Last week, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that some applications of the state’s sex offender registration law violate the state constitution. The decision represents an important step toward increasing constitutional scrutiny of sweeping laws that make it nearly impossible for convicted sex offenders to reintegrate into society after serving time in prison.
Pedro Hernandez, an 18-year-old man man from the Bronx, has been locked up on Rikers Island waiting for trial for almost two years. He has no prior criminal convictions and is fighting two cases, a 2015 shooting and an unrelated robbery, both of which appear to rest on flimsy evidence.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee and the Civil Rights Corpsare calling for an end to cash bail in Davidson County, a practice that keeps thousands of people locked up every year because they are poor. Hedy Weinberg, executive director of the ACLU of Tennessee, and Alec Karakatsanis, executive director of Civil Rights Corps, wrote in an op-ed that […]
Jeff Sessions is at it again. In yet another public statement, the Attorney General has voiced his support for a range of discredited or highly controversial criminal justice policies. This time, Sessions delivered a series of tough-on-crime bromides to the National District Attorneys Association: harsh penalties are the solution to drug addiction; broken-windows policing works; more criminal prosecutions […]
There’s a story the mainstream media trumpets most loudly when it comes to parole, and it’s a frightening one: A violent criminal is released from prison, and within weeks or months of their release, a heinous, tragic crime is committed again. The lesson this story teaches the public is toxic, and largely inaccurate. When the only stories of […]
For decades people who’ve jumped over the turnstiles in the New York subway system have faced arrest and being charged with criminal “theft of services.” But New York County District Attorney Cyrus Vance recently announced that his office would no longer pursue criminal charges against most people for fare evasion, and would instead seek to send them […]
Cuyahoga County prosecutor Michael O’Malley attempted to try a 15-year-old boy accused of murder as an adult. The child was accused of shooting 16-year-old Alexander Mullins in an abandoned building in Cleveland’s Slavic Village. O’Malley’s effort to try the child in adult court was rejected by Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court Judge Alison Floyd, who found that the […]
The California Supreme Court overturned the 2012 convictions of three men after finding that Kern County prosecutors used peremptory strikes in a discriminatory manner to keep Latinos off their jury. According to the Los Angeles Times, “The unanimous decision, written by Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, appeared intended to send a clear signal to prosecutors, defense lawyers and the […]
Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, whose office is responsible for prosecuting crimes in the nation’s second-larget county, has launched a new approach to pretrial detention. Foxx announced earlier this month that her office would be recommending that people charged with misdemeanors and low-level felonies who do not have a history of “violent crime” or pose a […]
Overwhelmingly, “undocumented” residents are referred to by the current administration In Washington as “illegal aliens” and identified almost exclusively as Latinos. There is little, if any, subtlety in this regard. The administration’s policy is undeniably race based.
The future was limitless for Seth Williams when he was sworn in as district attorney of Philadelphia almost eight years ago.
Donald Trump’s presidency represents a serious threat to undocumented immigrants across the country and here in Los Angeles. Mayor Eric Garcetti has boldly rejected President Trump’s dangerous rhetoric, but if the mayor and locally elected leaders truly want to protect immigrant Angelenos, they must commit to ending “broken windows” policing and other practices, which put many people at great risk of deportation for doing little more than sleeping on a sidewalk.
Police officers in Mesquite committed a crime when they tased a teenager in 2013 who would later die. But because it took the office of Dallas County District Attorney Faith Johnson so long to come to that conclusion, the officers cannot face criminal charges.
Travis County District Attorney Margaret Moore has acknowledged that the satanic child sex abuse crimes that have kept Dan and Fran Keller in prison for over a generation probably never happened.
That’s what officers told then 17-year-old Gerome Moore when they interrogated him following the 2015 shooting of Carolyn Temple. Moore ultimately confessed to driving the getaway car for two friends who robbed and shot Temple in her boyfriend’s driveway; she died a week later from the gunshot wound.
Ledura Watkins spent 41 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. And the only evidence prosecutors had against Watkins in the early 1970’s was a single hair.