Latest news with #Frieman
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Effort blocked to move more Louisiana teenagers from juvenile to adult courts
A Louisiana Senate committee blocked legislation backed by Attorney General Liz Murrill that could have moved thousands of cases from juvenile to adult court. (Wes Muller/Louisiana Illuminator) After outcry from several corners of the legal community, Louisiana lawmakers scuttled a controversial proposal backed by Attorney General Liz Murrill that could have moved thousands of criminal cases involving children and teenagers from juvenile to adult courts every year. The Louisiana Senate Finance Committee voted 6-5 Monday to reject Senate Bill 74 by Sen. Alan Seabaugh, R-Shreveport. The committee's decision came a few weeks after state voters overwhelmingly rejected a similar constitutional amendment. The legislation would have mostly affected Orleans, Jefferson, East Baton Rouge and Caddo parishes, where juvenile courts operate separately from district courts. Larry Frieman, chief deputy attorney general, told senators the bill was crafted specifically to address New Orleans juvenile court judges who are too lenient on the teens and children who come before them. 'They are one of the ones that have created this problem that we are trying to fix,' Frieman said. Pushback for the bill came from a wide swath of people involved in the criminal justice system who often aren't aligned with each other. District attorneys, public defenders, judges and anti-incarceration groups all spoke out against the proposal. 'The logistics of it are not as simple as everyone seems to think,' said Kyla Romanach, chief public defender for East Baton Rouge Parish, who opposed the legislation. Had it been approved, the bill would have allowed district attorneys and the attorney general to transfer 15- and 16-year-olds accused of felony crimes from juvenile courts to state district courts that mostly handle adult cases. District attorneys and the attorney general also would have gained the ability to move cases involving children under 15 accused of any crime, misdemeanor or felony, from juvenile courts to city and parish courts that focus on adult cases. District attorneys can already move 14-, 15-, and 16-year-olds into the adult criminal justice system, but only when they are accused of the most serious crimes such as murder, manslaughter and rape. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE The Louisiana Legislature also passed a statute last year that reclassifies all 17-year-olds as adults in the eyes of the criminal justice system. They are automatically tried in adult court and face adult prison sentences. The attorney general's failed legislation would have further blurred the lines between punishments for adults and minors in Louisiana, though the additional children and teenagers transferred from juvenile to adult courts under the bill would have been subjected to juvenile law standards, Frieman said. Judges, prosecutors and public defenders from the four parishes with juvenile courts indicated the attorney general's proposal would cost their courthouses and offices hundreds of thousands of dollars each. District attorneys and public defenders from East Baton Rouge, Jefferson and Caddo all said they would have to hire more staff to track cases in juvenile and district court if the legislation had been approved. Federal and state law also require minors to be separated from adult detainees. District courthouses in the four affected parishes don't have the appropriate accommodations for minors and would have had to retrofit their buildings. East Baton Rouge judges said the changes they would have to undertake at their courthouse would have cost between $3 million and $10 million, according to a legislative financial analysis. Legislators initially delayed a vote on the bill last week over questions about the accuracy of the fiscal review attached to it. An earlier version didn't have as many of the potential costs included, in part, because State Public Defender Rémy Starns told the legislative staff to disregard information provided by his office. Daniel Druilhet, a member of the Legislative Fiscal Office staff, said Starns asked him to ignore any costs public defenders had initially said would be associated with the bill when drafting the fiscal review. '[W]hile I did receive an initial response from the Office of the State Public Defender, including information from those four jurisdictions related to potential costs, I was contacted by Mr. Starns on May 2, 2025, instructing me not to include that cost in the fiscal note,' Druilhet told senators at a public hearing last week. In response to Druilhet's comments, the senators put off a vote on the matter for a week so a new financial write-up could be put together. Sen. Katrina Jackson-Andrews, D-Monroe, chastised Starns for intervening in the legislative process. 'I want our state employees to understand there's not a time when they can tell our fiscal office not to consider costs that have been submitted,' she said after Druilhet's testimony. Starns told Jackson he had decided, after an amendment was added to the legislation, that the expenses his office had turned over to the fiscal office were no longer relevant. Starns has been working closely with the attorney general on other criminal justice bills filed this session that would give Starns more authority over local public defender office budgets and personnel. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
20-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
What is dark energy? One of science's great mysteries, explained
Dark energy makes up roughly 70 percent of the universe, yet we know nothing about it. Around 25 percent of the universe is the equally mysterious dark matter, leaving just five percent for everything that we can see and touch -- matter made up of atoms. Dark energy is the placeholder name scientists have given to the unknown force causing the universe to expand faster and faster over time. But some recent cosmic clues have been chipping away at the leading theory for this phenomenon, which could eventually mean humanity will have to rethink our understanding of the universe. And with several new telescopes taking aim at the problem, scientists hope to have some concrete answers soon. Here is what you need to know about what many scientists have called the greatest mystery in the universe. - So what is dark energy exactly? - No one knows. It is invisible and it does not interact with matter or light. And it may not even exist. This story begins -- like everything else -- at the Big Bang around 13.8 billion years ago, when the universe first started expanding. Since then, there has been "cosmic tug-of-war" between two mysterious forces, Joshua Frieman, a theoretical astrophysicist at the University of Chicago, told AFP. Dark matter is thought to pull galaxies together, while dark energy pushes them apart. During the first nine or so billion years of the universe, "dark matter was winning," forming galaxies and everything else, Frieman said. Then dark energy gained the upper hand, starting to speed up the expansion of the universe. However for most of history, scientists had little idea this almighty tussle was going on. They thought that the expansion of the universe would simply start to slow down because of gravity. Everything changed in 1998, when two separate groups of astronomers noticed that distant exploding stars called supernovae were farther away than they ought to be. This led to the discovery that the universe is not just expanding -- it is do so faster and faster. So what could be causing this acceleration? They gave this strange force a name: dark energy. - What are the main theories? - The leading theory has long been that empty space itself produces dark energy. Think of a cup of coffee, Frieman said. "If I remove all the particles from the cup of coffee, there is still energy in there due to what we call the quantum vacuum," he said. This energy of empty space is known as the cosmological constant. It is the theory used in the standard model of cosmology, Lambda-CDM, which is our best guess for how the universe works. But in recent years, several scientific results have appeared to support a rival theory -- called evolving dark energy -- which has brought the standard model into question. On Wednesday, new results from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument provided the latest signs that dark energy could actually be weakening over time. However the scientists behind the research emphasise there is not yet definitive proof. If proven right, this would rule out that dark energy is a cosmological constant. It could not be "the energy of empty space -- because empty space doesn't change," explained Frieman, a leading proponent of the theory. For dark matter to change, it would likely require the existence of some incredibly light, as-yet-unknown particle. Another possibility is that there is something wrong with our calculations -- or our understanding of gravity. Einstein's theory of relativity has withstood an incredible amount of scientific scrutiny over the last century, and has been proven right again and again. There is no evidence that Einstein was wrong, but there is "a little bit of room" to change his theory when it comes to the largest scales of the universe, Frieman said. - When could we know more? - Soon. The best way to understand dark energy is to look at a vast swathe of sky, taking in as many galaxies with as much data as possible. And a bunch of new telescopes are working to do just that. On Wednesday, Europe's Euclid space telescope released its first astronomical data since launching in 2023 -- but any dark energy results are a couple of years away. NASA's Nancy Grace Roman space telescope, planned for launch in 2027, and the under-construction Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile will also take aim at the problem. It is an exciting time for dark energy, Frieman said, adding that he expected a "definitive answer" in the next couple of years. There is no time to waste, Frieman said. "Every minute we wait, galaxies are disappearing from view." dl/yad
