12 Jan 2012

January 12, 2012


First Since 1965: Homicides Off Top 15 U.S. Causes of Death List

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For the first time in almost half a century, homicide has fallen off the list of the nation's top 15 causes of death, replaced by a lung illness that often develops in elderly people who have choked on their food, the Associated Press reports. The 2010 list eflects at least two major trends: Murders are down, and deaths from certain diseases are on the rise as the population ages. Homicide was overtaken at No. 15 by pneumonitis, seen mainly in people 75 and older. It happens when food or vomit goes down the windpipe and causes deadly damage to the lungs.

This is the first time since 1965 that homicide failed to make the list, says the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It was as high as 10th in 1989 and in 1991 through 1993, when the nation saw a surge in youth homicides related to the crack epidemic. Criminologists have debated the reasons for the decline. Among the reasons: Abusive relationships don't end in murder as often as they once did, thanks to increased incarcerations and better support for victims. "We've taken the home out of homicide," said criminologist James Alan Fox of Northeastern University.

Associated Press/Miami Herald


OK Reform Panel Urges Raising Post-Prison Supervision to Cut Crime

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Unless the Oklahoma legislature acts, thousands of people will continue being released from prison with no form of supervision, the state's high violent crime rate will remain unchanged, and state spending on prisons will increase by more than $250 million over the next 10 years, says a ""justice reinvestment" report quoted by The Oklahoman.

A 20-member group of officials made recommendations to reduce violent crime statewide 10 percent by 2016 and provide post-prison supervision for all felons while containing growth in prison costs. "By doing nothing, our current path is unsustainable," said House Speaker Kris Steele. Suggestions include requiring supervision for all felony offenders; 51 percent of those leaving prison now have no supervision. It also calls for increasing the availability of substance abuse treatment, and developing community-based mental health care centers. The report recommends spending $110 million from fiscal year 2013 through fiscal year 2021, with an expected savings of $249 million that would otherwise be spent on the growing prison population.

The Oklahoman


Pepsi Beverages To Pay $3.1 Million in Criminal Records Misuse Case

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Pepsi Beverages Co. will pay $3.1 million to settle federal charges of race discrimination for using criminal background checks to screen out job applicants even if they weren't convicted of a crime, the Associated Press reports. The settlement with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is part of a federal crackdown on hiring policies that can hurt blacks and Hispanics.

The EEOC said the company's policy of not hiring workers with arrest records disproportionately excluded more than 300 black applicants. The policy barred applicants who had been arrested but not convicted and denied employment to others who were convicted of minor offenses. Using arrest and conviction records to deny employment can be illegal if it's irrelevant for the job. A Pepsi Beverages spokesman said a new company policy would take a more "individualized approach" in considering the applicant's criminal history against the particular job being sought.

Associated Press/Washington Post


While States OK Medical Pot, Many Local Governments Are Saying No

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More states are saying yes to medical marijuana, but local governments increasingly are using laws to just say no, not in our backyard, reports the Associated Press. In California, with the most permissive U.S. medical marijuana laws, 185 cities and counties have banned pot dispensaries entirely. In New Jersey, perhaps the most restrictive of 17 states that have legalized marijuana for sick people, some groups planning to sell cannabis are struggling to find local governments willing to let them in.

Dispensaries have been banned in parts of Colorado and have run into opposition in some towns in Maine. Some local politicians argue that pot is still illegal under federal law, that marijuana dispensaries attract crime, and that such businesses are just fronts for drug-dealing, supplying weed to people who aren't sick. Cities and towns may bar dispensaries outright or apply zoning ordinances so strict that they amount to the same thing. The ordinances set minimum distances between such businesses and schools, homes, parks, and houses of worship.

Associated Press/NPR


Judge Blocks Ohio Execution, Cites State's "Self-Inflicted Wound"

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An Ohio federal judge blocked the execution scheduled for next week of murderer Charles Lorraine yesterday while excoriating the state for failing to follow its own death-penalty protocol, reports the Columbus Dispatch. "Do not lie to the court, do not fail to do what you tell this court you must do, and do not place the court in the position of being required to change course in this litigation after every hearing," said U.S. District Judge Gregory Frost. "It should not be so hard for Ohio to follow procedures that the state itself created. Today's adverse decision [ ] is again a curiously if not inexplicably self-inflicted wound."

It is unclear whether Frost's withering criticism will have an impact beyond stopping the execution of Lorraine, 45, was convicted of murdering an alderly couple in 1986. Attorney General Mike DeWine will appeal Frost's decision to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Public Defender Allen Bohnert called on Gov. John Kasich to issue a moratorium in light of "federal constitutional problems."

Columbus Dispatch


Why Mexico Isn't Replicating Colombia's Success in The Drug War

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Colombia's incredible turnaround and the strategy credited with bringing it about have become not only a rare success story in the drug war, but also its most formidable brand and export, reports The Washington Monthly. The governments of Mexico and several other Central American countries that have been plunged into violent confrontation with drug gangs have tried to replicate their South American peer's strategy. There are two problems. The first is that none of these places, despite years of effort, has seen the kind of transformation that President Álvaro Uribe Vélez brought about in Colombia. In fact, so far, the momentum runs in the opposite direction, particularly in Mexico.

The second problem, says the Monthly, is that, in Colombia itself, Uribe's strategy has reached a point of sharply diminishing returns. Having largely defeated sweeping leftist insurgency against the state, and having decapitated a relatively cohesive paramilitary force, Colombia now faces a hydra-headed, apolitical, essentially criminal set of groups vying for turf and control over what's left of the drug trade. None of these groups is as powerful as its precursors, but nor do they seem to be susceptible to the same strategic countermeasures. Violence is starting to drift upward. "If you look at the trend lines on homicides and kidnapping, it looks like a backwards J," says Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America. "They drop really sharply from 2002 to 2006, then there's a stagnation. In 2008 and 2009 several of those measures start to creep back up again."

The Washington Monthly


Court's Eyewitness ID Ruling Expressed "Abundant Faith" In Juries

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Yesterday's Supreme Court ruling on eyewitness identifications expressed an abundant faith in trial juries' capacity to root out questionable eyewitness accounts, says Lyle Denniston on Scotusblog.com. As reported here yesterday, the court, by an 8-1 vote, refused to require a new screening procedure in situations where police have not actually manipulated the identification - intentionally or not. The ruling came amid growing complaints that those who claim to have seen a crime occurring too often get it wrong, resulting in unjustified guilty verdicts because of the high value most jurors place on what they deem to be first-hand observation.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg insisted that the court was adding nothing new to a long-standing practice of allowing jurors, not judges in a mid-trial screening process, to decide whether to believe eyewitness testimony. Jurors, with their roles at least partly limited by the constitutional rights of the suspect, have been trusted to evaluate such testimony, unless their judgment has been influenced by police creation of "suggestive circumstances" surrounding the identification, Ginsburg noted. The court rejected a plea by a New Hampshire man to require such a screening procedure by the judge any time an identification had been made in a "suggestive" setting. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the lone dissenter, would have required that approach, arguing that it was dictated by the court's precedents.

Scotusblog.com


Could Legislative "Fiscal Notes" Be a Key to Criminal Justice Reform?

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States could come up with more effective criminal-justice practices if legislatures drafted proper "fiscal notes" to assess proposals on crime and punishment, the American Civil Liberties Union urges in a new report concluding that "the vast majority of states do not accurately perform these fiscal notes in a way that is useful to legislators."

The group calls for states to calculate both short- and long-term costs and cost savings for criminal justice bills so that legislators "know the true fiscal implications of reform proposals before voting on them." Based on an analysis of state fiscal notes for significant adult sentencing and corrections bills enacted in the last three years - more than 600 bills from 49 states - the report found that states did not write a fiscal note for 40 percent of the bills. Without an official certification that a bill would save money, legislators may have less incentive to vote for it, the ACLU said. Most states failed to examine the fiscal impact beyond a year or two into the future. Fifteen of the 29 states that wrote fiscal notes finding a significant fiscal impact failed to estimate the impact beyond two years.

American Civil Liberties Union


Mississippi Judge Blocks Some Barbour Pardons Over "Notice" Issue

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Some Mississippi inmates expecting to be freed from prison on a gubernatorial pardon will remain behind bars, and others others already out could go back, reports the Jackson Clarion-Ledger. Hinds County Circuit Judge Tomie Green blocked the pardons made by outgoing Gov. Haley Barbour, citing issues raised by Attorney General Jim Hood of possible constitutional violations.

Attorney General Jim Hood argued that Barbour violated the state constitution when the departing governor granted 203 pardons to felons as he left office. That included five inmates, four of them convicted murderers, who have gone free. Green ordered them to report each day to the state Department of Corrections and to her courtroom on Jan. 23. Under the state constitution, the governor has the power to grant pardons, but a legal newspaper notice must be published in the county of conviction 30 days earlier. In many cases, notices failed to run on time. In a few cases, notices never ran. "It's unfortunate that Gov. Barbour didn't read the constitution," Hood said. "It's a shame, and he ought to be ashamed."

Jackson Clarion-Ledger


OR Tests Only 30% of Portland DNA Samples Within 30 Days

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Only 30 percent of the DNA samples that Portland police submit to the state crime lab are tested within 30 days, a national benchmark for timely analysis, according to a city audit reported by The Oregonian. The average processing time in 2010 and 2011 for Portland DNA evidence submitted to the lab was 56 days. The audit found there are hundreds, perhaps a thousand, DNA samples that are stored at the bureau's property evidence warehouse that haven't been submitted to the lab.

Crime labs nationally are struggling with DNA testing backlogs, partly because federal and state laws require authorities to collect more DNA samples yet the lab capacity hasn't been able to meet the demand. Oregon, for example, requires DNA samples from all convicted felons. Randall Wampler of the Oregon State Police Forensic Services Division said the city audit failed to take into account how the state lab prioritizes murder and sexual assault cases compared to lower-level property crime cases. "For public understanding, we are getting to those highly sensitive cases much quicker than what this report shows," Wampler said. "Certainly when we get a homicide or a sex assault, it goes up to the top of our priority list and into the DNA queue for processing, whereas a burglary or break-in to a car could sit for two years before we ever get to it."

The Oregonian


Fired TX Crime Lab Scientist: Some Drug Case Analysis Wasn't Done

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A fired former Austin Police Department crime lab scientist has alleged to District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg that some drug cases were processed "without any analysis being conducted at all," reports the Austin American-Statesman. Lehmberg asked the Texas Department of Public Safety to review the charges.

Assistant Police Chief Sean Mannix defends the lab, saying the charges came from an "angry former employee." One crime lab official said a review of two cases indicates no drug testing was performed before a "preliminary report" was emailed to prosecutors. The former employee said that "rush" cases were "analyzed without regard to laboratory protocols." Defense lawyers suggested that the "rush" cases were required to meet prosecutors' accelerated prosecution schedule under the so-called Rocket Docket. Defense lawyer Amber Vazquez Bode said that following protocol is essential in such cases because it ensures accuracy. "It's a pretty big deal if in fact a substance was not crack cocaine and you are sitting in state jail for a year," she said.

Austin American-Statesman


Latest Tabloid Justice Drama: John Edwards' Campaign Finance Case

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If you're wondering what crime news is captivating tabloid journalists these days, try the John Edwards campaign finance trial in North Carolina. The Raleigh News & Observer says the National Enquirer is reporting that Edwards is making a "desperate attempt to CHEAT JUSTICE" by marrying former lover Rielle Hunter. The News & Observer could find no evidence of such a marriage.

Now the question is what undisclosed medical condition has made it difficult for the former U.S. presidential candidate to help with trial preparations. A British tabloid not identified by the News & Observer reports that Edwards, 58, collapsed in the arms of a close friend before Christmas, debilitated after a long run by chest pains that turned out to be a panic attack. A meeting with the judge is scheduled tomorrow in Greensboro, N.C., to discuss the trial schedule.

Raleigh News & Observer