Failure, Thy Name is Criminal Justice
"Last Friday, The Harvard Law Review published a series of trenchant essays on criminal justice, the most personal and provocative of which was a piece written by Alec Karakatsanis titled 'Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers.'  Attorneys have failed to protect their clients and the citizenry at large on two basic levels, Karakatsanis wrote....

That same day, also at Harvard Law School, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, who has become the archangel of candor on criminal justice reform, gave a memorable speech in which he candidly blasted lawyers for abdicating their responsibility “to help create a safe, fair, and just society even when legal issues, in the narrow sense, are not directly at stake.”

A Judicial Nominee Rejected Due To Racial Insensitivity Has A Veto Over All Alabama Federal Judges

Nearly 30 years ago, the sitting United States Attorney for the state of Alabama lost his chance to become a federal judge due to concerns about his views on race. Among other things, he’d labeled the NAACP an “un-American” and “Communist-inspired” organization that “forced civil rights down the throats of people.” He’d conducted a tenuous criminal investigation into voting rights advocates, culminating in an unsuccessful prosecution against a former aide to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And an African American attorney who once worked for him testified that the nominee said that he “used to think [the KKK] were OK” until he found out some of them were “pot smokers,” that the nominee referred to his black subordinate as “boy,” and that the nominee had told the black attorney to “be careful what you say to white folks” after the nominee heard the attorney chastising a white secretary.

We’re talking, of course, about United States Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III (R-AL).

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Ten things to know about Canada’s newest Supreme Court judge

1. He’s a man. Many people had expected a woman, because Stephen Harper faced criticism last year when he named Richard Wagner to replace Marie Deschamps on the court. Judges Nadon and Wagner are both not women, a fact that didn’t escape NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair’s notice: “This is the highest court in the land. And that has to reflect the population,’’ he said Monday.
2.  Judge Nadon, 64, is an ‘‘expert in maritime and transportation law,’’ according to the Prime Minister. He has served on the Federal Court of Appeal, the Federal Court, the Court Martial Appeal Court of Canada, and the Competition Tribunal
3. A list of three names was presented to Mr. Harper. The candidates were not ranked, and the names of the other two on the shortlist were not disclosed.
4.  
5. Read on...

Judges vs. juries, and the Supreme Court

Judges may decide whether a punishment fits the criminal as well as the crime. But whether a crime was committed is for the jury, not the judge, to determine.

Legal scholars long have struggled to determine the proper allocation of authority between judges and juries. But you don't have to be an expert to recognize that Allen Ryan Alleyne was treated unjustly by a federal court in Virginia.

The jury that convicted Alleyne for his role in the armed robbery of a convenience store specifically looked at the question of whether a gun was "brandished" by Alleyne's accomplice, a factor that would trigger a mandatory minimum sentence of seven years for any participant in the crime. The jury concluded that it wasn't (although it did agree that a gun had been "used or carried"). But when the judge sentenced Alleyne, he concluded that a gun had been brandished and sentenced him to the mandatory minimum.

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This is an editorial from the LA Times. Tom

 

How Mandatory Minimums Forced Me to Send More Than 1,000 Nonviolent Drug Offenders to Federal Prison

Growing up in blue collar Circle Pines, Minnesota, in the 1950s, raised by parents from the “Greatest Generation,” I dreamed only of becoming a civil rights lawyer. My passion for justice was hard-wired into my DNA. Never could I have imagined that by the end of my 50s, after nineteen years as one of 678 federal district court judges in the nation, I would have sent 1,092 of my fellow citizens to federal prison for mandatory minimum sentences ranging from sixty months to life without the possibility of release. The majority of these women, men and young adults are nonviolent drug addicts. Methamphetamine is their drug of choice. Crack cocaine is a distant second. Drug kingpins? Oh yes, I’ve sentenced them, too. But I can count them on one hand. While I’m extremely proud of my father’s service in World War II, I am greatly conflicted about my role in the “war on drugs.”

You might think the Northern District of Iowa—a bucolic area home to just one city with a population above 100,000—is a sleepy place with few federal crimes. You would be wrong. Of the ninety-four district courts across the United States, we have the sixth-heaviest criminal caseload per judge. Here in the heartland, I sentence more drug offenders in a single year than the average federal district court judge in New York City, Washington, Chicago, Minneapolis and San Francisco—combined. While drug cases nationally make up 29 percent of federal judges’ criminal dockets, according to the US Sentencing Commission, they make up more than 56 percent of mine. More startling, while meth cases make up 18 percent of a judge’s drug docket nationally, they account for 78 percent of mine. Add crack cocaine and together they account for 87 percent.

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What Nov. 6 means for the Supreme Court

If Romney wins, we can expect a frighteningly conservative high court. A victory for Obama could mean a liberal majority for the first time since 1969.

The future of the Supreme Court is the forgotten issue in this year's presidential election. This is surprising and disturbing because a president's picks for the federal judiciary are one of the most long-lasting legacies of any presidency. There is a sharp contrast between the types of individuals that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney would place on the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts, yet neither is saying much about it.

Recent history powerfully shows the importance of presidential elections to Supreme Court decision-making. Imagine that Al Gore or John Kerry had been elected president and one of them, rather than George W. Bush, had been able to replace William Rehnquist and Sandra Day O'Connor in 2005. The high court likely would not have found a right for corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money in elections in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission (2010), or a right of individuals to own and possess guns in District of Columbia vs. Heller (2008), or upheld the federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act in Gonzales vs. Carhart (2007).

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Study: Elected Judges Hand Down Harsher Sentences Closer To An Election

A study by Loyola law Professor Carlos Berdejó and Berkeley business Professor Noam Yuchtman finds that elected judges in Washington state hand down demonstrably higher sentences during the lead up to their reelection bid, and that this spike in sentences drops shortly after the election is over:




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How Yawning Got One Court Spectator Six Months in the Slammer and Other Disturbing Acts of Judicial Tyranny

By Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Posted August 21, 2009.

When judges take on airs and lash out in fits of whimsical bullying, innocent people can end up paying the price with jail time -- or their lives.

Last month, in Illinois, Circuit Judge Daniel Rozak was handing down a sentence in a felony drug case when a courtroom spectator did something unforgivably disruptive. He yawned.

The move (by its very nature) may have been spontaneous, but Rozak found it highly offensive nonetheless. He slapped the yawner -- 33-year-old Clifton Williams, the cousin of the defendant -- with the highest contempt sentence possible under Illinois law: six months in jail.

In the description of the contempt order, Williams "raised his hands while at the same time making a loud yawning sound," a move ostensibly calculated to undermine the judge's authority.

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Judges Plead Guilty in Scheme to Jail Youths for Profit

by Ian Urbina and Sean D. Hamill

At worst, Hillary Transue thought she might get a stern lecture when she appeared before a judge for building a spoof MySpace page mocking the assistant principal at her high school in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. She was a stellar student who had never been in trouble, and the page stated clearly at the bottom that it was just a joke.

Instead, the judge sentenced her to three months at a juvenile detention center on a charge of harassment.

She was handcuffed and taken away as her stunned parents stood by.
"I felt like I had been thrown into some surreal sort of nightmare," said Hillary, 17, who was sentenced in 2007. "All I wanted to know was how this could be fair and why the judge would do such a thing."

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This really is over the top. Tom

W's Worst Judges

By Stephanie Mencimer, Mother Jones. Posted September 17, 2008.

Forget Roberts or Alito for a minute; in eight years, Bush installed more than 300 federal judges. Here are a few to keep a close eye on. Over the past eight years, Bush has installed 310 federal judges -- two of them to the highest court in the land -- whose influence will be felt for many years. Here are some to keep an eye on, along with their more notable rulings before and after elevation.

1. WILLIAM H. PRYOR JR., 11th Circuit

Precedent: As Alabama's attorney general, he defended the state's practice of handcuffing prison inmates to hitching posts.

Case closed: Voted to uphold an Anita Bryant-era Florida law prohibiting gays and lesbians from adopting children -- even when they've served as their foster parents.

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A lot of blame to spread around regarding the approval of these judges. Checks and balances, and the concept of an agressive (Democratic) opposition party failed. Tom