RUTHFULLY YOURS

In the aftermath of last month’s shooting of Saheed Vassell, a mentally ill man menacing Brooklyn pedestrians with a tool that looked like a gun, Chirlane McCray conceded that “New Yorkers are right to ask if their city is doing enough to support [those] struggling with severe mental illness.” The answer is “no.” Continued tragedies prove that Mayor Bill de Blasio’s signature mental-health plan, ThriveNYC, is not helping those with the most serious mental illnesses.

The mayor and his wife have boasted about committing more than $850 million in funding over four years to ThriveNYC, which launched in 2015, but New York’s mental- health commissioner, Gary Belkin, admitted last year that just $165 million had been allocated to those with serious mental illness. Belkin has failed to specify how those funds were spent. In 2015, de Blasio also announced NYC Safe, a program specifically intended for the seriously mentally ill, who use a disproportionate amount of hospital or police services. But the city has published little data on the initiative other than to say that it is a small program, budgeted at $22 million a year.

In 2015, police received 150,000 calls about “emotionally disturbed persons,” or EDPs. In spite of, or perhaps because of, the mayor’s focus on the problem of mental illness, that number is now up to 165,000 calls. The mayor’s misallocation of mental- health spending has made police officers the first responders to incidents of acute mental illness, putting cops in the precarious position of negotiating with unstable individuals, who may be violent and irrational. These situations can be dangerous for everyone involved: of the 3,523 assaults on NYPD officers in 2016, 18.3 percent resulted from encounters with EDP. Last year, one of these encounters led to the death of Officer Miosotis Familia, shot by a schizophrenic man who had stopped taking his medication. And by offloading responsibility for dealing with the seriously mentally ill to the police, the city also puts patients at risk. Though the NYPD responds to the majority of EDP calls successfully and humanely, almost half of the department’s 501 Taser deployments in 2016 were in response to EDPs.

Criminal justice cannot be reformed unless there is serious bail reform. Minor offenders who cannot post bail must remain in prison until sentencing, and the length of that unendurable wait is often longer than the sentence which will ultimately by handed down. Men and women waiting for a hearing and sentencing lose jobs, leave families. Something requires change…..rsk
Criminal justice reform is returning to political prominence, thanks to Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, one of its most ardent advocates. Ordinarily, that might be good news. But once again, the legislation at issue is so badly flawed that passage would cost taxpayers billions, yield little in the way of public safety or relief for the federal prison system and—at least according to liberal prison reformers—little reform.

The House Judiciary Committee, in a rare burst of bipartisan energy, last week passed the latest rendition of this recurrent theme. In an unusual non-party line 25-5vote, HR 5682, a watered-down version of legislation that has been kicking around Congress for several years, advanced toward consideration by the full House. Supporters hope the bill—which is also known as the FIRST STEP Act—will have a vote in the next couple of weeks.

HR 5682 would require the Federal Bureau of Prisons to provide more resources to reduce the likelihood of recidivism and ease reentry of prisoners back into society. A companion bill was introduced in the Senate but has yet to be taken up by the Judiciary Committee. A very different bill, encompassing a considerably wider array of reform, did pass the Senate Judiciary Committee several months ago over the objection of five Republican members.

The current bill has, not surprisingly, a wide list of supporters and opponents. To try to gain supporters, some of the most objectionable provisions of older legislation were left out and several new provisions added. Kushner has been able to secure White House backing, but Attorney General Jeff Sessions strongly opposes it. Several libertarian right-of-center groups, including those controlled by the Koch brothers, are strong supporters, while a number of left-wing groups, including the ACLU, People for the American Way and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human rights strongly oppose the legislation because it doesn’t go far enough.

You’ve heard that prosecutors have so much influence over grand juries that they can “indict a ham sandwich.” An embarrassing moment for Special Counsel Robert Mueller occurred in court the other day when the lawyer for one of the three Russian companies he indicted had some bizarre news for the judge.

The Daily Wire:

U.S. Magistrate Judge G. Michael Harvey asked Eric Dubelier, one of two lawyers representing the accused Russian company, Concord Management and Consulting LLC, if he was representing a third company listed in Mueller’s indictment.

What about Concord Catering?” Harvey asked Dubelier. “The government makes an allegation that there’s some association. I don’t mean for you to – do you represent them, or not, today? And are we arraigning them as well?”

“We’re not,” Dubelier responded. “And the reason for that, Your Honor, is I think we’re dealing with a situation of the government having indicted the proverbial ham sandwich.”

“That company didn’t exist as a legal entity during the time period alleged by the government,” Dubelier continued. “If at some later time they show me that it did exist, we would probably represent them. But for purposes of today, no, we do not.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Judge T.S. Ellis has expressed skepticism about the scope of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. “What we don’t want in this country is . . . anyone with unfettered power,” Judge Ellis, who is to preside over the trial of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, told prosecutor Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben May 4. “So it’s unlikely you’re going to persuade me that the special prosecutor has unlimited powers.”

Judge Ellis is right to be skeptical. Mr. Mueller’s investigation has crossed a constitutional line, for reasons the U.S. Supreme Court made clear in the 1988 case Morrison v. Olson. That case is best known for Justice Antonin Scalia’s powerful lone dissent arguing that the post-Watergate independent counsel statute was unconstitutional. But Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s opinion for the court, while upholding the statute, set forth limits that the Mueller investigation has exceeded.
U.S. Chief Justice William Rehnquist in 1990. Photo: Cynthia Johnson/Getty Images

At issue is the Constitution’s Appointments Clause, which provides that “principal officers” must be appointed by the president with the Senate’s consent. Rehnquist wrote that independent counsel Alexia Morrison qualified as an “inferior officer,” not subject to the appointment process, because her office was “limited in jurisdiction” to “certain federal officials suspected of certain serious federal crimes.”

Mr. Mueller, in contrast, is investigating a large number of people and has already charged defendants with many different kinds of crimes, including—as in Mr. Manafort’s case—ones unrelated to any collaboration between the Trump campaign and Russia. That’s too much power for an inferior officer to have. Only a principal officer, such as a U.S. attorney, can behave the way Mr. Mueller is behaving. Mr. Mueller is much more powerful today than any of the 96 U.S. attorneys. He is behaving like a principal officer. CONTINUE AT SITE