Horowitz: FL man released early after heinous child murder charged with grisly murder of Broward woman



"And you shall not corrupt the land in which you live, for the blood corrupts the land, and the blood which is shed in the land cannot be atoned for except through the blood of the one who shed it." —Numbers 35:33

There's a reason why biblical values dictate an "eye for an eye" in murder cases. It's not just punishment, but deterrent as well. For if you release a murderer, you now have blood on your hands for allowing someone with such a uniquely demonic proclivity to murder again. This is now happening all over the country, with "elderly" murderers being released and going on to murder again. The latest case from Florida demonstrates just how weak our criminal justice system is, even in red states.

In 1995, Eric Pierson was convicted of strangling 17-year-old Kristina Whitaker to death just one year after being released from prison for a prior attempted murder charge. At the time, he only served four and a half years for the attempted murder. Fast-forward 25 years, and Pierson was released again and is now, once again, being charged with murder within a year of release. Police say Pierson confessed to stabbing Erika Verdecia, 33, a single mother, four times with a screwdriver on Sept. 25. He confessed to the murder last month, but he was only charged with first-degree murder last Saturday when Verdecia's body was found in a canal near Sunrise, Broward County.

The obvious question is: How does a man convicted of strangling a girl to death after already having served time for attempted murder get released? Well, he was sentenced to 40 years in 1995, but was released September 2020, after serving just 25 years. This is happening everywhere in the country. The craziest thing is that the first victim could have been saved had Pierson served more time. In 1985, Pierson had broken into a home and slit a woman's throat, but was paroled just four and a half years into his 18-year sentence.

It is true that Florida has since updated its truth-in-sentencing laws and currently requires 85% of the sentence to be served; however, this story underscores the problem with good behavior credits across the board. Let's face it, there aren't too many opportunities for an incarcerated man to have "bad behavior." Good time credits have become a joke – a standard formality that is accorded to every single criminal, no matter how heinous and violent his crime was or his risk of reoffending. There is no reason why any part of the sentence should be diminished for murderers. The entire concept of good time credits needs to be reformed and needs to be applied only for lower-level crimes. This is especially true with sentences getting shorter and shorter up front.

Just like with COVID fascism, Republicans in red states have internalized all of the false arguments of the left regarding criminal justice. They claim there are too many people in the prisons and that they need to release even more criminals. But if that is truly the case, then the answer is to build more prisons and actually get tougher on criminals to deter even more of them. Their argument is akin to someone waiting too long to make a left turn onto a busy street and declaring, "I've waited long enough, I'm just going to make the turn anyway."

A recent study from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (table 14) found that among those murderers released from state prison in 2008 and rearrested within 10 years (a majority of them), they served a median of 10 years and 9 months in prison. In other words, aside from not properly deterring other violent criminals, we are not even locking up murderers for that long, and we are clearly paying the consequences. The answer is to execute those convicted of murder to make room in the prisons for other criminals. It is not to release them.

Yet paroling murderers is the new coolness across the country. As Virginia attorney Hans Bader warns, Virginia state Sen. Joe Morrissey (D) has introduced a bill for next year's legislative session that will retroactively reinstate parole for murderers and make them potentially eligible for release after just 15 years. Virginia has already passed numerous pro-criminal bills, including offering generous parole for juvenile murderers. Even Florida Republicans recently passed a bill calling for sweeping expungement of juvenile criminal records, a bill that Gov. DeSantis felt compelled to veto.

This entire movement began with the de facto shredding of the death penalty. "Well, life without parole is just as good." Then they claimed we needed to release "nonviolent offenders." But then when they discovered the obvious — that most of the prisons are full of high-level, repeat violent offenders — they began releasing murderers too. Eventually, a life sentence will just mean a few years behind bars, and those are just among the few who actually get sentenced to life. Which is why the death penalty was always the best way to deal with murder. There is no parole from the grave, just like there are no second chances for the victims of murder.

Horowitz: One of the worst Chicago gang leaders now seeking early release under Trump-passed First Step Act



When Republicans were squandering their trifecta control to pass weak-on-crime legislation in 2018, I warned at the time that those locked up in federal prison on drug charges were mainly gang members responsible for much worse crimes. Now some of the worst gang members in the history of Chicago are applying for early release under the GOP-passed First Step Act. While some of them have been denied by judges, leaving this decision as a crapshoot in the hands of liberal judges is a dangerous game.

Over the July 4 weekend, 22 people were killed and 90 wounded in Chicago's summer of violence. One 20-year-old college student was killed by a stray bullet that smashed through a window while he was sitting on a train. The people responsible for this carnage are mainly those who fit the profile of gang members locked up on RICO or drug charges in federal prison, like former Latin Kings leader Gustavo Colon.

Federal prosecutors don't go after "first-time, nonviolent, low-level" offenders; they go after people like Gustavo Colon. Colon was sentenced to life in federal prison 21 years ago for running a multimillion-dollar narcotics operation. While that is certainly not a low-level drug charge, some might believe that life in prison is too harsh for any drug crime. But that's not really why he was given life in prison; the drug laws were just used as prosecutorial tools.

As WGN-TV reports, Colon served 25 years in state prison for the 1971 murder of Glenn Burr when he was a teen gang member. He was also accused of putting a gun to a girl's head during the gang attack, but the gun failed to fire. "Far from displaying any reluctance or visible effects of intimidation, the defendant fairly reveled in the execution of his victim," the Illinois Appellate Court would later say of Colon's actions. "He fired repeatedly into the body of [the victim], and then casually held the gun to the head of [the young woman], who was spared only because the killer's earlier zeal had emptied the weapon."

While he was in state prison, the feds saw that Colon had risen to the rank of "corona" in the violent Latin Kings and was calling all the hits and murders from behind bars. Of course, he only served 25 years after being sentenced to 30-60 years, and the feds realized in 1997 that they must do something to keep him off the streets. So they convicted him on 20 counts of running a drug operation, and he was sentenced to life.

Fast-forward to this year, and his lawyer filed a motion to have him released under the 2018 bill signed by Trump. "Mr. Colon absolutely deserves this opportunity to finally be out and be with his family and be free after all these years in custody," said Colon's attorney, Gal Pissetzky. "And let us not forget that the crime that he stands convicted of is a drug offense, nothing more or nothing less."

That is the old trick of defense attorneys to obscure and limit the public threat of their clients to merely the pled-down charges of the previous conviction. In reality, the reason why cities like New York and Chicago are like shooting galleries is because of gang bosses like Colon who are now being released or were never even initially locked up, whereas 20 years ago they were taken off the streets. The lawyer argues that he has taken classes in prison and that somehow that means he is not a public threat. To the extent the prison curriculum didn't already consist of things like critical race theory, the First Step Act was so vague that it allowed any "productive activity," defined as a "group or individual activity that is designed to allow prisoners determined as having a low or no risk of recidivating to remain productive," to count as a prerequisite to an application for early release.

Obviously, application for early release doesn't guarantee that Colon will be granted it. Thankfully, a judge recently denied the application of Larry Hoover, a co-founder and former chairman of the Gangster Disciples, calling him "one of the most notorious criminals in Illinois history."

However, this should serve as a reminder as to the types of people serving long sentences in federal prison. And with increasingly more liberal judges, many of them will be released under the First Step Act. According to a 2020 analysis by the Chicago Sun-Times, judges are signing off on the release of career criminals, including top gang leaders, much to the consternation of local prosecutors who are at their wits' end trying to stem the tide of gun violence.

The Sun-Times analyzed 200 cases of early release in Chicago under the First Step Act and found that "more than 60 percent" of those who applied were granted sentence reductions by judges, "including some of the nation's most notorious criminals." At that point in 2020, 75 applications for sentence reduction were granted, 45 denied, and the rest are still pending. As I warned at the time, counting on judges to keep criminals locked up defeats the entire purpose of the mandatory minimums. In the 1960s and 1970s, liberal judges set criminals free left and right, which led Reagan to go on a crusade for tougher sentencing laws.

The only question at this point is how many more lives have to be lost before we put an end to the early release programs and weak sentencing regime. Liberals who control Chicago will only feel pressure once Republicans begin kicking their own addiction to the "empty the prisons" agenda.

Horowitz: Texas judge gives child rapist just 180 days, while forcing a father to get experimental vaccine before seeing his kids



Rape someone else's child? Just 180 days of jail time will suffice. You want to see your own child after divorcing your wife? You can never do that unless you take an experimental gene therapy sold as a vaccine, which according to one doctor may have killed as many as 50,000 people to date. That is essentially the ethos from a pair of court decisions made by Polk County District Court Judge Travis Kitchens this month. The biggest irony of all? The local Fox affiliate reporter who broke these two stories is the same woman who tried to report about the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine and claims she was muzzled by Fox Corp. in doing so.

KRIV-TV reporter Ivory Hecker, who has since been fired, reported last week that Eli Binnion, a child rapist, was sentenced to just 180 days in jail (not prison) for a 2018 rape of a 14-year-old girl in a Polk County, Texas, motel. According to the victim's father, Judge Travis Kitchens didn't even allow the parents to testify at the sentencing hearing. While Binnion was in jail for the rape, he brutally attacked a fellow inmate, breaking his jaw. According to Hecker, "Judge Kitchens gave Binnion a three-year sentence for the assault, and because he's been in jail since 2018, he'll be out in a matter of months."

Binnion also had a prior criminal history of assault and evading arrest prior to the rape. Yet this is someone who is considered "nonviolent, first-time, and low-level" by judges in this era of de-incarceration, even in red states. Polk County was carried by Trump by a net 54 points. During the last judicial election in 2018, there was no Democrat on the ballot. Yet these are the sorts of Republicans who are often serving as judges in the reddest of counties.

Just how liberal is this alleged Republican judge? While he lets child rapists off the hook, he treats fathers like criminals unless they get the mRNA gene therapy. In May, Hecker reported that Judge Kitchens ordered Chris Staley, a father of four going through a divorce, to get vaccinated for COVID before being able to visit his children, ages 6 through 11. The father is more likely to harm his children by infecting them with nearly any other respiratory virus or bacteria, yet Kitchens is making him take an experimental vaccine that is already very problematic.

It's hard to imagine how this order does not run afoul of Gov. Greg Abbott's order barring any state government official from mandating the vaccine. Yet we are seeing all over Texas, most prominently with 117 health care workers at Houston Methodist hospital, people being forced to serve as lab rats. Clearly, the governor and state legislature are not doing enough to protect both civil liberties and public health.

The tragic irony of the forced vaccination regime is that we've known for quite some time that there are cheap and effective therapeutics against COVID that don't come with the risk of side effects. The same reporter, Ivory Hecker, recently made national news when she unexpectedly reported on a live broadcast about the Texas heat wave that the Fox company censored her from reporting about the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine.

Hecker did a sit-down interview with Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe and revealed that KRIV's VP and news director, Susan Schiller, told her to "cease and desist" posting about hydroxychloroquine on social media. She then had multiple stories about the drug that were heavily censored.

"What's happening within Fox Corp is an operation of prioritizing corporate interests above the viewer's interest and, therefore, operating in a deceptive way," she added. "Viewers are being deceived about some of the things that are going on."

Fox 26 Reporter Ivory Hecker Releases Tape of Bosses; Sounds Alarm on 'Corruption' & 'Censorship' www.youtube.com

Hecker has since been fired by the news agency.

The twisted irony is that people like Judge Kitchens are making life-and-death decisions in the form of court orders based on censored information – downplaying any positive news about alternatives to the vaccines, while censoring any negative information about the vaccines. This is just a glimpse into one local newsroom in this country by one reporter. We can only imagine the degree of censorship taking place on issues like crime, race, economy, and illegal immigration all across the country.

Malcolm X once said, "The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses."

And indeed, they influence who is guilty in the eyes of a judge. Because of the media narrative that Judge Kitchens likely consumes, he believes those who don't take the experimental vaccine are guilty and child rapists are somewhat innocent. The media also ensures that the public is not informed about issues like crime and the extent to which we have an under-incarceration problem, not an over-incarceration problem, which allows politicians to promote more leniencies on criminals. The media has made innocent the criminals and guilty the average citizen.

Which is why I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for Judge Kitchens to require the child rapist to get vaccinated before his impending release from jail.

Horowitz: Anarchy! California to release another 76,000 criminals as crime surges and police quit



It's still a mystery to the media why crime is skyrocketing in much of the country, but any sane person knows that when you let criminals back onto the streets, you get more criminal behavior. When you treat the police like criminals, you get less policing. The result is utter anarchy.

Evidently, in California, the only crimes one can commit are not wearing a mask or opening a business against coronavirus edicts. Murder, robbery, or assault? Not so much. The AP is reporting that "with little notice," California decided to increase good behavior credits for 76,000 inmates, "including violent and repeat felons," which will enable them to trim their already diminishing sentences by as much as one third. So much for the promise of only offering more chances to "first-time, nonviolent" offenders. More than 20,000 people serving life without parole – something very hard to achieve in California these days – will be eligible for early release.

The changes were approved as an emergency regulation with almost no public notice. There is an emergency for them to get as many violent criminals as possible out on the streets before the public can protest. The prison population has already dropped by nearly 20% because of coronavirus jailbreak and will wind up being roughly half its level earlier last decade. Just last month, the state announced the closure of a second prison this year because the prison population is dwindling.

Now, is the prison population declining because crime is becoming scarcer? Not a chance. According to Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore, shootings have increased by 73% over the same period in 2020. Motor vehicle thefts are up 20%. Nearly half the shootings, according to Moore, are by gang members, yet District Attorney George Gascón is prohibiting his prosecutors from pushing sentencing enhancements for nearly 20,000 convicted criminals, including gang members.

Not only are there exponentially more criminals on the streets, but the thin blue line that stands between them and the citizenry is getting thinner. A recent survey showed that 40% of LAPD officers are considering quitting.

This comes as police around the country face a surge in retirements. The Philadelphia police department experienced a sevenfold increase in the number of officers being accepted into the city's Deferred Retirement Option Program during the first four months of this year relative to the same time period last year. The NYPD, the largest metro police force in the country, saw a 75% increase in retirements in 2020. 2,600 officers quit and 2,746 filed for retirement, accounting for roughly 15% of the entire NYPD.

The message being telegraphed to law enforcement is that they are the robbers and Black Lives Matter are the cops. What have George Floyd and BLM wrought upon America's major cities? Minneapolis experienced the second highest number of murders on record. Just last week, there were 107 violent crimes reported across Minneapolis, which is nearly double the number during the same week in 2020, before the BLM riots began at the end of May. Carjackings were up 331% last year.

Police now understand that even if they are able to successfully arrest violent criminals and rioters without getting themselves killed or getting prosecuted, the justice system will just let them go. CBS is reporting that District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine is personally informing more than 200 rioters who perpetrated last summer's violent uprisings that they will not be prosecuted and he is requesting a judge to seal their arrest records. In Portland, 92% of those arrested during the interminable rioting have not been prosecuted, and it's unlikely that the remaining suspects will receive more than a slap on the wrist.

The twisted irony is that the woke white liberals whose families are not yet affected by the crime bubble think they are doing black neighborhoods a favor by releasing black criminals, but in fact almost every victim of those crimes will be black. The Daily Mail reports that during the week after the Floyd incident, 80% of the victims in the record number of shootings in Minneapolis were black. As one Minneapolis police officer so depressingly summed it up: "One of us is gonna get killed and nobody cares. And that's what's sad. Nobody cares. Not the citizens, not our brass. Not our administration, not our city. They don't care. They don't care one bit."

The results?

"We're getting fed up. All of us. And there's only a few of us left that really want to work for the city. We're not gonna be here. We're gonna all leave. So this is gonna get worse before it gets better."

Horowitz: Man accused of mercilessly beating Asian woman in Manhattan was paroled after murdering his mother



The nation watched with horror the viral video of yet another black-on-Asian unprovoked beating in New York on Monday. A security camera showed the assailant randomly beating a 65-year-old Asian woman in broad daylight in front of her midtown Manhattan apartment. The man punched and beat her so severely that she remains hospitalized.

NYPD says 65-year-old Asian American woman was walking to church this morning when suspect assaulted her and said “… https://t.co/QEEc7OCPc9
— CeFaan Kim (@CeFaan Kim)1617065525.0

Thankfully, on Wednesday morning the suspect was caught, but his rap sheet once again raises questions about the criminal justice system in New York City.

There is a lot to say about the rash of black-on-Asian crimes (blamed on white supremacism, of course) unfolding on New York's streets and subways similar to the black-on-Jewish attacks in recent years. However, given my focus on criminal justice, my first question is always about the individual's rap sheet. As I've chronicled over the past several years, whenever there is a viral beating in New York City, the suspect invariably had a long rap sheet and was let out on the streets.

Brandon Elliot, 38, who allegedly told the elderly victim, "F*** you, you don't belong here" as he kicked her head on the ground, was arrested by NYPD on Wednesday morning. The New York Post is reporting that Elliot was convicted of stabbing his own mother to death in 2002, but had been paroled in November 2019. If you remember, that was when the city began emptying its jails after passage of several jailbreak bills and implementation of the new de-incarceration agenda. Elliot also had a previous robbery arrest, according to police, and lived at a nearby homeless shelter. Perhaps he was homeless because he killed his own mother.

What could possibly motivate city officials to parole a man like this? Whether he is criminally and violently insane or just a regular violent criminal shouldn't matter. Someone who stabs his mother to death at a young age clearly is irremediably broken and needs to be locked up for life. But this is what happens when both parties spend five years promising to release "low-level, nonviolent" offenders. Everything is now deemed low-level. Evidently, the definition of high-level, violent offenders is only reserved for those caught opening a business without people wearing masks.

What everyone is missing in the rancor of racial debates in this country is that we have violent criminals of all sorts who go undeterred because of the unstoppable jailbreak agenda. Almost every violent random attack is committed by a known criminal offender. I'm sure the man caught on camera brutally beating an Asian man unconscious on a New York City subway the very same day also has a rap sheet. Both cases appear to be black-on-Asian hate crimes, and both incidents reveal the weakness in our society, with not a single bystander intervening. Both of these issues need to be discussed at the societal level. But from a criminal justice standpoint, if we only locked up the violent criminals, we'd prevent a lot of crime – whether it's motivated by hate, greed, insanity, or anything else.

The real question is how many more people like Brandon Elliot are walking the streets, relative to last decade, when we were still locking up the bad guys? Unfortunately, we will only find out the answer after they strike and needlessly victimize more innocent Americans. It must be all that white supremacism in the air.

Horowitz: MN gov paroles child-killer while threatening single mom with prison for opening restaurant



King George has nothing on Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Had Walz been around in the early 1760s, it wouldn't have taken the colonists 13 years to declare independence.

There is no subtlety to Walz's tyranny, and his evils are clearly no longer sufferable. His regime is now threatening to imprison business owners who have no options to feed their families other than keeping their businesses open. At the same time, he is releasing violent criminals, including child murderers, as violent crime consumes the Twin Cities region.

Larvita McFarquhar is America embodied. An African-American single mom with four children to support, Larvita never asked for handouts. She opened Haven's Garden, in Lynd, Minnesota, a family-oriented restaurant with an attached gymnasium for kids to have a good time. She is the ultimate entrepreneur and family woman, but in Walz's Sodom and Gomorrah, she is now a criminal. She had the audacity to pursue the rights spelled out in the Declaration of Independence and kept her business open at great expense with full compliance with all the unscientific distancing restrictions.

The twisted irony is that Walz is all in on the de-incarceration agenda. Just last month, he stated that "incarceration is a failure of the system." But what he really meant was only incarceration for dangerous criminals should be shunned. On Wednesday afternoon, Nathan Hansen, Larvita's attorney, posted on Twitter that "Assistant Minnesota Attorney General Kaitrin C. Vohs filed court documents to have Ms. McFarquhar potentially imprisoned to force her compliance with Governor Tim Walz's executive order."

With so many criminals being released for violating real laws, you know, like not to steal, carjack, or murder, wouldn't "Mr. Anti-incarceration" himself not want lovely people like Ms. McFarquhar to be imprisoned for living a free life? Don't count on it.

What I find interesting is that people are now being criminalized for supporting their families with their own God-given, constitutionally protected property rights. Larvita has no other way to support her family. Despite our government spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the Paycheck Protection Program for small businesses, Larvita told me in an interview on my podcast that she has not received a penny of federal help, a complaint I've heard from nearly all small business owners. What choice does she have?

I can't tell you how many times I've heard virtue-signaling from political elites in recent years that drug traffickers aren't so bad because they have no other way to support themselves. In fact, last year, the Ninth Circuit ruled that cities cannot clean out homeless encampments even when they are blocking public walkways because it violates the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The Ninth Circuit essentially ruled that you can't criminalize something that, in their estimation, is unavoidable in order to live.

As a result, just as the state may not criminalize the state of being "homeless in public places," the state may not "criminalize conduct that is an unavoidable consequence of being homeless — namely sitting, lying, or sleeping on the streets," concluded the court in Martin v. City of Boise. The Supreme Court refused to overturn this extremely novel opinion.

So you mean to tell me there is now an inalienable right to camp out on public streets because it's supposedly unavoidable, but there is no right to earn a living with one's legitimately owned business, even though it is conduct that is an unavoidable necessity of feeding one's family? Courts are now ruling there is a right to homeless encampment and a right to Medicaid, but no right to property, as mentioned in the Declaration of Independence.

Now hold this thought as we move to another Tim Walz news story of the week.

On Tuesday, Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison, as part of the state's Board of Pardons, voted to immediately commute the life sentence of Myon Burrell after he served 18 years for the murder of 11-year-old Tyesha Edwards in 2002. He intended to kill someone else in a gang fight that day, but a stray bullet hit Edwards in the heart while she was in her home doing schoolwork. Burrell's cousin and jailmate testified in 2002 that he confessed to the killing, and Timothy Oliver, the intended victim of the shooting, testified that Burrell pulled the trigger. But, of course, Burrell and his lawyer maintain that he is an innocent man.

Why did Walz release him? The "science" of teenage killers!

"We cannot turn a blind eye to the developments in science and law as we look at this case," said Walz. "We can't shackle our children in 2020," added Walz. "We need to grow as our science grows."

You see, it's all in the science. The science says we can't incarcerate teenage killers. The science says we must declare war on cops and incarceration, which leads to utter terror, fear, and carjackings in Minneapolis. The science says that same-sex couples can biologically impregnate each other. The science says that diners have to dine outside in the zero-degree weather in Minnesota, but outdoor hockey designed to be played in the cold must be canceled. And the science says that business owners are a threat to the public.

Are you starting to see a pattern here?

There is so much crime in Ramsey and Hennepin Counties that they are forced to call in police from surrounding areas. Carjackings in Minneapolis were up 537% this November over last year. According to Neighborhood Scout, "With a crime rate of 42 per one thousand residents, St. Paul has one of the highest crime rates in America compared to all communities of all sizes. One's chance of becoming a victim of either violent or property crime here is one in 24."

What's their response? Ramsey County's prison population shrank by 43% from 2010 to 2019, and that was before the coronavirus jailbreak. Hennepin County has lifted bail requirements for 20 felony-level crimes. Attorney General Keith Ellison, who wants to lock up business owners, joined Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman in that announcement just two weeks ago in which Freeman bragged about the Hennepin County jail population being reduced by over 40% just in the past few months. He said that "we don't want to clog up our jails with persons who are not a threat, so that we have the space and the money to hold violent offenders."

Former Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner told KSTP a few months ago it is not "all that unusual" to have someone with multiple felony convictions who has barely served time behind bars. "We have, in Minnesota, one of the lowest incarceration rates in the country," said Gaertner in response to a story of a seven-time violent convict not serving time. "Right now, we are fourth from the bottom and we put very few Minnesota citizens in prisons compared to the rest of the country."

Yet Ellison's office is now dragging Larvita into Ramsey County court from halfway across the state because she, not the carjackers and the gangs in the Twin Cities, is the problem. She is the one who needs to be in jail because of the same virus that is used an excuse to release carjackers and drug traffickers.

This country is simply not big enough for people like us and people with the worldview of Walz and Ellison.

The preamble of the Minnesota constitution states that the document was established by the people "grateful to God for our civil and religious liberty, and desiring to perpetuate its blessings and secure the same to ourselves and our posterity." At its core, that means using the power to lock up violent criminals while getting out of the way of individual liberty. The opening line of the state constitution states, "Government is instituted for the security, benefit and protection of the people, in whom all political power is inherent, together with the right to alter, modify or reform government whenever required by the public good."

If the governor doesn't submit to the right to liberty, security, and protection, then he must remember the "right to alter, modify, and reform," held by the same sovereign citizens.

Horowitz: Baltimore criminalizes restaurant owners while releasing murderers



What do you call a place that uses a virus to criminalize the opening of schools and restaurants while using the same pretext to release violent criminals? What do you call a place that shuts down dining but leaves open drug markets? We used to call it Sodom and Gomorrah. Today, it's better known as Baltimore.

Welcome to what was formerly Charm City, a place where food is now treated like dangerous drugs and drugs are treated like food. As of Friday evening, Baltimore will be closing all restaurants to indoor and outdoor dining. Churches have already been severely limited in capacity. As if government can control private life and infringe upon constitutional rights. Schools have never reopened in this city full of beleaguered youth, and it has had a mask mandate in place forever.

But there is one activity the city government will not control because it is extremely essential — drug trafficking. Everywhere I walk when I unfortunately have to venture across the city line from my home, I can catch the pungent smell of drugs. The open-air drug markets that are rampant in this dying city are de facto exempt from the royal edicts.

"That hookah bar can wait. That brunch can wait," Mayor Brandon Scott said. "We have to keep our family and the people we love alive."

They just love protecting the sanctity of life … except for victims of drugs and dangerous criminals.

While the mayor is sternly warning business owners that they will be criminalized for living and earning a living — in order to save lives, of course — city officials are using the virus as an excuse to release some of the worst criminals. Recently, there has been a rash of armed carjackings fairly close to my side of Baltimore County. The police, ever careworn and unappreciated, did their job and caught 14 of the perpetrators, most of whom had prior criminal charges that never resulted in jail time. Well, most of them were released immediately because, you know, COVID. It's all in the science.

Now the city's Orwellian prosecutor is studying new "science" that suggests even murderers need to be released. In the ultimate case of the fox guarding the henhouse, Marylin Mosby, the city's prosecutor, hired a public defender on the taxpayer dime to set free some of the people serving the longest sentences in city jails. "Mosby announced Monday that her office would review the cases of men and women older than 60 who served 25 years in prison or more on a life sentence, or those who served 25 years or more for a crime committed before the age of 18," reported the Baltimore Sun. The excuse? They might have medical conditions that make them vulnerable to coronavirus.

Anyone who lives in this city knows that it is nearly impossible to get locked up for a juvenile crime, no matter how violent. If a criminal is serving a life sentence in Baltimore, he is obviously the worst of the worst. So you can take comfort as a Baltimore resident knowing that while Mosby will prosecute you for opening a business, and police for doing their jobs, murderers will be released and drug traffickers will be treated as a protected class. All because … COVID.

According to the Maryland Public Policy Institute, from 2016 to 2018, Mosby dropped 36% of cases for felony possession of a gun, and only 27% of felony possession cases resulted in a conviction. If you were a betting man, would you put money on Mosby prosecuting "violators" of the COVID religion at a higher rate?

All over the country, we are seeing the criminalizing of life itself in the very cities that are concurrently mainstreaming criminal life. In San Francisco, there is almost nothing you cannot do on the street and get away with it, as drugs, crime, vagrancy, and homelessness skyrocket. Yet what are authorities focused on? They finally reopened playgrounds, but they are forcing 2-year-olds, some of whom are still in diapers, to wear face diapers while they are running around outdoors. They can only play for 30 minutes, they cannot eat, and crying children are to be whisked away. They are essentially criminalizing behavior of children playing outdoors at no risk for a virus that poses no danger to them. I'm sure if they wanted to make a drug deal at the playground, they'd give the local youth more than 30 minutes to complete the transaction or to shoot up.

I've been telling friends over the past few months that while this virus started in China, it has turned this country into China. But that analogy is not fully accurate. At least the Chinese are equal-opportunity authoritarians. Yes, they suppress their people, but at the same time, they don't tolerate violent criminals either. America's major cities, on the other hand, have become a haven for violent criminals, including other countries' violent criminal aliens, and a living hell for law-abiding small business owners.

Accused child molester, out on bond, accused of intimidating the victim — and found at school bus stop

Let me decode the Orwellian trope of “criminal justice reform” for you. It means keeping more violent criminals on the streets so they can further intimidate witnesses and guarantee even fewer convictions and prison sentences. Now, every story you read about crime will make sense.

When New York Democrats passed a law automatically releasing most criminals pending their trials while also giving them access to information about witnesses and victims, they knew exactly what they were doing. Witness intimidation is not a bug of “bail reform” and jailbreak policies; it is a feature designed to ensure that fewer people testify at trial, thereby reducing the likelihood of a conviction that will result in prison time. A recent Georgia case is a perfect example.

While Georgia hasn’t gone as far as New York in prison and jail release policies, many judges throughout the country are releasing extremely dangerous criminals on little or no bond. It’s certainly the latest fad throughout the Peach State. In 2017, Paul Sherwood Lyle Jr., 35, was arrested in Clayton County on charges of child molestation and sexual battery against a child under age 16. Yet he was released on just $75,000 bond, which usually means just 10 percent of it must be paid in cash.

Just those charges alone should have warranted a higher bail, but like most criminals, this was not his first time in trouble with the law. According to Georgia court records, Lyle racked up several dozen criminal charges over the past two decades, including burglary, theft, criminal trespassing, assault, making terrorist threats, and multiple hit-and-run accidents. He was even arrested for a hit-and-run incident earlier this year while out on bond. But the trend in criminal justice to keep repeat offenders out of jail, even when they offend while out on bond or parole, is evidently strong in this allegedly red state.

Fast-forward to last Wednesday. Lyle was arrested by Clayton County sheriff’s deputies for trying to intimidate the victim in the original child molestation case. According to the sheriff’s office, “While out on bond, Lyle made contact with another minor, a 15-year-old, and convinced the minor to go to the home of the victim of the previous incident and attack them in an attempt to intimidate the witness.” After the county DA issued a warrant for his arrest for violation of a protective order, the sheriff’s fugitive squad apprehended Lyle “while standing at an elementary school bus stop with no justifiable reason for being there.” According to the public notice from the department, “It is to be noted that the subject was found to have a bottle of pink fingernail polish in his pocket. We can only speculate as to why.”

Lyle is now charged with aggravated stalking and influencing witness. Thank God in Georgia there is still modicum of common sense left, and he was held without bond. Had this taken place in New York, he would have been released again. In fact, in New York, the prosecution has to turn over all sorts of information on witnesses and victims to the defendants. So now that they are all out on the streets, they will have all the tools they need to ensure that no conviction is secured. This is the future of criminal justice in America now that the concept of pretrial holding is gradually being abolished. Not only will it pose a massive public safety concern, it will ensure that few convictions are made because nobody will want to testify. Prosecutors tell me that the biggest impediment to landing a conviction is the fear of victims and witnesses to come forward, which is why DAs have to arrange plea deals more often than not.

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Wake up, elites! Pro-criminal policies HURT average Americans

Yes, the ‘prison reform’ bill lets out high-risk inmates and sex offenders

The criminal justice reform bill, oops, I mean “prison reform,” was crafted precisely with the intent of reducing the federal prison population, even though it has already declined from the 1990s levels. Now that the public has gotten wind of the odious nature of this bill and are appalled by the philosophy propelling it, suddenly the leading voices for it are claiming that nobody gets early release, including sex offenders. The text of the bill and the opinion of the Department of Justice prove otherwise.

First, when supporters say nobody is released early from prison under this bill (aside from the drug traffickers who get sentencing reduction on the front end), they are saying that home confinement and halfway houses are not early release. Before we get into the fact that this bill does offer complete early release, let’s not forget the consequences of mass home confinement of convicted criminals. While the system already has a process for good time credits and home confinement, this bill would offer such an arrangement for tens of thousands of prisoners for as much as one-third of their sentences. As I’ve noted before, the security apparatus for home confinement is already a joke, and nobody has explained how law enforcement would have the resources to deal with this in such large numbers. The bill doesn’t appropriate enough funding to deal with this, because proponents want to preserve the talking point of saving money, even though the Bureau of Prisons has confirmed that home confinement costs almost three times more per diem than a federal prison.

But it’s worse than that. This bill allows these convicts to leave home confinement for numerous activities, including ridiculously vague “job-seeking activities.” Indeed, these people, many of whom are irremediable gangbangers, will continue their trade of drug trafficking.

It gets worse still. Turn to page 12 of the bill and you will see that the Senate bill added a clever trick over the original version.

Notice how the Senate bill adds a second option for the outcome of time credits: “supervised release.” That is straight-up early parole, not even in a less secure home confinement.

Now, let’s turn back to those eligible for such credits, which are earned simply by doing what they do now and Orwellianly defined “productive activities.” A number of federal sex offense convictions are not included in the exceptions from early release credits. Here are at least 4 of them:

  • 18 U.S.C. 2250 – failure to register as a sex offender

  • 8 U.S.C. 1328 – importing aliens for prostitution

  • 18 U.S.C. 116 – female genital mutilation

  • assault with intent to commit rape, aggravated sexual abuse, sexual abuse, abusive sexual contact, and other offenses. This offense is listed among the exclusion list, but only “if the offender has a previous conviction, for which the offender served a term of imprisonment of more than 1 year.”

Remember, anything not on the list of exclusions is eligible for early release, including many of those currently convicted of drug trafficking who will also receive front-end sentencing reductions.

Proponents of Soros’ jailbreak maintain that these people will never be designated as “lower-level” threats in the risk assessment, and therefore, will not be eligible for early release.

This is simply not true. Bureau of Prisons data sent to Sen. Tom Cotton’s office shows that 72 percent of sex offenders are currently classified as “low security.” An email from the BOP given to CR by Sen. Cotton's office explains that “of the 15,526 inmates currently serving a sentence for a sex offense in federal prison (approximately 10% of all current federal inmates), 11,283 (approximately 72%) are currently classified as low security inmates. 3,132 (approximately 20%) are classified as medium security inmates. 1,106 (approximately 7%) are classified as high security inmates.”

One can only imagine how many more will be designated as low-risk once liberals reclaim control of the DOJ and have a statutory weapon with which to release as many prisoners as possible.

The lie of this bill gets even worse than that. It turns out that the problem is not only the liberal classification of “low-risk,” but that even prisoners who might be designated as high- or medium-risk will be eligible for early-release credits, which include either home confinement or parole. A careful reading of the bill shows that bill sponsors lied when they repeatedly said hat “only prisoners classified as minimum or low risk may redeem these time credits to reduce their sentence.” This was a point made quite clear in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s official fact-sheet of the bill.

Now, turn to page 41-42 of the bill, and you will see, again, a dual track for eligibility, just like we saw with home confinement or supervised release. Either they are designated as low-risk, or the prison warden can sign off on release, which means even if they are designated as higher-risk.

This is important considering that on page 39, the bill explicitly allows high-risk individuals to participate in this early-release program. If you put these two provisions together, it’s clear they will get early release, and it’s all subject to administrative fiat.

The liars who are promoting this bill, once they are caught, tend to demur by suggesting that a good warden will never sign off on such a thing. But the joke is that these same proponents are the very pressure groups that will give the BOP hell down the road and agitate on behalf of every single prisoner for release.

Even proponents of the bill admit on their website that this is not just about low-level criminals.

Availability of prerelease custody by requiring the BOP to transfer low and minimum risk prisoners to prerelease custody—either a half-way house or home confinement. Because the bill provides that BOP shall do this, BOP will in effect be required to improve contracting with residential re-entry centers, and improve current policies. Even for those who are not designated as low or minimum risk, the FIRST STEP Act provides a pathway to petition for prerelease custody.

These clever provisions in the bill all stem from one point. Most people in federal prison are really bad, and in order to get them released, proponents need to lie about their bill because they know the public doesn’t support their insidious goals. The question is how many other talking points have been fabricated in order to grease the skids of this runaway jailbreak?

Editor's note: This article has been corrected to note that the Bureau of Prisons data quoted in paragraph nine was given to CR by Sen. Tom Cotton's office, not Sen. John Kennedy's. The data was in an email from a Bureau of Prisons official, not a Department of Justice official. CR regrets the error.

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