Andy  0:00  
registry matters is an independent production. The opinions and ideas here are that of the hosts and do not reflect the opinions of any other organization. If you have a problem with these thoughts FYP recording live from FYP Studios, east and west transmitting across the internet. This is Episode 93 of registering matters. You know what in a week or two, I'm not gonna be able to say Eastern Western might have to use the underground bunker I think

Larry  0:23  
it will be next week will be will be recording from the underground bunker on Sunday. So people need to be aware that they will probably get the podcast a little bit late because I do not imagine from the distance to drive to the bunker in the time I get in around five or six o'clock and I get settled. I doubt you're going to want to drive up to the bunker and do a recording Saturday evening.

Andy  0:45  
That's possibly true. I might have other things to do.

Larry  0:49  
So we'll probably be doing it Sunday morning.

Andy  0:51  
And then the following week, things get all messed up too, because that's when the Georgia meeting is right. Or is that next weekend also?

Larry  0:58  
Well, we're going to I thought where we're going to record it. We're going to record at the library.

Andy  1:01  
Okay, that's right. So hey, all right. So that's it. We're making the formal announcement that if you want to see us record a show, we're going to record at the library, go to the RSL Georgia web page, and you can find the details about the event. And you can come join us for a live recording of the registry matters podcast which should be a hoot.

Larry  1:19  
Yes, I suspect it will probably pack that library and have have a dislike it wasn't Houston.

Andy  1:25  
That's right. We needed police to direct traffic and panties were being thrown and all that.

Larry  1:32  
I'm quite I'm quite confident that once they know that registry batteries is recording that there will be a flock of people that will sign up for that for that RSL meeting.

Andy  1:43  
Excellent. Excellent. Excellent. Larry, we had two new patrons this week and I am always always excited about getting new patrons and we got a Brendan and a Brian. Thank you guys so much Brian came in at a shockingly high level and want to send out a very special super special thank you for to Brian for for being so very generous.

Larry  2:04  
I'm hoping that we can provide value for for that you feel a sense of love offering there when when someone makes makes a commitment at that level, but we hope we can earn that.

Andy  2:17  
That is the objective. We are we are trying we are honestly trying to provide some value to these people. You people as Larry likes to say you people and provide you with some value and compelling articles and ideas on how we can push back in and change the world as it were.

Larry  2:32  
We do have Brian?

Unknown Speaker  2:35  
Yes. And we

Andy  2:35  
do have when we have a bunch of articles. And we have a couple listener questions. We got a clip from Scalia, and then you are going to dive into tearing versus leveling. And we're going to talk about that as being like the feature segment of the show tonight. And with that, are you ready to start hitting some of these articles all of which you did? I didn't do any of this this week. This is all you this week. Don't blame

Larry  2:57  
Don't blame me. blame me for we're talking about

Andy  3:01  
send all your hate mail to old crotchety Larry at gmail. com.

Larry  3:07  
Ha crotchety? I wonder. I wonder, I wonder if anybody has that email.

Andy  3:13  
This first article comes from the appeal and it's Harris County DA six execution of intellectually disabled man. In reading through this, Larry it, I don't like somebody that has an IQ of 70. And then there's some margin of error that they talked about. You know, I assume that on different days of the week, different times of day that your IQ probably can be evaluated to be different. Let me say this guy who go in and he'll spend, he'll get $32 change, and he'll be handed $3. And he doesn't realize that he has been shorted $29 of change. He can't complete sentences. And yet here he is on death row and this da is pushing to have him executed. But she's also claiming that she's a progressive, kind of da did I did I characterize that?

Larry  4:02  
Sort of right? That's, that's precisely correct. That's why I put the article in here. Harris County is is Houston and Houston being so large has led Texas and sending people to death row. And Kim og who ran as a reform minded district attorney has fallen for short, which is quite common when people are our road whores, right as a reformer. And he's he's fallen for short expectations. But I put this in here to let people know, it's going to tie together with next week's clear clip because Scalia talks about the how the court has interpreted and continue to evolve its prohibition on the death penalty, which he says was never even contemplated the time of the of the framers founding the Constitution. So I should have, I should have possibly use that clip this week. But But he ran for the point of this article, she ran as a reformer. And as you as you dig into the story, you found out that she actually was an advocate for the death penalty has been for some time. And if this, this is not what I think the people of Harris County thought they were getting when they elected her. And so I'm disappointed that that are kind of a bait and switch,

Andy  5:28  
but feels like you know, and I don't I don't know if we want to dig into the the upcoming candidates on the Democratic side. But Kamala Harris has she's talking about all this criminal justice reform stuff, but she was kind of a pretty tough prosecutor out there. This sort of feels like the same thing then.

Larry  5:44  
Sure does. And it it these appeal articles always law, but it says from 2002 2007, og served on the board of directors of the Houston based justice for all a pro death penalty victims advocacy group. So so it it's clear that she's been pro death penalty for some number of years.

Andy  6:04  
Why? Why is it a problem to execute someone? Here's let me let me play devil's advocate and be the asshole for a minute, somebody established a line for the IQ to be if you are over this, then you are eligible to be executed, which sounds a really terrible thing like hey, you're the winner. But if you're below this line, then you're not and he is like on the line but he's a you know he's there so like there's a line for a reason. So why can't we we have determined that 70 is aligned before it's unconstitutional he can be executed

Larry  6:37  
well that's that's what the state of Texas was arguing. So you've put this together so simply

Andy  6:43  
Other than that, like this policy like Texas is like the execution capital at least of the United States if I'm not mistaken, probably Louisiana wins up there too.

Larry  6:51  
Yes, Texas, but the sheer size of Texas they have more executions. But but the the what makes it all what makes it tragic is that we've long since held and believe that people who are incompetent to stand trial shouldn't be forced to stand trial. Of course, if you can't stand trial, you can't be convicted. But we we've had we've had the diminished capacity insanity defense, but that that has been a road it's through the, through the through the years through the decades. And it picked up a lot of momentum after Ronald Reagan was shot and his his insight would be asylum was found not guilty by insanity. if if if there hadn't been such an erosion and and the mental disease or defect defense, this could possibly been putting on a diversity as the defense. But it's, it's almost impossible to have a successful defense that you're mentally defective on the guilt or innocence phase. So then the defense attorneys come in, they try to figure out some creative argument to save the person from the death penalty. And this is what they've come up with what way we can't execute a person who doesn't understand why they're being executed. Well, they should ever be at this point to begin with, if they couldn't understand the process that was happening. Yes. If they weren't supposed to go on trial to start with a be convicted?

Andy  8:07  
Yeah, he, I mean, I don't, we don't really think that we try to go into what the cases and I mean, the person did commit a pretty horrible offense in the mid 2000s. Obviously, that is taken into account of you have to be accountable for your actions. And so it says that the guy's name is Johnson. So Johnson sexually assaulted, and he and a co defendant took the victim into the woods and shot them. Like, that's pretty high up there as far as heinous crime. So do we, like, do we want those people in society? I mean, I'm trying to I'm trying to ask the jerk off questions, Larry, honestly.

Larry  8:45  
But don't, don't we have other options. I mean, it's not that we want them as a society, or execution that we have some remediation in between their probation keep them out of society.

Andy  8:54  
As in we don't have just black and white right, so we could let them go free or execute or somewhere else.

Larry  9:00  
Now that what would we be able to keep them incarcerated like we did with Charles Manson for the rest of his life? We certainly know that caught that, that that costs money.

Andy  9:09  
Yes, but does I mean, putting these people through three, four or five appeals processes cost a truckload of money to?

Larry  9:15  
I think that I think the evidence shows that the putting in personal details cost more than the prison for life most often. Of course, there's exceptions to everything. If a person is 74 years old, when they get put on death row, if they live long enough to actually be executed, it probably wouldn't cost is the the the person who's 20 years old, that does something put someone on prison for life, you could spend an awful lot of money as a HL before they die. But but but as a general rule, I think, I think the evidence shows that putting capital punishment

Andy  9:48  
is very expensive. But like someone that has, you know, of average normal IQ, maybe a little above average, and they commit a crime, you would expect putting them through the quote, unquote, rehabilitate a process of our prison system, that they would like, Oh, I am here inside these walls, I probably should think about why I'm here. And maybe I can change my behavior in the future. This guy isn't probably I should I don't want to like sell him short. But he probably isn't able to then figure out what's going on to figure out that he did something wrong to then correct the behavior on the other side.

Larry  10:24  
Possibly, but even if he if he could, the point I was wanting to have route is this this is a person who presented herself as a progressive. Sure. This is not generally what most progressive stands for. They're not usually a pro capital punishment. So that's all it's kind of a bait switch.

Andy  10:40  
Yeah, I do understand. Yeah, I understand. Sorry for taking in a different direction. Um, but let's move over to Time Magazine. This is a Florida judge released a student accused of attempted sexual assault after attorneys argue he's high achieving this sounds just like the thing when we had the attorney Andrew tourism with the judge was that was in New Jersey with the guy that filmed them having the relations with a young lady. That was the one where that he denied the state's motion to come right to tell him to charge him as $1. Yeah, this sounds at least at least, you know, directly parallel to it. To this is a good

Larry  11:21  
point. Well, but it sounds like it's what it actually is, is that the victims apparatus has gotten such a stranglehold on on people that we have totally lost sight of this is a presumed innocent person in the accusation is merely that it's an accusation and putting forth arguments about what your client has achieved when he's presumed innocent, or she that's exactly what an attorney is supposed to do. I'm just mystified as to why you're not supposed to advocate Don't be half of your client and an adversarial system and say, This person is a higher chief or what are you supposed to come in there? So my God, so pathetic loser, caged up until until trial. This is the most asinine response I've heard in some time to lawyer did exactly what a lawyer supposed to do in an adversarial system is to paint his accused client in the best light he possibly can. Because the presumption of innocence is supposed to follow him through the duration of this proceeding. And it's not as if they send him home with a slap on the wrist. He's on ankle monitoring and those who have been on that it's very much debilitating. It's it, you don't go swimming very often. There's a lot of things you don't do with something strapped and attached to your ankle. And

Andy  12:50  
certainly, everybody knows that you're on an ankle monitor. It's not like you're hiding it. You have basically could have a tattoo on your forehead with a neon sign.

Larry  12:57  
Well, if you've never put on short pants said you can Joey hide the monitor. But you're but you're restricted dramatically, and innocent person on home confinement with an ankle monitor. It's not as if they're roaming the countryside. I think that what you're preserved is that you should be allowed to roam the countryside. You're not on probation yet.

Andy  13:19  
Let me let me let me let me let me try and back up and tell you when I read this i and i know i'm going to get chastised for this. I read it and I read what he is accused of doing and the events that took place I felt for the victim and did not immediately go innocent until proven guilty. And that's it. I lost Larry, the whole podcast is shut down because Larry won't talk to me now. Well,

Larry  13:45  
I'm not wired to ever ever think that way. If you if you if you have that reaction on a case if you're in that fence business, you need to not be involved with that that defendants case because because how heinous the accusations are, how they're painted in the media may be completely over bro blown from the reality of what actually happened.

Andy  14:06  
And as you were going through your your you got a little heated there for a moment talking about this. It dawned on me that there's no further evidence behind this other than this is her statement, other than the part where she ran to a friend's house, and then he showed up at her house. That's the only part that probably has corroborating evidence. But otherwise, it's just her word against his and you would have the presumption of innocence.

Larry  14:31  
Well, not according to the victims advocate. She talked, yeah, butter. But yeah, I have not I have not shifted and converted to that belief system. But unfortunately, the majority of our society seems to have done so we have evolved to trashing the presumption of innocence. And we have bought into the notion that if you make a serious enough allegation, and it sounds bad enough, that that alone should be enough to send a person away, and they should forget about due process, they should forget about this. He should just be sitting in a jail cell from a day he was arrested. And and that should be the end of it. And all the lawyers should just forget about him and say, to hell with him. And that's not the America that I'd like to live in. Maybe you're happy with that, but I wouldn't be

Andy  15:12  
know and I'm not and I'm feeling a little bit shameful for immediately going in that direction. And some somehow the the lens of due process needs to show up first. And and the innocent until proven guilty part and fair trial. All that should show up while reading this. That should be the lens that we read all of these articles through until jury evidence conviction or acquittal.

Larry  15:35  
Well, I've had I've had this conversation so many times through the years and they say the the lawyer who was arrested in the Loria planet, not guilty NASA to be released. That's what the lawyer is supposed to do. And he entered a plea of not guilty. That is what you're supposed to do. You don't know the specifics of well enough. At the time the police arrest you you don't know the elements of burden of proof of what every particular element is of that allegation. You don't know the evidence that they're going to believe that they're going to line against you. You don't know all that stuff. You might know what you did, I would assume that you do or they did. But But what you don't know is what crime that constitutes, you don't know if they charge you accurately and the indictment, you don't know any of that until the lawyer thoroughly analyzes that, and figures out if they can beat the board to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Now, if people want to believe that somehow barely, that the defense lawyers job is to interrogate the client say, Well, I guess you said she admitted that you may you've done it, we ought not even try and on board to try to see if we mitigate anything, you just go in there and take whatever medicine they want to dish out to you. That's not the society I want to live in. Because we have an adversarial system in America. We don't have this healing justice. And this restorative justice, and all this stuff that people wish we had that stop what we have. We have two parties jousting, and the party this, this this the head of the gel stick, how's the burden of proving the party that sold the defending side of the jousting has a lesser burden?

Andy  17:16  
Larry, to all the attorneys talk like that. That's That's my question to all attorneys talk like that. Like, what? The southern drawl that you put on? Well, when I was

Larry  17:28  
here, I hear that I hear this it amazes me that that even people on our side have fallen is a belief that you should just throw in the towel because because of the seriousness of the accusations and and import or alleged these are nothing but allegations at this point.

Andy  17:46  
It is a trademark. Yeah, I understand. I agree. I agree. And and and I apologize for not thinking of it that way first. So should we move over to this appeal article? The next one?

Larry  17:57  
Yeah, I can't. I can't take this anymore. Oh, we we have to talk about the gorge. You haven't been there recently. Have you? I have not. But we have a nice suspension bridge just north of town. So it has been very effective.

Andy  18:12  
Effective, like hundred percent.

Larry  18:14  
I don't think there's any documented cases of it not working. So it's

Andy  18:19  
if you go over this bridge, didn't you tell me it's like 600 feet or something?

Larry  18:23  
I forget the height of it. But real grand gorge bridge. If you Google it, you'll see that it looks like it would do the job.

Andy  18:33  
gorge bridge. Oh my god. It's too many words to type. Oh, it's great. It's good. And a gorge bridge. You said it's in Taos. Is that what it is?

Larry  18:43  
That is north north of Dallas? Yeah,

Andy  18:45  
yeah. Okay. First of all, it's 73 degrees, which is pretty outstanding. It's not 9:30pm. What in the world? Yeah, that that would do it. Larry, that would totally that looks exactly like something that would see in some like the road or something like that. There was a there's a Western movie, we got the train going over the gorge, that would totally do it. That was just I,

Larry  19:10  
I suspect if you get in the center of that, and you take a leap, it would be effective.

Andy  19:14  
And you should just go there and hang out because it's pretty.

Larry  19:17  
I'm not advocating anyone.

Andy  19:21  
All right, from the appeal, balancing the scales of justice, this, this really we should almost just like segue what we were just talking about into this. It's an adversarial system that justice presumes to equal sides yet our criminal courts largely feature the most unequal of fights. You got people with money, you've got people with political power. And obviously on the other side, you have people with less than on both of all that and so like people with money, go free or get bond and others don't necessarily.

Larry  19:51  
Yeah, that's why I put the article in here is that in our adversarial system, it is essentially that we bring more parity between the parties that are that are in the jousting contest. And I think Gideon versus Wainwright was decided some 50 years ago, it just turned 50 recently, and then 50 years we've really not fully found figured out how to provide adequate insurance, defense resources. And it's far from being anything that resembles an equal Justin contest because the defense is not only hamstrung by all the rule changes that the victims advocates push through the system. They the attorneys that are representing data jets are so lacking on expert expert witnesses, the the budget that they would need to match the state's vast array of crime laboratories and forensics, the defense can bear sell them. companies were close to that they don't have the time to spend with their clients because of a crushing case load and turn the gathering facts they don't have the time to do all the pre trial work that's necessary if you were contemplating takes taking the case to trial. It is it is just tragic that that that even though the Supreme Court has said it's the constitutional requirement, that it's not important enough, but if you look at the bottom of the article that says the better funding fringe offense is a popular idea of the Brennan Center reports that 74% of voters think it's important to reduce the prison population and 66% support the use of government tax dollars to provide indigent offense. Now, the politicians that are out there, if that's if that's a reliable number, this may be something that you could possibly sign on to without fear of political harm. Because if it truly two thirds of the people believe that we should provide sufficient dollars for a digital fence that that's kind of a no brainer. Let me say like at some point in time, we did not have your Miranda rights. And I think I've heard some supreme court justices kind of balk at that, that that's like that's not constitutional. But

Andy  22:03  
we could go down that path of talking about having a fair trial. I mean, maybe that would even be like a Nexus like a starting point of having a fair trial is that you don't have to to speak without having representation. Am I headed down the path?

Larry  22:17  
Well, clearly, you have the right, you have the right to remain silent, you have the right to have no inferences drawn from you're not testified. But just because you have that right. Doesn't that mean that juries don't infer something from that made their own a human error? Yeah.

Andy  22:30  
Right. And if you if you had nothing to hide, why would you tell the police everything, you know,

Larry  22:34  
that that's the average person, Bill, if I would vote the world and allow business and not get up there and stand and I tell my story, by golly, that's what an average person is going to think. They don't understand that immediate mistake you've made in your life, it's going to be used against you because you open the door, they don't understand that if you have any minutia raw whatsoever, they're going to say, hey, you have to admit that you just talked, this is not true, this is not consistent. And then all of a sudden, they paint you as as a as a liar and unreliable witness. But but the average jury is going to read infer from you're not testifying this, you must have had a reason not to testify.

Andy  23:15  
And I use that as like a springboard to then move forward to, you know, you're supposed to have like the equal hands of justice, but attorneys are of different caliber, the DA is versus your defense attorney, whether that be PD or paid for. All of that would come into play. We've talked about what kind of clothing you wear, how you're presented to the court, all of that stuff's going to be used for or against you when you end up in court.

Larry  23:40  
Well, absolutely. And always quick to defend the quality of the edge of the fence in terms of that, very few people get called into indigent offense because they want to get rich, they got that they that's generally not the career path you would take you you're going to make a lot of money. So there's usually something at the heart that they want to pursue is as Justice. But despite what's in their heart, if you're getting paid $40 an hour, I think that's what we uncovered in Wisconsin, $40 an hour for your for your professional services. I'm sorry, but you're just not going to attract the top tier of people that are going to sign up for those public defense contracts and that system they have in Wisconsin, you're not going to do that. Because lowly paid entry level attorneys bill at it far greater than $40 an hour in my stadium. We're at the middle of low part of the pack. I mean, people, you seldom find a private attorney building building lessons. 175 $200 per hour. So it's just it's just like what I say about the prisons, yes, there's nice people working in prisons there. People have great hearts. But when when you think about everybody's listening to this podcast, when you were growing up, how many people did you say I just can't when they were expressing their career ambitions. IBM said, Well, when I grow up, Dan, I tell you what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna go straight down to the local jailhouse and apply, right? That that was just not a career aspiration that I remember anyone saying?

Andy  25:14  
Definitely not.

Larry  25:17  
So into the fences also in that category, that people have great hearts, but they they just don't have what they need. And if you take if you take a top tier attorney, what the support staff they need, and you put it with the same person accused of the same crime was an overburden public defender that can never speak to their client. Remember, Epstein was saying his client, his attorneys every day until they until his death, right? Because Because he could afford the time for them to come by the detention center and visit. And I'm sure they were charging probably more than $40 an hour,

Andy  25:55  
I would imagine. So they're probably still making money off the whole thing.

Larry  25:59  
Oh, gobs of money gonna be made office this thing would have seen but but indigent defense is something where the average citizen doesn't see it as a real problem. They they like this poll, if it's accurate, says what they support it. But conceptually, they don't understand why you need a lawyer because woman, the police are already overworked, I wouldn't have charged if you'd have done something, they must have the goods all you. So we

Andy  26:26  
often bring that up. If you have nothing to hide, then why don't you just go talk to them? I mean, yeah, I I'm with you. And that one? Larry, you've told me before, when someone says if you have nothing to hide, why wouldn't you block, you know, using an encrypted communication method? That you know, you and your boss aren't sharing anything, you know, state secretly but you use some sort of encrypted messaging app. Like you have nothing to hide right. There's there's there's a halfway decent argument to push back on that one I've heard before I think you've made it

Larry  26:58  
was what I say over Dr. Barry talked about tell him why don't we searchers and since yours, if you have nothing to hide them will go to my place next. Yeah, but that that they they shame manipulate people into into relenting because of that, if you have nothing to hide that that's one of their favorite lines.

Andy  27:17  
Yeah. All right, well, then let's move over to law 360. And I know that you're going to love this article to our prison law libraries falling short on access goals. I know that when I went to the law library, a I didn't know what in the EFF was going on. No clue, like, could we get a cliff notes version of even how to start trying to read stuff in the library to figure out, but they give you, you know, I think they may give you like two hours per week in there. And then the books may be out of date. And then the supplements and this article cover that they may give you the supplements, but they don't give you the the legal briefs maybe is what it said this, but then where was it like in Utah, Minnesota, someplace out in the middle of nowhere, where they had tablets, and the people now have 24 hours a day access to law library information? Which sounds stellar. Why can't we do that everywhere? Larry?

Larry  28:13  
Well, I don't I don't think there's anything that would preclude us from doing this other than the will to do it. We already got enough prisoners filing frivolous stuff. And if we made these law libraries, stellar, or I mean, they got nothing but time on their hands. And and we would be inundated with all these these frivolous filings? We can't have that. I mean, don't you understand that?

Andy  28:36  
I don't think that I do understand that. So the the crux of the article is that some some dude in prison is trying to get something so he can file a habeas, I think, but he had to file a file a FOIA a Freedom of Information Act, to get the information that he is a normal lawyer, a practicing lawyer would have had access to it just on their legal software, but he had to file a FOIA request to get to read publicly filed court papers, which sounds you know, you have to go around your elbow to get to your ass. I mean, that's just like, that's what it sounds like you had to do.

Larry  29:08  
Well, I'm not an expert on this. We probably already have Brandon sample, which he's cited as article who was a former prisoner who became a lawyer. By but apparently, in 77, the Supreme Court ruled in balance vs. Smith, that inmates must have access to the courts and adequate law books. And that was authored by Justice Marshall, Thurgood Marshall that is, and then, and in 1996, roughly two decades later, Louis first case, it says on the prisoners that they still have the right to $1, bro, but they must do more than claim but the materials or their access to them is inadequate, they must be able to show the inadequate, they blocked an independent meritorious case. Now that's a tough thing. When you start you're trying to prove that the lack of something you're trying to prove a negative. Right? Yeah. If you don't know what you didn't have access to, yes, it's hard to prove the meritorious case. So so. So under under the more restrictive interpretation of what prisoners have a right to, apparently presidents have taken it less seriously, to provide access to legal materials since 77. And then in 96. And this was Wisconsin Department of Corrections. I did not respond to a request for comment.

Unknown Speaker  30:34  
I can't imagine that, can you? No, not at all. Not at all.

Andy  30:37  
Hey, Larry, Chris, in in chat, says he, he had a prolific typing career while he was down. And so I comment back, Georgia doesn't even have typewriters. And he's like, What in the hell is wrong with Georgia? Yeah, you still have to buy carbon paper on the store and do things in triplicate, by you know, cramming your hand on to some paper? To make it go through all three copies?

Larry  30:57  
Does that? Does that cramp your ability produce paper when you're having

Andy  31:01  
with absolutely like, I mean, how fast can you write, especially with pushing down so hard to make you go through three copies? unless you actually want to write out three copies individually? which is totally a thing?

Larry  31:12  
I don't see a problem with

Andy  31:13  
that. I will No, of course not. So what would be like, I'm like, Is there like a prison security philosophy behind not giving access to let people have some kind of typewriter? Is it? Are they literally trying to gum it up so that like, these people were found guilty, so FM, they don't get a chance to file mountains of legal paperwork that we have to sift through that they may be innocent, which

Larry  31:40  
i think i think i think it's a combination of all those things, I think that you have people running correctional systems that have been doing it a long, long time. And evolving technology, like simple email, for example, email would would greatly diminished the institutional threat that they alleges that as administrators that they deal with in terms of contraband coming in. Because last time I've looked at the Internet, I've never seen any advice ship contraband itself through through the internet. So all the stuff that they claim that happens with stamps, and with diggers and what seal or the old seal double up that would that would go away. And plus, all the hours that are spent reading letters would go away, because you could scan for keywords that would call it that would call attention and have human eyes look at correspondence. So you could do all that. But it's something about those taxpayers out there when they come to their tour of the jail. Last thing I want to see is a whole bunch in mindset behind computer screens on the taxpayer dime. And it's always a reluctance to adapt to the new technologies that are available. And in the law library that I mean volumes of nobody does book research anymore. Right? If If you were to go to an actual Law Library in the free world, you pull the bottoms I think they're still printing them. I haven't gone and worked on the on the what they called the stacks and years, but I think they're still printing them. If you were to actually pull one those books off and open it, there would be such a dust storm that you probably wouldn't be able to have it ask but because because because nobody nobody does research that way. It had to be a very, very old attorney who just had refused to adapt to the modern age. So I think that the answer the question is, I think it's the clinging to the past, the public perception and the initial upfront investment, you've got some investment issues there to adapt the technology. But you know, it's kind of funny. They're awfully able to adapt to technology in terms of limiting visitation. Old Boys able to adapt, predict predict for county jails. I mean, they've got it for your work. in county jail settings, it's rare that you even get to visit through the glass anymore, much less contact is that they've adapted county jails to where you can even pay so much per 1530 minute visit. Yeah, yeah, I think they're able to adapt to that technology. But I think maybe the revenue driver has something to do with what that adaptation. Maybe Maybe they haven't thought about charging the inmates for access to all materials. Maybe they think that might be going over the top.

Andy  34:17  
But it seems like that was I would put up the hair on some people's necks about have an accident,

Larry  34:21  
you would you would think so about basic visitation. I mean, everybody knows that. Family Support is good. For for keeping those keeping those inmates and their families connected. We are we already know that.

Andy  34:34  
We know that. But that's not the application of it. Because people have that stuff deprived constantly in my family salary. I mean, we constantly talk about that

Larry  34:43  
with a paid 12 $15 for Interstate phone call. Correct calls that that darn Obama, FCC, they tried to restrict that. But then the phone provider still come to court and they want in court and say that the that was unconstitutional for them to upset rebels price fixing fix. So So now it's fair game, again, to charge what they want. But if you're an interstate, making interstate calls, you can pay some very hefty fees. And that certainly was a family relationships.

Andy  35:12  
Yes, I that that went into effect, right. Just before I got out. I'm sure I've spoken about this before, but I would pay $25 to call family in Pennsylvania. And then, about two months before I got out, they reduced it down to was like $4 a call give or take. I was like, Oh my God. But you know, I wasn't sure that it had taken effect. So you know, it takes a couple months for a billing cycle to go through. And by the time I had confirmation that the billing cycles had gone through and the price had been reduced, I gotten relief. So it was like that junk is absurd that we can make phone calls practically to the moon for free. And you have to pay exorbitant rates to have interstate phone calls. It's asinine. Well, it's unconscionable,

Larry  35:56  
but you but you don't believe in a big old bad federal government coming in there regulate those people have to invest gobs of money and have any secure systems. And you don't I mean, that's what's wrong with this country. So we've got too much government meddling and price fixing and regulation, we've got to free up people to run their businesses as they see fit. If you don't like to make the call that their price don't make it.

Andy  36:20  
It's okay. Let me play on that one just for a moment. So I use a service.

Larry  36:25  
What a smart

Andy  36:26  
No, no, I totally know. But I'm thinking like, here, here's here's an angle to take, you could go in there and see there's a revenue model in there where like you're putting this all on the backs of the inmates families, essentially. But we use a service to transcribe the podcast that provides me with X number of hours of transcription for free, and I upload it there, it is not perfect, but it comes back to let's take that over to the inmate phone calls. They could have them transcribed using computer technology, you would have a transcription, you could flag keywords and now you know whether they're talking about trying to escape or whatnot, and you could then look not have it.

Larry  37:01  
That's the whole thing I'm talking about. If you have the technology, rather than just trying to see how you can fleece the inmate, which is what they dis

Andy  37:09  
Yes, yes.

Larry  37:10  
You could, you could actually run a prison more efficiently. The Law Library, I think it's a combination of all the above though, I don't think prison administrators are anxious to see people succeed in their post conviction challenges. I don't think that that's that's a high priority for them. So I think that also ways into it. We all they're doing is just nibbling and complaining. And it's overwhelmed. They were convicted, they pled guilty. And I don't know why they keep falling and falling, falling all this crap.

Andy  37:41  
I think that actually gives us a really good segue over to an article over in the Marshall project that talks about when people with disabilities, intellectual disabilities are punished, parents pay the price. This totally would fit if you were on the registry and your family help support you that you can't live in. I think this kid actually is on the registry. The family you know, like, I don't know how they had to move to spend $150,000 a house and I don't want to like dig into that piece of it. There probably were other places they could live that would have been fit. But when you are trying to support someone, then the innocent people that act like what what a what a what a society wants you to do go Hey, UF up so FU I'm going to kick you to the curb, go find a bridge to live under. Are we that and compassionate of a society? Is that what we really are? Yes. Okay. All right. Next article move on. And and then to channel my inner Scalia. Well, there's nothing constitution unconstitutional about saying go live under a bridge. Right? I mean, that's where that's going to go.

Larry  38:42  
Well, the the point of this is, is that, of course, other than rare circumstances, it's hard to buy a house for less than 150,000 a bounce to anything, unless you're in a depressed region of the country, but $150,000 not a heck of a lot for a house anymore. But But this, this this parent is, is they have a son who cannot function without them, even though he's 32 years old. And and so therefore, in order for them to make sure he's not out pushing a shopping cart, they had to relocate because of the 500 foot rule, which is in the state of Illinois. Yes, yeah. And that, that, and apparently it can be since he's under supervision. Apparently, if something springs up, they can force them to move again,

Andy  39:36  
which you know, to tailor that to me, that church moved in a cross the street, two churches, one almost like slightly just off axis straight across, and then 100 feet away up the street. I was told I'm grandfathered, if I leave, probably can't come back. But at the moment I'm good be these people in Illinois, if something moves in across street school, church, daycare, Adios,

Larry  39:58  
but that's what it says the it says that in addition to buying the house that she's paying for sons court ordered sex offender treatment, which is which is $23,000 as polygraph tests, which have run $4,000, which doesn't take long if they run $500 or more each. And I know that some states are getting them for 175 to 75. But But $4,000 in him that she mentioned $200 registration fee. Yep.

Andy  40:25  
Yeah, the registry.

Larry  40:27  
Go. And other one said they spent $51,000 in Virginia, for not

Andy  40:32  
yet. I know that my quote unquote, treatment, which was, like such bullshit was somewhere around 2500 bucks. But there's a podcast that I referenced all the time. It's called Freakonomics. It's from June of 14. I think maybe it was 15. And they talked about why do we make sex offenders pay and pay and pay and pay and pay incredibly good, well sourced article or a podcast episode that I would strongly recommend everyone listen to the podcast go listen to it talks about this exact same thing of how it how much hardship being on the registry puts people?

Larry  41:03  
Oh, well, it's a it's probably something we can have a guest and his name's escaping me. But he spoken on our soul conference about his son, that that had had intellectual developmental problems and what what it's like having to go through this. This is really shitty. Brenda, Brenda, Brenda said chat, she can tell us the name of the person.

Andy  41:27  
So if she feels like she's probably going to draw a blank for 10 minutes to

Larry  41:33  
go back. I have everything.

Andy  41:35  
Let's move back over to the appeal where Louisiana prosecutors use the habitual offender statute to jail people for life. Attorneys for lifers are fighting back. Can you I know I read this article, but nothing is jumping out of me. Can you go over this article?

Larry  41:51  
Well, I, I put it in here primarily because of the UPS arbitrariness of crimes that can put you away for a very long time. Okay, at Louisiana, Louisiana. I was worried about their over incarceration. And then they passed of which governor Edwards signed, they passed a an amendment act 282, which was supposed to prospectively change what what would be what would qualify for habitual life sentence, but it's not. It's not retroactive. So this person, this person is does not qualify for any any any relief under the under the reform statute that the governor signed. So I'm going to give kudos to Louisiana is largely Republican, but they have a democratic governor by fluke because they had such a horrible dinner, Republican candidate that ran against john Bel Edwards, but but they were able to get some some measure of reform done, they were able to eliminate the non unanimous jury verdict, they sent that out to the to the people in form of referendum and that passed, and then they took a step here. So they've taken some steps. But this, this, this arbitrariness of seeking your life in prison, and this this particular person is not going to benefit from from the reform. Hmm.

Andy  43:12  
Yeah, Louisiana is definitely a they are harsh state. What is it about southern states and like, it feels like Louisiana, I guess Alabama and Texas maybe seem to be, man, there's just no no compassion and no empathy anywhere in there. That's crazy. Yeah, Mississippi. Sure. Well,

Larry  43:34  
yeah, Mississippi. But district starters Association, of course, a post all this stuff. And they have enormous influence.

Andy  43:44  
So well, let's move over to courthouse news. This this Larry, this one is 100% true. It's probably been a while since you've seen the inside but man, this is 100%. What some jailers will do is jailer still interrupting sleep despite order Bay Area inmates tell judge, they, they were ordered to make the the cell house darker, but they still then go in and shine lights in people's faces, and they have people cleaning and using buffers at all hours of the night. And I don't know if I should say when when I went to the people that are trying to sleep You know, you just learn to deal with like some noise in in the in the room or in the environment, that there's no way that you're going to make a concrete and rods environment silent. But you know, they don't need to shine lights in your face to keep you from getting a halfway decent night's sleep.

Larry  44:35  
Well, I thought I thought it was interesting that that they had to take us to federal court and try to try to get the sheriff to do what the human thing would be to do. But in defense of the of this particular sheriff, which I don't know jack about him, but but when you're running a correctional facility, it's all you're always get criticized for what you didn't do and what you should have spotted. Now we're having this inquiry and to find out why Epstein was able do what he did. And so if you go through sale houses, you have a have a pitch black at night, and you do bed checks without shining any lights, and you barely see a pile of something. You say where I'm headed you is as an administrator who's responsible for trying to make sure people are not doing horrible things to one another at night, and making sure that they actually are living, making sure they haven't escaped. Where do you draw? What is a reasonable amount of inconvenience during the course of an 810? hour? evening? overnight to figure out how often you check out what mechanism? How would you How would you run the facility? Ideally? If if it were you running it well, but what would be a way to keep people safe?

Andy  45:44  
I don't know. I'm thinking to the movie with Clint Eastwood, where they were on Alcatraz, I guess that was the name of the movie. And they all had little stuff, pillows and whatnot so that they could you know, they could mimic that they were still in bed when the when the jailers came by so that they could you know, to all their shenanigans running through the the walls to get their escape. Obviously, if you take the lights and shine them in their faces, then you would figure out that these are dummies and mannequins underneath the covers. What would you do? You could use? You could use something like heat sensing, you know, cameras, which would be very expensive. So that, you know, you would know if somebody under the blanket is actually generating heat. I don't know how you would generate heat artificially in prison. I'm sure somebody would figure it out.

Larry  46:27  
How would you How would you determine even though that their bodies warm? How would you determine if they're alive?

Andy  46:32  
Well, if they're dead, then who cares?

Larry  46:35  
Just kidding. The process of dying though, you could you could there's a point where you might be able to be revived. Now. I'm not saying that they do bad checks to try to save people from medical emergencies. But theoretically, that should be part of what you're doing even though it regular basis. Yeah, you

Andy  46:58  
just trying to make sure it's not on my way this person died. That's all they care about is like I didn't lose anybody and no one died on my watch. That's all.

Larry  47:08  
Well, I'd like to think that there are some who actually care about humanity that are working in these places, they're pretty sure that the whole jail system is filled with non caring people.

Andy  47:21  
This is my this is the article that's up my alley, it says California Legislature bars facial recognition for police body cameras. This is I am as much of a technology aficionado that I am and follow this stuff. So deeply. I am anti them having facial recognition everywhere and cameras everywhere. Or at least having very short attention spans. There's way too much stuff that the government can do with those cameras, picking up stuff from ATM machines and all the different security cameras that people have. There's so much stuff that they can discern from you, that would take away your first amendment and your Fourth Amendment freedoms, that this facial recognition thing is really bad. But I know where you're going to go with this. And I'm gonna spoil it that this is policy. these are these are bills and laws being signed, that are preventing these things from happening.

Larry  48:11  
Well, I don't know enough about facial recognition. what little I do know, scares me, because I saw an article in one of my magazines recently about the I saw that that people of minority and it doesn't have to be just African Americans, but people would have a higher rate of of incorrect matches. Yes. I saw us all that. And that and that disturbs me because it looks like it has a bias. Yes, whoever designed this, the computer geek didn't figure out how to account for the characteristics that make you make make the races different. But what I put it in is because it's it's it's showing that that you can push back successfully. This is an assembly I don't know if Gavin Newsom governor Newsome has signed it yet. It says that this will now be up to Governor Gavin Newsom stands for signing. But this is where enough of pushback has happened because of it. And the advocates in California have been managed have managed to successfully placed this on the governor's desk. I can't picture this getting through a Mississippi legislature. No, I can't picture this getting through a Georgia legislature. I think it would be very hard pressed to get through my legislature because the law enforcement people are so strong.

Andy  49:33  
All right, as we know, we know the California is going to be heavily slanted blue. Is it? Are there 18 red players over there and 42 blue, what's the split in? in cancer?

Larry  49:42  
It's a it's a pretty significant split. Now what would be I didn't take time to this interesting to see if there was if there was any bipartisanship on this or if it was simply democratic versus Republican. The Republicans that were on the law enforcement side. I did not do that analysis. But the vote totals were were significant on the legislation.

Andy  50:05  
What's interesting is they have an 80 person body that's they only had 60 people vote Why Why am I missing 20 people? That seems it seems to be a lot. Well, I'm just I'm looking at the Wikipedia page. And sorry, we're doing research like while Live on the Air. So we have 42 voted for an 18 against if I'm doing my math, right, that's 60. And the Wikipedia page says the lower house the California State Assembly has 80 map members.

Larry  50:30  
Well, it would be that a lot of people didn't vote.

Andy  50:33  
I what I'm shocked by is I would understand if 235 or something like that. That's 20 people. That's a mean, that's 25% that seems like a lot.

Larry  50:43  
I'd say it's probably not not as scary as what you think it is people that this is a this is this is a misconception people have about missed votes on missed vote. It's not indicative of a person drinking tequila being laid up somewhere, partying, miserable, could be free to a number of reasons that they can be enforced session and sometimes be having committee meetings at the same time. And those members that that that have bills are in that committee leave the floor to go present a bill. They could be that could be there could be a group of constituents that have traveled all the way into Santa Fe from Silver City. And they need to beat and be blessed by their by their representative, and the representative excuse us, themselves from the floor. And they go out and give a give a speech today and shake hands and do some photo ops with the people. It's a part of politics, but it's so Miss portrayed in the press that well, Senator Smith was absent for 42 votes in the last session. Yes, so it was I have heard, I've heard of this. So was that a senator so and so I mean, it goes, so so it doesn't seem like an astronomical number, the more controversial something is, the more likely the absences will diminish. Because if this is a lopsided victory, if the if the 20 had been there, it still wouldn't make any difference at all. That's what I was gonna think. So So when when something is destined to pass, it's not as critical when you're confirming a Supreme Court justice, and it's, and that's going to be pretty close to 5050, you can rest assured that they'll bring in every center they can find, to make sure that they vote, but but I wouldn't read a whole lot into to 20 people that voted.

Andy  52:30  
And just to fill in a gap on how this, this any of this machine learning stuff works, Larry, is you have a sample, you have a certain you know, you would feed it, I don't know, you pick 10,000 images or something like that. And you train it to recognize the features. If you train the database to only look at it has only seen criminals, that the system is going to be biased towards people with facial tattoos, they like the general perception of what criminals look like, like the stereotype, so to speak. And obviously, that runs the gamut. But suppose when you're feeding it, your training data, you know, you look at all the people in your office and all that stuff. But if you only feed it, quote, unquote, white men, whenever it encounters a non white man, the error rates going to go up, it's going to not understand the rules of what other people look like. And that's why these rates are so out of whack when it looks at a black person, African American, pick your terms. They're they're confused. They think they're doing the right thing, but they haven't been trained adequately to pick up the people of other persuasions other than white men. Specifically,

Larry  53:41  
what what do we do to fix that?

Andy  53:44  
I honestly think I'll give you two answers a stop using it for anything of this sort. But be is another way to solve this problem is you have competing systems, you actually have a system that is like testing for the results. And then you have a system that is challenging it. And you can make the it's almost like did you see the game movie wargames, way back in the day where the game the computer played? Tic Tac Toe millions of times, and it just finally decided says this is an unwinnable game. And so it was testing itself. And that's kind of what they've started doing with a lot of these machine learning systems is they have one that is trying to figure out the answer. And another one is using like a different algorithm. And it's challenging it. And they can do this for hours, hundreds and thousands and thousands of times per second. And they improve the system. They iterate through and figure out what the best possible answer is. But you need massive amounts of data and you need massive amounts of horsepower on computers, which we have through Google through Amazon. We have all that stuff available for us to to do these training sets. It's It's It's impressive. It is incredibly impressive stuff. I think it is terrible that the government would use it. I think it should like never be used by the government.

Larry  55:01  
Well, Alrighty. Let's see if we can make that happen in Georgia. lyst for California.

Andy  55:07  
From k What is HKLTK? Jeepers, KTVU Sorry, I can't read. I need my my bifocals to be stronger. Ex felons could soon start serving on juries. Oh, where California for the first time. Does anybody any state allow felons to serve on jury trials now there?

Unknown Speaker  55:26  
Oh, yes, yes. Do we do?

Andy  55:29  
Do you? Like I'm assuming after all of your sentence and all that stuff? No, nobody on paper anywhere, right? Yes. Well,

Larry  55:35  
without the federal courts have not open the door yet. But yes, there's no prohibition against a felon sort of our jury here now. And all likelihood of prosecutors caught up consider very much using one of their print free challenges. And for those who don't remember peremptory is a challenge where they don't have to stay to reason. If they can't come up with a reason to show by us. And we just use peremptory to strike the person. But yes, this is this is another thing where the will of the people has has been has been, is being heard in California, you've got a large disenfranchised population. And we have this right to be tried by jury of our peers. But yet, the the conviction rate of the minority community is so much higher, and they're excluded from serving. So the legislature by wide margins pass this action. And I'm not clear if the governor signed at Senate bill three, Tim. Well, anyone with a felony record? That's interesting, they excluded sex offenders. So those goes to government use them for consideration.

Andy  56:38  
Now Now, Larry, I find it telling let's go back to this. What was the other article from California? Was it the body cams? Yes. Okay. 42 to 18. And this is 47 to 26. Hey, so more people voted. But it seems to be pretty much the same sort of split. Guess how many guess how much republicans are the California State Senate or the House? State Assembly?

Larry  57:01  
Well, I know it's a lopsided that I know. Right. Yeah, it's so much.

Andy  57:07  
It's 18. Republicans

Unknown Speaker  57:09  
out of out of how many 8080?

Unknown Speaker  57:12  
Yeah, I'm just I'm just laughing because they have 18. Republicans and on the on the previous thing we had 4218. And on this one, so they did get some dems to vote for for us. I'm assuming this is pretty much party line split? I'm assuming it is.

Larry  57:24  
Well, yeah, wait, and the listeners in California can correct us because they've if it if it is bipartisan, it'd be nice to at least get some credit for bipartisanship. But But I'm suspecting that was it was by far. So that was only one or two republicans that joined in. Correct. So but yes, this is this is one of those things where we're, we're, it's why would you exclude people from serving on a jury? Because they've made a mistake in their life? What's the rationale for that? So

Andy  57:54  
okay, so so having these people proven that they have a flawed way of thinking and they shouldn't be put in a position to then drive society to their maligned way of thinking?

Larry  58:05  
Well, I don't think you could, you can prove that they had a flawed way of thinking. But if they've paid their debt to society, we don't know that our thinking is still flawed that these people had outset move into us, like so forever.

Andy  58:17  
We need our pound of flesh forever.

Larry  58:20  
Well, that's kind of what's been happening.

Andy  58:23  
Tim, can we say that it hasn't been working? Well.

Larry  58:27  
It says if the bill is signed by the governor, only Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky and Oklahoma will still have lifetime bans for people with felony convictions of ever serving on a jury.

Andy  58:38  
Okay, alright. So in Georgia, as I understand it, you can after you're done with your stuff, I don't think it's an automatic. I don't think it's challenging. If you recall, like the Florida stuff when they when they remove their fourth amendment thing for the first voting, like, like the governor only let 10 people have it at a thousands. But I think in Georgia, I don't think it's a terribly difficult thing to get your rights back. You may not get your second amendment stuff. But I think you get your rights back reasonably easy. And that would put you back on jury duty? I think. So I'm not sure either. But you just read off the states that would still leave it to where they don't have the right to, to serve and all that. And I've said this before, this is an incredibly neat process to be involved in to where you're going to go sit and listen to the evidence being brought before the two parties, the jealous thing, I found it to be incredibly interesting, where everyone else is like a mad jury duty. I gotta figure out a way to get out of this. I thought it was fascinating to see everything going on.

Larry  59:40  
Well, I'm sure I would I've never I've never, I've only been summoned once and then I was disqualified. Because it was a federal jury and I wasn't eligible. But yes, I think it was

Andy  59:51  
the I'm thinking it was because of age because you know, they wouldn't let anybody over 200

Larry  59:55  
that might have been part of it.

Andy  59:58  
They use you should have made an eight discrimination plainly.

Larry  1:00:02  
But this is this is so so interesting. A person who's been registered to vote all of their life, who's been in databases, all of their life has never been summoned. And people tell me Well, I get so mad all the time. It just gets on my nerves. Yes. And I've heard this dress by dresses current has one of the most mysterious people by keeping all my information current. And I never received the summons. That's very bizarre.

Andy  1:00:27  
What I mean, and it's just it. Do they do it on social do they do it on? Like, I don't know, do they just draw names out of a hat?

Larry  1:00:36  
Well, I think they use all the various databases to try to make it more representative of the population. And they use voter records, not just voter records. But MVD records, as we call it, not DMV, but the motor vehicle division records, they use a plethora of databases. And I have never received assignment except for once and my entire life.

Andy  1:00:57  
And I got hit twice outside of a roughly year in the mid 2000s. Ready to be a part of registry matters. Get links at registry matters dot CEO. If you need to be all discreet about it, contact them by email registry matters cast at gmail. com. You can call or text ransom message to 7472 to 744771. To support registry matters on a monthly basis, head to patreon.com slash registry matters. Not ready to become a patron, give a five star review at Apple podcasts for Stitcher, or tell your buddies that your treatment glass about the podcast. We want to send out a big heartfelt support for those on the registry. Keep fighting without you we can't succeed. You make it possible. Before we get into the the juicy stuff. That's let's hit this final article, The Statesman journal, Oregon Attorney General Supreme Court ruling could invalidate thousands of convictions. Let's get this one quickly before we go into the other juicy stuff.

Larry  1:02:05  
All right. What do you want to hit about it?

Andy  1:02:07  
What is it? how's this going to happen?

Larry  1:02:10  
Well, it's it's a case before the United States Supreme Court that's dealing with non unanimous jury verdicts. Now, Oregon's the only state left, because we want to change that. So we're going to find out what the US Supreme Court tells us when they're hearing oral arguments. August, August, October 7, and that will will receive a decision by the end of the term could be sooner, but certainly by the end of the term, which will be June 2020. Now we're going to we're going to it's going to be interesting to watch the split because they have previously ruled that that that Oregon has, that you have a right to a jury trial. But it doesn't have to be a unanimous verdict. And they've ruled that decades ago. And so now they're there they've granted sort and they're revisiting with a new case. And it's going to be interested in CC. The decision that this up for, for for scrutiny would be Apodaca vs Oregon refers to Robert up a Dhaka and two other organ man convicted of felonies, those cases went through Supreme Court in 1972. And they they said it was okay. If if you had a 90 demo unanimous jury party. Now if you're one of those who believes in the text, I don't think there's anywhere in the constitution where it says that the jury verdict has to be unanimous. I don't recall that. So if you're a textual issue, you'd have to say, Well, if they had one, if the founders and the framers had intended your voice to be unanimous, they would have said that, right?

Andy  1:03:44  
Yes. And then the legislature would have said, you know, if they were clear enough to say it, then they spoke to the like, I don't think that this is being ambiguous. So why is there Why is there a claim being brought to the Supreme Court then?

Larry  1:03:56  
I'll because the the the the creative argument, and it's 50 years since I last decided that this issue, and when you're trying to save someone's life, you come up with anything you can and saying the jury bird should be Nana was unanimous. It's a good argument. It was compelling enough that they granted review. Before we get too far away. Were you supposed to do just let your logic just give up on your on your clients say, well, there's nothing else left to do. Um, why

Andy  1:04:25  
what what is significant about like letting time pass before case gets brought back to the Supreme Court?

Larry  1:04:31  
Well, we don't know how many times that people have tried to get the court to reuse us. They don't tend to reverse themselves unless the courts makeup changes. So in the intervening decades, they probably had ample opportunity to take other cases, but they chose not to this good signify that they're going to revisit now that there's only one state that has you not unanimous jury verdict, it could be that they're ready to decide that since 49, states are doing it that there is a constitutional requirement. But if you're strict text lyst I'm not aware of that text, big up the Constitution. And then this

Andy  1:05:05  
would go to that attorney saying that if you look at what history has shown, then there's your evolving standard to go by that we have 49 states and that that's some level of standard there that Oregon is the the outlier.

Larry  1:05:21  
Yeah, but but don't have the right to be under under under that. That we have 57 separate governing entities in this country. What I'm with you.

Andy  1:05:31  
Yeah. Why do they have to conform to what the other 49? If they want to be the outlier? Let them be the outlier? I don't know which way do you think it should be? What is your opinion on the non unanimous jury argument at all?

Larry  1:05:42  
Well, as a as a, as a person who works in criminal defense, I'm looking for every way possible to save a person from conviction. So of course, I would like unanimous jury rights because it at least makes the jury have to put a lot of peer pressure on the holdouts. But if you if you if you like and the case where you have attended to was sufficient, that you can you can have a couple of holdouts that you can just you can deliberate around those holdouts. Yeah. So it's it's a it's a it's an additional tool in the arsenal because we're unanimous jury rights, you only get one hold out.

Andy  1:06:13  
Why do I Why does it seem to be in my head that you have to be convicted by unanimously by a jury of your peers? Why does it seem to be something in my head? Maybe it's folklore, it's a wives tale,

Unknown Speaker  1:06:24  
obviously, because that's the way that's that's why it's that's why it's always

Larry  1:06:29  
as far as as this as you've been, but it's not the way it is. It's it's if you live in Louisiana, it was not that way until just recently. And if you live in Oregon, it's not that way.

Andy  1:06:39  
And it's not the way it should be. It's just the way it is be.

Larry  1:06:42  
Well, it was the way it is the way it should be because the lawmakers and they'll states decided that they would impose that requirement. Okay. But the question is, is it in the constitution? And you've just it's not the question, the Constitution. The Constitution does not impose that as a standard. So you could either believe that that constitution has has evolved, because society has evolved, and society has evolved or that they've evolved to unanimous jury verdicts and 49 or 50 states, or you can believe Well, if they had intended that, they would have said that. And it ain't for us, we have to give those words what they meant when they will put on that paper. And that's if they if you don't like that you want a constitutional limit, then you need to get to work and pass a constitutional member. That's so that's also a way that that people that take the district interpretation view that's, that's a valid interpretation. Interesting. Okay. So well, if I will find out by June or sooner,

Andy  1:07:42  
yeah. Okay. All right. You ready to do Scalia?

Larry  1:07:45  
Oh, I love hearing from from from from Justice Scalia. We we missed it for a week or two?

Unknown Speaker  1:07:50  
Yes, I don't have the your favorite music behind it. But I'll put that in in post.

Unknown Speaker  1:07:55  
But I want to pick up on that with a question about that. The meaning of the 14th amendment in 1868, when the 39th, Congress was debating and ultimately proposing the 14th amendment. I don't think anybody would thought that equal protection would have applied to sex discrimination or certainly not to sexual orientation discrimination. So does that mean that we've gone off on a in air by? Okay, I'm just talked about sex, sex discrimination, sorry, tell you that, that's fine. I'm, I'm happy to

Unknown Speaker  1:08:31  
end the current society has come to different views. That's fine. You do not need the constitution to reflect the wishes of the current society. Certainly the Constitution does not require sexual discrimination, discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't nobody ever thought that that's what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that. So where do you get it from? If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey, we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws, you don't need a constitution to keep things up to date, all you need is a legislature in the ballot box. Things will be as up to date as you like, you don't like the death penalty anymore. That's fine. The Constitution doesn't require it, it simply doesn't forbid it. If you want to eliminate it, you know, for to eliminate, you want to write to abortion, to tell you the truth, there is nothing in the constitution about that. But that doesn't mean you you cannot prohibit it, persuade your fellow citizens, it's a good idea to pass a law, you've got the right to abortion. And that's what democracy is all about. It's not about nine, nine, superannuated judges who have been there too long, imposing these these demands on society. I don't know how we ever came to that notion that it's anyway.

Andy  1:10:10  
I got I really liked the framing. And I go through these little rituals of trying to go down a progression of what is he saying? What would be the resolution and what would be the counter to that and go forth. And so from what he just said, to me, like for the same sex marriage argument, but we as a society decided that it started to be okay, and a number of states in that created the elevated up to the Supreme Court. But as Chris just said, in chat, then we would then turn around and invalidate the law, which obviously would be like, I mean, that's how it would work. If we don't want something to be legal anymore, we would make it legal or illegal to do it. But we wouldn't necessarily need a constitutional amendment. But we have such an uninformed vote electorate, we have an interesting, stupid people. So that means we leave it to a very small number of people to make the decisions that we all have to live by, which means our democracy has failed.

Larry  1:11:09  
I don't know if I'd go that far says

Andy  1:11:10  
fail. Yeah, I know. But failing or challenged, I, you know, I know, I don't want to say failed as being like, it's already done. But that's, that's, that's like, where I keep going with most of these things that he says? Well,

Larry  1:11:22  
I'm trying to illustrate that that philosophy that people, people typically that have the conservative side, they really think they believe in that. Now, what he just told you was a lot of things that have have been pronounced with for this from the Supreme Court, that that, that that the majority of justice I've read in the constitution are just simply not there, that they've been invented. And and I want people to understand that if we, if we want the living constitution, you won't get that from people like Scalia. Delivered constitution, according to Scalia is threatening as well and want to be fair, he says, Well, if something can evolve into the Constitution, why can't something evolve out of the Constitution?

Andy  1:12:06  
So we could evolve out first amendment, we could evolve at the freedom of speech and assembly and all that. That's fair. that's a that's a fair fear.

Larry  1:12:15  
Yes. He says that if we we have a process by which we can amend the Constitution. And we have a process which we can make laws, to either allow something, or to prohibit something as long as we're not prohibiting something. That's the Constitution. Right. And most constitutional rights don't have an absolute. He himself has said, you don't have an absolute right to possess any type of weapon. He just says until the right case comes to the court, we won't we don't know where the boundaries are.

Andy  1:12:40  
And you don't have an absolute right to free speech. You know, don't say the B word in a movie theater and airport, you're going to have a bunch of people tackle you.

Larry  1:12:47  
Yes. So so. But But I've really tried to focus a lot on this on this textual interpretation. At this originalism, it has its downsides, folks, that's all I want. You understand, it's it's not the panacea, the decisions, we focused a lot on work, or they've done strict interpretation of the of the text, you know, Nebraska, Maryland, different, different decisions. If you're for textual ism, you would be happy as a lark for those decisions, because that's exactly what they've got. They've gone right by the text, and it's just not there. Have a feeling a lot of our people don't like textual interpretations, when it's contrary to what they would like the outcome to be.

Andy  1:13:31  
That's what everybody would do. If If, if I use your words against you, then you you know, for something that you weren't, anyway, I'm going to get myself twisted in a knot. And if it's not for what you think, you know, use your words against you, then you're going to be mad at me for using your words against you. I'm sure I can say that, right.

Larry  1:13:49  
But you, you shouldn't be what it what you should do is look at yourself and say, Wow, I find myself being intellectually inconsistent here.

Andy  1:13:57  
Yes. I mostly Well, they certainly they certainly you've even brought it up. You know, I as much as you are I try to be consistent and honest about the things that we talked about and think we all fall into the trap some people just more willing to fall into the trap than others of being inconsistent. And if you are willing to think this, then you should be willing to also then think that but like, No, I'm not going to do that, because that would be intellectually inconsistent. And I think you and I both tried very, very hard to do that. But I don't know that most people are even aware that that is an option or thing that they're doing.

Larry  1:14:34  
Most people, most people have given a second ball. That is correct. I think I've told the story about when we did the 2013 sort of members in my state, we we preempted local governments from imposing any residency proximity type of restrictions. And wasn't a year later that we're talking about. There was debate in the capital about giving the city Albuquerque the power to have a teen curfew. And some of our people who tend to link conservatives as well, I think by golly, that'd be good for the city to have a to paying curfew. Well, they the courts had strict curfew we had back in the 90s because they said it was preempted by the State Children's code that said that, that that that they'd be consistency in terms of juvenile juvenile opportunities and juvenile restrictions. And, and so the I said, Well, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, did you just asked me to go argue for statewide preemption, saying that the city should not be able to regulate sec? Well, yes, we did. as well. Now, if you're turning around saying the city should be able to have their own schemes in terms of how they regulate juvenile, which they can have curfews, and they can have these different requirements on juveniles, and it can be a hot hodgepodge of regulations around the state. Isn't that just a tad bit inconsistent? Yeah. And they look in their role, their role guys in the same window? I don't see it's inconsistent at all. So we find ourselves in that four week, we don't have to give it a second thought that we're being intellectually intellectually dishonest.

Andy  1:16:12  
All right, Larry, now is your chance to cover and I asked you this question earlier. So what is like tearing and leveling? Are they different? So we are going to take a deep dive and interesting exploration of what leveling and tearing are?

Larry  1:16:27  
Okay, let's say how much time do we have? Do we have like,

Unknown Speaker  1:16:31  
three, seven or eight minutes? No, just like four or five minutes? No, I'm kidding. Take as much time as you want. Well, then let's let's

Larry  1:16:37  
let's start with the with the, with the evolving Sex Offender Registry. When, when the states were encouraged in 94, to create registry is only a couple states had at the time to Jacob Wetterling Act passed. The the state of Washington had no California had since 47, I believe, I think Washington passed around 1990. But most states didn't have a registry. And the states were encouraged to create these registration schemes or face the loss of some federal funding for for crime assistance. The bird justice grants, a lot of the states took a an approach where they did an individualized level assessment of the person in terms of their threat to the community. They use various risk prediction models, but they use an individualized risk assessment. Arkansas still does. I think there's number of states I can't recite every one. But that states states did that approach of giving people a level based on their threat to the community their perceived threat. I think your Peach State of Georgia still does that. I don't think they're consistent and getting everyone level. But I think they have the process in

Unknown Speaker  1:17:56  
place. Yours truly is not leveled.

Larry  1:18:00  
But but but that that's and in some states, you derive a benefit from the level. Like for example, in Arkansas level ones are not put on the internet, some states that have that level system, they, they they will shield them from the from the view of the public. Well, that was 1994. Pat, fast forward to 2006 when the Adam Walsh Act passed, the Adam Walsh Act encouraged a different approach, the Adam Walsh Act encouraged a categorical approach rather than than a risk based approach. Because as as 12 years of experience had, one of the problems that that that had been alleged to have surfaced Was that too many people, even though they're registering were not known to the public, because the states had these wacky assessment systems that kept too many people in visible from the public. And the the advocates for full disclosure say that everybody knows that a registry I think it said the quote of one of the cases posted last week, or remember which one book but everybody knows that if they their persons visible to the public, that that decreases the chances that rate of recidivism. So the Adam Walsh Act encouraged states to take a different approach. So they encourage the states to go away from risk assessments, and go to a categorizing the offense by by tears and the the tears are completely different than an individual risk base. So in a nutshell, if you're a tier one, it makes you committed a very minor misdemeanor level offense. Well, there's very few sex offenses that are misdemeanor level. But but that and then if you're tier two, you have you have a felony offense, but it doesn't involve a minor under age 12. And, and then those who have have have used, used committed violence or had a minor against offense against a minor, they would be qualified as a tier three, or those who were previous the tier two who who committed another sexual offense could be elevated to a tier three under the category, category approach. So you end up with people. What happened was the states when they adopted their compliance with federal Sarna to try to preserve their their funding, they didn't have advocates. So from our side, actually participating in the process, say, wait a minute, this, this can be a tier one this offense. They all this whole group here you've put into proposing to be in tier three, they can actually be in tier two. So you ended up with a lot of offenses were pre were put in tier three, because Well, that was a crime against a minor. But that's not what the double check says it has to be a minor under 12. And and so you ended up with with people tearing these crimes incorrectly. But as long as they overtired there, okay, because the spirit of the federal legislation has to provide floors and not ceilings. So you can go above, you can put everybody at lifetime, if you like, then you certainly have you've met the minimum of having a tiered system. Everybody's tiered the same. You say the tier ones registered for lifetime, four times a year, the tier tues register for lifetime, four times a year, and a tier three is registered for lifetime, four times you you've got it covered. You've done more than what's required. But you you preserve your precious funding by doing that. Well, that's what happened. A lot of folks are in these tears that do not accurately represent what would have been required. child porn, a good example, that doesn't have to be a tier three. it's debatable. If you look at the sort of compliance sheet, the child porn possession under the federal statute can be tiered as a one. And then if you look at their guidelines for being a felony that could keras more than a year, it should be a tier two. So there's some ambiguity of whether it should be a one or two, but it certainly doesn't have to be a three, you've got to lot of people who are tiered as a tier three for possession, and they don't have to be. And my state would be an example of that. We have people that are that are tier destroyed. We don't really have a tier system, but we have a lifetime requirement for that particular offense. And it's not required by that rigid federal criteria. It most it's a tier two. This

Andy  1:22:21  
them what is the incentive of the state legislators to go so far above and beyond what is actually required? Seems like they would normally just go, if we have to, we'll go do the minimum, like what is their incentive to go beyond

Larry  1:22:35  
what they don't know that are going beyond? Again, the law enforcement apparatus is the only apparatus there. When these bills are proposed, they've been written by law enforcement, they've been taken up to the legislature seeking sponsorship by the attorney general's office, by the Association of District Attorneys, by the Sheriffs Association, or blah, blah, blah. And they have given them the legislation they would like to see and they will save looks pretty good to me. And they will have a bill draft or draft and they put it into the system. And when when, what our advocates are not there with the expertise to push back, for example, like on the five years on a tier one can be reduced from 15 years to 10 years. If the person picks up no felony conviction, there are a number of states who have not bothered to put that in there. Because no one mentioned it. The law enforcement apparatus didn't mention it. And no one mentioned that that was an option. Then for example, I called this ridiculous system that California just passed for removal is so silly, because under the under the rigid federal requirements, no petition need be filed. So what California did is they created a so called tearing system of registrants. And then a tier one is not required to file anything. A tier two is not required to follow anything a tier two would just automatically top off after 25 years that they created something that wasn't required, it is going to make a lot of money for attorneys, not a souls ever going to get off a whitelist. I take that back, I'm not supposed to say that. Very few people are going to get off in California under the system they've designed because of the complexity. And the the innocuous burden of proof and the way they've they've they've geared in favor of law enforcement and the fact that you have to file what the police first and then you have to go the district turning and addicts return, it has to notify the victim and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, very few people will get off. But it didn't even need to be there that you needed to file anything because the people as I understand it, the people that are lifetime, I don't believe they're ever eligible to file. But I would like to clarify that. But certainly that the tier ones and twos, they don't need to follow anything. If they had followed, what the federal recommendations are, they would just simply type those people out.

Andy  1:24:50  
So these, these leveling things aren't the panacea that people think they are.

Larry  1:24:55  
Well, the the tier system of the leveling system are not to adopt the same thing. The leveling system has its own set of problems, because people who have non contact defenses, they magically, they assumed that they would magically be tier one. That is a misguided erroneous assumption from the get go. People who have non contact defenses are often under these risk based models, a predicted to be very high risk. So they start with a with a with what the non-contact of interesting, well, if we just have a risk based system, my life will be all so much better, because I'll be low, low risk. Well, that that is assuming something that the evidence doesn't show. But beyond that, the complexity of who pays for it. What I tell people is it let's just go through a little exercise. All right. So okay, you want a risk based system? Okay. Who do you want to perform the evaluation for you? Well, do you want to be your sheriff's department that you're ready, one? No, I wouldn't want to be okay. Well, who would you like to do it? Okay, well, Oh, so you get what you want a group of professionals? Okay, well, okay, they that costs money. So so you want your wants I call just and treatment you want? Okay, so we got we're going to create a sex offender assessment board in your state. Okay, well, that costs money to staff. Ok. So now, those people are going to need support staff because you've got a conviction from Maine, you move to Arkansas. So they've got to figure out and they've got, they've got to figure out what you did in Maine, they've got looking at a bunch of stuff. So they need support staff. So we just created a bureaucracy to decide your risk. Okay, now right now. Okay. So we saw you, you saw that they call you and for your risk assessment, and they assign you a level that you don't agree with, because unless you assume that they magically get it, right, that they will that you and they will see eye to eye on everything. So then when you get your letter saying we declare you risk level three, okay, now what? Okay, well, what do you want to do next? Okay. Well, I'd like to appeal. Okay, well, what would you like the appeal to look like? Would you like to be? Would you like to have to file a court? Or would you like to have an administrative hearing first before you go to court, because that can be used to handle quick, more, more expeditiously. Okay. So you want to administer or but but how you gotta have administrative here you got of administrative law judge, that administrative law judge just kind of need to have a salary, so they're going to have to need to have support staff. Okay. So you have to prepare for administrative law judge hearing. Okay. What kind of like social security disability does to her termination she got before ALJ. cable that if you don't agree with administrative law judge, then what you think you should have to go right. Go To Court. Right. Okay. You should go to court. All right. Okay. So you fall in court? Okay, you have no money because you're working at a $7 25 cents an hour job? Who do you think would pay for your representation? Because you're in court? It gets far more complicated. You even need an attorney and administrative law judge level, but now you're in court? Who's going to pay? Okay, well, wait a minute. So the assessment board says your level three, you need money to pay for your counter assessment? Or you're going to argue that you should be a level one or two, who's going to pay for your assessment because you're $7 25 cents an hour won't cover that. Are you going to provide funding for indigent representation? And for indigent expertise, are you going, that's a tough sell to well, the status never had that model, to go present all those complexities and say, I'd like to create a bureaucracy to do these risk assessments, I'd like to staff it. And it would be an ongoing bureaucracy that would never die. Because until you publish the registry, it would be ongoing in perpetuity. I want to create an appellate process, I want to find the best representation. And I want to do all this in a time of lean budgets, where we don't have a lot of spare cash. And so I'd like you to prioritize and shift some money out of education and out of parks and out of out of roads. To do this, try selling that and tell me how well you do. It's just not an easy sell.

Andy  1:28:38  
That was more than what you wanted to hear. It is like I My eyes are still swirling, I don't know that I can even like come up with a cogent question to ask you. Is there anything else you want to say about this? Before we go on to some listener questions?

Larry  1:28:51  
Well, there are advantages to the rest system. Also disadvantages I just eliminated several of them. The advantages are for the people who it works for. And they actually derive a benefit from it like a shorter period of registration, or shielding from the public, it's a good thing for them. But for the for the people. It's like anything in our system. If it works for you, it's a great thing. But if you end up with nobody, and they level up to three and you can't do anything about it, you probably would not be screaming from the rooftops about what a great system it is for you. Oh, right.

Andy  1:29:22  
I now have a question for you. You do? All right. I do. Do you want to go over to wills voicemail question or do you want me to read the next question? I love wills question, but

Unknown Speaker  1:29:35  
we're gonna save it.

Andy  1:29:36  
Okay, so we'll save that for the best for last, then

Larry  1:29:38  
we'll say this is the best.

Andy  1:29:40  
So we have a question from listener J. And it says denying voting rights to felons aren't states violating the Constitution because the 15th amendment which says right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or bridged by the United States or by any state on account of race color or previous condition of servitude. When you are a prisoner that can that is condition of servitude. And thank you guys and

Larry  1:30:02  
guess I wish I had a better answer for this because I don't really know the origin on the felon disenfranchisement franchise month and and how that that has been held to be constitutional.

Unknown Speaker  1:30:14  
Jim Crow laws, right.

Larry  1:30:18  
Certainly, we say we recognize that all rights are not absolute, but barely a felony conviction for for disenfranchisement is it's always troubled me it's troubled me a lot I'm not a big gun told her it's troubled me that you can never, ever, ever possess under federal law. You can never you can never defend yourself again. So Martha Stewart for lied to, to the investigator can never carry a weapon lawfully

Andy  1:30:47  
again. And this is this doesn't this doesn't fit into the realm of amendments. This is like you don't you don't have a constitutionally amended right to vote you have a constitutionally protected like, in the We the People part to vote?

Larry  1:31:00  
And I don't I don't know. I don't know enough to explain it. It's it's troubling to me, but I don't know how hell did they've managed to deny that right to so many for so long. But there has been an effort to re and franchise felons, I mean, that we've been moving in the right direction. Yeah, I would think I think we can all acknowledge that.

Andy  1:31:17  
All right, well, sorry, we don't have a better answer for you. But it obviously troubles Larry, and I'm with you. We perhaps at least like as soon as you're done with your sentence, perhaps while you're still but you know, we talked about that, too. There are what two states that allow you to vote while you're still in prison. And 20 something will allow you some sort of procedure to get your voting rights back. And then there are those places, there's a dozen or so that you just never get it back. I think roughly how it split out.

Larry  1:31:44  
It's pretty much automatic. And a lot of states after you've served your time, I don't want my state it is your your you don't have to file anything with anybody, you're just automatically eligible again, you go down to register. And theoretically, the supervising officials, when they closed your supervision, they followed notice of eligibility for rip forever restoration. And if they fail to do that, but with human being sometimes those those certificates of completion are not filed. But but you don't need any type of pardon or any type of special permission. You just simply have to have exhausted the totality of your sentence. And then you're automatically written franchised in my state. And that's that's the case that a number of states,

Andy  1:32:22  
is there anything we can do to delay wills question any further because he's in chat. He's screaming and jumping up and down like a three year old? Because we're delaying his question, or anything else we can do

Larry  1:32:32  
that thank you should find his IP address and disconnected from our

Andy  1:32:37  
Wi Fi finally figured out a way to to use that for its expression. All right, here's wills question. This is will from Tennessee. And I have a question for Larry. Because look, Larry, nobody's asking me questions. So any question that comes in has to immediately just, there's no reason that anyone's gonna ask me a question.

Unknown Speaker  1:32:56  
Anyway, I digress. This is will from Tennessee. And I have a question for Larry, was the applicability of severability ever decided for the Michigan Sex Offender Registry law? And how much longer is the court going to give the state to fix the problem now that the 90 day window has been surpassed? Thank you, and to all you people who support the registry, you're such friendly young people. Thank you for all you do have a great day.

Andy  1:33:32  
Did you catch that? He said now that the window has closed?

Larry  1:33:36  
Well, as I said, support the register, I think he means the register batters podcast. Rather than support the registered we hopefully we don't have a lot of registered supporters here. Thank you meant to register matters podcast. But will and everybody listening? It's hard to answer that question. I can give you my best guess based on the political analysis. Keep in mind, the courts can never require the legislature to legislate, they can barely provide them the window of time to do that, which they did. And if that window has closed, I haven't tracked this case with with with with a calendar system. If that window hasn't closed on, take his word for it, then exactly what I said what my prediction was, has come to fruition. I did not think they would legislate because the incentive to legislate from political perspective is too risky. The the the political

analysis is that if we do anything, now, this is the political analysis, not me. But the political analysis would be if we do anything, we run the risk of being vilified if we seemed if we seem to be soft on sex offenders. And there always be the possibility that an opponent can say we did something we didn't have to do. Well, there's one way to make sure that risk never comes truest, don't do anything at all. And then if you don't anything at all, then any fallout goes to the courts. And it's like the California overcrowding in the prisons, the courts just said we were fed up, you cannot be this far over your design capacity. But the the the the courts got blamed for releasing people, they didn't release it. So they just said you can't keep but X number of people in these facilities that you have, you can build more if you like. But the same thing is going to happen here at my view with Michigan, the court is going to do have a couple of options. what they're going to do is they're going to have consultations with the parties and find out if any progress is being made. And the ACLU is going to say yes, so there's lots of progress, read good negotiations, and everybody's working in good faith. Because the ACLU doesn't want the court. To solve this, the ACLU feels like if the court solves this, all they're going to do is carve out the escalations that they did in 2006 and 2011. And the registry will be as it was with many it's a problem with that they would like to see addressed by legislation. So the ACLU is looking for a comprehensive fix that will go beyond 2006. To the elevations of 2006 and 11. Well, the court is going to say, Well, if you're making progress, we're going to give you a little bit more time because the last thing the court wants to do is to do the same thing the politicians don't want to do. They don't want to be blamed for turning loose hundreds and hundreds of if not thousands, I don't know the number, but potentially thousands of people from the registry. So the courts going to say, Well, all right, if there's progress being made, all will allow more time. And then what that extra time, the politicians are going to feel less pressure to do anything. So you've got this vicious cycle working, where at some point, the courts going to say clearly, there's going to be no legislation, and then the courts can be faced with the next part of what they have to do. And that's we've said this is unconstitutional, particularly the of the 2006 and 2011 members. So then they're going to need to know if Michigan law provides severability, and there's two ways for several buildings can be can be an option, it can be in the statute itself, they can say if at section of this law is declared to be unconstitutional, for surviving section shall remain in effect. To be honest, I haven't read the Michigan the entire Michigan sex offender registration statute, I don't know if such a clauses in there. If that's not in there, then they would have to take a look at that states jurisprudence, existing case law. If there's not a whole lot of case law on point, the best place to go would be to state Supreme Court. So what the what the Federal Court of Appeals do would do is they would certify question to the to the Actually, it's probably been remanded back to the tribal level court. But what the what the federal court would do is they would certify a question to the state Supreme Court. And they will say, we would like to know, if the sex offender registration act, inseparable if it provision is declared unconstitutional, if it can be severed, and if the remainder of the stature can be can be saved. And the Supreme Court of Michigan can say, nice, you'd like to know that we don't feel like answering it, or they can issue an opinion on this on the certified question. And they can say, Yes, we think it's terrible. No, we think it's not. And I have no idea how they'll answer that question. If they'll answer it in which way they'll answer that question. If it comes to that point, if they were to determine that it is separable, that the court would be likely to say, all right, you cannot enforce these two unconstitutional revisions in the registry continues to exist the way it is, if they were to say that it's not several, then the court has a real, real big problem. Because then, if the whole statutory scheme is unconstitutional, then what? Because if the court says, All right, well, then then the entire thing crashes, I can absolutely assure you, the pressure would go up on the lawmakers exponentially at that point, because Michigan at that point would be but without a registration scheme, because if it's unconstitutional is applied to everybody. Prior to our sort date, you'd be talking about many thousands people who would be who would be potentially without a requirement to register. Well, that would be an inspiration to lawmakers at that point, they what I just said earlier, they did, they don't have no incentive to legislate, they would all of a sudden have an incentive to legislate, because their phones would be ringing off the hook. And that's a your you were about to have 11,000 people in our state no longer required to register, you better get with it. So that's the trajectory this case could take, as we can have a lot of if they if they if they decide it's not separable. And the Supreme, the Federal Court says, Well, RH can enforce

the law, several of the several causes, you can afford the remainder that you don't have the larger problem. But if the Supreme Court says that it's not several them, then you've got, you've got the federal courts got made a real conundrum, because they're going to have to say, gee, how much time do we get the legislature to legislate to fix this before they can no longer enforce it. And I think they would really be serious at that point, they would say you've got 100, 90 days, or whatever it is to fix this. And then you can no longer enforce this. And this is your one time to get it done. And I bet they would get it done at that point.

Andy  1:40:08  
We'll have a couple follow up questions. And I think you've already answered them, but just to make sure that these go through. So basically, they're going to allow them to doddle for an indeterminate amount of time. And so they may never be any meaningful conclusions. And then the last one is in summary, this can keep dragging on for years without resolution. I think you answered all of those as Yeah, this is going to go forever.

Larry  1:40:30  
It Well, if if the parties when the when the court says progress. If the party said we're at loggerheads, we can't do anything here. That's going to be different. But the ACLU is not going to say that they will have absolutely no reason to say that. And they would have every reason to say just the opposite of that, because they want a resolution legislatively. They do not want not I'm stating their public position. And I'm not speaking for them. This is their public position that they have stated. They do not want just to note no longer enforcement of those unconstitutional provisions that caused the court to find that it Volleyed X was factor Plus, they are not going to want to go in and say all hope it's gone. So if there's anything that they can hang their hat on and say that there's a glimmer of hope, they're going to want to try to have a legislative fix that goes beyond what they think that they can most likely achieve was with the court. And so I suspect that as long as the court believes that progress has been made, at some point, they will close the door if we if this goes on and on. At some point, the judges the the court is going to say we've we've heard this story this long, have danced before. And this case needs to come to a conclusion. But it's it affects so many people and it's such a significant issue. The court is not going to want to be haste and premature. There, they're not going to I mean, even even no matter how liberal The court is, and how much they hate the registry. They also have kids that go to school, they also live in communities, and they don't want their throat sliced, and they don't want to be the one who lets thousands of people no longer have any accountability. So the courts are not chomping at the bit to crash the Michigan registry. And I'm sorry to have to say that but

Andy  1:42:06  
but they're not. Larry, this, you know, I've been following the gerrymandering stuff that goes in these different jurisdictions around this feels similar as far as like, hey, this was deemed an unconstitutional map election map. And it goes to the court, the court says this is unconstitutional, redraw the map. And I think in one of those cases, the court said, Okay, you guys have left up so bad, we're going to draw your map for you. They think and maybe Wisconsin or somebody like that, that's, that's what the end result was. But this feels very similar. As far as like the procedure like the trajectory and path that it's taking from what you're describing to me.

Larry  1:42:44  
It could very well be that but they won't be able to the courts won't be able to create their own registration scheme. They will be able to possibly extricate the things that they don't longer can afford state. And they'll extract that from the law, if they if they believe that that it is severability is options there. But the court cannot impose its own registration scheme. Now they do that like didn't have to supreme Gordon, and I think another Supreme Court recently did that. They said the registry is evolved to be unconstitutional, but if it had due process, it would be constitutional. So therefore, you have a right due process, but there was no legislative due process and sabarish. Nobody knows what to file what to call, what to do, what the requirements are the burden of proof who who should be enabled boss Kaka mania ruling I've ever heard up. But as a general rule, the courts are not supposed to be legislators. They're supposed to be interpreters. Yes. And they are not supposed to be like the the action enablers. They are supposed to just say yes, the thumbs up or thumbs down. And then the legislature supposed to act up after that. They are the ones that would actually do the doing. And and the courts are far more restrained. Now the decisions that we used to see in the 60s and 70s. Were not likely to see those today. We wait. I mean, busing was a very, very controversial thing back in the 70s. School busing. And and you're just not likely to say that schools were many ways just to segregate. It's like we're back in those days. But that's just that that was a the courts were far more interventionists, then they were trying to cure a public policy ill. And they were willing to take drastic measures. The I don't see the courts being anywhere near that, that activists today because the temperament of the judge judicial appointees at the federal level have been they've been moving constantly, constantly further towards towards the right. And I don't see them wanting to take that level of activism. And so I suspect the courts gotta give more time, as long as there's there's evidence of some progress being made.

Andy  1:44:40  
Already, then. Is there anything else at all that we could possibly cover on this podcast now? That is like seven days long?

Larry  1:44:48  
It's only two hours long.

Andy  1:44:51  
Larry, how can people find the podcast if they should be so inclined that they want to find the website that this podcast is hosted it? And purposely given you a lot of time for you to open up the document, find the website? Well, it's

Larry  1:45:01  
easiest. It's www but nobody does. I didn't remember how to do that. Yeah, yes. Nobody does anymore. registry. matters.co. And is that a.com?

No, it's a dot CEO.

Unknown Speaker  1:45:16  
Okay, just want clarity, because someone did I could cause like,

Unknown Speaker  1:45:19  
no.

Larry  1:45:21  
Now I remember listening to talk shows when they would have guests back in the early days of the internet back in the 90s. And, but it's saying give us your website. And they would say www dot blah, blah, blah, forward slash upside down character, backslash what happened to all that stuff. I bet by the time by the time they gave out there, you would have had to you would exhausted every piece of paper you had to your stock to try to write down their website address what happened to all those long board slashes a backslash is a very special characters that they used to have in their addresses.

Andy  1:45:53  
We are we have learned to not make people have to do typing jumping jacks to type in a on that we've shortened it. But you can still find some crazy someone posted one in chat just a few minutes ago. And it takes up the entire page of all kinds of little switches and bells and whistles. I'm trying to find it. Yeah. somebody posted an article to in gadget that has it's it's 500 characters long, I don't know. Yeah, it's just it's all the tracking information there. But otherwise, No,

Larry  1:46:20  
none of that stuff exists anyway. So or you could do what we'll do. And we threaten to disconnect the phone. So at least we got a call. But you could call 7472 to 74477. And that is exactly the length of question that we're looking for. Yes, ask some questions. They do it. It's a sink. And it's something that more than just one person is interested in. There are a lot of people out there interested in not only that live in Michigan, but they're interested across the country, because they want to know when IP litigation is successful. What's going to happen. This is a case study unfolding in front of you about what's going to happen when you win a case. And if you look at the Mendez decision out of Pennsylvania, these are all case studies telling you about what's going to happen or if you look in Maryland Department public safety were the DPS decisions about how long it took people to get relief, there was no instantaneous relief likely to come with a victory. So the these are good. These are good questions because it helps people understand that things things are not gonna happen overnight. Very much. So.

Andy  1:47:23  
All right. And then so where are we we just give out the phone number. And then what about supporting the podcast? What about the email? Sorry, I missed email.

Larry  1:47:32  
Yeah. Yes, that's, that's registry matters. cast@gmail.com

Andy  1:47:37  
outstanding. And then what is our boat, most bestest, favorite test way for people to support the podcast

Larry  1:47:43  
on that's that's that's patreon.com. And we are spelled out because we've had so many new signups. We don't want anyone to lose track of how to how to find Patreon.

Andy  1:47:52  
And that's oe@reon.com slash

Larry  1:47:56  
registry matters. And it will it will search function for you if you just if you go to patreon.

Andy  1:48:02  
Yes, it will. And you can find us on twitter Follow us on Twitter you can find us on our YouTube channel all of these things are registering matters. Certainly would love for everyone to go out and and friend us on Twitter or become friends whatever follow us friend follow and then YouTube sign up. All that stuff would help us if you don't want to support or if you can't support the podcast, please go to your favorite podcasting app, iTunes or wherever you get it and write a five star review so that more of our people can find us and help us move this whole shenanigans. Sh train down the path to making it look better for everybody.

Larry  1:48:37  
we would we would like to be talking to thousands of people every week because we feel like the information we're we're providing is very helpful to people. And I don't know of another source. Honestly, I don't I do not

Andy  1:48:47  
agree. Christian chat tonight said how in the world is Larry know this stuff? He is an incredible resource of information. I've paraphrased a little bit but he said something like that. So there you go.

Larry  1:49:00  
spent my life in being a nerd, I guess would be would be how I have learned Oh, I'm sitting at home, reading and studying when everybody's out having a good time. So

Andy  1:49:13  
perfect. Larry, as always, I can't thank you enough. And as Chris said, You are an unbelievable resource of information. And I don't think we could do it without you. I appreciate it. And I hope you have a great weekend.

Larry  1:49:24  
Thanks everybody, and I'm headed to the fair. So good night. Enjoy. Take care.

Andy  1:49:27  
Bye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai