Criminal Law

Ohio executions back on with 1-drug method

Posted on November 14, 2009
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Ohio's death chamber is set to resume executions next month using a single drug that has been used in the U.S. to euthanize pets but never to put condemned prisoners to death. Barring legal challenges, condemned inmate Kenneth Biros is scheduled Dec...

The Myth of Closure via Execution

Posted on November 12, 2009
Of all the arguments in support of capital punishment, perhaps the most emotionally compelling is that it provides "closure" for the loved ones of murder victims. Prosecuting attorneys, politicians and journalists commonly refer to how executions allow family members to "move on" from their pain, providing a sense of relief at knowing that "justice" was finally served...

The Permanent Underclass

Posted on November 11, 2009
If you think it's tough getting a job during a recession, imagine what it's like for an ex-convict. Gregory Headley, 29, knows exactly what it's like. The Harlem resident was released from prison in July after serving two years and eight months for the criminal sale of a firearm...

Needle Exchange Programs

Posted on November 10, 2009
PROGRAMS THAT allow drug addicts to swap their dirty needles for sterile syringes are effective in reducing the transmission of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. A 2008 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that an 80 percent reduction in the incidence of HIV in intravenous drug users over the past 20 years can be attributed in part to such programs funded by private organizations and localities...

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The Cost of Killing in Idaho

Posted on November 03, 2009
BOISE - Thomas Creech sits and waits on Idaho?s death row. Creech was already serving a life sentence for a double murder in 1981, when he was convicted of bludgeoning a fellow inmate to death using a sock filled with batteries. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in Ada County...

No Constitutional Protection Against Being Framed

Posted on November 02, 2009
"THERE IS NO Freestanding Constitutional 'Right Not To Be Framed.' " So states a brief filed by Iowa prosecutors hoping to persuade the Supreme Court to dismiss a lawsuit against them for allegedly fabricating evidence that led to the 25-year incarceration of two innocent men...

Justices will scrutinize life sentences for youths

Posted on October 29, 2009
It did not take long for the judge to determine that the convicted rapist in front of him was irredeemable. "He is beyond help," Judge Nicholas Geeker said of Joe Harris Sullivan. "I'm going to try to send him away for as long as I can." And then Geeker sentenced Sullivan to life in prison without the possibility of parole...

The 2009 Bonehead Award goes to....

Posted on October 24, 2009
State officials will soon seek bids from private companies for 9 of the state?s 10 prison complexes that house roughly 40,000 inmates, including the 127 here on death row. It is the first effort by a state to put its entire prison system under private control...

The Death Penalty in Texas Looks Bad?

Posted on October 22, 2009
Questions about whether Gov. Rick Perry allowed the execution of a man some arson experts say may have been innocent, and then hindered an investigation into the evidence, continue to reverberate across Texas, where issues surrounding capital punishment have rarely stirred such controversy...

An Example of Prosecutorial Misconduct

Posted on October 19, 2009
After spending three years investigating the conviction of a Harvey man accused of killing a security guard with a shotgun blast in 1978, journalism students at Northwestern University say they have uncovered new evidence that proves his innocence.Their efforts helped win a new day in court for Anthony McKinney, who has spent 31 years in prison for the slaying...

Governor Perry Did What?

Posted on October 01, 2009
DALLAS, Texas (CNN) -- Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Wednesday shook up the ranks of a state commission that is probing whether a man executed in 2004 belonged on death row, forcing the commission to delay a scheduled hearing on the case.Read more... Dallas Morning NewsI have witnessed some pretty outrageous conduct by elected officials, but this action by Governor Perry is way over the top...

Decriminalizing Drugs in Mexico

Posted on August 23, 2009
Reporting from Tijuana and Mexico City - Mired in a bloody battle with major drug traffickers, Mexico is quietly eliminating jail time for possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other drugs.Read more...This policy change is a great first step in shifting the issue of drug use away from the failed prohibition policies...

Priority Test: Health Care or Prisons?

Posted on August 22, 2009
At a time when we Americans may abandon health care reform because it supposedly is ?too expensive,? how is it that we can afford to imprison people like Curtis Wilkerson?Mr. Wilkerson is serving a life sentence in California ? for stealing a $2.50 pair of socks...

The Politics of Crime Control

Posted on August 21, 2009
After an impassioned debate over the cost and benefit of California's massive prison system, the state Senate on Thursday narrowly approved a controversial bill to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in spending on state lockups by reducing the time lower-level inmates would spend behind bars and on parole...

When Pigs Fly

Posted on August 19, 2009
The Supreme Court on Monday took the rare step of ordering a federal judge to consider the innocence claims of condemned Georgia prisoner Troy Anthony Davis, who has mounted a global campaign to declare he was wrongfully convicted of murder and barred by federal law from presenting the evidence that would prove it...

Getting Smart on Crime?

Posted on August 15, 2009
After decades of supercharged incarceration rates, our bloated prison system is straining under its own weight, and policy makers are finally being forced to deal with the need to shrink it.Read more...Asking elected officials to get smart on crime is asking a lot...

Death Qualification

Posted on August 14, 2009
NASHVILLE (WATE) -- Death penalty questions in Nashville Thursday brought out tears and hedging from the jury pool for the first trial of suspects accused of killing Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom. Attorneys for both sides continue questioning potential jurors in Davidson County for the trial of Letalvis Cobbins...

Needle Exchange Programs

Posted on August 12, 2009
The House voted to end a 21-year-old ban and allow federal funding of needle exchange programs. It also voted to allow the District to use its own money for such a program. There's one catch: the programs cannot be located "within 1,000 feet of a public or private day care center, elementary school, vocational school, secondary school, college, junior college, or university, or any public swimming pool, park, playground, video arcade, or youth center, or an event sponsored by any such entity...

Collateral Damage in Wrongful Convictions

Posted on July 29, 2009
Instead of the killer being caught, prosecuted and punished, quickly and efficiently, and the Nicarico family receiving whatever solace it could, the case has shapeshifted into something it should have never been. With three innocent men being prosecuted for the crime, it's become a case about law enforcement's mistakes and misconduct...

What Happend at the Gates Residence?

Posted on July 24, 2009
By now most people are aware of the events that took place at the Cambridge home of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates. A person in the neighborhood (not a neighbor) saw two black men trying to force open a door and called police. Gates was returning home from an overseas trip and could not open the door to his home...

Use of Life Sentences Continues to Increase

Posted on July 23, 2009
More prisoners today are serving life terms than ever before ? 140,610 out of 2.3 million inmates being held in jails and prisons across the country ? under tough mandatory minimum-sentencing laws and the declining use of parole for eligible convicts, according to a report released Wednesday by the Sentencing Project, a group that calls for the elimination of life sentences without parole...

Race and the Criminal Justice System

Posted on July 22, 2009
Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. has spent much of his life studying the complex history of race and culture in America, but until last week he had never had the experience that has left so many black men questioning the criminal justice system.Read more...

Older Prisoners Denied Social Security

Posted on July 22, 2009
Mother Jones - Not long ago I described the plight of the growing numbers of older prisoners filling up the country?s prisons and jails. They receive poor health care and are subject to any number of cruel and inhuman punishments?people with bad arthritis are required to climb into upper bunks to sleep; it's next to impossible for inmates in wheelchairs to access parts of prisons available to younger people, like baths...

Giving Life, Wearing Shackles and Chains

Posted on July 12, 2009
One day last November, the first shudders of childbirth woke Venita Pinckney before dawn. She was well into her ninth month of pregnancy. She was also incarcerated at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, a state prison. Before she left for the hospital, Ms...

No to More Prisons

Posted on July 09, 2009
Wednesday morning began with 100,552 inmates locked up in Florida prisons. The state also has or will soon have 11 thousand more beds under construction at a cost of almost a billion dollars. Florida?s major business groups are saying enough is enough...

Mental Health and the Death Penalty

Posted on July 09, 2009
SAN FRANCISCO, July 6 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- For the first time, families of murder victims have joined with families of persons with mental illness who have been executed to speak out against the death penalty. Double Tragedies, a report being released today at a special session on the first day of the annual convention of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), calls the death penalty "inappropriate and unwarranted" for people with severe mental disorders and "a distraction from problems within the mental health system that contributed or even directly led to tragic violence...

Financial Costs of Capital Punishment

Posted on July 01, 2009
Nearly 3 1/2 years into a court-ordered suspension of executions, opponents have embraced a new argument: that Californians can't afford to carry out the death penalty in a constitutional manner.They contend that by commuting all 682 death row inmates' sentences to life without the possibility of parole, the state could save up to $1 billion over the next five years -- a view expected to be offered, and challenged, during a public hearing today in Sacramento on proposed changes to the lethal injection procedures...

Mexico Gets It

Posted on June 21, 2009
The Mexican legislature voted to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine and other drugs.Read more...President Calderon proposed this legislation. His reasoning: It makes sense to distinguish between small-time users and big-time dealers, while re-targeting major crime-fighting resources away from the consumers and toward the dealers and their drug lord bosses...

DHS Report Warned Against Anti-Semitic Violence

Posted on June 10, 2009
A heavily criticized Department of Homeland Security Report on right-wing extremism that was released in April warned precisely of the type of violent anti-Semitic activity that occurred at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. on Wednesday...

Another Exoneration

Posted on May 14, 2009
(CNN) -- Former death row inmate Paul House woke to laughter and cries of joy from his mother on Tuesday, the day he learned he was a free man. "You've been exonerated," his mother, Joyce House, told him, shaking him awake. "Took 'em long enough," he replied, after taking a moment to process the information...

Texas police shake down drivers, lawsuit claims

Posted on May 06, 2009
TENAHA, Texas (CNN) -- Roderick Daniels was traveling through East Texas in October 2007 when, he says, he was the victim of a highway robbery. Police in the small East Texas town of Tenaha are accused of unjustly taking valuables from motorists...

President Obama's Opportunity re: SCOTUS

Posted on May 02, 2009
Conservative activists are already planning their campaigns to derail President Obama's pick to replace retiring Justice Souter.Read more....Read more on the politics of the process...The rallying cry of "No more Souters" is taken to mean no more stealth nominees...

How should nations respond to crimes against humanity?

Posted on April 21, 2009
On May 23, 1960, then- Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion stood at the podium in the Knesset and solemnly said: "A short time ago one of the most notorious Nazi war criminals, Adolf Eichmann, was discovered by the Israeli security services. Adolf Eichmann is already under arrest in Israel and will shortly be placed on trial...

Marital Rape

Posted on April 16, 2009
What do Idaho and Afghanistan have in common? Both governments permit marital rape.Read more...Chapter 18 of the Idaho criminal code states that18-6107. RAPE OF SPOUSE. No person shall be convicted of rape for any actor acts with that person's spouse, except under the circumstances cited inparagraphs 3...

A Racial Shift in Drug-Crime Prisoners

Posted on April 15, 2009
For the first time since crack cocaine sparked a war on drugs 20 years ago, the number of black Americans in state prisons for drug offenses has fallen sharply, while the number of white prisoners convicted for drug crimes has increased, according to a report released yesterday...

More Progress

Posted on March 26, 2009
New Hampshire's state House of Representatives voted Wednesday to abolish the state's death penalty, which has not been carried out in nearly 70 years.Read more...The fate of this bill is uncertain in the senate. The governor has stated that he will not sign the bill into law...

Almost 2400 Executed in 2008

Posted on March 24, 2009
With China, four other nations -- Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United States -- accounted for 93 percent of the 2,390 executions, according to the Amnesty International's report "Death Sentences and Executions in 2008."Read more...The U.S. should be embarrassed that it continues to be a party to this "axis of evil...

The Down-Side of the Prison-Industrial Complex

Posted on March 22, 2009
Both property and violent crime rates continue to decline. In this context, it is interesting to note that the prison population has exploded. Now faced with declining revenues, states are scrambling to make adjustments in correctional spending.This article in the Washing Post describes the problems faced by states in closing down prisons...

Breaking News - New Mexico Will Abolish Death Penalty

Posted on March 18, 2009
Gov. Bill Richardson says he will sign a bill repealing New Mexico's death penalty.Read more...Fantastic news! Another state has realized that capital punishment is failed public policy.

No Drug War in Portugal

Posted on March 15, 2009
In 2001, Portugal became the only EU-member state to decriminalize drugs, a distinction which continues through to the present. Last year, working with the Cato Institute, I went to that country in order to research the effects of the decriminalization law (which applies to all substances, including cocaine and heroin) and to interview both Portuguese and EU drug policy officials and analysts (the central EU drug policy monitoring agency is, by coincidence, based in Lisbon)...

The tide is slowly turning

Posted on March 15, 2009
The State Legislature voted Friday to repeal the death penalty, meaning New Mexico could become the 15th U.S. state without capital punishment if the governor signs the bill into law.Read more...Wow! This is good news for those of us who understand that the death penalty is flawed public policy...

It's About Time

Posted on March 12, 2009
The White House said yesterday that it will push for treatment, rather than incarceration, of people arrested for drug-related crimes as it announced the nomination of Seattle Police Chief R. Gil Kerlikowske to oversee the nation's effort to control illegal drugs...

Utah Death Penalty Amendment Defeated

Posted on March 12, 2009
A visibly upset Attorney General Mark Shurtleff left the House Thursday morning after representatives shot down a constitutional amendment that would streamline the post-conviction death penalty appeals process. Read more....The citizens of Utah don't know how fortunate they are that this proposed policy was defeated...

Access to DNA Evidence

Posted on March 03, 2009

We're Number 2!

Posted on March 02, 2009

Failure of the Drug War

Posted on February 22, 2009
Mexico is not a failing state, as it has become fashionable to say. What has failed is our "war on drugs." That failure and the drug-related violence wracking Mexico suggest it is time to open a national discussion on legalizing drugs.Read more...It is clear that our current drug polices are failing to reduce demand, availability, quality, and crime...

Regulatory Failure

Posted on February 17, 2009
These Washington Post and New York Times editorials outline a brief history of the crimes of the Peanut Corporation of America and proposed legislation to improve food safety. While these bills would be step in the right direction, they do not go far enough...

I've lost count...

Posted on February 12, 2009
of the number of states that have bills pending that would abolish the death penalty until I ran across this article.Read more....It seems that the current budget/revenue crisis is having some positive effects as states are considering the millions of dollars squandered on death sentences...

Reducing the Prison Population

Posted on February 10, 2009
As as result of the decline in state revenues and the explosion in the prison population, several states are now looking at ways to reduce the number of inmates.Inmates Who Should WalkJudges Back a 1/3 Reduction in State Prison PopulationStates should be concerned with the ruling in California...

When will it end?

Posted on February 08, 2009
Here are two more stories in the seemingly never ending saga of wrongful convictions:For Inmate Seeking Vindication, Freedom Can WaitTexas: Dead Inmate is ExoneratedThe Death Penalty Information Center reports that 130 individuals have been exonerated from death row in 26 states since 1973...

Shoddy Work in Forensic Labs

Posted on February 05, 2009
New York Times - Forensic evidence that has helped convict thousands of defendants for nearly a century is often the product of shoddy scientific practices that should be upgraded and standardized, according to accounts of a draft report by the nation?s preeminent scientific research group...

This is Murder

Posted on January 28, 2009
The Georgia peanut plant linked to a salmonella outbreak that has killed eight people and sickened 500 more across the country knowingly shipped out contaminated peanut butter 12 times in the past two years, federal officials said yesterday.Read more...

Compensation for the Wrongfully Convicted

Posted on January 25, 2009
OMAHA (AP) ? Three people imprisoned for nearly 20 years for a murder they did not commit could each be entitled to $1 million if state lawmakers approve a bill. Senator Kent Rogert of Tekamah introduced the bill, LB260, that would provide for a minimum of $50,000 for each year an innocent person is incarcerated...

Immigrant Deaths in Detention

Posted on January 16, 2009
NY Times - Federal immigration officials investigating the death of a New York computer engineer from China who died in their custody last summer said Thursday that supervisors at a Rhode Island detention center had denied the ailing man appropriate medical treatment on multiple occasions and that employees had dragged him from his cell to a van as he screamed in pain...

Gov O'Malley Leads on Abolition of Death Penalty

Posted on January 16, 2009
Washington Post - Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) said yesterday that he will for the first time personally sponsor a bill and do "everything in [his] power" to abolish capital punishment in Maryland, signaling his desire to make the issue a chief accomplishment as he enters the second half of his term...

Report Calls Online Threats to Children Overblown

Posted on January 15, 2009
The Internet may not be such a dangerous place for children after all. A task force created by 49 state attorneys general to look into the problem of sexual solicitation of children online has concluded that there really is not a significant problem...

Ann Coulter and Single Parents

Posted on January 07, 2009
Ann Coulter is at it again in her new book Guilty: Liberal "Victims" and Their Assault on America. .msnbcLinks {font-size:11px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #999; margin-top: 5px; background: transparent; text-align: center; width: 425px;} ...

Death Penalty Controversy in Idaho

Posted on December 21, 2008
The Idaho Supreme Court unanimously decided that the victim impact statements admitted by 4th District Judge Thomas Neville during the capital sentencing of Darrell Payne exceeded the scope permitted by existing case law. The result is a new sentencing trial for Payne...

Should Justice Be Rationed?

Posted on December 10, 2008
In an editorial regarding the prospects of abolishing the death penalty, I ran across this comment:?Justice is not a cost-benefit analysis. Justice is doing the right thing, no matter how much it costs,? Joseph Cassilly, a state?s attorney in Harford County, Md...

Spying on Citizens

Posted on December 07, 2008
Maryland officials now concede that, based on information gathered by "Lucy" and others, state police wrongly listed at least 53 Americans as terrorists in a criminal intelligence database -- and shared some information about them with half a dozen state and federal agencies, including the National Security Agency...

Indigent Defense in Shambles

Posted on November 09, 2008
This article in the NY Times captures the current state of indigent defense as well as the desperation of those who fulfill the 6th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution's promise of the assistance of counsel. Our society is failing to live up to this standard, which should be an embarrassment to the legal system and to all of us...

No Reversal on Kennedy v. Louisiana

Posted on October 01, 2008
The Supreme Court on Tuesday voted, 7 to 2, not to reconsider its decision last June that the death penalty is unconstitutional punishment for the rape of a child.Read more....Clearly there is no national trend toward executing child rapists, and the original majority in Kennedy v...

Palin's town charged women for rape exams

Posted on September 22, 2008
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's hometown required women to pay for their own rape examinations while she was mayor, a practice her police chief fought to keep as late as 2000.Read more...At up to $1000 per kit, it is not difficult to imagine the impact that Wasilla's policy had on rape investigations...

The Cost of Capital Punishment

Posted on September 21, 2008
It is not uncommon to hear claims that when it come to capital punishment, money should not matter. Today's op ed in the Star Press is typical.Read more...The editorial laments the fact that the prosecutor is not seeking a death sentence in a local case due, in part, to the prohibitive costs...

Harmless Error

Posted on September 09, 2008
In a rare move, the Supreme Court said it might reconsider its June decision that struck down the death penalty for crimes that fall short of murder, after a law blog revealed that the government left out a fact that would have bolstered its argument that executions for such offenses are constitutional...

Virginia's DNA Project

Posted on August 17, 2008
After Eva King Jones, 88, was raped and killed in her small-town Virginia home, a local man was accused and convicted. Now, 33 years later, police say newly discovered DNA evidence has led to the arrest of someone else.Read more....This state-wide effort to ensure the validity of convictions is a wonderful step toward restoring confidence in a system that punishes both the guilty and the innocent...

Prisoners' time spent on death row doubles

Posted on July 25, 2008
The time prisoners spend on death row has nearly doubled during the past two decades. Legal experts predict it will rise further as states review execution procedures and prisoners pursue lengthy appeals.Read more...Why is it taking longer to carry out executions? Wasn't the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act supposed to speed up the execution process? I cannot be sufficiently sarcastic to such a non-rhetorical question...

Will gas prices change policing practices?

Posted on July 20, 2008
As gasoline soars past the $4-a-gallon mark, police chiefs in towns and cities across the country are ordering their officers out of the car and onto their feet in a budgetary scramble.Read more...Carl Klockers once wrote that having police riding around looking for crime is about as effective as having fireman riding around looking for fires...

Anti-Death Penalty Groups Under Covert Police Surveillance

Posted on July 17, 2008
Maryland State Police officers conducted surveillance on local peace activists and groups opposed to the death penalty, including some in Takoma Park, for more than a year during the administration of former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R), documents released this morning show...

Ailing Manson follower denied release from prison

Posted on July 16, 2008
Susan Atkins, a terminally ill former Charles Manson follower convicted in the murder of actress Sharon Tate, on Tuesday was denied a compassionate release from prison.Atkins, 60, has been diagnosed with brain cancer and has had a leg amputated, her attorney said...

Neighbor Cleared in Murder of Two Burglary Suspects

Posted on June 30, 2008
A Texas man who shot and killed two men he suspected of burglarizing his neighbor's home was cleared in the shootings Monday by a grand jury.Read more....First, let's remember that this is Texas, a state that permits killing someone in defense of property and that leads the nation in executions...

The Insidious Nature of Capital Punishment

Posted on May 29, 2008
Two recent news articles bring attention to the insidious nature of the death penalty. The first article reports that a Louisiana prosecutor wanted the jury in a capital case to know that the defendant had been caught masturbating in his jail cell and was thus unfit to receive a life sentence...

Our National Shame - One Out Of Many

Posted on May 04, 2008
"Alas, we don?t treat our own inmates in Guantánamo with even that much respect for law. On Thursday, America released Sami al-Hajj, a cameraman for Al Jazeera who had been held without charges for more than six years. Mr. Hajj has credibly alleged that he was beaten, and that he was punished for a hunger strike by having feeding tubes forcibly inserted in his nose and throat without lubricant, so as to rub tissue raw...

Exonerated Inmates Struggle to Live Normal Lives

Posted on April 28, 2008
Tabitha Pollock was asleep when her boyfriend killed her 3-year-old daughter. Charged with first-degree murder because prosecutors believed she should have known of the danger, Pollock spent more than six years in prison before the Illinois Supreme Court threw out the conviction...

Death Penalty is Cruel & Unusual

Posted on April 24, 2008
THE Supreme Court concluded last week, in a 7-2 ruling, that Kentucky?s three-drug method of execution by lethal injection does not violate the Eighth Amendment?s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. In his majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts cited a Supreme Court principle from a ruling in 1890 that defines cruelty as limited to punishments that ?involve torture or a lingering death...

Former Bexar County DA lost faith in capital punishment system

Posted on April 20, 2008
SAN ANTONIO ? Sam Millsap is embarrassed to admit he doesn't remember how many people his office sent to death row when he was district attorney here in the 1980s.Read more...Interesting how many people who actually had a hand in sentencing someone to death or in the actual execution process no longer support capital punishment...

Problems for Lethal Injection Remain

Posted on April 17, 2008
New York Times - Executions in Texas, Alabama and other Southern states with large death rows are likely to resume shortly in the wake of the Supreme Court?s decision Wednesday upholding Kentucky?s method of putting condemned prisoners to death.But the fractured decision may actually slow executions elsewhere, legal experts said, as lawyers for death row inmates undertake fresh challenges based on its newly announced legal standards...

U.S. Supreme Court Allows Lethal Injections

Posted on April 16, 2008
The Supreme Court upheld Kentucky's use of lethal injection executions Wednesday, likely clearing the way to resume executions that have been on hold for nearly 8 months.The justices, by a 7-2 vote, turned back a constitutional challenge to the procedures in place in Kentucky, which uses three drugs to sedate, paralyze and kill inmates...

Limits of the Death Penalty

Posted on April 16, 2008
In recent decades, the Supreme Court has looked for ways to limit the death penalty, but it hears arguments today in a case that could reverse that trend ? and extend capital punishment to additional crimes. The court should stand by its past rulings that murder is the only crime committed by one person against another that can be punished by death...

Orange County Sheriff's Duputies Lied Under Oath

Posted on April 13, 2008
They lied, they changed their stories and they compared notes even after being ordered not to by a special Orange County grand jury investigating a deadly beating at Theo Lacy Jail, the testimony shows.During 45 days of grand jury prodding, members of the Sheriff's Department repeatedly hindered the probe, according to thousands of pages of transcripts made public last week...

Maryland Fires Correctional Officers for Brutality

Posted on April 10, 2008
The state prison agency fired eight more correctional officers on Tuesday, bringing the number to 17 in an investigation into accusations of brutality against inmates at two western Maryland institutions.Read more...More evidence of a national trend?

Rampant Abuse in Orange County Jail

Posted on April 08, 2008
A grand jury transcript released Monday describes an Orange County jail in disarray, with deputies watching television, playing video games and taking naps while inmates were allowed to use brutality and intimidation to keep order in the cellblocks.Read more...

Evidence the Pa. death penalty is punishment existing in name only

Posted on April 06, 2008
Mumia Abu-Jamal, convicted of murdering a police officer 26 years ago, has had his sentenced stayed by an appellate court. The reason was due to juror confusion over comprehension of sentencing instructions.Read more...The author laments that no evidence was presented to substantiate the claim that the original jury was confused, but the appellate court looked at the record and the forms and concluded that a substantial risk of confusion existed...

California prisons rocked by problems

Posted on April 05, 2008
A stabbing attack this week on four guards at one overcrowded state prison and a racially sparked brawl at another mark the type of violence that guards, inmates' attorneys and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger have been worried about for years.Read more...Let's place blame for the situation in today's prisons and jails where it belongs - on us...

Sex abuse, violence alleged at teen jails across U.S.

Posted on April 04, 2008
Girls as young as 13 say they were shackled for weeks at a time in Mississippi. Erica was 16 when she was forced to wear leg shackles at a Mississippi detention center, she said var CNN_ArticleChanger = new CNN_imageChanger('cnnImgChngr','/2008/CRIME/04/04/juvenile...

U.S. opens probe into Miami-Dade jails

Posted on April 04, 2008
The U.S. Department of Justice has launched a civil rights investigation into Miami-Dade County's beleaguered jail system, eying alleged excessive force against inmates and a pattern of suicides at the county's two main facilities over the past few years...

Do the time, lower the crime

Posted on March 30, 2008
Too many people behind bars? The statistics suggest otherwise.read more | digg story

Virginia's prison gravy train

Posted on March 29, 2008
The stupendous growth in the U.S. prison population is driven not by crime (which has been declining since the mid-1990s), but by ideology and profit. read more | digg story

The Juveniles Are Gone, Yet the Jails Remain

Posted on March 26, 2008
Three state facilities for teenagers are becoming high-priced ghost jails as teenagers in trouble are sent to programs closer to home, usually in the New York City area.read more | digg storyWhat are the elected and appointed officials of the State of New York thinking? How can they reduce the prison-industrial complex? Not only is the state closing adult prisons, but now it appears that juvenile facilities are also being emptied...

Consensus on Counting the Innocent: We Can?t

Posted on March 25, 2008
"What the debate demonstrates is that we know almost nothing about the number of innocent people in prison."read more | digg story

Decriminalize prostitution

Posted on March 24, 2008
Paying for sex is common. The U.S. should follow Mexico's lead and accept that.read more | digg story

CCA inmate didn't leave cell to shower for 9 mos.

Posted on March 24, 2008
For profit prisons are not the panacea envisioned by elected officials. This story illustrates part of the problem - the bottom line is paramount in this immoral business. read more | digg story

Judge rejects killer's current, future appeals

Posted on March 22, 2008
A federal judge dismissed the latest round of appeals by Idaho's longest-serving death row- inmate.read more | digg storyMr. Sivak is serving two sentences - life on death row and then death at the hands of the State or of natural causes. Think of the costs associated with the trial, conviction, appeals, housing, etc...

Over Three in Five Americans Believe in Death Penalty

Posted on March 18, 2008
95 percent believe that innocent people are sometimes convicted of murder, while 52 percent don't believe that the death penalty is a deterrent. 63 percent support capital punishment.read more | digg story

In Alabama, a Crackdown on Pregnant Drug Users

Posted on March 15, 2008
In an unusual burst of prosecutions, young women using drugs are being charged with harming their children.read more | digg story

Why so many people in jail?

Posted on March 14, 2008
Pennsylvania must re-evaluate its mandatory sentencing laws. They have created a monster: too many inmates, for too little reason.read more | digg story

Probation bill aims to ease load on Ariz. prisons

Posted on March 08, 2008
The data show that only about a third of offenders on probation commit new crimes. The Arizona legislature is considering changes in the law to reduce the rate of technical violations that lead to prison.read more | digg story

Death-penalty system loaded with racial bias

Posted on March 01, 2008
A bipartisan panel - the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice - is reviewing the evidence of racial, ethnic and geographic disparities and asking what should be done.read more | digg story

Idaho's prison population continues to rise

Posted on March 01, 2008
Idaho's prison population continues to keep pace with the rest of the nation. However, the correction's budget threatens to topple spending on education and health and welfare.read more | digg story

The Prison-Industrial Complex

Posted on February 29, 2008
Prisons have become big business in the U.S, which incarcerates a larger proportion of its citizens than any other country in the world.read more | digg story

1 in 100 Americans Are Behind Bars, Study Says

Posted on February 28, 2008
With the 1.6 million people in prison, the incarceration rate is now the highest in American history, according to a new report.read more | digg story

A Comeback For the Crime Issue

Posted on February 24, 2008
The next big issue is something the candidates aren't talking about.read more | digg story

Most state D.A.'s silent on death-penalty reasoning

Posted on February 20, 2008
Many refuse to answer a law school survey asking how each decided whether to seek execution. L.A. County's Steve Cooley was among the few who did.read more | digg story

Bill would ban non-elected judges from capital cases

Posted on February 20, 2008
In a blatant attempt to fix the outcome of capital cases, 3 Republican law makers have introduced a bill prohibiting non-elected judges from presiding over capital cases. This is a crude attempt to intimidate judges while undermining judicial impartiality...

Crime lab, ME: Investment price of death penalty

Posted on February 19, 2008
The lack of competent forensic experts and the necessary lab space and equipment are evident in the exonerations of two individuals and the capture of the real culprit.read more | digg story

Death penalty panel looks at reasons for reversals

Posted on February 19, 2008
Two common reasons for reversals of capital sentences are misconduct by police and prosecutors and ineffective counsel. read more | digg story

U.S. compares 9/11 cases to Nuremberg trials

Posted on February 13, 2008
The Bush administration has instructed U.S. diplomats abroad to defend its decision to seek the death penalty for six Guantanamo Bay detainees accused in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks by recalling the executions of Nazi war criminals after World War II...

Nebraska Supreme Court: electric chair not legal

Posted on February 08, 2008
The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled Friday that electrocution is cruel and unusual punishment, outlawing the electric chair in the only state that still used it as its sole means of execution.read more | digg story

Mine Operators Often Go Unpunished for Citations

Posted on January 28, 2008
CHARLESTON, W.Va., Jan. 27 -- The federal agency that regulates the nation's mining industry says it has failed to penalize mine operators for thousands of citations issued since 2000, and the oversight could extend back more than a decade.read more | digg story

A New Way to Fight the Death Penalty: Sister Helen Prejean

Posted on January 23, 2008
Sister Helen is tacking a new direction in her assault on the death penalty. Research shows that most death penalty supporters believe that killing is wrong, so she is attempting to show that the death penalty is plagued with problems. Will utilitarian arguments will the day? read more | digg story

Death penalty cases can't be tried on the cheap

Posted on January 23, 2008
While capital cases are more expensive than life sentences, funding of indigent capital cases is still woefully inadequate. read more | digg story

Tough but Smart on Drugs

Posted on January 21, 2008
A dozen troubled men and women from Hempstead, N.Y., got an unusual break this month. Instead of the failed policy of arrest and incarceration, these drug dealers participated in a novel program.read more | digg story

WSJ.com - Texas and the Death Penalty

Posted on January 19, 2008
The state solicitor general says he's defending democracy. He is also misrepresenting the views of the families of victims while distorting the actual practice of capital punishment. read more | digg story

Cramming in the Inmates

Posted on January 16, 2008
Kentucky's jails and prisons are overflowing. Does the state spend more money to build more capacity or should it reform its sentencing laws?read more | digg storyThe "get tough" crime control policies of the last 30 years are now bearing a bitter harvest...

Jail is no place for the mentally ill

Posted on January 14, 2008
An estimated 15% of jail inmates are seriously mentally ill. Treatment options are few. Is this the standard that we want to be known for?read more | digg storyAfter serving as a police officer, teaching in the Texas prison system, and my continued study of the criminal justice system for over two decades, I thought I was fairly immune to the deprivations that the system inflicts on individuals...

Clear the Norfolk 4

Posted on January 13, 2008
RARE IS the case that unites prosecutors and defense lawyers, Republicans and Democrats. Rarer still is a case that finds such diverse parties calling for the pardon of multiple defendants convicted of rape and murder.read more | digg storyIt seems that each day we are treated to new stories of the wrongfully convicted...

True and Untrue Confessions

Posted on January 12, 2008
The New York State Legislature should revive and pass a bill that would require videotaping of questioning in felony cases, and Gov. Eliot Spitzer should sign it into law. read more | digg storyThis reform, among others, is needed across the country, not just in New York...

Jurors in a Cape Cod Murder Case Testify About Racial Remarks

Posted on January 12, 2008
More than a year after it convicted a black trash hauler of murder, a jury returned to court for an extraordinary hearing on whether racism influenced its verdict.read more | digg storyThe racially oriented comments reported by jurors are consistent with those reported by researchers involved in the Capital Jury Project...

Government Secrecy about Execution Protocol

Posted on January 07, 2008
The issue of the secrecy surrounding the execution protocol of several states is well documented in today's L.A. Times (and elsewhere). Should the process and its participants enjoy this privilege?Read the storySeveral states have protected their execution protocols from public scrutiny...

Families of victims reject death penalty

Posted on January 07, 2008
Not every victims' family wants the offender executed. All too often, the needs of the victims' families are ignored. This factor was taken into consideration when New Jersey abolished the death penalty.read more | digg storyDefenders of the death penalty have frequently invoked the image that every victims' families want to see the offender executed...

15th Dallas County Inmate Since 2001 Is Freed by DNA

Posted on January 04, 2008
Charles Chatman was released after nearly 27 years in prison after a DNA sample recently taken from him did not match the profile from a rape victim's vaginal swab of 1981.read more | digg storyThe initial reaction to this story may be that the system is so unreliable that reformation is needed immediately...

Death Penalty Walking

Posted on January 03, 2008
The death penalty costs millions, but is only successful in a handful of cases. After hundreds of years of application and thousands of executions, why can't we get it right? Perhaps because the death penalty can never work as intended?read more | digg storyStudies have consistently shown that seeking and imposing a death sentence is 2-5 times greater than the cost of a life sentence without parole...

Death row inmate for 32 years gets 4th sentencing hearing

Posted on January 03, 2008
The longest serving death row inmate in Texas has received his fourth sentencing hearing. This case is an example of the extreme failure rate of the capital sentencing system in the U.S.read more | digg storyDoes anyone reading this story think that the money expended in the case a wise investment? Is it fair to the victims' family and to the defendant (and his family)? Most reasonable individuals can see that the goals of retribution and deterrence are undermined by cases such as this one...

Falling out of love with the death penalty

Posted on January 01, 2008
Though a majority of Americans back capital punishment, surveys find growing unease over it.read more | digg storyThis statement is accurate, to a point. As I have repeatedly pointed out, when respondents are asked the question, "Do you favor or oppose the death penalty for convicted murderers?" a majority respond that they support the death penalty...

Chipping at tough crack sentencing

Posted on December 30, 2007
Laws were ineffective and the drug's ravages overblown, experts say.read more | digg storyWe can learn a great deal about a society by studying "social artifacts" such as its legal code and its practices. The so-called "war on drugs" in U.S. society is a classic example...

Preventing AIDS Prevention

Posted on December 28, 2007
Congress and President Bush should act to eliminate the law that prohibits the use of federal funds for needle-exchange programs in the United States or abroad.read more | digg storyThis is a case where ideology trumps research. We would rather have higher rates of transmission of disease, greater expense treating the disease after the fact, and more human suffering rather than appear to be "soft on crime...

State's prison budget soars - Los Angeles Times

Posted on December 26, 2007
Court orders and ballot measures like Jessica's Law have helped fuel spending, which has climbed 79% since '03.read more | digg storyThe check is due! We have been incarcerating more people for a longer period of time and now we have to pay for that luxury...

A young Icelandic woman's recent experience visiting USA

Posted on December 25, 2007
The story of Eva Ósk Arnardóttir: During the last twenty-four hours I have probably experienced the greatest humiliation to which I have ever been subjected. During these last twenty-four hours I have been handcuffed and chained, denied the chance to sleep, been without food and drink and been confined to a place without anyone knowing my whereabouts, imprisoned...

Death Penalty in Review

Posted on December 23, 2007
IN MANY ways 2007 was a remarkable year in the history of the death penalty. Forty-two people were executed, the fewest since 1994 and down from last year's 53. According to a year-end report by the Death Penalty Information Center, fewer prisoners were sentenced to death in 2007 than in any year...

Milestone in Death Penalty Fight, but Still a Way to Go

Posted on December 22, 2007
Religious opponents of capital punishment were heartened by a United Nations resolution against the death penalty that passed on Tuesday. read more | digg story

In Ending Executions, Soul Searching

Posted on December 22, 2007
For many New Jersey lawmakers, the change of heart on the topic of the death penalty was something of a spiritual eureka moment.read more | digg story

Death penalty issues linger in Georgia

Posted on December 22, 2007
It is time to reinstate proportionality review. We know that sentencing someone to death is just as capricious and arbitrary today as it was prior to the Furman decision in 1972.read more | digg story

New Jersey Abolishes Death Penalty

Posted on December 17, 2007
New Jersey became the first state to abolish capital punishment since the U.S. Supreme Court authorized its use in 1976. After reviewing a report produced by a commission, elected officials concluded that the death penalty was a failed policy.read more | digg storyIf there is a poster child for failed policies, the death penalty is it...