Criminal Justice Reform

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.

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.