In an entirely unsurprising move, the five conservatives on the Supreme Court have once again weakened the minimal safeguards in the Bill of Rights for those accused of a crime. Specifically, they said that you don’t really have a right to remain silent until you’re informed of or have explicitly invoked that right. Tejinder Singh, …
Category Archive: Criminal Justice
Jun 19 2013
DEA Using Informant Fired for Perjury
The use of confidential informants is a system prone to massive abuse, especially when there’s a big financial incentive for them to lie in order to get paid. USA Today reports that the DEA is now using an informant again who was previously blacklisted because he had lied in numerous cases.
Jun 11 2013
Accused Terrorist Demands Religious Law
A man accused of terrorism in Canada is demanding an attorney who will argue that he should be judged on the basis of the Quran rather than on the criminal law of that country. Surprisingly, he’s having a hard time finding one. One attorney quit as a result.
Jun 11 2013
Arpaio Feels Discriminated Against!
Just in case you haven’t reached your recommended daily allowance of irony, let me fill your cup to the brim. Fascist Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio is upset because people are discriminating against him because of his advanced age, as if that’s the reason he’s being so strongly criticized.
Jun 10 2013
Florida to Privatize Prison Healthcare
A state appeals court in Florida has ruled that the state will be allowed to go forward with a plan to privatize the healthcare in their prisons, something that has proven disastrous in other states. A lower court had blocked the plan last year.
Jun 07 2013
Racism in Law Enforcement? Perish the Thought
A new federal study has confirmed what anyone paying attention has known all along, that the war on drugs is fought primarily against black people rather than white people. Blacks are almost 4 times as likely to be arrested as whites for marijuana, though they use and sell it at the same rate.
Jun 03 2013
Kiriakou’s Letter From Prison
John Kiriakou, the former CIA officer who blew the whistle on the Bush regime’s use of torture on detainees and was then prosecuted by the Obama DOJ, is now in a federal prison in Pennsylvania. And he has written a rather remarkable letter detailing his life in prison and how things operate on the inside.
May 31 2013
SCOTUS Gets One Right on Due Process
The Supreme Court got one right on a criminal justice and due process issue, which is always cause for celebration. And it’s a case from Michigan, McQuiggin v. Perkins, which involves a murder conviction for someone who may well be innocent. Floyd Perkins says he is innocent and he has affidavits from several of the …
May 30 2013
Can We Just Put Polanski in Jail Now?
Roman Polanski should already be in prison for raping a 13 year old girl in 1977, but he has managed to escape justice by fleeing to Europe. Now he’s giving us yet another reason to think he’s a world class asshole and a serious misogynist by spouting crap like this:
May 29 2013
Federal Judge Smacks Down Arpaio
It seems fascist Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona is finally getting reined in. A federal judge has ruled that Arpaio and his department have committed rampant civil rights violations by targeting Latinos for traffic stops and much more.
May 28 2013
The Racism of NYPD’s Stop and Frisk Program. Again.
I’ve noted before that over 80% of all people targeted for stop and frisk searches by the NYPD are black or Latino, but a new report by the New York Public Advocate found what other studies have also found, that the percentage of white people found to be breaking the law is actually higher than …
May 25 2013
Montt’s Genocide Conviction Overturned
When a court in Guatemala convicted former U.S.-backed dictator Rios Montt of genocide a couple weeks ago, I was skeptical. I wrote then, “But don’t be surprised if this does not last and the current president, who served in the military under Montt, finds some way to void the result.” And here’s the least surprising …
May 23 2013
FBI Investigating Bachmann Now
Things just went from bad to worse for Rep. Michele Bachmann. In addition to the FEC and the Office of Congressional Ethics, the FBI has now joined the investigations into campaign finance violations during her failed 2012 presidential run.
May 22 2013
A Terrible Juliet-Juliet Prosecution
A few years ago, Todd Heywood and I did a lot of reporting on so-called Romeo and Juliet relationships and how the use of statutory rape laws against young people who are just over 18 with a girlfriend or boyfriend under 18. Here’s a horrible story of a Juliet-Juliet prosecution that threatens to ruin the …
May 22 2013
Appeals Court Cuts Crack Sentences
In 2010, Congress passed and President Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act, which reduced the disparity in sentences for crack vs powder cocaine from 100-1 to 18-1. In 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that the new sentencing guidelines applied to cases where the defendant had been convicted before that law was passed but not yet …
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