The New York Times follows up on this week's Supreme Court rulings that expand the supervisory reach of judges to include plea bargaining, a process conducted...
Read full entry »The criminal justice system is "rigged" against jury trials, says Michelle Alexander, author of a book on race and mass incarceratation. Writing in the New York Times, she notes that 90-plus percent of people charged with crimes forfeit their constitutional rights and plead guilty. “The truth is that government officials have deliberately engineered the system to assure that the jury trial system established by the Constitution is seldom used,” said Timothy Lynch of the libertarian Cato Institute.
Alexander says "politicians champion stiff sentences for nearly all crimes, including mandatory minimum sentences and three-strikes laws; the result is a dramatic power shift from judges to prosecutors." She quotes scholar Angela Davis as saying that, "if the number of people exercising their trial rights suddenly doubled or tripled in some jurisdictions, it would create chaos." Alexander says such chaos would force mass incarceration to the top of the policy agenda, leaving two main options: sharply scale back the number of criminal cases or amend the Constitution. Either would create a crisis and the system would crash. Writes Alexander: "Mass protest would force a public conversation that, to date, we have been content to avoid."
Read full entry »Nancy and Phillip Garrido have confessed to kidnapping Jaycee Lee Dugard 20 years ago, the Sacramento Bee reports. The two reportedly kept Dugard as a sex slave...
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Below are copies of three chapters on covering criminal justice, a special report by Criminal Justice Journalists and the John Jay Center on Media, Crime and Justice:
Part One: Covering Prisons and Jails
Part Three: Covering Community Corrections, Probation and Beyond
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Judges in Oklahoma are being urged to raise fines and collect court costs to help overcome budget problems, reports the Oklahoman. "I cannot tell you how important this is," Supreme Court Chief Justice James E. Edmondson told the state's judges. The judges have been told they should require those getting probation to pay more upfront. A handbook encourages "defendants to pay their fines, fees and costs by credit card.”
The state judiciary depends mostly on fines and court costs for its operations, but it also gets state funds. The Legislature appropriated 7 percent less this fiscal year for court operations. Further cuts are expected. The Supreme Court responded by sponsoring workshops for judges to improve court cost collections. The workshops begin with a recorded statement from the chief justice.
Read full entry »As of July 1
Office Phone: (207) 780-4409
Professor Tuerkheimer focuses her scholarship on the intersection of criminal law and the lives of women and children. As an ADA, she prosecuted child abuse, sex crimes, and internet crimes and conducted trainings for prosecutors, law enforcement officers, medical personnel and child protective workers.
Read full entry »The Supreme Court ruled today that a robber may not withdraw a guilty plea even though the government reneged on a plea agreement and argued for a longer prison sentence, the Associated Press reports. By a 7 to 2 vote, the court upheld a 29-year prison term for James Puckett, who pleaded guilty in Texas to armed bank robbery. A condition of the plea was that prosecutors would tell the judge that Puckett had accepted responsibility for his actions and should be eligible for a shorter sentence.
Between the plea and sentencing, Puckett was implicated in another crime. Instead of advocating for the shorter sentence, prosecutors told the judge that Puckett should not get credit for accepting responsibility for his crime, since he allegedly took part in a new one. Justice Antonin Scalia said that because Puckett "obviously did not cease his life of crime," giving him credit for accepting responsibility "would have been so ludicrous as itself to compromise the public reputation of judicial proceedings." Dissenter David Souter said "Puckett is entitled to relief because he and every other defendant who may make an agreement with the government is entitled to take the government at its word."
Read full entry »Some 30 South Carolina law enforcers and mayors came together in Charleston Thursday to work up a plan for persuading the Legislature to sign off on new crime laws, reports the city's Post and Courier. Charleston Mayor Joe Riley called the coalition together and presented it with a body of proposed bills that would give law enforcement more authority to search criminals out on probation and parole, put those who attempt murder behind bars for life and make gun laws tougher, especially for drug dealers.
The eight proposals include measures to stop convicted criminals from legally possessing handguns or assault weapons; toughen penalties for offenders who possess firearms while selling or making drugs; increase punishment for attempted murder from a maximum of 20 years to the possibility of life in prison; require probationers and parolees to submit to enhanced monitoring with or without warrants; require criminals to serve at least 85 percent of their sentences in jail, and permit judges to deny bail for repeat offenders. Riley began a push for new crime-fighting tools more than two years ago, but the ideas did not make it into law.
Read full entry »University of Missouri
http://journalism.missouri.edu/faculty/steve-weinberg.html
(573) 882-5468
weinbergs@missouri.edu
Weinberg is a longtime journalist who formerly directed the organization Investigative Reporters and Editors. He teaches courses relating to covering the criminal justice system as part of an innocence project at the University of Missouri. He led a team under the auspices of the Center for Public Integrity that investigated prosecutorial integrity and misconduct nationwide, and published a report in 2003 that can be seen at http://projects.publicintegrity.org/pm.
Read full entry »Harvard Law School
http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/index.html?id=74
(617) 495-4621
tribe@law.harvard.edu
Tribe is one of the nation’s leading constitutional experts. Among areas related to
criminal justice on which he will talk to journalists are civil rights and liberties,
constitutional law, free speech, and privacy.
Washington, D.C.
http://justiceatstake.org
(202) 588-9700
Charles Hall, media contact
chall@justiceatstake.org
Justice at Stake is a group launched in 2002 to advocate “for fair and impartial courts.” It is a national, nonpartisan partnership of more than 45 judicial, legal, and citizen organizations. It is concerned about the impact of money and politics on courts, working to “keep politics and special interests out of the courtroom.” As of 2008, it was funded by the Carnegie Corporation, Joyce Foundation, Moriah Fund, and the Open Society Institute.
Read full entry »New York
Eric Ferrero, media contact
(212) 364-5340
info@innocenceproject.org
The project was founded in 1992 by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University to help prisoners who could be proved innocent through DNA testing. As of 2008, the project said 225 people in the U.S. have been exonerated by DNA testing, including 17 who have served time on death row. The project’s full-time attorneys and Cardozo law students have provided representation or other assistance on most of these cases.
Links to similar projects based elsewhere can be found at this site:
http://www.innocencenetwork.org/members.html
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Washington, D.C.
http://www.constitutionproject.org
(202) 580-6920
Media contact—Daniel Schuman
media@constitutionproject.org
(202) 580-6922
The organization says it “seeks consensus solutions to difficult and constitutional issues.” As of 2009, it was pursuing seven initiatives, each guided by a bipartisan committee. The initiatives are in the areas of liberty and security, war powers, courts, the death penalty, constitutional amendments, the right to counsel, and sentencing.
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