Bookmarks:
The Edward Nero trial • Hate speech is normally protected. • Homophobia? No: hoax. • Police brutality not as you’d expect • The Carlie Trent kidnapping • Mass incarceration: the facts

———— ♦ ————

The Edward Nero trial

Thursday 2016-05-19

Prosecutors to test novel legal theory in trial of officer charged in Freddie Gray case

Under these circumstances, I don’t see how a conviction can possibly obtain.

Monday  2016-05-23

Officer acquitted on all charges in Freddie Gray case

———— ♦ ————

The heckler’s veto again

Michigan evangelicals win free-speech case tied to anti-Muslim protest

Under the law, the police duty was to protect these obnoxious people from the increasingly hostile crowd their hate speech had inflamed.  The police erred in, instead, insisting that the hate-speakers leave.

Everything would be different if the festival were held on private property, where in fact the First Amendment does not apply.  And I would certainly hope that, if the festival is still being held from year to year, the organizers have moved it to a private venue.  In such a case as that, the private property owners would have the right to expel these troublemakers — or anyone else, for that matter — immediately.

Previous post: “Heckler’s veto” update

———— ♦ ————

Pastor admits he lied about a Whole Foods incident that caused a public outcry

———— ♦ ————

Officers in two states suspended after violent arrest caught on video

Richard Simone

———— ♦ ————

9-Year-Old Carlie Trent is Found Safe, Her Uncle is in Custody

Bottom line: this has been a very troubled family for a very long time.

As is often the case, in these cases.

Related:  Caitlyn Virts, Relisha Tenau Rudd amber alerts
Related:  An incredible story

———— ♦ ————

The facts about “mass incarceration”

I don’t know what “mass incarceration” means. I have opined before that incarceration at all is, in general, a tremendous waste of money; that probably 70% of those locked up pose no threat to public safety; inmates in general have no motivation to mend their ways; and for true career criminals, the prospect of incarceration is no deterrent to crime.

So, in short, as for my own opinions, most people in jail shouldn’t be.

Other folk have other ideas about why so many people are locked up. They are, in many cases, quite mistaken. These two articles by German Lopez provide, in effect, an X-ray as to who’s locked up, and where, and why. They are tremendously enlightening.

Why America incarcerates people, in one chart
Mass incarceration in America, explained in 22 maps and charts

In particular, those locked up for drug offenses form a much smaller portion of this population than is commonly believed.  A large mass are in there for violent offenses.

Now, there may be some overlap.  Progressives normally want to blame the majority of lockups on the “war on drugs,”  but the “war on drugs” was motivated by a perceived surge in violent drug-related crimes.  Lopez’s charts do not tease out how many of the violent offenses were drug-related.

Originally posted 2016-05-23.