When Second Circuit Judge Denny Chin was profiled by the New York Times, one phrase stood out to me: “Rule and roll.” I got it then. I still get it now. A decision has to be made. It’s not just because that’s a judge’s job, but because the wheels of “justice” must keep turning or the system cranks to a halt, to no one’s benefit. And yet, there is a callousness to the phrase, that a person’s life, his family’s life, can be devastated and the judge just rules and rolls.

Right? Wrong? Either way, it’s done and they move on to destroy more lives. Work, work, work.

A pair of Kevins raised a different mechanism to be applied to sentences.

We have both worked with people who have taken extraordinary steps to rehabilitate themselves in prison. One of us is a former federal judge who resigned, in large part, because he could no longer stand to impose the excessive and unjust prison terms Congress mandates in so many cases. The other is a former prisoner and the leader of a national organization that works with thousands of families directly impacted by harsh federal and state sentencing laws.

Continue reading →

The snarky commentary by Carol Roth had a bite:

Actual assault: good
Mean words: bad

Millions of words have been murdered in the effort to explain why words are hateful, words hurt worse than any punch, any bullet. Words are violence. But who could have seen the alternative, that an actual physical assault isn’t violence? Continue reading →

Ed. Note: Greg Prickett is former police officer and supervisor who went to law school, hung out a shingle, and now practices criminal defense and family law in Fort Worth, Texas. While he was a police officer, he was a police firearms instructor, and routinely taught armed tactics to other officers.

Alabama Governor, Kay Ivey, just signed legislation that will allow a megachurch to form its own police force. The Briarwood Presbyterian Church of Birmingham is a predominantly white church. Birmingham, Alabama is an overwhelmingly African-American community.[i] The police force would work under the guidance of the pastor of the church, and there would be no public accountability, other than to complain to the pastor. According to Pew Research, 17 nations have some form of religious police. The United States, thanks to Alabama, just joined that list. This is an incredibly bad idea.

First, as a private entity there is no right for the public to obtain or inspect records. If you want the police bodycam from an incident, in most states you can fill out a request and obtain a copy after jumping through whatever hoops the State requires. You can’t do that with a police force that is owned and operated by a private entity. Continue reading →

For generations, “bleeding heart” liberals fought for a colorblind society, where every person would be afforded equal opportunity to achieve as much success and happiness as she could. Now, we learn, this was racist all along, as there can be no such thing as a colorblind society, and more pointedly, the society created by the majority came at the expense of the minority.

The only way to correct this normalization of white supremacism was to put the minority in control. A good ally will shut up, apologize for being awful and either hand over the keys or do as they’re told. When it comes to prosecutorial charging, however, colorblindness is making a comeback.

George Gascón, the [San Francisco] district attorney, has acknowledged that a disproportionate number of African-Americans are prosecuted in the city, which led him to ask a troubling question: To what extent does bias affect the work of prosecutors? Continue reading →

Michigan Lawprof Nicholas Bagley raises the alarm that, based upon the Supreme Court’s decision in Gundy v. United States, Justice Elena Kagan might be right that “most of Government is unconstitutional.” Whether that’s correct or hyperbole, is that a bad thing?

In Gundy v. United States, which concerned the constitutionality of a law requiring the registration of sex offenders, four of the more conservative justices endorsed a controversial legal theory according to which Congress lacks the power to delegate broad powers to agencies like the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Heath and Human Services.

The “controversial legal theory” is called the “nondelegation doctrine,” which limits Congress’ authority to enact a law with a general concept and hand it off the bureaucrats to make it happen. Continue reading →

You loved him at Fault Lines. You appreciated him here. And now he’s broken free of the chains of bondage to join the ranks of big pundits pontificating to the passionately unwashed. Andrew Fleischman got the call and went for it.

The Supreme Court Just Showed a Way Forward on Criminal Justice Reform

in doing so, the quality of Slate’s legal writing just improved immeasurably. Andrew’s got no ax to grind that compels him to twist, if not outright fabricate, the holding of the Supreme Court in Rehaif v. United States to fit an agenda, because it would be a shame if any reader walked away without being told what they’re to think. Continue reading →

When Justice Sam Alito goes with the majority’s reversal of a death penalty conviction, you know it has got to be bad. And as Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s opinion made plain, it was bad.

Four critical facts, taken together, require reversal. First, in the six trials combined, the State employed its peremptory challenges to strike 41 of the 42 black prospective jurors that it could have struck—a statistic that the State acknowledged at oral argument in this Court.

Second, in the most recent trial, the sixth trial, the State exercised peremptory strikes against five of the six black prospective jurors.

Third, at the sixth trial, in an apparent effort to find pretextual reasons to strike black prospective jurors, the State engaged in dramatically disparate questioning of black and white prospective jurors. Continue reading →

It can be hard to get too teary-eyed over the fact that defendants sentenced to probation, or convicts released on parole, end up in prison for failure to abide the terms of release. The simple answer is that if you don’t want to go to, or back to, prison, comply with the terms of your release. How hard is that?

It’s a far bigger question than many realize.

Nationwide, 45 percent of admissions to state prisons are the result of probation or parole violations. Sometimes these violations are serious, but most involve technicalities, such as botched paperwork, curfew violations or missing a drug test, according to a report released Tuesday by the Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center.

Continue reading →

Among the worst of progressive inconsistencies in “reform” is the shift away from certain offenses that affect groups they favor, such as marijuana, and toward groups they don’t, such as sex offenses. And a huge reform celebrated in a New York Times editorial masquerading as a news article is the reform of the elements of sexual harassment under New York’s Human Rights Law.

Well, calling it reform may be a bit unfair. What the New York legislature has done is removed the words “severe or pervasive,” (note the disjunctive) which means there is no effective limitation on what constitutes harassment at all.

For decades, sexual harassment was the State Capitol’s worst-kept secret.

Continue reading →

When he first appeared on my radar, I thought he was kinda shallow, maybe even dense. I was wrong. There was method to his madness, his pandering to the crowd with half-truths, missing salient facts, contorted law and misstated theories.

In fairness, I came to appreciate the skills Director of Policy Scott Hechinger from LIsa Schreibersdorf’s Brooklyn Defender Services brought to the cause. He’s now got a blue tick next to his name and, at the moment, more than 55,000 followers. Give him credit. He’s pulled off a coup for the cause, and with it he’s earned the devotion and appreciation of a great many passionate advocates for social justice and criminal law reform.

My perspective over my career and my tenure at SJ has been guided by two basic principles: to be as intellectually honest as I can be, and to not make people stupider. These are not Hechinger’s principles. He will say whatever is necessary to whip up his audience and inflame their outrage if it will serve the cause. So what if it’s only half a story? If it works to serve what he believes to be the greater good, then isn’t a bit of lying worth it? Isn’t the cause greater than the truth? Isn’t the cause the truth anyway, if you’re passionate enough? Continue reading →