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.
After last week’s election victories, will Virginia Democrats address gun violence in ways that don’t rely on criminalization?
On a host of issues—including police shootings, bail reform, marijuana legalization, and the death penalty—critics say Lacey, once seen as a reformer, has sought to preserve the status quo.
Son of incarcerated parents, backed by Black Lives Matter co-founders, Boudin will be the next DA of San Francisco.
A severe shortage of assigned counsel due to low rates of compensation in Hampden County, Massachusetts jeopardizes the rights of defendants.
Last year, Cleveland.com announced that it would consider requests to remove names from long-ago stories about low-level charges.
Chesa Boudin is just 240 votes behind Suzy Loftus, even after local law enforcement spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to defeat him.
What you’ll read today Spotlight: Chicago teachers fought for support staff and restorative justice in schools San Francisco police brutality claim puts pressure on next DA to hold cops accountable Arizona prosecutor commissions report that argues against leniency for teens who commit crimes San Francisco DA race is “wide open” before tomorrow’s election Federal prosecutors want no mention of Trump in second trial […]
Report attempts to discredit decades of research on the adolescent mind.
Interim San Francisco D.A. Suzy Loftus claims to be a “progressive,” but her long record as a prosecutor reveals an all-too-familiar path chosen by establishment-types who have little interest in disrupting the status quo.
O’Rourke’s marijuana legalization plan includes expungement and clemency, and for communities hit hardest by the War on Drugs to reap the economic benefits of legalization.
Ahead of the city’s district attorney election on Tuesday, the alleged baton beating last month of Dacari Spiers has renewed debate over police accountability.
“Hundreds of registered sex offenders will gather on Halloween to spend several hours under supervision in an effort to make the community feel safer,” reports Taylor Pettaway for the San Antonio Express-News. For the last decade, the probation department in San Antonio, Texas, has been holding what they call “Project S.A.F.E. Halloween,” requiring sex offenders from across […]
Incarcerated women, half of whom are in local jails, have histories of trauma that require care, not criminalization.
Cabán, the career public defender who lost a primary bid for district attorney in Queens County, New York, will help the political party build nationwide support in criminal justice elections.
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. Two Louisiana judges will begin hearing arguments tomorrow about whether a Black judge should be recused from more than 300 criminal cases after she criticized prosecutors for the disproportionate rate of […]
The attorneys said they did nothing wrong by finding a victim in a rape case who had disappeared, but a judge accused them of making her unavailable.
Neither agency had written policies on how to capture or store the location data without violating privacy rights.
Advocates say that despite the election of several progressive prosecutors in the state, there’s a substantial increase in such detentions, which are stymieing gains made through policies to limit cash bail.
District Attorney Michael O’Malley’s 2016 election was viewed by some as a win for Black Lives Matter, but the number of children transferred to adult court in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, has increased more than 100 percent.
Two years ago, the state passed ‘raise the age’ legislation that goes into effect in December. A judge’s decision regarding a teen charged in 2015 raises the possibility of relief for other young people charged since the law’s passage.
A federal lawsuit claims that Asheville, North Carolina’s interim chief, Robert C. White, prevented a rape victim from filing a complaint against an officer when he led the Louisville, Kentucky, department.
The officers who killed Joshua Pawlik in 2018 are asking a state judge to block a federally appointed monitor’s decision that they violated policies on use of force.
Several policies under consideration in New York would promote prison visits.
An EEOC complaint documents allegations against Owens, former managing attorney in the Jackson office of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The state is one of eight that allow cops to arraign people on misdemeanor charges. Advocates and academics say the practice is unjust.
After more than two decades, Terrance Lewis was exonerated and released from prison earlier this year. He is now an advocate for other innocent people caught up in the criminal legal system.
Incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people face restrictions, even repression, as they engage in activism to end mass incarceration.
The results of record-sealing legislation enacted in 2017 shows the need for automatic expungement, advocates say.
Criminalization as a response to the overdose crisis can cost lives.
The gang database in the state gives police increased authority to approach and harass people for virtually no reason at all.
Loftus led the San Francisco Police Commission through a bloody and turbulent era.
The state’s narrow interpretation gives too much weight to voices that support a punitive criminal legal system, advocates say.
Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood and District Attorney Cynthia Zimmer intend to openly defy a 1975 state Supreme Court precedent that says law enforcement cannot intentionally discriminate against a person or group of people.
In some Alabama counties, a new investigation shows, sheriffs release people in jail who are experiencing medical emergencies to avoid liability for hospital bills.
His legal team had pushed for clemency, arguing that Bucklew’s previous attorneys mishandled his capital murder case.
In March, Coley McCraney was arrested and charged with capital murder in the 1999 killings of two teenage girls. But his attorneys say he’s innocent, and are now seeking information related to alleged police involvement in the homicides.
Miller’s victim impact statement was centered in a recent ’60 Minutes’ segment on the Brock Turner case. But such statements do not heal victims, and Miller’s unfavorable comparison of Turner’s sentence to drug offenders only reinforces carceral logic.
Rather than encouraging more faith in the police, true reform requires dismantling the system that empowers them.
Rodney Reed, set to be executed on Nov. 20, is innocent of a rape and murder, his lawyers say, and untested evidence will prove it. But prosecutors have pushed back, arguing the evidence is contaminated.