Law Prof Doug Berman at Sentencing Law and Policy:

On Veterans Day, I am thinking about all the veterans who, after serving our country in the military in support of our nation's commitment to liberty and freedom, discover that our sentencing laws give little or no credit for their service.  I specifically have in mind the decorated soldiers Patrick Lett (story here) and Victor Rita (story here), both of whom now have their futures in the hands of appellate courts trying to figure out what Booker really means for federal sentencing.

More broadly, I wonder how many thousands of veterans are subject to all the severe collateral consequences that can often follow a conviction.  For example, I wonder how many veterans are unable to vote because they are disenfranchised by state law or how many veterans cannot live where they want because of residency restrictions or how many can no longer purchase a firearm because of a prior felony.

Banishment laws turn a problem into someone else's problem. More importantly, they inhibit rehabilitation, increasing the likelihood that the banished offender will return to crime. Keeping offenders under close supervision near their friends, families, jobs, and treatment providers is a better way to protect society from recidivists. TalkLeft discussed banishment laws in more detail here.

Laws that tell sex offenders not to live within 1,000 or 2,000 feet of parks, schools, and day care centers amount to banishment from urban areas. The laws have been challenged in Indianapolis and Iowa, while a proposed law was rejected in Covington, Kentucky. Yesterday, a federal judge blocked enforcement of a banishment law that was enacted via California's ballot initiative. The legal challenge to the law was filed by a former sex offender who has lived uneventfully in the same neighborhood for 20 years, but who may be forced to move if the new law stands.

It was the kind of story Dateline loves: set up a camera outside a house to film the perp as the police arrest him and march him off to jail. The police love these stories, as well, because they give visual evidence to local residents that law enforcement is doing something productive.

The story didn't end as Dateline expected. Instead of surrendering himself to the police who pounded on his door, Louis Conradt Jr. shot himself. Conradt, a prosecutor, had been set up by Perverted Justice, a group of people who lurk in chat rooms, posing as minors, hoping to lure adults into a seemingly illicit chat. Conradt allegedly agreed to meet a chatter posing as a 13-year-old boy.

Dateline considers itself blameless. Its voyeuristic obsession with sex crime arrests didn't have anything to do with Conradt's suicide, it claims, because Conradt didn't know he was about to be filmed. Maybe, or maybe a neighbor called him to ask why a film crew was hanging out in his yard. In any event, it isn't Dateline's job to shame a presumptively innocent internet chatter by filming his perp walk as police show up unannounced to haul him out of his home. This is tawdry theater, not journalism.

He was yelling "I want Jesus" and carrying a bible. The cops tasered him. He died at the hospital.

Will the cops say they thought the bible was a gun?

In a report released in March, international human rights group Amnesty International said it had logged at least 156 deaths across the country in the previous five years related to police stun guns.

The rise in deaths accompanies a marked increase in the number of U.S. law enforcement agencies employing devices made by Taser International Inc. of Scottsdale, Ariz. ....Police had used Tasers more than 70,000 times as of last year, Congress' Government Accountability Office said.

Via Cursor:

Ontario's premier declares that his province is no "dumping ground" for American sex offenders, after a former school teacher was sentenced to Canada by a Buffalo judge.

NORML's Paul Armentano has an op-ed in today's Examiner pointing out that the U.S. is spending $1 billion dollars a year to incarcerate people for marijuana offenses. The figure comes from the latest report released by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The new report is noteworthy because it undermines the common claim from law enforcement officers and bureaucrats, specifically White House drug czar John Walters, that few, if any, Americans are incarcerated for marijuana-related offenses. In reality, nearly 1 out of 8 U.S. drug prisoners are locked up for pot.

Another $8 billion is spent on arresting them.

The New York Times has an interesting article about how the electronic age has stripped the expungement of criminal records of practical effect.

Before, when courts used paper records, they were destroyed or put in a closet with an "expunged" stamp on them, making them inaccessible to third parties.

Now, courts keep electronic records and companies buy criminal records information. So even if the arrest or conviction is later expunged, the company still has the record of its existence.

Private database companies say they are diligent in updating their records to reflect the later expungement of criminal records. But lawyers, judges and experts in criminal justice say it is common for people to lose jobs and housing over information in databases that courts have ordered expunged.

Who says legalization and decriminalization don't work? In Europe, marijuana use has dropped sharply, while cocaine use has risen.

British figures .... show that the popularity of cannabis in the UK has plummeted, with 600,000 fewer people smoking or eating marijuana than three years ago. The Home Office statistics, released last week, also show that consumption of cocaine in Britain has risen.

The figures will help the British government and other European nations with more liberal drug laws such as Holland and Switzerland rebut claims that their approach to cannabis leads to increased use of the drug. The growing cocaine use will, however, worry European anti-narcotics police and many politicians.

by TChris

Shouldn't a knowledge of sign language be a job requirement for campus police officers at Gallaudet University?

Students at Gallaudet University remained barricaded inside one of the main campus buildings Friday, protesting the school's presidential selection and what students call a pattern of prejudice at the largely deaf institution.

Students said campus police on Friday morning forced their way into the Hall Memorial Building, shoving and elbowing students and pepper spraying some. The school denied use of pepper spray and said authorities needed to rush in because of a bomb threat, though there turned out to be no bomb.

Ryan Commerson, a student and leader of the protests, said the campus police apparently did not know sign language and could not communicate their concerns to students as they pushed their way in. A lack of knowledge of sign language by those charged with protecting the students has historically caused troubles at the university not far from the U.S. Capitol, but the school has previously said it took steps to address that.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has vetoed a bill to grow hemp. Here's his letter to the Assembly explaining his decision. Snippets:

I would like to support the expansion of a new agricultural commodity in this State. Unfortunately, I am very concerned that this bill would give legitimate growers a false sense of security and a belief that production of "industrial hemp" is somehow a legal activity under federal law.

You gotta love it....after a large, months-long undercover drug operation in Aspen using wiretaps, snitches and car tracking devices, the DEA had this to say in defense of its undercoverwork:

Undercover work isn't always popular in Aspen, but "to quote a movie, 'our job is to protect democracy, not to practice it,'" [DEA Agent Jeffrey] Sweetin said.

I love this article at Slate by Seth Stevenson, This is Your Ass on Drugs, evaluating one of the ads by the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, called Pete's Couch.

The spot: A high-school kid sits on a couch in a basement rec room, next to a couple of stoner friends. Looking straight at the camera, he says, "I smoked weed and nobody died. I didn't get into a car accident. I didn't OD on heroin the next day. Nothing happened. We sat on Pete's couch for 11 hours." The couch then magically teleports into the midst of some wholesome teen scenes (kids mountain biking, ice skating, playing basketball), while the zonked-out stoners just sit there, looking bored. Our narrator concedes that you're more likely to die out there in the real world ("driving hard to the rim" or "ice skating with a girl") than on Pete's couch back in the rec room. But, deciding it's worth the trade-off, he says, "I'll take my chances out there."

The point of the ad is to make it seem like kids who smoke pot are nothing but couch potato[e]s. As if because they hang out one day getting high, all of their days will be spent that way. Stevenson writes: