A Success In The Drug War

September 1st, 2010

As I looked at Edgar Valdez Villarreal’s smiling, smug photo in the newspaper this morning, I wondered what his photo might look like a decade from now after he serves his first ten years of what will no doubt be a very long sentence in prison. I suspect the American born drug lord called “the Barbie” by the Mexicans because of his fair complexion and green eyes will not be smiling smugly in future photos.

Villarreal is the third major Mexican drug lord killed or captured in less than a year. Mexican President Felipe Calderon has been roundly criticized for pursuing an aggressive war against organized crime and the cartels in the face of escalating violence that has claimed an estimated 28,000 lives. But what, I ask, is the alternative?

Calderon could just ignore the cartels and the massive flow of drugs into the U.S. Before he decided enough was enough, Mexico was well on its way to becoming the next Somalia, a country controlled by warring, well-armed gangs and corrupt government officials. Earlier this week, 72 immigrants were murdered on their way to the U.S. by the Zeta drug cartel. Human trafficking has become an additional source of income for the drug cartels, as they grow more desperate for money to fund their operation. Yesterday, a firebomb killed eight people in a bar in Cancun. The owner of the bar had refused to pay extortion money to the Zetas. If the violence continues to expand into tourist areas such as Cancun, Mexico’s economy could suffer a devastating blow.

Colombia, under the leadership of former President Alvaro Uribe and newly elected President Juan Manuel Santos, has pursued a similar strategy against the FARC and the Colombian cartels. As a result of these security policies, Marxist guerrillas are on the run, kidnappings have been reduced, and the economy is on the rebound.

Rather than ignoring or aggressively pursuing the cartels, Former Mexican President Vicente Fox has joined with those urging Calderon to legalize drugs in Mexico, saying that could break the economic power of the country’s brutal drug cartels. Calderon has agreed to open the door to discussions about the legalization of drugs, even though he remains opposed to the idea.

The Mexican government spends about $8.2 billion annually on law enforcement. It’s estimated that it would save between 5 percent and 15 percent of GDP if narcotics were legal in all countries. But those savings fall to as low as 1 percent if drugs were legalized only in Mexico. Ultimately, all countries, including the U.S., would have to legalize and regulate the drug trade. It’s extremely unlikely that will happen.

And so Calderon is left with little choice but to aggressively challenge and pursue men like Villarreal. The violence and deaths will continue, but my guess is, the drug lords who have managed to avoid killing or capture are not smiling now.

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Roger Clemens’s Final Pitch

August 24th, 2010

Seinfeld was one of my favorite shows, and George Costanza one of my all-time favorite fictional television characters. George had many great lines but one of the best is when he said, “Jerry just remember, it’s not a lie if you believe it.” I can’t help but think of that line whenever I hear Roger Clemens vehemently denying that he ever used Performance Enhancing Drugs.

Last Friday’s six-count indictment reported by the New York Times alleges that Clemens obstructed a congressional inquiry with 15 different statements made under oath, including denials that he had ever used steroids or human growth hormone.

It’s difficult to understand why Clemens insisted that he’s innocent of the charges and then voluntarily went before Congress when he was not under subpoena. Perhaps it was because Clemens had been prominently mentioned in the Mitchell Report, Major League Baseball’s own accounting of its steroid problem. Former Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, the top Republican on the House panel at the time of Clemens’ testimony, called it “a self-inflicted wound.”

So why would Clemens testify under oath and risk jail time by continuing to insist that he’s innocent and didn’t lie to Congress. Why reject a plea offer Federal prosecutors made, which probably involved admitting to a crime while avoiding a multiple-count indictment? Why not just plead guilty to making misleading statements to committee investigators regarding his knowledge of performance-enhancing drugs like Miguel Tejada did? Tejada got one year of probation and is still playing in the major leagues with the San Diego Padres.

Perhaps, like far too many famous athletes, Clemens ego is so large, he actually has convinced himself that he didn’t take steroids and that his accomplishments are strictly due to his skills, dedication and training.

While Clemens faces a possible combined maximum sentence of 30 years in prison and a $1.5 million fine if he’s convicted, U.S. sentencing guidelines recommend a range of time between 15-21 months.

In the end, Clemens may not face any jail time, but something far worse for a man with his large ego. Once a sure-fire candidate for Baseball’s Hall of Fame, Clemens may face the same fate as Pete Rose, who for years denied that he gambled on baseball before finally admitting that he had. Rose is still waiting for his Hall of Fame induction.

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Deficits and Drugs

August 15th, 2010

November 2, 2010 is the date of the mid-term elections. It’s also a date that may signal the beginning of a major change in our drug laws. While fourteen states and DC have enacted laws legalizing medical marijuana, if Proposition 19 passes in California, it will be the first U.S. state to legalize the drug.

Legalizing marijuana appears to have broad support in the state, with 51% to 56% of Californians surveyed in various polls saying they favored making marijuana legal for social use and taxing the sales proceeds to help bail out the cash-strapped state.

Those supporting the measure assert that banning marijuana has contributed to an increasingly deadly underground economy run by brutal drug cartels that have cost billions in scarce law enforcement resources and made criminals out of countless law-abiding citizens. Those opposed to the measure worry about increased drug usage and impaired driving crashes and say the social costs far outweigh the money it would bring in.

Under the initiative, simple possession of an ounce or less of marijuana, currently a misdemeanor offense punishable by a $100 fine, would be legal for anyone at least 21. It also would be lawful to grow limited amounts in one’s own home for personal use. While sales would not be legalized outright, cities and counties could pass laws permitting commercial distribution subject to local regulations and taxes. Retail sales would still be limited to an ounce for adults 21 and older.

Despite our decades long battle against the cartels and traffickers, the U.S. still has some of the highest rates of drug use in the world, and more than a quarter of its prison inmates are behind bars for drug-related offenses. Mexico’s U.S. backed war on drugs has left more than 28,000 people dead since December 2006. Recently, former Mexican President Vicente Fox said Mexico should consider legalizing the production, distribution and sale of drugs in order to “break the economic structure that allows the mafias to generate huge profits in their business.”

It is truly ironic that government budget deficits largely created by anti-drug politicians may lead to the legalization of marijuana in California. And its passage may spearhead a national movement toward decriminalizing the drug in states across the country.

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Justice for Some

August 2nd, 2010

Last Thursday’s ruling by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals striking down Minnesota’s rules barring judges or judicial candidates from personally accepting campaign money or from endorsing political candidates has added another nail to the coffin of impartial justice.

The appeals court said there are protections against the influence of money such as allowing judges who receive campaign contributions from people appearing before them in their courtrooms can remove themselves from the case. But federal courts have consistently struck down rules limiting political speech by those seeking seats on the bench. And the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations now have the same rights as individuals.

The circuit court ruling will soon turn judicial campaigns in Minnesota into the same ugly partisan contests that we have seen in states that have opened the judicial campaign floodgates like Wisconsin, our neighbor to the east. Allowing judges to seek campaign contributions will sever the few remaining threads holding our system of equal and impartial justice together.

Confidence and trust in our elected public officials has pretty much bottomed out. The overwhelming majority of people in the country believe our elected officials are bought and paid for and are in Congress strictly to serve their own moneyed interests. But losing confidence and trust in our judiciary could lead to more dire consequences.

Lobbyists and special interests will support judges they think will rule in their favor. Negative attack ads will proliferate as money pours into judicial coffers, much of it from outside the state. The huge influx of dollars will lead to an even greater explosion of big money into judicial races in this state and in others. It’s a never-ending cycle that has already led to obscene amounts of money being spent on political races.

Minnesota has elected its judges since 1857 and has had a reputation for fair and impartial justice. Given the recent circuit court ruling, the states last and best hope to preserve its untainted justice system, may be to drop its system of electing judges. Many judges currently run unopposed now.

The legislature has begun work on a constitutional amendment that would make all judicial seats appointed, subject only to what is known as “retention election.” Voters would only be allowed to decide whether judges had done a good enough job to keep their seats.

The rich and powerful can already buy the best lawyers. Let’s not allow them to buy the judges as well.

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The Grim Sleeper

July 12th, 2010

The recent arrest of Lonnie Franklin Jr. may have finally brought an end to the serial killer who targeted African American women known as the Grim Sleeper. Franklin had avoided LAPD police for 25 years. Franklin is believed to be responsible for at least 11 murders and one attempted murder in Los Angeles since 1985. He was called the “Grim Sleeper” because he apparently took a 14-year break from his crimes from 1988 to 2002. Franklin has been charged with ten counts of murder and one count of attempted murder.

Franklin had several run-ins with the law over the years, yet his DNA was never logged into the criminal database. It was only after Franklin’s son 31 year old Christopher John Franklin was arrested and ordered to submit a DNA profile that the connection to Lonnie Franklin was made. Detectives used a piece of discarded pizza with Franklin’s DNA to make the link.

But Franklin’s arrest raises an interesting question regarding the use of DNA.

As James Fox, Professor of Criminology, Law, and Public Policy at Northeastern University, pointed out on his Crime and Punishment blog, “Privacy concerns raised by the use of familial DNA to crack the Grim Sleeper murders may create significant problems for the prosecution, should a defense attorney challenge the evidence. Laws permit the collection and storage of DNA data on certain convicted offenders for use in potentially linking future crimes to these same criminals, but not to their blood relatives who happen to have a similar genetic profile. This is not so much a concern for the slippery slope of privacy invasion, but a case of legal quicksand.”

DNA offender database policy is rapidly changing in states. All 50 require that convicted sex offenders provide a DNA sample, and states are increasingly expanding these policies. To date, 47 states require that all convicted felons provide a DNA sample to the state’s database. At least 15 states include certain misdemeanors among those who must provide a DNA sample. DNA databases in all states today are connected to the National DNA Index System, which is run by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for federal and state information sharing.

While lawmakers and police agencies would like to expand the use and scope of the DNA database, the ACLU believes DNA data is different from photos and fingerprints of suspects and violates the U.S. Constitution’s ban against unreasonable government searches and seizures.

Last May the U.S. House overwhelmingly passed the “Katie Sepich Enhanced DNA Collection Act of 2010,” which increases federal funding for DNA testing. Sepich, 22, was raped, strangled and set on fire near her New Mexico home in 2003. DNA recovered was matched three years later to a career criminal when his DNA was entered into the national database after his conviction. This enhancement to “Katie’s Law” — under which DNA is tested in all felony arrests — would increase funding by 5 percent to 10 percent for states to conduct DNA testing and help reduce the backlog of DNA testing.

It would be a real tragedy to see Franklin’s case thrown out of court over issues of DNA collection if he is, in fact, a serial killer. Expect to see more lawsuits filed challenging the growing use of DNA as Congress and politicians seek to expand the scope of the database.

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The Iron Pipeline

July 1st, 2010

Recently, the Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper ran a series of investigative reports about Paul Giovanni de la Rosa, the son of a former Mexican diplomat and a U.S. citizen living in the small town of Medford, Minnesota. Giovanni de la Rosa was arrested by the ATF at the Mexican border and charged with smuggling 31 firearms to drug cartels in Mexico over a two year period. He had purchased the firearms at a Cabela’s sporting goods in Owatonna, Minnesota.

According to the federal Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, there are roughly 54,000-licensed gun dealers in the U.S., nearly 7,000 of them along the U.S./Mexican border. In Mexico there is only one. Run by the Mexican army, it’s located in Mexico City and is called the “Directorate for Arms and Munitions Sales.” Anyone wishing to purchase a firearm in Mexico must obtain a permit from the army, which can take months to get. Citizens can buy only one handgun. It must stay inside the home where it’s registered and it can’t be larger than a .38 special. Owners who want to transport their firearms outside their homes need a permit that must be renewed annually. Hunting and sport rifles can be transported, but they are also heavily regulated. There are also limits on how much ammunition buyers can purchase each month, where they can take the gun, and who they can sell it to.

It’s estimated that roughly 7,000 to 8,000 firearms are sold legally in Mexico each year and that includes sales to private security firms. Yet in 2009, Mexican authorities seized almost 30,000 weapons, primarily from the drug cartels. Close to two-thirds of the firearms seized in Mexico were sophisticated rifles and assault weapons — AK-47s, R-15s, .50-caliber Barretts.

So if Mexico has some of the toughest gun-control laws in the world, yet the country’s drug cartels are armed to the teeth with illegal weapons, where could all those sophisticated firearms be coming from?

While some weapons certainly come from other countries, it seems obvious to those with any common sense that U.S. citizens like Paul Giovanni de la Rosa are smuggling weapons over the border into Mexico along the “iron pipeline” and selling them to drug cartels.

Lobbyists from the NRA argue that strict gun laws in Mexico have done nothing to prevent criminals and drug cartels from obtaining firearms and have left the average citizen in Mexico defenseless. But one is left to wonder if the U.S. had the same restrictive gun laws as Mexico, would 30,000 illegal weapons, many of them assault rifles, be in the hands of drug cartels.

According to the Los Angeles Times, drug-related violence has led to as many as 22, 700 deaths in Mexico since the start of 2007. That’s more deaths than U.S. fatalities in the Iraq War.

Arresting and prosecuting gun smugglers like Paul Giovanni de la Rosa must continue, but it will not stop the carnage. It appears that neither the Supreme Court nor Congress has the stomach for challenging the NRA by restricting U.S. gun sales. Perhaps, the U.S. needs to take another approach and rethink our failed drug policies. But that’s another discussion.

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Death Penalty

June 20th, 2010

Ronnie Lee Gardner’s death by firing squad last Friday was the first time in 14 years that an American inmate was executed by firing squad — a method Gardner choose over lethal injection. Utah essentially banned firing squads in 2004 but allowed Gardner to choose his method of execution since he was sentenced before the state ban. Gardner was the third man to die by firing squad since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. He was sentenced to death in 1985 for fatally shooting an attorney during a failed escape attempt from a Salt Lake City courthouse. At the time, he was facing a 1984 murder charge for the shooting death of a bartender.

Interestingly, the attorney’s family opposed the death penalty and asked for Gardner’s life to be spared. Relatives of the bartender lobbied the parole board to reject Gardner’s request for clemency and a reduced sentence. Those opposing points of view regarding the death penalty are reflected in polling data.

According to Gallup, the percentage of Americans in favor of the death penalty has fluctuated significantly since 1936, ranging from a low of 42% in 1966, to a high of 80% in 1994, though public opinion has stabilized in recent years with 65% supporting the death penalty in October 2009.

Given that roughly 2/3 of the country currently supports it, one would assume that the prospect of receiving a death sentence would deter would-be murderers from committing such offenses.  In fact, the murder rate in states that do not have the death penalty is consistently lower than in states with the death penalty.  The South, which carries out over 80% of the executions in the U. S., has the highest murder rate of the four regions. Research conducted by the Death Penalty Information Center from data supplied by the FBI, found that murder rates in death penalty states in 2007 was 42% higher than in non-death penalty states. Statistics from the latest FBI Uniform Crime Report also found that regions of the country that use the death penalty the least are the safest for police officers.

It also costs far more to execute a person than to keep him or her in prison for life. A New Jersey Policy Perspectives report concluded that before the state repealed the death penalty in 2007, it had cost New Jersey taxpayers $253 million since 1983, a higher cost than if the state would have utilized a sentence of life without parole.

80% of experts from the American Society of Criminology, the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, and the Law and Society Association do not believe that the death penalty is a proven deterrent to homicide. Similarly, over 75% of those polled do not believe that increasing the number of executions, or decreasing the time spent on death row before execution, would produce a general deterrent effect. And, surprisingly, a 2004 poll found that 62% of people in the U.S. believed that the death penalty was not a deterrent even though they supported the use of it.

Then there is a growing concern regarding guilt. Thanks to the Innocence Project, as of June 20, 2010, 254 people have been released from prison after new evidence proved they were not guilty, 17 of those inmates were on death row.

So if there are possibly more innocent death row inmates, the majority of research doesn’t support the use of the death penalty, and 62% of the American people do not believe it deters crime, why do states continue to use it? Polling data give us some answers. When asked their feelings about the continued use of the death penalty, 91% of respondents said politicians support it in order to appear tough on crime. However, 75% said that it distracts legislatures on the state and national level from focusing on real solutions to crime problems.

Certainly there’s some satisfaction in seeing a double-murderer like Ronnie Lee Gardner get what many believe he had coming to him. There may be closure for the victim’s family, and there’s an obvious irony in Gardner’s chosen method of execution in that he used a gun to kill both his victims.

Yet, murderers like Gardner rarely think about the possible consequences of their acts. They commit murders largely in the heat of passion, under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or because they are mentally ill. Those who carefully plan their crimes beforehand like the sociopaths often portrayed on television and in the movies figure they won’t get caught.

And so the question remains. Should states continue to use the death penalty?

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One Serial Killer Off The Board

June 9th, 2010

The FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit defines a serial murder as “the unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offender(s), in separate events.”

It is generally estimated that in the United States, there are at least 20 and as many as 50 serial killers actively searching for victims. The term serial killer was coined in the 1970s due to cases such as Ted Bundy and David Berkowitz. According to an FBI Behavioral Unit study, 85% of the world’s serial killers are in America.

While serial killers differ in their motivations for killing and their behavior at the crime scene, there are certain traits common to some serial murderers, including sensation seeking, a lack of remorse or guilt, impulsivity, the need for control, and predatory behavior. Often there is a sexual element to the murders. Serial killers appear normal or charming, and exhibit what is sometimes referred to as the “mask of sanity.”

Most experts agree that serial killers suffer from APD, Antisocial Personality Disorder, a type of chronic mental illness in which their ways of thinking, perceiving situations, and relating to others are dysfunctional. Serial killers typically have no regard for right and wrong and often violate the law and the rights of others, which leads to frequent trouble or conflict. Serial killers often lie, behave violently, and have drug and alcohol problems.

Antisocial personality disorder is sometimes known as sociopathic personality disorder. It’s also sometimes referred to as psychopathy. Psychopathy is a personality disorder manifested in people who use “a mixture of charm, manipulation, intimidation, and occasionally violence to control others, in order to satisfy their own selfish needs.”

The FBI believes that serial killers select their victims based upon availability, vulnerability, and desirability. Availability is explained as “the lifestyle of the victim or circumstances in which the victim is involved, that allow the offender access to the victim. Vulnerability is defined as the degree to which the victim is susceptible to attack by the offender. Desirability is described as the appeal of the victim to the offender.”

As a writer of police procedurals, I’ve both studied and written about serial killers and APD, so it came as no surprise when Joran Van der Sloot admitted that he had murdered business student Stephany Flores in his Lima, Peru hotel room on May 30. Peruvian police reported that he became enraged when he caught Flores looking up information about the Natalee Holloway case on his laptop and questioning his involvement in her disappearance five years ago in Aruba.

In a related story, the New York Post reported that Van der Sloot faces extortion charges in the United States. Citing an unnamed source, the newspaper said the FBI paid Van der Sloot $25,000 as part of a sting operation, which he then used to pay for his trip to Peru. Van der Sloot offered information about Natalee’s disappearance to her mother in return for the money.

I also heard this morning on Caracol, the national television network in Colombia, that police were interested in talking with Van der Sloot about the mysterious disappearance of two young Colombian women who went missing while he was visiting the country.

While we may never know for certain how many women Van der Sloot has killed, it’s satisfying to know that Peruvian police have, at least for now, taken one serial killer off the board.

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Internet Suicides

May 26th, 2010

In March of 2009, the St. Paul PD, the Minnesota Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, and the State Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in cooperation with the Ottawa Police Department began an investigation into the death of an 18-year-old Canadian college student named Nadia Kajouji. Her body was found in a river in Ottawa in 2008, five weeks after she disappeared. Nadia suffered from depression and her death was considered a suicide.

But when Ottawa investigators searched her e-mail, they found that William Melchert-Dinkel, a 47-year-old male nurse in Faribault, Minnesota, had advised Nadia how she could kill herself in an online chat room where people around the world discuss reasons and methods for committing suicide. Transcripts of multiple chat sessions — released by police — allegedly show Mr. Melchert-Dinkel attempting to persuade her to hang herself while he watched; something investigators think didn’t happen.

Police say Melchert-Dinkel was masquerading as a 20-something woman when he befriended Ms. Kajouji. He told her about being depressed for years and that he planned to commit suicide, too. Nadia’s mother believed that the suspect made it sound like a suicide pact.

When I first blogged about this unusual case, prosecutors were looking at state and federal statues and considering specific charges in Nadia’s death. Police were also investigating Melchert-Dinkel’s involvement in the assisted suicide death of Mark Drybrough, 32, who hanged himself at his home in Coventry, England, in 2005.

Police identified Melchert-Dinkel as the man behind the chats in February 2009. But their investigation lasted far longer than they predicted because of jurisdictional and forensic issues. Melchert-Dinkel was finally charged with two felony counts of aiding suicide. The charges cite Minnesota’s assisted suicide statute, a rarely used piece of legislation that provides penalties of up to 15 years’ imprisonment or as much as $30,000 in fines for anyone who “intentionally advises, encourages, or assists another in taking the other’s own life.”

Controversy first surfaced in Nadia Kajouji’s case when it was reported that Carleton College administrators and health officials knew about her deteriorating mental health but declined to tell her parents. A second controversy surrounds the decision by Ottawa police not to charge Mr. Melchert-Dinkel under Canada’s assisted suicide law, which is virtually identical to Minnesota’s.

In his first court appearance yesterday, a judge ordered Melchert-Dinkel to stay off the Internet and forbade him from leaving the state except for work assignments related to his job as a long-haul trucker, a career he took up after his nursing license was revoked.

Some legal experts contend that the charges against Melchert-Dinkel will be difficult to prove despite the evidence. But the case does raise some interesting legal questions. In particular, should individuals who use the Internet to harass, bully, intimidate or encourage others to commit crimes or suicide be prosecuted? What do you think?

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Juvenile Justice

May 18th, 2010

Monday, in a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court limited the practice of locking up juveniles for life when they haven’t committed murder. The court ruled in the case of Terrance Graham, who was 17 when he was implicated in a series of armed robberies and subsequently sentenced to life in prison. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted, even the prosecutor did not recommend life without parole. Justice Anthony Kennedy, who five years ago voted to outlaw the death penalty for killers under 18, wrote the majority opinion.

The Justice Department reported that no 13-year-old has been given life without parole for non-homicides in a decade. The more than 2,000 juveniles who are currently serving life sentences for killing someone were not affected by the court’s ruling.

While life sentences with no chance of parole are unusual for juveniles who have been tried as adults and convicted of crimes other than killing, three-dozen states still allow for the possibility of life sentences. Vermont and Kansas provide statutory provisions for trying children as young as 10 years old in adult criminal court. 60% of juveniles in Florida’s prisons, like Graham, are locked up for life for crimes other than homicide. Pennsylvania has the highest total number of juvenile lifers. Only Alaska, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico and Oregon prohibit sentencing minors to life without a chance for parole.

According to Frontline report, there has been little extensive research into the impact of laws making it easier to try kids as adults. But existing studies indicate that the get-tough approach has had little or no effect on the rate of juvenile crime. Two studies that examined whether trying juveniles as adults resulted in lowered juvenile crime rates found that there was no evidence to support that the laws had the intended effect.

Two additional large-scale studies indicated that juveniles who receive harsher penalties when tried as adults tended to reoffend sooner and more often than those treated in the juvenile system. A 1996 Florida study found that youth transferred to adult prisons had a nearly 30% higher recidivism rate than youth who stayed in the juvenile system. Given the hardcore clientele in most adult prisons, this statistic should come as no surprise.

In a second 7-2 ruling, the court upheld a federal law that allows for the indefinite imprisonment of inmates considered mentally ill and “sexually dangerous,” regardless of whether their sentences have been served. Under the current law, authorities must persuade a federal judge that continued imprisonment is necessary and also must try to transfer prisoners to state control.

The argument before the high court was not whether Graham was innocent or that he was seeking freedom now, but whether he deserved to someday make a case before the state parole board.

So what do you think? Should juveniles be locked up for life without parole for crimes other than murder? And should sex offenders who have served their sentence be released regardless of whether they’re deemed to be dangerous?

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