in the newest issue of the Association for Psychological
Sciences is well worth your time. Click here to read it
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Sheriff Joe defies government and its order
Copied from URL below:
latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-joe-arpaio12-2009dec12,0,2123666.story
latimes.com
Arizona sheriff ups the ante against his foes
Joe Arpaio has escalated his tactics, not only defying the federal government on immigration but launching repeated investigations of those who criticize him.
By Nicholas Riccardi
December 12, 2009
Reporting from Phoenix
The day after the federal government told Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio that he could no longer use his deputies to round up suspected illegal immigrants on the street, the combative Arizona sheriff did just that.
He launched one of his notorious "sweeps," in which his officers descend on heavily Latino neighborhoods, arrest hundreds of people for violations as minor as a busted headlight and ask them whether they are in the country legally.
"I wanted to show everybody it didn't make a difference," Arpaio said of the Obama administration's order.
Arpaio calls himself "America's toughest sheriff" and remains widely popular across the state. For two decades, he has basked in publicity over his colorful tactics, such as dressing jail inmates in pink underwear and housing them in outdoor tents during the brutal Phoenix summers.
But he has escalated his tactics in recent months, not only defying the federal government but launching repeated investigations of those who criticize him. He recently filed a racketeering lawsuit against the entire Maricopa County power structure. On Thursday night, the Arizona Court of Appeals issued an emergency order forbidding the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office from searching the home or chambers of a Superior Court judge who was named in the racketeering case.
Last year, when Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon called for a federal investigation of Arpaio's immigration enforcement, the Sheriff's Office demanded to see Gordon's e-mails, phone logs and appointment calendars.
When the police chief in one suburb complained about the sweeps, Arpaio's deputies raided that town's City Hall.
A local television station, KPHO, in a 10-minute-long segment last month, documented two dozen instances of the sheriff launching investigations of critics, none of which led to convictions.
The most notorious case involves county Supervisor Don Stapley, a Republican who has sometimes disagreed with Arpaio's immigration tactics. Last December, deputies arrested Stapley on charges of failing to disclose business interests properly on his statement of economic interest.
Stapley's alarmed supervisor colleagues had their offices swept for listening devices. Arpaio contended the search was illegal and sent investigators to the homes of dozens of county staffers to grill them about the sweep.
A judge in September dismissed several of the allegations against Stapley, and prosecutors dropped the case. Three days later, Arpaio's deputies arrested Stapley again after he parked his car in a downtown parking structure near his office.
No charges were filed until County Atty. Andrew Thomas -- Arpaio's ally in his fights with the supervisor -- charged Stapley this week with misusing money he raised to run for president of the National Assn. of Counties.
"It's just extraordinary, the kind of thing that takes place in Third World dictatorships," said Paul Charlton, a former U.S. attorney who is representing Stapley. He predicted the latest charges would also be dismissed. "So many people are of one mind on a single issue -- illegal immigration -- that they are willing to ignore these misdeeds."
Arpaio brushes off suggestions that he's used his office to go after critics. Many of the complaints, as in the Stapley case, come from targets of anti-corruption probes that started with tips rather than the sheriff's personal intercession.
"We don't abuse our power," Arpaio said in an interview. "We do what we have to do."
Arpaio, a Republican, is highly popular in Arizona. He won reelection last year with 55% of the vote in the state's most populous county. Though he has said he's not interested in running for governor, a recent poll showed him crushing the presumptive Democratic nominee, state Atty. Gen. Terry Goddard, 51% to 39%.
The sheriff was not always at war with much of the region's political establishment. A former official with the Drug Enforcement Administration who was first elected sheriff in 1992, Arpaio had support from the majority-Republican county Board of Supervisors and from local Latino leaders.
"He had a very good relationship with the Hispanic community," said Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox, the lone Democrat and lone Latina on the board.
But by 2005, central Arizona was seething over illegal immigration. Crime was rising in Phoenix, a key smuggling hub that was becoming the kidnapping capital of the country.
Arpaio received a federal waiver, known as a 287(g), that allowed his deputies to enforce federal immigration laws. He said he had identified more than 30,000 illegal immigrants through his sweeps and interrogations in the county jail.
In October, the federal Department of Homeland Security revoked the 287(g) for Arpaio's street operations, though he could continue to question jail inmates about their immigration status.
Arpaio, however, said state law permitted him to continue his street operations and is awaiting a legal opinion from Thomas, the county attorney.
Latino community leaders say Arpaio has become more aggressive since he was stripped of some authority in the 287(g) program.
"It's actually gotten worse rather than better," said Salvador Reza, an activist who added that some immigrants don't dare turn the lights on in their homes at night for fear that Arpaio's deputies would knock at their doors.
A Homeland Security spokesman declined to comment, referring a reporter to statements Secretary Janet Napolitano gave to a liberal advocacy group in Washington.
Napolitano, the former governor of Arizona, said Arpaio "was unwilling to accept that there were standards that needed to be met. He wanted to go off on his own. And so that's where we had a parting of ways." She acknowledged, however, that state law would allow him to continue making his arrests.
The U.S. Department of Justice has launched a civil rights investigation into Arpaio's tactics. The sheriff has refused to cooperate and has called for an investigation of the investigators.
As Arpaio has fenced with the Obama administration, he has become embroiled in a sometimes-surreal battle with the five county supervisors who oversee his budget. Amid the recession, they have cut the sheriff's budget by 12.2%.
Arpaio and Thomas filed a federal racketeering lawsuit against the county supervisors, administrators and several judges who have ruled against the two in prior cases.
Arpaio and Thomas contended there was a conspiracy to assign the Stapley prosecution to an anti-Thomas judge, part of an effort to cover up what they call a wasteful county effort to build a new courthouse.
County officials noted that Arpaio and Thomas have sued them six times in efforts to regain power over their budgets -- and they lost every time.
Tensions escalated this week when the county attorney filed criminal charges against the presiding judge of the county's criminal courts, alleging bribery and obstruction of justice for ruling against Arpaio and prosecutors in some of those previous legal battles.
Wilcox, whom Thomas charged this week with violating state laws by voting on government contracts for a charitable organization that gave one of her businesses a loan, said she had been stunned by the sheriff's conduct.
"They have made life hell on everybody," she said of Arpaio and Thomas."Every time you speak out, they investigate you."
"Racketeering? That's just crazy," she added. "We're becoming the laughingstock of America."
nicholas.riccardi@latimes.com
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
Friday, December 11, 2009
100 Year Old Dangerous Sex Offender
At age 90, he molested little girls. Why he
was sentenced to any term that would allow
him to walk out of prison is hard to understand.
Buffalo is now facing a dangerous 100-year old
sex offender who looks like a harmless old gent.
If there ever was a situation where community
policing could help by personally telling all
neighbors about this newly arrived resident,
this is it. One must hope all in the area are
aware of who he is and what he looks like.
 | |||
 |
This Oct. 15, 2009 photo obtained from the New York State Sex Offenders registry web site shows Theodore Sypnier. Sypnier, 100, New York state's oldest registered sex offender, could be released from a halfway house soon, much to the dismay of a prosecutor who says he remains a threat to children. AP Photo Western NY frets as 100-year-old molester is freedAssociated Press Writer Updated: December 10, 2009, 5:20 PM / Everything that pedophile Theodore Sypnier has to show for his 100 years on Earth is packed in a single duffel bag as he prepares to begin a new chapter in life: freedom. It's a chapter that prosecutors, judges and others who know him never wanted - or expected - to see written. New York's oldest registered sex offender is scheduled to move by week's end out of a Buffalo halfway house for released inmates and into a place of his own, after completing his latest term in state prison for molesting little girls. The judge who sentenced him said at the time that she expected him to die behind bars. But 10 years after his last arrest, as Sypnier prepared to shed the closely monitored lifestyle of the halfway house, its director warned that the spry and active Sypnier has not changed from the manipulator who used his grandfatherly charm to snare and rape victims as young as 4. "Whether he's 100 or 101 or 105, the same person that was committing these crimes 10, 25, 30 years ago still exists today and has an unrepentant heart," said the Rev. Terry King, director of Grace House, which has twice taken Sypnier in from prison. "He is someone that we as parents, as members of the community, any community, really need to fear." Six months after marking his 100th birthday in the Groveland Correctional Facility - becoming the first New York inmate to reach the milestone while incarcerated- the retired telephone company worker now says he wants to get to know the youngest members of a family that has disowned him. "I'll tell them I never harmed any children," the father, grandfather and great-grandfather told his hometown newspaper, The Buffalo News. A former daughter-in-law said he is not likely to get the chance. "No one from the family plans to have any contact with him," Diane Sypnier said before ending a brief phone interview. Being grandfatherly was how the 5-foot-5, 150-pound Sypnier found his victims, authorities say. After his most recent arrest at age 90 on charges of raping and sodomizing a 4-year-old girl and her 7-year-old sister, his neighbors in the suburb of Tonawanda recalled what appeared to be a kindly Sypnier offering rides to adults, handing out money to children so they could buy candy, and baby-sitting. The victimized sisters called him "Grandpa," their mother said at the time, adding that it "was a total shock" when police showed her sexually explicit pictures of her girls found in Sypnier's apartment. Sypnier's convictions date to 1987, when he was given three years' probation for sex abuse. He spent a year in prison for sexually abusing a minor in 1994. His neighbors in Tonawanda never knew of Sypnier's background because he was convicted before the adoption of laws requiring sex offenders to register with police. A relative once came forward and said Sypnier had molested her while she was growing up, former Erie County prosecutor Frank Clark told the News. Authorities wonder what else might lie in Sypnier's past. "People don't start to become pedophiles at 78," Erie County District Attorney Frank Sedita told the AP. "I call them vampires. ... This is something that's deep inside of them, and they won't want to stop doing this until they're dead." But Sypnier says he is the victim of a miscarriage of justice, despite twice pleading guilty in the case involving the sisters. "Those children crawled into bed with me because they were frightened, but there was never any sexual hanky-panky," Sypnier told the News. Sypnier initially pleaded guilty in 2000 to two counts of rape, 15 counts of sodomy and endangering the welfare of a child for molesting the Tonawanda girls, as well as three in Buffalo. An appeals court threw out the conviction in 2002 after Sypnier claimed he was confused at the time, leading to another plea the following year to a lesser charge. In sentencing Sypnier to as many as 10 years in prison, state Supreme Court Justice Penny Wolfgang told him she expected he would spend the rest of his life behind bars. "The sheer notion of him wandering the streets unattended or unsupervised is a scary proposition," King said. Sypnier was released on parole in 2007, only to be returned to prison in 2008 after failing to attend sex-offender counseling. He completed his term in November and will be on parole through 2012. Until then, he's forbidden from using e-mail, chat rooms or social networking sites, hanging around playgrounds or schools, or spending time in bars. Instead, he spends his days watching television, cooking, socializing in the halfway house and attending programming, King said. Sypnier's new address has not been disclosed, but the law requires him to enter it in the state's sex offender registry. Although his age makes him New York's oldest registered sex offender, there is at least one older offender elsewhere. Bert Jackson of Utah is 103 and living under home confinement. |
http://www.buffalonews.com/nationalworld/national/story/889828.html |
© 2008 The Buffalo News.
Elect or Appoint is One Really Superior
Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra
Justices making new push to abolish elected judges
By KRISTEN WYATT
An old debate about whether judges should be elected or appointed is heating up again.
Day O'Connor is leading an effort to change
the way in which judges are selected in our
country. The article copied below was
featured on the Crime and Justice News
If you consider a voting ballot in Texas,
the names of judges are lower down in
a ballot with many choices. Only a tiny
number of voters know anything about
the judges.
How does one decide who is
a "good judge"? Is it more important for
the judge to apply the law scrupulously
and toss tainted evidence that allows
a heinous offender to go free or be so
generous with "good faith" exceptions
that offender stays behind bars?
This is an important issue that is rarely
given consideration. Maybe that will
change LOL:)
| TheNewsTribune.com Section: - NEWS UPDATES |
Justices making new push to abolish elected judges
By KRISTEN WYATT
An old debate about whether judges should be elected or appointed is heating up again.
Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and several state Supreme Court justices are planning a nationwide push during next year's state legislative sessions to end the practice of electing judges. Nevada already has such a proposal before voters on the 2010 ballot.
Many judges and the American Bar Association argue the legal system is tainted by judges seeking campaign donations.
"It doesn't support the fundamental principle of judges acting fairly and impartially," Ohio Chief Justice Tom Moyer told The Associated Press.
A judicial think tank at the University of Denver has assembled a group of prominent judges, including O'Connor, to push for the abolition of directly elected judges in the 33 states that have them.
They want state commissions made up mostly of non-lawyers to pick judges. Governors would appoint judges the commissions select, and voters would decide in future elections whether the judges keep their jobs.
Current judicial elections give a false impression that voters have much invested in court picks, O'Connor said.
"A voter goes into the voting booth on Election Day, and they have a long list of races to vote for," O'Connor told the AP. "When they come to the judges, they don't typically know any of them. How are they supposed to decide?"
Open judicial races lead to pricey television campaigns in some states. That requires fundraising, often from trial lawyers or businesses interested in who decides cases that affect them.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court narrowly ruled that elected judges must step aside if campaign donations are likely to create the perception of bias. That ruling was sparked by a 2004 West Virginia case in which a state Supreme Court judge ruled on a dispute that affected a company whose owner spent $3 million to help get the judge elected.
"It really highlights the need for a change," said former Arizona state Supreme Court Chief Justice Ruth McGregor. Arizona has long used the appointment and retention-vote system backed by the Denver-based initiative.
McGregor said the rising expense of judicial races, topping $1 million in some states, could lead more states to follow Arizona.
"Contributions have gotten so enormous that it causes voters to step back and say, 'Isn't there better way?'" McGregor said.
But history suggests the appointed-judge initiative faces long odds.
Even O'Connor concedes only two states - Ohio and Minnesota - are likely to put the question before voters in the near future along with Nevada.
One of the nation's most prominent backers of appointed judges, Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson, concedes his state has little appetite to forgo partisan judicial races.
"You have to be realistic. We've been trying to change this for 30 years," said Jefferson, who has been on Texas' highest court since 2001.
In Ohio, voters have rejected appointment schemes as far back as 1938. In 1987, Ohio voters again declined to change the state constitution to do away with elected judges.
"It has sort of an elitist tinge to say that voters aren't sophisticated enough to make this determination," said Jeff Patch, a spokesman for the Alexandria, Va.-based Center for Competitive Politics, which opposes campaign finance limits.
Patch said voters don't buy the argument that appointed judges, even those who face retention elections and performance reviews, are somehow insulated from accusations of bias. He pointed out the possibility of a governor appointing a donor to the bench, or a commission choosing a popular lawyer.
"To say that merit selection is going to be more ethical is pretty misguided," he said.
Rebecca Love Kourlis, executive director of the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System and a former Colorado Supreme Court justice, said a pending decision from the U.S. Supreme Court could boost interest in the elected-judge debate.
The high court is expected to issue a ruling on campaign finance that could lead to fewer restrictions on how much businesses and unions can spend on favored candidates. If that happens, states could see more expensive judicial races.
"We think the timing is right" for a national debate on elected judges, Kourlis said. "Judicial elections have become so expensive, and so unseemly, that this is something ripe for action."
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Unusual solution
There is an article in today's Findlaw's
blotter about a community in Florida
that is made-up of sex offender
housing. There is a church whose
membership is also made up of
sex offenders primarily.
This is an unusual approach but has
the underlying philosophy of trying
to assist these "outcasts" to have
housing and employment in addition
to other types of counseling and help.
All against a background of keeping
society's children safe from known
predators who are not in prison.
This seems like a good idea if it is
limited to truly low level offenders:
Teen who has willing sex with another
teen who is underage; touching incidents
and others where no children or rape
is involved.
Basic problem is that we apply the same
label to a multitude of different offenses.
Can you think of a better approach to
assisting these offenders?
Monday, December 7, 2009
It Works and Needs Replication
Copied from CrimProf BLog (http://tinyurl.com/yhg9njd)
"A Cincinnati experiment has changed the way police deal with gang violence"
The Crime Report has this interesting story here. In part:
The Cincinnati study provides a detailed account of how the city’s police force implemented the anti-violence strategy, which is based essentially on identifying gang members and then calling them in for a meeting, or a series of meetings, attended by both law enforcement and community representatives. There, they are told that they have two choices: they can continue their lawbreaking activities and face severe punishment; or they can agree to accept counseling or other services aimed at dealing with the problems that contributed to their gang participation.
The deep involvement of community leaders , parents and pastors, whose moral authority carries a powerful impact, combined with the threat of punishment acts as a form of focused deterrence, say adherents of the model. Similar strategies directed at gang members or drug dealers in cities like High Point, NC, Providence, RI and Hempstead, NY have resulted in a marked falloff in gang violence and the disappearance of open-air narcotics markets.
Is the law too broadly interpreted
The Constitution never defined due process, but
the Courts created a meaningful measurement.
A criminal statute, which leaves "honest-service"
fraud undefined, has been used in so many different
situations that the Supreme Court will hear cases
involving its application.
When you begin to read the article and the specific
charges against the named individuals, you think,
or I suspect you do, of wondering what the fuss is
about. The problem is that without specific parameters
written in the statute itself, by definition, the law can
easily be abused by prosecutors: this is not to say that
it has been, only that it could be.
It is important to the well being of our nation that elected
officials and those involved with companies whose
stockholders' interests are at stake be required to act
within the law. But one must know what is prohibited.
There is a major difference between a moral wrong and something
statutorily illegal. Legislators must clearly state the illegal and
not leave it up to executive branch of government to draw the
parameters of a statute. The Constitution requires that laws not
be vague for just this reason.
The following article was copied from the New York
Times web site on December 7, 2009 to allow you
to consider the need for Congress and other legislative
bodies to define any criminal action clearly.
December 7, 2009
Justices to Weigh Honest-Services Law
An unusual coalition of groups has come together to
criticize the federal government’s increasing reliance
on a statute that is commonly used but little understood:
honest-services fraud.
The honest-services law, on the federal books since 1988,
broadly requires that public and corporate officials
act in the best interests of their constituents or employers.
It has become an important tool for federal prosecutors,
who used it successfully against the lobbyist Jack Abramoff
and many of his associates. It is an element of the cases
against former Gov. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois;
the former New York State Senate majority leader,
Joseph L. Bruno; and former Gov. Donald E. Siegelman of Alabama.
Prosecutors have described the law as a valuable instrument
against corruption at a time when officials have become
increasingly sophisticated at covering their tracks.
But critics say it is used too broadly, is applied inconsistently,
and too often criminalizes behavior that fails to merit the
full weight of federal prosecution. The Supreme Court
will hear three cases concerning the honest-services law
in this term, with two coming up for oral argument on Tuesday.
Opposition to use of the law has emerged from across the
political spectrum, from the United States Chamber of Commerce
and the Washington Legal Foundation on the right,
to the more left-leaning National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
“Could an insincere sermon at Sunday religious services come
within the statute?” asked the chamber, half sarcastically,
in a brief to the Supreme Court.
Justice Antonin Scalia has been harshly critical of the
honest-services law, writing in a recent dissent that it has
been applied to “a staggeringly broad swath of behavior.”
He said that it “invites abuse by headline-grabbing prosecutors
in pursuit of local officials, state legislators, and corporate
C.E.O.s who engage in any manner of unappealing or
ethically questionable conduct.”
One of the two cases coming before the court next week
involves Conrad M. Black, the newspaper executive
who was convicted of defrauding his media company,
Hollinger International. He is arguing that the law
should not be applied to him because he did not
contemplate “economic harm” to Hollinger.
In the second, Bruce Weyhrauch, a former Alaska state
legislator, was convicted of failing to disclose a conflict
of interest. He had not violated state law, however,
and argues that the federal prosecution on honest-services
charges violates important principles of federalism.
The third case, to be argued later in the term, involves
Jeffrey K. Skilling, the former chief executive of Enron.
He is arguing that the honest-services law is unconstitutionally vague.
Melanie Sloan, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility
and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit watchdog group,
scoffed at the idea that the law is so vague that people
do not know when they have crossed the line, especially
in the three cases before the Supreme Court.
“If you go to those cases — Black, Skilling and Weyhrauch —
and look at what they did, a kindergartner knows
that they were wrong,” she said. “It’s not credible
that those guys really had no idea that what they
were doing would get them into trouble. What they
thought was that they wouldn’t get caught.”
The watchdog group’s brief to the Supreme Court called
the law “an indispensable weapon in the prosecutorial
arsenal for fighting government corruption” since it offers
“a much easier evidentiary burden” than bribery law.
Critics of the law, however, say that its vagueness is used
to bolster corruption cases in which the evidence
might be weak or the offense, while perhaps distasteful, is minor.
That is the argument of Larry Remer, a political consultant in
San Diego who faced multiple felony charges after
successfully running a bond campaign for a community college.
After the campaign was over, and the campaign fund depleted,
a video production company sent in a bill for $5,800.
The college president proposed paying the bill with
public money, ostensibly by buying outtakes from
the video company, though it is illegal to use public money
for such a campaign.
Federal prosecutors indicted Mr. Remer and the college president
in 2004 on a range of charges related to the improper
use of taxpayer money, including honest-services charges.
Mr. Remer said he was baffled by the case.
“I do understand the need to get the sleazebags,” said Mr. Remer,
whose case ended in a mistrial and a plea of guilty, along with
the college president, to misdemeanor charges of improperly
using public money, not honest-services charges. “But let’s
get them with real laws. Let’s not just say we need to get
this guy, so we’ll use this law because it can be
melted to meet our needs.”
The United States attorneys office in San Diego
declined to comment on the case.
The honest-services statute grew out of the Supreme
Court’s earlier attempts to rein in the widening use by
prosecutors of mail and wire fraud laws, said John C. Coffee,
a professor at Columbia Law School.
In a landmark 1987 decision, the Supreme Court
limited mail and wire fraud prosecutions to cases
involving tangible goods like money and property,
and not the “intangible right” of the people to good government.
Within a year, however, Congress restored the prosecutors’
flexible tool by passing the current law.
Since then, critics argue, chaos has resulted, with significant
differences across the country in the ways that the statute is interpreted.
Bennett L. Gershman, a professor at Pace University Law School,
said the power of prosecutors to overreach by focusing on a person
to prosecute and then finding a law to apply “is not only subject
to abuse under the honest-services theory, but has been abused”
in cases like those involving Mr. Siegelman, the former Alabama governor.
The charges against Mr. Siegelman, including honest-services fraud,
concerned a contribution from a businessman, Richard M. Scrushy,
to an issue campaign advocated by the governor, who
later reappointed Mr. Scrushy to a state hospital board.
The Department of Justice has conducted an investigation
of the case and found no misconduct in the prosecution;
Mr. Siegelman’s supporters say the investigation was
poorly conducted. Mr. Siegelman has appealed to the
Supreme Court, which has not decided whether to take
up the case.
Ms. Sloan, of the watchdog group, said that if prosecutors
abused the statute, “it doesn’t mean the whole statute is at fault.”
“It means the prosecutors made some bad decisions,” she said.
Richard L. Thornburgh, who was attorney general when the
honest-services law was passed, said he expected the
Supreme Court to issue “something fairly sweeping”
since it had taken on so many honest-services cases.
But, he added, “I think they can do it without doing
violence to proper law enforcement.”
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