Most of the stops are of young African American and Latino men. Over 85 percent of the stops are of non-whites. A young African American or Latino is nine times more likely to be stopped than a white person. Yet only seven percent of these stops result in arrests.

Under Terry v. Ohio in order to stop someone, an officer must have a reasonable suspicion that the individual is involved in criminal activity and in order to frisk that person the officer must have a reasonable suspicion that the person is carrying a weapon.

But all too often officers, knowing that they do not have a reasonable suspicion that the young person of color is involved in criminal activity of carrying an illegal weapon stops and frisks the individual any way. Sometimes they do it purely for harassment. Other times they do it because they hope to get lucky and find that the person is either on parole or probation with a search clause allowing the officer to search the individual without a reasonable suspicion of wrong doing. Third world members are often so used to being searched that they consent to what would otherwise be an illegal search. If they consent to the search anything found on them (drugs, guns, etc.) can be used against them in court. And sometimes, to be honest, police write false reports, alleging consent when consent was not given. Knowing that a DA, a judge or a jury is more likely to believe a police officer than a minority youth.

One of the problems with the extraordinary number of searches of minority youth is that they and their families learn not to trust the police. As a result they do not cooperate with officers who are investigating crime and do not reports criminal acts to the police.

Dugard was kidnapped outside her home while she was on the way to school in 1991 when she was 11 years old and held for eighteen years. When she was found she was living in a shack behind the Garrido’s Antioch residence with the two children who were fathered by Phillip Garrido.

Phillip Garrido plead to guilty to kidnapping and thirteen counts of sexual assault. He will be sentenced on June 2 to 431 years to life. Nancy Garrido plead to kidnapping and aiding her husband commit rape . She will be sentence to 36 years. She will be eligible for parole after 31 years in custody at the age of 81.

According to Nancy Garrido’s lawyer Stephen Tapson, it was Nancy Garrido’s desire to plead to save Dugard and her children from the pressure of having to testify that lead to the plea. One might question this because after all these years of being quiet, assisting in the kidnapping and allowing Dugard to be raped why does she care if Dugard has to testify. It certainly sounds self serving. But it is unlikely that the plea is lawyer motivated. Why would anyone agree to what is in effect two life sentences. When your only option is life you may as well throw the dice and go to trial. The only logical explanation is that the Garridos did not wanted the trial and were willing to accept life sentences,

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Following Ninth Circuit precedent it ruled that there is no Federal due process right to parole but that the Federal constitution guarantees that states will follow state derived due process rights. Thus the first question is whether Oregon law guarantees the right to early consideration of parole. Comparing the Oregon law to the laws of California, Montana, and Idaho where the Ninth Circuit has previously found a right to parole, it found that Oregon guarantees a liberty right to parole.

Under Oregon law any inmate with an indeterminate sentence can apply after spending twenty years for early parole. But first the inmate must show by the preponderance of the evidence that he/she is likely to bee rehabilitated within a reasonable amount of time. The State of Oregon argued that by putting the burden on the inmate the state denied early parole as a matter of right. But the Ninth Circuit found that in Oregon. like Montana, Idaho, and California, an inmate has a liberty right to parole if certain precursors are met. In the case of Oregon the precursor is that the inmate is rehabilitatable within a reasonable amount of time.

But the Ninth Circuit upheld the Oregon decision not to grant parole. Miller argued, following Ninth Circuit precedent that the Oregon decision is not supported by “some evidence.” However the Ninth Circuit decision holding that “some evidence” is necessary has been reversed by the Supreme Court which held that it is only necessary for the state to show that it complied with procedural due process. In Swarthout v. Cooke the Supreme Court held that it was only necessary to show that the inmate had a fair hearing and there was no evidence that Miller did not have a fair hearing. As a result the parole denial was upheld.

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only on the ground that he is in custody in violation of the Constitution or laws or treaties of the United States

The Supreme Court has not recognized a Constitutional substantive right to parole. It has ruled that if a states grants inmates a right to parole the state must procedurally provide for the inmate to be heard and the state must provide a statement of the reasons why parole is denied.

California court have ruled that in order to deny parole the state must have “some evidence” that the inmate is unsuitable for parole. Furthermore the state courts have rule that the some evidence standard must be met by current unsuitability. It is insufficient for the parole board or the governor to make a finding of unsuitability based purely on the gravity of the crime.

Damon Cooke was convicted of attempted first degree murder in 1991 and Elijah Clay was convicted of first degree murder in 1978 in California state courts. Both were given indeterminate sentences of seven years to life.

Damon Cooke and Elijay Clay filed writs in Federal Court challenging the Parole Board’s finding that there was some evidence that they were unsuitable. The Ninth Circuit granted both writs and the State appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court in its decision Friday ruled that the Ninth Circuit decisions must be reversed because there is no federal substantive right to parole and therefore Federal courts cannot review state denials of parole on the merits.

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He violated his supervised release and the court revoked the release. It then sentenced him to two years in prison and another year on supervised release. He violated his second supervised release and the court gave him another two years in prison. ²

On appeal he argued that two years was the maximum supervised release for the crime and therefore he could not be given a second two year period.

Prior to 2003 18 USC § 3583(e)(3) stated “that a defendant ‘may not be required to serve more than’ an enumerated number of years in prison based on the class of the underlying offense.” But the PROTECT Act changed the law to read: “that a defendant ‘may not be required to serve on any such revocation more than’ the relevant term of imprisonment for the underlying felony.” The Fifth Circuit ruled that the only possible reason the amendment was to allow courts to was to to give the maximum sentence on each violation without worrying about the aggregate total of violations.

Section 3583(h) states that the court:

may include a requirement that the defendant be placed on a term of supervised release after imprisonment. The length of such a term of supervised release shall not exceed the term of supervised release authorized by statute for the offense that resulted in the original term of supervised release, less any term of imprisonment that was imposed upon revocation of supervised release.

Shabazz interpreted this to mean that the aggregate sentence, for all violations of supervised release could not exceed the maximum sentence for the offence which in this case is two years. But the court held that the limit in the above sentence only affects the maximum that can be imposed for any one violation of the supervised release. Otherwise the 2003 amendment would be meaningless.

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But they will be released this year as a result of an order signed by Governor Haley Barbour suspending the remainder of their sentences. Jamie is suffering from severe kidney disease and needs dialysis on a daily basis. In fact one of the reasons Barbour is granting the release is the high cost of the dialysis. ¹ Well high medical costs are not a good reason to release prisoners ² but sometimes things done for the wrong reason are the right thing to do. Jamie and Gladys would never have been sentenced to life in prison for a juvenile armed robbery if they were middle class and White but they were poverty-stricken and African-American.

One of the conditions of the parole is that Gladys donate a kidney to Jamie. This is not an acceptable reason of parole. Parole conditions should be limited to those which increase the odds of an inmate not reoffending. But in this case it is probably immaterial. Gladys wants to donate the kidney to her older sister in any case. However, the requirement that Gladys donate a kidney raises a number of ethical and legal questions. What happens if the two sisters do not have compatible kidneys? Selling or giving something of value in exchange for a kidney is illegal. Is Barbour trading the remainder of Gladys’ sentence for a kidney? What, if Gladys changes her mind?

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McCullough was convicted for the 1982 murder of John Kukis. Kukis was asleep in his car when Kukis hit him in the head, killing him, in order to steal money to buy drugs. He was sentenced to fifteen years to life. During his early years in prison McCullough had a number of disciplinary actions but eventually he became a model prisoner, earning a GED and a college degree in social work. He learned how to finish furniture and drive a forklift. He went to AA meetings and he volunteered for the juvenile offender deterrent program.

The District Court released him on his own recognizance when it granted his habeas. He immediately got a job for a furniture manufacturing company and has since been promoted to supervisor.

In denying him parole the governor found that “McCullough committed an especially heinous second-degree murder because he preyed upon and bludgeoned a sleeping, unsuspecting, and unthreatening man — ultimately killing him — for the remarkably trivial motive of stealing his money.”

But the Ninth Circuit found that the denial of parole can not be based solely on the convicting offense. It must be based on current dangerousness to the community. Finding that California law grants McCullough a due process right to be released on parole unless there is “some evidence” of current dangerousness the Court denied the State’s appeal. It cited the prison psychologist’s finding that McCullough was less dangerous than the average citizen. It found that a murder 28 years ago did not meet the “some evidence” rule for current dangerousness and it upheld the district Court’s decision.

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After he was indicted Alston moved to suppress the evidence as the fruit of an illegal detention. But at the time of his arrest he was on parole. Conditions of his parole included that he not associate with felons or people involved in crime and that he not change his address or sleep away from his approved residence without approval from his parole officer.

Under Arkansas law, parolees are subject to arrest if a police officer or a parole officer has a reasonable suspicion that the parolee is violating the terms of his/her parole. A reasonable suspicion is considerably less than probable cause. The court ruled that the fact that Oteri said that he was dealing with DA and that Oteri was a convicted felon provided a reasonable suspicion that Alston was associating with a convicted felon. Furthermore, Alston admitted to staying at the hotel, a violation of his parole.

As a result Robie had a reasonable suspicion that Alston was in violation of his parole conditions. Under the Federal Constitution parolees are considered to have waived their Fourth Amendment rights against illegal search and seizure. In any case Groves rented room 416 and she gave the officers permission to search the room.

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Earlier this year the California Supreme Court upheld most of Proposition 83 which included the California version of Jessica’s Law. Jessica’s Law is a Florida law prohibiting convicted sex offenders from living within 2000 feet of a public school, park, or other places that children hang out. But the California Supreme Court held that the residential ban would have to be decided on a case-by-case basis in the local superior courts.

Since the Supreme Court’s decision the lower courts have been inundated with suits claiming that Jessica’s Law unconstitutionally prohibits the plaintiffs from residing in the county. In Los Angeles County, California’s largest 650 suits have been filed. In heavily populated counties there are few if any places that convicted sex offenders can live. In San Francisco the only place sex offenders can legally live is in a parking lot belonging to A T & T Park. The effect of the law is that many sex offenders have been forced to become homeless. Ironically homeless sex offenders are more difficult to keep track of and provide greater problems for police and parole officers. Furthermore there is no evidence that Jessica’s Law prevents children from being molested. Most cases of child molestation are committed by family members. The law makes it more difficult for convicted sex offenders to obtain jobs, maintain family relationships, and get therapy. As a result it increases the likelihood that sex offenders will reoffend and commit other crimes.

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One of the rules prohibits people from filing “second or successive” petitions. In Restucci v. Bender the First Circuit Court of Appeals found that the rule does not apply to petitions alleging deprivations of liberty which could not have been challenged in earlier petitions. William Restucci was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in 1995. This is his third petition for a writ of habeas corpus. In his first writ he challenged the constitutionality of the statute under which he was convicted. The Court considered the writ on its merits and denied it. In his second writ he challenged the competence of his counsel The Court rejected the writ because it was a “Second or Successive” writ in that the issue could have been considered in the earlier writ. Now he has petitioned to be allowed to file a “Second or Successive” writ in order to challenge the denial of parole.

The First Circuit denied the petition, last week, as being unnecessary. Since the denial of parole came after the denial of his previous writs it could not have been considered in either of the previous petitions. As a result, under the AEDPA, it is not necessary for Restucci to file a petition prior to filing his writ of habeas corpus challenging the denial of parole.

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