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- A panel of 9th Circuit judges rules that prosecuting homeless people for sleeping in public is cruel and unusual punishment. [NY Times]
Sleeping In The Street
- Law
- Posted on 6 years ago
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We should never even reach the issue of whether or not it is cruel and unusual punishment.
The practical concerns are that it is a grotesques waste of financial resources, and an inordinate waste of time that could be far better spent on legitimate law enforcement matters.
And even though many crimes have a high rate of repetition no matter how often you arrest and prosecute the suspects, none of them remotely approach the 100% repeat rate of this supposed violation.
Most people don't think of being homeless as a crime. It's more of a tragic life style that results from being addicted, mentally impaired, and a myriad of other reasons. No matter how many times you arrest these people, nothing is corrected and no lessons are learned, nor are any members of the public truly protected in any meaningful sense.Once released these folks will be found sleeping in public the very next night. Either that, or they will be outside the convenience store asking you for money.
This isn't just about homelessness either – it's a broader problem with how we handle societal problems. Instead of spending money to fix the problems upstream (more funding for addiction counseling or mental health), we criminalize them. This is true of homelessness, but also a lot of theft and physical violence issues could be avoided if we were willing to give people the help they need. But we don't, because "taxes bad." It's pennywise and pound-foolish.
Generally agree with 3:09 but homelessness is a tough nut to crack as many homeless prefer to sleep outside. Some I have personally discussed the matter with say this because the shelters are ridden with bedbugs and violence, others because they just prefer to live outside in an urban environment. Frankly, and admittedly harshly, if you create shelters that are really sufficient to draw people, you may draw more to the homeless 'lifestyle' or more of the homeless from other states. And even if you provide excellent mental health services, you cannot force people into treatment if they are not a danger to themselves or others.
I work in an office downtown. The homeless in the area are a problem. I didn't used to think so, but lately they have been causing huge damage. Dumpster fires, property damage to buildings and vehicles parked there, needles left around, feces on the front doorstep of the office next door (as well as in and around our property). Fist fighting on our property with each other, refusing to leave the property, banging on our front and back doors. My firm hired nightly patrol that cost well over $2k a month to deal with the issue. We also installed cameras and a lock on the front door so anyone without a key needs to be buzzed in. Law enforcement doesn't care.
I didn't care about people sitting around so long as they didn't cause damage to anything or anyone. At this point it is almost a daily issue, and our neighbors as well as our firm have no idea what to do. Neighbors installed barbed wire, it didn't help. Other neighbors installed a gate to their parking area, it didn't help.
I don't care if they sleep, I care about everything else.
I also work in an office downtown, and have experienced absolutely none of these problems. The only issue we've had is homeless people leaving trash on the ground, which is not a good thing but could be easily solved by putting trash cans on the sidewalk.
I'm not calling you a liar or anything, but I think it's important to realize that homeless people, like other people, are individuals with differences in individual behavior. Just because you have a few (literally) shitty people living near your office, it doesn't mean you can make blanket statements about the behavior of all homeless people.
9:33 here. We didn't have problems until a couple months ago. Now it's almost a daily occurrence. I also never said all homeless people were a problem, in fact I noted I didn't mind them until we started having the problems.
Can we please just abolish the 9th circuit and create three new ones with actual judges instead of ideologues?
This is a bad idea for obvious reasons (one person's "ideologue" is another person's "reasonable judge interpreting obvious law," so that can't be a standard). But it's not possible to split the Ninth Circuit up even semi-evenly because California is so honking big. Like, if it were split into three circuits, there would be two very underpopulated circuits containing all the non-California states, and one California Circuit, which would be less efficient than the current system and lead to a weird scenario where California federal law diverges from the rest of the country and converges with California state law. Or we could just split up California between the circuits, which would make three arguably-too-small circuits and create a different kind of weird scenario where federal law means different things in different parts of the state.
The Ninth Circuit is a too-big kludge, but I don't think it's possible to do anything really differently about it.
Nothing in the Constitution prevents Congress from splitting a state into different circuits. Congress has total power over the jurisdiction of the inferior courts.
We had a homeless person die right outside our downtown office in the alleyway overnight. Came in the morning to park and he was just sitting there, dead. Cops said he died of natural causes. It's truly a shame to have someone die like that…alone, homeless, on the street, name unknown. We all deserve better than that. Compassion can go a long way guys
The decision in the 9th Circuit wasn't that controversial. The summary is that the City of Boise enacted an ordinance which made sleeping in public places or streets criminal. The court rules that "a municipality cannot criminalize such behavior consistently with the Eighth Amendment when no sleeping space is practically available in any shelter". So if a shelter isn't available (full), or requires something not reasonable (long distance travel, religious commitment etc) you cannot criminalize sleeping rough. You can kick them out of public spaces, you can move them along but you can't arrest them solely for sleeping in public spaces. Pretty non-controversial.
All Bar Counsel should be prosecuted for sleeping at their desks
Do judges even read what they sign? My God.
Would you please be my attorney, it sounds like you have a brain. I am dealing with stupid now who is my attorney.
PSA: On page 34 of the Nevada Lawyer, the State Bar refers to Lawyer Advertising Interpretive Guidelines, and invites written comment. They then provide utterly useless directions on obtaining the guidelines. You would never find the guidelines using their direction. If you were lucky enough to find the Interpretive Guidelines sub-page of the Member Services > Lawyer Advertising page, you would discover nothing there.
With that in mind, here are the guidelines: https://www.nvbar.org/member-services-3895/lawyeradvertising/interpretive-guidelines-july-2018/
Perhaps the most absurd of the guidelines is that mere puffery ("the best PI Lawyer in town") "will be subject to proof of verification."
https://www.nvbar.org/wp-content/uploads/Interpretive-Guidelines-July-2018.pdf
But Dimopolous can advertise as legal elite. The state bar will self implode in 321
The Las Vegas City Council was on the verge of passing a law that would ban homeless people from being within 1000 feet of a food processing facility, but then they didn't because it got bad publicity. It was a really stupid law for a lot of reasons. It would have physically blocked homeless people from parts of the homeless corridor; it was being pushed by Anderson Dairy for "health reasons" even though the city health department said there wasn't any actual health problem caused by homeless people; and there's also this constitutional/practical concern about criminalizing homelessness.
https://www.nevadacurrent.com/2018/09/06/lv-council-kills-anderson-dairy-bill/
So much craziness in the world, thank God that Colin Kapernick is here to save us
I can no longer advise clients to file a bar complaint against another attorney. He has a valid complaint against this attorney and OBC does shit. WTF?????
OBC is the biggest joke going. I would call and ask for actual bar counsel and complain.
All I can tell you is we filed a proper bar complaint on a person's behalf, and documents, and Phil told us that the OBC is not a substitute to the courts. Who is in charge over there?
I had an attorney steal $6k from me and Wolfson and the OBC did jack shit.
Duh, they have better things to do, like prosecute the homeless for sleeping outside.
This ineptness is brought to you your Board of governors. I would call them or bar president. Bar counsel wants mandatory insurance and audits, but treats attorneys like shit. I see there pattern here.
Their
Who told an attorney from bar counsel they would read things to them off the Internet? Moron.