Word: lenient
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Howe justifies his decision to lower his family's taxes by saying that the property had been over-assessed previously--something Somerville insiders doubt, in light of the city's usually-lenient assessment practices, and the unusual timing of Howe's sudden tax decrease. Only the state's Department of Corporation and Taxation can rule definitively whether Howe's self-help tax break was legitimate, but the department has so far taken no steps to handle the politically sensitive issue...
Many states lack the resources to protect witnesses. John Kaplan, a Stanford Law School professor, suggests another alternative: speedier trials and stiffer bail. "The longer the delay, the more likely the witness will be intimidated. Our lenient bail practices have not helped," says Kaplan, noting that they put the accused back on the street, where he can seek out his accusers. Some district attorneys have proposed a starkly realistic solution: compulsory pretrial depositions, which roughly means getting a witness's testimony quickly on the record. That way, Boston Special Assistant D.A. Thomas Dwyer explains, "if the witness is murdered...
...year. In contrast to the earlier years of the Burger Court, the Justices last term ruled more often in favor of defendants than of prosecutors. Last week the court ruled that juries must be allowed to weigh almost limitless mitigating circumstances, which may force many states to write more lenient death-penalty statutes. They also protected the accused's right to counsel and jury trial in two decisions, and in another refused to permit a "murder scene" exception to requiring search warrants...
...like many other state penalty statutes, provides for parole eligibility after a prisoner has served his minimum term, or, in cases which carry several sentences, after the single stiffest minimum has been served. The law was designed in 1965 to give courts and parole boards the capability of being lenient. But it also raises, at least remotely, the possibility that a deranged killer like Berkowitz could some day be returned to the streets. His case gives new ammunition to proponents of capital punishment in New York, where the death sentence is usually restricted to killers of law-enforcement officers...
Another twist in the effort to regulate DNA research is the recent proposal to make the NIH guidelines more lenient, lowering the containment restrictions on certain viruses used in the research and giving the local biohazards committees more leeway. While the proposals cannot be approved for at least a few months, sources involved in monitoring DNA legislation say the director of NIH has already given tacit consent to the proposal...