Criminal Justice System

Sessions Versus Winner: It’s Just The Beginning

July 1, 2018 John Kiriakou, Reader Supported News. Educate! Criminal Justice System, Media, NSA

Reality Winner, the former NSA contract employee who allegedly provided a classified document to two journalists at The Intercept, agreed on Tuesday to change her plea to “guilty” and to accept a sentence of 63 months in prison, three years of “supervised release” and forfeiture of her electronic devices. The plea was made to one count of “espionage,” which, since my case in 2012, has been interpreted as “the provision of national defense information to any person not entitled to receive it.” The sentence is unprecedentedly harsh and Winner was brought into the court literally in chains.

Outraged By Kids In Cages? Look At Our Entire Juvenile Justice System.

June 25, 2018 By Cara H. Drinan, Huffingtonpost.com Educate! Criminal Justice System, Detention Centers, Prison Industrial Complex, Youth

Last week, the nation witnessed an abrupt reversal from the White House. After claiming for days that he did not have the authority to address the family separation crisis at the border, President Donald Trump appeared to do just that with the stroke of a pen. Trump has purportedly put an end to the family separation policy, but he has also created a host of new issues to resolve. How and when will nearly 2,500 migrant children be reunited with their parents? How and where will families be detained together going forward? Even as these legal questions are being resolved, there is a persistent sense of outrage among most Americans. How could there not be? In 2018, in a time of tremendous economic prosperity, the United States is keeping migrant children in cages, claiming that a policy of family separation deters future illegal immigration. The images of what this policy entails are horrific: terrified, confused children watching as agents search their mothers...

Death Row Saved My Life

June 11, 2018 Christopher Young, Law at the Margins. Resist! Criminal Justice System, Death Row, Prison

Christopher Young is on death row at the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas, listed in 2013 as one of America’s 10 worst prisons. He has an execution date of July 17, 2018. Young, 34, was sentenced to death in 2006 for the 2004 murder of 55-year-old convenience store owner Hasmukhbhai “Hash” Patel. Young’s lawyers claim religious discrimination occurred during the jury selection process of his trial, and over 500 religious leaders signed a statement saying he deserved a new trial. In January 2018, the United States Supreme Court turned down Young’s latest appeal.He seeks clemency.

Resistance Is Necessary To Overcome The Climate Crisis

April 2, 2018 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Clearing the FOG Radio. Podcast Climate Change, Criminal Justice System, Oil and Gas, Pipeline

The science is clear that we must no longer build new fossil fuel infrastructure and we must invest in clean sources of energy, yet oil and gas companies continue to receive permits to build more pipelines, compressor stations and refineries. in response, communities are organizing to stop these projects. We speak with Tim DeChristopher about how communities are using the necessity defense to defend their actions to stop the projects. And we discuss the state of the climate justice movement, how Big Greens are failing on climate justice and strategies for action.

Vichy Journalism On Steroids

February 4, 2018 Jon Jeter, MintPress News. Educate! Criminal Justice System, Media, Obama

In the decade since he stepped onto the national stage, Barack Obama has inspired a coterie of black writers like Coates who have largely foregone reportage and robust interrogation for a kind of anger management, in an apparent attempt to lower the public’s expectations of the 44th president — and to reassure African-Americans especially that, despite losing more of their wealth than at any time in history, everything is swell. In his groundbreaking 1978 book, Orientalism, the late Palestinian intellectual Edward Said posited that the West has historically sought to qualify its imperialism by assigning men of science and letters the exercise of shifting the blame for colonialism from the colonizer to the colonized.

Jeff Session’s Assault On Mariujuana Legalization

January 23, 2018 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Clearing the FOG Radio. Podcast Criminal Justice System, DOJ, Drug War, Marijuana

Jeff Sessions, head of the Department of Justice, reversed the "Cole Memo" that allowed states to pursue marijuana legalization without fear of the federal government stepping in and prosecuting the marijuana industry. Sessions is leaving it up to each state's federal prosecutor to decide on how to proceed. This happened just as California moved to implement legal marijuana and Vermont voted to legalize marijuana. We speak with Justin Strekal, policy director for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), and Doug McVay, a long time advocate for drug law reform at the state and national level and editor of Drug War Facts, about what lies ahead for the movement to end marijuana prohibition.

How Uncle Sam Launders Marijuana Money

January 22, 2018 Ellen Brown, Truthdig. Educate! Banking, Criminal Justice System, Marijuana

Thirty states and the District of Columbia currently have laws broadly legalizing marijuana in some form. The herb has been shown to have significant therapeutic value for a wide range of medical conditions, including cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, glaucoma, lung disease, anxiety, muscle spasms, hepatitis C, inflammatory bowel disease, and arthritis pain. The community of Americans who rely on legal medical marijuana was estimated to be 2.6 million people in 2016 and includes a variety of mainstream constituency groups like veterans, senior citizens, cancer survivors, and parents of epileptic children.

41 Hearts Beating In Guantanamo

January 14, 2018 Kathy Kelly, Voices for Creative Nonviolence. Resist! Criminal Justice System, Guantanamo, Torture

January 11, 2018 marked the 16th year that Guantanamo prison has exclusively imprisoned Muslim men, subjecting many of them to torture and arbitrary detention. About thirty people gathered in Washington D.C., convened by Witness Against Torture, (WAT), for a weeklong fast intended to close Guantanamo and abolish torture forever. Six days ago, Matt Daloisio arrived from New York City in a van carefully packed with twelve years’ worth of posters and banners, plus sleeping bags, winter clothing and other essentials for the week.

‘The Justice System In Its Current Form Destroys Families’

September 30, 2017 Staff, www.blog.generationopportunity.org Educate! Criminal Justice System, Families, Prison Industrial Complex

By Staff of Generation Opportunity - A year ago, Weldon Angelos was released from prison after serving nearly 13 years of a 55-year sentence. Today, he’s leading the movement for criminal justice reform in the United States. Weldon’s story about facing over-criminalization and injustice is well-known. He was arrested for selling marijuana while in possession of a firearm and received an extraordinarily long punishment for a first-time, non-violent offender. Since his release, Weldon has worked tirelessly to reconnect with his family – his sister, his nephew, and his fiancée and two sons – while fighting to fix our broken criminal justice system. “I’m incredibly grateful to be out, but I’m going to continue to push for reforming mandatory minimum sentencing because it destroys so many families,” Weldon declared in an interview last year. “I witnessed that first-hand in prison. There are other people like me, even more deserving than me, that should be out.” Generation Opportunity caught up with Weldon during a recent trip to Washington, D.C., where he shared his story with lawmakers and urged them to make criminal justice reform a top priority. Weldon took a few minutes to talk to Gen Opp about adjusting to life after prison and what he considers the most important elements of criminal justice reform.

TN Counties Sue Opioid Makers Using Local “Crack Tax” Law

June 18, 2017 Zero Hedge, www.mintpressnews.com Resist! Criminal Justice System, health, Opioids

By Zero Hedge for Mintpress News. As the death toll in some of the hardest-hit areas of the country skyrockets – in some cases forcing county coroners to build larger freezers to store the bodies – states have begun filing lawsuits against the pharmaceutical companies responsible for making and marketing opioid painkillers, in hopes of offsetting the ballooning public-health costs that have been a byproduct of the crisis. Three Tennessee district attorneys are the latest prosecutors to file suit against the drug makers, joining a group that includes the attorneys general of Ohio, Illinois, Mississippi, New York and Santa Clara and Orange County in California – not to mention the Cherokee Nation. But the Tennessee prosecutors’ approach differs from their peers in one unique way

Ecuador Expects ‘Safe Passage’ For Julian Assange

May 21, 2017 Jim Wyss, www.cuencahighlife.com Educate! Criminal Justice System, Ecuador, Julian Assange

By Jim Wyss for Cuenca High Life. The government of Ecuador on Friday said WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange should be granted safe passage to the South American nation after Swedish authorities dropped their investigation of him. Assange has been holed up in Ecuador’s London embassy for five years avoiding extradition to Sweden where he was wanted for questioning on allegations of sexual assault. Prosecutors eventually interviewed him at the embassy in November. Sweden dropped the investigation on Friday. In a series of tweets, Ecuador Foreign Minister Guillaume Long questioned the delays. “Ecuador regrets that it took Swedish Prosecutor more than four years to carry out this interview. This was a wholly unnecessary delay,” Long wrote.

Mumia Abu-Jamal Fights For New Trial And Freedom

April 30, 2017 Jeff Mackler, www.counterpunch.org Resist! Criminal Justice System, health, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Political Prisoner

By Jeff Mackler for Counter Punch. Pennsylvania - On Mumia Abu-Jamal’s birthday, April 24, about 125 demonstrators mobilized outside Philadelphia’s Court of Common Pleas in solidarity with Mumia’s effort to reverse his 1982 frame-up murder conviction and win a new trial that could lead to his freedom. Mumia Abu-Jamal is perhaps the world’s best known political prisoner. He has been imprisoned for 36 years, and was on death row for 30 of those years. His fight for a new trial and freedom has been supported by organizations ranging from Amnesty International and the NAACP to the European Parliament and scores of national and local trade unions and city governments in the U.S. and abroad. Represented by Judy Ritter, Mumia’s Philadelphia-based attorney, and Christina Swarms, of the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Education Fund, Mumia petitioned the court for a new Post Conviction Relief Act hearing based on last year’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in the case of Williams v. Pennsylvania.

As Trial Begins, Climate Protectors Say Action Was A Necessity

March 12, 2017 Jeremy Brecher, www.commondreams.org Resist! climate crisis, Criminal Justice System, Oil and Gas, Pipelines

By Jeremy Brecher for Common Dreams. Is there anything people can do about climate change in the Trump era? The new American president has asserted that global warming is a fraud perpetrated by the Chinese to steal American jobs; threatened to ignore or even withdraw from the Paris climate agreement; and pledged unlimited burning of fossil fuels. Whatever the details, Trump’s agenda will escalate global warming far beyond its already catastrophic trajectory. As we learn that 2016 was the hottest year on record, it sounds like a formula for doom. On October 11 2016, with the presidential campaign still raging, five climate protectors traveled to five secluded locations in North Dakota, Montana, Minnesota, and Washington state and turned the shut-off valves on the five pipelines that carry tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada into the United States. Their action – dubbed “Shut It Down” – blocked 15% of US crude oil imports for nearly a day.

Extreme Enforcement Abuse At Standing Rock & Where It’s Going

January 29, 2017 Dahr Jamail, www.truth-out.org Educate! #NoDAPL, Courts, Criminal Justice System, Indigenous Resistance, Police abuse, Standing Rock

By Dahr Jamail for Truthout. What are your concerns with the Trump administration as to how much worse this could become, particularly after his recent executive order? Trump has been an investor in the pipeline. He says he's decreased his investment, which I question. He's made the construction of pipelines and general fossil fuel development a large part of his program. I think he'll make Standing Rock a target. Instead of the Army Corps of Engineers having a new EIS [Environmental Impact Statement] done, as it is calling for, he'll erase that, and tell the pipeline if they drill under the lake they won't be prosecuted anyway. I fear that law enforcement will feel they have a free hand to use excessive, and possibly lethal, force on the Water Protectors.

She Lied: Emmett Till’s Accuser Admits She Made Up Story

January 29, 2017 Kali Holloway, www.alternet.org Educate! Criminal Justice System, Emmett Till, Racism

By Kali Holloway for AlterNet. Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Chicago boy visiting relatives in Tallahatchie County, was kidnapped under cover of night, mercilessly beaten, shot, and thrown into the Tallahatchie River for the crime of being black and bold enough to flirt with a white woman in 1955 Mississippi. The murder has long been painful evidence that black lives do not matter in this country, that they can be snuffed out for any perceived slight against whiteness. “[I]n 2007, at age 72…[Carolyn, the accusor] confessed that she had fabricated the most sensational part of her testimony. 'That part’s not true,' she told Tyson, about her claim that Till had made verbal and physical advances on her. As for the rest of what happened that evening in the country store, she said she couldn’t remember. (Carolyn is now 82, and her current whereabouts have been kept secret by her family.)...

«1 2 3 »

Daily movement news and resources