Isthmus: School resource officers are not the answer.

Salon: Did the FBI order Malcolm X's murder? The question reemerges.

"But what we have obtained now in this reinvestigation, are numerous materials that my office tragically did not have in 1965 and thus did not turn over to the defense," (Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus) Vance told the court. "Most critically, we have obtained dozens and dozens of reports, from the FBI and the NYPD's Bureau of Special Services and Investigations. … And, significantly, we now have reports revealing that, on orders from Director J. Edgar Hoover himself, the FBI ordered multiple witnesses not to tell police or prosecutors that they were, in fact, FBI informants."

Herald-Mail Media: Civil lawsuits taking over where government fails.

As institutions including legislatures, executives and criminal justice systems have abrogated their duties, civil law is filling the void.

Consider how for more than 20 years now, the ball of public safety has been dropped at every conceivable level in the ongoing opioid crisis. All our institutions — government, medical, pharmaceutical, regulatory, judicial — failed to do their jobs, and hundreds of thousands have died.

Right On Crime: The Rittenhouse case is a cautionary tale for conservative legislatures.

For this reason, the Rittenhouse case is a cautionary tale for conservative legislatures, where debates are waged around whether to infuse prosecutors with more power over the outcome of a criminal case, while reducing the influence of the judge.

Proponents call it truth in sentencing. The result is the tipping of the state’s criminal justice balance of power in favor of prosecutors, who, let’s not forget, are partial actors in this system.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Waukesha parade attacker's history of domestic violence is not surprising, experts say.

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Note: We are crunching Supreme Court of Wisconsin decisions down to size. The rule for this is that no justice gets more than 10 paragraphs as written in the actual decision. The "upshot" and "background" sections do not count as part of the 10 paragraphs because of their summary and very necessary nature. We've also removed citations and some statute numbers from the opinion for ease of reading, but have linked to important cases cited or information about them.  Italics indicate a WJI insertion. Case names are also in italics.

The case: State v. Cesar Antonio Lira

Majority: Justice Annette K. Ziegler (31 pages) for a unanimous court.

The Upshot

Neither his (Lira's) incarceration in Oklahoma between 2006 and 2017 nor his detention in Wisconsin and Texas between 2005 and 2006 were "in connection with the course of conduct for which [the 1992 and 1999 sentences were] imposed." §973.155(1)(a). Thus, we reverse the court of appeals and conclude that Lira is not entitled to sentence credit. 

Background

Over the course of 13 years, Lira transited thousands of miles while fleeing government authorities and committed seven separate offenses in two states. 

Lira was sentenced in July 1992 to 10 years' in prison for possession of cocaine with intent to deliver. He was paroled September 1996 and was busted on several charges in January 1999, while still on parole. That parole was revoked and Lira went back to prison. He also was convicted of two of the 1999 charges, felon in possession of a firearm and conspiring to distribute cocaine. He was sentenced in Milwaukee County Circuit Court to two years in prison on the felon-in-possession charge. The drug charge brought a sentence of 12 years' probation, concurrent with his incarceration. A 16-year prison sentence was stayed. When he was released from prison in 2001, he was on parole from the 1992 case and probation from the 1999 case.

In November, 2002, Lira fled from the office his Department of Corrections supervising agent when the agent tried to take him into custody for violating his conditions of supervision. Lira had travelled to Illinois without permission and possessed $55,000 in cash.

He was arrested again in 2004 and taken into custody. He also was charged with endangering safety by use of a dangerous weapon.

While being transported to a medical appointment on April 15, 2004, Lira fled officers and escaped in an awaiting vehicle with his girlfriend. As a result, Lira was charged with escape. The next day, on April 16, 2004, Lira's parole and probation were revoked. The stay of the 16-year sentence in the 1999 case was removed, and Lira's reconfinement for the 1992 case was ordered. 

Meanwhile, Lira was driving with his girlfriend and her child to Oklahoma. Once in Oklahoma, on April 16, 2004, Lira initiated a high-speed car chase with police. Lira ran a road block and crashed the vehicle he was driving. His girlfriend died as a result of the collision. That same day, Oklahoma police arrested Lira. He later pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, eluding police, running a roadblock, and child abuse/neglect. He was sentenced in Oklahoma to 20 years in prison. 

Oklahoma transferred Lira to Wisconsin in 2005 to face charges stemming from his 2004 escape and the endangering safety charge that followed. Lira, though, was accidentally released and fled again. He was arrested in Texas and was returned to Wisconsin, where a bail-jumping charge was added to those he already faced. He eventually reached a plea deal to close the Wisconsin cases against him. He was sentenced to three years in prison and three years extended supervision, all to be served after he finished his 20-year sentence in Oklahoma. He was returned Wisconsin in June 2017.

Lira filed a motion in 2018 alleging he was entitled to sentence credit for much of the time he served in Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Texas. The motion was denied in Circuit Court, but the Court of Appeals overturned part of that decision and said Lira was entitled to sentence credit for all the time he spent in prison in Oklahoma from April 5, 2006, and June 9, 2017 and for time spent incarcerated in Texas in from May 22, 2005, to April 5, 2006. The state appealed.

The guts

Wisconsin Stat. §973.15 establishes miscellaneous guidelines in setting and instituting criminal sentences....

Section 973.155 sets a basic rule for sentence credit determinations: a defendant will receive credit for time spent incarcerated when that time has a factual connection to the offense for which he or she was convicted....

Lira's statutory argument relies on an exceedingly narrow, and ultimately unconvincing, reading of the statute. According to Lira, the statute's requirement that a "convicted offender... made available to another jurisdiction" receives credit toward "his or her Wisconsin sentence" trumps the factual-connection test....

The statutory language unambiguous: credit is due under the provision only if it is warranted under § 973.155, which includes the factual-connection test.... Given that "the meaning of the statute is plain," no further inquiry is necessary. 

                                                                                             ***

Lira also claims that this court must accept his legal reasoning because it is supported by published precedent from the court of appeals. (The appeals court was wrong, Ziegler said.)

While respecting court of appeals precedent is an important consideration, it is not determinative....We have shown a repeated willingness to interpret and apply the law correctly, irrespective of a court of appeals decision that came to a different conclusion.

                                                                                             ***

The interpretation of Wis. Stat. § 973.15(5) advanced by Lira would likely undermine, not enhance, interstate cooperation. If a defendant is entitled to sentence credit for the entire time he is in foreign custody so long as he was a "convicted offender" that was "made available to [the other] jurisdiction," Wisconsin authorities would be strongly incentivized to not transfer prisoners to foreign jurisdictions. By doing so, the transfer could effectively eliminate a Wisconsin sentence and produce an improper windfall for a prisoner. For example, if Lira's legal position were correct, someone could commit one murder in Wisconsin and another murder in Oklahoma. If the person received consecutive sentences of the same length for the offenses, and he or she were transferred from Wisconsin to Oklahoma to complete the Oklahoma sentence, the Wisconsin sentence would in effect be erased....

Lira also argues that...he is entitled to sentence credit for time spent in Wisconsin and Texas between May 22, 2005, and April 5, 2006, while on detainer from Oklahoma....

Here, the court of appeals cites a mere procedural connection between the 1992 and 1999 cases and the 2004 endangering safety charge to justify credit. It asserted that the endangering safety charge legally "initiated" Lira's reconfinement for the 1992 and 1999 cases....

Lira is not entitled to sentence credit for any time spent in custody in Wisconsin and Texas between May 22, 2005, and April 5, 2006. 

The New York Times: Feds planning to crack down on unruly airplane passengers.

As travel in the United States nears prepandemic levels, the federal government has ramped up prosecution of crimes on flights, especially by passengers refusing to abide by Covid protocols. In some cases, passengers have assaulted or threatened flight attendants.

New York Post: U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wants Kyle Rittenhouse to receive the Congressional Gold Medal.

Alternet: Five U.S. Supreme Court rulings that could be in danger if the court overturns Roe v. Wade.

WBAY: Attorneys general from several states, including Wisconsin, investigating whether Facebook and Instagram are violating consumer protection laws.

If that’s where kids already are, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul believes there’s a responsibility to make sure what youth are reading and watching online doesn’t cause harm.

“It’s critical that any company, but certainly one of the largest companies in the world like Facebook, is taking steps to make sure that kids and young adults are safe and that the products that it’s putting out there aren’t causing harm,” says Kaul. “And if they are putting that out there and misrepresenting people, we’re committed to making sure that they’re held accountable.”

Forbes: Trump-era "Remain in Mexico" policy may resume next week.

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CNN: Three men found guilty in murder of Ahmaud Arbery.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Suspect in Waukesha car slayings charged.

The Marshall Project: Why my first Thanksgiving in prison was the best I'd had in a long time.

Now this is what I think of when I think of redemption. It was only one day, and then everything went back to how it was. But this is how change happens, one day at a time. People learn about kindness and hope and change through individual moments that eventually add up to a different person. Those moments felt so scarce behind bars.

CNBC: Justice Department sues to stop big sugar merger.

The civil antitrust lawsuit, filed in federal court in Delaware, aims to stop the United States Sugar from buying Imperial Sugar. The corporations are rivals in the “already cozy” sugar industry, said Jonathan Kanter, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, in a press release.

“This deal substantially lessens competition at a time when global supply chain challenges already threaten steady access to important commodities and goods,” Kanter added.

Slate: The Charlottesville verdict is a win.

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Suspect in Waukesha car homicides has long criminal history.

The New York Times: Court urged to let Jan. 6 panel see Trump records.

The Washington Post: Families of Stoneman Douglas High School massacre victims settle with feds for FBI's inaction.

The attorneys said the settlement’s details are confidential, but a person familiar with the deal said the government will pay the families $127.5 million overall. The person requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the amount.

CNBC: Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen finishes his home confinement sentence.

Cohen, who controversially was tossed back into prison briefly last year by federal authorities after winning an early furlough, also told CNBC he will keep pushing “to advance prison reform in any way I can.”

“My release today in no way negates the actions I took at the direction of and for the benefit of Donald J. Trump,” Cohen said in a statement after submitting paperwork at Manhattan federal court to end his home confinement.

The New York Times: In her second day of testimony, Theranos' former boss Elizabeth Holmes says failure is not a crime.

Ms. Holmes’s decision to testify is a risky one that shocked the courtroom out of its Friday afternoon lull last week. She has opened herself up to cross-examination by prosecutors and also risks perjury.

But experts have argued that she had no choice but to defend herself, given the evidence presented by prosecutors. That has included text messages that showed Ms. Holmes was aware of Theranos’s technology problems and testimony about faked demonstrations of its abilities. Prosecutors also revealed that after an employee, Erika Cheung, spoke to regulators about problems in the Theranos lab, the start-up hired a private detective to follow her.

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Reuters: How Amazon worked to kill privacy rights for Americans.

Reason: Don't punish people for asserting their right to a jury trial.

The "right" thing. At first glance, I'd posit most readers wouldn't think much of that; plea bargains are a core part of the U.S. criminal justice system. Yet in being frank with (Jacob) Chansley, (U.S. District Judge Royce C.) Lamberth laid bare why those "bargains" are raw deals: Had Chansley insisted on his constitutional right to a trial by jury, he would have been staring down more than 16 additional years in prison. That's not because the government believes such a stratospheric sentence would serve public safety. It's because prosecutors routinely inflate hypothetical prison sentences and dangle them over defendants in order to bully them out of going to trial, where outcomes are both costly and uncertain.

The Washington Post: Americans do not want guns at protests, research shows.

The Guardian: How fentanyl is unfolding as one of America's great tragedies.

More than 100,000 people died from overdoses in the US in a 12-month period ending in April, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It’s the biggest increase ever seen in the US – and it’s only rising each month, drug researchers say.

Fentanyl is driving the majority of these deaths, associated with at least 60% of the fatal overdoses – a 50% increase in a single year, Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, told the Guardian.

“It’s devastating,” she said. “It’s an epidemic within the pandemic.” Deaths from fentanyl were already on the rise across the country, but the pandemic supercharged their speed and intensity.

The Hill: How religious liberty was distorted in the age of COVID-19.

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The Washington Post: Why is the U.S. Justice Department fighting more oversight?

NBC: Could Kyle Rittenhouse face civil penalties despite acquittals in the criminal case?

Star Tribune: President Biden has pardoned turkeys, but no people.

Following the lead of his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, Biden is just letting requests sit. While some cases have been closed administratively (largely where people are simply not eligible), not a single case has been resolved up or down through presidential action.

The New York Times: Judge tries to block coverage of Times' coverage of Project Veritas.

“This ruling is unconstitutional and sets a dangerous precedent,” Dean Baquet, the executive editor of The Times, wrote in a statement on Thursday.

“When a court silences journalism, it fails its citizens and undermines their right to know,” Mr. Baquet wrote. “The Supreme Court made that clear in the Pentagon Papers case, a landmark ruling against prior restraint blocking the publication of newsworthy journalism. That principle clearly applies here. We are seeking an immediate review of this decision.”

NBC: The family of Elijah McClain, who was killed by police, settle with Aurora, CO. for $15 million.

The settlement with McClain’s family is among the highest ever, and comparable to other recent high-profile deaths of Black people who died during interactions with police.

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By Gretchen Schuldt

​COVID cut an uneven path across state courts in five mid-size counties last year.

​Douglas County's criminal case backlog actually shrank by 17% from December 2019 to December 2020, while Shawano County's, highest among the five counties to begin with, grew by 46%, tops among the five. The number of pending criminal cases in Shawano County in December 2020 was more than three times the number in any of the other four – Douglas, Pierce, Marinette, and Oconto counties.

WJI examined the numbers of pending cases in the state's five largest counties here and the five smallest counties here. This post, using Wisconsin Court System statistics from December 2019 and 2020, looks at pending cases in mid-sized smallest counties, as measured by population. 

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Kyle Rittenhouse acquitted.

As the verdict was read, Rittenhouse appeared to hold back sobs. When the final "not guilty" was announced, he dropped to his knees. He was helped back into his chair and hugged one of his attorneys, Corey Chirafisi.

The Washington Post: Why prosecutors get away with misconduct.

While prosecutors often hold news conferences or orchestrate “perp walks” when indicting people for crimes, when prosecutors themselves are accused of wrongdoing, state bars and other authorities make sure you never hear about it. “I can’t say more because it could subject me to a complaint myself,” (attorney Lara) Bazelon says.

Courthouse News Service: Environmental groups sue EPA over Gulf states air pollution.

The Hill: President Biden signs bills providing more resources to police.

The Washington Post: Democratic divide puts action on marijuana in doubt.

The conflict has come to a head in recent weeks after a push by Democratic and Republican lawmakers to attach the narrower banking legislation to the must-pass annual defense policy bill, which would ensure its passage in the coming months. The bill’s advocates say it would offer a substantial step toward legitimizing and rationalizing the cannabis industry in the 47 states that have moved to at least partially legalize marijuana — allowing businesses to move away from risky cash-only operations.

That push has hit a roadblock in the Senate, however, where Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has sided with Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Ron Wyden (D-N.J.), who are seeking to assemble a comprehensive bill that would federally decriminalize the drug, tax it and potentially expunge the criminal records of those previously convicted of having bought or sold it. Passing the narrower bill, they argue, would make passing their broader bill more difficult.

​“To me, it wouldn’t be a win,” Booker said Tuesday. “It would be a setback for expunging the records of all of the people who are waiting for some kind of justice. And unfortunately, if you do that, the pressure won’t be there to get it done.”

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Above the Law: Trump threatens to sue Pulitzer Prize Board if it won't retract prized for N.Y. Times and Washington Post.

What even is this shit?

Washington Monthly: How the Trump era changed the U.S. Supreme Court.

If the new majority on the Court wants the public to respect it, then it can earn that respect by acting like a Court. Signs so far are that the new majority will act with only token respect for precedent and contempt for transparency. Indeed, the stealth decision to allow Texas to gut abortion rights suggests more than that—it suggests outright lawlessness.

The Hill: Support for stricter gun control lowest since 2014, according to Gallup poll.

AP via WMTV: Parole granted to man who was key in juvenile life sentence case.

Henry Montgomery, 75, was released from prison just hours after the parole board’s decision and went to the offices of the Louisiana Parole Project, a nonprofit which is supporting him after his release. There he was embraced by tearful staff and former juvenile lifers who were freed as a result of the court case that bears Montgomery’s name.

“It feels so wonderful,” said Montgomery during an interview with The Associated Press. When asked what he plans to do now that he is out of prison, Montgomery said he wanted to pay his respects to his mother and grandmother and other family members who died when he was behind bars.
​
NBC: Oklahoma governor commutes sentence of condemned man, Julius Jones.

State and county prosecutors have said the evidence against Jones is overwhelming. Trial transcripts show witnesses identified Jones as the shooter and placed him with Howell’s stolen vehicle. Investigators also found the murder weapon wrapped in a bandana with Jones’ DNA in an attic space above his bedroom. Jones claims the murder weapon was placed there by the actual killer, who visited Jones’ house after Howell was shot.

The state’s Pardon and Parole Board twice voted 3-1 to recommend Stitt grant clemency to Jones and commute his sentence to life in prison.

“I believe in death penalty cases there should be no doubt, and put simply, I have doubts in this case,” Chairman Adam Luck said in September following the board’s vote.

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