by TChris

Tempering justice with mercy is one of the most difficult tasks of the criminal justice system -- almost as difficult as deciding what constitutes "justice" in the first place.

Robert Latimer, a Saskatchewan farmer, killed his daughter in 1993. He says he did it to spare her from unbearable suffering.

At trial, Tracy's pediatric orthopedic surgeon testified that the tiny girl, contorted by cerebral palsy, would likely face "incredible" pain after surgery to ease a permanently dislocated hip. The procedure involved removing part of her upper leg to create a "flail limb" that would no longer be connected by bone.

Both the surgeon and a family doctor had told the Latimers that Tylenol was the only painkiller Tracy could have after her release from hospital. Anything stronger could have shut down her fragile respiratory system, Mr. Latimer said.

Knowing that his daughter would eventually need the same surgery on her other hip, Latimer couldn't bear to see his daughter suffer. A jury found him guilty of second-degree murder but recommended that he serve only one year in jail and another under house arrest at his farm. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Latimer would have to serve the ten year mandatory minimum sentence for the crime.

Latimer, who has served more than three years, hasn't yet applied for clemency because he thinks the Supreme Court misspoke when it said he could have controlled his daughter's pain with more effective medications. He worries that the misunderstanding needs to be resolved before his clemency petition will be taken seriously. That's unfortunate, because Latimer is a perfect candidate for clemency. Whether his actions are viewed as morally right or wrong, it's obvious that Latimer poses no risk to others. The unique and tragic circumstances of his case make the sentence proposed by the jury a more just outcome than continued incarceration.

by TChris

The President's web page on corporate responsibility claims that his administration "continues to pursue an aggressive agenda to fight corporate fraud and abuse" for the protection of investors. So the Bush administration must support regulatory proposals that benefit investors, right?

The Securities and Exchange Commission has come under intense pressure from business and some members of the Bush administration to water down proposed rule changes in the way corporate boards are elected, mutual funds are governed and hedge funds are regulated.

The proposals, which flow from scandals in the mutual fund industry and at some of the nation's largest corporations, have split the agency largely along partisan lines. The two Democratic commissioners support them, the two Republicans have expressed skepticism about them, and the swing vote is in the hands of the agency's chairman, William H. Donaldson, a Bush appointee.

Donaldson is being pressured to water down the rules by "an administration eager to court the chief executives during an election year."

The White House web page gives the President credit for leading the S.E.C.'s effort to improve corporate accountability, and it leaves the impression that the administration fully supports proposals for reform. The administration's effort to sway the S.E.C. in favor of corporate executives isn't mentioned.

by TChris

Remember: if any little thing bothers you in life, no matter how silly, just ask your government to make it illegal. Much of the time, your government will oblige.

The city council in Gaston, North Carolina passed an ordinance prohibiting dogs in store windows -- unless the store is a pet shop. The ordinance is targeted at Clint Baucom, a bail bondsman who keeps his two dogs in his storefront office.

Baucom says his dogs give his office a sense of protection, and he's able to better care for them at the store given his round-the-clock business hours.

But, because others think the dogs are "ugly" and don't portray the "positive image" that Gaston desires, Baucom's dogs can no longer lounge around in a room with a view.

by TChris

Listening to conservatives over the last 25 years might lead to the conclusion that only fuzzy-thinking liberals who are "soft on crime" care about the rehabilitation of offenders. Now that the preferred correctional policy of conservatives -- lengthy sentences with no services that might interfere with the corrective value of punishment -- has (as TalkLeft reported yesterday) caused serious financial problems for states without corresponding benefits in crime reduction, some conservatives have come to accept that there may be more cost-effective means of reducing the likelihood of recidivism.

Having turned "rehabilitation" into a dirty word, and unwilling to admit their error, conservatives had to find a new phrase.

They are not calling it rehabilitation but re-entry, programs that help inmates make the transition from prison to returning home. These include drug treatment, job training and finding housing.

"We've got a broken corrections system," Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, said. "Recidivism rates are too high and create too much of a financial burden on states without protecting public safety."

No kidding. Brownback says that "the public forgot" that all those incarcerated people were eventually going to be released -- with no job skills, no education, no drug or mental health treatment, no support systems, a criminal record that will prevent them from finding a decent job, and no help in their efforts to avoid a return to crime. Well, actually, "the public" didn't forget; it was the right wing, continually ridiculing the left for being "soft on crime," that forgot to stay in touch with reality.

So now the right is backpedalling as "the public" sees how successful rehabilitation (sorry, "re-entry") programs can be.

by TChris

States have frequently gone overboard with their sex offender registration laws, requiring everyone convicted of a sex offense, no matter the circumstances, to register. Michigan legislators may reform the law to give a break to a class of people who aren't reasonably viewed as dangerous -- teenagers who had sex with other teenagers.

All too often, it takes a tragedy to get the legislature's attention. That's what happened in the case of Justin Fawcett.

Fawcett, who as a teenager was charged with statutory rape for having sex with a fellow high school student, learned his name would appear for 25 years on the state's sex offender registry, despite a plea agreement that allowed him to avoid inclusion on the list.

A few weeks later, on March 19, the 20-year-old was found dead of an apparent drug overdose at his boyhood home in West Bloomfield Township. Fawcett, who battled drug problems throughout his high school years, clearly was bothered by the news, his father said. "Whether or not Justin actually would have had a good life and stayed off drugs and things like that, I don't know," David Fawcett said. "But I know that this did not help him."

Stigmatizing someone for 25 years because he slept with a girlfriend close to his own age doesn't make society more safe. It arguably makes society less safe by standing in the way of rehabilitation. Michigan should enact the proposed change to remove nonviolent teenagers from the registration requirement.

by TChris

States are rethinking the "lock 'em up" approach to crime as they notice a correlation between soaring prison populations and rising deficits. A report by the Justice Department should fuel the demand for reform.

The number of arrests rose only to 13.7 million in 2001 from 12 million in 1982, and the number of court cases grew only to 92.8 million in 2001 from 86 million in 1984, the report found. But the number of state and federal prison inmates jumped to 1.3 million in 2001, up from only 488,000 in 1985. At the same time, the number of inmates in local and county jails tripled, to 631,000, the report said.

The pricetag for fighting crime reached $167 billion in 2001. Realizing that they can't afford to continue funding an unduly harsh response to crime, states have started to rethink their sentencing philosophies.

In the last year, more than half the states took legislative steps to modify tough sentencing laws they passed in the 1990's, like scrapping mandatory minimum terms or requiring treatment instead of prison for first-time drug offenders, said Dan Wilhelm, director of the state sentencing and corrections program at the Vera Institute of Justice in New York.

Professor Michael Jacobson says that the policy changes have been "minor reformist efforts, just nibbling around the edges," and argues that this is a good time "to take a new look at how we use mass incarceration."

One big savings could come from a revised parole policy, he said, returning fewer parolees to prison for minor infractions like being late for an appointment with a parole officer or failing a drug test. This would be particularly helpful in California, the state with the largest number of inmates and where almost two-thirds are in prison for parole violations.

by TChris

Small towns and rural areas with prisons look larger in the census because the inmates count as local residents. A report by the Urban institute concludes that this practice affects outcomes "in matters as diverse as political representation to state and federal funding."

Twenty-plus years of aggressive prison construction have left states with bloated budgets, but prisons provide welcome jobs in the small towns and counties that host them.

"There is a growing trend in rural areas to pursue prisons and jails as a tool for economic development," said Joe Weedon, legislative director for American Correctional Association.

Building more prisons is not a healthy solution to the economic hardships suffered in rural America. Nobody should be sent to prison so that someone else will have a job.

by TChris

A New York Times editorial urges the State of Delaware to adopt a proposed law that would end the State's inflexible policy of denying occupational licenses to people who have been convicted of a felony. The proposed law would require a "substantial relationship" between the crime and the occupation, so that somebody convicted of (for instance) a felony trespass on government property during a demonstration would not, twenty years later, be denied a license as a landscape architect.

The proposed law only makes sense. People who have been punished, who have paid their debt to society, should be given a chance to reform. Society only benefits by allowing ex-offenders to become productive. As the Times argues, ending these "senselessly punitive bans" makes it easier for reformed offenders to stay on a path that keeps them out of prison.

by TChris

TalkLeft has written (most recently, here and here) about the federalization of crimes that could and should be handled by state and local prosecutors. William Anderson and Candice Jackson write about ill-advised federal prosecutions "that illustrate how federal criminal law has overstepped its proper bounds, prescribing draconian punishments for offenses that should be handled at the state level or that should not be considered crimes at all."

The bottom line in their thoughtful analysis:

During the last century, especially in the last three decades and in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, Congress has made federal crimes out of an astonishing array of behavior, much of which is already prohibited by state law, could be better addressed with civil penalties, or is considered wrongful not because it violates anyone’s rights but only because Congress says so.

by TChris

Let's start by getting our terms straight. If you take property that belongs to another person without that person's consent, it's called theft. The fact that the property is easy to steal is not a defense to theft. So why does Manuel Miranda, who worked for Bill Frist and Orrin Hatch, continue to argue that taking over 4,000 memoranda that belonged to Democrats from the Senate's computer system isn't theft?

New York federal prosecutor David Kelley will lead a Justice Department investigation into the theft of the documents. The Justice Department had been urged to appoint an independent prosecutor to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, but it's unclear just how independent Kelley will be since John Ashcroft hasn't recused himself from overseeing the investigation.

An investigation by the Senate's sergeant-at-arms suggested that the wrongdoing was not limited to the two Republican staff aides who downloaded and printed the files.

The report also suggested that many other Republican aides might have been involved in trafficking in the stolen documents, and Democrats have questioned whether officials at the Justice Department and the White House were also privy to the material in working to support Mr. Bush's nominees and derail Democratic opposition.

Whether Kelley will successfully uncover the full extent of the wrongdoing may depend upon the cooperation he receives from the Justice Department, but his appointment letter "left open whether he would have the type of broad autonomy given to the prosecutor in another politically sensitive case involving the leak of a C.I.A. officer's identity." Bowing to political pressure, Ashcroft recused himself from that investigation. Since this investigation could also lead to the White House, Ashcroft should recuse himself here, as well.

by TChris

An often overlooked casualty of our country's misguided war on drugs is prominently reported in today's New York Times: domestic asparagus farmers. Since the early 1990's, the United States has been subsidizing the asparagus industry in Peru, purportedly to encourage Peruvian farmers to grow asparagus instead of cocaine. The result has been disastrous for American asparagus growers, as companies like Del Monte move their asparagus processing plants from the United States to Peru, where they can buy cheaper asparagus and process it with less expensive workers.

Since 1991, this outsourcing of asparagus production has resulted in a 55 percent decline in Washington farmland devoted to asparagus growing, while asparagus imports from Peru have increased from 4 million pounds to 110 million pounds. The value of the asparagus processing industry in the United States has dropped by about 30 percent.

Can a program that hurts American farmers by subsidizing Peruvian farmers be justified by its reduction of cocaine production?

"The irony is that they didn't plow under the coke to plant asparagus in Peru," said John Bakker, executive director of the Michigan Asparagus Advisory Board. "If you look at that industry in Peru and where it's growing, it has nothing to do with coca leaf growers becoming normal farmers. Coca leaf is grown in the highlands. The asparagus is near sea level."

The outrage of the day occurs in Florida where a man seeking pain relief gets 25 years for drug trafficking.

Although prosecutors admitted Paey was not a drug trafficker, on April 16 he received a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years for drug trafficking. That jaw-dropping outcome illustrates two sadly familiar side effects of the war on drugs: the injustice caused by mandatory minimum sentences and the suffering caused by the government's interference with pain treatment.

Now that he's in jail, in his wheelchair, the authorities allow him a morphine subdermal pump.