Criminal Justice System

How To Protest In Trump’s Expanded Surveillance State

January 22, 2017 Sally Adee, www.newscientist.com Organize! Criminal Justice System, Privacy, Surveillance, Trump

By Sally Adee for New Scientist. WELCOME to the new normal. Even before Donald Trump was elected, the US was already in a “golden age of surveillance“. As Edward Snowden revealed in 2013, the US government’s surveillance powers had expanded dramatically under the Obama administration. Trump has repeatedly signalled that he intends to make much greater use of these capabilities – perhaps inspired by British legislation that has given the UK government unprecedented power to snoop on its citizens. In both cases, such powers were ostensibly introduced to combat terrorism. But there’s very little evidence that greater spying powers actually catch terrorists, many of whom already know how to evade spooks. On the other hand, there is mounting concern among privacy advocates and human rights campaigners that such powers will stifle domestic dissent and enable political witch-hunts.

ND Debates Petition For Out-Of-State Lawyers For #NoDAPL Arestees

January 9, 2017 Caroline Grueskin, www.rapidcityjournal.com Create! #NoDAPL, Criminal Justice System, National Lawyers Guild, Water Protectors

By Caroline Grueskin for the Bismarck Tribune. MANDAN, N.D. | A petition to let out-of-state lawyers represent pipeline protesters has drawn thousands of public comments to the North Dakota Supreme Court. The vast majority of the comments, which come from as far away as Hawaii, are in favor of the petition, which arose from concerns among some lawyers there were not enough criminal defense attorneys in the state to handle the 570-plus criminal cases arising from the Dakota Access pipeline protests. When the petition was filed in mid-December, 264 people were listed as being without attorneys, a problem they said could be partly attributed to a shortage of public defenders and private criminal defense lawyers.

Open Data Projects Fuel Fight Against Police Misconduct

October 30, 2016 Alice Speri, www.theintercept.com Create! Criminal Justice System, Police abuse, Racism, Transparency

By Alice Speri for The Intercept. SAMANTHA SEDA’S CLIENT, a 16-year-old foster child from Far Rockaway, New York, had no criminal history when he was arrested in September, accused of having pulled out a gun and fired one shot in the air. Even though he had no priors and no relatives who could post bail, a judge set the amount at $100,000, and as he sat in jail for over a month, the boy lost his spot at the foster home where he had been living. Seda, a Legal Aid attorney representing adolescents charged as adults in Queens, thought the allegations against her client were dubious and was looking for a way to get him out on bail. That’s when she decided to look into the officers named in the complaint against him. What she discovered stunned her.

Colorado Kids Aren’t Using More Marijuana, Are Punished More

July 10, 2016 Amanda Bent, www.alternet.org Educate! Criminal Justice System, health, Marijuana, Youth

By Amanda Bent for Alternet. Last week was exciting for folks (nerds?) like me who are interested in the public health implications of marijuana policy reform, especially those of us in Colorado. With the long-awaited release of the 2015 Healthy Kids Colorado Survey, we got an updated snapshot of how youth in the state are responding to implementation of Amendment 64. This ballot initiative victory legalized recreational use of marijuana for adults in 2012, allowing those 21 or older to purchase it when it became available in retail stores starting in January of 2014. Opponents of this groundbreaking reform continued to harbor concerns over the past few years that it would lead to a drastic spike in marijuana use among young people. Using data from the 2013 version of the Healthy Kids survey as a baseline, however, we can see that such fears remain unfounded and unrealized.

Obama Commutes Sentences Of 58 Federal Prisoners

May 6, 2016 Timothy Gardner, www.huffingtonpost.com Create! Barack Obama, Criminal Justice System, Prisoner rights

By Timothy Gardner for Reuters - WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama has commuted the prison terms of 58 people, nearly a third of whom were serving life sentences, the White House said on Thursday. Most of the convicts who will be freed early were non-violent drug offenders. Obama said in a blog post that “it just doesn’t make sense to require a non-violent drug offender to serve 20 years, or in some cases, life, in prison.”

US Ties To Saudi Kingdom Are Beheading Democracy

February 28, 2016 Paul Gottinger, www.readersupportednews.org Educate! Criminal Justice System, Human Rights, Obama, Saudi Arabia

By Paul Gottinger for Reader Supported News. Saudi Arabia opened 2016 with a tragic, yet increasingly common event for the Kingdom, a mass execution. In the words of Amnesty International, “Saudi Arabia’s authorities demonstrated their utter disregard for human rights and life by executing 47 people in a single day.” According to the British rights organization Reprieve, Saudi Arabia has had one of the world’s highest rates of execution for over ten years. Many of these executions occur after unfair trails and may be carried out by the barbaric means of beheading, public crucifixion, stoning, or firing squad. All 47 individuals executed on January 1 were accused of being terrorists. However, four of those executed were involved in Saudi Arabia’s Arab Spring protests. These four remained strictly nonviolent in their calls for greater democracy and rights in the Kingdom.

Crucial Element Of Criminal Justice Reform Not Talked About

February 21, 2016 Jonathan Rapping, www.talkpoverty.org Educate! Criminal Justice System, Public defenders

By Jonathan Rapping in Talk Poverty. Brendan Dassey, a 16-year-old with a developmental disability, was accused of rape and murder. The police exploited his cognitive limitations to secure an unreliable confession. Prosecutors took advantage of his vulnerability to engineer his conviction. And the court refused to sufficiently correct these and other obvious injustices. Perhaps most troubling is the fact that Dassey’s own lawyer—who had been appointed by the court—assumed that his client was guilty and refused to investigate his claims of innocence. All of this and more is explored in the much-discussed Netflix documentary series, Making a Murderer. It exemplifies exactly what the Supreme Court declared in the 1963 case, Gideon v. Wainwright: only with the aid of effective defense counsel is justice for all ensured.

Manslaughter Charge Dropped For Son Of NY Cop

February 8, 2016 Keegan Stephan, www.photographyisnotacrime.com Educate! Criminal Justice System, NYPD, Violence

By Keegan Stephan for PINAC. New York City - Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance this week dropped the manslaughter charge against the ex-con son of a well-connected NYPD family who was caught on video driving onto a sidewalk while texting before striking and killing an outspoken civil rights activist, then fleeing the scene on foot and evading police for more than two months, all while he was on parole after serving a three-year prison stint on drug charges. The victim was Charity Hicks, the policy director for the East Michigan Environmental Action Council and a well-known activist in the struggle for environmental justice in Detroit, especially the struggle for access to clean water.

Private Companies Making Killing In Justice System

January 26, 2016 Brandon Weber, www.progressive.org Educate! Criminal Justice System, Prison Industrial Complex, Privatization

By Brandon Weber for The Progressive - Private corporations make money at almost every step of our justice and prison systems, from processing fines to monitoring ankle bracelets and drug testing. And they make a lot of it. The group In the Public Interest(ITPI), has just compiled a list. Sweetheart contracts with state and federal governments, and with the private companies who now own 20 percent of federal prisons across the United States, have opened up a whole new areas of taxpayer-funded profit-making.

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