President Trump has appointed a quarter of active federal appellate judges, and they have decisively hampered legal efforts to force prisons and jails to address the coronavirus.
Harris’s record as a prosecutor was representative of a politics of the past. The nation has moved on.
People held in courthouse cells were shackled for up to 15 hours a day, and some were unable to eat, change menstrual pads, or use the bathroom, advocates say.
A lawsuit in Los Angeles and a motion in Orange County highlight battles to get key information.
Advocates say Anthony Aceves’s death conforms with long-standing issues in the second-largest jail system in California.
Phone calls between prisoners in Orange County and their lawyers were recorded and accessed. How wide the eavesdropping was remains an open question.
The California county has a thin blue line that appears to protect not just the police, but also the DA’s office, criminal justice advocates say.
A new court order allows the family’s lawsuit to proceed, and may lead to holding jail staff accountable.
In 2009, Anaheim police shot and killed Theresa Smith’s son. A new California law promises police transparency, but her quest for answers faces a substantial cost.
Todd Spitzer blasted Global Tel Link for recording attorney-client phone calls, but his campaign won’t call on a PAC supporting his candidacy to return the company’s lobbyist’s donation.
In California, as elsewhere in the nation, there’s a growing consensus that cash bail unfairly penalizes poor defendants, forcing them to sit in jail for months or even years pre-trial, while wealthier defendants walk free. Last year, California nearly ended cash bail after a bill, SB 10, passed the State Senate and then stalled out in […]
An Orange County, California murder conviction may be thrown out because of juror misconduct. But the office of District Attorney Tony Rackauckas opposes the motion to dismiss, insisting the conviction is valid. According to R. Scott Moxley at OC Weekly, a juror who helped to convict Eric Ortiz of the 2006 murder of Emeterio Adame […]
Two years ago, some longtime residents of Placentia, California, were disturbed when Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas announced his plan to fight a problem they didn’t think they had: violent street gangs. “The residents in these neighborhoods that consist of families, children and the elderly have been in the crossfire of these rival gangs […]
Embattled Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas has another scandal on his hands. A veteran prosecutor, Karen Schatzle, has filed a claim against Rackauckas’ office after the district attorney allegedly retaliated against her when she chose to unsuccessfully run against an incumbent superior court judge. Schatzle is seeking $5 million in damages. Schatzle claims she was […]
A California judge has taken the death penalty off the table for Scott Dekraai after finding that the Orange County District Attorney’s Office and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department engaged in “chronic” corruption. On Friday, Superior Court Judge Thomas M. Goethals said Dekraai could not face the death penalty due to the repeated misconduct by both D.A. Tony Rackauckas’s office and […]
Embattled Orange County Prosecutor Tony Rackauckas will not prosecute a police officer who shot an unarmed 18-year-old. Rackauckas announced in a letter last month that there’s insufficient evidence that Santa Ana Detective David Prewett committed a crime in the January shooting of Steve Salgado. This is the second time Prewett has been cleared in a fatal shooting […]
Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas, currently serving his fourth term as the elected prosecutor of the sixth most populous county in the United States, has vowed to seek reelection in 2018. Although he won reelection in 2014 with over 73% of the vote, the longtime prosecutor has been plagued by scandals that put his […]