New York Sun: “Arson, Vandalism Linked to Antifa Opponents of Atlanta’s ‘Cop City’ Spread to Five States as Project Is Tarred as ‘War Base’ That Will Train Police ‘To Kill Black People’”

(Hat Tip to Ricky Trent)

I just received this article from my brother, from the New York Sun, which describes some, though not all, of the national activities of the so-called “Stop Cop City” terrorists such as Extinction Rebellion, ANTIFA, Food Not Bombs, D.S.A., and A.N.S.W.E.R.  Importantly, journalist Maggie Hroncich with the Sun exposes the “Nationwide Summit to “Stop Cop City” taking place in Tuscon, Arizona February 23-26.  I will try to be there, but if anyone closer wants to go incognito, please contact this blog. ... 

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What Can We Do To Stop January 18th Anti-Police Traffic Disruption from Happening?

A few weeks ago, the eco-terrorists, radical trans activists, and anti-police “Stop Cop City” terrorists met in the Decatur Quaker Meeting House to discussion “actions” they would be taking on January 18, the anniversary of the death of Manuel Teran, AKA “Tortuigita,” who claimed to be of fluid gender and so has also been adopted as a pet martyr by the LGBTQ community, as the rest of the “Stop Cop City” anti-police activists seamlessly morphed into a virulently anti-semitic pro-“From the River to the Sea” Israeli extermination project.  Manuel Teran refused to leave his tent as he was trespassing on police property; shot a cop, and was then killed.  The gun was registered to him: the bullets removed from the cop were from his gun.  Case closed.  He appears to have been a severely mentally challenged or disturbed young man, but his parents, Venezeulan Citizens on tourist visas, are seasoned Marxist organizers.

Why are they allowed to be here? ... 

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Stop Cop City Is Lying About Their Recent “Non-Violent” Attack on Police. The Quakers and American Friends Service Committee Need to Answer Questions Now

THIS IS A TWO-PART ARTICLE TO COINCIDE WITH MY APPEARANCE ON TREVOR LOUDON’S PODCAST, SUNDAY, DECEMBER 17.  PART I EXPLAINS HOW ATLANTA’S ANTI-POLICE TRAINING CENTER MOVEMENT BECAME GROUND ZERO FOR NATIONAL LEFTIST ACTIVISM, CURRENTLY FOCUSING ON ANTI-SEMITIC, PRO-GAZA THEMES.

NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS SYSTEMATICALLY SEEK OUT LOCAL PROTESTS SUCH AS STOP COP CITY AND TURN THEM INTO NATIONWIDE CAMPAIGNS. ... 

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What Does Transgenderism Have to do With Opposing a Police, Firemen, and EMT Training Center?

In the final scenes of Dr. Zhivago, he discovers his daughter, daughter of his pre-revolutionary romantic love Lara, playing the ancient folk instrument, the Balilaka. Unlike her mother, the daughter has no feminine grace, no nascent womanhood: she looks what we would today call “gender-neutral.”  She has been raised by government officials in groups of other children her age.  She doesn’t know gender roles.  While she is polite, she is also mechanical and coarse: centuries of Russian civilization, emotion, reading, and human love between women and men have been wiped out by just a few years of revolution. ... 

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Emory Medical Clinic Physicians and Med School Professors are Supporting Terrorists, Supporting Rioting, and are Raising Money for Police-Shooter Manuel Teran

First, do no harm.

Unless, according to this nose-ringed Emory Professor of Medicine, you’re shooting a cop. ... 

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10 Reasons to Vote For Hershel Walker

Ok, I will get to 10, not 50.  It’s just a bow to that Simon and Garfunkel song.  And the election is tomorrow.  But big life events have intervened recently.  So I will get as far as I can with this list and call it a day.

I have to say I’m both confused by and angry at conservatives who won’t vote for our candidate.  As snark and anger aren’t great motivating tools, I’ll try to avoid them, but what are you thinking?  I think I understand some of it: you have been belittled and lied to by the Georgia GOP and the currently poisonous big-L Libertarian (cough, Leftitarian) Party, and Walker is nobody’s idea of an ideal Senator, but that’s no reason for not trying to win.  Political operatives are nearly all professional liars.  Just let their poisonous spittle roll off your backs.  You’re better than them.  Don’t let THEM win by staying home. ... 

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Idiot Liar and Extremely White Defense Attorney Douglas D. Ford Blames “white face jury” For His Client’s Violent Carjacking in an Op-Ed in (where else) the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Of course this was in the Atlanta Journal Constitution They titled it: A City’s Haunting Rejection of a Child.   They’re literally jealous of big cities like NYC and Chicago and Los Angeles and Cincinnati (does the L.A. Times even still exist?) for one-upping them on rising crime numbers — and — celebrating government enforced criminality.  So they resort to the lamest and most dishonest screed the’ve published in a while about our Haunting Rejection of a Child.  Except the child is a 15ish (their term) violent carjacker who put his victim in the hospital as he beat her and stole her car.

She is the most selfless of humans: a nurse. ... 

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Making Heroes Out of Killers. Troy Davis Killed Savannah Police Officer Mark Allen MacPhail in Cold Blood. The “Witness Recantations” Are Just The Usual Garbage Manufactured by Academicians Who Should Be Doing Their Jobs Instead.


Troy Davis.  Gone, Should Be Forgotten.

Ever notice how these pro-inmate cottage industries crying redemption or rehabilitation spring up only to defend the worst of the worst?  Such as Troy Davis, who gunned down Savannah Officer Mark Allen MacPhail in cold blood.  I’ve never seen these criminal groupies waste time on people who could really be rehabilitated.  Too boring.  You never get Innocence Project and Amnesty International dampening their Hermès or organizing undergraduates at Yale to spring some mere car thief who managed to keep his head down, get a GED in prison, actually learn something from incarceration, and really deserves a fresh start. ... 

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Georgia Legislators May Finally Have the Hate Crime They Wanted. They Had to Bury a Lot of Other Victims First.

Last night, 21-year old Robert Aaron Long was captured after murdering eight people in so-called “massage parlors” in Metro Atlanta.  Long is white.  Six of his victims have been identified as Asian women.  It is likely the six murdered women were Korean.  In Atlanta, Korean mobs run the massage parlors; strip clubs are either all-black or predominantly white (Chocolate City, The Gold Club); so-called “lingerie modeling” enterprises are a glory of employment desegregation, as it were, and flat-up prostitution involves Hispanic or black or white women and girls — lots of girls — depending on where you are in the city.

The other two human beings Long murdered in the massage parlors were white — one male and one female.  But who cares about them?  Believe me, all around Atlanta, legislators and activists and journalists are waking up this morning desperately wishing he hadn’t killed those two white people — not because the murder of two humans is terrible, but because the existence of two murdered white bodies represent an inconvenient speed-bump in their excited jostling to get to the nearest microphone to grandstand the loudest about anti-Asian hate crime. ... 

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I am on Cliff Kincaid’s Show Discussing Marjorie Taylor Greene and the Georgia GOP

You can watch it here, at America’s Survival: One-Party Rule: Republicans Now Taking Orders From Democrats

Analyst Tina Trent joins Cliff Kincaid to discuss the phenomenon known as “Kevin McCarthyism,” a name given to the Republican movement that keeps anti-Trumper Liz Cheney as the number three in the House GOP leadership while ostracizing conservative wife, mother, and small businesswoman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green. House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy is the same official who removed strong conservative Steve King from the Congress in response to Democratic Party demands. ... 

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Marjorie Taylor Greene is not the First “Truther” Georgia Sent to Congress. That was Cynthia McKinney.

I’m positive I’ve “met” Marjorie Taylor Greene a couple of times.  I put that in quotes because I don’t think I ever spoke to her, but our paths have crossed.  I’m terrible with names, and I meet a lot of people, but I do recognize her.

Marjorie Taylor Greene: Truther Loon ... 

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Newsweek Lies Bigly About Bigly Lying “Organization” That Lies Bigly about being Pro-Trump by Telling Georgia Conservatives to Sit Out the Senate Race.

On Saturday, various activist groups descended on the Georgia Capitol to assert that Trump won, that Governor Kemp be deposed, and to shrilly instruct Georgia Republicans and conservatives to stay home and refuse to vote in the upcoming Senate runoffs because the Deep State is plottin’ to use the election to invade their privacy in some inexplicable way, so we should teach the Georgia GOP a firm lesson by tying up our two Senate seats in a pink bow and handing them to Stacey Abrams.

Alex Jones, Pre-Bathroom Floor ... 

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Cliff Kincaid and Tina Trent on the Georgia GOP, Voter Fraud, and the Georgia Senate Run-Offs Between Loeffler, Warnock, Perdue, Ossoff

Cliff Kincaid at America’s Survival (or USA Survival) has several fascinating YouTube interviews about the existential rolling elections mess that is the Peach State, including an informative talk with Garland Favorito, founder of VOTER GA.  Mr. Favorito, a retired computer tech expert, is also gifted in pedagogy, for in this relatively brief interview he was able to make the problems with the Georgia recount clear even to me, hopelessly unreconstructed luddite that I am.

If you can explain the virtually mystical workings of the Dominion voter machine bar-code-plus-fifty-four-pound-paper-ballot system to someone who still pines for her flip phone and IBM Selectric, you’re good at ‘splainin.  Do check out the VOTER GA website. ... 

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Georgia’s Hate Crimes Racket: Update on the Murder of Eddie Nelson Jr. by Jayvon Hatchett

Craig Jones, lawyer for the family of murder victim Eddie Nelson Jr., made a pretty extraordinary statement today.  Here is the video from the Columbus, GA news station WLTZ, along with a transcript of his remarks.  It’s well worth watching the whole thing.  This is the sort of reporting you’re not getting in Atlanta:

New details are emerging about what happened inside the Muscogee County Jail early Saturday morning when Eddie Nelson was allegedly beaten to death by his cellmate Jayvon Hatchett. Nelson was picked up for a probation violation on September 1st and then housed with the hate crime suspect. [snip] ... 

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Not Reporting Jayvon Hatchett: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Just Can’t Find the Right Hate Crime to Publicize

There’s absolutely nothing hate crimes activists hate more than having the wrong type of hate committed by the wrong type of hater take the wind out of their ideological sails.  This is why the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has reported exactly nothing about Jayvon Hatchett until they were grudgingly forced to do so a few hours ago, and then only by re-running an AP story after Hatchett apparently did a re-run on his openly stated intention to kill white men by killing his white cellmate.

Four days ago. ... 

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Do Ralston and Bottoms Really Want Hate Crime Laws? Because the Atlanta Rioters Are All Hate Criminals. Including Bottoms and Ralston.

Certain politicians and pundits in Atlanta — Double-Dipping Mayor I’ll take two paychecks for that one job thank you very much Keisha Lance Bottoms, disgraced GOP House Speaker David Ralston, job-threatening public-radio-triple-dipper Bill Nigut, and every single Democrat and virtue-signaling Republican want to pass a hate crime law in Georgia.  Because Brunswick.  Because George Floyd.  Because “racism.”  Purportedly against all black men.  Purportedly by all police.

As of this writing, such rhetoric and the riots they birthed have resulted in serious injuries to more than 400 police and several murders of police, along with hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage and looting. ... 

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David Shafer Sponsored the National Popular Vote Bill With Stacey Abrams. He Has No Business Being the Chairman of the Georgia GOP.

Did This Happen?

On Saturday, the Georgia GOP will hold their statewide convention in Savannah. Former State Senator David Shafer is one of the three candidates to head the state party. I spoke with Shafer this week at an advance event for the convention. He was gracious. He amassed a good record in the state senate. He seems like a nice guy.

But David Shafer has no business running the state party because he sponsored the National Popular Vote bill, a bill that would existentially devastate the GOP in Georgia — and everywhere else in the United States. Worse, he co-sponsored the bill with our party’s sworn enemies, people like Stacey Abrams and “Venceremos Brigade” Nan Orrock, who was my representative for 20 years, during which time I came to understand very well just how radical she is.  ... 

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We Killed the Hate Crimes Bill in Georgia, Again

20 years ago, I singlehandedly took on the SPLC and the ADL and the NAACP and the incredibly sleazy Rural Urban Summit and the HRC and a score of other alphabet soup organizations and helped kill the hate crimes bill in Georgia with a well-placed op-ed in the Atlanta Journal Constitution that argued these laws are in fact oppressive to speech and destroy equality for victims before the law.

And, oh yeah, that the hate crime activists are bunch of liars about the real uses of these “laws.”

I’m looking at you, Bill Nigut.  Unlike some of your victims, you can’t get me fired by throwing your ADL-abetted weight around, pal.  And trust me, I still remember the first time you twisted a story in my presence — to my benefit because I was a Democrat at the time — but I saw it and had the decency to be appalled for the pro-life activists you were perjuring on the other side.

Some of us have non-selective scruples.  Also, I know who you got fired.

A long, long time ago, when I was knee-high to a grasshopper, Bill Nigut taught me everything I needed to know about media bias.  Maybe I should write a children’s book about it.  Bill would be the grasshopper twisting arms and accusing people of prejudice in order to destroy their lives, then he would hop back to his nest (do grasshoppers live in nests?) and cash all his many checks from public, academic, nonprofit, and private agencies paying him to work some 900 hours a week because he’s that special kind of grasshopper.  Nice gigs if you can get them.  Maybe the state or the IRS should investigate exactly how much time he clocks at all those different jobs.

Probably it would be too gross to be a children’s book.  For example:

Bill Nigut, Investigative Reporter

So here is my anti-hate crime bill editorial this time.  Jesse Smollett helped me write it.  In a way.

Insider Advantage, Georgia ... 

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Georgia Rep. Chuck Efstration and Others Need to Answer Questions About Their Hate Crime Bill, HB426

So Georgia has another hate crimes bill pending,

HB 426 is sponsored by the following legislators:

Chuck Efstration, Calvin Smyre, Karen Bennett, Deborah Silcox, Karla Drenner, and Ron Stephens.

As I have documented for years, hate crime laws aren’t accidentally discriminatory and dishonest: they were designed to be discriminatory and dishonest. The drafters of hate crime legislation in 1997 — Bill Clinton, Eric Holder, Elena Kagan, and a bunch of politically motivated activists — weren’t driven by the desire to oppose hate whenever and wherever it happens. They were motivated to create a false picture of an America as a nation where ‘ordinary crime’ was not as important as the crimes they deemed “hate.”

To do this, they created hierarchies of victims.

They destroyed our highest principle of equality before the law.

They empowered unelected activists to dictate what was and was not hate, destroying the way that our democracy and our criminal justice system is supposed to work.

They made justice itself into just another identity politics shell game.

The biggest problem with selling the hate crimes racket to the American public was and is the problem of crimes committed against women for being women. There are just too many such “gender bias” crimes to … “count ’em,” as Bill Clinton laconically intoned to adoring audiences: if we counted all those crimes against women, then hate crime laws would just become about serial rapists and serial killers and other guys who snatched random women (or men, or boys, or girls) off the streets.

The hate crime activists — who were and are anti-cop leftists and race activists and gay activists and Jewish and Muslim groups and advocates for illegal immigrants — sure didn’t want that sort of outcome, especially as it carried with it the problem that many, if not most, hate crime offenders might end up being minority men. And they certainly didn’t want that, either.

So they cooked the books. Over the next few weeks as we try to stop the hate crimes bill in Georgia for the second time, I will tell the story of how the hate crimes industry started cooking the books in 1997 to get the statistics they desired, and how they have succeeded in pulling off the greatest statistical hoax in American history.

You can read the whole story right now by reading this PDF: Rape is Not A Hate Crime Against Women.

You can also read some of my earlier hate crime articles in the categories: “hate crimes” and “The Hate Crimes Racket” on this blog.

We need to get the sponsors of HB 426 to answer some hard questions about the bill they’re pushing on Georgia. If you live in their districts, please try to get them to answer the questions I have posed below for each of the bill’s sponsors. If they respond, I’ll post their responses, with or without your name. Also please feel free to ask me anything about hate crime laws and why I oppose them. If you email me with a good question, privately, I won’t use your name in my response here, but I like to know to whom I’m speaking off the blog itself.

This is a pro-cop blog, and I ALWAYS keep police and other law officials’ identities private. If you are a law enforcement officer or a state or federal statistician or prosecutor who wants to share information about the way you were taught to enforce (and not enforce) hate crime laws, I promise you I will never reveal your identity. I have references from police who will vouch for me. Believe me, I know what’s at stake.

Here are some questions for the sponsors of Georgia HB 426. Feel free to share it widely!

Questions for Sponsors of HB 426

Rep. Chuck Efstration, Dacula:

• Do you believe Ed Kramer, the infamous child predator and convicted child molester who has repeatedly eluded justice and recently was caught once again preying on a young boy in your district, should be charged with gender bias hate crime under your bill? If not, why not? Do you believe he is a gender-bias hate criminal? If not, why not?

• Why do you feel the need to prioritize so-called hate crime legislation this session when prolific sexual predators such as Kramer are still clearly not being properly monitored or incarcerated, leaving them loose in your district to prey on even more child victims?

• Why is prolific, Atlanta-based serial killer Michael Darnell Harvey, who mutilated and reportedly lynched by hanging at least some of his female victims while raping and murdering them, never cited among the notorious killers used to justify the alleged need for hate crime laws? Do you believe he should be added to the HCSA statistics as a gender-bias hate criminal? If not, why not? Do you believe he is a gender-bias hate criminal? If not, why not?

• Do you believe violent serial rapist Blair Malachi Washington, arrested in your district, should be charged with gender bias hate? Do you believe he is a gender-bias hate criminal? If not, why not?

• Do you believe James Hiram Akil Watkins, arrested in your district for stabbing, beating, torturing and murdering his 77-year old neighbor, should be charged with a hate crime? If not, why not?

• Do you believe accused murderers Glenda Carter, Russell Williams, and Zarius Williams, charged with killing one man with a baseball bat and nearly murdered another in your district should be charged with hate crime murder and hate crime attempted murder under your bill? If not, why not? Do you believe they are hate criminals? If not, why not?

• Do you believe Franecha Torres, Nicholas Evans, and Khalil Miller, charged with brutally murdering a 21-year old man in your district, should be charged with hate crimes? If not, why not?

• Do you believe serial killer Charles Lendell Carter, convicted in your district, who killed three women, should be counted as a hate criminal in the federal HCSA (Hate Crime Statistics Act) statistics collection that may be updated in Georgia if your legislation passes? Do you believe he is a gender-bias hate criminal? If not, why not?

• Do you believe Samuel Little, who may be the most prolific serial killer of women in America, should be added to the federal HCSA statistics and other hate crime lists, such as those used to educate schoolchildren? If not, why not? Do you believe he is a gender-bias hate criminal? If not, why not?

• Do you believe the as-yet unidentified rapist who has left DNA at seven rape and attempted rape sites in Clayton County since 2015 should be counted as a gender bias hate criminal? A race bias hate criminal? If not, why not?

Rep. Deborah Silcox, Powers Ferry/Cobb County

• Do you believe prolific serial rapist Christopher Charles Sanders, who was released from prison five times and was most recently arrested for rape in your district, should be charged with gender bias hate crime? If not, why not? And if so, do you understand that the bill you are sponsoring will not count crimes such as his as gender bias hate?

• Do you believe Sanders’ sometimes co-conspirator, Ryan Neal Walker, should also be charged with hate crime for gang-raping at least one woman with Sanders? If not, why not?

• Although Sanders and Walker left DNA at the 2006 rape site and Sanders left DNA at other rape sites, due to lack of attention and resources, their DNA samples were not tested for years, during which time Sanders committed more rapes. How do you justify trying to pass legislation that knowingly, deceptively excludes rape victims from being counted as victims of gender bias hate (thus denying these victims and other women law enforcement resources) while rape victims in your district continue being ignored and denied justice in such egregious ways?

• Do you believe Aeman Lovel Presley, who murdered your constituent Karen Pearce in a random attack in Decatur and also killed three homeless men, should be categorized as a hate criminal for all four murders or just a hate criminal for some of his crimes, such as the crimes against homeless men?

• Do you believe serial killer Gary Michael Hilton, arrested in your district, who tortured and killed at least several women and one man, including Meredith Emerson in Cumming and Cheryl Dunlap, whom he decapitated, should be counted as a hate criminal in the federal HCSA statistics collection that may be updated in Georgia if your legislation passes? Do you believe he is a gender-bias hate criminal? If not, why not?

• Why is prolific, Atlanta-based serial killer and torturer Michael Darnell Harvey, who mutilated and reportedly lynched by hanging at least some of his female victims while raping and murdering them, never cited among the notorious killers used to justify the alleged need for hate crime laws? Do you believe he should be added to the HCSA statistics as a gender-bias hate criminal? If not, why not? Do you believe he is a gender-bias hate criminal? If not, why not?

Rep. Karen Bennett, Stone Mountain:

• Do you believe the man who snatched a 13-year old child off a railroad track in your district and raped her should be prosecuted as a gender-bias hate criminal? If not, why not?

• Do you believe serial rapist Corey Griffin, who terrorized, beat, tortured and and raped multiple women in Clarkston and Stone Mountain, should be prosecuted as a hate criminal? If not, why not?

• Why is prolific, Atlanta-based serial killer and torturer Michael Darnell Harvey, who mutilated and reportedly lynched by hanging at least some of his female victims while raping and murdering them, never cited among the notorious killers used to justify the alleged need for hate crime laws? Do you believe he should be added to the HCSA statistics as a gender-bias hate criminal? If not, why not? Do you believe he is a gender-bias hate criminal? If not, why not?

• Your district has one of the highest crime rates in the state. Astonishingly, your constituents have a one in 13 chance of becoming a crime victim. How many of these crimes do you view as hate crimes? How do you distinguish between hate crimes and other crimes in your district?

• How many of the murders in your district are what you would call hate crimes?

• Don’t you think you should be doing more to focus on the terrible crime rate in your district instead of advocating on the vague and politicized issue of so-called hate crimes?

Rep. Calvin Smyre, Columbus:

• Do you believe Carlton Gary, the prolific serial torturer, rapist, and murderer of women in your district, should be counted as a gender-based hate criminal in the federal HCSA statistics collection that may be updated in Georgia as a result of your proposed legislation? Do you believe he is a gender-bias hate criminal? If not, why not?

• Do you believe Samuel Little, who confessed to killing at least three women in your district, and who may be the most prolific serial killer of women in America, should be added to the federal HCSA statistics and other hate crime lists, such as those used to educate schoolchildren? If not, why not? Do you believe he is a gender-bias hate criminal? If not, why not?

• Columbus, your district, saw more than 1,000 reports of sexual assault in 2018 alone. Do you view some of these as potential gender-bias hate crimes? If not, why not? Do you view all of these as potential gender-bias hate crimes? If not, why not? How would you differentiate between gender-bias rape and non-gender-bias rape?

Rep. Ron Stephens, Savannah:

• Do you believe Reinaldo Rivera, serial killer, rapist and torturer of women, including at least two in your district, should be added to the federal HCSA statistics as a gender bias hate criminal? If not, why not? Do you believe he is a gender-bias hate criminal? If not, why not?

• Do you believe Samuel Little, who confessed to killing at least two women in your district, and who may be the most prolific serial killer of women in America, should be added to the federal HCSA statistics and other hate crime lists, such as those used to educate schoolchildren? If not, why not? Do you believe he is a gender-bias hate criminal? If not, why not?

• Do you believe Edward Charles Wilkins, convicted in 2007 of murdering three prostitutes in your district, should be counted as a gender-bias hate criminal in the federal HCSA statistics collection that may be updated in Georgia if your legislation passes? Do you believe he is a gender-bias hate criminal? If not, why not?

• Do you believe serial rapist Theron Morrell Hendrix, convicted of kidnapping and raping a child and two adult women in Savannah, should be added to the federal HCSA statistics. Do you believe he is a gender-bias hate criminal? If not, why not?

Rep. Carla Drenner, Avondale:

• Do you believe Wayne Williams, the convicted murderer of two of Atlanta’s “Missing and Murdered” male children, some of whom disappeared in the vicinity of your district, should be counted as a race-bias and/or gender bias hate criminal in the federal HCSA statistics collection that may be updated in Georgia if your legislation passes? Do you believe he is a gender-bias hate criminal? If not, why not?

• Why is prolific, Atlanta-based serial killer and torturer Michael Darnell Harvey, who mutilated and reportedly lynched by hanging at least some of his female victims while raping and murdering them, never cited among the notorious killers used to justify the alleged need for hate crime laws? His victims include your constituents. Do you believe he should be added to the HCSA statistics as a gender-bias hate criminal? If not, why not? Do you believe he is a gender-bias hate criminal? If not, why not?

• Do you believe serial killer and gay prostitute Howard Milton Belcher, who tortured and killed at least four gay men, including one in your district, should be added to the HCSA statistics as a gender-bias hate criminal? Do you believe he is a gender-bias hate criminal? If not, why not?

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The Daryle Edward Jones Case Grows Worse

Yesterday, I posted about yet another heinous sex crime committed by yet another felon who should have been in prison but was granted leniency and was free on the streets.

The information I had yesterday was limited to what I could find in public incarceration records, but today the Athens (Georgia) newspaper has more details about Jones’ criminal history.

And they are damning, not only because he got out early for a murder he committed in 1994, but even after he got out early and immediately committed another crime, the state essentially passed on an opportunity to put him behind bars for that crime for a substantial period of time.

Here’s the story:

Jones was paroled in 2010 [for the 1994 murder], but he was quickly back in prison.

In August 2011 he was arrested on stalking and terroristic threat charges for having threatened to murder a woman, according to records. The arrest sent him back to prison for a parole violation but he was paroled again in October 2013.

Two months later, on Dec. 23, Jones was convicted for the 2011 stalking and terroristic threats charges and sentenced to 200 days of incarceration with six years of probation. He was given credit for time already served.

Jones has been treated to serial leniency, which is the default choice of our justice system nearly all the time.  In 1994, he was allowed to plead (presumably down from murder) to voluntary manslaughter, which put him back on the streets.  Then he was given a mere 200 days (with credit for time served, no days, actually) for stalking and terroristic threats committed in 2011.

These aren’t “nothing” sentences.  But they do reflect the normalization of reduced sentencing throughout the criminal justice system.  Academicians, the media, and leftists relentlessly accuse our justice system of being too harsh on offenders.  But exactly the opposite its true.  It would not have been too harsh to sentence Jones to life without parole for murder in 1994, but he got 20 years instead, and then he got released four years early, originally serving only 16 years for taking a life.   And while we don’t know all the details of the 2011 case, I doubt it would have been “harsh” at all to sentence him to something more than time served for stalking and threatening to kill a woman.

Serial leniency has now resulted in a 14-year old girl being kidnapped, raped and tortured:

 [L]ast Wednesday, Athens-Clarke County police said that Jones lured a 14-year-old girl into a vehicle then locked the doors so she could not escape.

He allegedly drove the girl to an isolated location where he pulled a gun and sexually assaulted her, police said.

Jones, of Oak Hill Drive, was arrested two days later on charges of rape, kidnapping, aggravated assault, aggravated child molestation and aggravated sodomy.

Chalk up another rape to the anti-incarceration activists who shill the fantasy that our prisons are stuffed with victims of harsh, unjustly long sentencing — “victims” who must be petted, celebrated, sympathized with, released early, and “re-entered” into society on our dime.  That little girl’s horrific ordeal is more blood on your hands.

 

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Let Out Early for Voluntary Manslaughter, Now Accused of Kidnapping and Rape

Here’s another one.

Another what?

Another offender who should have been in prison but was let out early, and some innocent child paid the price.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is reporting that Daryle Edward Jones kidnapped and raped a young girl in Athens, Georgia:

Jones, 41, has been charged with rape, aggravated assault, aggravated child molestation, aggravated sodomy and kidnapping in the case. He remained in the county jail Saturday afternoon.

Here’s what they did not report: Daryle Edward Jones was supposed to be in prison until April.  Or at least that is how long he would have served, had he served his entire previous sentence.  Which, of course, nobody ever does, but isn’t it nice to imagine that somebody, somewhere, even once, would serve all their damn time?

In April of 1994, Jones committed voluntary manslaughter.  It’s hard to know from the online records what he really did, but suffice to say that getting 20 years in 1994 was the maximum for that crime and serving nearly all of it was unusual, so I suspect at least one of two things:

  • The crime was particularly heinous and the voluntary manslaughter was offered only with an agreement to serve a long sentence.
  • Jones, who was 21 at the time, must have had a terrible juvenile record, likely sealed.

So Darlye Jones went to prison for voluntary manslaughter in April, 1995 (he’d probably had a year in jail before that) and got out June, 2010, fifteen years later.  Then he was back in prison from January, 2012 to October, 2013, possibly for a parole violation because no other crime is listed.  Four months after finally being released, he has committed a heinous kidnapping/rape.

What is there to learn from this?

Under-prosecution may be the problem.

My guess — and it’s just a guess — is that Jones had a prolific and violent criminal career before being put away at the age of 21.  Yet he was only charged with one crime, which is entirely typical, even today.  Contrary to what all liberals and all those Right on Crime Grover Norquist types and Reason libertarians believe, our criminal justice system is wildly lenient towards nearly all criminals and expends the resources to put away only a tiny fraction of people who commit even serious crimes.

And given his current crime and the severity of his previous sentence, he may have been a sex offender but the sex offense was not kept on the table for some reason.  He’s not in the sex offender registry, as far as I can tell.

There is troubling talk across the Right today about prosecutorial over-reach.  I consider such talk to be almost entirely anecdotal and wildly out of touch with reality in our criminal courts — and motivated in large part by Alex Jones and his ilk, who have it out for police in an utterly personal and unhinged way.

Yes, the Department of Justice in Washington and Eric Holder in particular are troubling, and Holder is openly contemptuous of the rule of law and treats victims of crime with contempt — except those who fit certain categories of so-called hate crime that he invented in 1999.  Holder is pro-criminal, anti-victim and almost entirely lawless, but Eric Holder does not represent law enforcement in the states.

The sort of leniency that lets a killer walk free to rape a child is what too often represents criminal justice in the states.  We need longer sentences and more law enforcement, not less of both.  How many times do we have to see stories like this?  Let’s talk about what the feds are up to, certainly.  But don’t conflate that with state courts where, especially in urban areas, crimes like burglary aren’t even being investigated, let alone prosecuted anymore, and prolific criminals still have most of their charges dropped against them every day.

Here is a terrific response by “David” to yet another anecdotal complaint about “over-prosecution” from the Right.  It is in response to this (uncharacteristically) lazy screed in what is usually an excellent source on crime policy, City Journal:

Before every reader of this article jumps on the “let’s bash prosecutors” bandwagon, the good professor’s thoughts warrant a bit of careful consideration. Professor Bhide is, after all, a PROFESSOR of law, not a practitioner. And his online list of accomplishments shows that he has never practiced criminal law at any time in his illustrious career. Indeed, his expertise lies more in the realm of business and, perhaps, economics. Having said this, Professor Bhede is correct to be outraged by Ms. Khobraghade’s arrest and the humiliating and inexcusable way she was treated while incarcerated. Professor Bhede is also correct when he expresses concern about the proliferation of federal criminal laws. And perhaps Professor Bhede is also on to something when he quotes the following from the ABA (though this organization is not particularly well-known for either its objectivity or its lack of bias): “‘Individual citizen behavior now potentially subject to federal criminal control has increased in astonishing proportions.'”

But the key words in the quote Professor Bhede uses from the ABA are “potentially subject”. For even though there are too many federal criminal laws, it has been my actual experience that the feds prosecute only a tiny fraction of the cases they could file. Additionally, the feds file ONLY when they are assured of victory (not the standard for filing a criminal charge, contrary to Eric Holder’s excuses to the contrary) and potential good press. Professor Bhede lists a number of activities that Congress has criminalized since our Constitution’s ratification. But the impetus for the “busybody Congresses” that pass these laws usually takes the form of busybody groups and individuals who believe this or that activity should be criminalized. Prohibition readily comes to mind. …

So for those who are ready to jump up and say, “Professor Bhide is absolutely correct! Federal prosecutors need to be reigned in!”, I would respond that too often these very same prosecutors do too little with regard to crimes that directly impact the safety and welfare of our society. And I say this because I spent almost 20 years as a state prosecutor, in a major metropolitan area, where I concentrated primarily on handling felony narcotics dealing and firearms offenses. (To those who would protest and say that I was part of the problem because I was part of the “War on Drugs”, I would respond as follows: Please go tell this to the little 75 or 80 year old woman who is afraid to go out on her front porch because a group of punks–usually armed–are slinging crack, coke, or meth in her neighborhood. This person lives in fear for her life every day. Tell her that the street in front of her house is not a war zone. She’ll say you’re wrong.) Very little assistance was provided prosecuting these crimes by any of the U.S. Attorneys and their staffs in the city where I worked. I don’t know what, exactly, were the priorities of our resident U.S. Attorneys (several of them came and went during my time as a deputy prosecutor), but I do know that they couldn’t be bothered to help make our city’s streets and outlying areas safer. With the laws available to them, U.S. Attorneys can do a lot to put really bad people out of commission for very long periods of time. But if a certain crime (or group of crimes) aren’t on some important politician’s radar, well, such crimes won’t be prosecuted by a U.S. Attorney. …

Too many laws? Perhaps. Not enough use of many of the laws already in existence? Yes. …

 . . . read the whole thing here 

 

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Murder by Leniency? Another Reason We Need To Stop Treating Domestic Violence Like Domestic Violence

There once was a time when feminist activists tried to make the courts respond to domestic violence the way they respond to violence between strangers.  This was a very good impulse, both morally and rationally, and also in terms of making our justice system operate equitably (in the “equal,” not “social justice” sense of the term “equitable”).

You shouldn’t serve less time for stabbing someone just because she is your wife or was once your wife.  Or your husband.

The law shouldn’t make exceptions for people based on their identities.  Criminal acts should be the only factor determining punishment.  Of course, there is manslaughter and there is murder; crimes of passion and random violence; there are many factors to be considered when two people live together and the relationship is a violent one.  But the goal of making the criminal act, not the relationship, the deciding factor for the punishment is and always has been a good goal.

Those early domestic violence advocates were dealing with a judicial system that did, until surprisingly recently, make it exceedingly difficult to put violent offenders behind bars if the targets of their violence were their own family members.  Things are better now.  They aren’t perfect.  They’re more equal.  The overall path has been towards equality.  And as I write this, I know I will hear from people who feel they were given a raw deal because they are men and the feminists have taken over the courts, so let me say this up front: I happen to advocate for radical equality, not special treatment of anyone, unless they are children, for obvious reasons.  I’m also very suspicious of feminist legal ventures that attempt to excuse murders by women who claim they were suffering from battered woman syndrome and are therefore not responsible for their actions.  If self defense is the defense, so be it.  But there are plenty of women who belong in prison, or deserve to stay there, as much as any other murderer, despite the fact that their victim once battered them.

Having worked with the domestic violence movement, I know enough about the dynamics of the crime to know that men are not infrequently victims too.  That’s actually more reason for us to pursue every domestic violence case objectively and with little consideration for the voluntary relationship involved, except insomuch as the technical elements of that relationship can be considered evidence of a crime.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the differences between the legal reforms of the 1970’s that demanded equal treatment for blacks, or women, or gays, versus the special rights movements that subsumed these earlier efforts.  For a brief window of time, equality was the ambition, and a lot of good came of that.  Those healthy legal efforts led to new sex crime laws, for example, that punished the offender based on his behavior, not on the victim’s identity.  They opened the door for prosecutions of men who raped men and the prosecution of female rapists — virtually all of whom target children.  They enabled battered women to see their violent husbands serve time for beating them, and visa versa.

But then the emphasis shifted to special rights, special protections, affirmative action justice and identity-based law enforcement.  The politicization of crime is spinning wildly out of control these days — illegal immigrants are given special leniency when they can’t produce a driver’s license in Los Angeles, for example; the hate crimes industry is a bottomless pit of prejudicial law enforcement; affirmative action poisons every aspect of employment law and equal rights; federal meddling casually threatens police with career-destroying racial charges for simply trying to do their jobs.   The sheer notion of equality before the law is deemed risible by the “best” legal minds.

Equality isn’t the goal anymore.

We need to get back to that moment when it was the goal.  Because in addition to being the right thing to do, equality worked a hell of a lot better than the alternative.  Inequality of any type, I’ve come to believe, is the handmaiden of leniency.  When any crime is politicized, the courts lose the moral authority they need to maintain every law.

I thought of this when I saw the following headline in the Atlanta Journal Constitution today:

Slain woman predicted her own death

Donna Kristofak was terrified and letting the court know it. John S. Kristofak, who was her husband for 19 years, had been arrested six months earlier as he chased her in a Wal-Mart parking lot. In his car were a butcher’s knife and what police called “a suicide note.”

During a court hearing Oct. 12, Mrs. Kristofak begged a Cobb County judge not to release him from jail. “I fear for my life,” she told Superior Court Judge Adele Grubbs, telling the judge that a court-issued order of protection would not stop her crazed ex-spouse.

Early Thursday, fugitive squads arrested Kristofak, 58, after a short struggle at a Motel 6 in Union City, ending a publicized five-day manhunt. He was charged with doing exactly what he’d promised earlier this year: murder.

I have a lot of questions about this case.  What the hell was this man doing out of prison for time served, seven months after trying to kidnap and plotting (with evidence) to murder his ex-wife last March?  Why wasn’t he prosecuted for attempted kidnapping and given a real sentence?  Why wasn’t he given a sentence enhancement for repeatedly violating the restraining order in place against him before the March incident?  What happened to the mandatory minimum of 10 years without parole for kidnapping in Georgia?  Was a protective order used in lieu of prosecuting him for kidnapping?

Why does anybody get time served and probation for attempting to kidnap, with the written intent to kill, anyone?  Ex-wife or no ex-wife?

The judge in this case has more explaining to do, as does the prosecutor and the defense attorney and everyone else involved in what may be an illegal plea deal that left an unsurprised woman unsurprisingly dead.  I’m not saying that any of them treated John Kristofak with special leniency because his target was his ex-wife, but why was he released from prison with such a paltry sentence when he had just set out to kill someone, threatened her repeatedly, stalked her, and then tried to kidnap her from a public place?

Kristofak remained in jail until October, when he cut a plea deal with the court that would sentence him to seven months in jail and have him serve the rest of the 5-year term on probation.

According to the transcript of the guilty plea Oct. 12, Donna Kristofak told the judge: “I definitely want a permanent order of no contact. May I also say that a protective order existed the night of the arrest and I do not feel that will necessarily bring safety.”

Judge Grubbs: “I understand that. It’s a little different with a TPO and filing a protective order. … If he violates the order in this case he gets picked up by the probation violation and put in jail immediately.”

Mrs. Kristofak: “Yes, your honor, I respect that and thank you for that. My fear is that I may not survive that …”

“I understand,” the judge said, cutting in.

“… I fear for my life,” Mrs. Kristofak continued.

“I can’t tell you with 100 percent, I’d be lying to you and I am sorry you are in that position,” said the judge, sounding sympathetic. “But whatever I do, you can go out and, you’ve got that risk but you will have that … copy of the protective order so the minute you get nervous about anything you call the police. … It’s as close as we can get to 100 percent.”

“Thank you, your honor,” Mrs. Kristofak said. “May I ask, your honor, that it is on the record that I fear for my life?”

“It is on the record,” said Judge Grubbs . . .

On December 22, John Kristofak killed Donna Kristofak in the garage of her home.

Keeping Kristofak in prison would have been 100%.  Apparently, the restraining order was a giant zero.

If Kristofak was treated with special leniency in the March crime because his victim was his wife, something needs to be done about that.

If Kristofak was treated with run-or-the-mill leniency for no special reason, something needs to be done about that, too.

 read the article here

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Gaming The System: DragonCon Founder Edward Kramer Caught With Another Boy

I wonder what Bob Barr has to say about Ed Kramer’s health these days.

Ed Kramer, Pre-Miraculous Recovery/New Child-Endangerment Charges

As reported here, back in 2009 Barr, the former Libertarian Presidential Candidate, helped his client Ed Kramer avoid trial — helped him avoid justice — in multiple felony charges for child molestation and aggravated child molestation.  Barr and fellow defense attorney Edwin Marger managed to convince a judge in Georgia that Ed Kramer simply could not stand trial because it would be too painful for him to show up in a courtroom because of some obscure, obviously pretend spinal illness.

You know, kind of like fantasy role-playing.

Kramer had first been arrested in 2000 — yes, 2000 — on charges of molesting three boys.  The DragonCon founder had managed to “game” the system for nine years.  Then Bob Barr took a little break from running for President and representing Baby Doc Duvalier to score a highly unusual deal for his DragonCon client: house arrest on the grounds of his extreme-yet-vague “disability.”  Not a plea, mind you: just no trial.

In other words, the three young victims were denied justice. Their rights as citizens were literally stripped from them via legal wizardry performed by someone who claims to represent individual liberties.

Well, some people’s liberties.

Of course, Ed Kramer immediately pushed the envelope and demanded release from house arrest. Of course, the judge granted it, along with the right to travel to another state and to “check in” by telephone.  Of course, Kramer didn’t even bother to meet those requirements.  Of course, nobody in our ever-so-vigilant court system bothered to follow up.  Of course, the victims, and the molestation charges, simply got lost in the shuffle.

Ed Kramer, Pre-Pretend Spinal Cord Disease ... 

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Lavelle McNutt Sentenced To Life. Finally. After Only 35 Years of Getting Cut Loose for Rape After Rape.

Atlanta serial rapist Lavelle (Lavel, Lavell) McNutt was sentenced to life this week for two rapes and two other assaults that occurred while the convicted sex offender was working in Atlanta’s Fox Sports Grill restaurant.  When you look at McNutt’s prior record of sexual assaults and other crimes, you really have to wonder what inspired the owners of Fox Grill to endanger female employees and customers by choosing to employ him.

Particularly with McNutt’s history of stalking women.  Particularly with the length of his record, and the density of his recidivism.  Was some manager actually sympathetic to McNutt’s hard-luck story?  This is no record to overlook.  Below is my partial round-up of the crimes I could find on-line.  I’m sure there’s more in arrest reports.  This guy is the classic compulsive* offender.

[*Of course, in using words like “compulsive,” I speak strictly as an amateur. Northeastern University Criminologist James Alan Fox has handed down an edict informing all non-criminologists that they are not to use fancy criminologist lingo when talking about crime.  Crime victims, especially, are not supposed to use big words or act like they know stuff.  Furthermore, they’re not supposed to become journalists, because they’re, like, totally damaged.]

James Alan Fox, Professional

We’ll return to Dr. Fox soon.  Very soon.  Back to McNutt:

McNutt’s first adult rape conviction, for two separate rapes in New York State, occurred in 1976, just after he turned 18. When you see an 18-year old convicted of a serious offense, you have to wonder about the contents of his sealed juvenile record: 18-year olds don’t wake up one day, break into the first house they see, and rape the occupant. They usually start experimenting with sexual abuse early in adolescence, victimizing their siblings, peers, and other easy targets. How many children and young women had already been sexually assaulted by McNutt by the time he aged out of the juvenile system?

I believe those victims exist, and that unlike Lavelle McNutt, they were abandoned by society. There’s no way to sugarcoat it: the football coaches and college presidents who treated McNutt like a victim because he was a rapist abetted him in his crimes, thus sentencing his victims to a lifetime without justice.

The two rape victims in the New York State cases were also denied justice, only in a different way. McNutt was sentenced to a preposterously light term of five years for the two rapes. He served less than three years of that, and by 1979 he was a college student at Atlanta’s Morehouse University. Almost immediately, he was charged in another sexual assault, this time for aggravated sodomy. In May, 1979, he began serving a seven-year sentence for that crime. He got out in three years.

In 1982, Lavelle McNutt was 24 years old and already had three adult sexual assault convictions on his record. Two years later, he was convicted of aggravated assault in Clayton County. Was that a rape case, pled down to a non-sexual charge? He also had a burglary conviction in Fulton County, date unknown. Burglary and aggravated assault charges from the early 1980’s might very well have been rapes, or attempted rapes. Atlanta was notorious at that time for going easy on sex offenders — thanks largely to irresponsible jurors who rendered sex crime prosecutions almost impossible to win, regardless of the circumstances. An ugly contempt for victims of rape was the status quo in the courts. The malaise incited by public prejudices towards victims crashed the entire system, and Atlanta was a rapist’s paradise. And a victim’s nightmare. It would be very interesting to know more about those crimes.

In 1984, McNutt was sentenced to five years for the aggravated assault. Oddly, he did serve nearly all of that sentence, receiving only a few months off, probably for the time he was behind bars awaiting sentencing. This is another reason I suspect that the underlying crime was something more serious than aggravated assault. In any case, for five years the public was protected from him. Pre-sentencing reform, this was the best a prosecutor could do. In August, 1989, he was free again.

In 1992, McNutt was charged in Fulton County with the offense called “Peeping Tom.” Funny as that sounds, he was probably casing out a victim to rape or amusing himself between more serious attacks. He received three years for the Fulton crime and 12 months for a crime labeled “other misdemeanor” in Gwinnett County. He was out again two years later, in 1994.

And then the crimes started again. Disturbingly, there are parole officials and possibly prosecutors and judges in Metro Atlanta who then ignored Georgia’s new sentencing laws and continued to illegally grant McNutt leniency, enabling him to rape even more women.  Why is nobody in the Atlanta media looking up these cases and asking the corrections department, to explain their actions?  If I was one of McNutt’s later victims, I’d sue everybody involved in cutting him loose.

Georgia’s sentencing reform law was passed in 1994. It was supposed to enhance sentencing for repeat offenders and extend sentences significantly for so-called “serious violent offenders.” But the law was passed with several default mechanisms that enabled judges to keep releasing repeat offenders onto the streets. Consider this language:

Except as otherwise provided in subsection (b) of this Code section, any person convicted of a felony offense in this state or having been convicted under the laws of any other state or of the United States of a crime which if committed within this state would be a felony and sentenced to confinement in a penal institution, who shall afterwards commit a felony punishable by confinement in a penal institution, shall be sentenced to undergo the longest period of time prescribed for the punishment of the subsequent offense of which he or she stands convicted, provided that, unless otherwise provided by law, the trial judge may, in his or her discretion, probate or suspend the maximum sentence prescribed for the offense [italics inserted]. (O.C.G.A. 17-10-7)

In other words, a criminal must be sentenced to the maximum penalty the second time he is convicted of a felony unless the judge decides to sentence him to something other than the maximum penalty, such as no time at all, as in the case of six-time home burglar Johnny Dennard. What is the point of a law like this? The point is that the criminal defense bar still controlled the Georgia Legislature in 1994, and other elected officials lacked the courage to stand up to them. The rest of the story is that too many judges betray disturbing pro-defendant biases, even when it comes to violent predators like Lavelle McNutt.

Nevertheless, other portions of the 1994 sentencing reform law did strengthen sentences for repeat offenders. In 1996, McNutt was charged with aggravated assault and stalking in Fulton County. Aggravated assault is not one of the “seven deadly sins” that trigger sentencing as a “serious violent felon” under the 1994 act: if it were, he would have been sentenced to life without parole due to his prior rape convictions.

Yet even as a “non-serious violent felon” repeat offender, McNutt was still required under the 1994 sentencing reform act to serve the entire sentence for his crimes. But he didn’t. He was sentenced to six years and served less than four. He walked into prison in January, 1997 and walked out again three and a half years later, in July of 2000. Even counting the time he may have spent cooling his heels in the Fulton County jail before being transferred to the state prison (or maybe not), he was out of prison four years and two months after the date of the crime for which he was sentenced to no less than six years behind bars, with no parole.

Here is the code section that restricts parole for four-time felons:

[A]ny person who, after having been convicted under the laws of this state for three felonies or having been convicted under the laws of any other state or of the United States of three crimes which if committed within this state would be felonies, commits a felony within this state other than a capital felony must, upon conviction for such fourth offense or for subsequent offenses, serve the maximum time provided in the sentence of the judge based upon such conviction and shall not be eligible for parole until the maximum sentence has been served. (from O.C.G.A. 17 -10-7)

Can anybody explain the fact that McNutt was granted parole? Who let him go early, apparently in direct violation of Georgia’s reformed sentencing law? Did the prosecutors fail to record his three prior felony convictions dating back to 1976 — two rapes (counted as one, unfortunately), aggravated sodomy, and the 1984 aggravated assault? Did the judge ignore the law of Georgia in sentencing McNutt? Did the Department of Corrections ignore the no-parole rule? Who is responsible?

These questions remain unanswered since 2009. Heck, they remain unasked, in the Atlanta media market.  More questions:

  • Why didn’t the judge give McNutt a longer sentence in the first place? How could any judge look at the accumulated evidence of violently predatory sexual behavior, of repeat offenses rolling in after each brief incarceration, and not decide that it was his or her duty to protect the public for longer than six years? Does anybody on the criminal justice bench in Atlanta even contemplate public safety in sentencing?
  • Why was McNutt charged with stalking and aggravated assault for the same incident? Was he actually attempting to commit a sexual assault? Could he have been charged with attempted sexual assault instead, a charge that would have triggered the life sentence (read: 14 years) as a serious violent felon and repeat offender? Was he permitted to plead to a charge that didn’t carry life imprisonment? Did the Fulton prosecutor’s office do everything it could do to keep McNutt off the streets, given his disturbing prior history and relentless sequence of serious crimes?
  • Was McNutt’s DNA checked before he was released from prison in 2000? Could other rapes have been solved, and charged, before he walked out of prison again? How many rapes could have been prevented, including the four recent Buckhead-area sex crimes, if this had been done? His first adult rape conviction occurred in 1976 — his latest rape charges occurred quite recently. Does anybody believe he took a twenty-year hiatus from hunting and torturing women?

I have said before that if McNutt had been labelled a hate criminal, someone in the media, or the legal world, or the activist circuit, would have cared.  Serial rapists are hate criminals, at least by the definition created by the activists, no matter how much these same activists try to keep rapes of women out of the discussion.

For, serial rapists choose one random victim after another to target; they attack the things that make their victims women (their sexual organs, and the same goes for serial rapists who target men); they use sexual slurs while violating their bodies; they attempt to degrade them; they spread fear among other women.  So why didn’t the hate crime activists utter a peep over McNutt’s crimes, or the crimes of any of the other serial rapists blighting women’s lives in Atlanta over the years? Why does the media give hate crime activists a pass — the gay groups, the Anti-Defamation League, the NAACP, CAIR, and Justice Department officials, especially Eric Holder –as they labor hard behind the scenes to keep serial rapes from being counted as hate crimes?

At the very time hate crime activists in Atlanta were busy trying to find the first case that would showcase their new law in the way they wished (the Georgia law is since overturned), Lavelle McNutt slipped out of prison, unnoticed.

Lavelle McNutt had been a free man since July, 2000, working in Atlanta-area restaurants, even managing them. He wasn’t hiding. As if his prior record isn’t bad enough, the current allegations about him are sickening: an informant reported that he carried “duct tape, wigs, lubricant and sex toys” in his car, to use during sexual assaults.

McNutt has now been sentenced for two rapes and two other assaults between 2007 and 2009. And what was he doing between 2000 and 2007?  Where was he?

In April 2007, authorities said, McNutt raped a woman inside her Sandy Springs home on Riverside Drive after holding a knife to her neck and bounding her with duct tape.

Later in February 2009, McNutt was charged with being a Peeping Tom after a woman at Macy’s at Lenox Square in Buckhead discovered a man watching her disrobe in the women’s dressing room.

In March 2009, prosecutors say McNutt attacked a Buckhead woman as she was leaving her apartment on Canterbury Road. He began dragging her away when she broke free and ran for help.

That same day in March, McNutt stole the purse and apartment key card of a woman walking her dog in Piedmont Park. The next day the woman found underwear missing from her home and later discovered hanging in a tree.

She is lucky she didn’t walk in on him.  Lavelle McNutt is a dangerous sadist.  Gerald Ford was president when he was first caught.  Gerald Ford.  The Bicentennial.  Patty Hearst.  Farrah Fawcett.  Apple computers invented.  You know, 35 years ago. ... 

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The Green Mile Syndrome: David Lee Powell Was Not Innocent. His Victims Are Not Hateful.

Someone claiming to be cop-killer David Powell’s cousin has written me, accusing Powell’s victims and the justice system of various sins.  Unsupported allegations like these too often pass for debate over the death penalty in the mainstream media.  Therefore, it’s worth a look, though the slurs Powell’s cousin tosses at the victims ought to just be trash canned.  See here and here for my previous posts on Powell.

The writer, John Struve, makes several assertions about minutiae of the appeals process — assertions that should be taken with a very large grain of salt, for he offers no proof.  It’s not as if the courts didn’t revisit these cases in detail: that is why it took 30 years to execute Powell.  It’s not as if Struve lacks access to the court documents.  But he feels no need to back up his claims, and in this, the media has unfortunately trained him to need no proof as he says everything and anything about the case against Powell.

For, while a technical error or defense-biased evidentiary rules can blow a strong case for the prosecution, the defense suffers no consequences for repetitively and flagrantly lying.  Many activists and defense lawyers feel that such lies are an honorable act — a sort of noble rot that produces the always-desired outcome of avoiding consequences for crime.

If Mr. Struve would like to send actual documentation backing up any of his assertions here, I’ll post it.  But his claims sound like the type made loudly and repetitively — in cases like Troy Davis’ in Georgia — that lazy reporters reprint without looking into the original court records, or the prosecution arguments, or the trail of appeals.

John Struve’s letter:

You are all so short sighted. The fact still remains that the dying Ralph Ablanedo, when asked who did this, said, ” a girl” and “That damn girl.”

Powell’s female accomplice was the driver.  Powell opened fire not once, but twice on officers.  Ablenado’s dying words are being misrepresented, which is an awful thing to do.

Several officers testified at Sheila’s parole hearing in 1982 stating that she was a future danger to society and that she did all the shooting and threw the grenade. Unfortunately, this information was not released to us, the family, until 2002, and the prosecutors at that time thought it would be easier to get the death penalty for a man than a woman. He had already exhausted all of his appeals by this time.

Actually, the female accomplice testified that Powell thrust a grenade at her, but she wasn’t able to deploy it right.  I’m sure the officers testified that the she should never get out of prison.  I would be very surprised if they testified that she “did all the shooting.”  Struve appears to be accusing these police of lying in their original testimony in the Powell trial — a serious allegation.  Defamation of character is actionable.

Incidentally, if this case were tried today, changes in the law would make it easier to hold all offenders responsible for a crime in which someone is murdered.

Now a human being that had definite reasonable doubt of guilt has been murdered.

Not true.

Just like Cameron Todd Willingham.

The Powell case has nothing to do with the Willingham case.  The Willingham case, in which a man was executed for setting the fire which killed his three small children, is another cause celebré, thanks to wildly biased and strangely querulous reporting in the New Yorker.

Why is it that New Yorker editors seem to thrill at watching predators prey on the great unwashed?

Meanwhile, back in the real world, forensic scientists are revisiting the Willingham case.  But cherry-picked claims about the fire itself, which constitutes the much-publicized defense, ignores other forensic evidence and the actual testimony that put Willingham behind bars (and you can buy expert witnesses to say anything — they charge by the act, as do many professionals).

I’m not going to bother to link to anything regarding Willingham.  The local news reporting, read in total, explains the controversy.  Virtually everything else should be read with a highly critical eye.  Embarrassingly, even Wikipedia places the word “alleged” before prosecution testimony that passed courtroom muster while allowing defense testimony which failed to pass muster to be stated as fact.  Pretty unprofessional of them, but that’s typical of reporting in these cases.

It’s death by a thousand cuts for the truth. Back to John Struve:

I am 33 years old, so my cousin David had been in jail my entire life.

Officer Ablenado has been dead for the last 33 years of his sons’ lives.  Shame on Struve for attempting to insert himself into that tragedy.

Once it came to a point where justice had failed due to officer and political vengeance

Again, defamation?

that caused the truth to be buried, we realized that we needed to embrace that David was guilty of this single act.

And then there was the auto theft, petty theft, stockpiling weapons, drug dealing, over 100 bad checks — yeah, he was a boy scout carrying hand grenades and automatic rifles around in a car, serially ripping off innocent people by the scores.  Come on.

Maybe not the one who pulled the trigger, but definitely responsible as the law of parties would suggest. He took that responsibility, although up to his murder, always stated that he has no recollection of what happened that dreadfully fateful night. All we wanted was for his life to be spared. Please read his story at letdavidlive.org before jumping on the “eye for an eye” human written testament of justice bandwagon dated over 2000 years ago.

Crying “vengeance” is offensive.  Struve doesn’t know these people.

If killing 100 evil people means that even 1 is innocent, then that indicates that the entire system is dysfunctional. Just think if it were you or someone you loved that was truly innocent. Now, my only hope is that the Willingham and David’s cases serve as martyrs to help us move from the 18th century into the new world where people actually think instead of seek blood for blood. Since David was put to death, then you should

See, we are all vengeful.  Bloodthirsty.  If I had a dime for every time some bloated defense attorney wannabe accused me of wanting innocent people to suffer . . . I still wouldn’t have enough money to buy enough earplugs.

all believe that Officer Leonardo Quintana should be held to the same standards. [?]   The unredacted Key Point report specifically states that his reckless tactics were what caused the police sanctioned murder of a defenseless individual, Nathaniel Sanders III. And unlike David, he had a history of reported violations prior to committing his murder. I used to be a huge proponent of the death penalty, but as I go through life, as I probably would have felt during the Spanish Inquisition, I question the tactics that we, as a society, use to punish individuals for acts of behavior “outside” that of what is considered the norm.

Behavior “outside” that of what is considered to norm? Is Struve equating blowing away an innocent public servant and trying to murder several others (whom Powell shot at, and missed) with, say, changing radio stations or hairstyles?

My brother is a Texas State Trooper. If he were killed in the line of duty or otherwise, I would not want the death penalty for the accused. If he were to murder someone on the taxpayer’s dime or not, I would not want him to receive the death penalty. Now we mourn. Next we move forward with our efforts to abolish the death penalty 1st in Texas, then in the entire United States. NOTE: What do you do when it is later found out that someone WE executed is found to be innocent? Go to their grave and pour some Mickey’s on it?

Nice.  Struve places his feelings above the officer’s family’s, makes himself the center of attention, accuses the real victims of heinous, animalistic rage, defames scores of police officers, and then accuses society of failing to live up to his standards of morality.  So much of this activism is a sickness, parading around as morality.

I wonder if this John Struve is the same person who sent me an anonymous e-mail celebrating the recent murder of Chicago Officer Thomas Wortham?  The sentiment sounds similar.

I welcome any suggestions for identifying anonymous e-mails.

~~~

You don’t have to support the death penalty (I don’t) to be disgusted by what passes for activism and reporting on death row cases.  An enormous, fact-free myth system has been built up around allegations that innocent men fill our prisons and molder nobly on death row.  This “Green Mile” syndrome, indulged by politicians and priests and professors — and more journalists than you could shake a forest of redwoods at — well, it has consequences.  It abuses the real victims, because they are falsely accused of everything from ransacking the justice system to being simply evil.

Careless reporting gives careless people free reign.

Consider the Troy Davis case. It has also become a cause celebré.  The Atlanta Journal Constitution has reported ceaselessly on the activism for Davis and editorially advocated for him.  Yet, nowhere in their reporting (unless there are articles that have never appeared on-line) have they bothered to mention the subject of forensic evidence withheld by the original trial court on a technicality, evidence that strongly supports Davis’ guilt.  Nor have they addressed the case made by prosecutors who were (quite unusually) freed up to discuss evidence against Davis after the Supreme Court made an unusual decision to revisit that evidence.

Nor have they mentioned efforts by Davis’ lawyers to keep physical evidence from being considered as the case gets revisited, thanks to the Supreme Court’s actions.  No, you couldn’t possibly trust the public with information about the real issues at stake in the Davis case, and other death row appeals.  Atlanta readers — by far the largest audience of Davis supporters — know nothing of any of this, unless they read Savannah papers:

Black shorts evidence:  After months of wrangling over evidence and legal issues, attorneys for the state’s attorney general’s office last week asked permission to submit Georgia Bureau of Investigation reports concerning “blood examination on pair of black shorts recovered from (Davis’) mother’s home on Aug. 19, 1989.”  They also asked to submit a report of DNA typing of the item.  Davis’ lawyers cried foul, urging Moore not to allow the evidence which they called “untimely” and “of questionable probative value.”  They argued it would “clearly prejudice” (Davis’) ability to rebut the contents of the report.  The jury hearing Davis’ 1991 trial never heard about the shorts after Chatham County Superior Court Judge James W. Head barred them from evidence because of what he found was police coercion of Davis’ mother, Virginia Davis, when she arrived near her Sylvester Drive home Aug. 19, 1989.  Police seized the shorts from a dryer while searching for the murder weapon.

And this must-read from the Chatham County D.A., published last year in the Savannah Morning News:

Chatham County’s district attorney explains why he’s not concerned that an innocent man may be put to death.

Many people are concerned that an innocent man is about to be put to death. I know this, and I understand it. I am not likewise concerned, however, and I want to explain why.

The only information the public has had in the 17 years since Troy Davis’ conviction has been generated by people ideologically opposed to the death penalty, regardless of the guilt or innocence of the accused.

While they have shouted, we have been silent. The canons of legal ethics prohibit a lawyer – prosecutor and defense counsel alike – from commenting publicly, or engineering public comments, on the issue of guilt or innocence in a pending criminal case.

Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled, the case is over, and I can try to tell our side.

First , Davis’ advocates have insisted that there was no physical evidence in the case. This is not true.

Crime lab tests proved that the shell casings recovered from the shooting of Michael Cooper at a party earlier in the evening were fired from the same weapon as the casings recovered from the scene of Officer Mark MacPhail’s murder. Davis was convicted of shooting Cooper.

And, while it isn’t physical evidence, consider the “testimony” of Officer MacPhail himself: When he comes to the rescue of a homeless man being harassed and pistol-whipped, the officer ran past Sylvester Coles on his way to catch Davis. This makes Davis the only one of those two with a motive to shoot Officer MacPhail. Yet Davis’ lawyers argue to condemn Coles for shooting MacPhail. Why would he?

In fact, Davis’ advocates are eager to condemn Coles based on evidence far weaker than their characterization of the evidence against Davis. Where is their sense of fairness? This is the same Sylvester Coles who promptly presented himself to police, and who was advised by counsel to tell all that he knew – with his lawyer not even present. Which he did. No lawyer who even faintly suspects a client of criminal conduct would let him talk to the police without counsel.

Second , they claim that seven of nine witnesses have recanted their trial testimony. This is not believable.

To be sure, they’ve produced affidavits; a few handwritten and apparently voluntarily and spontaneous, except for concluding with “further the affiant sayeth not.” Who wrote that stuff? The lawyers, perhaps?

The law is understandably skeptical of post-trial “newly-discovered evidence.”

Such evidence as these affidavits might, for example, be paid for, or coerced, or the product of fading memory.

If every verdict could be set aside by the casual acceptance of a witness’s changing his mind or suggesting uncertainty, decades after the event, it is easy to see how many cases would have to be tried at least twice (perhaps ad infinitum).

Thus the law sets strict standards for such “newly discovered” evidence.

For example, it cannot be for a lack of diligence that the new evidence was not discovered sooner, and the defendant is expected to present that evidence at the earliest possible time.

Yet these affidavits were not offered in a motion for new trial until eight days before the first scheduled execution in 2008 seventeen years after Davis’ conviction. If this affidavit evidence was so compelling, why didn’t they rush to seek a new trial in 2003 when they had most of the affidavits they now rely upon? Or collect those affidavits earlier?

Each of the now-“recanting” witnesses was closely questioned at trial by lawyers representing Davis, specifically on the question whether they were in any way pressured or coerced by police in giving their statements or testimony. All denied it.

And while an 80 percent recantation rate – the first in the history of the world ? – may seem to some as overwhelmingly persuasive, to others of us it invites a suggestion of uncanny coincidence, making it very difficult to believe.

Third , they claim that their “newly discovered evidence” (i.e., the recantations) hasn’t been adequately considered by the courts. This is not true.

The affidavits, in various combinations, had already been reviewed by 29 judges in seven different types of review, over the course of 17 years, before Tuesday’s ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The state Parole Board halted the execution in 2007, saying they wouldn’t allow a possibly innocent man to be executed. Then, after more than a year of reviewing all of the evidence on both sides, and hearing from every witness Davis’ lawyers presented – including Davis – they refused to grant clemency.

The trial was fair. Davis was represented by superbly skilled criminal defense lawyers. He was convicted by a fair jury (seven black and five white). The post conviction stridency we’ve seen has been much about the death penalty and little about Troy Davis.

The jury found that Davis, after shooting another man earlier in the evening, murdered a police officer who came to the rescue of a homeless man Davis had beaten. Mark MacPhail had never even drawn his weapon.

A more complete discussion of these – and other – points can be found at Chathamcounty.org/vwap/html [link gone]
Spencer Lawton Jr. is Chatham County District Attorney.

Why would the AJC be so coy, essentially misleading an audience of millions on crucial elements of physical evidence in a controversial case?  Because what they are doing is not reporting: it is advocating for Davis.  Ditto Davis supporters like the Pope, Bob Barr, Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu — none of whom, I’m sure, bothered to reach out to Officer MacPhail’s family.

As I’ve said before, oppose the death penalty on grounds of universal ethics, or opposition to state-administered death, but when you make a faux hero out of a murderous, worthless criminal like Troy Davis, you are doing so at the cost of the humanity and dignity of the real victims.

Slain Officer Mark Allen MacPhail’s Children ... 

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Clockwork Riots, L.A. Lakers Style: These Are Not Sports Fans

Imagine the crappiest job in the world:

You put on your Men’s Warehouse suit and drive to the office, dreading the inevitable outcome of the day.  Settling into your cubicle, you arrange the day’s work on the chipped laminate desk: a billy club, mace, and a copy of the quarterly budget figures for your division, awaiting approval from above.  In the next cubicle, Joey H. is already rocking back and forth in his mesh swivel knockoff, working the screws on one of the padded armrests.

The word comes from headquarters right before lunch: the budget numbers are good.

Joey lets out a guttural shriek, rips the loosened arm off his chair and kicks the front wall off his cubicle, still howling.  You grab the mace and billyclub and follow him as he tears a path of destruction to the break room, carefully avoiding getting too close, shouting at him to step down.

Joey ignores you and smacks out a fluorescent light fixture with his arm-rest, sending bits of glass and toxic powder all over accounting.  Then he pulls a wad of gasoline-soaked newspaper out of his pocket, lights it with a lighter, and throws the flaming mass in the paper recycling bin by the door.

Mike D. wearily rises from his desk, shouldering his fire extinguisher, and heads for the blaze.

You follow Joey into the break room.  He’s already used a folding chair to demolish the front of the snack machine, filling his pockets with KitKats while chanting “We’re Number One.”  You notice he’s been working out.

“Put the Kit Kats down, Joey,” you say.

“F*** You, Pig-Man,” he screams, winging a full Red Bull can at your face.  Luckily, you thought to wear your plexi face shied to work today.  Now that you’ve cornered him, Joey head-buts your belly.  That hurts.  You smack him a few times with the billy-club, always aware that the altercation is being recorded on security cameras for later review.  Finally, you manage to subdue him with the help of Kathy P., the new associate from sales.  She’s brought her handcuffs, and Joey’s taken off to the bathroom to wash up and get ready for Personnel to review the security tapes.

Later that day, the verdict comes back from Human Resources.  While you should have tried to stop Joey before he broke the front of the snack machine, you’re not going to get docked pay for using excessive force subduing him, like last quarter.  Kathy P. however, is going to have to go before the panel and explain why she bruised Joey H.’s wrist while snapping the handcuffs on.

Cop Injured By Lakers Enthusiasm

Joey H. gets assigned five hours of community service, which immediately gets suspended, as HR is testing a new program which will use positive messaging and self-esteem training to encourage him to stop setting the office on fire.  (Nancy W., still recovering from those lycra burns from the spring quarter numbers, stifles a bitter laugh).  Joey takes the rest of the afternoon off to meet his new esteem coach at the Starbucks.  The rest of the staff gets down to sweeping up broken glass and trying to scrub the scorch marks off the walls while running the numbers on the cost of replacing the carpet.

All except Kathy P., who is hiding in the bathroom to avoid those a-holes from PR who want to snap her picture and use it to illustrate a story they’re writing about the proper way to subdue a co-worker.  You settle into your smoke-fill cubicle and tug your rumpled necktie, wishing you could take it off as you start in on the stack of paperwork explaining your actions.

It’s going to be a long night.  There’s no way you’re going to catch that Lakers game.

~~~ ... 

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Jordan Gibson, Jose Reyes, Wilson Gomez, Leonard Scroggins: “I didn’t want to be one of those cases where you find my remains three years from now.”

You wouldn’t know it from the way many in the media cover crime, but recidivists with extremely violent records are still routinely cut loose from prison early, or allowed to stay free while awaiting trial.

Or allowed to attend high school with nobody knowing they’re sex offenders.

But wait, isn’t America supposed to be a police state, where people sometimes shockingly serve full sentences for their crimes?  Not in these cases:

Jordan Anthony Gibson, Atlanta, Georgia:

Gibson is currently a suspect in multiple rapes.  But even though he was caught in 2009 with items belonging to the rape victims, it took police a year to get back DNA results from the State Crime Lab positively tying him to two of the sex crimes.  This story says a lot about the state’s priorities, letting a suspected serial rapist’s DNA collect dust on a shelf for 13 months while some judge actually let the suspect walk free.  It also says a lot about the way the defense bar has convinced the judiciary to raise the bar way too high on evidence in criminal convictions: why isn’t being in possession of rape victims’ property enough to try someone for rape?  Why couldn’t he have been tried, or at least actually held under real supervision, on burglary or robbery charges until the DNA came back?  Don’t we have enough laws on the books to keep people like this off the streets for their other crimes.  of course, that would involve the courts actually displaying a commitment to treating crime like crime.

Part of the problem is the perception that crimes like burglary and robbery are now deemed too minor to even address.  And we know who to thank for that.  yet, somehow, the Atlanta Journal Constitution wants you to believe that we are far too harsh on criminals.  And so, you have a man now known to be a serial rapist, who could have been prosecuted for robbery and kept behind bars as the rape investigation continued, instead set free for a year as the crime lab didn’t bother to prioritize its work in a timely way.  Money problems?  Well, then, they should be using a case like this one to yell from the rooftops that they need more funds.  They don’t make waves like that, though.

Nor do Atlanta’s politically motivated “victim advocates” — many of them campus rape activists — who would rather berate all men for alleged sexist insensitivities than get their fingers dirty actually advocating for swift justice against a real rapist.  Oh, for the days when there were real feminists.  Here’s the serial rape story:

Police charged a man Friday for two of a string of rapes early last year along the Briarcliff Road corridor. DeKalb County Police investigators believe Jordon Anthony Gibson may be responsible for more sexual assaults, however.  Gibson, arrested Thursday, had been in police custody [that’s an ankle monitor, not jail] for more than a year on related charges.  On April 11, 2009, Gibson, 19, was stopped for a traffic violation, and police found property from the rape victims inside his car, DeKalb County police spokesman Jason Gagnon said.  Police, at the time, charged him with several counts of robbery, but continued to consider him as a person of interest in the series of rapes, Gagnon said.  DNA samples were taken from Gibson at the time of his arrest, but they were returned only a few weeks ago, police said.  The GBI’s results showed Gibson to be a positive match in two of the rapes.

Umm, so why wasn’t he arrested weeks ago?  Why wasn’t he picked up the very same day that the DNA results were known?  What exactly does it take to remove a dangerous, DNA-identified rapist from the streets, especially when he’s facing a long prison sentence?  Why did the warrant take “weeks” after the DNA match?

“We had a strong feeling that he was our guy, just due to the fact that those sexual assaults discontinued the minute he was arrested,” Gagnon told the AJC. “However, we didn’t have the evidence.  After the robbery charges, Gibson was released on a $60,000 bond and given an ankle monitor.  “We wanted to keep up with him,” Gagnon said.  There were at least five more rape victims for whom Gibson’s DNA did not match.  “Sometimes DNA can possibly be tainted,” Gagnon said, in explaining why there were not more matches.  As far as waiting a year for DNA results, Gagnon said investigators were patient.  “We’re just glad it came,” he said.

Look, at some point, somebody in the system needs to stand up and say:

Waiting a year for DNA results in serial rapes with the main suspect out in the community is NOT acceptable.  Having a court system in which we can’t even push a robbery conviction to get a suspected rapist behind bars while we investigate his other crimes is NOT acceptable.  If the courts are so distracted and overwhelmed that they can’t process a case like this in less than 13 months; if the DA doesn’t feel it is a priority to get a guy like this off the streets ASAP, then we really don’t have justice.  We really don’t have courts; we really don’t have prosecutors who can say they’re representing the people.  We don’t have anybody bothering to prevent the next preventable rape.

I understand why a cop can’t say this.  What I don’t understand is why a judge won’t say it.  Somebody needs to be the person who has the courage to challenge this type of utter failure.

Somebody . . .  some politician, some DA, some well-paid victim activist, needs to speak up.

~~~

Because when nobody speaks up, this is what happens: Jose Reyes, Seattle, Washington
 ... 

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Is Texas Incarceration Policy Really Different Now, Or Is That Cowboy Just A Journalist Riding His Hobbyhorse?

With a flick of public relations rhetoric, Texas has suddenly become a media darling to criminal justice journalists who previously viewed the state as mean and bloodthirsty.  The sudden transformation of the Lone Star State into the South Massachusetts of empathetic corrections was accomplished entirely in the media, of course, where gaining good PR is as easy as clicking your heels and saying: “I think it’s time we considered alternatives to incarceration, Joe.  This puttin’ people in jail just ain’t working.”

You don’t have to do it, you just have to say it.  Then you hand out lollypops and watch the great reviews (oops, I mean newspaper stories) roll in.

Articles of this stripe all read the same, which is unsurprising, as they start with pure opinion (incarceration is mean and us reporters believe it doesn’t work), proceed to cherrypick other opinions (some judges are looking at drug treatment as an alternative to incarceration, as if they didn’t already), beat in vague inference (drug treatment works, sometimes), add two cups of accusing the public of inventing the problem of crime in their own overactive imaginations (that’s just a “perception” your car got stolen, Ms. Hysteric), all topped with a dollop of political grandstanding (let’s get us some of that drug treatment and stop being mean, like Bob over there, who says he’s “tough” on crime just to get re-elected . . . hey, you gonna quote me, right?).

The Texas Miracle version of this story has been making the rounds for weeks.  Now it’s surfaced in the Atlanta Journal Constitution in an “analysis” of the “difference” between Georgia and Texas sentencing practices, one that feigns objectivity while ignoring real sentencing practices and hammering away at the notion that crime actually exists and is the — you know — reason we have criminal sentencing.

Note the not-very-objective lead, beneath the not-very-objective headline, beneath the not-very-objective series heading:

Government Waste in Georgia

A billion-dollar burden or justice?

Hmmm, which do you think it’s going to be?

AJC investigation: Georgia leads nation in criminal punishment

By Carrie Teegardin and Bill Rankin

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Georgia taxpayers spend $1 billion a year locking up so many criminal offenders that the state has the fourth-highest incarceration rate in the nation. When it comes to overall criminal punishment, no state outdoes Georgia.

Well, except for those three other states.  Also, don’t crime rates matter, as in: ‘Georgia also has a higher rate of criminal activity than these states it is being compared to here?’ No?  OK.  Just asking.

Hard-nosed measures approved with wide public support forced a five-fold increase in corrections spending since 1985.  A monumental prison construction campaign that quadrupled space over the last four decades seemed like money well spent as record crime rates in the 1990s left Georgians fearful of becoming the next victims of violence.

Wow.  That’s a lot of vague, condemnatory prose squeezed into a few brief lines.  “Hard-nosed” measures?  “Seemed like money well-spent?”  And you know, “wide public support” is code for “what a bunch of deluded buffoons.”

What was that support for?  For not being victimized by violent repeat offenders, the impetus for Georgia’s excellent two-strike law?  How much did violent crime rise?  What percentage of serious and recidivist crimes resulted in prison sentences, before and after those new prisons were built?  Was that money well spent, looking at the decline in crime rates after two-strikes for violent crime was passed, for example?  Anyone?

One might also ask what the alternative response to those “record crime rates” might have been.  Rolling over and letting criminals destroy even more lives?  Kill more of their peers, who were on the front line of the carnage?  But you can’t talk about the number of lives saved by raising incarceration rates.  Not in the Atlanta Journal Constitution or any other big-city paper.

Reporters simply believe incarceration doesn’t work.  End of story.

The rest of this purported “study” consists largely of quotes from politicians positioning themselves against spending money on incarceration for a variety of vague reasons: you might call it more of a study of politicians’ habits in exploiting the subject of crime than a look at crime itself.  Revelations include the startling fact that some conservatives don’t like paying for new prisons because they don’t like taxes, or “big government.”  Wow, that’s really illuminating:

Mark Earley, a Republican former attorney general in Virginia who is chief executive of the nonprofit Prison Fellowship, agreed.  “When you have in Georgia 1 in every 70 adults [incarcerated] and 1 in every 13 is in some form of correctional control, that’s big government with a big big G, ” he said.

The big “G.”  Usually, reporters mock such language.  But when it’s in the service of advancing their hobbyhorse of empathizing with violent offenders, I guess anti-guvmint claptrap gets a pass.

How unsurprising that Early is also “chief executive of the nonprofit Prison Fellowship.”  Just like Mike Huckabee, who made a very destructive public hobby of sharing Bible passages with rapists and killers before cutting them loose?  Well, that’s a viewpoint you can take to the bank.

Unlike, say, actual recourse to actual crime statistics, which are nowhere to be found.

Shake the bushes and it’s not actually hard to find someone with an -R after their name who gets off on hanging out with prisoners while posturing for the cameras.  Of course politicians will always say they like alternatives to incarceration for non-violent offenders.  That’s why there are and always have been alternatives, including the much-abused alternative of simply letting the vast majority of offenders plead their sentences down.  Everyone’s always happy to talk about alternative sentencing, but has it worked?  In which cases?  Are violent offenders being permitted to slip through the cracks?

Oh, never mind.

Extraordinarily, the AJC article, which purports to analyze Georgia’s incarceration policy from 1990 to 2010, contains just one mention of an actual crime: stealing baby formula.  Yes, that’s right: stealing baby formula.  Of course, we all remember the bad old days of the baby formula wars, back in old 1-triple9.  Lost a lot of good men that day.

Goodness.  The reporters were obviously so deep in serious analyzing mode that they managed to overlook the 13,000 murders that happened in Georgia over the same time.  Not to mention the 50,000 forcible rapes.  500,000 aggravated assaults . . . and so on.  Nope.  Not a one.  One case of stealing baby formula stands in for all those horrific human losses, just so the reporters can smugly point fingers at the public and scream: Hysterics!  Passing all those hateful laws just to incarcerate poor baby formula thieves!

How intellectually dishonest.

Of course, this type of reporting isn’t really about analyzing the efficacy of incarceration policies.  But when reporters actually go so far as to fluff up some fake Jean Valjean moment (more likely a baby formula theft to procure drugs, not feed babies) instead of actually addressing the tidal wave of violent crimes that took the lives 13,000 Georgia residents, why does nobody call them on it?

Meanwhile, back in reality, there is no simple way to compare Texas’ current shifts in sentencing policy with those in any other state: journalists who feign to do so are mainly extrapolating political speeches and vast budget line-items that bear no conclusive relationship to the actual working of a diverse (in the old fashioned sense of the term) landscape of courts.  At least they don’t need to worry about the vast cheerleading squad we call academia actually pointing out their errors: evaluating sentencing outcomes is a court-by-court task that virtually nobody, including academicians, ever bothers to attempt.  Those who do end up with book-length descriptions of justice systems that fail to address most crimes, out of despair and lack of funding: one illuminating example is Edward Hume’s year-long observation of the Los Angeles juvenile court system: No Matter How Loud I Shout.

For, when there is no such thing as a judicial precinct where every charge is brought against every defendant, and when a large, if not the largest, percentage of charges get abandoned or pled down outside the courtroom, how can any policymaker or academician or reporter or pundit make sweeping claims about statistical outcomes with a straight face?  Judges know this.  Prosecutors know this.  Yet they are never asked by most journalists (who also know this) to simply quantify all decisions, to produce their complete records for the public to scrutinize, a task that would be as easy as hitting a button in the computer age and would tell us a great many thing the public does not know but deserves to know.  We are, after all, footing the bills as well as dealing with the consequences of every decision made in every court.

Actual facts are never demanded, or provided, to support all this nonsense about “finally” offering alternatives to sentencing (there are always alternatives — there always have been alternatives, including just not bothering to act on most crimes).

No, this is all merely grandstanding.  Smoke and mirrors.  But it has passed for public debate about crime for fifty years, and journalists are hardly going to change their game now.

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