Violence in the Heartland, Part III: City Trends

In earlier posts (here and here), I have explored state-level violence trends since 1960 in the seven midwestern states of Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin.  This post focuses on the data from the largest city of each of these states.  Since Chicago does not report its rape numbers in conformity with FBI standards, it is omitted from the analysis.

Here are the city trends since 1985 (reported violent crimes per 100,000 residents):

city data

What stands out most is the very wide, persistent gap between Detroit at the top of the chart and Des Moines at the bottom.  

Continue ReadingViolence in the Heartland, Part III: City Trends

Wisconsin Adopts the Uniform Trust Act

On December 14, following the signature of Governor Scott Walker, Wisconsin trust law took on a dramatically new look when 2013 Wisconsin Act 92 took effect.  This act adopted the Uniform Trust Code, with minor modifications, as the law of the Badger state.

Introduced into the legislature on November 4, after almost a decade of study, the proposed revision of the state’s trusts laws sailed through both the Senate and the Assembly with very little opposition.

The Uniform Trust Code (UTC) was promulgated by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws in 2000 with the intention of being a vehicle that would both update and standardize the law of trusts in the United States.  It was subsequently modified in relatively minor ways in 2001, 2003, 2004, and 2005.

The model code was enthusiastically received by many in the legal community, and it was quickly endorsed by the American Bar Association, the ABA Section on Property, Probate and Trust Law, and the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP).  Wisconsin’s adoption now raises to 27 the number of jurisdictions that have enacted the model statute since 2000 (26 states and the District of Columbia).

Many states have made their own modifications to the model act, and while this is true for Wisconsin, the Wisconsin changes appear to be relatively minor, especially compared to a state like Virginia which made significant modifications.

In regard to Wisconsin’s neighbors, the UTC has been adopted in Michigan, but not in Minnesota, Iowa, or Illinois.

Although the sudden adoption of the UTC by the Wisconsin legislature in December caught many observers, including this writer, by surprise, there has long been wide-spread agreement that the Wisconsin law of trusts, which was last significantly modified in 1971, was particularly thin and somewhat out of date.

The primary effect of the new statute will be to modify the “default rules” that apply when trust instruments fail to provide a complete answer to the question of what rules govern the trust.  In that regard, the new code makes it easier to modify or terminate trusts and to replace trustees.  It also creates greater flexibility in regard to issues of trust management, including the transfer of assets from one trust to another.

The new act also devotes an entire article to revocable trusts, the use of which has skyrocketed in recent years.  It does not appear to affect the application of Wisconsin’s unique Rule against Perpetuities.

It will, of course, likely be several years before the full range of effects of the new code will be appreciated.

Continue ReadingWisconsin Adopts the Uniform Trust Act

“The Past Is a Foreign Country” — Or Is It?

dean bookI’ve recently finished reading Dean Strang’s fascinating new book, “Worse Than the Devil: Anarchists, Clarence Darrow, and Justice in a Time of Terror.”  The book recounts the story of a once-famous (or infamous) criminal case that was tried in Milwaukee nearly a century ago.  The case arose from a short, armed skirmish between police and residents of Milwaukee’s largely Italian, working-class Bay View neighborhood in September 1917. In the wake of that violence, police indiscriminately arrested dozens of Italian immigrants, ultimately resulting in the trial of eleven suspected anarchists in November 1917 on charges of assault with intent to murder.

America’s recent entry into the First World War had already created a public atmosphere that was hardly favorable to immigrants and political dissidents, but a terrible local tragedy may have wiped out any remaining hope that the defendants would receive a fair trial.  Just days before the jury was selected, a bomb exploded in a Milwaukee police station, killing ten — America’s single greatest loss of officers in the line of duty before 9/11. Although the Bay View defendants were not formally charged with this crime — indeed, the case was never solved and no one was ever formally charged — the bombing was widely believed to be the work of the defendants’ supporters.

Little wonder that all of the defendants were convicted on a dubious conspiracy theory in a trial that reeked of pro-prosecution bias from start to finish.  

Continue Reading“The Past Is a Foreign Country” — Or Is It?