The potential for conviction and actually winning a jury verdict are two very different things — particularly against the notoriously combative and slippery former president. To convict, Mr. Smith will have to overcome four significant hurdles.
Nothing in the U.S. Constitution or federal law dictates that federal criminal cases get priority over state cases, or that prosecutions proceed in the order in which indictments are issued.
The blunt fact about the cash bail system in the US is that it creates a two-tier system of “justice” in which the presumption of innocence is denied to people who have not been convicted of anything but the “crime” of being poor.
The HALT Act was passed to end long-term solitary confinement. Enforcing it is a whole new struggle.
Long-term research from Northwestern University finds that rates of firearm injury or death are higher for juvenile detainees than for the general population and those from similar demographic backgrounds.
“The harsh reality is that, despite the possibility that a rich and powerful man may now be in for his just desserts, our criminal legal system is daily marked by widespread unfairness and a stark racial bias.”
When we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Gideon ruling this year — recognizing the right to counsel conferred by Gideon’s persistence and Justice Hugo Black’s resolve — we are erasing a far longer and richer legacy: the history of the women who invented the idea of the public defender.
Death by incarceration is the most prevalent and most overlooked form of state sponsored execution. They call it a life sentence, but that is a misnomer. Any prison sentence that a person cannot outlive is a sentence to death.
In this conversation, we talk to Juan Moreno Haines, editor of the San Quentin News, about what drew him to investigate the Adjustment Center, and what it was like to report on the prison’s Covid-19 crisis as he was living through it.
Just Mercy challenges us not just to abolish the cruel, oppressive, and racist system of death sentencing, but to move beyond soul-killing modes of thought that are part of what make such systems of oppression possible in the first place.
Spread the word