How Low Can They Go?

With California's Legislature and Governor hell-bent on passing as much pro-criminal, anti-victim, anti-law-abiding-people, anti-law-enforcement legislation as they possibly can, I have begun to wonder if there is any bottom.  Is there any depth below which they will not sink?  Is there any depth below which the voters will wake up and vote the bums out?

Maybe.  The pro-criminal forces recently sneaked a major change in criminal law through the Legislature by tucking it in to a "budget trailer" bill having to do with funding health programs.  With the sloppy wording that has become so common in pro-criminal legislation, the bill would allow any judge to "divert" any criminal, including murderers and rapists, from prosecution merely upon a finding that the defendant has a mental health diagnosis and that it "played a significant role" in the offense.

The state's district attorneys are, naturally, up in arms.  Mental disorder is a broad category, and it gets broader with each edition of the psychiatrists' manual.  We are presently on the DSM-5; by the DSM-8, I predict, we will all be mentally disordered.  "Significant role" is so broad and vague that it could mean just about anything.

Don't think for a minute that every judge would apply mental health standards with appropriate discretion.  Back in 2005, a federal judge in Connecticut tried to hold up the execution of a notorious serial rapist/murderer because he thought the "diagnosis" of sadism was powerfully mitigating.  See this post.

The outcry is so loud that even Governor Brown may be backing down.  A fix is reported to be in the works to ram through the Legislature in its waning hours.  We'll see.

On another front, the police unions are correctly outraged about a bill that would severely limit the use of deadly force relative to current law and greatly expand the exposure of officers to homicide prosecutions.  We will see if they can get this bill killed.  If not, it will be yet one more reason for anyone seeking a career in law enforcement to leave California and go elsewhere.  And when they are gone, "who ya gonna call?"

How Low Can They Go? curated from Crime and Consequences Blog