Life on the inside: an inmate’s view

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For two months now, the Ann Arbor chronicle has been publishing the Washtenaw Jail Diary, a series of chapters by a former inmate at that jail, chronicling his life behind bars and his experiences. Interestingly, the content of the chapters were originally published as tweets, but later taken down and deleted. This unnamed inmate is now in the process of writing a book, it seems, while at the same time publishing these stories in the newspaper. They’re up to the third chapter and you can find all the installments here.

The latest installment, Chapter 3, is of particular interest to me, because in it he writes about “The Public Pretender”:

I still cannot decide if I had decent representation within the parameters of the “McJustice” doled out via the overworked Public Defender’s office and the backroom horse trading that goes on. If I could have afforded a real lawyer, one with “connections,” would I have done as much jail time? I do not know the answer to that. I tend to think that I would have gone free sooner. But I will never know for sure.

I am taken from my block and brought to a room back near the dreaded holding tanks, meeting with the person with whom I am to entrust my life. And here, in front of me, is Clarence fucking Darrow, himself – all bluster and a bit cartoonish, reveling, it seems to me, in being the center of attention. He is surrounded by assistants, interns, law students – almost all of whom, I am strangely curious to discover, are attractive young women.

…

The Pretender tells me that I am not the usual kind of person he represents, since I am apparently well-spoken and educated. But that does not prevent him from launching into street lingo, some of which I ask him to translate for me. He speaks this way out of habit, I am guessing, to try to win the trust of his usual crop of clients.

I have mixed feelings about my Pretender. Do I want what appears to me to be a snake oil salesman representing my interests in these felony cases? Maybe this is exactly the kind of person I need on my side. The lawyer in my misdemeanor cases seemed much too timid for me – in fact, agreeing with the prosecutor in court.

But there’s more. For instance, this handy guide to writing a successful “speech to the judge”:

Major ingredients for a successful speech to a judge include:

1. Apologize to the court, to the community and to any victims harmed and admit your mistakes.
2. Talk about what you are doing while in jail to further your education, help the jail community or help control destructive behavior (AA, Alternatives to Domestic Abuse, GED, etc.).
3. Discuss your job possibilities after you return to the community and the support system of family and friends that awaits you.
4. Mention family members, teachers, members of the community who might have written letters to the judge on your behalf.

Do not:

1. Insist you are innocent.
2. Tell a hard-luck story about yourself and your family.
3. Fail to address the court clearly and with respect.

Title bout in GA: death penalty vs. no money

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This seems to have been a week of heavyweight fights.  Last night some guy named Pacquaio rearranged the face of some dude named Cotto and earlier in the week, in the state of “even Brian Nichols didn’t get death”, aka Georgia, the well oiled machinery of state sponsored murder took on the almighty dollar.

Yes, that was a very convoluted way of saying that the GA Supreme Court heard oral argument in the case of Jamie Ryan Weis, who’s sat in pre-trial confinement for 4 years awaiting a death penalty trial. For the first two years of his confinement, he didn’t even have counsel. The reason? GA has no money. Not for him and not for the 70 or so other capital defendants.

The state high court’s decision, expected next year, will set an important precedent. Numerous death-penalty trials across the state have been delayed because there has been no money to pay defense lawyers, investigators, expert witnesses and mitigation specialists.

In recent weeks, the state Office of the Capital Defender has not had enough lawyers to fully defend all of the approximately 70 death cases pending statewide. This includes two defendants charged in the July 26 slaying in Atlanta of former pro boxing champion Vernon Forrest.

Georgia court rules call for a capital defendant to be represented by two experienced attorneys. But because of overwhelming case loads, the capital defender office has been able to provide only one lawyer each for Charman Sinkfield and Jquante Crews, two of three men charged with Forrest’s murder.

Not only “Georgia court rules”, but ABA standards as well require two lawyers on each capital case. Anything but is sure to result in a reversal. So why doesn’t Georgia have any money to pay for an adequate defense? I’m glad you asked: Continue reading →

So long, farewell, don’t let the door hit you on your way out

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[Alternate post titles: So long and thanks for all the blog fodder; This just in: The Law now has a weak pulse]

So, it’s probably unnatural and unhealthy to be so giddy upon learning that Gov. Rell has decided not to seek re-election, but as most of you know, I can’t stand the woman. And that’s putting it mildly. I let out an audible yell yesterday when Ann Nyberg tweeted that she wasn’t going to run. My colleagues looked at me, much like they always do, like I had three heads. So maybe my disdain of the American Idol Governor knows no bounds.

But there’s good reason. After all, she has singlehandedly done so much to create such a disregard for the law and the rule of law, that sometimes I wonder who is worse: the law-breaking “criminals” she sought to protect our white community from or the law-ignoring bureaucrat.

She was the most dangerous of the “tough on crime” pols: sweet, nurturing, grandmotherly. She would lull everyone into sleep with her gentle affect and then decree the most outrageous acts of lawlessness this State has seen this decade.

First, there was Cheshire. Oh boy was there Cheshire. The brutal crimes in a white suburban neighborhood served not only to rouse the Governor from her mid-term siesta, but also had the side-effect of completely blinding her to common sense, and well, the rule of law. So the first thing she decided to do (well, sort of) was ban parole. That lasted for 4 months and resulted in severe overcrowding and a tremendous burden on state resources. That’s when Colin McEnroe coined the moniker “The American Idol Governor“. I still can’t get enough of that. She then proposed some truly scary and not very well thought out “reforms” of the criminal justice system, some of which unfortunately made it into law. Then she wanted CT to have a three-strikes law, in the face of all scientific research on its uselessness. Then came the unhinging, aka, “The David Pollitt Project“. I’m not even going to touch that. And finally, the veto of the death penalty abolition bill.

I write all of this, not to disparage her, but to remind myself and you  – voters all – of the absolute effing nonsense we’ve had to put up with these past few years. Will any of the people who’ve announced they’re running for Governor be any better? They almost have to, don’t they, because it can’t get much worse than this.

So while I wish her well in her personal life and hope that her health remains strong, I will not be sad to see her become former Governor Rell. I’m not sure there was a person less equipped to take on that job.

And now, on to the big question. What needs to be done? The first response is obvious: abolish the death penalty. But there are so many more things that need to be changed about the criminal justice system in our State. In my mind, there’s only one candidate who is qualified to do that. So, you guys can be the first to hear it: I am hereby announcing my candidacy for the Governor of the State of Connecticut and I will be running on the Smart on Crime platform for the “It must be easy; she did it for so long” party.

More details about the, well, details of my platform will follow in subsequent posts. I’m now going to go and do a cartwheel.

This I believe

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Man is neither inherently good nor bad. I believe that we act in ways because we are, for whatever reason, compelled to do so. I believe that we, as a society, need to assign labels to define behavior, to make ourselves feel better.

As someone who stands in a room of judgment, day after day, and watches society impose its collective morality on those that it deems the outliers, I cannot help but believe that there is something fundamentally askew with us. That our desire to control, to bring order, to inject sense where there may be none has blinded us. That we have drawn lines so sharp and clear in the sand that we have forgotten that there is no such thing as good or evil. I believe that it is our perception of acts that classifies them as good or evil.

I believe that the man who is about to spend the next 5 years of his life for shooting someone else has the same capacity for evil as the man who is sending him there. I believe that there is none among us who could not lift a finger to hurt another; just as there is none among us who wouldn’t lift a finger to help another. I believe that our actions are the product of our circumstances and thus, we are capable of anything: good or bad.

I believe that there is no act, however good or bad, that cannot be explained by the circumstances preceding or surrounding it. I believe that if we only chose to pay attention to those circumstances, that we would understand that. I do believe that the majority of us are better at controlling our base desires, of having better hold on our emotions and it is merely that which we are punishing in others: the lack of self-control.

I believe that we all have a breaking point; a point at which “we” become “them”. Some of the nicest, most docile men that I have met are those that have taken another life. Some of the angriest, most close-minded men are those that seek to judge others without recognizing the same capacity in themselves.

I believe that in order for us to evolve as a society, to have more “good” than “evil”, we must stop judging. I do not believe that people should not be punished, but that punishment must come with understanding and with mercy. I believe that it is easier to paint those that do not conform to our notions of “good” with the same broad brush of “evil”, but that it is more damaging. I believe that it is harder to look behind the acts that we are judging and recognize that capacity for good, but that if we tried – sincerely – we would all take a step forward toward making ourselves “better”.

I believe that it is difficult to believe this, but believe it I must.

From the Ministry of “It has to sink in eventually, right?”

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insp_captkirk[5]

The Death Penalty Information Center, in keeping with its tireless mission of boldly going where no man has gone before abolishing the death penalty has yet another “why didn’t I think of that!” report out today, pointing out (yet again) the stupidity of persisting with the death penalty in these financial times (and the general lack of cost-effectiveness of that method of punishment).

The study (available here) essentially says that the DP is far too costly to be viable these days. The report is a fascinating read for several reasons, but I’ll highlight just two. First, let’s get right to it. How much does the damn thing cost? From the report:

The high costs to the state per execution reflect the following reality: For a single death penalty trial, the state may pay $1 million more than for a non-death penalty trial. But only one in every three capital trials may result in a death sentence, so the true cost of that death sentence is $3 million. Further down the road, only one in ten of the death sentences handed down may result in an execution. Hence, the cost to the state to reach that one execution is $30 million. Sums like these are causing officials to rethink the wisdom of such expenditures.

Although arriving at the actual cost of the death penalty in a state is complicated, in some states $30 million per execution is a very conservative estimate:

In 2008, the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice released an exhaustive report on the state’s capital punishment system, concluding that it was “dysfunctional” and “broken.” The report found that the state was spending $137 million per year on the death penalty. The Commission estimated a comparable system that sentenced the same inmates to a maximum punishment of life without parole would cost only $11.5 million per year. Since the number of executions in California has averaged less than one every two years since the death penalty was reinstated in 1977, the cost for each execution is over $250 million. The state has also indicated it needs another $400 million to construct a new death row.

In Maryland, where a legislative commission recently recommended abolishing the death penalty, a comprehensive cost study by the Urban Institute estimated the extra costs to taxpayers for death penalty cases prosecuted between 1978 and 1999 to be $186 million. Based on the 5 executions carried out in the state, this translates to a cost of $37 million per execution.

In 1988, the Sacramento Bee found that the death penalty cost California $90 million annually beyond the ordinary expenses of the justice system, of which $78 million was incurred at the trial level.45 But the costs have increased sharply since then. According to the Los Angeles Times in 2005, maintaining the death penalty system now costs taxpayers more than $114 million a year beyond the cost of simply keeping the convicts locked up for life. This figure does not count the millions more spent on court costs to prosecute capital cases. The Times concluded that Californians and federal taxpayers are paying more than $250 million for each execution.

The study then goes through an examination of the opportunity costs and why the death penalty costs so much to begin with. But more interesting is the first part of the report, which is a poll of 500 randomly chosen police chiefs. Read pages 9-12 of the PDF report, but here are the highlights:

  • The death penalty was considered the least efficient use of taxpayers’ money. Police chiefs ranked expanded training for police officers, community policing, programs to control drug and alcohol abuse, and neighborhood watch programs as more cost-effective ways to use taxpayers’ money
  • 69% of those surveyed believed that politicians support the death penalty as a symbolic way of showing they’re “tough on crime”.
  • Only 24% agreed that offenders think about the range of punishments before committing a murder.
  • Of various statements about the death penalty, the one with which the police chiefs most identified was: “Philosophically, I support the death penalty, but I don’t think it is an effective law enforcement tool in practice.”
  • 57% agreed (and 39% disagreed) that the death penalty is an effective deterrent.

This is just reinforcement for the argument that the death penalty should be abolished. CT came close last year, but was vetoed by the Gov. Good thing she likes polls so much; someone should show her this new report.

And because it’s been so damn long since we’ve had a video on this blog, I give you a related Ministry:

Drunk driving is different

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Ordinarily, on a criminal law blog, the words “is different” would usually be preceded by the word “death” and an accompanying rant about the futility of the death penalty and the special standards to be applied in deciding whether a State should be in the killing business (I do not disappoint: see next post). However, today we learn that our esteemed Chief Justice uses another “d” word to finish that sentence: drunk driving.

In an odd little dissent from the denial of cert in Virginia v. Harris, Chief Justice Roberts essentially argues that anytime police receive an anonymous tip that someone is driving drunk and they find that person, they should be able to pull them over and conduct an investigatory stop.

The story in Harris essentially was that some woman called the cops refusing to give her name, but said that Harris was driving drunk in a green Altima and wearing a striped shirt. The police found a green Altima in the general vicinity of where she said it would be, and the license plate was “close enough” to the partial description she provided. Importantly, however, Harris did not commit any traffic violations (damn those pesky drunk drivers not providing any bases for a pretextual stop!), so when he pulled over to the side of the road, the cop followed suit and initiated a traffic stop. It is not clear why he pulled over (probably because he was drunk and saw a cop following him) or what the cop initiated a stop for (probably because he was a cop and he could). Anyway, Harris reeked and was arrested.

Not so fast, said the Virginia Supreme Court, relying on Florida v. J.L. SCOTUS, in its wisdom, determined less than a decade ago that anonymous tips, by themselves are worth diddly-squat:

An anonymous tip has a relatively low degree of reliability, requiring more information to sufficiently corroborate the information contained in the tip. See J.L., 529 U.S. at 270. “Unlike a tip from a known informant whose reputation can be assessed and who can be held responsible if her allegations turn out to be fabricated, ‘an anonymous tip alone seldom demonstrates the informant’s basis of knowledge or veracity.’ ” J.L., 529 U.S. at 270 (quoting Alabama v. White, 496 U.S. at 329) (citation omitted).

The indicia of reliability of an anonymous tip may be bolstered when the tipster provides predictive information, which the police can use to test the tipster’s basis of knowledge and credibility.  However, for such predictive information to bolster the tipster’s basis of knowledge or credibility, the information must relate to the alleged criminal activity. Providing information observable or available to anyone is not predictive information and can only “help the police correctly identify the person whom the tipster [meant] to accuse.” J.L., 529 U.S. at 272. An anonymous call that provides no predictive information leaves the police without a means to test the tipster’s knowledge or credibility. J.L., 529 U.S. at 271.

And it makes perfect sense. if this were not the case, I could call the police and say I saw Scott walking down the street, carrying an AR-15 and a suitcase full of meth and he told me he was going to go rob some prosecutors. That’d be enough for them to arrest him. Now, I know he’s not actually doing any of those things, but he’d be harassed a bit. Chief Justice Roberts’ response to this, though, is that “drunk driving is different”. Okay, he didn’t actually use that pithy phrase, but that’s essentially what he thinks:

The imminence of the danger posed by drunk drivers exceeds that at issue in other types of cases. In a case like J. L., the police can often observe the subject of a tip and step in before actual harm occurs; with drunk driving, such a wait-and-see approach may prove fatal. Drunk driving is always dangerous, as it is occurring. This Court has in fact recognized that the dangers posed by drunk drivers are unique, frequently upholding anti-drunk-driving policies that might be constitutionally problematic in other, less exigent circumstances.

Riiight. So a cop who is following a driver based on an anonymous tip couldn’t pull him over if the driver was say…driving erratically? No, of course not. That would make too much sense. There’s definitely more harm there than, say, a drug deal gone bad. You know how those cops love to point out to juries that drug dealers are violent types known to carry guns.

I don’t know why he chose to dissent in this case, but one can suspect that perhaps his whole intention isn’t really to distinguish between drunk driving and other offenses, but rather to do away with that pesky J.L. case altogether.

Either way, good thing he was all alone in his dissent. Well, besides that MADD amicus brief, which I won’t link to because this is a respectable, family oriented blog.