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From Los Angeles Times

U.S. Supreme Court orders massive inmate release to relieve California's crowded prisons

Justice Kennedy cites inhumane conditions, while dissenters fear a crime rampage. Gov. Jerry Brown seeks tax hike to fund transfers to county jails as prison officials hope to avoid freeing anyone.

by David G. Savage and Patrick McGreevy, Los Angeles Times

May 24, 2011

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that California must remove tens of thousands of inmates from its prison rolls in the next two years, and state officials vowed to comply, saying they hoped to do so without setting any criminals free.

Administration officials expressed confidence that their plan to shift low-level offenders to county jails and other facilities, already approved by lawmakers, would ease the persistent crowding that the high court said Monday had caused "needless suffering and death" and amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.

Gov. Jerry Brown's transfer plan "would solve quite a bit" of the overcrowding problem, though not as quickly as the court wants, said Matthew Cate, secretary of California's Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. "Our goal is to not release inmates at all.''

But the governor's plan would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, to be paid for with tax hikes that could prove politically impossible to implement. And at present, Brown's plan is the only one on the table.

The governor issued a muted statement calling for enactment of his program and promising, "I will take all steps necessary to protect public safety."

The court gave the state two years to shrink the number of prisoners by more than 33,000 and two weeks to submit a schedule for achieving that goal. The state now has 143,335 inmates, according to Cate.

Monday's 5-4 ruling, upholding one of the largest such orders in the nation's history, came with vivid descriptions of indecent care from the majority and outraged warnings of a "grim roster of victims" from some in the minority.

In presenting the decision, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, a Sacramento native, spoke from the bench about suicidal prisoners being held in "telephone booth-sized cages without toilets" and others, sick with cancer or in severe pain, who died before being seen by a doctor. As many as 200 prisoners may live in a gymnasium, and as many as 54 may share a single toilet, he said.

Kennedy, whose opinion was joined by his four liberal colleagues, said the state's prisons were built to hold 80,000 inmates, but were crowded with as many 156,000 a few years ago.

He cited a former Texas prison director who toured California lockups and described the conditions as "appalling," "inhumane" and unlike any he had seen "in more than 35 years of prison work."

The court's four conservatives accused their colleagues of "gambling with the safety of the people of California," in the words of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. "I fear that today's decision will lead to a grim roster of victims. I hope that I am wrong. In a few years, we will see," he said.

Justice Antonin Scalia, delivering his own dissent in the courtroom, said the majority had affirmed "what is perhaps the most radical injunction issued by a court in our nation's history." He added, "terrible things are sure to happen as a consequence of this outrageous order." Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Clarence Thomas also dissented.

Law enforcement officials in California concurred and said that trying to squeeze more inmates into already overcrowded county systems would force some early releases.

"Citizens will pay a real price as crime victims, as thousands of convicted felons will be on the streets with minimal supervision," Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said in a statement. "Many of these 'early release' prisoners will commit crimes which would never have occurred had they remained in custody."

"It's an undue burden …to deal with the state's problems,'' said Jerry Gutierrez, chief deputy of the Riverside County Sheriff's Department.

Republican lawmakers said they would continue to fight the governor's plan and its reliance on tax increases. Democrats "are looking for any excuse they can to try to have more taxes," said the leader of the state Senate's GOP minority, Bob Dutton of Rancho Cucamonga.

Dutton said state officials should instead fast-track construction of new prisons and pressure the federal government to take custody of thousands of illegal immigrant felons housed in the state system.

Administration officials said their plan would keep the public safe by moving offenders into county lockups, drug treatment programs and other types of criminal supervision. But Cate said the Brown administration "cannot act alone" and conceded that release of some prisoners remains a possibility.

He urged the Legislature to immediately fund Brown's $302-million plan, which would shift 32,500 inmates to county jurisdiction by mid-2013. Among those identified for the program are tens of thousands of parole violators sent to costly state prisons every year to serve 90 days or less.

Monday's ruling arose from a pair of prison class-action lawsuits, one going back 20 years, which accused the state of failing to provide decent care for prisoners who were mentally ill or in need of medical care. The two suits were combined by a panel of three judges, all of whom were veterans with a liberal reputation.

U.S. District Judges Thelton Henderson from San Francisco and Lawrence Karlton from Sacramento were joined by 9th Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt from Los Angeles. Since overcrowding was the "primary cause" of the substandard care meted out to inmates, they ordered the state to reduce its prison population by 38,000 to 46,000 persons.

Then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and then-Atty. Gen. Brown appealed, believing a more conservative Supreme Court would be wary of telling a state how to run its prisons.

Since the earlier court order, the state has transferred about 9,000 state inmates to county jails. According to recent figures, the total prison population is about 33,000 more than the limit of 110,000 set by the three-judge panel. Kennedy said state officials can decide how to reduce the number of inmates.

The American Civil Liberties Union said the court "has done the right thing" by addressing the "egregious and extreme overcrowding in California's prisons."

Donald Specter, the lawyer for the nonprofit Prison Law Office who represented the inmates, said "this landmark decision will not only help prevent prisoners from dying of malpractice and neglect, but it will make the prisons safer for the staff, improve public safety and save the taxpayers billions of dollars."

Others agreed with the dissenters. "What is the message for law-abiding people in California? Buy a gun. Get a dog. Put in an alarm system. Even seriously consider bars on the windows," said Kent Scheidegger of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento, writing on his "Crime & Consequences" blog.

Meanwhile, the court took no action Monday on another California case, a challenge to the state's policy of granting in-state tuition at its colleges and universities to students who are illegal immigrants and have graduated from its high schools.

The justices said they would consider the appeal in a later private conference.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-court-prisons-20110524,0,5745553,print.story

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Time for California to tackle prison overcrowding

With the U.S. Supreme Court upholding an order to reduce the state's inmate population, the Legislature should take a first step by creating a panel to revise sentencing guidelines.

May 24, 2011

Gov. Jerry Brown is a reluctant prison reformer; in his former job as attorney general, he fought hard to stave off a federal court order requiring the state to reduce its inmate population. But with Monday's ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court upholding that order, Brown can't put off the big decisions anymore — and neither can the Legislature, which has been ignoring the prison problem for decades.

Perhaps because he understood the weakness of his own case, Brown seems to have been prepared for Monday's ruling in Brown vs. Plata, in which a 5-4 Supreme Court majority agreed that California's prison conditions were so bad that they violated the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Earlier this year he released a proposal for transferring thousands of inmates from state prisons to county jails, and last month he signed a bill, AB 109, to accomplish that. But that may not suffice.

At last count there were 142,000 inmates in California prisons, which are so overcrowded that some prisoners must be housed collectively in gymnasiums or alone in phone-booth-sized cages. Under the order upheld by the Supreme Court, the state must reduce its inmate population to 137.5% of the system's capacity — meaning about 110,000 — within two years.

Brown's plan to shift nonviolent offenders to county facilities is a partial solution. But the state would have to pay counties to take its prisoners, so the plan requires the Legislature, and ultimately voters, to approve an extension of the 2009 temporary tax hikes to fund the transfers. Those taxes are a subject of fierce debate as lawmakers bicker over closing the state's yawning multibillion-dollar deficit. Moreover, as it stands now, Brown's plan would cut the state inmate population by about 30,000 within three years, one year later than the federal order requires.

In his dissent, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. argued histrionically that California was being mandated to release "the equivalent of three Army divisions" of criminals onto its streets; similarly, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that "terrible things are sure to happen as a consequence of this outrageous order." But the truth is that experts have been suggesting responsible ways to ease prison overcrowding for years. One way is to create an independent panel to revise the state's haphazard sentencing guidelines, which all too often result in excessive terms that worsen overcrowding. In other states, sentencing commissions have lengthened penalties for truly dangerous felons while finding alternative punishments for minor offenders.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger backed such a commission, but he couldn't get the Legislature to go along. Maybe the threat of wide-scale prisoner releases can finally scare our lawmakers straight.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-prisons-20110524,0,3153932,print.story

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In Joplin, there was no time to prepare

Sunday's tornado ripped into a hospital, a nursing home and thousands of other buildings, killing at least 116 in what's being called the worst twister ever to hit Missouri.

by Nicholas Riccardi, Matt Pearce and Robin Abcarian, Los Angeles Times

May 23, 2011

Reporting from Joplin, Mo.

When the tornado hit, Staci Perry, a scrub technician at St. John's Regional Medical Center, had just left the operating room to grab a piece of equipment for a surgery in progress. An urgent announcement came over the loudspeaker: "Execute condition gray." That was the hospital's code for an impending disaster, though in drills, the command was always preceded by "Prepare for condition gray."

There was no time to prepare. As she heard the massive glass walls crack, Perry, 33, dashed back to surgery. "The pressure in everyone's ears was just tremendous," she said. A physician's assistant threw himself against the door so it wouldn't blow in and destroy the operating room. The lights went out. The wind howled.

"Literally, the hospital imploded," said Dr. Jim Riscoe, an emergency room physician at the 230-bed facility. There is an emergency plan for disasters, he said, "but they don't anticipate the emergency being the hospital."

When it was over, just after 5:30 p.m. Sunday, the storm had gouged a six-mile swath roughly half a mile wide in this city of 50,000 people. At least 116 people died, five of them hospital patients.

The apocalyptic after-images were depressingly familiar, reminiscent of those from the deadly April tornadoes in the South: rubble as far as the eye could see, cars buried under pieces of houses, trees wrenched from the ground with massive roots reaching toward the sky, columns of smoke rising from gas fires, emergency vehicles with lights flashing. And everywhere, knots of people stunned by nature's violence mourned their losses, counted their blessings and told their harrowing stories.

In torrential rain, lightning and heavy winds, rescuers went door-to-door Monday, gingerly avoiding debris and downed power lines that ignited fires fueled by leaking gas. They pulled 17 survivors from the rubble, officials said.

Joplin officials said more than 2,000 structures were ripped apart and whole neighborhoods obliterated in what was described as the worst tornado ever to hit Missouri. Power remained out Monday on most of the city's west side. Residents were advised to boil water.

"We still believe there are people to be saved in the rubble," said Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, who deployed about 140 National Guard troops to help with rescue efforts.

President Obama, visiting Ireland, expressed his condolences in a telephone call to Nixon. Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Craig Fugate was on his way to Joplin to coordinate federal disaster relief, said White House spokesman Nick Shapiro.

The National Weather Service said Monday that the Joplin tornado was the deadliest single tornado since a 1953 twister killed 116 in Flint, Mich. With winds as high as 198 mph, it was rated F-4 on the Fujita scale, one step below the strongest tornado. (Multiple tornadoes were responsible for approximately 344 deaths over four days in late April, mostly in Alabama.)

The weather service also said that more than 100 tornadoes had occurred during May, the most active month for tornadoes. The May record of 542 tornadoes was set in 2003.

Another twister touched down Sunday in north Minneapolis, Minn., killing one person.

Dr. Jason Persoff, 39, a Florida internist and storm chaser, had been in southeast Kansas on Sunday with his storm-chasing partner, also a physician, when they realized they were seeing something huge. "This storm will do incredible things," Persoff remembered thinking.

But as the pair headed into Missouri, they heard on the radio that a "debris ball" had been spotted on radar — a mass of material torn from the ground, carried along by the turbulence. Persoff's excitement turned to alarm. He pulled off the highway into Joplin and saw crumpled semi trucks. Flagging down an emergency worker, he got directions to the nearest functioning hospital, where he and his friend helped treat patients all night, amazed at the dedication of the hospital staff.

"They didn't know what happened to their families," Persoff said, "and yet they were focused 190% on keeping people alive."

A few blocks from St. John's hospital, where a helicopter had been blown off the roof, Zach Simonds was cleaning floors at the Greenbrier Nursing Home when he heard a "code red" announcement on the intercom. About a dozen staffers tried to gather up the 85 patients into the central hall, since the home had no basement. Some refused to budge. But most clustered in the hall.

The tornado tore the roof off the nursing home. Simonds could see cars being tossed overhead. "Everybody was praying; you could hear people praying, 'Please God don't kill me,' " he said. Then the glass-plated front of the building burst.

"It just sucked everybody out," Simonds said. He was able to duck into a closet-sized room with a few other people, including a man in a wheelchair. When he left to find help, he had to pick his way past decapitated bodies. And there was no help to be found. All the buildings he passed were destroyed. "I didn't think anybody was alive," he said.

Behind the nursing home, a Catholic church was destroyed; all that stood was a cross.

All around Joplin, families reunited gratefully, still puzzling over their fates, and those of others less fortunate.

Melissa Clark and Richard Slimp, both 26, took refuge with their four small children and six neighbors in the basement of their white clapboard house. When the tornado passed, they emerged to find their house seemingly intact, minus the windows. But Monday afternoon, torrential rain poured through the roof. "Every one of our walls look like we mowed in here," said Clark, waving at the layers of mud and grass and debris surreally caking the vertical surfaces.

Clark's stepfather, Dave Word, 57, was in his house three miles away when the sirens sounded. He dove onto his hallway floor as his roof was ripped away. Clad only in boxer shorts, he walked to Clark's home. A sympathetic passerby gave him a coat. Monday he sat in his stepdaughter's living room amid a jumble of broken glass and debris. "I don't even know what I am going to do; I don't know where I am going to start," said Word, who had lost his wallet and credit cards.

Joplin's Wal-Mart, on a slight incline overlooking the city's business district, was half-collapsed, with ceiling supports sticking out like an exposed ribcage. In the parking lot, dozens of destroyed cars were stacked in pyramids.

"I hope to God nobody was in these cars," said Cavin Cowan, 45. He pointed to a ravaged gold Buick. "Somebody was probably still in that one," he said. "The lights are on, the radio's still going."

David Utter, 26, was driving with his wife and two small children when the twister touched down. "The rain started going sideways, and it lifted us up and pushed us into the oncoming lane," Utter said. They were unharmed; their van was undamaged. On Monday, he was standing in front of a brick home, looking for a friend and the friend's 3-year-old son.

"I've lived here my whole life," said his wife, Misty Kelso, "and I no longer recognize where I am."

Less than half a mile from the devastated Greenbrier Nursing Home, at the intersection of 26th and Main streets, Chalea Cogbill, 23, surveyed the wreckage of Mr. Nice Guy, the smoke shop she managed. About half a dozen friends helped pick through debris. They fished out fancy glass pipes, some still in bubble wrap, perfect.

She pointed at places where businesses used to be: "That was a Taco Bell. That's a tattoo parlor. Payday loan. That was the new Salvation Army office."

A Joplin native, Cogbill said she was thinking of moving away. "It's going to take like four years to rebuild this town," she said, "and it wasn't very spunky to begin with."

Photos: Tornado hits Joplin

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-missouri-tornado-20110524,0,7312584,print.story

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Obama promises full federal response to Midwest storms, will visit Missouri on Sunday

by Christi Parsons

May 24, 2011

Reporting from London

President Obama this morning expressed his sorrow about the tornado damage in Missouri, Minnesota and around the Midwest, calling the devastation "incomparable" and promising a full federal response to help in the recovery.

Obama has already dispatched federal officials to the region to survey the damage and talk with local officials, and he said he will visit Missouri personally Sunday.

"We are here for you," Obama said, addressing the survivors. "We're going to stay by you."

He pledged to sustain the recovery efforts "after the news cameras leave."

Sunday's storm gouged a six-mile swath roughly half a mile wide through Joplin, Mo. At least 116 people died, five of them hospital patients.

The impromptu statement was the first event of a day devoted to a state visit to Britain, where he will visit Queen Elizabeth II and join her for lunch at Buckingham Palace.

He is slated to sit down with Prime Minister David Cameron and to lay a wreath at Westminster Abbey. Although the president has traveled to Britain more than once during his term in office, this is the first official state visit, complete with a formal state dinner in the evening.

While the president's two-day visit is devoted to emphasizing the relationship between the United States and Britain -- "special relationship" is the officially preferred term -- an aide said the president is also asking for frequent briefings from home.

He spoke with FEMA director Craig Fugate this morning before addressing a small pool of reporters in a garden outside Winfield House, the ambassadorial residence where he is staying.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-obama-missouri-storms-20110524,0,4500396,print.story

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Gun control that won't

If California bans 'open carry,' it could lead to more permits to carry concealed weapons.

by Adam Winkler

May 24, 2011

What if we passed a gun control law but it led to more people carrying guns on our streets? That may be exactly what happens if a bill passed last week by the California Assembly becomes law.

AB 144 would prohibit the carrying of visible firearms in California cities. It was inspired by the spectacle of gun-rights advocates showing up last year at Starbucks shops with their handguns prominently displayed. That's legal, as long as those guns are unloaded.

If, however, California bans what is called "open carry," the state will probably have to loosen the standards for people to have permits to carry concealed weapons. In California, gun owners can only legally carry a concealed firearm, loaded or unloaded, if they have a permit. And in cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles, "concealed carry" permits are very difficult to obtain — arguably too difficult, if AB 144 becomes law.

How, exactly, could banning open carry become a wedge that opens the door to more liberal concealed carry laws? It starts with a landmark Supreme Court decision two years ago, District of Columbia vs. Heller, in which the justices clearly held — for the first time in United States history — that individuals have a constitutional right to possess firearms.

Although the court's decision involved only guns kept in the home, most 2nd Amendment experts predict the court will eventually hold that the Constitution also guarantees the right to have a gun for self-defense in public. As the court explained, the 2nd Amendment recognizes not just a right "to keep" arms but also a right to "bear," or carry, arms.

The court decision, however, also suggested that the right to bear arms is not absolute. States may be able to ban people from carrying concealed weapons or prohibit them from carrying them openly, but probably not both. The court cited a number of lower court cases that upheld concealed carry bans on the ground that citizens still had the alternative of openly carrying their guns.

In two recent lower court lawsuits challenging California's concealed carry laws, the judges upheld the restrictive policies in part because the state allowed open carry. The judges explained that because the state allows people to openly carry unloaded firearms without a permit, any 2nd Amendment right to have a firearm in public was satisfied. If you find yourself in immediate danger, you can load your gun quickly and protect yourself. Absent an open carry policy, however, future courts could have a much harder time upholding concealed carry restrictions.

Truth is, only a handful of gun owners are willing to tote their guns around openly. Not only does it scare and alienate neighbors, it also often leads to confrontations with police because officers are allowed to inspect openly displayed guns to ensure they're not loaded. Gun owners would much prefer to conceal their firearms when out on the town, and although gun-rights groups are officially opposed to the AB 144 ban, some gun owners must be quietly hoping that the California Senate passes the open carry ban and Gov. Jerry Brown signs it into law.

Banning open carry might be a comfort to people who are terrified by the sight of guns. But what is worse: seeing a visible, unloaded gun once in a blue moon at a Starbucks — or being surrounded by people with hidden, possibly loaded guns every time you go out on the street?

Adam Winkler is professor of law at UCLA and the author of "Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-winkler-guns-20110524,0,4949931,print.story

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From Google News

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Casey Anthony trial to start in Orlando, Fla.

ORLANDO, Fla. — A Florida mother charged with her toddler's death will have her day in court almost three years after her 2-year-old daughter disappeared.

No witnesses saw what happened to 2-year-old Caylee Anthony, and only her killer knows exactly how she died. So the jury's decision will likely come down to forensic evidence.

If convicted, 25-year-old Casey Anthony could be sentenced to death. She has pleaded not guilty and says a babysitter kidnapped Caylee.

The trial is expected to last from six to eight weeks. Jurors were picked from Pinellas County on the Gulf Coast and transported to Orlando where they are being sequestered during the trial.

http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/casey-anthony-trial-to-955808.html

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13 charged as federal officials round up alleged East Coast mafia

Federal authorities broadened their nationwide crackdown on organized crime Monday, arresting the reputed leaders of Philadelphia's La Cosa Nostra family on extortion, loan-sharking and other charges.

The indictment of 13 members and associates of the Philadelphia family is the latest in a series of high-profile roundups of alleged East Coast mafia members this year. Federal officials say the scope and severity of the charges show that the mafia remains a resilient foe, even after a decades-long FBI campaign against it.

In the newest case, authorities unsealed an indictment charging alleged Philadelphia boss Joseph Ligambi and 12 other mafia members and associates with criminal conduct that included racketeering conspiracy and illegal gambling. Federal officials said the defendants infused their activities with violence, using phrases such as “chop him up” and “put a bullet in your head” when threatening victims.

“This department has shown that our commitment to fighting organized crime is backed by actions,'' Lanny A. Breuer , assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Criminal Division, said at a news conference in Philadelphia. “Arrests, charges, convictions, prison sentences — the drumbeat of enforcement is growing louder, and organized crime figures throughout the country should hear it and take notice.”

The mass arrests of reputed organized crime figures, an increasingly common tactic in recent years, tend to recall images from mafia movies that have lingered in the popular imagination. Authorities said one of the defendants, Damion Canalichio, used a bat to beat a victim for not paying a loan debt — a tactic reminiscent of a famous and gory scene involving Al Capone's character in “The Untouchables.''

But federal officials emphasized the real-life threat posed by organized crime families who have little regard for the law.

“The life of a traditional ‘mobster' has been dramatized in the movies and on TV,” Breuer said. “But there is nothing entertaining about violence in our communities.”

It was unclear whether attorneys had been appointed for the defendants, who included another alleged member of the Philadelphia family's ruling hierarchy, underboss Joseph Massimino. FBI agents and local officers arrested 11 of the defendants Monday; the other two are serving prison terms.

Justice Department officials, who are also cracking down on Russian and other international crime organizations, say the Obama administration is bringing new energy to the fight against traditional organized crime. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., has “renewed” the commitment that Robert Kennedy made against the mafia when he was attorney general in the 1960s, Breuer said.

Experts said the latest federal crackdown, while noteworthy, is targeting organized crime families who are already severely weakened. More than 7,000 organized crime figures have been convicted since the first major racketeering indictment against the mob in 1985, they said.

“The sizes of the cases they are bringing is significant,'' said Jay Albanese, a Virginia Commonwealth University professor and organized crime expert, who characterized the current crackdown as “a continuation of the government's effort of the past 25 years.''

Bruce Maffeo, a former federal mafia prosecutor, said he applauds Holder's “continued attention to the problem of organized crime. They are building on the success of prior administrations.'

“These cases will have a significant impact on La Cosa Nostra's day-to-day operations,'' Maffeo said.

In the Philadelphia indictment, the defendants were charged with crimes spanning more than a decade, including running an illegal electronic gambling business that supplied video poker machines and other devices to bars, restaurants and coffee shops.

The arrests followed charges in January against 127 people from seven East Coast organized crime families. That case produced the largest coordinated arrest, involving more than 800 law enforcement officers, in the history of the FBI's mafia crackdown.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/13-arrested-as-federal-officials-continue-roundup-of-alleged-east-coast-mafia/2011/05/23/AFlTTw9G_print.html

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