California Budget Courts Crime and Punishment Criminal Justice Prison Prison Policy

Wednesday’s Fresh Picks

2010-Lupine

I’m buried in work right now reading (very good) student stories,
but here are a bunch of issues that are worth our notice and/or attention.

(NOTE: For one week out of the year the mountain lupine in Topanga are in fullest bloom. This year, this is the week. I snapped the iPhone photo at the side of the road this past Saturday.)


9TH CIRCUIT JUDICIAL NOMINEE TO BE KICKED & PUMMELED QUESTIONED VIGOROUSLY AT SENATE HEARING WEDNESDAY.

James Oliphant for the LA Times has the story.

Senate Republicans are preparing to mount an assault against one of President Obama’s federal appeals court choices, offering a preview of a possible Supreme Court fight this summer.

Goodwin Liu, the president’s pick for the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, is expected to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday in what promises to be a contentious hearing.

[SNIP]

The Obama White House generally has shied away from the kind of incendiary and partisan fights over appeals court judges that were a staple of the George W. Bush administration, preferring moderate nominees with extensive experience in the federal courts.

Even his Supreme Court nominee last year, Sonia Sotomayor, was widely viewed as a legal centrist with a nearly 20-year record as a judge.

But Liu, 39, is seen by opponents as a game-changer. By all accounts, he is an opinionated and intellectually fierce academic with no judicial experience. Given his relative youth, an appeals court post could serve as a launching pad to a Supreme Court nomination.

Read on.


BRUCE LISKER GETS TRIAL DATE FOR CIVIL SUIT AGAINST LAPD

Neon Tommy’s Kevin Grant has the story. (Another one of my smart students. Wooo-hooo!)


CALIFORNIA PRISONS BUDGET RESISTS THE CHOPPING BLOCK

The San Jose Mercury News had this overview of some of the reasons that chopping money out of the state’s corrections has been a troublesome matter. Here are some clips.

The billions of dollars that California pours into its troubled prisons — a number fattened by court-ordered medical spending and sky-high personnel costs — have become an increasingly attractive target for leaders desperate to trim the state’s $20 billion deficit.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in January called for a constitutional amendment that would cap prison spending and put the savings toward public universities. And since last summer, lawmakers have tried to wring more than $2 billion from the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, once budgeted for $10 billion.

But despite officials’ attempts to clamp down after watching costs double over the past decade, some corrections spending is proving impervious to the budget ax.

{SNIP]
And more than two-thirds of the department’s budget goes to thousands
of correctional officers earning salaries locked in during California’s last boom. The state must employ all those officers because of tough sentencing laws that increased the inmate population more than fivefold over the past 20 years.

The challenges only add to a portrait of crisis for California’s prison system, beset by high recidivism rates and dilapidated facilities.

Paul Golaszewski of the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, which advises the Legislature on fiscal and policy issues, says reducing the number of inmates or taking a tougher stand on corrections salaries could save millions, “but they would require difficult policy decisions.”


JEFFREY MACDONALD SEEKS NEW TRIAL IN “FATAL VISION” MURDERS

The legal team of convicted murderer Jeffrey MacDonald got 45-minutes in court to explain why MacDonald should get a new trial in the matter of the murders of his wife and two daughters that occurred 40 years ago. MacDonald is serving three life sentences.

ABC has the story.

It’s been 40 years since MacDonald’s wife, Colette, and their two young daughters were brutally murdered in their home in Fort Bragg, N.C., and 31 years since MacDonald, a former army surgeon, was convicted in their murders. He claimed that a group of people, high on drugs, attacked him and murdered his wife and children.

The murders came just six months after the Charles Manson killings and immediately captivated an already shocked nation, spawning the book and TV miniseries “Fatal Vision.”

MacDonald’s lawyer, Joseph Zeszotarski, argued before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., that MacDonald deserves a new trial, based primarily on statements made by people tied to the case that had not previously been heard and new DNA findings that MacDonald’s team wants submitted to the court.

“MacDonald asserts that evidence submitted shows that he is actually innocent, and shows that his trial was infected with constitutional error,” his appeal says.

Read the rest. It’s a troubling tale

To make matters more confusing, Joe McGinnis, the veteran journalist who wrote Fatal Vision, the famous book about MacDonald, the murders and the trial, is the husband of one of my close pals, and I know that, in the course of researching the book, Joe reluctantly came to believe that MacDonald likely committed the murders.

Now it looks like the prosecutor might have had his finger on the scales.

It is all very curious and, as I said, troubling. And it’ll be worth watching the outcome.


SUNDAY CLOSURES & MORE FOR LA’S LARGEST LIBRARIES?

Maeve Reston at the LA Times describes a grim picture of what the budget cuts are doing to the city’s libraries.

19 Comments

  • What’s even more troubling is that you would think any of the bs that’s being claimed is anything more than just that. 40 years down the line and hocus pocus McDonald was framed? Is there any old case when someone brings up some far fetched stupidity that you won’t latch onto Celeste?

    Amazing. I heard decendants of Booth are claiming he didn’t kill Lincoln, very troubling huh?

  • Once again the Draconian Prison Industrial Complex, Robber Barons and Powers That Be, are taking all the money we should be giving to the poor working class, especially the hard working exploited undocumented workers from the culturally superior mexico.

    The rise in Fascism and Laissez-faire economics is taking over our country !!!!!!!! We need a revolution, we need a modern day “Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón” (General Santa Anna), que viva la revolucion !!!!!

    p.s.
    Saludos a mi abuelita.

  • Goodwin Liu is a Berkeley commie. I’d give him the same courtesies that the Democrats gave Republican Jeff Sessions.

    Obama is grooming the commie for the Supreme Court, and figures that an oriental would be hard to vote against. I wouldn’t have any problem blocking his nomination, simply for the survival of our free nation.

  • That’s a nice picture of the flowers. Soon, all the pine pollen will be in full force here, changing our car colors to yellow. I’ll send you a picture.

  • Daily Presidential Tracking Poll
    Wednesday, March 24, 2010
    The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows that 31% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-two percent (42%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -11

  • SureFire, try not to be so predictable. I’m not “latching on” to this.

    If the prosecutor was shaving the dice, which the new evidence indicates may be true, that should make all of us uneasy. It does not, however, prove MacDonald is innocent.

    If you bother to read you’ll note that my friend Joe McGinnis, who spent years around MacDonald and wrote the bestselling book about the case, wanted to believe him innocent, but came famously to believe he was guilty.

    All this adds up to the fact that, if there’s a new trial, you can bet I’m going to keep an eye on it.

  • Gallup.com
    March 24, 2010
    Healthcare
    Obama Fares Best Among Healthcare Political Players
    Independents evenly split on the efforts of the president and Republicans in Congress

    President Obama gets higher ratings for the job he did on the healthcare reform process over the past year than either congressional party does, though none of the three primary political actors receives positive reviews from a majority of Americans.

  • Woody, I’ll be looking for the pine pollen photo. I feel hay feverish just thinking about it.

  • Wait- surefire. Are you sure you are on the right side. Sure law enforcement is always right, but listen to the case. A military captain has his wife and children murdered and accuses a bunch of hippies of doing it – hippies who said, “acid is groovy. kill the pigs.” I mean who do you trust? Is it the military man or the hippies? How do you make snap judgements without any information when your stereotypes confict?!?!

  • What’s the odds that hippies did it and have kept it to themselves all these years? About the same as if the mob killed Kennedy and kept it to themselves all these years. What’s the odds that none of those hippies ever got arrested for anything and wanted to make a deal? What’s the odds that none of those hippies ever discussed it with their lover during pillow talk and then their now ex-lover came forward after the love affair ended?
    What’s the odds that the hippies could keep this quiet when more than two of them were involved? Oh, about the same as the mob keeping it quiet if they had killed Kennedy.
    The odds are high. Astronomically high.

  • Common Sense. Read the article. The “hippies” are dead, but supposedly the woman did talk to her mother and also talked to the DA who, according to a now dead cop, threatened her into changing her testamony.

    On the other hand, speaking purely personally, despite the above, I’m guessing that MacDonald’s guilty based on what I’ve heard from those who know the case very, very well. And that he’s a sociopath.

    Yet, the loose ends aren’t reassuring.

    But if by some chance MacDonald gets a new trial, it’ll be a quite an interesting drama.

  • Common Sense. Read the article. The “hippies” are dead, but supposedly the woman did talk to her mother and also talked to the DA who, according to a now dead cop, threatened her into changing her testimony.

    On the other hand, speaking purely personally, despite the above, I’m guessing that MacDonald’s guilty based on what I’ve heard from those who know the case very, very well. And that he’s a sociopath.

    Yet, the loose ends aren’t reassuring.

    But if by some chance MacDonald gets a new trial, it’ll be a quite an interesting drama.

    PS: I’ve always thought that “”Acid is groovy, kill the pigs,” was exceedingly bad dialogue, which made me distrust MacDonald from the gate.

  • I read the article where it links to ABC has the story
    I missed the link read the rest it’s a troubling tale
    Reading it now. I will withhold any comment until reading the link I missed. For the time being I stand corrected.
    Thank you Celeste.

  • My gut told me early on McDonald was guilty. He had that whole dominant/military/chauvinist stench about him. I WAS a hippie, had the revolutionary mindset and saw this McD phony as just another impediment to peace and freedom, the old guard trying to besmirch what we were sure was to be a new age. Today at 60+ years I followed your link to the ABC story of the motion for retrial and instead of reading strode off to the Susan Atkins story. Yeah I know she’s finally dead from cancer and Charles Manson still ruminates in some modern dungeon full of himself. To celebrate the death of a dream and justice served I rolled a “fattie” and counted my blessings.

  • Sure Celeste, and Leonard Weinglass interviewed a witness in the Mumia Abul Jamal case who said her boyfriend was involved, yet she’d been dead for 2 years when the supposed interview took place.

    This isn’t news Celeste. you have a dead marshall and a dead girl whose changed her mind and we’re supposed to think a new trial is in order? Forty years after the fact this crap come up and people buy it?

    Mavis, I was not always a clean cut Sure Fire, I grew up in the 60’s and early 70’s, have enough experiences from that time to “know a think or two about a thing or two”, so spare me. Read Fatal Vision, loved Gary Cole and Karl Malden in the movie and don’t believe either McDonald or the hippies, the evdience convicted the right guy.

    To show what an egotistical piece of crap of guy this is his wanting to practice medicine again. Please, this is too dopey to believe.

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