Michael Rushford – California Globe

Murderers Seek to Overturn Convictions Under California’s Racial Justice Act

November 3, 2025 3:15 pmNovember 3, 2025 3:15 pm

Four condemned murderers are asking the California Supreme Court to overturn their convictions and death sentences claiming that racial prejudice influenced the jury verdicts against them. In 2020 the California Legislature passed AB 2542, called the Racial Justice Act (RJA),...

CA Appeals Court Blocks Early Release of Murderers

July 30, 2025 10:43 amJuly 30, 2025 10:43 am

A unanimous panel of California’s Third District Court of Appeal has held that state law does not authorize the early release of murderers serving indeterminate sentences in state prison. The court’s July 28 decision in the case of Criminal Justice...

California Democrats Plan to Starve Proposition 36 to Death

April 3, 2025 3:10 amApril 3, 2025 3:11 am

On November 5, 2024, California voters overwhelmingly adopted Proposition 36, the Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act, a modest reform to restore consequences for thieves and drug dealers and require treatment for addicts. It’s adoption was a complete rebuke...

Politicizing Government Data

October 8, 2024 3:31 amOctober 8, 2024 3:32 am

There was a time when data compiled by government agencies could be trusted. For generations federal labor statistics, and data on reported crimes, commerce, health, finance, industry, agriculture and even weather were relied upon by both the government and private...

A Time When America United to Discourage Kids From Taking Drugs

April 11, 2024 4:21 pmApril 11, 2024 4:22 pm

A review of the book DARE to Say No: Policing and the War on Drugs in Schools (Max Felker-Kantor, The University of North Carolina Press) in the May 2024 issue of Reason Magazine looks back 42 years to the launch...

Governor Newsom’s Early Release of Murderers is Illegal

February 16, 2024 9:53 amFebruary 16, 2024 9:53 am

On December 14, 2023, the California Board of Parole Hearings, which is under Governor Gavin Newsom’s authority, approved parole for child murderer Patrick Goodman. Goodman, a repeat felon, beat his girlfriend’s three-year-old son to death in 2000. The medical examiner...

California Supreme Court Reduces Sentences for Gang Murderers

December 28, 2023 2:45 amDecember 28, 2023 2:46 am

In a unanimous ruling announced on December 18, the California Supreme Court held that a 2021 bill that narrowed the definition of “street gang” to reduce the number of criminal defendants designated as gang members, did not violate Proposition 21,...