Archive for November, 2009

« Older Entries

FBI releases 2008 hate crime statistics

Friday, November 27, 2009

On Monday, the FBI published its summary of hate crimes in America in 2008.

These are the FBI’s bullet points:

An analysis of the 7,780 single-bias incidents revealed that 51.3 percent were motivated by a racial bias, 19.5 percent were motivated by a religious bias, 16.7 percent were motivated by a sexual orientation bias, and 11.5 percent were motivated by an ethnicity/national origin bias. One percent involved a bias against a disability.

There were 5,542 hate crime offenses classified as crimes against persons in 2008. Intimidation accounted for 48.8 percent of crimes against persons, simple assaults for 32.1 percent, and aggravated assaults for 18.5 percent. Seven murders were reported as hate crimes.

There were 3,608 hate crime offenses classified as crimes against property; the majority (82.3 percent) were acts of destruction/damage/vandalism. The remaining 17.7 percent of crimes against property consisted of robbery, burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, arson, and other offenses.

Of the 6,927 known offenders, 61.1 percent were white and 20.2 percent were black. The race was unknown for 11.0 percent, and other races accounted for the remaining known offenders

The largest percentage (31.9 percent) of hate crime incidents occurred in or near homes; followed by 17.4 percent on highways, roads, alleys, or streets; 11.7 percent at schools or colleges; 6.1 percent in parking lots or garages; and 4.2 percent in churches, synagogues, or temples. The remaining 28.8 percent of hate crime incidents took place at other specified locations, multiple locations, or other/unknown locations.

In West Virginia, 23 agencies reported 43 hate crimes. Interestingly, the FBI also listed different jurisdictions (cities, counties, etc.) that reported zero hate crimes during 2008. Happily, after the headline-grabbing accounts of what happened to Megan Williams in Big Creek in 2007 (and all the subsequent commotion), Logan County reported no hate crimes in 2008.

The same is not true of some of West Virginia’s most populated counties, including Kanawha and Monongalia (although Morgantown had none).

Posted in Kanawha County, Logan County, Monongalia County, Public safety | 1 Comment »

Tort trials decreasing, DOJ study finds

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

The Bureau of Justice Statistics, which is part of the U.S. Department of Justice, released a new report this week on the number of tort cases that went to trial in state courts 2005. Torts, as the report reminds us, are cases with “one party alleging injury, damage, or loss stemming from the negligent or intentional acts of another party.”

Here are some highlights:

– Almost 60 percent of tort cases that went to trial were car accident cases. The next highest category, at 15 percent, was medical malpractice.

– Plaintiffs won about half (51.6 percent) of the time. This was true for jury trials (51.3 percent) and bench trials (56.2 percent). Nine out of ten trials were decided by juries.

–The median final award amount for plaintiffs who won was $24,000. The median for awards by juries ($24,000) was pretty similar to the median for awards by judges ($21,000).

(A quick reminder: the median is not the same as the average; the median is the number where half of the sample is higher, and half is lower.)

–Winning plaintiffs sought punitive damages less than 10 percent of the time. Punitive damages were awarded to less than three percent of plaintiffs who won. Judges ($54,000 median) tended to award smaller punitive damages than juries ($100,000 median), although the study said those numbers are “not statistically different.” (more…)

Posted in Courts | No Comments »

More domestic violence precendents from the state Supreme Court

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

As I reported in today’s Gazette, the West Virginia Supreme Court established new precedents in an opinion published Monday. The heart of the decision is this: Actual violence is not a prerequisite for getting a domestic violence protective order, or for violating West Virginia’s domestic violence laws.

Here are the two new syllabus points (numbers 5 and 6 of the opinion):

 5. The act of domestic violence defined in West Virginia Code 48-27-202 (5) (2001) as “[h]olding, confining, detaining or abducting another person against that person’s will” does not require proof of some overt physical exertion on the part of the alleged offender in order to justify issuance of a protective order.

6. The act of domestic violence defined in West Virginia Code 48-27-202 (3) (2001) as “[c]reating fear of physical harm by harassment, psychological abuse or threatening acts” provides that fear of physical harm may be established with (1) proof of harassment, (2) proof of psychological abuse, or (3) proof of overt or covert threatening acts.

As I’ve written before, it’s pretty noteworthy when new precedents are set. Here’s hoping that judges, magistrates and law enforcement (and particularly potential violators) all around the state got the Supreme Court’s message.

Posted in Courts, Domestic violence | 1 Comment »

Upsetting upsets: Football and domestic violence

Monday, November 23, 2009

19174356.jpg

Many of us have heard the oft-repeated canard that Superbowl Sunday is the worst day of the year in terms of domestic violence. (More people have money riding on the game, and/or have been drinking, and if the wrong team wins, tempers flare and violence ensues, goes the conventional wisdom.) This conclusion hasn’t held up to closer scrutiny, and I don’t think very many people put much stock in it these days.

But what does cause a spike in domestic violence, according to a new academic study titled Family Violence and Football, is an upset in the NFL. Using Las Vegas spreads as an indicator of the expected outcome, economists David Card of the University of California Berkeley and Gordon B. Dahl of the University of California San Diego tracked reported incidents of family violence in areas loyal to a particular team. When the hometown favorite lost unexpectedly, reports of domestic violence went up 8 percent. And particularly wrenching losses, like in a playoff game, made it worse.

Sadly, the inverse does not seem to be true: unexpected wins do not decrease the reports of domestic violence significantly, the study found.

(While the Superbowl Sunday brutality may be a myth, the study notes that domestic violence does go up on holidays: Christmas Day +17 percent, Thanksgiving +22 percent, Memorial Day +30 percent, New Year’s Day +19 percent, New Year’s Eve +32 percent, and July 4th +28 percent.)

(more…)

Posted in Domestic violence, Gambling | 5 Comments »

Judicial nominations: “Partisan political warfare”?

Friday, November 20, 2009

That’s how Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) sees it. Speaking Tuesday in support of Indiana U.S. District Judge David F. Hamilton‘s nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Specter said:

arlenspecter.jpgSpeaking candidly, perhaps bluntly, Judge Hamilton is a pawn in partisan political warfare. That is the long and short of it. This is the 90th filibuster in the past several months. This follows a pattern, regrettably, that goes back almost two decades, when both sides, Democrats and Republicans at various times, have engaged in filibusters against judicial nominees where there was no justification to do so. It occurred extensively during the Clinton administration. At that time, on the other side of the aisle, I supported many of President Clinton’s nominees. It occurred during the Bush administration, when I chaired the Judiciary Committee, and there were repeated filibusters by Democrats against President Bush’s nominees.

At that time, this Chamber was almost torn apart with the ferocity and intensity of the partisanship, with serious consideration being given to what was called the nuclear or constitutional option, when there was serious consideration given to altering the traditional requirement of 60 votes to end a filibuster. There was a tactic devised to challenge the ruling of the Chair, which could be overruled by or upheld by only 51 votes, and thereby move the judicial nominees without the traditional 60 votes. Fortunately, sanity and tradition prevailed and we worked out a compromise with the so-called Gang of 14 to confirm some and to reject others. Now we find the pattern continues.

It is my hope that at some point we can declare a truce, an armistice, and stop the partisan political warfare. The nomination of Judge Hamilton would be a good occasion to do that. 

Well, there was no truce.

On Tuesday, Republicans tried unsuccessfully to filibuster Hamilton’s nomination, which prompted the Washington Post‘s Dana Milbank to observe: “When you’re in politics, a certain amount of hypocrisy comes with the job. Still, what happened on the Senate floor Tuesday stretched even the senatorial capacity to suspend shame to new levels of elasticity.”

And on Thursday, in a highly partisan vote, the Senate confirmed Hamilton by a 59-39 margin. The only Republican to vote for Hamilton was Sen. Richard Luger of Indiana, who, along with his Democratic colleague Evan Bayh, recommended Hamilton in the first place.

(more…)

Posted in Courts, Legal, Nominations, Politics | 2 Comments »

Secret meetings, Nov. 20, 2009

Friday, November 20, 2009

lockeddoor.jpg

Today’s edition of the State Register lists three meetings that did not comply with the public notice requirements of West Virginia’s open meetings law.

The agencies involved were the Cabell-Huntington Board of Health, the DHHR Drug Utilization Review Board and the Board of Psychologists.

As we’ve reminded folks before, the West Virginia Open Governmental Proceedings Act requires agencies to send meeting notices to the Secretary of State in time for notices to appear in the State Register five days prior to a scheduled meeting. Every week, we list the agencies that didn’t comply, thanks to the Secretary of State’s office, which kindly marks those agencies with an asterisk in the list of meetings published each Friday in the Register.

Posted in Open government | No Comments »

What we’re reading: U.S. Chamber, e-mail at work, PCBs and high blood pressure, foreign language for all

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Happy Thursday. If you haven’t seen these gems, you might want to take a look:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been criticized by some of its own members, and some members have quit, over the chambers old-fashioned views on climate change.  Chamber Director Thomas J. Donohue is unfazed, by a lot of things, apparently, in this New York Times profile.

Workplace e-mail issues? Companies are facing tougher tests in the nation’s courts when they try to monitor employees’ personal accounts. It seems there is a growing presumption of privacy, the Wall Street Journal reports.

PCBs were banned three decades ago, but they still persist in the food chain, and a new study at the University of Albany in New York suggests that PCBs could be linked to high blood pressure, says Science News.

All students would be required to speak two languages to graduate, Fairfax County, Va., schools decided in 2006. They began teaching foreign language to elementary students. But with the economic downturn, foreign language for little kids may now be considered a frill, according to The Washington Post.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

New Census data: One in six West Virginians living in poverty

Thursday, November 19, 2009

povertymap.jpg

More than 300,000 West Virginians lived in poverty in 2008, according to new data from the Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau yesterday.

That translates into 17.4 percent of all residents (or slightly more than one in six).

For children, the numbers are even worse: 90,000 (23.9 percent) under the age of 18, and 32,000 (31.1 percent) of children under the age of five lived in poverty. (I’ve rounded the estimates but not the percentages.)

Worse still, all of those numbers are creeping up from 2007, after a slight improvement from 2006.

Nationally, only Louisiana (17.6) and Mississippi (20.8) had higher percentages of their population living below the poverty line. And at $37,528, West Virginia had the lowest median household income in the United States.

The data can also be broken down by county and school district. Staggeringly, an estimated 46.3 percent of people under the age of 18 in McDowell County lived in poverty. This is almost two times higher than Kanawha County (23.5), three times higher than Monongalia County (15.2) and four times Jefferson County (11.1, the lowest percentage of all 55 counties).

Posted in Jefferson County, Kanawha County, McDowell County, Monongalia County, Poverty | 1 Comment »

Workman issues dissent in Maynard-Blankenship case

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

workman09_sm.jpgSupreme Court Justice Margaret Workman today issued her dissent to the court’s decision last week to block release of e-mails sent by former Justice Spike Maynard to Massey Energy President Don Blankenship.

The dissent is posted here and the majority opinion in this 4-1 case is here.

Workman’s main point is spelled out pretty clear this way:

In the case at hand, a Justice sitting on the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals communicated by e-mail on a somewhat regular basis with a friend who was the Chairman and CEO of a party litigant with a case pending before the Court. With one exception, the literal content of those e-mails did not contain information relating to the conduct of public business.

The fact that those e-mails had been sent, however, did contain relevant information.

First and foremost, it discloses the existence of a personal relationship between a sitting Justice and a CEO of a party litigant. In addition, when the AP made its first FOIA request, a motion filed by the Plaintiffs in Caperton  seeking Justice Maynard’s recusal from that case was pending, the basis of which was his personal relationship with Mr. Blankenship.

The fact that the e-mails were sent, albeit on issues unrelated to matters pending before this court, is clearly relevant to the relationship between Justice Maynard and Mr. Blankenship.

(more…)

Posted in Courts, Open government | 5 Comments »

Three charged in Workforce West Virginia scandal to enter pleas

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Plea hearings have been scheduled for three people implicated in a state workforce training grant scandal.

Comar CEO Al Hendershot, former Workforce West Virginia administrator Mary Jane Bowling and West Virginia State University Extension agent Christine Gardner are set to appear in federal court Dec. 8 at 9:30 a.m.

Hendershot, Bowling and Gardner are expected to plead guilty to charges that they misused federal grant money administered by Workforce West Virginia, according to previous court filings.
U.S. District Judge John T. Copenhaver has been assigned the case.

A fourth person involved in the scandal, former Comar Chief Technical Officer Martin Bowling, already has pleaded guilty and is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 3.

You can find the Gazette’s ongoing investigation of Workforce West Virginia here.  
 

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

« Older Entries