News roundup

Scot freed after 20 years

This story hasn't been getting much press in the United States, but it's been a topic of interest in Europe. Kenneth Richey of Scotland has spent 20 years on death row in Ohio, exhausting round after round of appeals for a crime he insists he didn't do. Finally, a plea bargain has been reached in which he will plead no contest to involuntary manslaughter and be home in time for Christmas.

Europeans had been outraged at the conditions of Richey's confinement, which are ho-hum here in the prison nation. Said one Scottish official who visited Richey:

"The reality of somebody who is kept locked up in a cell for 23 hours a day for 19 years is quite mind-blowing. It is a dreadful, inhumane and dehumanising system. If one man is off it, then remember there are hundreds [sic!] of people in America still enduring that dreadful situation."

The London Times has more.

Children electroshocked (roll over, Stanley Milgram)

A prankster has outdone experimental researcher Stanley Milgram by a long shot, telephoning a school for the severely disturbed and easily convincing school officials to shock pupils up to 77 times each!

The prank is highlighting the fact that the Massachusetts school, Judge Rotenberg Educational Center, routinely administers electroshock as punishment. The school is the only one in the United States that does so; the device's inhumanity is concealed by the clinical-sounding name of graduated electronic decelerator.

ABC News has the story here.

Are trial lawyers an endangered species?

The University of Pennsylvania Law Review has a special issue on the changing landscape of U.S. criminal law, especially in the federal system. With plea bargains the norm, trials – which bring the possibility of acquittal – are becoming rarer. The articles are in response to an earlier essay by law professor Ronald F. Wright entitled "Trial Distortion and the End of Innocence in Federal Criminal Justice."

This trend has direct relevance to the practice of forensic psychology. Without the truth-exploring forum of a trial, both trial lawyers and expert witnesses could go the way of the Siberian tiger. Our primary product becomes a written report that can aid the parties in their plea negotiations, by elucidating the nexus between an individual’s psychological dynamics or mental state and a specific legal issue (such as specific intent to commit a crime or risk to public safety).

The entire debate is available online.

Hat tip to the Concurring Opinions blog for alerting me to this debate. Photo credits: Amber Rhea, sign on old Suntrust building in downtown Decatur, Illinois; Zoo Stream, Siberian tiger (Creative Commons license).

News roundup

Eastern nations importing Western justice practices

I've seen several accounts lately of Asian countries importing Western criminal justice practices. In China, which has a continental (or inquisitorial) model like that used in most of Europe, the Canadian Bar Association is collaborating with Chinese lawyers to advance the adversarial practices used in Canada and the United States. The Lawyers Weekly of Canada has that story. Meanwhile, in Japan, courts are gearing up to implement what for the West is an old standard – jury duty. In preparation for the January 2009 launch date, a former New York Legal Aid attorney is training Japanese defense lawyers in how to address ordinary citizens in court. That story is one of a series of special reports on "Toyko Justice" at New York City's NY1 news service.

New DOJ report: Sexual victimization of prisoners

The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics has released findings from a national survey of more than 23,000 prisoners at 146 state and federal institutions. Overall, about 4.5% of prisoners report sexual victimization, more than half committed by staff. The special report, required under the Prison Rape Elimination Act, is available online, as is a summary press release.

$10 million law & neuroscience project

How should the courts respond to new brain-scanning techniques that have potentially far-reaching legal implications?

A $10 million, 3-year grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is bringing scholars together to help answer this question by integrating neuroscience developments into the U.S. legal system.

The project will begin by synthesizing existing research and identifying gaps. Then, studies and conferences will be funded to fill those gaps. One end goal is an educational primer for judges, differentiating evidence-based techniques from those that lack scientific validity and should not be admitted in court.

More information is available at the project's website.

Utah court: OK to forcibly medicate accused kidnapper

One of two defendants in the highly publicized Elizabeth Smart kidnapping case in Utah can be forcibly medicated in an attempt to make her competent to stand trial, the Utah Supreme Court has ruled.

Wanda Eileen Barzee has been at the Utah State Hospital for more than three years without making any progress toward competency. Claiming she is the "mother of Zion" and receives messages from God through her television, she shuns treatment and refuses medication.

Friday's ruling upheld an opinion by a district court judge last year that administering antipsychotic medication would be in Barzee's best medical interest.

A key bone of contention is the expected efficacy of antipsychotic medications. State doctors claim that antipsychotic drugs have a 70% chance of making Barzee competent. Defense medical experts counter that the odds were closer to 20%.

Under Sell v. United States, for a defendant to be forcibly medicated to restore competency, a court must find that important government interests are at stake, involuntary medication will significantly further those interests by being "substantially likely" to restore the defendant's competency, the medication is substantially unlikely to have negative side effects, and the medication is medically appropriate.

Barzee and Brian David Mitchell are awaiting trial in the kidnapping and sexual assault of then-14-year-old Elizabeth in 2002. Police say Mitchell, a self-proclaimed prophet, planned to make Elizabeth one of his wives.

The Salt Lake City Tribune and the Deseret Morning News have coverage; the high court opinion is available online here.

Postscript: Judge Judith Atherton's 2005 competency decision in codefendant Brian David Mitchell's case, a thoughtful analysis of competency as it pertains to religiosity, is online HERE.

Georgia high court backtracks on ruling overturning sex offender residency restrictions

As you may recall from my previous blog posts, last month the Georgia Supreme Court overturned that state's residency restrictions against sex offenders. The law bans registered sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of schools, churches and other areas where children congregate.

But in a press release issued last week, the high court announced a "substitute opinion" drastically limiting the scope of the ruling. The new language limits the ruling to homeowners only, and only to the extent that residency restrictions might cause a "taking of [their] property without just and adequate compensation."

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has the story here. The original decision in Mann v. the Georgia Department of Corrections is here.

Hat tip to How Appealing.

Cautionary notes on last week's sentencing reforms

While some are heralding last week's federal sentencing reforms as the biggest civil rights development since Brown v. Board of Education back in 1954, others are less sanguine. The excellent Sentencing Law & Policy blog summarizes two cautionary opinion pieces, one by James Oliphant of the Chicago Tribune and the other by Adam Liptak of the New York Times.

Oliphant's piece, "New drug rules won't crack many jail doors," starts out:

When the U.S. Sentencing Commission last week reduced sentences for imprisoned crack cocaine offenders -- reversing years of policy that treated crack far differently from powder cocaine -- the Justice Department and police groups bitterly criticized the action, warning of a flood of criminals rushing out onto America's streets....

But many experts say the reality is not so dramatic. Fewer than 3,000 prisoners nationwide will be immediately eligible for the relief. All have already served considerable time. Each eligible prisoner will have to petition the court for freedom -- and the Justice Department can oppose those petitions. Few offenders with violent histories are likely to be released.

Adam Liptak's column, "Whittling Away, but Leaving a Gap," begins:

There was an avalanche of sentencing news last week. The Supreme Court gave trial judges more power to show mercy, the United States Sentencing Commission gave almost 20,000 prisoners doing time on crack cocaine charges a good shot at early release, and even President Bush commuted a crack sentence.

The net effect: tinkering. The United States justice system remains, by international standards at least, exceptionally punitive. And nothing that happened last week will change that.