RePath Round Up--New Rules in Chicago
Plus Satoshi down under, magic spells and the law, and the feds that hate terrier mix type dogs
Safe in SAFE-T Act: Cook County Illinois is changing the way it deals with pre-trial release after the no-cash bail SAFE-T Act has been in place for a year. Now, prosecutors must seek pre-trial detention for anyone accused of certain crimes, particularly violent offenses, domestic violence cases, and sex offenses or crimes against children. A report from Loyola University found that Cook County had previously sought detentions at a much lower rate than the rest of the state. While many counties sought detention in well over half of the eligible cases, Cook County had only sought detention in 26% of the eligible cases. The new policy will dramatically increase that number for the County and the State overall and will also provide more consistency in detentions sought for similarly charged cases.
He did it for the likes: Despite his repeated claims, Australian businessman Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto (the creator of Bitcoin). Wright has been falsely claiming to be creator of the Bitcoin white paper for years and even tried to sue Jack Dorsey’s company Block for $1.2 trillion over the claim. He lost that suit and has been ordered to serve one year in prison in Britain over his persistent false claims. Opposing lawyers say he keeps pursuing the false claims to “keep his cultish supporters engaged.”
San Francisco Cares: In October 2023, San Francisco ramped up a new “CARE” court (Community, Assistance, Recovery, and Empowerment) that was designed to help defendants with specific types of mental illness. The court was to be a model for other counties and expected to serve 1,000-2,000 eligible participants with the $4.3M in external funding. The program enrolled 8 participants in the first month and appears to have only received 47 total referrals over the past 14 months. Health officials have been unwilling to say how many individuals have actually enrolled in the program and have provided no known updates to elected officials or the press. Statewide, 58 CARE courts have opened in California as of this month.
Technically, he was in the jail: There’s probably not a nice way to say it so . . . CNN aired a dramatic segment with a Syrian prisoner who had disappeared (along with 130,000 others) during Assad’s brutal reign and was only found and freed as a result of last week’s Syrian revolution. But, as many actual prisoners were freed and desperate families combed the prisons looking for loved ones, it appears that CNN’s subject was actually an infamous intelligence officer, torturer and extortionist working in the jail for Assad. The original report is still up at CNN (now with a correction) and serves as a remarkable piece of propaganda (now known as misinformation).
Ignorantia juris non excusat: “Ignorance of the law is not an excuse” is a legal doctrine that is thousands of years old and is still in place across the globe. If a law is broken, it’s not an excuse that the accused either didn’t know about it or didn’t understand it. A study from MIT reveals that the laws are actually designed not to be understood. The reason: “Just as “magic spells” use special rhymes and archaic terms to signal their power, the convoluted language of legalese acts to convey a sense of authority.” So the laws don’t make sense because people writing them and interpreting them want to sound smart.
Please take a moment to consider the most important court case in the world. On December 6, 2024 the United States government filed a forfeiture lawsuit against maybe 2 or so dogs: Behold: The United States of America v. Approximately Two Terrier Mix Type Dogs.
Incarceration in the Old Line State: The Maryland Equitable Justice Commission has issued 18 recommendations to reduce incarceration rates. These include ending non-safety-related traffic stops, mandating cognitive behavioral therapy training for all police officers in the state, amending the training requirements of judges to ensure that their decisions are supported by knowledge of implicit bias, cultural competency, adolescent brain development, and trauma, eliminating school attendance requirements for justice-involved youth, and developing and adopting a sentencing pilot using a needs-based approach.
Meanwhile, Baltimore police are frustrated with the revolving door for juvenile offenders who are back on the street the next day after carjacking and other serious arrests.
Stranger Stuff
Still need that money: A Philly man who was awarded $4.1M after serving 24 years for a murder he says he didn’t commit has pleaded guilty to killing a man for $1,200.
You might hate it, but is it a hate crime?: A woman’s complaint about a neighbor’s dirty underwear hung on a washing line in North Wales was recorded as “non-crime hate incident” by police because the neighbor was Italian and something about a soccer, sorry football, match.
Gotham: New York City has revived its local conditional release program to reduce the jail population from Riker’s Island. In perfect NY fashion, they kept the name from the prior commission which was shut down in a wave of corruption that included an inappropriate release of a state senator convicted of taking bribes for state contracts.
Rideshare/Walletshare: A fake Uber driver in Arizona stole over $300,000 of crypto from passengers by asking to borrow their phones for directions and then draining their crypto wallets.
We’re the three best friends that anyone could have: Sam Bankman-Fried, Luigi Mangione, and Sean "Diddy" Combs are all being held in the same Brooklyn jail.
