In the two months since the court’s decision in Grants Pass, an analysis by The Appeal finds that dozens of municipalities have passed or proposed new camping bans that levy the possibility of fines, tickets, or jail time against unhoused residents. More are sure to follow.
The U.S. Supreme Court will soon be hearing a case that will impact whether Texas executes Rodney Reed for capital murder— though another man has confessed to the crime.
Resources from organizations that have spent decades helping people access abortions and defending people who are criminalized for their pregnancy outcomes.
Most abortion bans criminalize providers by making it a felony to perform an abortion. But experts say people who obtain abortions can and will be criminalized for their pregnancy outcomes — they already have been even while Roe was still in place.
Police and prosecutors will now be tasked with enforcing state anti-abortion laws.
Model state legislation proposed by a leading anti-choice group would impose felony charges for a broad new set of activities related to abortion.
Prosecutors across the country could soon be tasked with enforcing abortion laws that require people to reproduce against their will.
A Supreme Court decision overturning the constitutional right to an abortion could force thousands of incarcerated people to carry pregnancies to term.
Georgia is the strictest state in America when it comes to proving intellectual disability in capital cases. This month, the Supreme Court could save the life of a man who says he is mentally disabled—or let the state kill him.
State Attorney Melissa Nelson is pushing for a death sentence even as more prosecutors reject capital punishment.
President-elect Biden has a tough road ahead in reversing the Trump administration’s damage to the immigration system. Advocates say they’ll make sure he fulfills his promises.
The Court’s willingness to infer discrimination against Judeo-Christian religions from poorly articulated remarks that accompanied a public health response to COVID-19 may make other laws and policies vulnerable to claims of religious discrimination as well.
A Democratic president who politely listens to progressive rhetoric while failing to act on it is one who just watches the planet burn a little more slowly.
Jones has vowed to support expansion of the Supreme Court, back the Green New Deal, and push for criminal justice reform.
In the midst of a national debate about changing the criminal legal system, Barrett is set to take a lifetime seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. Advocates see her addition as a potential setback to creating a more fair system.
Shifting control of the states’ highest courts next month will prove critical on a number of major issues, including redistricting in 2021.
The state’s pre-Roe abortion ban includes mandatory prison time for people who provide or obtain abortions. Candidates for top prosecutor in Maricopa County differ on whether they would prosecute such cases.
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.
No intellect or doctrine can overcome a judiciary inclined to favor government and the powerful against the accused and the vulnerable. And that is the federal judiciary we now have.
Rebalancing the nation’s highest court is a reasonable, proportionate response to a system that failed a long time ago.
It’s the first time in modern history that the federal government has executed a Native American for a crime committed against another Native American on tribal land, his attorneys say.
Enabling widespread voter suppression is shaping up to be the Roberts Court’s most consequential accomplishment, because every other aspect of the Republican agenda depends on it.
In a 5-4 ruling early today, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the lethal injection of Wesley Ira Purkey. Lawyers had argued that killing Purkey, who had dementia associated with Alzheimer’s disease, would represent cruel and unusual punishment.
A late-night Supreme Court ruling cleared the way for the execution of Daniel Lewis Lee, despite his claims of innocence and his attorneys’ belief that DNA testing could show he was wrongly convicted.
The ruling thwarts the administration’s attempt to deport nearly 700,000 immigrants who were brought to the United States as children.
The Supreme Court will soon decide the fate of 650,000 so-called Dreamers across the country. Lawyers say terminating protections for them during a pandemic would be ‘catastrophic.’
People in nearly every state are under some form of a stay-at-home order because of the COVID-19 pandemic. But today in Wisconsin, residents must decide whether they want to protect their health or participate in democracy. The state’s Democratic governor tried to postpone in-person voting in the presidential primary and local elections, but Republican legislators and a […]
State court is where everyday criminal justice gets meted out. Generally speaking, if you’re arrested for robbery, or assault, you’re getting arrested by local police and prosecuted in a state court, under state law. What does it matter what happens in fancy federal courts across the country? And what could be less relevant to the […]
After protests over the police shooting of Alton Sterling, DeRay Mckesson, the Black Lives Matter activist, was sued by a police officer.
In 2018, the state’s voters approved a constitutional amendment that requires unanimous jury verdicts in felony cases for crimes committed on or after Jan. 1, 2019. Now, the Supreme Court is considering the constitutionality of the nonunanimity rule—with prosecutors arguing that the U.S. Constitution does not require unanimous jury verdicts in criminal cases.
Under a legal doctrine called “harmless error,” appellate judges routinely affirm convictions tainted by legal error whenever they feel confident that the person appealing the conviction is guilty.
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 […]
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 […]
Just about every year while they were on the bench, the Supreme Court Justices John Paul Stevens and Antonin Scalia would take each other on. “These contests reflect the temperaments of the two men—Stevens’s cautious balancings against Scalia’s caustic certainties,” wrote Jeffrey Toobin for the New Yorker in 2010. Two years prior, in Baze v. Rees, the justices […]
With Appeal contributors Amir H. Ali and Emily Clark of the MacArthur Justice Center
As the potential demise of Roe v. Wade looms, past and current prosecutions of pregnant women illustrate what lies ahead.
First, look to local prosecutor elections.
Trump’s pick to replace Justice Kennedy would most likely undermine the rights of criminal defendants and stall progress on solitary confinement, prisoners’ rights, and the death penalty.
On May 23, 2013, Khari Illidge, a 25-year-old Black man in Lee County, Alabama, was face down and hogtied, with a 385-pound police officer kneeling on his back, when he suddenly went limp and a mixture of white froth and blood seeped from his mouth. Sheriff’s deputies had confronted Illidge while he was running in […]
Court watchers believe Justices will side with plaintiff