Sarah Lustbader

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. New Yorkers were supposed to be finished with all of this. Done with 12 years of Michael Bloomberg, a technocratic, out-of-touch billionaire mayor who oversaw the highly […]

Rodney Reed was scheduled to be executed tomorrow. He won’t be, at least not tomorrow. He was convicted and sentenced to die in 1998 for the rape and murder of 19-year-old Stacey Stites. But last Friday, the Court of Criminal Appeals in Texas halted his execution and ordered the court where he was originally tried to consider […]

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. Rodney Reed was scheduled to be executed tomorrow. He won’t be, at least not tomorrow. He was convicted and sentenced to die in 1998 for the rape […]

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. In a video posted on Twitter on Friday, a small woman with a pushcart full of churros is surrounded by four NYPD officers inside the Broadway Junction […]

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. “Most lawyers, as well as ordinary citizens unfamiliar with the daily procedures of criminal law administration, are astonished to learn that a person in this society may […]

What you’ll read today Spotlight: Yesterday, Oklahoma saw the largest mass commutation in U.S. history Commentary: It’s time to fight the Democratic mayors who are champions of the carceral state People behind the Girls Do Porn website were just charged with sex trafficking. But complaints were filed about them years ago. Illinois Department of Corrections revises book ban policy Study finds […]

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. At least 462 people were released early from Oklahoma prisons yesterday in the largest mass commutation in U.S. history. A total of 527 people had their sentences […]

“Hundreds of registered sex offenders will gather on Halloween to spend several hours under supervision in an effort to make the community feel safer,” reports Taylor Pettaway for the San Antonio Express-News. For the last decade, the probation department in San Antonio, Texas, has been holding what they call “Project S.A.F.E. Halloween,” requiring sex offenders from across […]

What you’ll read today Spotlight: In leaked audio, prosecutor admits locking people up is not about public safety California court destroys files in historic police corruption case A proposed solution to the facial recognition controversy Michigan raises age of criminal responsibility to 18 In the Spotlight In leaked audio, prosecutor admits locking people up is not about public safety “Hundreds of registered sex […]

What you’ll read today Spotlight: Louisiana prosecutors try to pull cases from Black judge who criticized discrimination in the courts New York State judges are jailing people who can’t afford to pay their fines Leaked presentation shows New York prosecutors training each other to subvert reform laws Tennessee sheriff cancels contract with ICE In the Spotlight Louisiana prosecutors try to pull cases from […]

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. Two Louisiana judges will begin hearing arguments tomorrow about whether a Black judge should be recused from more than 300 criminal cases after she criticized prosecutors for the disproportionate rate of […]

What you’ll read today Spotlight: Julián Castro’s new criminal justice plan is long on inspiration, short on specifics Using nitrogen gas for executions is untested and poorly understood. Three states plan to do it anyway. Austin braces as Texas officials plan crackdown on homeless encampments Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg releases criminal justice reform plan New Mexico school resource officer who used excessive force on an […]

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. Julián Castro’s new criminal justice plan starts off promising. The title itself, “The First Chance Plan,” is promising. “Traditionally, the conversation around criminal justice has centered on a second […]

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. “As soon as Julie Eldred was granted probation for stealing jewelry to buy drugs, she got busy fulfilling the judge’s conditions,” Jan Hoffman reported for the New York Times […]

“As soon as Julie Eldred was granted probation for stealing jewelry to buy drugs, she got busy fulfilling the judge’s conditions,” Jan Hoffman reported for the New York Times last year. Eldred “began an intensive all-day outpatient treatment program. She even went an extra step and started daily doses of Suboxone, a medication that can quell opiate […]

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. Last week, the family of a British teenager, Harry Dunn, who was killed in an August car crash in England, traveled to the White House to push […]

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. Early Saturday morning, Atatiana Jefferson, a 28-year-old Black woman, was at her home in Texas playing video games with her 8-year-old nephew when police officers responded to a call […]

Early Saturday morning, Atatiana Jefferson, a 28-year-old Black woman, was at her home in Texas playing video games with her 8-year-old nephew when police officers responded to a call made by a neighbor who noticed a front door open. Body camera footage released by the police shows Aaron Dean, a white police officer, going around the back of the […]

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. At last night’s debate, the most sustained conversation about the courts was about the possibility of court-packing. Which is a fine thing to discuss, considering how effectively […]

Special Edition Prison whistleblowers, too, are vulnerable This week, White House counsel informed House Democrats that the White House will not cooperate with their impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. The letter states, in part, “You have designed and implemented your inquiry in a matter that violates fundamental fairness and constitutionally mandated due process.” As has become common for […]

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. This week, White House counsel informed House Democrats that the White House will not cooperate with their impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. The letter states, in part, “You […]

What you’ll read today Spotlight: A discriminatory rule that even Justice Kavanaugh opposes Philadelphia man begins rebuilding his life after wrongful conviction More than 40 people have died in the East Baton Rouge jail. Will voters oust the sheriff? Jury deadlocks in first police hate crime trial in a decade In LA, Black and Latinx people more likely than white people to be stopped […]

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. This week, the Supreme Court appeared ready to rule against convictions by nonunanimous juries. The Court heard arguments in Ramos v. Louisiana, a case that challenged the […]

Republicans seem to discover the urgent need for due process and procedural safeguards each time an ally of theirs becomes vulnerable. This time, it’s about hearsay. I am confident that I am not the only attorney fielding questions about whether the whistleblower complaint—which began an impeachment inquiry into President Trump’s dealings with the Ukranian president—is hearsay. This is because after the complaint was released, Trump allies such […]

“For some legal observers, there was only one word for the Amber Guyger guilty verdict on Tuesday: stunning,” the Dallas Morning News reported. “That’s because a police officer likely never even would have been charged just a few years ago.” Between 1973 and 2016, there were no Dallas police officers who faced murder charges for killing a civilian, […]

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. Last week, Washington D.C.’s Advisory Neighborhood Commission 4B voted unanimously to pass a resolution in favor of the city’s proposed second-look bill, which would let incarcerated people who committed […]

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. Meralyn Kirkland got a call last Thursday about her granddaughter, Kaia Rolle. She was told that the 6-year-old girl had been arrested at her Orlando charter school and was […]

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. “Environmentalism is now equated with social justice and civil rights,” wrote professors Robert D. Bullard and Glenn S. Johnson in the Journal of Social Issues almost 20 years ago. […]

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. “Donald Trump has long understood that he can leverage homelessness to motivate people,” writes David Graham for The Atlantic. “In the early 1980s, the developer was desperate to get […]

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. Last Friday, actress Felicity Huffman was sentenced to 14 days in prison for paying thousands of dollars to have one of her daughter’s SAT scores inflated. She is the […]

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. Sometimes it seems as if U.S. Senator Kamala Harris thinks we aren’t paying attention. She seems to assume that if she chooses the right words, the ones […]

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. “After 147 years, California residents are now free to turn down law enforcement officials who ask for help with an arrest,” reported Jacey Fortin for the New York Times […]

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. “Even before Boston Municipal Court Judge Richard Sinnott had defense attorney Susan Church handcuffed on Wednesday morning, proceedings in his courtroom had gotten bizarre—and worrying,” wrote Yvonne Abraham, […]

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. Anyone who has ever done work combating mass incarceration has most likely been approached by family members and friends asking what they can do to join the […]

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. While progressives and reformers wax poetic about reducing low-level arrests, one group is making it happen: the NYPD. Not out of some newfound understanding about the moral […]

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. This month, billionaire Henry T. Nicholas III, who made his fortune as a co-founder of the semiconductor firm Broadcom, was arrested in Las Vegas for narcotics trafficking […]

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. The ironies of the Trump administration can seem to pile up, beginning with his campaign against elitism and corruption, and including the first lady’s pet project combating online […]

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. This week, the two most progressive frontrunners for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, added their criminal justice proposals to the pile. They […]

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. Yesterday seemed by all accounts a good day for police accountability. Scholars recently revealed that police violence is a leading cause of death for Black men, but […]

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. At 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, while attempting to serve a warrant, Philadelphia police found themselves under fire. Six of them were shot, and although none were seriously […]