Crime and Punishment

Since President Bush has shown himself to be in a forgiving mood by commuting Scooter Libby's sentence, perhaps he like to address a few other excessive sentences handed down by the federal courts. If so, he could start with these federal prisoners identified by Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM) as having received very harsh sentences because of mandatory minimum … [Read more...] about Some Other Sentences Worth Commuting

Former sex crime prosecutor Sarena Straus posts a moving account of some of the unpleasant psychological aftereffects of years of seeing the world through the eyes of its child victims. I start to get the shakes. My eyes well up with tears. I want to tell my parents not to take the kids – there are too many kids and too few of them, it’s crowded at Coney Island. I suppress … [Read more...] about A Stressful View of the World

(My discussion of hate crimes arises against the background of Bush's veto of a new federal hate crimes bill, but I'm not discussing that bill at all.) A few days ago I blogged about hate crime laws. These laws increase the punishment for "hate crimes," which are crimes that are motivated by bigotry. Beat a guy because he cut you off in traffic, that's an ordinary crime. Beat … [Read more...] about Second Thoughts on Hate Crimes

William Hanhardt wants a new trial. I guess if I were a 78-year-old former Chicago Police Chief of Detectives who got sent away for 12 years for running a jewelry theft ring, I'd want a new trial too. Although...I'm not sure "new trial" is the right term when you plead guilty the first time. I suspect that pleading guilty makes it hard to find grounds for a retrial so, … [Read more...] about Meanwhile, In Other Embarassing Chicago Police News…

Sarena Straus has a post about the lack of technological support she had as a sex crimes prosecutor. In my first year at the DA’s office, I shared my desk with five other ADAs and my phone with 7 in a windowless room aptly called, “The Barn.” By my last year at the office, only supervisors and a select few felony prosecutors that could prove a need even had computers. The … [Read more...] about Technology and the Prosecutor