RHDefense: The Law Office of Rick Horowitz
Home of Probable Cause: The Legal Blog with the Really Low Standard of Review
Today’s Fresno Bee carries the story that Coalinga — a foothill town on the west side of the Valley, more than an hour or so from Fresno — is praying for prisoners. Scrambling to keep its doors open.
It’s important that Coalinga finds more prisoners. And fast.
This is the kind of story that should make ordinary human beings sick to their stomachs.
By now, only those living under rocks are unaware that governments — local, state, and federal — are running out of money. Anyone who has studied history could have predicted this would happen, but studying just about anything in the United States these days is disfavored.
We are, frankly, a nation of idiots. And, for some reason, we’re actually proud of that, which makes the writing of blog articles pointing out these problems even more discouraging for me.
Meanwhile, there are some people, including the Pew Center, writing some reports that really stink.
Without ever having served any time in one, I cannot call myself an expert on prisons. But I suspect I know something more about them than the average person. I’ve visited more than a few throughout California in my work as a criminal defense attorney. I know that prisons are considered by inmates to be better than jails. I know this because I’m currently representing a prisoner in a habeas case, which has required him to be transported from the prison in Coalinga to Fresno and he has made it clear he would much rather be in the prison.
From what I’ve seen, while prisons are better than jails, prisons suck.
Last week, I sat in a courtroom – so far as I can tell, the only courtroom – in Corcoran, California, waiting for my case to be called.
Corcoran is apparently a small, scared, little hick town full of frightened citizens. I came to this conclusion because of the little man who sat near the front of the courtroom, next to his court-appointed attorney who was, with loud, booming voice, questioning a woman who looked like a deer caught in the headlights. I realized later she held this look because, like so many officers of the state – she was apparently a guard at the local prison – she was trying to make sure the answers she gave to the defense attorney’s probing questions did not help his client, or hurt (what turned out to be) her case.
Some of you will wonder why this article is going to start off, in a minute here, by talking about and quoting from comments made at so-called “town hall meetings” regarding Obama’s health care plan. Is this blog “going political” or something?
There are actually two answers to that, the most simplistic of which is “no.” Although, in a way, this blog is unavoidably political: the legal system is, at bottom, the reification of the politics of a given jurisdiction — or to be more honest about it, it is the reification of the politics of those who have the power over the legal system, such that they can reify their political views in a concrete system of law. But I really want to save that discussion for another post. At any rate, it must be admitted that, on the one hand, this blog has always been political.
On the other hand, this blog does focus on the legal system; it is my “professional” blog and I am an attorney. We don’t typically think of discussions of the law as being political discussions, per se. This post will maintain a focus on the legal system; not health care. In that sense, then, this post is not a sign that the blog is “going political.”
The most I will say about Obama’s health care plan is that I’m not a socialist. But, again, that particular issue is for discussion for another post and, with respect to Obama and/or political footballs like health care plans, for another blog.
On page one of today’s San Francisco Chronicle, above the fold, is another article concerning California’s prisons. If I did the math right, California’s prisons hold 7.2% of the nation’s prisoners, which currently number about 2.29 million. (Today, with more than two-and-a-quarter million prisoners, the United States has the world’s highest documented incarceration rate. Even with its supposedly-high level of political oppression, China is number two with only 1.5 million. The United States holds just 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s incarcerated population.)
Why so much?
The Law Office of Rick Horowitz provides criminal defense services
in Fresno, Tulare, Kings, Kern, Madera and Merced Counties.
Political Lies & Propositions 34/36
It’s pretty close to the day that we vote on a number of propositions for this year’s ballot. About a week ago, I wrote a post on Proposition 34, the initiative which will hopefully bring an end to the death penalty. Then, as now, I was spurred to the writing by reading the inimitable Jeff Gamso.
But today, I want to come at Proposition 34 from a different angle — and to include some discussion of Proposition 36, which would reform one of the most hideous pieces of legislation on California’s books. Proposition 36, for those who are unaware, deals with the so-called “Three Strikes” law, which was approved because, as they say, “hard cases make bad law.”
And now we have a chance to fix both the death penalty, and Three Strikes, as well as a few other things all in one election.
[Read more...]