Via Jamilah King at ColorLines, Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi has decided to suspend the sentences of Jamie and Gladys Scott, two women who were sentenced to life in prison for an armed robbery in 1994. Their release is contingent upon Gladys Scott giving a kidney to her sick sister, which she has already said Read More
It’s two weeks too late for Derrion Albert, but the New York Times reports that a former police officer named Ron Huberman has a new plan for trying to protect the most vulnerable students from violence. It sounds a bit like CompStat. . . . if Mr. Huberman’s hunch is right, about 10,000 high school Read More
I think, as dispassionate observers of the legal system, we can all agree that Charles Hood probably got a fair trial despite the newly established fact that the prosecutor and judge were having an affair. Besides, if that was an issue, Hood’s lawyers should have just raised it at trial. What, don’t think so? Communist. Read More
Remember that weird, problematic case in which the off-duty officer, in plainclothes, pulled out his gun and chased a guy who may have broken into his car, and then other cops came and shot that off-duty cop? News from the New York Times: A grand jury in Manhattan has voted not to indict a New Read More
Adam Liptak reported on a study that found the way race factors into the death penalty in Harris County, Texas. This is important because Harris County (where Houston in located) puts more people to death than any other state in the U.S. (besides Texas, of course). So what did the study find? Well, besides echoing Read More
The way crime is prosecuted in America is inextricably linked to race and class. Yeah, yeah. Everyone knows that, right? But it bears repeating for the myopic ‘personal responsibility’ reactionaries: two new reports say black men are more likely to be arrested and convicted on drug offenses even though white and black people use drugs Read More
Scalia says the number is small enough to be acceptable, but Adam Liptak of the New York Times said it’s almost impossible to really know.
Barney Frank wants to introduce legislation that decriminalize medical marijuana use. We won’t go on a rant about the country’s misbegotten drug policy, but there’s no way this gains any traction in the House. Or is there?
Burns, Simon, Pelecanos. Um, how many ways does this essay fall into our bailiwick? So how come we missed it? David Simon, Ed Burns, and George Pelecanos launched a salvo at America’s misbegotten drug policy, penning an essay in Time asking people serving on juries to vote to acquit any suspect charged with a nonviolent Read More
Ashley Alexander Dupre. The question of whether or not prostitution should just be legalized turns on whether you believe the oldest profession is an inevitable part of human society, and whether you think the benefits of regulation (bringing the workers into a controlled environment and taking arrest off the table so they might Read More
