Most Long Overdue Crime News Ever?

CONGRESS PASSES BILL TO REDUCE DISPARITY IN CRACK, POWDER COCAINE SENTENCING DISPARITY

From WaPo:

Congress on Wednesday changed a 25-year-old law that has subjected tens of thousands of African Americans to long prison terms for crack cocaine convictions while giving far more lenient treatment to those, mainly whites, caught with the powder form of the drug.

The House, by voice vote, approved a bill reducing the disparities between mandatory crack and powder cocaine sentences, sending the measure to President Obama for his signature. During his presidential campaign, Obama said that the wide gap in sentencing "cannot be justified and should be eliminated." The Senate passed the bill in March.

The measure changes a 1986 law, enacted at a time when crack cocaine use was rampant and considered a particularly violent drug. Under the law, a person convicted of crack cocaine possession got the same mandatory prison term as someone with 100 times the same amount of powder cocaine. The new legislation reduces that ratio to about 18 to 1.

The bill also eliminates the five-year mandatory minimum for first-time possession of crack, the first time since the Nixon administration that Congress has repealed a mandatory minimum sentence. It does not apply retroactively.

This is exceedingly welcome news, even if it does mean I have to revise my cocaine unit for my drug policy class this fall!

I know that many folks are displeased that the ratio wasn't equalized at 1:1, but given the highly-charged political nature of the federal cocaine sentences, I think we should be happy that the disparity was cut by a factor of five. It's progress, no doubt.

I'm surprised not to find a lot of commentary on the legislation from around the blogosphere (save for this post from Outside the Beltway, a political science blog). I did find a related article about the War on Drugs and America's new racial caste system at The Crime Report that is worth a read.

I will update with more commentary as it becomes available.

Rape by Deception

In Israel, a Palestinian man has plead guilty to "rape by deception"--admitting he lied to a woman in order to have sex with her.

What were Sabar Kashour's lies? There were actually two. First, he told her he was single. Second, he claimed he was Jewish, when he is actually an Arab Palestinian.

Mr. Kashour claims she assumed he was Jewish based on his nickname, which is commonly used for men named David (pronounced da-VEED in Hebrew, and a common Jewish first name). He also claims she only went to police after discovering he was really Arab. Of course, one has to wonder if he would be charged with this crime if he was a Jew who had sex with a Palestinian woman.

Historically, rape laws have been more likely to be applied when the accused is in a minority group and the victim is in the majority. For decades after the end of slavery in the United States, black men accused of raping white women suffered harsh penalties, including execution. White men accused of raping black women rarely faced such penalties.

[Here's an interesting legal discussion entitled Rape, Racism, and the Law.]

Putting aside issues of bias against Arabs, Mr. Kashour makes an excellent point:

"I did not say anything or commit anything wrong," he insisted, adding that he did not understand how his misrepresentations could result in a rape charge. "If I told the woman I was a pilot and later she finds out that I was not a pilot, then she goes and says that 'He raped me'? If I told her that I was a millionaire and it turns out that I am a poor man, then she goes and says that 'He raped me'?"

[Mr. Kashour actually DID admit to doing something wrong, as he plead guilty in this case.]

This law is rarely used, so it is not possible to systematically analyze the pattern of enforcement. It is notable that the only other case of this type in Israel involved a man pretending to be a housing official, who coerced women into sex by promising he would provide them with benefits in exchange. Is there a difference between a man preying on poor women in need of benefits and a man pretending to be single? Certainly, these two behaviors differ significantly on the "scale of sleaze", but should the criminal law apply in both cases? Did Mr. Kashour behave unethically? Certainly. Does he deserve to be incarcerated for it? Probably not.

In the United States, the only type of "consensual rape" that can be charged is statutory rape. Given that a minor in this country cannot consent to sex (nor drive a car, vote, drink alcohol, become a party in a contract etc.), this seems logical. Unfortunately, even in the U.S. the issue of consent has been murky. Consider the case of Genarlow Wilson, a 17-yeard-old boy sentenced to 10 years in prison for accepting "consensual" oral sex from a 15-year-old girl. (He ended up serving only 2).

Perhaps Israel should change the name of this law to the "Sexual Regret" law. Have regrets the next morning? Call the police.

[Update: after writing this piece, I found an interesting web site that analyzes stories from several different media outlets. I might have to check this site more often.]

Another Wrongful Conviction: This Time, Close to Home

Carolyn Kronenberg’s murder was one of Lansing’s most notorious murder cases. A professor at Lansing Community College (LCC), she was preparing to teach a 9am class on January 23, 2005. Sometime between 8:30am and 8:45am, she was assaulted and raped in her classroom. A student in her class found her, clinging to life. She died soon after.

Eventually, LCC student Claude McCollum was convicted of her murder. The primary investigator in Kronenberg’s murder was an LCC detective who had never investigated a homicide. He has been accused of making several errors in judgment, including one extremely troubling ethical violation: he was aware of exculpatory video evidence showing McCollum sleeping (yes, sleeping) in another part of campus at the time of the murder. He is alleged to have hidden this evidence and neither disclosed it to the Ingham County Prosecutor’s Office (allegedly) nor McCollum’s defense attorney. A report from the Michigan State Police arguing that McCollum could not have committed the crime was never introduced at his trial. He was found guilty by jury and sentenced to life without parole.

Throughout the trial, McCollum steadfastly maintained his innocence. He likely wasn’t surprised, when in 2007, Matthew Macon confessed to her murder. Matthew Macon was convicted of killing two Lansing women and was suspected in four other homicides. All of Macon’s victims were middle-aged, white women. All were raped. One survived her attack, and helped to convict Macon of his crimes.

Today, McCollum’s legal team reached a $2 Million settlement with LCC, which will be paid out in installments over several years.

Clearly, wrongful conviction greatly harms the lives of those incarcerated erroneously. McCollum was certainly deserving of a settlement, and most of those released from prison after wrongful convictions never seen any compensation.

The media attention to these cases puts the alleged offender in the spotlight, as it should. However, we often fail to remember the first victims: Carolyn Kronenberg, who suffered horribly at the hands of a serial killer and rapist; and her family, who sat through McCollum’s trial hearing the gruesome details of their mother’s death only to have it all count for nothing. When they heard that the wrong man had been arrested, they were devastated and feared having to face a new trial. Thankfully, Macon’s confession erased such a need.

If you’d like to read more about this case, the Lansing State Journal has a compendium of major stories available online.

Attorney General and the New Black Panther Party

A former DOJ prosecutor assigned to the Civil Rights Division has gone public with his allegations that Attorney General Eric Holder dropped voter intimidation charges against the New Black Panther Party for politically motivated reasons. J. Christian Adams, part of the team of prosecutors assigned to the case, reports that Holder ordered them to drop the case although the team of prosecutors believed there was ample evidence for prosecution, including several sworn affidavits and videos of the alleged actions. Adams paints a picture of a Justice Department where the Attorney General refuses nearly categorically (never exactly states this, but certainly implies it) to prosecute cases involving defendants of color and white victims. He has recently appeared on Fox News to discuss the case.

Thoughts on this case?

Pap & Patch make the Times. Again.

Pap & Patch's cyberbullying research appeared in yesterday's New York Times. An excerpt:

Schools these days are confronted with complex questions on whether and how to deal with cyberbullying, an imprecise label for online activities ranging from barrages of teasing texts to sexually harassing group sites. The extent of the phenomenon is hard to quantify. But one 2010 study by the Cyberbullying Research Center, an organization founded by two criminologists who defined bullying as "willful and repeated harm” inflicted through phones and computers, said one in five middle-school students had been affected....

Studies show that online harassment can begin in fourth grade. By high school, students inclined to be cruel in cyberspace are more technologically sophisticated, more capable of hiding their prints. But that is also when older students may be more resilient:

“By high school, youths are developing more self-confidence, engaged in extracurricular activities and focusing on the future,” said Sameer Hinduja, a professor at Florida Atlantic University and an author of “Bullying Beyond the Schoolyard.”

“Their identity and self-worth come from external things that don’t revolve around social relationships.”

This is their second appearance in the NYT. To quote The Trailing Spouse, "It's no Coffee Talk on Wisconsin Public Radio, but it'll do."

Finally!

Yesterday, almost nine months after President Obama selected him to head NIJ, John Laub was confirmed by the Senate. The Crime Report has more:

Two key Obama appointees in the Justice Department have been confirmed by the Senate: John Laub as director of the National Institute of Justice and James Lynch as director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics. They were among more than 60 nominations whose confirmations were delayed by Senate Republicans in a dispute over a presidential recess appointment.

Laub, a professor in the University of Maryland’s Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, will be the first criminologist in four decades to serve as director of NIJ. His research areas include crime and deviance over the life course, juvenile delinquency and juvenile justice, and the history of criminology. Lynch, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, previously chaired the department of Justice, Law, and Society at American University. He has focused on measurement issues in criminal justice data and statistics. His worked with Al Biderman on the nation’s two crime measures—the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report and BJS’ National Crime Victimization Survey [emphasis mine].

This is long overdue -- and very welcome -- news.

Utah Killer Executed by Firing Squad

Making the rounds this morning is news that a Utah man was executed early this morning by a 5-person firing squad:

Convicted killer Ronnie Lee Gardner was executed early Friday by firing squad, the Utah Department of Corrections said.

Gardner, 49, is only the third person in 33 years to die by firing squad in the United States.

He was killed at 12:20 a.m. MST (2:20 a.m. ET), a Corrections Department spokesman said.

A hood was placed over Gardner's head and a paper target pinned to his chest. He was heavily restrained as a five-person firing squad took aim at the target and shot him, witnesses said...

Gardner, 49, was convicted for the shooting death of attorney Michael Burdell during a botched escape attempt from custody in 1985 at a Salt Lake City, Utah, courthouse.

There is some discussion about the extent to which Gardner moved after he was shot, indicating that his death may not have been immediate (and certainly not painless). There has also been debate about whether firing squads are preferable over other, more common forms of execution like lethal injection.

Happy stuff to be pondering on a sunny Friday morning, I know.

Adventures in Armchair Profiling

I thought I'd piggyback on ShockProf's post about the still-unsolved Natalie Holloway murder with a story about an unsolved murder in metro Detroit.

First, a brief history: Last year, 5-year old Neveah Buchanan was abducted from her apartment complex in Macomb, Michigan. Her body was later discovered in a shallow, concrete-covered grave along the River Raisin. Though police initially identified three "persons of interest" -- including a man named James Easter -- no suspect has ever been arrested in Neveah's slaying and her murder remains unsolved.

To commemmorate the one-year anniversary of Neveah's murder, the Detroit Free Press is running a three-part series about the case. (You can read part one and part two now; part three will appear tomorrow.)

For this series the Freep has posted a 9-minute video containing excerpts of interviews with James Easter, whom police questioned at length but who was ultimately released without being charged.

This video is generating some interesting comments from readers, many of whom are analyzing it for clues as to Easter's guilt or innocence. Particularly disturbing for many people is a passage of the video (which is transcribed in the first article) in which Easter describes in detail how Neveah's killer might have carried out her burial. A glimpse:

He suggests the killer might have needed more concrete to finish the job and cover Nevaeh's body."Maybe, you have a second bag and you get some water from the river and start mixing some more and put it," he says...

Equally unsettling for some are the...unsavory aspects of Easter's life: he was convicted of indecent exposure some years ago; from his home police confiscated X-rated videos, among other items; he has been methodically pulling out his own teeth; he collects newspaper articles about Neveah's death. If the reader comments are any indication, those facts alone are enough to convict him, but to date the police have not had enough evidence against Easter -- or anyone else, for that matter -- to make an arrest in the case.

Scrolling through the reader reactions to the video of Easter's interview, I was reminded how familiar the general public is (or thinks it is) with criminal profiling and homicide investigation. For example, some readers wondered whether Easter revealed details of the murder not publicly available in the autopsy report, while others questioned whether he removed his teeth to avoid dental record matching. Still others have speculated that by advocating for the hanging death of the perpetrator, Easter is deflecting his own guilt. All of this gleaned from a rambling, 9-minute video on a newspaper website.

Though homicide investigation -- especially of violent, unsolved child murders -- constitutes such a small percentage of police work, it captures the public imagination and invites ordinary citizens to apply what they've learned from the movies and true crime TV to real life. I guess this explains why when I tell people that I'm a criminologist, they often ask, "Do you work for the FBI?" or say, "Oh, like on CSI?" Thank you, Truman Capote.