On the evening of January 29, 2018, Caryn Santa knew she only had a few hours to save her son, Robert Collazo. Collazo, 21, had been held on Rikers Island for almost three years, charged with the murder of Jose Velasquez.
On Friday, in what her office called, “the first [release] of its kind in the country,” Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx made public six years of felony criminal case data.
By the time Steven Odiase learned of the evidence that would set him free, he’d already spent six years in prison for murder.
He’s a death-penalty championing, Islam-bashing vaccine skeptic who believes the U.S. is “rooted in Christian principles.” And he’s currently campaigning for re-election in Texas as the district attorney of Bexar County, a populous county of nearly two million residents, close to 60 percent of whom are Hispanic — as a Democrat.
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 […]
In September 2017, newspapers across the country ran headlines of a similar theme: According to data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, the agency’s official report on criminal behavior nationwide, crime — or at least violent crime — had risen for the second year in a row. That’s not entirely true.
On February 10, the ACLU of Texas held a forum for the Dallas County district attorney candidates in anticipation of the March 6 primary. For almost two hours, Democratic candidates Elizabeth Frizell and John Creuzot fielded questions as Anthony Graves, a man who was wrongfully convicted of murder and spent 18 years on death row, led the […]
As the conversation about criminal justice reform increasingly focuses on the nation’s broken bail system, prosecutors across the country have announced new policies that purportedly aim to keep low-income people from being denied their freedom simply because they can’t afford to pay bail. In New York City, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez and Manhattan District Attorney […]
Local activists are set to gather at New York’s City Hall today, urging Mayor Bill de Blasio to end his silence on the idea of the city opening a supervised injection facility, a medical setting for safely injecting drugs. Organized by VOCAL-NY, a nonprofit grassroots organization, the coalition of activists and drug users are calling out […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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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 […]
Joseph Margulies, professor of law and government at Cornell University, recently remarked, “In the carceral state, we have developed such a crabbed view of justice that we imagine it as nothing more than a criminal conviction … I hope we want accountability for what happened, and change to ensure it never happens again. Why should we think […]
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 […]
In almost every criminal case in New York City, the police department makes an arrest, and it’s up to the borough’s District Attorney to decide whether to prosecute. However, since the beginning of 2016, the Manhattan DA has taken the extraordinary step of allowing the NYPD’s Legal Bureau to prosecute some cases in court. Why? […]
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.”
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 […]
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.
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 […]
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 […]
In March of 2010, Jesus Aguirre, Jr. had just turned 16 and was hanging out with a group of friends in Buena Park, California, when a fight broke out amongst nearly 20 boys. One of the boys fired a shotgun full of birdshot at another teen, who sustained “superficial” injuries, according to the Buena Park Police Department […]
The Trump administration uses Sanctuary Cities as punching bags in its war against immigrants. But even in the cities taking federal heat for protecting immigrant communities, a little-understood, post-9/11 institution called the “fusion center” is playing a starring — if behind the scenes — role in the Trump-Sessions deportation regime. Despite promises from liberal mayors, local police departments are […]
Most of us go to the doctor regularly, or at least use the Internet to identify health information of questionable medical value. Either way, we have heard some variation on the phrase “one of the very best predictors of [medical event X] is a prior instance of [X].” One of the very best predictors of whether you’ll […]
A recent bombshell report from the Department of Justice claims that the number of people prosecuted in federal court for commercial sexual exploitation of children roughly doubled between 2004 and 2013. The title of the report from the DOJ’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, Federal Prosecution of Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children Cases, 2004–2013, conjures the specter of […]
It didn’t take too much deliberation for the Philadelphia Inquirer to render its guilty verdict against District Attorney Larry Krasner after he took office on January 2: “the first days of Krasner’s administration,” the editorial board intoned nine days later, “seem more about imprudence than jurisprudence” Zing. A rhyme. But what does it all mean? Well, Krasner swiftly ousted […]