably read about the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s latest, not-at-all suspiciously timed terror sting. The Bureau, in an inspired bit of early-20th century nostalgia, has railroaded a bunch of dangerous anarchists. (Or “dangerous” “anarchists.”) America will not waver in the face of the Galleanist threat!

Five young men from Cleveland are now in jail, accused of plotting to “blow up a bridge in the Cleveland area,” according to the FBI’s triumphant press release/criminal complaint. As is always the case with FBI terror stings, the “sting” part involved the bureau’s informant/agent provocateur mostly inventing the plot the accused have now been arrested for. In this case, the five planned to detonate smoke bombs as a distraction as they “topple[d] financial institution signs atop high rise buildings in downtown Cleveland.” But the informant (as usual, a sketchy unnamed character with a checkered past) strongly pushed the group to seriously consider different, more extreme plots. At the end, some or all of them were going to plant C-4 on the Route 82 Brecksville-Northfield High Level Bridge over the Cuyahoga Valley National Park….

To give you an idea of the…um.. ept-ness of the group: among their discussed strategies to avoid capture was to get tacks to throw in the road behind them in the event of a chase.

The LA Times also reports on the arrest, albeit in a more serious tone.

PEW CENTER FINDS WARM & TRUSTING FEELINGS ABOUT SCOTUS REACH A QUARTER CENTURY LOW

Yeah, now that’s a shocker. (cough) Bush v. Gore, Citizens United (cough, cough).

Actually, the interesting part is that the grim view of the Supremes is shared almost identically by Democrats, Republicans and independents. Moreover the survey was taken right after the health care hearings in the high court. So where ever you fell ideologically on the matter, it seems you were mighty disgruntled. Or at least half of those surveyed were.

Check out the rest here.

ADULT ED: SHOULD LAUSD REALLY TURN ITS BACK ON A QUARTER MILLION STUDENTS?

Former Adult Ed teacher John McCormick challenges the wisdom of eviscerating adult education in Los Angeles in an LA Times Op Ed. Here’s a clip from the center of the essay:

….The repercussions of cutting or losing adult education would extend far beyond the staffs and students at the schools. Many local businesses, such as pharmacies, hire students who have been certified by adult school skill centers. High school dropouts return to adult school to get their diplomas. Eliminating adult schools would diminish the workforce. And people who make less money pay less in taxes, they spend less, and they often have to depend more on government to meet their basic needs.

Closing adult schools would also result in collateral damage to K-12 children. My students often attended the same schools at night that their children attended during the day. Because kids usually pick up English faster than their parents, if the parents don’t learn the language, they become marginalized in their own families. They cannot communicate with teachers, help with homework or even understand what their kids are saying. So instead of being able to help their kids assimilate, parents are more likely to remain isolated.

THE OTHER BIG SUPREME COURT CASE: AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin writes about another potentially far reaching US Supreme Court case that we should all be tracking. As usual everything rests on Justice Kennedy. Here’ a clip from Toobin’s story:

As the legal and political worlds await the Supreme Court’s verdict on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, the Justices have another case in the near future which may prove nearly as significant. The health-care case will be decided by June, but next fall the Court will return, perhaps for the last time, to the fraught subject of affirmative action in university admissions.

The facts of the new case are straightforward. Abigail Fisher, a white high-school student in Sugar Land, Texas, was rejected for admission to the University of Texas-Austin. The state requires all students in the top ten per cent of their high-school classes to be admitted to state universities, but students who fall just short of that threshold, like Fisher, are admitted according to a formula; race is one factor in the equation. Fisher’s lawsuit is based on a claim that any consideration of race by a university in admissions violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The case amounts to a direct challenge to the most famous decision authored by Sandra Day O’Connor during her long and consequential service on the Court. In 2003, the Court held, by a vote of five to four, that the University of Michigan Law School could consider race as one factor among many in determining whom to admit. In Grutter v. Bollinger, O’Connor said that diversity was such an important goal in American life that universities could engage in some level of race-consciousness in screening candidates. But O’Connor’s opinion imposed a time limit:

We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.

Now, less than a decade after her ruling, the Court appears poised to throw it out….

“SAVING OUR SONS: A COMMUNITY CONVERSATION” WEDNESDAY NIGHT AT LA TRADE TECH

This is from the press release on the event, which is sponsored by a bunch of good folks:

California Community Foundation invites parents, educators, employers, community, civic and religious leaders, and all concerned members of the public to participate in a historic town hall on the need to change and improve conditions for Black male youth in Los Angeles that are adversely affecting their futures.

Twenty years after the civil unrest in Los Angeles, Black male youth have significant challenges related to their educational and employment prospects. Additionally, while Black male youth make up 10 percent of L.A. County’s youth population, they comprise approximately 33 percent of all youth under probation supervision.

The event on May 2 is supported by Brotherhood Crusade, Community Coalition, Liberty Hill Foundation, Los Angeles Urban league, Youth Justice Coalition, Youth Mentoring Connection, and the Office of the Mayor, City of Los Angeles, and will feature a personal appearance by actor and activist Larenz Tate (TV’s “Rescue Me”, and films such as, “Ray”, “Love Jones”, “Crash”, and “Menace II Society”).

The event will take place on Wednesday, May 2, at 6 p.m., in the North Tent at Los Angeles Trade-Tech College, 1937 Grand Ave., Los Angeles 90015

Photo by David Maxwell, European Pressphoto Agency / May 1, 2012

LYRICS FOR “A JACK OF ALL TRADES”

…after the jump

Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday, the US Supreme Court rejected without comment an appeal that could have shielded Sheriff Lee Baca from legal responsibility for a pending jail abuse case. The case involves an inmate named Dion Starr who was stabbed 23 times with a jail-made shank by three alleged Latino gang members in a racially charged attack that occurred when Starr was in the 2400 block of Men’s Central Jail awaiting trial on minor charge.

Interestingly, in looking more closely at the chain of supervisory control in Men’s Central Jail at the time of the reported attack against Starr, it appears that any legal exposure might better be shared by Undersheriff Paul Tanaka.

But before we get to that part of the story, it helps to know at least the rough parameters of the case and of the recent action (or more accurately, the deliberate inaction) by the U.S. Supreme Court:

Starr’s complaint states that the attack against him was made possible when a deputy named Jose Garibay, who controlled inmate ingress and egress from the 2400 cells, wrongly opened the door to Starr’s cell, then walked away from his observation post while Starr—who is African American and reportedly has no gang affiliation—screamed and called out for help as the attack continued.

Eventually, other deputies arrived, including a Sergeant Inge, who rapidly stopped the attack. But as Starr lay on the floor of his cell, bleeding and moaning in pain, one of the deputies—Deputy Maybet Bugarin—allegedly yelled racial epithets at him, things like, “shut up nigger.” Then Bugarin reportedly kicked Starr in the face, fracturing his nose. According to the complaint, Sergeant Inge, who was the floor sergeant for the 2000 block, saw Bugarin deliver the kick.

Starr’s attorneys, Sonia Mercado and Samuel Paz, contend that the inmate attacks and the deputy abuse, and the lack of a rigorous follow-up investigation, are part of an ongoing pattern of such incidents in Men’s Central Jail, and that Sheriff Baca had been repeatedly informed about the problems by supervisors, and through reports from people like Mike Gennaco of the Office of Independent Review, and LA County Special Counsel Merrick Bobb, whose 2004 and 2005 reports wrote of similar attacks. One high profile inmate on inmate attack that involved a mentally ill inmate named Chadwick Shane Cochran, had occurred a few months before in November of 2005, in the same 2400 block, of CJ, where Starr was stabbed. Cochran was left incorrectly in a room with 30 inmates some of whom beat him to death, while other inmates screamed for deputy intervention that did not arrive. “It was a systemic failure,” Bobb told an AP reporter of the Cochran case. In short, in the face of a rash of violent and in some cases, fatal incidents, multiple critical outside reports and lawsuits, Baca had not exerted the leadership necessary to put a stop to the problems and to keep inmates safe.

And so he’s liable, said the attorneys.

Last summer, a three judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed when it ruled in the case of Baca v. Starr that Dion Starr could hold the sheriff legally accountable for the serious injuries he received on January 27, 2006 in Men’s Central Jail.

That the Supremes declined to fiddle with the 9th Circuit’s ruling was a surprising setback for Baca and his LA lawyer, Timothy Coates. And if Starr and his attorneys are successful at trial, it will open a wide highway for other inmates in jail abuse cases to sue the sheriff directly.

In reading the text of the 9th Circuit’s ruling its evident that, in addition to the justices’ interpretation of legal precedent, they took seriously the detailed line up of similar inmate-on-inmate abuse cases, including five killings in six months in late 2003 to early 2004. Most of the incidents had occurred in CJ when deputies unaccountably allowed the wrong inmates together in a cell or room, and then walked away.

After examining the Starr case, we reviewed our own records here at WitnessLA, and noticed that the timing of Starr’s reported attacks (and some of the other attacks referenced in the case) seemed to logically point to supervisory culpability in addition to Baca’s, namely that of Undersheriff Tanaka.

To wit:

Starr was injured on January 27, 2006. This means the incident occurred during Captain John Clark’s tenure as head of Men’s Central Jail. If you remember, Clark is the CJ captain who became concerned about spiking levels of deputy use of force and the increasingly toxic deputy cliques like the 3000 Boys, and the 2000 Boys—the latter being the deputies who could have potentially guarded the 2400 block where Starr was housed.

WitnessLA has recently obtained a copy of a February 8, 2006, memo that Clark sent out to the deputies and supervisors in his charge in which he announced a new policy of job rotation that would begin in March of 2006, and was specifically designed to help break up the deputy gangs.

If you’ll remember from Parts 1 and 2 and 3 of Matt Fleischer’s Dangerous Jails series, then Assistant Sheriff (now Undersheriff) Paul Tanaka, reversed the reforms Clark had announced in the memo, and subverted the authority of the captain and his supervisors to discipline deputies for wrongdoing by meeting with the deputies separately and telling them to come directly to him—Tanaka— not their immediate bosses.

We were also interested to note that Clark’s Feb. 8, 2006 memo was sent out 12 days after the attack on Dion Starr, meaning that the Starr incident fell smack within the period during which Clark was the most concerned about deputy misconduct, and was attempting to act constructively to address his concerns—but was thwarted by those above him, specifically Tanaka. That would be the same Tanaka who has, as WLA has reported, often exhorted deputies to “work in the gray.”

With the above events in mind, now that the 9th Circuit has opened the door to holding supervisors like Sheriff Baca legally accountable in jail abuse cases like Dion Starr’s, one cannot help but wonder where the undersheriff’s legal responsibility in such cases might conceivably lie.

LEGAL NOTE: David Savage at the LA Times has an extended report on the Supreme’s ruling that is worth reading.

In it he mentions SCOTUS’s earlier ruling on a similar issue:

In 2009, the Supreme Court made it harder to sue top officials. In a 5-4 decision, it threw out a suit against former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft seeking to hold him liable for the arrest and jailhouse beating of Muslim men after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Ashcroft is considered by many to be a clumsily written ruling. Thus a couple of the lawyers I spoke to yesterday thought that SCOTUS might be trying to at least somewhat amend their Ashcroftian mistake through the back door by declining to take Baca v. Starr, thus allowing the 9th circuit’s precedent-making ruling in the matter to stand.

by Taylor Walker

DID A DECADE OF FAULTY FBI FORENSICS RESULT IN HUNDREDS OF WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS?

Defendants across the U.S. were left in the dark about the DOJ’s knowledge of nine years worth of faulty FBI forensics. Justice officials defended their actions saying that they were only legally obligated to inform the prosecutors, not the numerous defendants affected.

The Washington Post’s Spencer Hsu has the story.

Here’s how it opens:

Justice Department officials have known for years that flawed forensic work might have led to the convictions of potentially innocent people, but prosecutors failed to notify defendants or their attorneys even in many cases they knew were troubled.

Officials started reviewing the cases in the 1990s after reports that sloppy work by examiners at the FBI lab was producing unreliable forensic evidence in court trials. Instead of releasing those findings, they made them available only to the prosecutors in the affected cases, according to documents and interviews with dozens of officials.

In addition, the Justice Department reviewed only a limited number of cases and focused on the work of one scientist at the FBI lab, despite warnings that problems were far more widespread and could affect potentially thousands of cases in federal, state and local courts.

As a result, hundreds of defendants nationwide remain in prison or on parole for crimes that might merit exoneration, a retrial or a retesting of evidence using DNA because FBI hair and fiber experts may have misidentified them as suspects.

LA BUDGET CUTS WILL EVEN CLOSE JUDGE ITO’S COURT

At least 56 Los Angeles courtrooms (including 24 criminal courtrooms) and some departments will be shut down next month as part of California’s impending $650M budget cut.

The AP’s Linda Deutsch has the story.

Here’s how it opens:

The vast Los Angeles County court system, known worldwide for its many high-profile cases, is about to see a huge budget cut that will close dozens of courtrooms, including one used by Judge Lance Ito, its most famous jurist.

After 56 courtrooms go dark by June 30, Ito, who presided over the O.J. Simpson murder trial in 1995, will be reassigned to handle cases for which no other judge is available.

Presiding Judge Lee Edmon and Assistant Presiding Judge David Wesley announced the slashing of $30 million from the nation’s largest court system that includes laying off 100 non-courtroom employees and eliminating court reporters for civil cases.

IF YOU GET RID OF A RACIST LAW, SHOULD THE CHANGE BE RETROACTIVE?

An update to Monday’s post on Dorsey & Hill vs. US:

SCOTUS is still divided after hearing arguments Tuesday on whether Congress implied retroactivity in the Fair Sentencing Act, and even, whether Congress considered the law it superseded to be intentionally racist.

SCOTUSblog’s Lyle Denniston has the recap.

Here’s a clip of interaction between Washington attny. Miguel Estrada and Justice Sotomayor:

…Justice Sonia Sotomayor told [Estrada] that, when Congress has found that a law was racially discriminatory, “we should do as speedy a remedy as we could, because it is one of the most fundamental tenets of our Constitution…that our laws should be enforced in a race-neutral way.” Why, she then asked, “shouldn’t our presumption be that the fix is immediate rather than delayed? The question, of course, had not only the effect of switching the argument’s emphasis to the racial question, but also the effect of suggesting that the Court might want to avoid those constitutional implications by finding retroactivity implicit in the 2010 law.

Estrada conceded that there had been concern about the racial impact by some in Congress, but he would not concede that Congress regarded this disparity as being the product of intentional discrimination — the kind that would itself violate the Constitution. Sotomayor, though, sought to press her point, noting that, in her 20 years as a judge, she had seen no law that created as much controversy or as much discussion of its racial impact as had the crack vs. powder disparity.

Estrada conceded that point, but argued that Congress had not rushed into changing the disparity, doing nothing for 20 years in the face of repeated requests to confront the question.

NOTE: A New York Times editorial urges the Supremes to play fair and allow the law to apply to all those sentenced after the FSA’s passage.

Also, the LA Times’ David Savage describes some of the drama of Tuesday’s arguments. Here’s a clip:

A Justice Department lawyer warned the Supreme Court on Tuesday there may be thousands of crack cocaine defendants sentenced to long prison terms under a law that Congress repealed two years ago as racially biased and unfair.

Deputy Solicitor Gen. Michael Dreeben urged the court to tell sentencing judges to use the new law, not the discredited old one, when setting prison terms for those convicted of crack offenses but not yet sentenced when the law was passed.

But by the end of an hourlong argument, it was not clear the Supreme Court would heed the request. Some of the justices said they were not inclined to apply a new law retroactively to crimes that predated it.

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

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.

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.”

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.

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.

Original illustration by Scott McPherson

Chronic truancy is a daunting problem in districts all over California, but it’s far worse in the Los Angeles Unified School District where nearly one fourth of the district’s middle-school students are chronically absent from school.

What is even more alarming is that an identical number of LA’s kindergartners— 22.7 percent—are also chronically absent from their classrooms.

(Chronic absence” is defined as missing 10 percent of the school year for excused or unexcused reasons.)

Fortunately, not every school district in the state has those miserably high truancy numbers.

In fact, earlier this week, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson announced that 11 districts have been designated as models of attendance improvement and dropout prevention by the State School Attendance Review Board. The 11 model districts, which include Alhambra, Montebello, San Bernardino and San Diego, will be given awards at a conference in April.

““There’s a very basic fact that is often overlooked: Even the best teacher can’t help students who don’t make it to school,” Torlakson said in a written statement. “These [districts] are proving that there are highly effective strategies for improving attendance and reducing the dropout rate”

After new research pointed to chronic absence as a key indicator of a kid’s academic future, reducing absenteeism became a major focus for Torlakson’s administration, which is trying to find low coast ways to motivate districts to identify students who are are missing too much school, and then intervene early.

“And by early, that means kindergarten, says David Kopperud, the chairperson of the state’s School Attendance Review Board. “We thought the problem began in middle school and high school,” Kopperud told me. “But it starts way before that. It turns out that even kindergarten is important because that’s when students learn beginning reading skills.” Once kids fall behind in their first three years, he said, the slide can all too easily become cumulative until, by middle school they’re in trouble.

“Now they’re too far behind to catch up, and so the next thing is, they start to misbehave.”

School suspensions follow the misbehavior, which means more classwork in missed.

“In a lot of schools,” Kopperud said, “20 percent of their absences are due to suspensions. And we find that schools with high suspension rates, have a high drop out rate.” It’s what other experts call the push out factor. And pretty soon you have this really large population that is lost to law enforcement.”

So what to do?

“We’re learning that the best kind of drop-out intervention, is prevention,” said Kopperud. “But that means analyzing the school attendance data so that you have a good early warning system to tell you when kids are missing too much school, and then intervening aggressively.”

But aggressive and timely intervention requires the personnel to do the intervening—at a time when districts like LAUSD are in a frenzy of cutbacks.

So that’s where the awards come in..

Kopperud said that he and his board members hope that the other districts will look at the honorees and think, hey, if those guys over there can improve , we can too. “So we’re handing out certificates and plaques,” he said.

“It’s a reminder that there are places where, despite the odds, they’re beating them,” said Kopperud. “So it can be done. Even in this economy, it can be done.”

Let’s hope LAUSD takes note. So far what they’ve done districtwide is….not much. (Unless you count paying consultants fat fees to produce this and that report and analysis, without any appreciable follow-up that would change outcomes for actual kids.)

AND IN OTHER KID-RELATED NEWS…… AN OPPONENT OF OPENING OF JUVENILE DEPENDENCY COURT SLAMS LA TIMES COVERAGE OF COURT HEARINGS AS HARMING KIDS

Whittier Law School professor William Wesley Patton evidently slammed LA Times editor-at-large Jim Newton for his coverage of LA’s newly-opened child dependency court in an Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Daily Journal (which is hidden behind a hefty pay wall, or I’d link to it).

Newton, who wrote two excellent columns about his visits to court in the weeks since Judge Michael Nash ordered the opening of the long-secret proceedings to the press (here and here), decided not to simply ignore the slam, but to point out its truthiness. Here’s a clip:

The shift from holding almost all Dependency Court hearings in private to declaring a presumptive openness of those proceedings to the press is understandably upsetting to those accustomed to working in private. It is hard to have prying eyes where once there were none.

And yet, what is often lost in the resistance to change is what is most important. The interests of children are, of course, paramount in all of this, but those who side with Patton, in my view, see those interests too narrowly. Secrecy in Dependency Court has protected social workers, lawyers and even judges who perform poorly from being held to answer for their work. We would never tolerate such immunity from scrutiny in our adult and family courts, nor should we when the stakes are even higher — the preservation of an opportunity for children who have done no wrong. In the end, the victims of secrecy in Dependency Court are children whose caretakers are allowed to fail them without consequence; the beneficiaries of a more open system would be children as well.

So far, the experiment in Los Angeles Dependency Court is bearing out that argument. Perhaps that’s why Patton distorts it.

What Jim said.

COMMENTARY AFTER WATCHING SIX HOURS OF HEALTH TESTIMONY AT SCOTUS.….

Dalia Lithwick of Slate sounds stunned and depressed after Wednesday’s round of arguments….

Amid all the three-day psychodrama, it’s easy to get confused about what’s happened and what hasn’t. Court watchers seem to generally agree that the individual mandate is in real peril and will rise or fall with Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kennedy. Court watchers also agree that 19th-century tax law—while generally adorable—will not prevent the justices from deciding the case by July. And they also agree that they may have counted five justices who appear willing to take the whole law down, along with the mandate, and the Medicaid expansion as well.

But the longer they talked, the harder it was to say. A lot of today’s discussion started to sound like justices just free-associating about things in the law they didn’t like. That doesn’t reveal all that much about the interplay between the four separate challenges—what happens when they all have to be looked at together—or anything at all about what will happen at conference or in the drafting of opinions. Could the five conservative justices strike down the entire health care law, and take us into what Kagan described this morning as a “revolution”? They could. Will they? I honestly have no idea anymore. As silent retreats go, this one was a lot less enlightening than I’d hoped.

While Adam Teicholz at the Atlantic wonders morosely…but interestingly…. if bloggers killed the health care mandate before it got to court…

Back in early 2010, before the 26 state attorneys general, before the angry protests and the breathless headlines, before the six hours of oral argument at the nation’s highest court, the legal challenge to the individual mandate was greeted with head-scratching skepticism. The constitutional argument was dismissed by many Court-watchers. A week after the first challenge was filed, one liberal scholar suggested the claims were so frivolous that the lawyers could face sanctions.

Now, however, the atmosphere has changed, “and that,” Adam Liptak, Supreme Court correspondent for the New York Times, told me last week, is in part “a testament” to the persistence of a small group of conservative and libertarian attorneys. In the last few days, Politico and the New York Times have shone a light on Randy Barnett, the Georgetown Law professor who has taken on the dual role, unusual for an appellate lawyer, of spearheading advocacy both in court and in more public forums.

[BIG SNIP]

Blogs — particularly a blog of big legal ideas called Volokh Conspiracy — have been central to shifting the conversation about the mandate challenges. At Volokh, Barnett and other libertarian academics have been debating and refining their arguments against the mandate since before the ACA was signed. At the beginning, law professor Jonathan Adler fleshed out the approach that came to typify the elite conservative response for the first months of the public debate: the Founders never intended for the Constitution to permit such broad federal power, but given New Deal-era precedent, the mandate, if it became law, would pass muster. Things changed on Volokh around the time that it became clear that an insurance mandate would be part of whichever health care reform package passed into law.

One congressional floor speech seemed to mark a tonal turning point for Volokh, the moment its writers realized their power to shape debate…..

AND IN GOOD LASD NEWS…..A DRAMATIC AIR-5 RESCUE SAVES WOMAN’S LIFE AFTER CRASH

Amid the Aero Bureau controversies, it’s important to remember the great work LASD pilots do day in and day out, both in patrol and rescue. Here’s a KTLA report of the most recent dramatic example of Air-5’s rescue work. (Scroll down for the video.)

THE SUPREME COURT HEALTH CARE ARGUMENT: “ITS NOT ABOUT THE LAW, STUPID

This coming Monday, the Supreme Court will start hearing arguments regarding the Affordable Health Care Act—AKA Obamacare.

Dalia Lithwick of Slate, who has the advantage of being wickedly smart, gives the most intriguing analysis of what to expect from the justices that I’ve read yet.

Below is a clip from the essay, but if this case interests you at all, read the whole thing, as it is guaranteed to stimulate your thinking.

The first proposition is that the health care law is constitutional. The second is that the court could strike it down anyway. Linda Greenhouse makes the first point more eloquently than I can. That the law is constitutional is best illustrated by the fact that—until recently—the Obama administration expended almost no energy defending it. Back when the bill passed Nancy Pelosi famously reacted to questions about its constitutionality with the words, “Are you serious?” And the fact that the Obama administration rushed the case to the Supreme Court in an election year is all the evidence you need to understand that they remain confident in their prospects. The law is a completely valid exercise of Congress’ Commerce Clause power, and all the conservative longing for the good old days of the pre-New Deal courts won’t put us back in those days as if by magic. Nor does it amount to much of an argument.

So that brings us to the really interesting question: Will the Court’s five conservatives strike it down regardless? That’s what we’re really talking about next week and that has almost nothing to do with law and everything to do with optics, politics, and public opinion. That means that Justice Antonin Scalia’s opinion in the Raich medicinal marijuana case, and Chief Justice John Roberts’ and Anthony Kennedy’s opinions in Comstock only get us so far. Despite the fact that reading the entrails of those opinions suggest that they’d contribute to an easy fifth, sixth, and seventh vote to uphold the individual mandate as a legitimate exercise of Congressional power, the real question isn’t whether those Justices will be bound by 70 years of precedent or their own prior writings on federal power. The only question is whether they will ignore it all to deprive the Obama of one of his signature accomplishments.

Professor Randy Barnett, the intellectual power behind the entire health care challenge, wrote recently that Justice Scalia could break from his previous opinions—freeing him to strike down the Affordable Care Act—“without breaking a sweat.” I suspect that’s right.

If that’s true, we should stop fussing about old precedents. These old milestones of jurisprudence aren’t what will give Scalia pause. What matters is whether the five conservative justices are so intent in striking down Obama’shealthcare law that they would risk a chilly and divisive 5-4 dip back into the waters of Bush v. Gore and Citizens United.

Oddly enough that turns more on what we think about the case than what they think.

This clip is interesting, but read the whole column. Lithwick builds a thesis that deserved to read in its entirety.

AND WHILE WE’RE ON THE SUBJECT OF HEALTH CARE AND THE SUPREMES: CAMERAS IN THE COURT, DAMN IT!

Slate’s Andrew Cohen has a pleasingly cranky column on the issue. Here’s a clip:

Pardon me for being such a drag on the eve of the Supreme Court’s momentous health care arguments, but I respectfully dissent. There is something discordant here, something that just doesn’t feel right. While the legal and political elite gleefully plan their big week at the High Court, while members of the Washington establishment applaud themselves for their inside connections to the courtroom, the rest of the country will be left, as usual, in the dark. The contrast gives new meaning to the phrase “unequal justice.”

Starting next Monday, for three consecutive days, two hours a day, the justices will hear oral argument in three joined cases that are primed to determine the immediate fate of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, the controversial new federal health care law. Together, the three cases (out of Florida) are the most closely watched Supreme Court cases since Bush v. Gore, for they have the potential to determine the outcome of the next presidential election and not just pick a winner in the last one.

AMAZINGLY, THE SUPREMES EXPAND THE RIGHTS OF THE ACCUSED IN THE PLEA BARGAIN PROCESS

This column by the NY Times’ Adam Liptak illustrates why Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling that expands the rights of the accused when it comes to pleading out a case, is so important—and amazing, really, that the ruling favored the accused.

Here are clips from Liptak’s story:

Criminal defendants have a constitutional right to effective lawyers during plea negotiations, the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday in a pair of 5-to-4 decisions that vastly expanded judges’ supervision of the criminal justice system.

The decisions mean that what used to be informal and unregulated deal making is now subject to new constraints when bad legal advice leads defendants to reject favorable plea offers.

“Criminal justice today is for the most part a system of pleas, not a system of trials,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority. “The right to adequate assistance of counsel cannot be defined or enforced without taking account of the central role plea bargaining takes in securing convictions and determining sentences.”

{SNIP]

Scholars agreed about its significance.

“The Supreme Court’s decision in these two cases constitute the single greatest revolution in the criminal justice process since Gideon v. Wainwright provided indigents the right to counsel,” said Wesley M. Oliver, a law professor at Widener University, referring to the landmark 1963 decision.

[SNIP]

Some 97 percent of convictions in federal courts were the result of guilty pleas. In 2006, the last year for which data was available, the corresponding percentage in state courts was 94.

“In today’s criminal justice system,” Justice Kennedy wrote, “the negotiation of a plea bargain, rather than the unfolding of a trial, is almost always the critical point for a defendant.”

Quoting from law review articles, Justice Kennedy wrote that plea bargaining “is not some adjunct to the criminal justice system; it is the criminal justice system.” He added that “longer sentences exist on the books largely for bargaining purposes.”

A week from Tuesday the US Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Jackson v. Hobbs and Miller v. Alabama, two cases concerning whether the sentencing a 14-year-old killer to life without parole violates the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution.

For those who are interested in the juvenile LWOP issue (a sentence of Life Without the possibility of Parole), the go-to site to track the legal side of the matter is Doug Berman’s Sentencing Law & Policy, as Berman is parsing the various developments in the twinned cases with a very experienced eye.

For instance, Berman points out that the precursor for the Jackson and Miller cases to be heard next week, is the SCOTUS ruling on the earlier cases of Roper and Graham, which concerned LWOP for kids who had not committed murder, and which the court found to be unconstitutional. Thus it’s going to be interesting to watch the various SCOTUS justices respond when their own wise words are bounced right back to them in this broader set of cases.

If you want to get still wonkier, take a look, for example, at the amicus brief filed by the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the National Association for Social Workers. It gives an idea of how the petitioner attorneys will quote the Supremes—to themselves.

Begin by reading the opening of the summary from that brief, which you’ll find on page 15.

HOW THE CASE MAY AFFECT OTHER STATES

In addition, all this week, Michigan Live is doing an excellent series on Juvenile Life, although neither of the cases that will be argued before the Supreme Court next week are from Michigan (they are from Alabama and Arkansas). Still, Michigan is second only to Pennsylvania for its number of juvenile lifers, thus the Michigan Live team is pulling apart the issue for its readers. (LA Times? This might be a good time for a California series, no?)

Here’s how the first one opens:

He was 14 years, 11 months and 1 day old.

That night TJ Tremble rode his bike to the home of Peter and Ruth Stanley. He had the .22-caliber rifle given him by his dad. He had alcohol in his belly, some also from his dad. And, police say, he had murder on his mind.

Before daylight, the Michigan youth would be behind bars for the rest of his life. Or maybe not.

Next week, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether mandatory life sentences are too cruel for anyone so young. It will be exactly 14 years, 11 months and 1 day since Tremble got on his bike.

Now 29, is it possible he has changed in the second half of his life, or that he can change with more time? Should he at least have the consideration to one day walk free?

Or does death make it different?

In a state with more “juvenile lifers” than almost any other, the answers will resonate throughout Michigan as the high court addresses this: Are life sentences, without any chance of parole, unconstitutional even for juveniles who commit unthinkable crimes?

If the court’s earlier rulings are an indication, the answers could be yes.

[But the reporters acknowledge these are not simple issues, particularly for the families of victims.]

“It rekindles it,” says Dennis Stanley, son of the murdered Peter and Ruth Stanley, of next week’s hearing. “I was just thinking of that this morning. It’s like counting down to April 1997. We’re still very bitter, angry and, sure, we go about our lives. But no one knows what the victims go through.”

“It never ends,” he says. “It never ends.”

AND ON OTHER JUVENILE JUSTICE ISSUES…..THE LA COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS WILL VOTE TUESDAY ON WHETHER TO OPPOSE GOVERNOR BROWN’S PLAN TO CLOSE THE STATE’S JUVIE PRISONS—AKA DJJ

Youth advocates like the Youth Justice Coalition will show up at the Supes’ meeting on Tuesday to ask the Supervisors to instead work to “create a local alternative to DJJ so families can stay involved and programming can be more consistent.”

It’s a complicated choice, to be sure, but DJJ is preposterously expensive, and has no good record of doing right by its charges. The recidivism rate is horrendous.

On the other hand, LA County’s juvenile facilities—run by the probation department— have their own problems (to understate the matter greatly). In choosing between two bad choices, I tend to lean toward what the YJC says. Bring these kids home, and take the state’s money to deal with them here.

But that is if—and only if—we can commit to providing appropriate oversight and programs for them. Alameda County, for example, is doing just that. But, thus far, LA seems to have little stomach for such an endeavor.

On Tuesday night, March 13, two weeks before the U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act—aka “Obama Care—The California Endowment and a pile of distinguished law schools are bringing together a bipartisan mix of hot shot legal minds and policy experts to hear and argue the case that will decide the health status of millions.

The event runs from 6-7:30 p.m. (with a reception following) and will be held at The California Endowment- Yosemite Hall, 1000 North Alameda St, Los Angeles, CA 90012

Behold the list of petitioners, respondents and justices:

RESPONDENT:
Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr., Partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, LLP

PETITIONER:
Kathleen M. Sullivan, Partner, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP

JUSTICES:
Vikram Amar, Associate Dean, UC Davis
Hon. Gray Davis, Former Governor, State of California
Daniel Philip Kessler, Professor of Law, Stanford University and Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
Thomas E. Lorentzen, President, Health Approaches, and Former Regional Director, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
Rachel F. Moran, Dean, UCLA School of Law
Hon. Carlos R. Moreno, Former Associate Justice, California Supreme Court
Thomas A. Saenz, President and General Counsel, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund
Hon. Deanell Reece Tacha, Dean, Pepperdine University, and Former Circuit Judge, 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals
Judge Alex Ferrer, Host of Judge Alex; Former Florida Circuit Court Judge

Cool, right?

The Cal Endowment has also filed an Amicus Brief with SCOTUS, which is summarized here, with the full brief here.

If you want to attend you must RSVP: (323) 892-2080

But it will fill up fast, so if you can’t attend, or if the event is already full by the time you inquire, you can also listen to a live broadcast here.

Or follow the Twitter stream at #ACA_mc (which you should do anyway, whether you’re there or not, as it will provide the Greek chorus, so to speak.

HERE’S THE DEAL: Where ever you stand on the health care issue, the outcome will be of consequence, So you may as well become well informed on the challenge, legally speaking.

With this in mind, here are a couple of stories (below) to get you started:

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS’ BIG CASE

*On Sunday, the NY Times Adam Liptak wrote about how and why this will be the signature case for Chief Justice Roberts and what kinds of choices Roberts will have before him as he and the rest of the Supremes hear the arguments.

Here’s how it opens:

When Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. takes his usual center seat on the Supreme Court bench on March 26, he will begin presiding over an extraordinary three days of arguments that will determine the fate of President Obama’s sweeping health care law.

The decision in the case, expected by June, will have practical consequences for tens of millions of Americans without health insurance, and it may affect Mr. Obama’s re-election chances.

It will also shape, if not define, the chief justice’s legacy.

MEET THE VERY, VERY SMART PAUL CLEMENT: THE CONSERVATIVES’ MAIN GUY WITH THE SUPREMES

The Washington Post profiles attorney Paul Clement, 45, who will be handling the case against the health care law, and whom Ken Starr calls the the best advocate of his generation.

Here’s a clip:

When Paul Clement stands in front of the Supreme Court’s nine justices to argue a case, the effect is akin to watching a game of speed chess, only speed chess contested on nine different boards against nine relentless players. Clement addresses all the boards at once. He’ll make a rhetorical move on one justice here, only to find another skeptical justice requiring attention over there — he has arguments tailored for the court’s fence-sitters especially.

If the justices have anything in common during an oral argument at the court, it is a willingness to express in-your-face sarcasm for a lawyer’s weak gambit. But when Clement, a Republican and former U.S. solicitor general, is on his game, he is a grandmaster, conservative and liberal lawyers agree.

WILL SEATTLE PD’S 2004 CASE OF TASING A PREGNANT WOMAN IN A TRAFFIC STOP GO TO THE SUPREME COURT?

If the LA County Police Chiefs Association has any say in the matter, the Supremes will hear an appeal brought by three Seattle police officers who repeatedly used a Taser on a pregnant woman during a 2004 traffic stop, reports the Seattle Times.

Here’s a little of the back story, as reported a year ago by the Seattle Weekly.

Malaika Brooks was driving her 12-year-old son Jahrod to the African American Academy on Beacon Hill one morning in 2004 when a Seattle cop pulled her over. It was the beginning of a traffic infraction that has so far cost city taxpayers $345,000 in legal fees, and which left the then-pregnant Brooks with Taser scars and the determination to pursue an alleged police-brutality case for what appears to be a record seven years and counting.

Officer Juan Ornelas, who’d caught Brooks on radar, came to her window and said she’d been doing 32 in a 20-mph school zone. Brooks denied it, explaining he must have mistaken her vehicle for the black Honda that had been racing along in front of her. Brooks, then 34, handed her license to Ornelas as her son got out and walked on to school. Ornelas wrote the ticket and handed it to Brooks for her signature. She declined. Signing it, she mistakenly thought, would be an admission of guilt. Ornelas told her that if she didn’t sign the traffic ticket, he would issue a criminal citation for refusing. She could then be arrested and taken to jail.

Brooks said she wasn’t signing anything, but would accept the ticket otherwise. Ornelas then called Sgt. Steve Daman to the scene. Officer Donald Jones also showed up. When Brooks told the sergeant she wouldn’t sign, Daman told Ornelas and Jones to “book her.” Brooks was asked to step from the car. She refused. Jones then displayed a Taser stun gun and asked if she knew what it could do to her. Brooks told the officers she was pregnant. “How pregnant?” one asked. Her baby was due in two months, she said. She refused to step out.

After a discussion among the officers, Ornelas opened the driver’s door, reached in and grabbed Brooks by the left arm as Jones put the device to Brooks’ thigh in touch-stun mode and shocked her with 50,000 volts. She began honking her horn, screaming for help as she resisted. Jones quickly administered another shock to Brooks’ arm, and she stopped blowing the horn. Then he shocked her a third time, in the neck, and Brooks fell over, unable to move.

The case eventually worked its way up to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which then decided that the tasing was the use of excessive force—meaning that the way was cleared for Malaika Brooks to sue the officers in state civil court (but not in federal court).

It’s this ruling that the LA Police Chiefs—a group that includes both Chief Beck and Sheriff Baca—and the National Tactical Officers Association both found unpalatable, hence their push for an appeal, reports the Seattle Times.

The national and Los Angeles police organizations, in their brief, argued that the 9th Circuit ruling creates an “inflexible” and “unworkable” rule, “because it ignores the infinite variety of situations police officers confront on a daily basis.

KFI HOSTS JOHN AND KEN TO MEET WITH A DIVERSE GROUP OF MEMBERS OF LA’S AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY ABOUT ON AIR “CRACK HO” REMARKS

The meeting with KFI 640 station management and John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou of the “John and Ken Show” to discuss their calling of Whitney Houston a “crack ho,” and making other creepily disparaging remarks after her death, will take place at 2 pm Monday, with a press conference afterward.

Those meeting with Kobylt and Chiampou include:

Blair Taylor, President and CEO of the Los Angeles Urban League
L. C. “Chris” Strudwick-Turner, Vice President of Marketing & Communications for the Los Angeles Urban League
Jasmyne Cannick, public affairs and communications strategist
Najee Ali, community activist
Kevin Ross, host of the syndicated television program ‘America’s Court with Judge Ross’, former KABC and KFI host
Kevin Ross, 20-year radio veteran and the editor of Radio Facts
Lee Bailey, 30-year radio broadcasting pioneer, founder and CEO of the Electronic Urban Report
Isidra Person Lynn, former morning show host of KACE
Dominique DiPrima, talk radio veteran and on-air personality

May some raised consciousness and a better calibrated sense of decency come out of the meeting.

FEDS SHOULD PUSH TO OPEN PROSECUTORS’ FILES SAYS THE NY TIMES

And we agree.

To explain, here’s how the NY Times Sunday editorial opens:

Prosecutors have a constitutional duty to disclose significant evidence favorable to a criminal defendant. But too often that duty, as laid out by the 1963 Supreme Court decision Brady v. Maryland, is violated.

To help ensure compliance, some prosecutors, criminal defense lawyers and legal scholars have sensibly concluded that prosecutors’ files, as a general rule, should be made open to defendants. In cases where turning over evidence might endanger a witness, for example, a judge could allow an exception.

A small number of state and local governments have adopted open-file policies that require prosecutors to make available well before trial all information favorable to the defense, without regard to whether such information is likely to affect the outcome of the case. North Carolina and Ohio and places like Milwaukee have found that such policies make prosecutions fairer and convictions less prone to error. The Justice Department should join this movement and set a national example. But instead, it continues to take half-measures in response to its own failures to meet disclosure requirements.

When it is left up to prosecutors to determine what evidence is material, in too many instances Brady is violated—in what has become a highly adversarial justice system. We know this because of the frequent discoveries over the past few years of evidence withheld by prosecutors, the withheld material only coming to light after aggressive investigative work in the course of innocence cases.

Since, unlike the defense, the first obligation of the prosecution is to seek justice—not to win at all costs—the feds should have no problem fully supporting a no-holds barred embrace of the 1963 Brady decision.

it is, as the NY Times said, an important standard to uphold.

TRIED AS ADULT FOR MURDER AT AGE 12 PAUL HENRY GINGERICH TURNS 14 IN PRISON

The then Indiana 6th grader participated in a ghastly crime—specifically the murder of the step-father of a 15-year old friend, who was reportedly being abused by the step-dad. In any case, the two boys shot the man dead, with a third 12-year-old waiting outside the house.

He was sentenced to 25 years in adult prison-–an outcome that a number of attorneys and supporters hope to eventually manage to change.

USA Today has the story, which originally ran in the Indianapolis Star:

Paul Henry Gingerich awoke on the morning of his 14th birthday to the sound of a voice — his prison guard. “Happy birthday,” she said.

It was 6 o’clock. Paul would just as soon been given a few more minutes to sleep. But in a place where he must ask permission to go to the bathroom, where he eats every meal under close surveillance and where birthdays aren’t much different from any other day, it was a nice gesture for one of the state’s most controversial inmates.

Paul Gingerich is believed to be the youngest person in Indiana ever sentenced to prison as an adult. He was still 12 years old when he arrived here at the Pendleton Juvenile Correctional Facility, the state’s maximum security prison for children. He had such a small frame and such a baby face that one of his new teachers — the prison has a school — asked: “What is a 7-year-old doing in our facility?”

Yet Paul was also a killer. He had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder after he and a friend fired four bullets into the friend’s stepdad. Each boy received 25 years, with the possibility that, for good behavior, they could get out in about half that time. They would still be young men, but young men who had grown up in prison.

In Paul’s case, that means living in a cell with a steel door and bare block walls in a remote corner of Pendleton. Home consists of a mattress on a concrete slab, a small desk and a chair and a window spliced with thick bars. Paul’s view is of a small patch of grass, a tall fence and rolling wave of razor sharp concertina wire.

Here, in this place, Paul has grown nearly 3 inches to about 5-foot-8, sprouted peach fuzz, popped his first pimples, had his voice change and — now — marked two birthdays. It is also a place that — should his lawyer pull off an epic reversal — Paul hopes to soon leave.

If you’re thinking that the photo of Meryl Streep backstage at the Oscars, by Al Seib of the Los Angeles Times, has exactly zero to do with any of the criminal justice stories….you’re quite right of course. But it was, after all, Academy Awards night, Sunday night, and Streep’s win was one of the few surprises of an otherwise predictable evening, since equally stellar and deserving Viola Davis was considered the frontrunner.