The American Nightmare: the Tyranny of the Criminal Justice System How can the life of such a manBe in the palm of some fool’s hand?To see him obviously framedCouldn’t help but make me feel ashamed to live in a landWhere justice is a game.—Bob Dylan, “Hurricane” Justice in America is not all it’s cracked up to be. Just ask Jeffrey Deskovic, who spent 16 years in prison for a rape and murder he did not commit. James Bain spent 35 years in prison for the kidnapping and rape of a 9-year-old boy, but he too was innocent of the crime. Mark Weiner got off relatively easy when you compare his experience to the thousands of individuals who are spending lifetimes behind bars for crimes they did not commit. In the meantime, Weiner lost his job, his home, and his savings, and time with his wife and young son. The system that should have worked didn’t, because the system is broken, almost beyond repair. Unfortunately, in the real world, justice is harder to come by, fairness is almost unheard of, and truth rarely wins. It wasn’t always this way.
The New Science of Sentencing C riminal sentencing has long been based on the present crime and, sometimes, the defendant’s past criminal record. In Pennsylvania, judges could soon consider a new dimension: the future. Pennsylvania is on the verge of becoming one of the first states in the country to base criminal sentences not only on what crimes people have been convicted of, but also on whether they are deemed likely to commit additional crimes. As early as next year, judges there could receive statistically derived tools known as risk assessments to help them decide how much prison time — if any — to assign. Risk assessments have existed in various forms for a century, but over the past two decades, they have spread through the American justice system, driven by advances in social science. The tools try to predict recidivism — repeat offending or breaking the rules of probation or parole — using statistical probabilities based on factors such as age, employment history and prior criminal record. Like this story?
Denver man charged with seven felonies for handing out 'jury nullification' fliers outside courthouse A Denver man has been charged with multiple felonies after he was caught distributing fliers to educate potential jurors about the practice of “jury nullification.” The Denver Post reported that 56-year-old Mark Iannicelli set up a small booth with a sign reading “Juror Info” outside the Lindsay-Flanigan Courthouse in Denver last week. The Denver District Attorney’s Office charged Iannicelli with seven counts of jury tampering after members of the jury pool were found to be in possession of fliers describing jury nullification. Jury nullification allows juries to acquit a defendant who they may believe is guilty if they also believe that the law is unjust. A copy of the criminal complaint obtained by Kirsten Tynan of the Fully Informed Jury Association says that Iannicelli “unlawfully and feloniously attempted directly and indirectly to communicate with” seven jurors. A probable cause statement added that Iannicelli was accused of “handing out information to potential jurors.”
huffingtonpost End Prosecutorial Immunity. Period. Prosecutorial misconduct is a reality. So is the lack of any meaningful legal recourse for its victims. Over at The Daily Beast, Jay Michaelson uses the one-year anniversary of the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, to draw attention to this pressing and increasingly well-documented problem. Michaelson notes that among the most important impediments to holding prosecutors accountable for abuses of their authority is the fact that “prosecutors are granted immunity for most kinds of misconduct.” While federal law authorizes civil suits against government officers who violate constitutional and statutory rights, the Supreme Court has insulated prosecutors against liability by holding that they are entitled to absolute immunity from civil damages for actions taken as advocates. Simply put, when prosecutors violate our rights, no judge-created rule should prevent them from being held civilly liable. Where did absolute prosecutorial immunity come from? In Imbler v.
Why is Rev. Edward Pinkney in Prison? Another Case of Political Persecution Why is Rev. Edward Pinkney in prison? One answer comes to mind from my very first meeting with Pinkney in 2003. I drove from Lansing to Benton Harbor in southwest Michigan to witness a Berrien County Commissioners meeting soon after the Benton Harbor uprising. Standing outside City Hall, Pinkney said to me, “You know, they offered me a Cadillac. He did not shut up then, and he has not shut up ever since. For years, he’s been preaching that this monstrous conglomeration of business interests and state authority is of a piece. The vicious, cowardly attack on democracy in Benton Harbor, Michigan, shows that the corporate power structure is determined to crush anyone that stands in its way. Benton Harbor: the first city in Michigan subjected to the fascist rule of a state-appointed Emergency Financial Manager. Roger Bybee wrote, “There is no place in the United States that more cruelly illustrates the intensifying conflict between corporate power and democracy than Benton Harbor.” “Rev.
How Wall Street’s Bankers Stayed Out of Jail Business The probes into bank fraud leading up to the financial industry’s crash have been quietly closed. Is this justice? Please consider disabling it for our site, or supporting our work in one of these ways Subscribe Now > On May 27, in her first major prosecutorial act as the new U.S. attorney general, Loretta Lynch unsealed a 47-count indictment against nine FIFA officials and another five corporate executives. Lost in the hoopla surrounding the event was a depressing fact. Since 2009, 49 financial institutions have paid various government entities and private plaintiffs nearly $190 billion in fines and settlements, according to an analysis by the investment bank Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. The more meaningful number is how many Wall Street executives have gone to jail for playing a part in the crisis. At an event at the National Press Club last February, Holder said the virtual absence of convictions (or even prosecutions) this time around did not result from a want of trying.
Mississippi judge shrugs off innocent until proven guilty: People charged with crimes are criminals Circuit Court Judge Marcus D. Gordon (C-SPAN) A Mississippi judge displayed a startling lack of concern with constitutional rights during a one-on-one interview. Circuit Court Judge Marcus D. However, defendants routinely wait in jail for months without speaking to an attorney because Mississippi doesn’t set a time limit for prosecutors to seek an indictment. Gordon, who is facing an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit for excessive pretrial detention and denial of counsel, told a reporter that he understands the system is flawed, but he said most criminal defendants were “con people” who probably deserved jail time. “Lady, people charged with crimes, they are criminals, and they say what meets their purpose,” Gordon said. Gordon, who has sat on the bench for more than 35 years, presided over the trial of Edgar Ray Killen, who was convicted in 2005 of manslaughter in the deaths 40 years earlier of three civil rights workers. “Are you believing the statements of the defendants?”
Why the Darknet Matters | Desultory Heroics By Luther Blissett and Fernando Villalovs of Arkesoul In February 2015 Ross Ulbricht was convicted of money laundering, computer hacking and conspiracy to traffic narcotics for his role (either with or as Dread Pirate Roberts) in creating and administrating the darknet market Silk Road. For this, U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest sentenced Ulbricht to life in prison without possibility for parole. Why was Ulbricht treated more severely than most murderers and child molesters (not to mention wall street and state criminals who do far more societal harm than all others combined)? The only logical explanation is that they needed to make an example out of him not just for his actions but for what he represented. The darknet is an anonymous overlay network accessed through special software, configurations and/or protocols. Interest in and use of the darknet has grown dramatically since TOR was released to the public in 2003. As is, the Darknet is a system that is continually evolving.
How Police Officers Seize Cash From Innocent Americans On February 17, 2014, a 24-year-old college student named Charles Clarke checked a bag at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport and parked himself in a chair near the boarding gate. Having just visited relatives, he was in high spirits, and eager to return to his home in Florida. But Clarke’s day took an unexpected turn. Two uniformed men -- an airport police detective and a local Drug Enforcement Administration officer -- approached by Clarke and corralled him into a fluorescent backroom. His checked bag sat on a table. The cash, earned through five years of hard work at fast-food restaurants and retail outlets, represented Clarke’s life savings -- money he intended to use for tuition fees. Under the umbrella of “civil forfeiture,” officers of the law confiscate millions of dollars in cash from thousands of individuals like Charles Clarke every year. A Brief History of (Legally) Stealing Other People’s Stuff Manipulation of the Law A civil forfeiture case filed in Nebraska
L.A. to pay total of $24 million to two men freed after wrongful convictions The Los Angeles City Council agreed Tuesday to pay more than $24 million to settle lawsuits from two men who alleged that investigations by dishonest LAPD detectives led to their wrongful murder convictions and caused them to spend decades behind bars. Kash Delano Register, who won his freedom in 2013 after lawyers and students from Loyola Law School cast doubt on the testimony of a key prosecution witness, will receive $16.7 million — the largest settlement in an individual civil rights case in the city’s history, his attorneys said. Bruce Lisker, who was released from prison in 2009 after a Times investigation into his conviction, will get $7.6 million. Join the conversation on Facebook >> Though the cases were unrelated, both men contended that detectives ignored evidence of their innocence and fabricated evidence of their guilt. “This is an extremely dangerous case,” city attorneys wrote of the Lisker case. The case against Register was based on eyewitness testimony.
The Best Lawyers Money Can Buy The United States Supreme Court decides cases involving the nation’s most pressing legal issues, affecting the daily lives of hundreds of millions of Americans — and yet so much about its functioning is shrouded in mystique and exclusivity. The court’s front doors are locked and its vast “public” plaza is off-limits to protesters. Alone among the branches of government, it refuses to televise its proceedings, even though its gallery can seat only 250 members of the public. As a new report by Reuters shows, this exclusivity extends even to the types of cases the court agrees to hear.
Jailed 96 days on bogus charge: It is no one's fault? © Oktibbeha County Sheriff's Office via AP This undated photo released by the Oktibbeha County Sheriff's Office, shows Jessica Jauch. Pulled over for traffic violations, Jauch was held for 96 days in a Mississippi jail in 2012, on a felony drug charge, without seeing a judge, getting a lawyer or having a chance to make bail, even though a police video showed she committed no crime. ACKERMAN, Miss. — Pulled over for traffic violations, Jessica Jauch was held for 96 days in a Mississippi jail without seeing a judge, getting a lawyer or having a chance to make bail. She was charged with a felony based on a secretly recorded video that prosecutors finally acknowledged showed her committing no crime. Only when she finally got a hearing and a lawyer, who persuaded prosecutors to watch the video, did the case fall apart. Then, the 34-year-old mother sued, alleging violations of her rights to bail, legal representation, a speedy trial and liberty. U.S. Still pending before U.S.