Saturday, May 16, 2015
Mythos and Logos in the Culture of American Criminal Justice
For those who have been asking about my successful doctoral dissertation, you can read it here. Comments and criticisms are most welcome, either here or by email to me at sperolappas@gmail.com.
Monday, October 6, 2014
On October 6, 2014, I had the pleasure of addressing Professor Scott Foulkrod's Evidence class at Harrisburg University. The PowerPoint of my lecture is available here. Other materials relating to the New Jersey Supreme Court decision in State v. Henderson and the Pennsylvania Advisory Committee Report on Wrongful Convictions are also available by clicking at their links.
Thursday, September 11, 2014
Materials from September 12, 2014 CLE: Confidential Informants and Preliminary hearings
On September 12, 2014, I had the pleasure of addressing the meeting of the Pennsylvania Association of Criminal Defense lawyers on the topic of defending state court felony drug cases. Materials from that presentation are available at the following links.
Powerpoint presentation.
Public Policy Analysis of Incentivized Witnesses
Powerpoint presentation.
Public Policy Analysis of Incentivized Witnesses
Monday, February 13, 2012
The Reasonable Doubter comments on the controversy about Wrongful Convictions
Your humble Doubter commented for the Harrisburg Patriot about law enforcement objections to the work of the State Senate Advisory Committee to Study the Causes of Wrongful Convictions. Click here to read the article.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
The Reasonable Doubter on Pennsylvania's Education Funding Cuts
The family that I know the most about — mine — had two parents who didn’t finish grade school, let alone high school or college. They were an immigrant and the child of immigrants and they recognized from their own lack that education was the key to advancement, accomplishment and public service.
The two generations that follow them will have earned nine college degrees, 10 graduate degrees and six terminal degrees. They will include four teachers and professors, two lawyers, three scientists, three successful business owners and a newspaper publisher. They have created jobs, searched for disease cures, served their communities, educated the next generation, explored the secrets of human nature and American history and worked for justice.
This is not offered as a testimonial to my family history, though I am, of course, hugely proud of it. The most remarkable thing about my family’s story is that in America it is not remarkable at all. This country and this state are full of hardworking and inspired parents who sacrifice and strive for their children’s opportunity to learn all that they can learn, succeed in their own lives and then give back to society. Some of these parents can pay the bill for that education. But with tuition, expenses and fees at prestigious colleges amounting to $60,000 per year, most of them can’t.
Those families need, as mine needed, the help of scholarships and college loans to get the job done. Well-funded public schools and universities are indispensable parts of this equation. And yet the state’s proposed 2011 budget would cut $550 million from basic education funding, $271 million from the State System of Higher Education, and reduce funding to Penn State, the University of Pittsburgh, and Temple and Lincoln universities by half.
It is impossible to calculate — yet — how many worthwhile programs will be eliminated, how many deserving students will be denied basic or advanced educations and how much social justice will be eliminated.
President Obama has rightly bemoaned the fact that in a single generation America has fallen from first to ninth place in the proportion of young people with college degrees. In terms of high school graduation rates, we’re ranked 18th out of 24 industrialized nations. As recently as 2008, a study published by McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm, found that the achievement gap between American students and their peers in other countries costs our national economy as much as $2.3 trillion.
On a more concrete level, consider this: The burglar whom you fear might invade your home at night and the mugger whose footsteps behind you on a darkened street make you walk a little faster are probably not highly trained craftsmen or Ph.D. scholars. Education might not be the only cure for poverty, and poverty might not be the only cause of crime, but the correlations cannot be disputed.
A Northwestern University study has found that one in 10 male high school dropouts is in jail or juvenile detention. The societal costs for each high school dropout are estimated at $292,000.
Gov. Corbett’s budget proposal recognizes this connection with an unfortunate linkage — while education funding decreases, prison funding increases. The budget for the Department of Corrections would go up $12 million, and the funding for prison expansions includes $68.5 million to add another 1,260 beds to the state prison system. Local and county prisons are not part of these statistics.
The futures of this commonwealth and of America have always been painted with the brushstrokes that illustrate the futures of our children. George Washington became the first president of a country whose Congress had already recognized that education was critical to our civic and economic life by funding public schools with the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. Two hundred and twenty-one years later, Washington’s 43rd successor reached the White House with a scholarship-funded education.
This is not, as many have framed it, a big government versus small government issue. This is about big futures versus diminished futures. Education is not an entitlement to be doled out as a privilege to a select few. Rather, as G.K. Chesterton observed, it is the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.
The two generations that follow them will have earned nine college degrees, 10 graduate degrees and six terminal degrees. They will include four teachers and professors, two lawyers, three scientists, three successful business owners and a newspaper publisher. They have created jobs, searched for disease cures, served their communities, educated the next generation, explored the secrets of human nature and American history and worked for justice.
This is not offered as a testimonial to my family history, though I am, of course, hugely proud of it. The most remarkable thing about my family’s story is that in America it is not remarkable at all. This country and this state are full of hardworking and inspired parents who sacrifice and strive for their children’s opportunity to learn all that they can learn, succeed in their own lives and then give back to society. Some of these parents can pay the bill for that education. But with tuition, expenses and fees at prestigious colleges amounting to $60,000 per year, most of them can’t.
Those families need, as mine needed, the help of scholarships and college loans to get the job done. Well-funded public schools and universities are indispensable parts of this equation. And yet the state’s proposed 2011 budget would cut $550 million from basic education funding, $271 million from the State System of Higher Education, and reduce funding to Penn State, the University of Pittsburgh, and Temple and Lincoln universities by half.
It is impossible to calculate — yet — how many worthwhile programs will be eliminated, how many deserving students will be denied basic or advanced educations and how much social justice will be eliminated.
President Obama has rightly bemoaned the fact that in a single generation America has fallen from first to ninth place in the proportion of young people with college degrees. In terms of high school graduation rates, we’re ranked 18th out of 24 industrialized nations. As recently as 2008, a study published by McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm, found that the achievement gap between American students and their peers in other countries costs our national economy as much as $2.3 trillion.
On a more concrete level, consider this: The burglar whom you fear might invade your home at night and the mugger whose footsteps behind you on a darkened street make you walk a little faster are probably not highly trained craftsmen or Ph.D. scholars. Education might not be the only cure for poverty, and poverty might not be the only cause of crime, but the correlations cannot be disputed.
A Northwestern University study has found that one in 10 male high school dropouts is in jail or juvenile detention. The societal costs for each high school dropout are estimated at $292,000.
Gov. Corbett’s budget proposal recognizes this connection with an unfortunate linkage — while education funding decreases, prison funding increases. The budget for the Department of Corrections would go up $12 million, and the funding for prison expansions includes $68.5 million to add another 1,260 beds to the state prison system. Local and county prisons are not part of these statistics.
The futures of this commonwealth and of America have always been painted with the brushstrokes that illustrate the futures of our children. George Washington became the first president of a country whose Congress had already recognized that education was critical to our civic and economic life by funding public schools with the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. Two hundred and twenty-one years later, Washington’s 43rd successor reached the White House with a scholarship-funded education.
This is not, as many have framed it, a big government versus small government issue. This is about big futures versus diminished futures. Education is not an entitlement to be doled out as a privilege to a select few. Rather, as G.K. Chesterton observed, it is the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
The Reasonable Doubter on the Castle Doctrine
This month's Patriot news column argues against expansion of the Castle Doctrine which allows the use of deadly force without retreat in self-defense. According to the PennLive.com posters, this opinion identifies your humble Doubter as a "liberal coward" who wants murderers to survive their crimes so that he can get rich defending them. What do you think?
Two bills pending before the state’s General Assembly are designed to increase the legal opportunity of Pennsylvanians to kill one another. HB 40 and SB 273 would broaden the poorly named “Castle Doctrine” by legitimizing the use of deadly violence in self-defense, even when the person threatened can avoid all personal risk by simply going someplace else.
These bills celebrate our right to “stand our ground” when faced with danger, and they resonate with the macho imperative that we should not have to run away from bad guys.
They will almost certainly become law; similar bills sailed through the Legislature last year before being vetoed by Gov. Ed Rendell, and Gov. Tom Corbett has reportedly said that he will sign them if they are passed this time. When that happens, it will be an awful day for law enforcement and a perilous time for public safety.
Technically, the bills would change an important part of the law of self-defense — the duty to retreat. Currently, when a person is attacked or threatened with attack he can fight back to protect himself or others: up to the point of killing the attacker. Before meeting deadly force with deadly force, he must try to escape the dangerous situation if he safely can do so.
The law makes a reasonable decision that if one person must flee or another will die, then running away is best. There are exceptions to protect a person who is threatened at home or at work, but aside from that safe retreat is preferred to homicide.
The key word here, of course, is “safe.” If you place yourself at risk by retreating you can stand and fight. There is generally no duty to turn your back on a shooter or to try to outrun gunfire. Superman might be faster than a speeding bullet, but the law recognizes that he is the only one. In the rare and true case of kill or be killed, self-preservation trumps nonviolence. The law of self-defense does not intend to promote suicide.
HB 40 and SB 273 would change these rules by allowing people to oppose deadly force with deadly force whenever they are in any place they have the legal right to be. Streets, stores, shopping malls, houses of worship, hospitals and playgrounds would all become lawful shooting ranges: dueling grounds where mortal combat is favored over the embarrassment of turning tail.
When Gov. Rendell vetoed this legislation last November he said, “I do not believe that in a civilized society we should encourage violent and deadly confrontation when the victim can safely protect themselves.” That seems self-evidently true.
Rendell and others, including prominent police and law enforcement interests, oppose the “shoot first mentality” that this law would foster. Dauphin County District Attorney Ed Marsico has been quoted as saying that “someone can claim self-defense if they shoot someone who looks at them the wrong way.”
These bills and their authors seem little troubled by these public safety concerns. Instead, the language of the bills blithely proclaims that “it is proper for law-abiding people to protect themselves” and that no person “should be required to needlessly retreat in the face of intrusion or attack” outside their home or vehicle.
The battle lines for this debate are drawn close to pro-gun, anti-gun divisions with one sponsor of the Senate Bill quoted as saying “I bust my butt for” the NRA. But this is really not just a gun rights issue, it is an issue complicated by pride and vanity and a misguided notion of what it means to be brave. Running away is weak, and standing your ground is manly. This is a law that would exalt saving face over saving lives.
Pennsylvania and its legislators should be looking for tools to reduce lethal violence rather than finding new ways to glorify its increase. The criminal courts already overflow with the consequence of senseless mayhem, and those of us who work there would prefer not to see it get any worse.
Two bills pending before the state’s General Assembly are designed to increase the legal opportunity of Pennsylvanians to kill one another. HB 40 and SB 273 would broaden the poorly named “Castle Doctrine” by legitimizing the use of deadly violence in self-defense, even when the person threatened can avoid all personal risk by simply going someplace else.
These bills celebrate our right to “stand our ground” when faced with danger, and they resonate with the macho imperative that we should not have to run away from bad guys.
They will almost certainly become law; similar bills sailed through the Legislature last year before being vetoed by Gov. Ed Rendell, and Gov. Tom Corbett has reportedly said that he will sign them if they are passed this time. When that happens, it will be an awful day for law enforcement and a perilous time for public safety.
Technically, the bills would change an important part of the law of self-defense — the duty to retreat. Currently, when a person is attacked or threatened with attack he can fight back to protect himself or others: up to the point of killing the attacker. Before meeting deadly force with deadly force, he must try to escape the dangerous situation if he safely can do so.
The law makes a reasonable decision that if one person must flee or another will die, then running away is best. There are exceptions to protect a person who is threatened at home or at work, but aside from that safe retreat is preferred to homicide.
The key word here, of course, is “safe.” If you place yourself at risk by retreating you can stand and fight. There is generally no duty to turn your back on a shooter or to try to outrun gunfire. Superman might be faster than a speeding bullet, but the law recognizes that he is the only one. In the rare and true case of kill or be killed, self-preservation trumps nonviolence. The law of self-defense does not intend to promote suicide.
HB 40 and SB 273 would change these rules by allowing people to oppose deadly force with deadly force whenever they are in any place they have the legal right to be. Streets, stores, shopping malls, houses of worship, hospitals and playgrounds would all become lawful shooting ranges: dueling grounds where mortal combat is favored over the embarrassment of turning tail.
When Gov. Rendell vetoed this legislation last November he said, “I do not believe that in a civilized society we should encourage violent and deadly confrontation when the victim can safely protect themselves.” That seems self-evidently true.
Rendell and others, including prominent police and law enforcement interests, oppose the “shoot first mentality” that this law would foster. Dauphin County District Attorney Ed Marsico has been quoted as saying that “someone can claim self-defense if they shoot someone who looks at them the wrong way.”
These bills and their authors seem little troubled by these public safety concerns. Instead, the language of the bills blithely proclaims that “it is proper for law-abiding people to protect themselves” and that no person “should be required to needlessly retreat in the face of intrusion or attack” outside their home or vehicle.
The battle lines for this debate are drawn close to pro-gun, anti-gun divisions with one sponsor of the Senate Bill quoted as saying “I bust my butt for” the NRA. But this is really not just a gun rights issue, it is an issue complicated by pride and vanity and a misguided notion of what it means to be brave. Running away is weak, and standing your ground is manly. This is a law that would exalt saving face over saving lives.
Pennsylvania and its legislators should be looking for tools to reduce lethal violence rather than finding new ways to glorify its increase. The criminal courts already overflow with the consequence of senseless mayhem, and those of us who work there would prefer not to see it get any worse.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
In memoriam to a great swordfighter
sierramtb.blogspot.com
“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, champagne in one hand, strawberries in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and screaming ‘WOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE’.” ~Anonymous~
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