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California Finds a New Way to Be Soft on Crime

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Elderberry:
Wall Street Journal By Heather Mac Donald 3/4/2024

The Legislature creates a new ‘systemic racism’ defense that risks turning many felons free.

What would happen if lawmakers reinvented the criminal-justice system to target “systemic racism” instead of crime? California is about to find out. Thanks to a 2020 law called the California Racial Justice Act, every felon serving time in the state’s prisons and jails can now retroactively challenge his conviction and sentencing on the ground of systemic bias.

To prevail, the incarcerated prisoner need not show that the police officers, prosecutors, judge or jurors in his case were motivated by racism or that his proceedings were unfair. If he can demonstrate that in the past, criminal suspects of his race were arrested, prosecuted or sentenced more often or more severely than members of other racial groups, he will be entitled to a new trial or sentence.

The Racial Justice Act repudiates a key U.S. Supreme Court precedent governing allegations of criminal-justice bias. McCleskey v. Kemp (1987) held that to defeat prosecution or sentencing under federal equal-protection grounds, a defendant must show that decision makers acted with discriminatory purpose; statistical disparities aren’t enough. The Racial Justice Act establishes a new state cause of action that simply presumes that the justice system is biased, obviating the need to show individual discriminatory intent.

California’s criminal-defense bar is lining up an onslaught of litigation. The 2020 law initially applied only to new prosecutions, and even before the onset of retroactivity at the start of 2024, defense lawyers were demanding that district attorneys provide decades’ worth of records, no matter how tangential to their case, to create statistical claims of bias.

More: https://www.wsj.com/articles/california-finds-a-new-way-to-be-soft-on-crime-systemic-racism-defense-frees-felons-f5282810?st=8govoantm09nspy&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Fishrrman:
Once more... take 30 seconds to read this post put up by me going on 4 years ago:
http://www.gopbriefingroom.com/index.php/topic,407004.msg2241037.html#msg2241037

Who was right?

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