Within hours after the Citizens United decision issued, people started asking how big money would fundamentally alter judicial elections. I had my doubts, since buying judges’ loyalties never struck me as a good use of money, and if someone was dying to throw their money away, there were better places to waste it.  And indeed, aside from some high profile purchases, the influence of big outside money didn’t appear to be nearly as serious a problem as initially thought.

From this report by the Center for American Progress, however, it appears that cash for judges may have a more insidious effect than most realize.

As state supreme court campaigns become more expensive and more partisan, the fear of being portrayed as “soft on crime” is leading courts to rule more often for prosecutors and against criminal defendants. Continue reading →

When XKCD first published this comic, everyone who saw it realized how painfully true it was:

A lot of people get very passionate about winning arguments on the internet.  No one “wins” arguments on the internet. Continue reading →

The New York Times editorial applauds the incipient “smart on crime” solutions that are starting to undo the damage of decades of “tough on crime” politics.

The mandatory sentencing movement that swept the United States beginning in the 1970s drove the state prison population up from less than 200,000 to about 1.4 million today and made corrections the second-fastest-growing state expense after Medicaid. But bipartisan sentencing reforms in a growing number of states are starting to reverse that trend — causing the prison population to decline by about 3.8 percent since 2009.

It credits empirical analysis as a better means of determining recidivism: Continue reading →

As a half-snarky response to Tim Cushing’s update to this post about the harm done to students by police educating them on active shooter preparedness, I twitted:

Any more kids harmed today?

And Tim half-snarkily replied:

Day’s still young.

This post at PoliceOne makes me regret my lame attempt at humor.

Police policy was not followed leading up to a school assembly where a student pulled the trigger of an assault rifle mounted on a police motorcycle and three children were injured by bullet fragments, authorities said. Continue reading →

At the New York Times, Tim Kreider complains of how the word “content” went from satisfied to freebie.

NOT long ago, I received, in a single week, three (3) invitations to write an original piece for publication or give a prepared speech in exchange for no ($0.00) money. As with stinkbugs, it’s not any one instance of this request but their sheer number and relentlessness that make them so tiresome. It also makes composing a polite response a heroic exercise in restraint.

People who would consider it a bizarre breach of conduct to expect anyone to give them a haircut or a can of soda at no cost will ask you, with a straight face and a clear conscience, Continue reading →

In a scathing post at The Atlantic, Andrew Cohen wrote of the travesty inflicted on Terrence Miller, both at trial and appeal.

In State v. Terrence Miller, four justices of the state supreme court—over a lone dissent—affirmed the conviction of a man indicted on drug charges who met his lawyer for the first time for a few minutes in a stairwell at the courthouse on the morning of trial. The lawyer had not tried a criminal case in seven years and had been appointed to Miller’s case only four days before trial. He never spoke to any witnesses, or to Miller’s former attorney, or to investigators in the public defender’s office. He didn’t know what his client would say on the witness stand. Continue reading →

I recall the drills in grade school where we were shuffled into the hallway and instructed to crouch down and put our head between our knees.  If an atomic bomb went off, we were ready. Of course, there was a joke about the drill, but nobody told us grade-schoolers about it.

Today, schools are engaging in active shooter drills. Trying to impute the best of faith to those who came up with the idea, it’s because this is perceived as the most likely tragedy that a school can face.  It may not be likely, but it does happen. So why not be prepared?

IF you missed last week’s “mad gunman terrorizes American schoolchildren” news story, Continue reading →

No doubt you’re getting as tired as I am of reading about Mary Anne Franks. Unfortunately, she’s turning into the gift that keeps on giving, and sometimes in ways one would never imagine.  This isn’t another post about her reinterpretation of the First Amendment that would permit her to criminalize speech that makes her feel bad, so don’t get all huffy on me.

Both Mark Bennett and Ken White put on their coolest lawprof hats and tried their best to behave in a respectful fashion to address the failings in Franks’ model law and her facile spin on that part of the Constitution that stood in the way of her slaying dragons.  And while their efforts at lawprof-speak failed to compare with the real McCoy, they did a fine job of maintaining a respectful tone, much to my amusement. Continue reading →

There’s fantasy football. Why not fantasy crime?  According to the 9th Circuit’s opinion in United States v. Black, there’s nothing wrong with the idea.  The majority opinion, written by Judge Raymond Fisher,  is explained in the case summary:

The panel affirmed four defendants’ convictions and sentences for conspiracy to possess cocaine with intent to distribute and use of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking offense, arising out of a reverse sting operation in which an ATF undercover agent recruited the defendants to carry out an armed robbery of a fictional cocaine stash house. Continue reading →

When the news of Polk County, Texas, Judge Elizabeth Coker got caught texting prosecutor Kaycee Jones broke, shock and outrage ensued.  But not from all quarters.  To the extent Mark Bennett was shocked, it was that she knew how to text.

The criminal-defense lawyers inter­viewed for the Chron­i­cle arti­cle call Coker’s actions “shock­ing” (Richard Bur­roughs) and “unusual” (Stan Schnei­der). I am not shocked, but I do find Coker’s con­duct unusual—not in its under­ly­ing con­tempt for the adver­sar­ial process, but only in its high-tech (and eas­ily doc­u­mented) execution.

The new news is that Coker has chosen to resign, and by resigning, terminate the investigation into her texting instructions to the prosecution during trial. Continue reading →