CrimProf Blog

Sanford H. Kadish Berkley Criminal Law Professor

                          FSU Contact: Roxanne Livingston Sanford Kadish joined the Boalt faculty in 1964 and served as dean from 1975 to 1982. Previously, he taught at the University of Utah and the University of Michigan and also practiced with a New York firm.

Kadish has been a Guggenheim Fellow and visiting professor at Harvard, Columbia, Oxford, Cambridge, Kyoto-Doshisha University, the Freiburg Institute for Criminal Law, and the University of Melbourne. He has been president of both the American Association of University Professors and the Association of American Law Schools, as well as vice president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received honorary degrees from the City University of New York and Cologne University.

Kadish was editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Crime and Justice and his books include Discretion to Disobey; Criminal Law and Its Processes; and Blame and Punishment: Essays in Criminal Law. Recent publications include "Fifty Years of Criminal Law: An Opinionated Review," in the California Law Review (1999).

In 1991 Kadish was awarded the Berkeley Citation. In 1999 he received the ABA's Annual Research Award and was elected to the Executive Council of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Western Division.

Education:

FSU Contact: Roxanne Livingston Sanford Kadish joined the Boalt faculty in 1964 and served as dean from 1975 to 1982. Previously, he taught at the University of Utah and the University of Michigan and also practiced with a New York firm.

Kadish has been a Guggenheim Fellow and visiting professor at Harvard, Columbia, Oxford, Cambridge, Kyoto-Doshisha University, the Freiburg Institute for Criminal Law, and the University of Melbourne. He has been president of both the American Association of University Professors and the Association of American Law Schools, as well as vice president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received honorary degrees from the City University of New York and Cologne University.

Kadish was editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Crime and Justice and his books include Discretion to Disobey; Criminal Law and Its Processes; and Blame and Punishment: Essays in Criminal Law. Recent publications include "Fifty Years of Criminal Law: An Opinionated Review," in the California Law Review (1999).

In 1991 Kadish was awarded the Berkeley Citation. In 1999 he received the ABA's Annual Research Award and was elected to the Executive Council of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Western Division.

Education

B.S.S, City College of New York (1942)
LL.B., Columbia University (1948)
Dr. Jur., University of Cologne (1983)
LL.D., City University of New York (1985)
LL.D., Southwestern University (1993)

[Mark Godsey]

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New Trends in U.S. Violent Crime Patterns?

The Atlantic: Falling crime rates have been one of the great American success stories of the past 15 years. New York and Los Angeles, once the twin capitals of violent crime, have calmed down significantly, as have most other big cities. Criminologists still debate why: the crack war petered out, new policing tactics worked, the economy improved for a long spell. Whatever the alchemy, crime in New York, for instance, is now so low that local prison guards are worried about unemployment.

Lately, though, a new and unexpected pattern has emerged, taking criminologists by surprise. While crime rates in large cities stayed flat, homicide rates in many midsize cities (with populations of between 500,000 and 1 million) began increasing, sometimes by as much as 20percent a year. In 2006, the Police Executive Research Forum, a national police group surveying cities from coast to coast, concluded in a report called “A Gathering Storm” that this might represent “the front end … of an epidemic of violence not seen for years.” The leaders of the group, which is made up of police chiefs and sheriffs, theorized about what might be spurring the latest crime wave: the spread of gangs, the masses of offenders coming out of prison, methamphetamines. But mostly they puzzled over the bleak new landscape. According to FBI data, America’s most dangerous spots are now places where Martin Scorsese would never think of staging a shoot-out—Florence, South Carolina; Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; Reading, Pennsylvania; Orlando, Florida; Memphis, Tennessee.

Read the full article here. [Brooks Holland]

Changes Encouraged to Prevent False Confessions

There have been at least 56 wrongful convictions in New York State including those of Martin H. Tankleff and Jeffrey Mark Deskovic. Of those, at least 23 since 1991 have been based on DNA evidence — seven in the last eight years alone.

On Wednesday, the New York State Senate Democratic Task Force on Criminal Justice Reform held a forum

“I was one of the lucky ones,” said Mr. Tankleff, who testified at the forum before rushing off to his college class. “I was a white guy who lived in a nice area with a great family.”

Before his conviction for killing his parents was overturned in December 2007, he had written some 50,000 letters pleading his case in the 17 years he was in prison. “Over my time in prison I met many men who did not have the desire or drive that I did,” he said.

Among the proposals discussed at the forum, which was held at the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center in Washington Heights, were:

• Establish a commission to make recommendations for reforms, as other states have already done. The New York State Bar Association’s Task Force on Wrongful Convictions, for example, has looked at patterns in wrongful convictions. Among its findings: the average length of time before the conviction was overturned in the 56 cases was 11.2 years.

• Preserve DNA evidence since the evidence is often lost, destroyed or impossible to locate. The Innocence Project, which works to exonerate the wrongfully convicted, said that a sample of closed cases from across the nation showed that one-third of them were closed because evidence could not be located for testing. The figure was even higher in New York, 50 percent.

• Require written policies for administering eyewitness identification. Misidentification by witnesses contributed to 13 of the 23 New York DNA exoneration cases, according to the Innocence Project.
  

• Reform the public defense system so that public defenders have the resources to uncover and challenge law enforcement’s methods in gathering evidence.

• Require electronic recording of interrogations. False confessions or admissions were involved in 10 of the 23 wrongful conviction cases, according to the Innocence Project.

As an example of how the police can coax false confessions, the commission made available a videotape of Frank Esposito, who as a 17-year-old was arrested and charged with arson in a fire at Bergen Beach Stables, which killed 21 horses in 2000.

He was later acquitted in a jury trial when the defense showed cellphone records that indicated he was nowhere near the stable at the time of the fire. [Mark Godsey]

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Texas man gets 4,060 years in prison

WEATHERFORD, Texas - A man was sentenced to more than 4,000 years in prison Wednesday for sexually assaulting three teenage girls over two years.

A day after finding James Kevin Pope guilty, jurors sentenced him to 40 life prison terms - one for each sex assault conviction - and 20 years for each of the three sexual performance of a child convictions.

At the request of prosecutors, state District Judge Graham Quisenberry ordered Pope to serve the sentences consecutively, adding up to 4,060 years. He will be eligible for parole in the year 3209, according to the Parker County District Attorney's Office.

"We believe it was a just result," prosecutor Robert DuBoise said, adding that he was "overwhelmed" with the judge's decision to stack the sentences.

Pope, 43, of Springtown, abused the girls for nearly two years. It came to authorities' attention earlier this year after Pope made several inappropriate comments to a friend, who notified Child Protective Services.

During the trial, the teens testified about the abuse, and their sexually explicit photographs were shown as evidence.

But Rick Alley, Pope's defense lawyer, told jurors in closing arguments that the victims were incapable of understanding what happened, the Weatherford Democrat reported in its Wednesday online edition.

"If it was as traumatic as they indicate, they would be able to give you (specific dates and times of the incidents). Simply because it's shocking doesn't make it true," Alley said.

During the sentencing phase of the trial, a U.S. Secret Service agent testified that while examining Pope's home computer, he found more than 200 images of child porn. [Mark Godsey]

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Fired to rehired City's record poor when dismissals go to arbitration

The Cincinnati Police Department tried and failed 19 times to fire officers and dispatchers in the past decade. One officer tackled an unarmed Alzheimer's patient, resulting in a $700,000 settlement. Another was accused of shooting a woman with a Taser and then taunting her. Two others drove a drunken woman home and had sex with her while on duty. Police administrators fired all the officers, including one who was fired twice. But many of them are back at work today. An Enquirer analysis of personnel files found that 35 police firing cases have been resolved since 1998. The firings stuck with 16 officers, but 11 of those cases involved criminal charges that made it difficult or, in some cases, impossible for the officers to return to work.

The other five did not appeal their firings, lost their appeals or resigned.

The 19 remaining cases ended with a settlement or an arbitrator's ruling that returned the fired officers to the job.

• Video: Officer Robert Hill tackles an unarmed Alzheimer's patient at an ice cream counter (Provided by WLWT Channel 5)
• City loses: Read the arbitrator's decision in the Robert Hill case
• City wins: Read the arbitrator's decision in the Elizabeth Phillips case

The appeals process is the main reason so many officers come back. Independent arbitrators ruled against the city and reinstated fired officers in 16 of the 18 cases they decided in the past 10 years.

The police union sees the appeals as crucial protection against unfair or excessive discipline. But city officials say the inability to keep fired officers off the payroll erodes public confidence, increases the city's financial liability and creates the impression the police department cannot police itself.

"It bothers me that the threshold is set by the city of Cincinnati, but is not upheld by arbitrators," said Police Chief Tom Streicher.

"I think citizens have a right to demand total honesty from a police officer." [Mark Godsey]

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Terror watch uses local eyes Privacy advocates worry that officers' snooping will entangle innocent people

Hundreds of police, firefighters, paramedics and even utility workers have been trained and recently dispatched as "Terrorism Liaison Officers" in Colorado and a handful of other states to hunt for "suspicious activity" — and are reporting their findings into secret government databases.

It's a tactic intended to feed better data into terrorism early-warning systems and uncover intelligence that could help fight anti-U.S. forces. But the vague nature of the TLOs' mission, and their focus on reporting both legal and illegal activity, has generated objections from privacy advocates and civil libertarians.

"Suspicious activity" is broadly defined in TLO training as behavior that could lead to terrorism: taking photos of no apparent aesthetic value, making measurements or notes, espousing extremist beliefs or conversing in code, according to a draft Department of Justice/Major Cities Chiefs Association document.

All this is anathema to opponents of domestic surveillance.

Yet U.S. intelligence and homeland security officials say they support the widening use of TLOs — state-run under federal agreements — as part of a necessary integrated network for preventing attacks.

"We're simply providing information on crime-related issues or suspicious circumstances," said Denver police Lt. Tony Lopez, commander of Denver's intelligence unit and one of 181 individual TLOs deployed across Colorado.

"We don't snoop into private citizens' lives. We aren't living in a communist state." [Mark Godsey]

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In Court Ruling on Executions, a Factual Flaw

WASHINGTON — When the Supreme Court ruled last week that the death penalty for raping a child was unconstitutional, the majority noted that a child rapist could face the ultimate penalty in only six states — not in any of the 30 other states that have the death penalty, and not under the jurisdiction of the federal government either. This inventory of jurisdictions was a central part of the court’s analysis, the foundation for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s conclusion in his majority opinion that capital punishment for child rape was contrary to the “evolving standards of decency” by which the court judges how the death penalty is applied. It turns out that Justice Kennedy’s confident assertion about the absence of federal law was wrong.

A military law blog pointed out over the weekend that Congress, in fact, revised the sex crimes section of the Uniform Code of Military Justice in 2006 to add child rape to the military death penalty. The revisions were in the National Defense Authorization Act that year. President Bush signed that bill into law and then, last September, carried the changes forward by issuing Executive Order 13447, which put the provisions into the 2008 edition of the Manual for Courts-Martial.

Anyone in the federal government — or anywhere else, for that matter — who knew about these developments did not tell the court. Not one of the 10 briefs filed in the case, Kennedy v. Louisiana, mentioned it. The Office of the Solicitor General, which represents the federal government in the Supreme Court, did not even file a brief, evidently having concluded that the federal government had no stake in whether Louisiana’s death penalty for child rape was constitutional.

The provision was the subject of a post over the weekend on the blog run by Dwight Sullivan, a colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve who now works for the Air Force as a civilian defense lawyer handling death penalty appeals. [Mark Godsey]

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Not Winning the War on Drugs

According to the White House, this country is scoring big wins in the war on drugs, especially against the cocaine cartels. Officials celebrate that cocaine seizures are up — leading to higher prices on American streets. Cocaine use by teenagers is down, and, officials say, workplace tests suggest adult use is falling. John Walters, the White House drug czar, declared earlier this year that “courageous and effective” counternarcotics efforts in Colombia and Mexico “are disrupting the production and flow of cocaine.”

This enthusiasm rests on a very selective reading of the data. Another look suggests that despite the billions of dollars the United States has spent battling the cartels, it has hardly made a dent in the cocaine trade.

While seizures are up, so are shipments. According to United States government figures, 1,421 metric tons of cocaine were shipped through Latin America to the United States and Europe last year — 39 percent more than in 2006. And despite massive efforts at eradication, the United Nations estimates that the area devoted to growing coca leaf in the Andes expanded 16 percent last year. The administration disputes that number.

The drug cartels are not running for cover.

Mexico and parts of Central America are being swept up in drug-related violence. Latin Americans are becoming heavy consumers of cocaine, and traffickers are opening new routes to Europe through fragile West African countries. Some experts argue that the rising price of cocaine on American streets is mostly the result of a strong euro and fast-growing demand in Europe.

Workplace drug tests notwithstanding, cocaine use in the United States is not falling. About 2.5 percent of Americans used cocaine at least once in 2006, the same percentage as in 2002, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

While cocaine use has fallen among younger teenagers, 12th graders are using more: 5.2 percent used cocaine last year — up from 4.8 percent in 2001 and 3.1 percent at the low point in 1992, says a Monitoring the Future survey done by the University of Michigan.

All this suggests serious problems with a strategy that focuses overwhelmingly on disrupting the supply of drugs while doing far too little to curb domestic demand. [Mark Godsey]

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Florida reinstituted the death penalty: State executes child killer

STARKE — Florida reinstituted the death penalty Tuesday with the execution of a child killer. Unlike a botched execution in 2006 that halted the state's death penalty for more than a year, the execution of Mark Dean Schwab appeared seamless and peaceful. Schwab, 39, made no final statement and stopped moving only two or three minutes after chemicals began flowing into his veins.

He was pronounced dead 13 minutes after the death chamber's curtain rolled open.

"That was the most peaceful passing I've ever been to, and I wish I could know that my son passed as peacefully," said Vickie Rios-Martinez, the mother of Schwab's victim, Junny Rios-Martinez.

Schwab abducted, raped and murdered 11-year-old Junny in 1991 after seeing his picture in a newspaper. Schwab posed as his father and lured him to a ball field.

Florida halted executions after the Dec. 13, 2006, death of Angel Diaz. Corrections officials mistakenly poked needles through Diaz's veins, causing the chemicals to splash into his flesh. Diaz took 34 minutes to die, and some observers said he appeared in pain. An autopsy found footlong chemical burns on his arms.

Then-Gov. Jeb Bush convened a panel to study lethal injection procedures. The Florida Department of Corrections adopted 37 changes in protocol recommended by the panel. [Mark Godsey]

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UPR and Arizona CrimProf David Wexler: New Book on Criminal Practice and Therapeutic Jurisprudence

CrimProf David B. Wexler (SSRN) (Wikipedia) (Homepage) of the Universities of Puerto Rico and Arizona has published a new edited volume Rehabilitating Lawyers: Principles of Therapeutic Jurisprudence for Criminal Law Practice (Carolina Academic Press).

The description:
"This book seeks to bridge the traditional divide between scholarship and practice in the field of law. It introduces the interdisciplinary perspective of therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) and then, largely through the thoughtful and informative essays of practitioners and clinical law professors, shows how criminal law practice can be enriched — and how clients can benefit — from lawyers looking at their practice with a TJ lens. Lawyers can be positive change agents for many of their clients, and will find that this approach can markedly increase their own professional satisfaction and enhance their professional image."  Flier here More details and ordering information below.

“The most interesting, important and innovative book I have read about the practice of law in many years. I’m a former Public Defender (still one at heart), and I hope this book is read by all of those who devote themselves valiantly to this most undervalued position. Anyone who has ever represented a criminal defendant owes Professor Wexler a great debt of gratitude.” — Professor Michael L. Perlin
Director, International Mental Disability Law Reform Project, Director, Online Mental Disability Law Program, New York Law School

“Rehabilitating Lawyers is the kind of smart and balanced book too often absent from the fractious debate about the future of our criminal justice system. By embracing healing as a legitimate criminal justice goal, Professor Wexler offers up an exciting new paradigm in which lawyers finally deserve the label ‘counselor.’” — Robin Steinberg, Executive Director, Bronx Defenders

About the Editor:
David B. Wexler is Professor of Law and Director, International Network on Therapeutic Jurisprudence at the University of Puerto Rico. He is also Distinguished Research Professor of Law and Professor of Psychology at the University of Arizona. He served as a member of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Mental Health and the Law, and is a recipient of the American Psychiatric Association's Manfred S. Guttmacher Award, the New York University School of Law Distinguished Alumnus Legal Scholarship/Teaching Award, and the National Center for State Courts Distinguished Service Award.
Wexler is an Honorary Distinguished Member of the American-Psychology-Law Society, was a consultant on therapeutic jurisprudence to the National Judicial Institute of Canada, and has served as a Fulbright Senior Specialist, lecturing on therapeutic jurisprudence across Australia and New Zealand. He has also
addressed national audiences in the US, UK, Canada, Spain, Chile, Puerto Rico and Israel, and his work has been translated to Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew, and Urdu. This is his seventh book.

Order and Exam Copy Information: Save 10% when you order online!
Order online at www.caplaw.com or call 800-489-7486.
If you teach and wish to request an examination copy of this or any of our other titles, please e-mail comp@cap-press.com or call (800) 489-7486. You may also request examination copies online at www.caplaw.com. Examination copy requests should include the following information:
• course(s) name for which the book is being considered;
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Ariz. courts trying alternative juvenile justice

TUCSON - If you had visited the juvenile lockup in Pima County a decade ago - at the height of the adult-time-for-adult-crime campaign - you'd have seen young people sleeping in the cafeteria because of crowding.

If you'd visited five years ago, you'd have seen nearly 200 juveniles held each day.

If you visited a week ago, you would have counted 78.

There were almost 3,500 youths detained in Pima County in 2003, a number that plummeted to 2,583 last year and is still dropping.

In year four of a wide-scale transformation of Pima County's juvenile-justice system, troubled kids are being diverted into other alternatives.

"We're responding to national research which negates some commonly held beliefs that you can scare them straight," said presiding Juvenile Court Judge Patricia Escher. "More frequently, when you detain young people inappropriately, what you do is send them on a path of criminality."

Lower-risk youths might be influenced by higher-risk ones they meet in detention.

And then there's the power of the self-fulfilling prophecy, Escher said.

"If you have youths wondering, 'Am I a good person or a bad person?' and you put those young people in detention, you're confirming this is who they are and this is who we expect them to be," she said.

How states treat their kids, including those in the juvenile-justice system, got attention this month with the annual release of the Kids Count report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore, a private charitable organization "dedicated to helping build better futures for disadvantaged children in the United States." [Mark Godsey]

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Agencies join forces to tackle violent gangs

Federal law enforcement authorities have coupled multi-agency task forces with strategies that once focused on Mafia-era crime syndicates to target national and international gangs, many of which have brought warfare to the nation's cities.

With a propensity for indiscriminate violence, intimidation and coercion, some of the gangs are considered security threats. One of the largest is Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, with an FBI estimate of 10,000 members in 42 states, including Maryland and Virginia, as well as the District.

Federal law enforcement authorities have coupled multi-agency task forces with strategies that once focused on Mafia-era crime syndicates to target national and international gangs, many of which have brought warfare to the nation's cities.

With a propensity for indiscriminate violence, intimidation and coercion, some of the gangs are considered security threats. One of the largest is Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, with an FBI estimate of 10,000 members in 42 states, including Maryland and Virginia, as well as the District. [Mark Godsey]

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Panel finds California death penalty flawed, urges overhaul

Capital punishment in California is too flawed to be effective and is crippled by an appeals backlog that delays punishment for crimes, a state Senate- appointed panel has concluded.

The California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice issued an in-depth report on the death penalty Monday, the first official review of the practice since it was reinstated in 1978.

The state's death-penalty system must undergo a multimillion-dollar upgrade – an investment that voters must weigh in on – to lessen the nation's longest time between conviction and execution, the panel said.

"We've got to insist on these resources if we want a credible death penalty," said former Attorney General John Van de Kamp, commission chairman.

Alternatives the commission offered were to narrow the field of defendants eligible for the death penalty or to abolish it. Both measures would ignite controversy, Van de Kamp said, but would potentially save rather than cost money.

Keeping someone on death row costs $92,000 annually above the cost of a year at a maximum-security state prison, the commission found. The cost of appeals can be three times the cost of the original trial.

The need for reform is clear, commissioners said.

At least 70 percent of death-row judgments that are appealed to the state high court result in new hearings, with ineffective counsel the typical reason, said Gerald F. Uelmen, a law professor who publishes an annual survey of the state Supreme Court. [Mark Godsey]

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Border Drug Wars Plague Cities in Mexico and U.S.

Drug cartels have made Juarez the deadliest city in Mexico. But they also operate just across the border, in El Paso, Texas — one of the safest cities in the U.S. NPR's Jason Beaubien speaks with host Andrea Seabrook about efforts to stop the violence.

Listen to "Border Drug Wars Plague Cities in Mexico and U.S."

Local and national outbreak of grave robbing

Grave robbing has become an above-ground affair. Gone are the days when enterprising thieves would dig up an old grave and pillage for gold teeth and rings. Today, it's mostly the bronze markers and flower vases that draw their attention. Rising scrap metal prices, coupled with the lagging economy, have triggered a string of cemetery thefts both locally and across the nation. "I can't think of anything lower," said David Evans, general manager for Valhalla Gardens of Memory in Belleville. "Nothing's worse than stealing from the dead."

But grave robbers beware: The authorities are getting wise. States are passing laws and police are cracking down.

In March, the Madison County Sheriff's Department arrested three people for stealing 40 vases from two Metro East cemeteries. The owner of a Granite City scrap recycling center turned them in.

Late last year, a trio of thieves hit the Valhalla Memorial Park cemetery in East Alton. They stole 17 bronze vases from graves in the cemetery. A month later, they went back and stole a dozen more.

The two men and a woman were arrested after a tipster reported a suspicious vehicle. Charges are pending.

The scrap value of a bronze vase is about $10, according to cemetery operators; the replacement price often tops $300.

Grave robbery was more common in the 19th century, when thieves dug up the dead in a search for gold. Sometimes they snatched the bodies for medical experiments.

In 1876, three men broke into Abraham Lincoln's burial site in Springfield, Ill., in an attempt to steal the body and hold it for ransom. The men were caught in progress.

Through the decades, such nefarious acts became uncommon. [Mark Godsey]

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Gun Laws and Crime: A Complex Relationship

Lurking behind the Supreme Court’s ruling last week that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms were a series of fascinating, disputed and now in many ways irrelevant questions. Do gun control laws reduce crime? Do they save lives? Is it possible they even cost lives? Justice Stephen G. Breyer, one of the dissenters in the 5-to-4 decision, surveyed a quite substantial body of empirical research on whether gun control laws do any good. Then he wrote: “The upshot is a set of studies and counterstudies that, at most, could leave a judge uncertain about the proper policy conclusion.”

There is no question, of course, that guns figure in countless murders, suicides and accidental deaths. Over the five years ending in 1997, the Justice Department says, there was an average of 36,000 firearms-related deaths a year. (Fifty-one percent were suicides, and 44 percent homicides.) Determining whether particular gun control laws would have, on balance, prevented some of those deaths is difficult. Take Washington, D.C., whose near-total ban on handguns in the home was on the receiving end of last week’s decision.

At the crudest level, as Justice Breyer wrote, violent crime in Washington has increased since the ban took effect in 1976. “Indeed,” he continued, “a comparison with 49 other major cities reveals that the district’s homicide rate is actually substantially higher relative to these other cities than it was before the handgun restriction went into place.”

Those statistics by themselves prove nothing, of course. Factors aside from the gun ban, like demographics, economics and the drug trade, were almost certainly in play. “As students of elementary logic know,” Justice Breyer wrote, “after it does not mean because of it.”

But Gary Kleck, a professor at Florida State University’s College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, whose work Justice Breyer cited, said there were good reasons for making a definitive judgment.

“We know the D.C. handgun ban didn’t reduce homicide,” [Mark Godsey]

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Will Some Felons Be Permitted To Own Guns After Heller?

N.Y. Sun.com: The Supreme Court's historic decision on the Second Amendment could make millions of felons eligible to own guns.

Under current federal law, the vast majority of felons are prohibited from so much as touching a gun or ammunition, on pain of punishment of up to 10 years in prison.

Some legal experts now say that the constitutionality of that law, known as the "felon in possession" law, was deeply undermined by the Supreme Court's decision Thursday in District of Columbia v. Heller.

In that case, the court held that the Second Amendment gives individuals the right to keep a handgun at home for protection. The court struck down a handgun ban in Washington, D.C. Gun rights groups have begun challenging bans elsewhere.

But little attention has been paid to the effect that the court's decision could have on regulations defining which groups of people can be excluded from gun ownership.

"The Court might decide there are some classes of felons that ought to be treated differently from other classes of felons," a former solicitor general, Theodore Olson, said in an interview on Thursday about the prospect that the Supreme Court may eventually permit felons to own guns.

Crimes ranging from murder to writing a hot check can count as felonies. The felon-in-possession law applies to people convicted of state crimes as well as federal crimes.

At the end of 2001 there were 5.6 million adult felons living in this country who either had been to prison or were still behind bars, according to Justice Department figures. But the number of felons is actually much higher because many felons are sentenced to probation and never do any time.

The only felons who can lawfully retain a gun, according to exceptions written into the statute, are those convicted of anti-trust violations or crimes involving unfair trading practices.

In interviews, several legal experts say that lower court judges should interpret the Supreme Court's decision in Heller to permit non-violent felons to own weapons.

"Why not? I can't see why they shouldn't have gun rights if they don't have a record of violent crime," a lawyer who financed the Heller case, Robert Levy, said. "If the nature of their crime has nothing to do with the commission of violence than it's a pretty strange punishment that would deprive ex-felons of the ability to defend themselves."

Continue reading article here. [Brooks Holland]

NRA Targets Gun Bans after Heller Decision

NPR.org: Five cities and suburbs are facing lawsuits challenging their bans on handguns. When the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark June 26 decision, rejecting Washington, D.C.'s ban on handguns, gun-rights lawyers swung into action.

As a result, the legal landscape for gun laws could face dramatic changes.

The village of Morton Grove, Ill., just north of Chicago, has one of the oldest handgun bans in the nation on its books. It's also the target of one of the five lawsuits filed by the National Rifle Association.

Village Manager Joe Wade says Morton Grove isn't going to wait for a court battle. It's going to act.

"The village of Morton Grove has every intention to comply with [the Supreme Court ruling]," Wade says. "We're going to propose an ordinance that would eliminate the possession-of-handgun ban within the village."

The attitude is different in Oak Park, a suburb on Chicago's West Side that has become another target of NRA lawyers.

"It's just completely befuddling that our Supreme Court would be in alliance with the gangbangers," says Tom Barwin, the village manager in Oak Park.

Barwin used to be a police officer near Detroit. He said he's hoping Oak Park pushes back against the high court ruling. But that might not be easy.

Barwin says e-mail is already coming in from people interested in owning handguns.

He says he expects the village to meet with other communities that might want to fight to continue their bans, in order to figure out where to go next.

Where the NRA is going next is Chicago. The city has a handgun ban nearly identical to the D.C. law struck down by the Supreme Court.

The NRA lawsuit in San Francisco challenges a local ordinance that bars possession of handguns by public housing residents.

How far will the legal challenges go?

Stephen Holbrook, an outside counsel for the NRA, believes it won't be a free-for-all.

"Most laws will stay on the books," Holbrook says. "But that's because they're regulations and not outright bans."

At the same time, Holbrook says there is fertile ground for future challenges, whether by lawsuit or other means.

For instance, he said, Washington, D.C., officials suggested after the ruling that residents wouldn't be able to legally own semiautomatic handguns.

That's not acceptable, Holbrook says.

"The Supreme Court decision refers to handguns generally — not just revolvers," he points out. He says that means it applies to semiautomatic handguns as well, adding that there may be more semiautomatic handguns in use right now in the U.S. than there are revolvers.

And he predicts that if Washington, D.C., tries to use its zoning powers to keep handgun dealers out, that won't work either.

"It would be like if they banned books in D.C. and they told them they couldn't do that, so they banned bookstores," he says.

Still, Holbrook does think many gun regulations will stand.

But David Kairys, who teaches law at Temple University in Philadelphia, thinks differently.

Continue reading article here. [Brooks Holland]

Cops: Grand Theft Auto video game inspired crimes

Teenagers who police say went on a video-game-inspired late-night crime spree were arraigned Thursday after they mugged a man outside a New Hyde Park supermarket and menaced motorists in Garden City with a baseball bat, a crowbar and a broomstick, Nassau police said.

The teens told detectives they were imitating the "Grand Theft Auto" video-game series where characters steal cars, beat up other characters and commit crimes, authorities said.

Police have identified at least three victims: a man they said was severely beaten during a robbery; a would-be carjacking victim; and a driver whose van was smashed with a bat.

Nassau Det. Lt. Raymond Coté said there are likely more victims who were attacked.

At one point during the spree, the initial group of four encountered other youths.

"They realize they know them from school and they can't rob them," Coté said. "Two of them they enlist in this crime spree and now they're joining the pack. It's an angry mob of youths."

The six suspects were all charged as adults.

Arrested and charged with felony robbery were Dylan Laird, 17, of Southborough, Mass., and Stephen Attard, 18, Samuel Philip, 16, Brandon Cruz, 15, and Gurnoor Singh, 14, all of New Hyde Park. Police did not release photos of Cruz or Singh because of their age. Jaspreet Singh, 17, of New Hyde Park, was charged with misdemeanor criminal possession of stolen property and is jailed on $20,000 bond or $10,000 cash bail, a jail official said.

Laird, Attard and Philip were ordered held on $100,000 bond, or $50,000 bail. Cruz and Gurnoor Singh were ordered held on $150,000 bond, or $75,000 cash.

The teens committed the crimes Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, police said.

It began Tuesday when the group was hanging out at a park in New Hyde Park, Coté said.

"They decide that they're going to go do some street robberies, emulating the popular fictional character Niko Bellic," Coté said, referring to a star of "Grand Theft Auto IV: Liberty City."

The group attacked a man near a New Hyde Park supermarket who had just finished an evening shift and was waiting for a bus, Coté said.

"They approach him from behind, force him to the ground, start punching him, kicking him, knocking the teeth out of his head and take what he has on him," Coté said.

They stole a small amount of cash and a cell phone, he said. After fleeing, the suspects broke into sheds and storage units in a hunt for makeshift weapons including the bat, crowbar and broomstick, Coté said.

Near New Hyde Park Road and Stewart Avenue, they formed a human roadblock. A woman driving a 2008 BMW was forced to stop. Cops say the group wanted to carjack her.

"She was scared for her life," Coté said. They stole her cigarettes, and she sped off and called 911, he said.

The six suspects were arrested by Garden City police responding to a 911 call shortly after the group approached the third victim and hit his car with a bat. [Mark Godsey]

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Mansfield drug case gone wrong: The inside story

In the shadows of boarded-up homes on a hazy October afternoon in 2005, two men pull into a gas station parking lot in a souped-up Buick Roadmaster with tinted windows.

They are there to buy $2,600 of crack cocaine.

Jerrell Bray is driving. The stocky man with unkempt hair is a killer. He spent 13 years in prison for his role in the death of a Cleveland drug dealer. Despite that, guys know him as Mr. Talk-a-lot: He never shuts up.

With Bray is his friend Todd, who is not Todd. He is Lee Lucas, a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent working undercover. Bray is Lucas' informant.

You can't tell to look at them, sitting in their car this afternoon, but theirs is a strange relationship, built on an uneasy trust. They're helping each other advance in their separate worlds. Lucas is building drug cases, looking good for his overseers in the DEA and the U.S. attorney's office. Bray, perhaps without Lucas' knowledge, is using Lucas to frame rivals.

Ultimately, this relationship will cost both men. It will put innocent people in prison, ruin careers and tarnish the record of an outgoing U.S. attorney with an impeccable reputation.

But not yet. On this afternoon in 2005, the Bray-Lucas operation is in full swing, and the target that day is Joshawa Webb. He's a brute of a guy, 6-foot-4 and 280 pounds. He's missing two of his front teeth.

In the parking lot, Bray and Lucas buy cocaine. Lucas will repeatedly say the seller is Webb.

No one will notice -- not for a long time, anyway -- that the man who sells the cocaine is 5-feet-8 and about 200 pounds. And he has his front teeth.

No matter. By fingering Webb, Bray will get rid of a competitor. Lucas will notch another arrest.

The drug case investigation in Mansfield is swerving out of control this afternoon.

Months from now, it will be a shambles. [Mark Godsey]

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