FW: Women behind bars: We’re #1 (through 25)!
Dianne Tramutola-Lawson
From: The Marshall Project [mailto:info=themarshall...@mail8.atl51.rsgsv.net] On Behalf Of The Marshall Project
Sent: Thursday, November 19, 2015 6:13 AM
Subject: Women behind bars: We’re #1 (through 25)!
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Opening Statement |
Edited by Andrew Cohen |
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Opening Statement is our pick of the day’s criminal justice news. Not a subscriber? Sign up. For original reporting from The Marshall Project, visit our website. |
The campaign to save capital punishment. Seven states since 2007 have repealed the death penalty, and executions in America in 2015 are at their lowest rate in a generation. But the political and legal movement isn’t all in one direction. Meet the people who want to save capital punishment in their states by, among other things, speeding up appeals and making death rows more humane. By TMP’s Maurice Chammah. The Marshall Project Sentencing bill inches forward. The House Judiciary Committee Wednesday passed by a voice vote the Sentencing Reform Act of 2015. The measure, which reduces some mandatory minimum sentences but creates added penalties for drug traffickers, now goes to the full House for consideration. If passed, it would have to be reconciled with pending Senate legislation. The Hill Related: “The average length of time served by federal inmates more than doubled from 1988 to 2012, rising from 17.9 to 37.5 months,” a new report reveals. The Pew Charitable Trusts “Only 5 percent of the world’s female population lives in the U.S., but the U.S. accounts for nearly 30 percent of the world’s incarcerated women.” A new report out Wednesday places into context the rate at which the U.S. incarcerates women. The first 25 jurisdictions around the world with the highest rates (and 42 of the first 44) are American states. Leading the list is West Virginia. Prison Policy Initiative Children, immigration, and the right to counsel. Newly-disclosed documents reveal that thousands of children under the age of 16 have been deported in the past 16 months by immigration judges after a single hearing in which they were not represented by a lawyer. A federal lawsuit is now challenging the practice as a violation of basic due process rights, but there is little sign the litigation will succeed. Politico Life as the nation’s only full-time forensic pollen analyst. Plants and trees have their own “fingerprints,” and the art and science of such “forensic palynology” is embodied in the dogged work of Andrew Laurence. He says he’s worked on hundreds of cases in the past three years on behalf of customs officials. The Atlantic
After a roller-coaster day in the state courts, Texas executes a convicted murderer before he gets a chance to make a clemency request of the governor. The Dallas Morning News Related: Harris County, the death-penalty capital of Texas, may soon lose that title. The Guardian More: The “next to die” in America, later today, is Marcus Ray Johnson. The Marshall Project A wrongfully-convicted man who spent 27 years in prison for a rape and murder he did not commit has now sued Washington, D.C., officials for damages, claiming the police framed him. The Washington Post A California prosecutor announces she’ll release information about the men and women released early from confinement as a result of federal court orders. The Sacramento Bee Caddo Parish, Louisiana, the center of many storms over capital punishment, is also a national leader in the length of delay between conviction and execution. The Shreveport Times A police shooting in Idaho is called “a needless murder” by the family of the dead man; anger and anxiety build in a conservative town wary of official authority. The New York Times
When the model is the message. Can predictive policing be both effective and ethical? The New York Times A “state of crisis” exists. Why the Justice Department needs to investigate prosecutorial misconduct uncovered in Orange County, Calif. OC Weekly Related: Read the letter dozens of legal experts wrote to Loretta Lynch asking for a federal probe. The Marshall Project A surveillance state doesn’t have to be a police state. On the other hand, get ready for reductions in both privacy and crime. Reason Show me Gideon v. Wainwright. The constitutional right to counsel in St. Louis is but a fantasy for hundreds of indigent defendants — and the judges who preside over these cases don’t seem to care. Pacific Standard Foul play. At long last, Alaska answered for the treatment of Gilbert Joseph, whose death in a Fairbanks jail ultimately helped bring about the dismissal of the state’s corrections chief. Alaska Dispatch News
First Person of the Day: Fay Wells recounts the time her white neighbor called the cops on her for breaking into her own California apartment. The Washington Post Related: Police chief defends officers, tactics. Los Angeles Times Testimony of the Day: Why Congress should reduce current mandatory minimum sentences for drug trafficking, in a statement prepared for delivery Wednesday during the House Judiciary Committee hearing on sentencing reform. U.S. Sentencing Commission Video of the Day: “Does the American criminal justice system need an overhaul?” was the title of a lively debate earlier this week between two prominent federal appeals court judges, both Republican nominees. Cato Institute Junk Science of the Day: A forensic science commission meeting in Texas turned feisty when the topic turned to the accuracy of bite-mark evidence. The Dallas Morning News Quote of the Day: “Public scrutiny is not a negative. It's the foundation of policing in a democratic society,” says Ronald Davis, a 30-year police veteran who is now the director of the COPS program at the Justice Department. Davis made his remarks Tuesday during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing titled “The War on Police.” The Huffington Post |
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