Fact Check: Charges dropped after suspect misidentified in attack on NYPD officers

“Charges against a man initially arrested as a suspect for attacking police officers in New York City were dropped, according to the Manhattan District Attorney, because he had been misidentified as a participant in the January 2024 brawl, not because crime by a “migrant” has “no consequences,” as suggested in social media posts.

Posts on social media, opens new tab shared a photograph showing a 22-year-old Venezuelan man, Jhoan Boada, with captions such as: “The Manhattan DA just dropped all charges against Jhoan Boada, 22, migrant who flipped the bird at photographers following his involvement in a gang attack on the NYPD. No consequences.”

“The Manhattan DA’s office said in an email, citing court documents, that, “After a thorough and diligent investigation, Jhoan Boada has been exonerated as a participant in this assault” and that the complaint against Boada was dismissed.
The DA’s office told the court that another man, Marcelino Estee, had been identified as the person described in the complaint as “wearing the black & white jacket with pink shoes, committing this assault” and that Estee had been charged for his participation.”

https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/charges-dropped-after-suspect-misidentified-attack-nypd-officers-2024-03-13/

Opinion | Why Is Trump Getting Special Treatment From the Supreme Court?

“In recent years, the Roberts Court has shown greater and greater impatience with criminal defendants’ efforts to forestall punishment — even if the outcome would be cruel, needlessly painful or simply unjustified. The effect of this new hostility to delay is most sharply felt in the death penalty context. But a general hostility to foot-dragging in criminal cases is a through line in the court’s docket.
Justice Neil Gorsuch set the tone for this approach in 2019, when he complained that legal challenges to the death penalty were often used to stall or even derail execution. Courts, said Gorsuch, should “police carefully against attempts” to use constitutional challenges as tools to interpose unjustified delay.” In particular, he warned, “last-minute stays should be the extreme exception, not the norm.”

The court has since followed Gorsuch’s lead with an unsavory relish. Before 2020 and the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, it was common for the Supreme Court to grant stays to hear legal questions that arose at the last stage of a capital case. Since then, it has only granted two such stays. In the same period, it has also vacated nine stays on death sentences imposed by lower courts.

The result has been predictable: Many of the convictions the court has let stand are plausibly described as “riddled with errors.” And in January, the court declined to hear a challenge to Alabama’s novel use of nitrogen gas to execute Kenneth Smith. Witnesses described Smith’s resulting death as horrific — extended and torturous — and not at all painless as the state promised.

The same is true of federal prosecutions. In the last half of 2020, the court stepped aside as the federal government sprinted to execute 13 people — as many as had been killed in the previous six decades. Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted that the court “repeatedly sidestepped its usual deliberative processes” to enable an “expedited spree of executions.” In its haste to see punishment done, the court waved away its usual rules.

Outside the capital punishment cases, the Supreme Court has added more and more constraints upon prisoners’ ability to challenge constitutional errors. Gorsuch and Justice Clarence Thomas in particular have urged that the longstanding right to challenge state court convictions in federal court be effectively gutted. The effect of their proposal would be to streamline even further the criminal justice process — shutting down almost all efforts to raise objections before they had even started.

All this makes the Supreme Court’s decision to hear Trump’s appeal for absolute immunity from all criminal charges even more unusual, and troubling.

Start with the weakness of Trump’s argument. There is absolutely no constitutional text, no precedent and no authority in the original debates over the Constitution’s ratification to support the idea for a former president’s absolute immunity. The argument advanced by Trump’s counsel is patently absurd. The idea that senators could impeach a president who threatened them with deadly violence and so no criminal justice process is needed, is facetious. The District of Columbia Court of Appeals rightly ridiculed it — and issued a comprehensive, tightly reasoned and unanimous opinion that presented no good cause for further review.

Trump is within his right to appeal the decision, but there’s no good reason for the Supreme Court to take it up and review it as a matter of law — especially given how thorough the D.C. Circuit was.

In fact, the court’s erstwhile concern with “unjustified delay” in criminal cases would seem to cut hard against hearing the case. It is, after all, a matter of common knowledge that the former president’s legal strategy is to run out the clock and thus prevent a trial prior to the election. Here then is a case where justice delayed may well be justice derailed.

Indeed, the grounds for the court rejecting Trump’s request to take up the immunity question appear much stronger than in Kenneth Smith’s challenge to the use of nitrogen gas. If Smith had been successful, Alabama could have found another, permissible way to kill him. If Trump’s trial is delayed enough, it may never happen. If Trump is back in the White House, he can easily quash the Justice Department’s case.

The Supreme Court’s attention, moreover, is a precision good. In the court’s 2022-23 term, the court issued just 58 decisions. Given that this scarce commodity is so infrequently used to prevent the miscarriage of criminal justice, the question must be asked: Why now? And why for this defendant?

There is no good answer. It is hard to see any legally sound reason why the Supreme Court should have decided to step in to hear Trump’s implausible and constitutionally destructive claim for absolute criminal immunity — especially when it has refused to hear so many other criminal defendants’ far more meritorious claims.”

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/02/29/trump-special-treatment-supreme-court-00144138

The Supreme Court just handed Trump an astonishing victory

“The Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that Trump’s DC criminal trial, the one concerning his attempt to steal the 2020 presidential election, must be delayed for at least another two months. The Court already effectively delayed his trial for an additional two and a half months in an order handed down last December.
This order is a colossal victory for Trump, and could potentially allow him to evade criminal responsibility for his attempts to overthrow the 2020 election altogether. Trump’s goal is to delay his trials until after Election Day. Should he prevail in that election, he can then order the Justice Department to drop all federal charges against him.

Trump was able to secure such an order from the justices by exploiting the fact that the federal judiciary ordinarily does not allow two different courts to have jurisdiction over the same case at the same time. So, when a party to a lawsuit or criminal proceeding appeals a trial court’s decision, the trial court often loses authority over that case until the appeal is resolved.

The ostensible reason for the Court’s order putting the trial on ice is that the Court needs that time to consider a weak appeal challenging a ruling by Judge Tanya Chutkan, the judge presiding over his DC criminal trial.

According to Trump, the Constitution forbids any prosecution of a former president for any “official acts” he engaged in while in office. The implications of this argument are astounding, and Trump’s lawyers haven’t exactly tried to hide them. During one court hearing, the former president’s lawyer told a judge that Trump could not be prosecuted even if he had ordered “SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival,” unless Trump were also impeached and convicted by the Senate.”

“Yet Trump has now, with Wednesday’s ruling, leveraged this ridiculous legal argument to delay his DC trial for at least four and a half months, and the delay will likely extend much longer because the Court will need time to produce an opinion. The Court will hear oral arguments in late April.

Simply put, Wednesday’s order is a disaster for anyone hoping that Trump may face trial before the November election. And, because the nominal reason for this order is to give the justices more time to decide if the president is completely above the law, this decision raises serious doubts about whether this Court can be trusted to oversee Trump-related cases in a nonpartisan manner.”

https://www.vox.com/scotus/2024/2/28/24086046/supreme-court-donald-trump-sabotage-delay-dc-trial-judge-chutkan

How the nation’s capital became an outlier on violent crime

“In 2020, during the pandemic and after the murder of George Floyd, homicide and violent crime across the US soared. The number of murders that year represented the largest increase since the FBI began formally tracking national statistics in 1960.
But 2023 was different: Across the spectrum, violent crime and homicide dropped significantly from their 2020 peak, and murders fell more than 12 percent in cities, according to the FBI’s latest crime report. Last year saw “one of the lowest rates of violent crime in the United States in more than 50 years,” Jeff Asher, a crime data analyst, writes.

There were exceptions: In Memphis, Tennessee, murders skyrocketed in the 12 months following the killing of Tyre Nichols by city police, and in Shreveport, Louisiana, they jumped by more than 37 percent. But no other city has experienced a crime surge — or the accompanying national scrutiny about its meaning — like the nation’s capital has.

DC saw its deadliest year in more than two decades, with 274 people killed and a homicide rate that makes it among the deadliest cities in the country. Violent crime also spiked nearly 40 percent in the nation’s capital, driven largely by a surge of armed robberies and carjackings, many of them perpetrated by kids. The city reported more than 950 carjackings in 2023, and shocking news coverage about teen carjacking rings rattled residents and people who worked there.”

“DC’s lack of statehood partly explains why its criminal-legal system is more complicated. Most cities have local government and law enforcement agencies that operate in conjunction with state and federal law enforcement, but the District of Columbia, because of its status as a federal district, has a much more complex, overlapping system of agencies and offices.”

“Amid rising crime last year, city leaders passed emergency legislation last summer handing more power to police and prosecutors to go after people suspected of committing violent crimes; the council is working on a larger public safety bill that would expand upon last year’s legislation. In describing the turn from police reform efforts toward expanding powers for law enforcement, Mayor Muriel Bowser told the Washington Post late in 2023 that “the pendulum is swinging back to the middle.”

Other major cities that enacted police reforms post-2020 didn’t see rising violence like DC did in 2023, making it less likely that any recent legislative changes are directly responsible for the violent crime surge. Research shows that when it comes to preventing crime, certainty of getting caught is a greater deterrent than severity of punishment — and the city has serious challenges catching those who commit certain violent crimes.”

“DC faced its largest police shortage in roughly 50 years in 2023, after being unable to meet its recruitment targets or keep pace with attrition. While the city isn’t alone in struggling with staffing shortages, police in the city are also arresting far fewer people than they used to.”

“the arrests in DC declined the most in areas where violent crime surged. In another analysis of police staffing in early 2023, DC Crime Facts also found that police weren’t deploying heavily in areas where crime was rising the fastest, raising questions about whether there were enough police focused on the “hot spots,” areas where crime is more likely to happen. Decades of research shows that targeting hot spots is an effective strategy for significantly reducing crime.”

https://www.vox.com/cities-and-urbanism/24055029/washington-dc-crime-rate-homicides-republican-democrats

No, Blocking Traffic Is Not Protected by the First Amendment

“freedom of expression is crucial and central to the American project. It’s also not a force field by which people are shielded from other rules. If I want to get people’s attention by, say, driving 120 miles an hour while sporting a Palestinian flag, I cannot tell the officer who pulls me over for reckless driving that I’m simply exercising my free speech rights. The First Amendment does not give carte blanche to violate the law.”

https://reason.com/2024/01/26/no-blocking-traffic-is-not-protected-by-the-first-amendment/

Police are solving fewer crimes. Why?

“” the murder clearance rate fell from above 60 percent in 2019 to just 52 percent in 2022.””

“Asher also points out that 2020 began an exodus of officers leaving law enforcement. “The majority of big cities had fewer officers in 2022 than they did in 2019,” Asher says. “If you have fewer officers, you have fewer resources to dedicate to solving crime, which means lower clearance rates. And we do have lots of research that shows that.””

https://www.vox.com/2023/12/23/24012514/police-crime-data-solve-rate-eddie-garcia-today-explained

Cocaine, cartels, and corruption: The crisis in Ecuador, explained

“Ecuador, according to its president Daniel Noboa, is now “in a state of war.” Earlier this week he had announced a state of emergency after the leader of one of the country’s top two gangs escaped from prison. The following day, armed gang members stormed the TC Television news program, broadcasting their hostage-taking and violence live to make an announcement of their own.
It was far from the only act of shocking violence the country has suffered this week.

In what appeared to be a coordinated campaign Tuesday — and one with a brazenness that recalled Mexico’s cartels in the mid-2010s, or worse — armed men stormed hospitals, businesses, and universities. Prisons were taken over in violent riots, bombs were set off in multiple locations, and police and prison guards were kidnapped and murdered. At least 10 people were killed in gang attacks, including police, and over a hundred prison staff were taken hostage.

It may seem like an inexplicable turn for Ecuador, a country that many experts, including Felipe Botero, a program head at the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime, told Vox used to be an “island of peace” in an often-troubled region.

But this turn to violence in an upper-middle-income country of 18 million didn’t happen overnight.

While there are factors that accelerated a spike in crime over the last couple of years, experts say this is a story nearly a decade in the making. Ecuador’s security crisis is the product of years of growing impunity enjoyed by gangs, the influence of transnational crime groups, shifts in global cocaine consumption, and, above all, increasing institutional corruption.

That means even with President Noboa’s promised military crackdown, this chaos won’t be solved overnight.”

https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2024/1/11/24034891/ecuador-drugs-cocaine-cartels-violence-murder-daniel-naboa-columbia-crime

Was the Capitol Riot an ‘Insurrection,’ and Did Trump ‘Engage in’ It?

“Trump’s misconduct included his refusal to accept Biden’s victory, his persistent peddling of his stolen-election fantasy, his pressure on state and federal officials to embrace that fantasy, the incendiary speech he delivered to his supporters before the riot, and his failure to intervene after a couple thousand of those supporters invaded the Capitol, interrupting the congressional ratification of the election results. All of that was more than enough to conclude that Trump had egregiously violated his oath to “faithfully execute” his office and to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.” It was more than enough to justify his conviction for high crimes and misdemeanors in the Senate, which would have prevented him from running for president again.”

“”At oral argument,” the opinion notes, “President Trump’s counsel, while not providing a specific definition, argued that an insurrection is more than a riot but less than a rebellion. We agree that an insurrection falls along a spectrum of related conduct.” But the court does not offer “a specific definition” either: “It suffices for us to conclude that any definition of ‘insurrection’ for purposes of Section Three would encompass a concerted and public use of force or threat of force by a group of people to hinder or prevent the U.S. government from taking the actions necessary to accomplish a peaceful transfer of power in this country.”
That description suggests a level of intent and coordination that seems at odds with the chaotic reality of the Capitol riot. Some rioters were members of groups, such as the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, that thought the use of force was justified to keep Trump in office. But even in those cases, federal prosecutors had a hard time proving a specific conspiracy to “hinder or prevent the U.S. government from taking the actions necessary to accomplish a peaceful transfer of power” by interrupting the electoral vote tally on January 6. And the vast majority of rioters seem to have acted spontaneously, with no clear goal in mind other than expressing their outrage at an election outcome they believed was the product of massive fraud.

They believed that, of course, because that is what Trump told them. But to the extent that Trump bears moral and political responsibility for riling them up with his phony grievance (which he does), his culpability hinges on the assumption that the rioters acted impulsively and emotionally in the heat of the moment. That understanding is hard to reconcile with the Colorado Supreme Court’s premise that Trump’s hotheaded supporters acted in concert with the intent of forcibly preventing “a peaceful transfer of power.”

Nor is it clear that Trump “engaged in” the “insurrection” that the court perceives. After reviewing dictionary definitions and the views of Henry Stanbery, the U.S. attorney general when the 14th Amendment was debated, the majority concludes that “‘engaged in’ requires ‘an overt and voluntary act, done with the intent of aiding or furthering the common unlawful purpose.'”

Trump’s pre-riot speech was reckless because it was foreseeable that at least some people in his audience would be moved to go beyond peaceful protest. Some 2,000 of the 50,000 or so supporters he addressed that day (around 4 percent) participated in the assault on the Capitol. But that does not necessarily mean Trump intended that result. In concluding that he did, the court interprets Trump’s demand that his supporters “fight like hell” to “save our democracy” literally rather than figuratively. It also notes that he repeatedly urged them to march toward the Capitol. As the court sees it, that means Trump “literally exhorted his supporters to fight at the Capitol.”

The justices eventually concede that Trump, who never explicitly called for violence, said his supporters would be “marching to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” But they discount that phrasing as cover for Trump’s actual intent. Given Trump’s emphasis on the necessity of “fight[ing] like hell” to avert the disaster that would result if Biden were allowed to take office, they say, the implicit message was that the use of force was justified. In support of that conclusion, the court cites Chapman University sociologist Peter Simi, who testified that “Trump’s speech took place in the context of a pattern of Trump’s knowing ‘encouragement and promotion of violence,'” which he accomplished by “develop[ing] and deploy[ing] a shared coded language with his violent supporters.”

That seems like a pretty speculative basis for concluding that Trump intentionally encouraged his supporters to attack the Capitol. Given what we know about Trump, it is perfectly plausible that, unlike any reasonably prudent person, he was heedless of the danger that his words posed in this context.”

“The Colorado Supreme Court’s belief that Trump intentionally caused a riot also figures in its rejection of his argument that his January 6 speech was protected by the First Amendment. The relevant standard here comes from the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1969 decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio, which involved a Klansman who was convicted of promoting terrorism and criminal syndicalism. Under Brandenburg, even advocacy of illegal conduct is constitutionally protected unless it is both “directed” at inciting “imminent lawless action” and “likely” to do so.

The Colorado Supreme Court quotes the 6th Circuit’s elucidation of that test in the 2015 case Bible Believers v. Wayne County: “The Brandenburg test precludes speech from being sanctioned as incitement to riot unless (1) the speech explicitly or implicitly encouraged the use of violence or lawless action, (2) the speaker intends that his speech will result in the use of violence or lawless action, and (3) the imminent use of violence or lawless action is the likely result of his speech.”

It is hard to deny that Trump’s speech satisfies the third prong, which is why it provoked so much well-deserved criticism and rightly figured in his impeachment. But what about the other two prongs?

Applying the first prong, the court cites “the general atmosphere of political violence that President Trump created before January 6” as well as the “coded language” of his speech that day. As evidence of the “specific intent” required by the second prong, it notes that “federal agencies that President Trump oversaw identified threats of violence ahead of January 6.” It also cites what it takes to be the implicit message of Trump’s speech and his reluctance to intervene after the riot started.

“President Trump intended that his speech would result in the use of violence or lawless action on January 6 to prevent the peaceful transfer of power,” the court says. “Despite his knowledge of the anger that he had instigated, his calls to arms, his awareness of the threats of violence that had been made leading up to January 6, and the obvious fact that many in the crowd were angry and armed, President Trump told his riled-up supporters to walk down to the Capitol and fight. He then stood back and let the fighting happen, despite having the ability and authority to stop it (with his words or by calling in the military), thereby confirming that this violence was what he intended.””

https://reason.com/2023/12/21/was-the-capitol-riot-an-insurrection-and-did-trump-engage-in-it/