Search

Illinois has successfully abolished cash bail through the Pretrial Fairness Act, becoming the first state to do so. This law has led to significant changes in the criminal justice system, with judges now making decisions based on factors other than wealth. The law has resulted in a decline in the jail population, without causing a surge in crime rates, and has been viewed as a model for other states interested in similar reforms. [Extracted from the article]

This text provides an overview of several cases currently on the Supreme Court's docket and their potential significance. It begins by discussing a Tennessee law that bans gender-affirming care for transgender kids, which the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld and the Supreme Court is likely to agree with. The second case involves an age-verification law in Texas that restricts access to pornography for adults, and the outcome of this case is uncertain. The third case focuses on Richard Glossip, a man on death row seeking to have his conviction overturned based on new evidence, and the conservative majority on the Supreme Court makes the outcome uncertain. The text also explores the power of the Supreme Court as a policymaking body and the potential impact of the upcoming election on the court's composition and decisions. [Extracted from the article]

Many of the examples Medwed gives of innocent defendants whose release from prison was delayed or even entirely blocked by procedural technicalities are truly disturbing, not least because of what they say about both prosecutors and judges. What happens, as Medwed demonstrates repeatedly, is that judges tend to interpret otherwise established doctrines in such a way as to make it very difficult for convicted defendants to get a chance to prove their innocence, even with the aid of newly developed techniques like DNA testing. BOOKS & the ARTS WRITING IN 1923, THE PROMINENT AMERICAN JUDGE AND legal philosopher Learned Hand stated that "under our criminal procedure the accused has every advantage. [Extracted from the article]

In Until Justice Be Done, Masur widens her geographic scope and considers how the struggle for equality manifested itself all over the country, particularly in the Midwestern states. Writing about the mostly unknown Black activists in Ohio and Illinois, Masur describes how they worked tirelessly to repeal racist laws and create enclaves of Black achievement. Had Masur chosen to look west, she could also have included Mary Ellen Pleasant, an abolitionist and activist whose work earned her the moniker "the mother of human rights in California." Despite legal setbacks, unfavorable court decisions, and white supremacy, Black and white activists and advocates in the 19th century managed to make their belief in fairness and inclusion concerning Black civil rights the mainstream view. [Extracted from the article]

Boudin and three other district attorneys - Republican Tori Verber Salazar of San Joaquin County, in the Central Valley (whose office didn't respond to requests for comment for this article), and Democrats George Gascon of Los Angeles and Diana Becton of Contra Costa County - joined the Prosecutors Alliance of California in September 2020. - George Gascon, DA of Los Angeles County New measures of success: Contra Costa County DA Diana Becton favors treatment programs rather than incarceration for low-level drug offenders. - Chesa Boudin, DA of San Francisco County A new path: George Gascón recently resigned from the conservative California District Attorneys Association to join the progressive Prosecutors Alliance. FOUR HUNDRED MILES TO THE SOUTH, GASCÓN, BOUDIN'S predecessor in San Francisco, was elected DA of Los Angeles County in an upset this past November. [Extracted from the article]

After passing the bar, Aboushi worked for Judge Milton Tingling (currently the county clerk of Manhattan as well as the first African American county clerk in New York state) before eventually opening her practice in Times Square, to be joined later by the other lawyers in her family. In fact, the current Manhattan DA sends more people to jail than any other district attorney in New York City. FEATURES TO HEAR TAHANIE ABOUSHI TELL IT, A COURTROOM CAN BE A STRANGE PLACE for a Muslim woman lawyer. While on a trip visiting family in the West Bank in July 2019, and after several people had suggested she run, Aboushi decided she wanted to become the next district attorney of New York County, the official name for the borough of Manhattan. [Extracted from the article]

So yes, perhaps the victim was struggling with mental illness, but perhaps the assailant was suffering from mental illness as well. The victim pretty much had to be Black to account for the callous disregard for his life, and the assailant had to be white to secure the disregard of law enforcement. This story won't register as a "gun violence" story, because no weapons were used by the victim or the assailant. [Extracted from the article]

Since the 1960s, when California and then the country at large turned against the idea of holding the severely mentally ill in psychiatric facilities, the story of mental health care provision for the poor has been one of repeated failure. Last year, California Governor Gavin Newsom persuaded the state Legislature to fund a CARE Courts system, which requires counties to provide mental health services for poor unhoused residents and forces residents to participate in that treatment. [Extracted from the article]

The article presents several women who received mandatory sentence of juvenile life-without-parole (JLWOP). These include Machelle Pearson who was charged of accidentally killed the wife of an editorial columnist. It notes Lisa Dawn Harris who was charged after beating to death the rapist of her friend. It mentions Laquanda Faye Jacobs who was charge of killing her classmate.

The article offers the author's insights on the political support given by the African American race to the Clintons. Topics include the high rate incarceration among African Americans who involved in illegal drugs after the term of former U.S. President Bill Clinton in 2001, the support of 2016 U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on criminal justice reform, and the penal amount of budget alloted for food stamps during Clinton's presidential term.

Given the history of police in the slave patrols and their current role in strike breaking, criminalizing protest, and enforcing voter disenfranchisement laws, police are undeniably an antidemocratic force. The Debate Yes DIANE GOLDSTEIN AS A FORMER CAREER POLICE OFFICER, I know that good police want the same things that most abolitionists do: safe, healthy, and empowered residents and investments in programs that prevent crime from occurring in the first place. Many progressives also endorse civilian review boards, community control of police, increasing police pay, and no longer having police enforce traffic violations or respond to mental health calls. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the practice of sentencing mandatory sentence of juvenile of life without parole (JLWOP) in the U.S. It states that Pennsylvania is the state with highest number of JLWOP inmates. It notes that the inmates served far longer sentences than they might have received had they taken plea deal. It mentions that the critics of justice systems insist that the JLWOP inmates were victims of poor lawyering during their first sentence.

Republicans are trying to terrify the public with stories of rising crime, sending Democrats scrambling to prove that they're tough on the issue. While the US does spend, in total, more on education and social programs than on our penal system - courts, prisons, and police departments - the ratio is far lower here than in other countries. A 2020 study found that expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act reduces violent crime rates, and another found that it reduces recidivism, particularly by keeping people from committing the same types of violent or public order crimes for which they had previously been convicted. [Extracted from the article]

The author discusses the work of students from the Innocence Project at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in the case of Anthony McKinney, an African-American man from Chicago, Illinois who died in prison in 2013 while serving a life sentence for murder. They found evidence of a wrongful conviction due to witness recantation and claims of forced confessions, but state's attorney for Cook County Anita Alvarez, disputed the allegations and a new hearing was not granted.

The article discusses the state prison system in California as of June 2013, with a focus on living conditions for prisoners, overcrowding, and the lack of adequate healthcare and medical services for inmates. Topics include federal class-action lawsuits filed by inmates alleging inhumane conditions which resulted in the realignment of California's criminal justice system; the economic aspects of imprisoning low-level offenders; and plans by California Governor Jerry Brown to reform the California prison system and increase funding for criminal rehabilitation programs rather than corrections and incarceration.

The article presents suggestions for progressive executive orders and actions to be issued by U.S. President Barack Obama during his second term. Topics include President Obama's environmental policy views on issues such as climate change and greenhouse gas regulation under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); his foreign policy and national security views on issues such as nuclear weapons; and his economic policy views on issues such as the creation of a National Development Bank. Suggestions are also presented for executive action on issues including labor laws, criminal justice administration, immigration law, civil liberties, reproductive rights, and voting rights.

The article reports on the criminal justice system in New Orleans, Louisiana two years after the Hurricane Katrina disaster. The city has the highest incarceration rate of any major U.S. city, and a huge case backlog. The social crisis and rising crime rate is fueled by the slow disaster recovery effort.

AYANNA PRESSLEY "WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL." even as a fifth-grader, with my hand held over my heart, I knew those emphatic words were an aspiration, not yet an affirmation, in America. As this administration prepares to take office, the People's Justice Guarantee offers a bold and expansive framework to transform our criminal legal system, meet the scale of the crisis before us, and finally make good on America's promise of justice for all. The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country on the planet, with Black Americans incarcerated at over five times the rate of white people. [Extracted from the article]

COLUMNS In June 2011, a Black transgender woman named CeCe McDonald was walking with friends to a grocery store in her Minneapolis neighborhood when a group of white bar patrons began hurling racist, homophobic, and transphobic slurs, calling them "bitches with dicks", "faggots", and suggesting they "go back to Africa." When a male attacker lunged at her as she attempted to flee, McDonald, fearing for her life, grabbed a pair of scissors from her purse to defend herself, fatally stabbing her assailant in the chest. As in Floyd's case, McDonald's treatment by the cops and the courts reveals a problem that lies not just with the Minneapolis Police Department but with the American criminal justice system. [Extracted from the article]

A Gamble Worth Taking Bill Fletcher Jr.'s wish list for the reinvention of organized labor ["Labor: More Perfect Unions", June 15/22] is, as usual with him, insightful and incisive. Katha Pollitt writes that Reade is a strong supporter of Bernie Sanders, and it may be relevant that her story came out in the pro-Sanders media just as Biden was emerging as the presumptive Democratic nominee. Pollitt throws in that it is "possibly relevant" that Reade lied or timed her allegations to help Sanders, when in fact the charges came out too late to make a difference and, not surprisingly, didn't help Sanders in the slightest. [Extracted from the article]

UPFRONT Sitting on my deck a few miles from downtown Durham, N.C., I waited for the city to burn. The Durham Freeway bisects the city; from the late 1960s to the early '70s, its construction sliced through vibrant black neighborhoods and business districts. [Extracted from the article]

It is informed that over the past year, the U.S. government has intensified its crackdown on political dissidents opposing corporate globalization, and it is using the same intimidating and probably unconstitutional tactics against demonstrators at the presidential inauguration. In Washington in April and at the Republican National Convention protest in Philadelphia last summer, the police rounded up hundreds of activists in pre-emptive arrests and targeted and arrested on trumped-up charges those they had identified as leaders. Once many of those cases appeared in Philadelphia court, they were dismissed because the police could offer no reason for the arrests.

The article focuses on various developments around the world during 2000. First article focuses on racism among black and white people. In a case, police officers who shot Amadou Diallo, an unarmed West African immigrant, came as a profound shock to many. Another article focuses on wedge politics. Republicans practiced wedge politics, trying to separate voters from the Democratic Party by pushing divisive social issues. The Grand Old Party has been a party of special interests for decades. And it was the Ronald Reagan Administration that reversed an eleven-year-old policy denying tax-exempt status to the racist.

In early December 1984 an undercover police officer named Marcellus Ward met with a pair of heroin dealers above a candy store in southwest Baltimore. Ward had planned to make a buy, then an arrest. But when Drug Enforcement Administration agents stormed into the building, one of the dealers panicked and shot Ward to death. The next day, Kurt Schmoke listened to the recording from Ward's body wire. A friend of the slain detective, Schmoke was then Baltimore's 35-year-old chief prosecutor. The incident, he would say later, prompted him to rethink the drug laws he had spent six years enforcing: Setups and stings and jail terms hadn't curbed the violence associated with the drug trade, let alone reduced drug use.

Amid the decade long orgy of self-congratulation in the wake of the Soviet Union's final capitulation in the cold war, scholars and journalists have managed to ignore one uncomfortable fact. Official crimes were committed by the winners as well as the losers. This prolonged case of national amnesia has survived even the release Paraguay of a trove of documents implicating the guilty. The archives apparently demonstrate that a U.S. military official helped to draw up the apparatus of the Paraguayan police state while he was ostensibly merely training its officers. They also conclusively prove an official U.S. connection to crimes of state committed in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia, under Operation Condor.

The article focuses on news related to sociopolitical issues from the U.S. as of October 1987. Almost most a year ago, the Federal Bureau of Prisons opened a subterranean Female High Security Unit in the basement of the Federal Correctional Unit in Lexington, Kentucky. The prison within a prison was designed to house women considered too dangerous for other Federal facilities. The fourth anniversary of the opening of House Un-American Activities Committee hearings on "alleged Communist infiltration of the motion picture industry took place on October 19.

One of the most eloquent memorials to the victims of terrorist violence is the ragged glass panel set into a wall of the Bologna railway station in Italy. Sculpted to match the damage caused when a powerful bomb ripped through the building on August 2, 1980. On March 27 of this year, the Italian neo-fascist terrorist Stefano Delle Chiaie, alias Alfa, the Black Bomber and the Black Pimpernel, was arrested by Venezuelan police outside his Caracas apartment. Three days later he was deported to Rome aboard an Italian Air Force jet to stand trial for his role in the Bologna massacre and a range of other violent offenses.

The article states that Pennsylvania, like most states, has a death penalty. But in Pennsylvania, as in most states, no one has been executed for decades. In civilized America there is really only one capital crime, exasperating a policeman. The Philadelphia police confirmed that rule last May when they bombed a row house in a quite black-neighborhood. Sixty-one houses were destroyed in the fire. At least eleven people were killed. Six of the identifiable victims were adult members of a local primitivist group called MOVE. Police say they had no choice.

The war on drugs has by all accounts failed. Yet national dialogue about how to address this failure is trapped in a dead-end, partisan debate over who stands tougher against drug use and dealing. The concept of legalizing drugs has sparked some significant discussions and controversy but primarily among limited circles of academics and analysts. The public criticism of drug war defectors has legitimized a wider debate. Others in the treatment community and criminal justice system have chosen to challenge failed policies not by defecting from the drug war but by reforming it to shift the emphasis from punishment to treatment.

The article presents information on conditions faced by Palestinians in Israel. Palestinians will have municipal authority over the towns and some 400 villages within the Israeli cordon, but they will have no real security responsibility, no right to resources or land outside the populated centers and no authority at all over Israeli settlers, police and army. Israel will continue to hold fifty or sixty Palestinian villages, The settlements will be untouched and a system of roads will connect them to one another, making it possible for settlers, like whites in the old South Africa, to avoid or even see the people of the Bantustans and making it impossible for Palestinians to rule over any contiguous territory.

The article discusses the book "Live From Death Row," by Mumia Abu-Jamal. On July 3, 1982, Mumia Abu-Jamal, radio journalist and MOVE supporter, much of whose reputation was built on criticizing the Philadelphia Police Department in the matter of race relations, was convicted of the first-degree murder of officer Daniel Faulkner. Amid intense public debate, National Public Radio canceled the broadcasts. Abu-Jamal, who denies killing Officer Faulkner, has become the object of a debate that reflects racial divides in the United States.

When Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon became President of Mexico last year, he seemed to be preparing for all out war with the country's fast-growing drug cartels and their associates in the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Apparently unable to trust anyone in his own party, he appointed a leader of the opposition to be attorney general. He reopened inquiries into the assassinations of two prominent politicians and a cardinal, replaced the entire Supreme Court and installed a federal police chief committed to a purge of regional commanders on the payroll of the cartels.

The eighty-eight-foot lion that guards the entrance to MGM's Emerald City looked unusually glum on the eve of the Memorial Day holiday. As dust devils chased early evening commuters down Tropicana Boulevard, Las Vegas police strapped tear-gas masks to their gun belts. Sullen resort security men in blue blazers stood sentry behind hastily improvised little signs declaring the adjacent sidewalk, probably the busiest section of the casino strip, private property. The police seriously underestimated both the scale and militancy of the demonstration. After the first 500 busts, police commanders threw in the towel. Hundreds of unionists, having waited hours to be arrested, demanded their place on the police bus.

On Meredek Street high in the hills overlooking Budapest, construction of attractive homes for the first wave of post-Communist nouveau riche is busily under way. In both the "Times and Commentary," pieces, author Sam Tanenhaus relies upon the unpublished findings of a 34-year old Hungarian historian, Maria Schmidt, who in the course of research in the secret-police archives uncovered statements.

Presents several editorials which discuss different subjects. "Chartering the F.B.I.," which discussed the charter for the U.S. FBI; "Sanctioning Muzorewa-Smith," which discussed the resolution calling upon the U.S. President Jimmy Carter to lift sanctions and recognize the Abel Muzorewa-Ian Smith Government of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia; "Racist Revealed," which discussed that Texas State Judge Ted Butler bowed from his bid for one of Texas's ten new federal judgeships.

Focuses on the role played by the U.S. government in the Vietnam war while discussing grant of amnesty to war resisters by the government. Influences in the author's life that crystallized his anti-war thinking; Information on immigration standards in Canada for war resisters; Criticism of U.S. President-elect Jimmy Carter's amnesty program for war resisters.

Focuses on policies adopted by various U.S. presidents regarding amnesty and pardon to draft evaders and deserters from the Vietnam war. Provision in proclamations related to pardons for deserters issued by U.S. Presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison; Information about the Espionage and Sedition Acts passed by the U.S. Congress during World War I; Author's comments on U.S. President Gerald R. Ford's clemency program for deserters and draft evaders.

Focuses on problems facing prisons in the U.S. Personalities are of the opinion that no new prisons should be built; Outcome of admitting failure regarding prisons and prisoners; Analysis of inherent and unalterable defects of reform through incarceration by Erving Goffman.

Focuses on Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA), a federal anti-crime effort. Criticism made by Attorney General William Saxbe against the program; Manipulation made to data banks for political purposes; Failure of LEAA to change the substance or direction of the criminal justice system.

Focuses on the process of actual dispensation of criminal justice in the U.S. as of October 26, 1974. Factors playing major role in this context; Account of court cases that brought the plea bargaining system into public focus; Reason behind giving up constitutional guaranteed right to a trial by various defendants; Reasons behind acceptance of plea bargaining by prosecutors and defense lawyers; Impact of plea bargaining on the criminal justice system of the U.S.; Recommendations given by American Friends Service Committee regarding reforms likely to be introduced in the criminal justice system of the U.S.

Focuses on misconducts done by officials of California Policemen with reference to perjured police testimony and diminishing police credibility on witnesses as of March 23, 1974. Account of police misconducts faced by the author; Role of illegally obtained evidence from police officials in confrontation against their suspects; Role of courts in increasing misconducts of police officials against their suspects.

Presents information's on various surveillance related to political crisis during the administration of the President Richard M. Nixon in the U.S. Reason for which Nixon's Justice Department has used federal grand juries in anti war radicals; Provisions provided by the 1968 legislative Act; Allegation against fifteen members in relation to the Weatherman faction case in Detroit under the ruling of the federal district Judge Damin Keith.

Focuses on the Executive Order 12333, which releases the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to conduct domestic intelligence operations. Criticism of the order by civil libertarians for creating the danger of a police state in which the CIA will seek to suppress dissent; Authority provided by the order to the CIA; Objective of the CIA.

Focuses on the detention of Anthony Blunt, agent of the security police and intelligence agency of the Soviet Union, for his role in Russian penetration of British intelligence. Regulations made against Blunt during the investigation; Official status of Blunt prior to his detention; Factors led to his detention.

The article presents information related to social and political issues. The internal easing of Soviet rule, like Moscow's conciliatory gestures toward the rest of the world, has seemed to indicate an intention to reduce antagonism by recognizing the existence of justified grievances and doing something about them. The satellites have been prominently included in the new program, and among the satellites, East Germany was particularly favored. Not only was it provided with a civilian high commissioner, but the whole process of Sovietization appeared to be set in reverse an amnesty was promised, land was to be returned to expropriated farmers, schools and colleges were to be relieved of various Communist restrictions, all ration cards were to be restored to those who had forfeited them.

Sentencing of the communist leaders seemed curiously irrelevant alongside the historic fact of their conviction. In giving ten of the eleven defendants live years' imprisonment and a $10,000 fine Judge Harold R. Meclin went as far as he could go. He indicated that he would have meted out even heavier sentences if the U.S. Congress last year had not halved the penalty for conspiracy, a fact which strangely came to light only in the week after the convictions. Coupled with denial of bail pending appeal, the severity of the sentences draws the line clearly. Judge Medina has chosen to assert the existence of the danger as a matter of law.

This article focuses on various current socio-political developments and issues across the world. It is to be hoped that the very revolting scene at the scaffold on June 29, 1882, will do something toward bringing about a reform in the matter of the license accorded to condemned criminals in the moments immediately preceding their execution. The whole issue is considered as a consequence of the murder-case against Charles Guiteau, the assassin of U.S. President James A. Garfield. The article further reports that the Attorney-General on June 29, obtained a judicial order requiring the Central and Erie Railroads to show cause why a peremptory mandamus should not issue compelling them to exercise their franchise and handle and transport freight. The facts on which the order is based are that there has been for days a large accumulation of freight in the city, which is ready for the railroads, but which the railroads do not take.

Presents information on the case of frightened convict Eddie Sanchez. Details of his imprisonment; Problems faced by Sanchez in the prison; Details of Special Treatment and Rehabilitative Training; Presentation of letters written by Sanchez to his lawyer.

The great and sensational case of the United States of America vs. William P. Haywood et al. resulted in a verdict of "Guilty" against the one hundred defendants who finally faced the court and jury. Although the trial consumed over four months, and although the witnesses were numerous and the record unprecedentedly voluminous, the jury deliberated less than two hours. The prosecution was not unwilling to acquiesce in this arrangement, although it deprived the Government likewise of the opportunity of going over the evidence carefully, and showing how each of the one hundred defendants had been duly connected by it with the conspiracies charged in the indictment.

Factional cleavage, formal secessions, and expulsions for heresy are the order of the day in the Socialist party in this country. This state of affairs differs in marked degree from conditions that prevail among the Socialists of the belligerent nations of Europe. There are majority and minority Socialists in Germany and Austria, France, in England, and in Russia, with the majorities regularly in favor of the national war programme and the minorities in favor of the quickest attainable international reconciliation. The position is reversed in this country, where the majority Socialists are the internationalists and the minority Socialists are firm for a vigorous prosecution of the war to victory.