A federal appellate court has ruled that the office of Maricopa County District Attorney Bill Montgomery violated the law with their wiretapping practices. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit found that Montgomery didn’t personally review and sign off on surveillance warrants, which is required by federal law. Montgomery instead relied on a less […]
If there’s a chance you could wind up in jail, you have the right to an attorney whether or not you can afford one. The U.S. Supreme Court has reaffirmedand clarified this right more than once, in doing so making clear that it applies to both misdemeanor and felony offenses. Yet in Nashville, Tennessee, defendants in misdemeanor courts aren’t […]
Implicit bias in the criminal justice system is a very hot topic these days, as it should be in a system where unjustified racial disparities persist. This past April, my co-authors and I published an article, Judging Implicit Bias: A National Empirical Study Of Judicial Stereotypes, which looks at implicit bias in sentencing by federal and […]
Earlier this month, District Attorney Ricky Babin was elected president of the Louisiana District Attorney’s Association. He’ll take on this new role at a critical time for criminal justice reform. But Babin’s history and past statements suggest he will not be a voice for change, and will instead defend the status quo that has made […]
Two elected district attorneys in North Carolina have been arrested and one has pleaded guilty for a scheme that authorities said involved both men hiring the other’s wife for bogus jobs. Craig Blitzer and Wallace Bradsher were both accused of taking about $100,000 in state money from the North Carolina payroll program for jobs that didn’t really […]
In a highly unusual move, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s office recently became embroiled in a fight to keep a new mother from being locked up. Karen Padilla Garcia, 26, went into labor after she was detained in the Cook County Jail following a probation violation last month. Garcia was taken to Stroger Hospital where […]
For years, Indiana has been at the center of the national conversation about opioid addiction, which has ravaged the state since the late 1990s. Between 1999 and 2014, the number of drug overdoses skyrocketed 500 percent. There was also a 60 percent increase in emergency visits for non-fatal overdoses between 2011 and 2015. By and large, the medical community […]
In 1998, Vance Haskell was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life without parole for the shooting of Darrel Cooley. Nearly four years prior, Cooley was gunned down with a semiautomatic weapon at a steakhouse in Erie, Pennsylvania. Haskell matched the profile of a suspect based on the reports of multiple witnesses, but it was the […]
The office of Marin County District Attorney Ed Berberian is fighting to keep a man locked up in prison even though an appellate court has ordered a new hearing in his case to determine whether he should have been tried as a juvenile. Max Wade, now 22, was sentenced in 2014 to 21 years to life imprisonment […]
On Thursday, President Trump announced that his administration will soon declare the opioid crisis a national emergency, following the interim recommendation of his Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis. “We’re going to spend a lot of time, a lot of effort and a lot of money on the opioid crisis,” said Trump. “We are going to […]
Twenty years ago, a brutal murder in a red state like Mississippi would likely guarantee a death sentence for a defendant. But as last week’s sentencing of Scotty Lakeith Street illustrates, juries in the South and across the country continue to shift away from capital punishment. In 1997, four people inMississippi were sentenced to death; last year, 2016, not one person […]
Damning new details have surfaced about a Bronx prosecutor and two investigators tied to the case of Pedro Hernandez, a 17-year-old accused of two non-fatal shootings that occurred in 2015. According to PIX11 News, Assistant District Attorney David Slott and detectives Daniel Brady and David Terrell pressured several witnesses to identify Hernandez as the gunman in […]
Imagine you’ve been charged with a crime and are sitting in jail awaiting your trial. Your bail is set to $5,000, leaving you with three options — if you’re rich and you pay the money up front, you can get out of jail and wait for your court date from the comfort of your home. If you’re […]
Like Vida B. Johnson, I was outraged at the t-shirt worn by a Metropolitan Police Department officer that glorified the use of “jump-out cars” and contained a common white supremacist symbol. Police and political leadership should actively identify and root out white supremacists from police departments throughout the country. At the same time, community leaders should examine […]
The Christian County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office has been removed from handling a murder case after a judge found that Commonwealth’s Attorney Lynn Pryor had a conflict of interest from previously dating the lead detective. Pryor, who took over as top county prosecutor in January 2007, and her entire office are now off the murder case of Jarred Tabor Long […]
Norfolk County (Massachusetts) prosecutors announced on Monday that they do not intend to retry Fred Weichel, a South Boston man who spent 36 years behind bars for a murder the existing evidence suggests he did not commit. Yet the district attorney’s office took pains to clarify that the decision not to re-prosecute falls far short […]
When Henry Ayo was arrested for allegedly trying to steal an air conditionerand jailed in the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison last August, he was financially dependent on his wife and unable to make bail. Paying thousands of dollars to secure his pretrial release from the jail was impossible at the time, yet the judge presiding […]
Fort Bend County District Attorney John Healey will be departing at the end of his term in 2018, ending a 26 year tenure as the elected prosecutor for Texas’ 10th largest county. Healey, a Republican, was originally appointed to office in 1992 and has been reelected six times. He faced a general election challenger only once; in […]
Years after his brutal death, Darren Rainey remains on the minds of the people of Miami. That’s bad news for Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle. In 2012, guards locked Rainey in the shower at the Dade Correctional Institute. He died after he was essentially boiled to death. Other inmates said he was screaming for […]
The Illinois Supreme Court has smacked down a prosecutor who created his own private police force with civil asset forfeiture dollars. Former LaSalle County State Attorney Brian Towne created the task force in 2011. According to Forbes, “Using the state’s civil forfeiture laws, which allow law enforcement to seize — and keep — property even if the owner has never been criminally charged, […]
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams is urging the state of New York to create a independent commission to look into what he has called a “wrongful convictions crisis” in Brooklyn. Since 2014, the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office’s Conviction Review Unit (CRU) has investigated at least 70 convictions; 23 have been overturned. The CRU, which was started by the […]
The Iowa Court of Appeals overturned a conviction after finding that a Scott County prosecutor’s removal of the only two black people from a jury pool was motivated by race. In 2015, Marquise Miller, a black man, was convicted and sentenced to up to five years in prison. Police had said Miller and two others fled a Dillards […]
A Kentucky judge has ruled that the death penalty is unconstitutional for defendants who committed a murder before they turned 21 years of old. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Roper v. Simmons that the death penalty is unconstitutional for anyone who committed murder when they were under the age of 18. Fayette Circuit Court […]
Today, the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a bar complaint with the Office of Disciplinary Counsel against Leon Cannizzaro, the District Attorney for New Orleans Parish, Louisiana. The gist of the allegations involve a series of fake subpoenas Cannizzaro’s office was using to coerce people not accused of a crime to come to the DA’s office and […]
A Hawaii judge has blasted Honolulu prosecutors for bringing charges against a woman who’d previously filed a sex discrimination suit against a major donor. Judge Karen Nakasone dismissed all charges against Laurel Mau, an architect who worked for Mitsunaga & Associates, an influential architectural and engineering firm that had been one of the top donors to the […]
After he shot Stan Severi last December in Tehachapi, California, Sheriff’s Deputy Gabriel Romo admitted to making a near-fatal mistake. Severi was unarmed, but Romo believed he was reaching for a gun and fired a single shot at Severi’s abdomen. The deputy realized shortly after taking the shot that Severi didn’t have a weapon. Nevertheless, Kern […]
Eric Gonzalez has a longstanding reputation as a “pure district attorney” and criminal justice reformer. Before assuming his position as the Brooklyn District Attorney in 2016, following the death of much-beloved predecessor Ken Thompson, Gonzalez worked on a policy to scale back the prosecution of low-level marijuana offenders. He also assisted in the creation and implementation of a […]
He was once praised for being “America’s toughest sheriff.” But as of yesterday, former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio was convicted of a crime of his own. Arpaio’s rise and fall mirror the way America has looked at criminal justice in the 21st Century. Once an icon of the right, Arpaio’s approach to policing has proven to […]
A Kentucky murder conviction has unraveled amid allegations that the elected prosecutor was having an affair with the lead detective on the case. The prosecutor’s office is also being accused of failing to disclose critical evidence to the defense. David Wayne Dooley was convicted of the 2012 murder of Michelle Mockbee and sentenced to life in […]
Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro announced in April that his office would no longer send out fake subpoenas to witnesses after he was roundly denounced for the practice. But the issue hasn’t gone away, and now one of those fake subpoenas could put a high-profile conviction in danger. According to the New Orleans Times Picayune and The Lens,Cardell Hayes, […]
Viewers know that Olivia Benson is the leather jacket-wearing detective on Law and Order SVU, an icon to law-abiding women everywhere. In a recent Women of the World biography, the newly-anointed district attorney for San Diego Summer Stephan received comparisons to Olivia Benson for her tough-as-nails approach to offenders. Stephan has taken over the top prosecutor job, handpicked by her […]
The Florida Supreme Court ruled that a man sentenced to death must be acquitted because there was insufficient evidence to convict him. Ralph Wright Jr., a former Air Force airman, becomes the 27th death row inmate in Florida to be exonerated. Wright was exonerated for the 2007 murder of his girlfriend and their baby son in St. […]
Since becoming attorney general, Jeff Sessions has announced plans to ramp up civil forfeiture laws, revive prosecutions for crimes involving small amounts of marijuana, and charge defendants with crimes that carry more severe penalties. He has also come out with outlandish policies on immigration-related crimes and consent decrees with local police departments, and reversed the Department of Justice’s position in the ongoing Texas voter-discrimination […]
District attorneys in Oregon have a new tactic to deal with judges that hand down rulings against their offices: they’re effectively getting rid of them. County circuit judges in both Lane and Multnomah counties have been disqualified from hearing criminal cases this year following accusations from district attorneys that the judges failed to be “fair […]
On July 23, 2014, Joseph Rudolph Wood was supposed to be executed in a quick and painless way—injected once with 50mg of midazolam and 50mg of hydromorphone. Instead, he suffered through a lethal injection protocol that lasted 117 minutes, snorting and gasping for air as he was injected with 15 doses of the drugs. Following […]
Protesters railing against extreme heat in one of St. Louis’ abuse-plagued jails were pepper-sprayed by police clad in riot gear last Friday and Saturday, as they called on city officials to shut down the dangerous facility. They say inmates at the Medium Security Institution, nicknamed the “Workhouse,” are living in cells with no air conditioning despite […]
Time is running out for Ronald Phillips, who is scheduled to be executed in Ohio later today. If it proceeds, the execution would be Ohio’s first in over three years. Ohio, like the rest of the country, has experienced a drastic decline in executions over the past decade. But, in a rapid change of course, the Buckeye State has […]
The Kentucky Supreme Court unanimously threw out a child molestation conviction because the Campbell County trial prosecutor “flagrantly abused its authority in prosecuting the case” by making misleading statements to the jury during closing argument. David Albert Soloway was sentenced to 45 years in prison after the 8-year-old daughter of his live-in girlfriend accused him of molesting […]
Ohio has not conducted an execution in over three years. That’s about to change. The state has scheduled 27 executions in the three year period between today and September 2020. For context, the entire country performed a *total* of 62 executions between 2014–2016. Here are the best five articles we’ve read on Ohio’s abrupt change of course. Bidish Sarma, Ohio […]
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.