The Supreme Court Gives A Get Out Of Jail Free Card To California Convicts

by John Hawkins | May 24, 2011 5:27 am

Wow, don’t you love it when judges usurp the role of the legislature and arbitrarily release thousands of criminals into the community[1]? If you said yes, you might be a liberal or alternately, Anthony Kennedy.

California prison officials must remove tens of thousands of inmates from its prison rolls in the next two years, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, saying persistent, severe overcrowding has resulted in “needless suffering and death” and violates the constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

The ruling, one of the largest prison-release orders in the nation’s history, sharply split the court, with vivid descriptions of indecent care from the majority and outraged warnings of a “grim roster of victims” from some in the minority. It will force the state to reduce the number of inmates by more than 30,000, either by releasing some who are now held or by sending fewer local convicts to state prisons.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, a Sacramento, Calif., native, spoke from the bench about suicidal prisoners being held in “telephone-booth sized cages without toilets” and others sick with cancer or severe abdominal pain who died before they were seen by a doctor. As many as 200 prisoners may live in a gymnasium, and as many as 54 prisoners may share a single toilet, he said.
Kennedy, whose opinion was joined by his four liberal colleagues, said the state’s prisons were built to hold 80,000 inmates but were crowded with as many 156,000 a few years ago.

…The court’s four conservatives accused their colleagues of “gambling with the safety of the people of California,” in the words of Justice Samuel Alito.

“I fear that today’s decision will lead to a grim roster of victims. I hope that I am wrong. In a few years, we will see,” he said.

…”Our goal is not to release inmates at all,” Matthew Cate, director of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, told reporters, though he conceded a release of some prisoners is still likely.

Oh, so it’s “cruel and unusual punishment” to be stuck in an overcrowded prison? Know what else should qualify as “cruel and unusual punishment” by that flimsy standard? Getting raped, robbed, or murdered by one of the criminals the left-side of the Supreme Court + Anthony Kennedy just released into California. But, what do they care, right? It doesn’t affect them — but, I wish it did. I genuinely wish that every criminal who was released could be given a bus ticket and a housing voucher, but ONLY if they used it for an area within 10 square miles of the houses of the Supreme Court Justices who let them out. That way, after making this highhanded and arbitrary decision, those SCOTUS judges would have just as much skin in the game as the innocent people in California who’ll undoubtedly suffer for it.

PS: California is famously illegal alien friendly — and they pay a terrible price[2] for that in a lot of ways, including in their prison system.

As Investors Business Daily reported in March 2005:

“The U.S. Justice Department estimated that 270,000 illegal immigrants served jail time nationally in 2003. Of those, 108,000 were in California. Some estimates show illegals now make up half of California’s prison population, creating a massive criminal subculture that strains state budgets and creates a nightmare for local police forces.”

In other words, if you want to know why California’s prisons are overcrowded in the first place, it’s because of illegal immigration.

Endnotes:
  1. judges usurp the role of the legislature and arbitrarily release thousands of criminals into the community: http://www.denverpost.com/nationalpolitics/ci_18125102
  2. pay a terrible price: http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/3/27/114208.shtml

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