Seventh Circuit Weighs in on Crime-Lab Evidence

seventh circuitThe Supreme Court was not the only court wrestling this week with the admissibility of crime-lab evidence.  A day after the Justices heard oral argument in Briscoe v. Virginia, the Seventh Circuit decided United States v. Turner (No. 08-3109).  Both cases put into question the vitality of Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, 129 S. Ct. 2527 (2009).

A jury convicted Turner of selling crack to an undercover police officer.  The drugs were sent to the Wisconsin State Crime Laboratory, where they were analyzed by a chemist named Hanson, who confirmed that they were indeed crack.  The government intended to call Hanson to testify to this effect, but she went on maternity leave before the trial.  So Hanson’s supervisor, Block, was summoned instead.  Based on Hanson’s notes and data, Block testified that he agreed with her conclusion that the drugs were crack.

On appeal, Turner argued that Block’s testimony violated Melendez-Diaz. 

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New Study Adds to the Debate Surrounding Ideological Divides and the United States Supreme Court

Democrats Republicans boxingThe New York Times published an article detailing the results of a new study regarding the career paths of former United States Supreme Court clerks.  The study finds that “former clerks have started to take jobs that reflect the ideologies of the justices for whom they worked.”  The data collected show a shift in the career paths of clerks hired from 1990 and on:

 Until about 1990, the study shows, there was no particular correlation between a justice’s ideological leanings and what his or her clerks did with their lives.

 Clerks from conservative chambers are now less likely to teach. If they do, they are more likely to join the faculties of conservative and religious law schools. Republican administrations are now much more likely to hire clerks from conservative chambers, and Democratic administrations from liberal ones. Even law firm hiring splits along ideological lines.

It is no secret that the justices have shown a greater propensity to hire clerks that share their ideological beliefs (as the article and previous studies explain).  Yet this newest study, which focuses on life post-clerkship, has alarmed those already worried about the strong ideological splits on the Court.  Says law professor William Nelson of NYU, “It’s cause for concern mainly because it’s a further piece of evidence of the polarization of the court.”

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Incarceration Nation

PrisonDespite the increasingly audible calls for changes in policy, we should not lose sight of the extent and nature of imprisonment in the United States.  As of 1975, only .01% of the population was imprisoned, but the percentage has grown every year since then and now stands at almost .05%.  We as a nation have the dubious distinction of reporting the highest per capita imprisonment figure in the world.  What’s more, American prisons are no longer geared to rehabilitating inmates.  Instead of educating and training inmates, prisons for the most part simply warehouse them.

These developments do not derive from increases in crime or from the widespread commission of more serious crimes.  Instead, the increase in the number of inmates and the use of warehouse-style incarceration are attributable to such policies as quicker revocation of probation and parole, mandatory sentences for certain crimes, three strikes legislation, and truth-in- sentencing laws.  Often, these policies come into play for drug-related offenses and are part of the larger “war on drugs.”

Noam Chomsky contends, “In the United States the drug war is basically a technique for containing populations internal to the country and doesn’t have much to do with drugs.”  Chomsky has in mind the urban underclass, which is disproportionately but not exclusively made up of members of minority groups.  Middle and upper class Americans have come to see the underclass as dangerous and almost inherently criminal and are comfortable with warehousing larger and larger numbers in order to maintain social control.  Chomsky suggests the contemporary imprisoning of large numbers of poor men and women is an American variety of “social cleansing.”

As harsh as Chomsky’s comments might seem, law professor Jonathan Simon might take the critique one step further.  In his book Poor Discipline, Simon argues that mainstream Americans perceive inmates as a type of “toxic waste” and take those who run our jails, prisons, and penitentiaries to have the nasty task of “waste management.”  How troubling is to see our nation traveling down this fundamentally dehumanizing path.

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