On Monday, February 20, actions will be occurring across the country in solidarity with the more than 2 million people locked in cages -- the incarcerated. Monday, is National Occupy Day in Support of Prisoners.
"OWS is a struggle for human rights," said Jay Chiu, an activist with Occupy Wall Street. "You can't take a stand against severe economic inequity, the denial of human rights, and the …
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Occupy the Criminal Justice System: From Stop-and-Frisk to Prison Cells
February 19, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Viewpoint: Tenth Amendment Applies to Criminal Justice, Too
February 19, 2012 By Leave a Comment
When the current U.S. Supreme Court term began, Justice Antonin Scalia made headlines by appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee and testifying that "[i]t was a great mistake to put routine drug offenses into the federal courts."
Scalia was not arguing that drugs should be legal, but rather that there is a limit to what the federal government is competent, and constitutionally, …
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Justice Falls Down
February 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment
America’s flawed criminal justice system
THE TITLE OF William J. Stuntz’s masterwork, The Collapse of American Criminal Justice, is at first glance a misnomer. “Collapse” does not describe a system that seems to be humming along, processing ever-larger numbers of Americans. Stuntz notes that our rate of incarceration is closing in on 500 inmates per 100,000 people, up sevenfold from a …
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Panel: Streamline criminal justice boards in La. system
February 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment
A panel of judges, attorneys, legislators and others suggested Thursday that the Louisiana Legislature create a new court in Baton Rouge and merge the state’s pardon and parole boards.
The proposals by the Louisiana Sentencing Commission will be considered in the legislative session that starts March 12.
A number of ideas emerged over months of meetings, including:
Creating re-entry …
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“Game Over: Jerry Sandusky, Penn State, and the Culture of Silence
February 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Pre-Order Bill Moushey & Bob Dvorchak's Book
Available April 17, 2012
Order Here: BARNES & NOBLES …
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Texas judge faces inquiry on wrongful conviction
February 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment
AUSTIN, Texas — A special investigation will be launched to determine if a former prosecutor who is now a judge hid evidence in a trial that sent a man wrongly convicted in his wife's murder to prison for nearly a quarter-century, Texas' chief justice ordered Thursday.
A proceeding known as a "court of inquiry" will determine whether Judge Ken Anderson, when he was a district attorney, failed …
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In Albany, Top Judge Seeks to Curb False Convictions
February 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment
ALBANY — Instituting new safeguards against wrongful convictions and raising the age at which criminal defendants are considered adults should be top priorities of legislators and the legal community in New York, the state’s chief judge said Tuesday.
Delivering his annual State of the Judiciary address from the wood-paneled, red-carpeted Court of Appeals chamber, the chief …
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Attorney: Lawyer earned fees paid by exonerees
February 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment
LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) — An attorney credited for pushing a law that made Texas the most generous state in the nation in compensating the wrongly convicted earned his fees by fighting to get two clients as much money as possible after they were exonerated by DNA, his lawyer said Monday.
Opening statements were held in the State Bar of Texas' lawsuit against Kevin Glasheen. The bar association …
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California Counties ready to handle state’s juvenile offenders, study says
February 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment
County governments have invested nearly a half-billion dollars over the past 15 years to modernize juvenile lockups and now have the capacity to absorb offenders currently housed in the state’s youth prisons, if those facilities are closed, a new study contends.
The report [PDF] by the San Francisco-based Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice offers fresh data in support of Gov. Jerry …
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Former district attorney should face inquiry in Morton prosecution, judge says
February 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment
GEORGETOWN — Former Williamson County District Attorney Ken Anderson should face a court of inquiry to examine allegations that he hid evidence that could have spared Michael Morton from a wrongful murder conviction and almost 25 years in prison, a state district judge ruled Friday.
The finding means District Judge Sid Harle found probable cause to believe that Anderson violated state law in …
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