Last month, a Montana prosecutor made a major move to criminalize pregnant women. Big Horn County Attorney Gerald “Jay” Harris announced he would seek civil restraining orders against pregnant women who use drugs or alcohol. Under these court orders, pregnant women can be monitored for such conduct by law enforcement. If they are found in […]
Polaris, a Washington, D.C.-based non-governmental organization best known for operating the National Human Trafficking Hotline, says it has located a new front in the fight against human trafficking: what it describes as “illicit massage businesses,” or IMBs. The nonprofit, which brought in $10 million in 2016 (of which $2.1 million is government funding, according to IRS […]
On February 14, Manhattan, Brooklyn and Bronx prosecutors stood in front of Manhattan Supreme Court to protest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arresting New Yorkers involved in criminal cases. The event followed growing protests from public defenders — including walk-outs — taking aim at ICE’s practice of staking out courthouses to locate targets for deportation. According to a December 2017 report by The […]
By all accounts, 71-year-old Henry Montgomery is not the same man he was when he was 17. In 1963, Montgomery skipped school and encountered Charles H. Hurt, a plainclothes sheriff’s deputy, in the woods. In a panic, he shot and killed Hurt with his grandfather’s gun.
Russell Maroon Shoatz says that for 22 years straight he couldn’t sleep for more than three or four hours a night. The restricted housing unit where he lived — a solitary confinement cell, in common parlance — was smaller than most horse stalls, perpetually lit, and often cold during Pennsylvania’s long winters. Another Pennsylvania prisoner, Andre Jacobs, […]
By all accounts, 71-year-old Henry Montgomery is not the same man he was when he was 17. In 1963, Montgomery skipped school and encountered Charles H. Hurt, a plainclothes sheriff’s deputy, in the woods. In a panic, he shot and killed Hurt with his grandfather’s gun. A Baton Rouge, Louisiana jury convicted Montgomery of murder […]
Each day in his small cell in a Manhattan federal prison, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera battles severe headaches and vomiting, his lawyer says. He spends several hours with members of his defense team, reviewing 300,000 pages of discovery to prepare for his upcoming trial on charges including “leading a continuing criminal enterprise,” drug distribution, use of firearms, and […]
In early February, the Philadelphia City Council made history: It voted unanimously in favor of ending the use of cash bail. The resolution, passed February 1, urges the district attorney’s office and the courts “to institute internal policies that reduce reliance on cash bail” and called on the state legislature and state Supreme Court to eliminate […]
For decades, the New York Police Department has subjected people it arrests to a labyrinthine and bureaucratic process for retrieving their seized property. Often, poor New Yorkers — many without the legal assistance needed to navigate this process — give up on their property instead of trying to get it back. In a rare disclosure to the public, the […]
President Trump’s 2019 budget proposal, released Monday, requests nearly $30 billion for drug control. The majority of that funding is slated for law enforcement and an $18 billion border wall, with the purported dual purpose of stopping the flow of immigrants and illicit drugs from entering the country. The budget requests $2.2 billion in funding for […]
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner is bringing much-needed change to the city’s notoriously ineffective conviction review unit (CRU). The district attorney’s office confirmed to The Appeal that Patricia Cummings, former head of the Dallas County district attorney’s conviction integrity unit, has joined the Philadelphia DA to lead the the office’s review of old cases for evidence […]
On the morning of February 9, 2017, 17-year-old Quanice Hayes knelt on the ground in front of heavily armed Portland police officers as they yelled instructions at him. “Stay down on your knees,” they told him. “Move towards us.” A police dog barked. Hayes, who was unarmed, reached down toward his waistband. Why? We’ll never […]
In New York City, chants of “I can’t breathe” have given way to neatly run press conferences featuring Mayor Bill de Blasio’s boasts about how the NYPD’s “neighborhood policing” program, described as a collaborative crime-fighting strategy, brings the police and community together. Eric Garner’s killer still on the job and hasn’t faced justice? A horrifying story of rape involving cops from […]
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A 16-year-old Memphis girl charged with first-degree murder in the killing of a teen boy is being held in pretrial isolation at the Tennessee Prison for Women in Nashville. The Shelby County District Attorney’s office charged her as an adult in the April 3, 2017 shooting death of 17-year-old Deago Brown. She was just 15 […]
Since its initiation in 2013, the NYPD’s gang policing program has operated with little outside scrutiny. Based on evidence it has kept almost entirely hidden from public view, the police have targeted and surveilled entire social networks inside low-income communities, breaking down doors in pre-dawn military-style raids that have resulted in over 2,000 arrests in just the […]
Last week, days after dancers took to the streets of New Orleans to protest recent police raids on the city’s strip clubs, the state agency that led them was in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals fending off a challenge to a Louisiana law barring 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds from working as strip club dancers. In 2016, long before the raids, […]
On Jan. 23, public defenders in Los Angeles County got a new interim boss — over their own objections. For one thing, many have argued, Nicole Davis Tinkham, the appointee, comes from the Office of the County Counsel, where she defended the Board of Supervisors (the same governing body that appointed her), and the Sheriff’s Department, a frequent foe of their clients.
It was a courtroom scene that seemed to tell an epic tale of redemption — and show the New Orleans DA’s office in a rare embrace of restorative justice. On December 1, 2017, 23-year-old Jeremy Burse stood before the New Orleans criminal court judge who, less than two years earlier, had sentenced him to life without parole […]
For five days, 47-year-old Shannon Daves sat in solitary confinement in a Dallas County jail because she couldn’t afford to pay $500 bail. Daves, who is unemployed and homeless, was isolated because she is transgender — allegedly to protect her from the jail’s general population. She faces a misdemeanor property theft charge. She and five other indigent plaintiffs are […]
In Oklahoma last month, the Lincoln County District Attorney’s Office charged a 13-year-old boy with first-degree murder after an October play date ended with him hitting his two friends (ages 8 and 10) with a crossbow arrow, killing one. According to NewsOK, the arrow went through the 10-year-old, killing him, and punctured the 8-year-old in the arm. The 13-year-old boy told authorities that the incident was an accident. However, the 8-year-old who was hit told investigators that the 13-year-old was angry at his friends.
In Oklahoma last month, the Lincoln County District Attorney’s Office charged a 13-year-old boy with first-degree murder after an October play date ended with him hitting his two friends (ages 8 and 10) with a crossbow arrow, killing one. According to NewsOK, the arrow went through the 10-year-old, killing him, and punctured the 8-year-old in the […]
Since last fall, #MeToo has grown from a hashtag into a movement. Stories of sexual misconduct throughout society — especially in the entertainment and business and political spheres — have wakened millions of people to the colossal scale of the problem. One of the most hopeful results is that efforts are underway to go beyond simply naming the problem […]
On January 24, Larry Gerard Nassar, the former national team doctor of USA Gymnastics, was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison for the sexual assault of minors. The sentence was handed down with biting words from Judge Rosemarie Aquilina, after a week of intense and moving pre-sentencing statements from Nassar’s victims. Aquilina noted that if the Constitution did not forbid cruel and unusual punishment, she might have sentenced him to be made a victim of sexual violence. She settled for an unsurvivable prison sentence, saying, to great public applause, “I just signed your death warrant.”
Frederick Adami, a 52-year-old resident of Morrisville, Pennsylvania, died from apparent opioid withdrawal early in the morning on Sunday, January 28, while in custody at the Bucks County Correctional Facility. Adami’s cellmate, Bruce Gramiak Jr., made a phone call to his girlfriend, Melissa Weitzel, the night before Adami’s death to tell her that his cellmate […]
In a series of tweets, New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand recently praised the recall effort against Judge Aaron Persky, who sentenced Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner to six months in prison after Turner was convicted of sexually assaulting a woman during a college party. The recall effort is misguided. It’s unlikely to result in the changes its […]
Crime in New York City is at historic lows. The overall number of people in the city’s jails recently dipped below 9,000 for the first time since 1982. Yet the number of people locked up for violating the terms of their parole is on the rise. That is the conclusion of Less is More in New York City, a new […]
Prisoners in Florida are in the midst of a huge and risky protest: They started a strike and boycott on Martin Luther King Jr. Day meant to last through the month. The protest challenges exorbitant prices at canteens; urges Florida to extend parole, as an incentive for good behavior, to all prisoners; and demands payment […]
Historically, whenever a Pennsylvania court handed down a death sentence, it was effectively condemning the defendant to live the rest of his or her years in isolation. The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections mandates that people on death row be held in solitary confinement. And Pennsylvania isn’t the only state to do so: A recent survey by The Marshall […]
In the early spring of 2013, Yolanda and Jessie Smith, an African American couple, agreed to accept what they believed were packages of cancer medicine for a 58-year-old white man named Alvin Phillips, whom they knew from a pool hall in Waggaman, Louisiana, a tiny town comprised of about 10,000 residents near New Orleans.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear filed lawsuits last week against several pharmaceutical companies, including Purdue Pharma and McKesson Corporation, that manufacture and distribute opioid pain relievers, alleging that they are getting rich to the tune of $13 billion annually from an overdose crisis that kills 120 people each day. “By suing […]
In The Princess Bride, Prince Humperdinck has Wesley strapped to a device known as The Machine, which has a lever that can be raised from 1 to 50. When the lever is turned to 1, the machine sucks away one year of the victim’s life, with each tick of the lever corresponding to another year taken away. […]
Congress is marking “National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month” by considering major anti-sex trafficking legislation in both houses. The bills use different approaches but would both target websites, such as Backpage, where sexual services are advertised. Yet neither bill will result in justice for victims of human trafficking, anti-trafficking advocates and service providers told The […]
On January 11, Marian Ryan, the District Attorney of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, proudly announced that her office would stop requesting cash bail in “non-violent, low-level” cases. “Recognizing that even a short period of incarceration can cause tremendous upheaval in one’s life, including loss of employment and housing,” Ryan proclaimed, “this practice seeks to prevent incarceration solely due […]
For decades, Philadelphia held the dubious honor of hosting America’s largest open-air heroin market in a tangle of pockmarked streets on the city’s north side, known as the “Badlands.” On Tuesday, less than two weeks after Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf declared the overdose crisis a public health emergency, city officials, including District Attorney Larry Krasner and […]
On January 31, 2013, a California Highway Patrol officer pulled over Carlos David Sanchez for playing his car stereo too loud. During the stop, the officer asked Sanchez, then 19, if he was on probation or parole. He was not, Sanchez said, but he was under a gang injunction, as was his younger brother, also in […]
The Louisiana jury that will decide whether a white man shot a black former NFL player in self-defense during a road rage incident has just one black juror. The fatal shooting of former New York Jets running back Joe McKnight in December 2016 quickly triggered accusations of racism in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana’s largest county. The suspect, Ronald […]
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday heard oral arguments in a challenge to New York’s controversial “gravity knife” statute, the latest chapter in a fight against a law that has drawn broad criticism from criminal justice reform groups, in part for its disproportionate impact on people of color. Two of the plaintiffs in the case, […]
Caleb Smith was an overwhelmed but idealistic 26-year-old with a master’s degree in biomedical science, studying for medical school entrance exams. When he wasn’t learning about the human body, Smith, a resident of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, worked on his car, watched anime cartoons, and played with his beloved Siberian Husky.
It looked like a flyer promoting Bourbon Street strip clubs: purple, magenta and black, with neon light-styled letters spelling out the name of then-New Orleans mayoral candidate, Desiree Charbonnet. But it wasn’t a flyer. It was an opposition mailer, sent just before the hotly-contested November election. Under a photograph of Charbonnet, the mailer stated, “In December […]