National headlines this week have focused on the failed execution of Christa Pike. She was sentenced to death in Tennessee for fatally stabbing her classmate Colleen Slemmer in 1995. Last week, the state attempted to execute Pike via lethal injection, but was not successful even after the administration of two normally fatal doses of pentobarbital. Pike was taken to a hospital where she remained unconscious for days, leading authorities to consider removing life support. However, according to this AP story, she has now regained consciousness, though she “can’t move her arms or swallow” and is experiencing cognitive confusion. Prospects for continued recovery are uncertain. Meanwhile, the Governor of Tennessee has paused executions in the state and the head of the state’s prison system has resigned. A different AP story features legal experts discussing the legal issues that might arise if the state were to try again to execute Pike.
Flock, Flock, and more Flock. It is hard to keep up with all the stories and developments concerning Flock Safety, the company that sells automatic license plate readers to law enforcement agencies. The news items that caught my eye this week included: (1) A Jalopnik story claiming that through August, “149 cities and counties canceled or rejected contracts, or deactivated [Flock] cameras in 2026,” with more than half of the cancellations taking place in August as the public controversy around license plate readers deepened. (2) A first-of-its-kind ruling by a federal judge in Oklahoma that the warrantless tracking of a suspect’s location using Flock violated the Fourth Amendment. (3) A Texas Tribune story reporting that the city of North Richland Hills, Texas, responded to a public records request concerning the city’s use of Flock cameras by informing the requester that it would cost $2.3 million to review and to provide the requested records. (4) Here in Chapel Hill, an announcement from Chief Brian James that his department has ended automatic Flock data sharing with other North Carolina law enforcement agencies over public concerns and fears of misuse.
If you like Flock cameras, you’ll love autonomous patrol vehicles equipped with license plate readers and video cameras. And if you don’t like Flock cameras, I’m guessing you probably won’t be excited about the prospect of robot police cars, either. This WRAL story reports that the command staff of the Raleigh Police Department heard a presentation about autonomous police vehicles this week and sees potential value in the idea as a “force multiplier,” but has not made any decisions about purchasing or deploying the technology. At least one jurisdiction in another state has apparently embarked on a pilot program.
Cornell. Readers are likely generally familiar with the ongoing train wreck at Cornell surrounding an alleged sexual assault in a fraternity house and the university’s allegedly deficient response. Students are protesting the administration; the local prosecutor who declined to bring criminal charges based on the original investigation by campus police reopened the matter and promptly was booted off the case by Governor Kathy Hochul in favor of the state’s Attorney General; and now the AP reports that the university has hired former Acting Attorney General of the United States Sally Yates to review how Cornell “investigates reports of sexual assault and sexual harassment, how the disciplinary process works, campus police responses and more.” Legislators and members of the public are also considering whether New York’s sexual assault laws need to be changed. Apparently, current law requires that a victim be unconscious to establish an inability to consent. An NPR interview with a law professor about the New York standard is available here.
A conservative but pro-defendant Supreme Court? That may sound counterintuitive, but over at SCOTUSblog, Rory Little has a post that begins: “[O]ver the past two terms, 21 of the court’s 30 ‘pure’ criminal law decisions have been pro-defendant or defense position. Eleven of 16 in the 2025-26 term, and 10 of 14 in the prior one. That’s 70%. Given a conservative court, does that stat surprise you? What justices are leading to these overall numbers, and who is leading the charge?” The post has some interesting answers, including a suggestion that Justice Kagan is the go-to Justice in criminal cases.
Data on elected prosecutors in election years. Continuing with the academic number crunching, Chika Okafor of Northwestern University recently published a paper in the Journal of Public Economics regarding whether elected prosecutors do business differently in election years than in other years. An excerpt from the paper provides a summary and suggests the author’s perspective:
[T]his paper studies the impact of DA election cycles on criminal sentencing outcomes. I compile a new comprehensive dataset on the election cycles and offices sought for all district attorneys in office during the steepest rise in incarceration in U.S. history (roughly 1986–2006). Exploiting variation in the timing of DA elections, I employ a dynamic differences-in-differences specification to find that being in a DA election year increases total admissions per capita to state prisons and total months sentenced per capita. In assessing the magnitude of the findings, I estimate that the election year effects on admissions per capita rose by approximately 3 percent—roughly 63,000 additional prison admissions over the time period covered by this project. Similarly, the increase in months sentenced per capita in election years is roughly 3 percent.
Has the eCourts lawsuit been settled, or not? The Carolina Journal has a story up about the federal lawsuit involving eCourts vendor Tyler Technologies. The litigation generally concerns the claim that eCourts was implemented in a way that resulted in the unjustified detention of hundreds of criminal defendants, sometimes for weeks, and that the problems were foreseeable based on Tyler’s previous work in other states. Apparently, the parties reported to the court several weeks ago that the matter had been settled, but this week the plaintiffs filed an amended complaint. As Yogi Berra said, it ain’t over ‘til it’s over.
Have a good weekend and we’ll see you next week.
