There’s a fairly new blog called Decision of the Day, about interesting Appellate Court Decisions. (If you aren’t interested in Appellate Court Decisions, remember, Appellate Court Decisionsare interested in you.)

No More Rainbows In Newark Fire Houses
Lomack v. Newark, 05-4126 (3rd Cir., Sept. 18, 2006)
As part of an effort to improve morale, the Mayor of Newark decided to embark on an ambitious program to integrate all of the city’s fire houses. To ensure adequate diversity in each fire house, the Mayor had dozens of firefighters involuntarily transferred. He then declared that he had “created a rainbow at each fire house.”

This is reminiscent of busing, and it’s apparently illegal. Firemen, (of all races, judging by the names of the plaintiffs) sued for racial discrimination. Apparently this racial assignment policy, like busing, moves everybody where they don’t want to be. “The district court rejected their claims, but the Third Circuit reverses. The Court agrees that rainbows may be nice. However, the Equal Protection Clause prohibits this kind of racial balancing.”

There are a couple of immigration decisions, too.

Granados-Oseguera v. Gonzales, 03-73030 (9th Cir., Sept. 25, 2006)

Congratulations to University of Arizona law students Marybeth Canty, Laura Boyle, and Josh Chetwynd, who convinced two out of three judges on a Ninth Circuit panel to reopen their client’s immigration proceedings due to ineffective assistance of counsel. No small feat, particularly since the client did not exhaust his ineffective assistance of counsel claim before the Board of Immigration Appeals. But the majority explains that the same ineffective attorney represented the petitioner before the Immigration Judge and the BIA, so exhaustion is unnecessary under the circumstances.

As I’ve said before, law students should not be encouraged to do this; it is the opposite of pro bono publico.

Also, Gabuniya v. Attorney General, 05-3339 (3rd Cir., Sept. 19, 2006)

This is a reversal of a decision by Immigration Judge Donald Ferlise, who the Treason Lobby considers too tough on immigrants. (see The Treason Lobby’s Latest Vendetta—Not Enough Asylum Granted by Immigration Judges for more on this)

The Third Circuit wrote, according to Decision of the Day, that

“We note with concern the IJ’s dogged determination to make an adverse credibility finding by stringing together whatever insignificant inconsistencies he could unearth from the testimony and bolstering them with his own unsupported conjecture. While we appreciate the difficulty an IJ must face in vetting applications for asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the CAT, this responsibility is not license to jump eagerly on each slip of the tongue or to demand that an applicant be infallible in order to be credible.”

Could be. I haven’t read the whole decision. But there’s evidence that all the other immigration judges have an extremely low standard of credibility.

The recent murder of Officer Rodney Johnson cannot be considered merely a terrible tragedy of the sort that happens to police in their hazardous profession.

Houston is far more dangerous than it needs to be because of the city’s illegal alien sanctuary policy (General Order 500–05), in place since 1992, which prevents police from questioning suspects adequately and sends the message that illegal aliens are treated with kid gloves.

Walter Alexander Sorto is the worst sort of illegal alien criminal, a violent career lawbreaker, who was not deported by authorities when they should have. Instead, the Salvadoran was allowed to remain, and he used the opportunity to murder at least two Houston women. Sorto was sentenced to death in 2003 for the kidnapping, rape and murder of Roxana Capulin and Maria Moreno Rangel, two young women who worked waiting tables in an East End Mexican restaurant.

Sorto had been convicted of armed robbery in 2000, but was given 10 years probation instead of jail time and deportation even though he was an illegal alien with a prior record.

He and two other men then engaged in a crime spree around Houston for several months: the group was called the “monsters of the barrio” and left at least six dead in their wake. As mentioned, the legal system finally sent Sorto to death row (where he resides today and would like Spanish-speaking pen pals).

Diane Clements, a crime victims advocate, asked “What if the INS had done its job?” It’s too bad the city’s elected representatives don’t similarly grasp the connection between immigration anarchy and crime.

Forensic evidence indicates Sorto may also have been involved in the kidnapping of 13-year-old Laura Ayala, who was abducted in March 2002 close to her home in Houston. Four years later, there is no child and no body, although blood analyzed as being Laura’s was identified in 2002 in the car belonging to men (including Sorto) believed to have abducted her.

Houston’s sanctuary policy sheltered a known illegal alien criminal, Walter Sorto, and left him free to engage in terrible crimes. Now there has been another needless death because the city would rather protect foreign criminals than its law-abiding citizens.