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Access to Justice
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January 06, 2025
Judge Rejects Rape Kit Seller's 2nd Bid To Pause Wash. Ban
A Washington federal judge has denied a request for an injunction pending appeal by a company challenging the state's ban on the sale of "DIY" DNA collection kits for sexual assault survivors, reiterating his prior ruling that the law passes constitutional muster because it regulates conduct and not speech.
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January 06, 2025
New Joint Bar Task Force To Tackle Indigent Defense In NYC
The New York City Bar Association announced Monday that it has teamed up with the city's county bar associations to form a task force assessing the NYC Assigned Counsel Plan, which assigns lawyers to indigent people in criminal and family courts who can't be served by institutional legal service providers.
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January 03, 2025
Where Access To Justice Leaders Will Be Focused In 2025
As they await the potential impacts of a new presidential administration and the GOP-controlled Congress, access to justice leaders across the country say they're headed into 2025 with an eye on issues like use of non-attorney professionals and AI technology to help address the ever-increasing need for free or affordable legal services.
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January 03, 2025
Inside Arnold & Porter's Win In Prison 'Rape Club' Case
Aided by attorneys from Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP, a group of women incarcerated at a California federal prison recently reached settlements with the Bureau of Prisons, including a consent decree and the agency’s largest-ever monetary settlement, to resolve claims of systemic sexual abuse at the notorious facility.
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January 03, 2025
Executions Rose In 2024 As Death Penalty Support Wanes
The number of new death sentences across the U.S. increased last year, as did the number of states imposing them, but public support for capital punishment continues to be at historic lows, the Death Penalty Information Center said in a year-end report published last month.
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January 03, 2025
Film Captures NJ Law Grad's Fight Against Child Sex Abuse
Brisa De Angulo won a historic international human rights victory against the government of Bolivia in 2023 over how it handled her legal case against the relative who sexually assaulted her as an adolescent, and an upcoming documentary is putting her story to the big screen.
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January 03, 2025
Atty Wants Free Speech Suit Over Tenn. Court Rule Kept Alive
A free speech challenge to a Middle District of Tennessee rule barring attorneys from making "any extrajudicial statements" about cases in the district should be allowed to move forward since the court is not entitled to sovereign immunity, according to the Nashville civil rights lawyer behind the suit.
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December 20, 2024
Texas AG Blocks Roberson Legislative Testimony
Texas state representatives on Friday slammed Attorney General Ken Paxton's last-minute effort to block testimony from a man on death row after his 2-year-old daughter died from what was diagnosed as shaken baby syndrome.
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December 20, 2024
Justice Reformers Wary Of Trump's Return, Yet Hope Persists
While President-elect Donald Trump's impending return to the White House has many criminal justice reformers preparing for battle, given his scorched-earth rhetoric on crime and immigration on the campaign trail, hope for meaningful change persists in varying degrees among advocates after Trump's backing of reform legislation during his first term.
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December 20, 2024
How Akin Helped Holocaust Survivors Win Reparations
The Anti-Defamation League recently honored a Holocaust survivor who went on to become the face of a movement seeking accountability from the French national railroad company SNCF for its role in taking tens of thousands of Jews to Nazi concentration camps. The movement was assisted pro bono by attorneys from Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP.
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December 20, 2024
Lambda Legal Adds Attorney In NY Focused On Trans Rights
LGBTQ+ advocacy group Lambda Legal has hired a new senior attorney focused on the organization's work defending the transgender community.
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December 17, 2024
Prisoners Reach Largest-Ever Settlement With BOP Over Abuse
More than 100 women currently and formerly detained at a now-shuttered federal women's prison in Northern California have reached settlements with the federal Bureau of Prisons worth nearly $116 million to end individual lawsuits alleging sexual assault and harassment at the hands of prison staffers.
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December 17, 2024
Texas Lawmakers Issue 2nd Subpoena In Shaken Baby Case
Texas lawmakers issued a subpoena to a man convicted based on a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome, marking their second attempt to hear his testimony at a House committee meeting on the state's so-called Junk Science Law.
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December 16, 2024
No 1st Amendment Right For Prison Interviews, 4th Circ. Says
A South Carolina prison's policy of prohibiting interviews with inmates does not violate the First Amendment's free speech protections, the Fourth Circuit has said in a published decision.
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December 16, 2024
Battle Over Atty Speech Raises First Amendment Concerns
An attorney is challenging a local rule used to gag him in the Middle District of Tennessee, saying it goes too far in restricting lawyers from speaking to the press about their cases.
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December 13, 2024
YSL Defendant Sues Sheriff Over Fulton Co. Jail Conditions
One of the defendants in the recently wrapped Young Slime Life racketeering and gang trial is now leading a class action against Fulton County Sheriff Pat Labat and the county's chief jailer John Jackson over allegations that the two allowed unconstitutional conditions at the jail that violated detainees' Eighth and 14th amendment rights.
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December 12, 2024
Prison Co. Says Jurors Shouldn't See ICE Facility In TVPA Suit
Private prison operator Geo Group urged a Colorado federal judge to deny immigrant detainees' request to show jurors the inside of its detention facility in a trafficking case, including the size of housing units, arguing Wednesday the facility's size will not be relevant when determining whether detainees performed forced labor.
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December 12, 2024
Biden Commutes Nearly 1,500 Sentences In Clemency Record
President Joe Biden announced Thursday he was commuting the prison sentences of nearly 1,500 Americans he said had successfully rehabilitated themselves, the largest number ever in a single day, according to a statement by the White House.
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December 09, 2024
Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch Crack Door For 2nd Amendment Fight
Three U.S. Supreme Court justices on Monday signaled their willingness to delve into an appeal from a Hawaii man who argues that he is being unconstitutionally prosecuted for owning a handgun without a license, though they agreed with the rest of the court that they don't currently have jurisdiction to hear it.
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December 06, 2024
Ga. Man Freed After 26 Years Sues Over Bogus Murder Charge
A Georgia man who spent more than a quarter-century in prison for murder before his name was cleared with the help of two true crime podcasters has sued the county and cops behind his arrest and prosecution alleging he was framed for the accidental death of a friend during a game of Russian roulette.
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December 06, 2024
Justices To Consider Easing Rules On Revising Habeas Petitions
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear a case that could make it easier for prisoners to amend their habeas corpus petitions, brought by a man who claims his drunken attorney never pointed out that key evidence in his child pornography trial was marked as "not child porn" by investigators.
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December 06, 2024
Advocates Shine Light On Rash Of Deficient Evictions In NJ
A new report from a team of New Jersey housing experts found that as many as 29,000 tenants and tenant families may be evicted in the Garden State every year based on legally deficient complaints. Now they’re calling for greater oversight in the state’s landlord-tenant courts.
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December 06, 2024
Keker Van Nest Marks 5 Years Of Calif. Resentencing Work
Over the last five years, Keker Van Nest & Peters LLP has helped imprisoned Californians petition to reduce their life sentences following a 2018 change to the state's felony murder rules, most recently securing the release of a man who was originally sentenced to death.
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December 06, 2024
Veterans Courts Help Some, But Leave Many Others Behind
Veterans treatment courts have helped thousands of justice-involved vets with addiction and mental health issues, but strict eligibility rules, difficulty identifying defendants and a lack of courts mean many former service members are still falling through the cracks.
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December 06, 2024
Wash. Justices OK Pilot To Relax Regs For Non-Lawyers
Washington's high court has approved a pilot program that will allow the Evergreen State to loosen rules on who can practice law, with the aim of empowering businesses and organizations not run by lawyers to innovate on providing legal services, and perhaps make them more affordable.
Expert Analysis
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Prosecutors' Growing Case Backlogs Need Urgent Attention
Growing case backlogs in prosecutors' offices around the country affect the functioning of the entire criminal legal system, so the problem's root causes must be immediately addressed, say Minnesota county prosecutor John Choi and Montana county prosecutor Audrey Cromwell.
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Context Is Everything In Justices' Sentencing Relief Decision
In the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Pulsifer v. U.S. decision, limiting the number of drug offenders eligible for sentencing relief, the majority and dissent adopted very different contextual frames for interpreting the meaning of “and” — with the practical impact being that thousands more defendants will be subject to severe mandatory minimums, says Douglas Berman at Moritz College of Law.
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Passing The HALT Fentanyl Act Will Repeat Past Mistakes
The war on drugs has failed, with overdose deaths at an all-time high despite decades of criminalization, so lawmakers should vote no on the HALT Fentanyl Act's proposal to impose lengthy mandatory minimum sentences for fentanyl-related drug offenses, says Liz Komar at The Sentencing Project.
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Behind The Unique Hurdles Of Rural Access To Justice
While rural access to justice has become conflated with access to lawyers, the two are not synonymous, and in order to solve both issues, it is critical to further examine the role and impact of resident attorneys in these communities, say Daria Fisher Page and Brian Farrell at the University of Iowa College of Law.
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Compassionate Release Grants Needed Now More Than Ever
After the U.S. Sentencing Commission's recent expansion of the criteria for determining compassionate release eligibility, courts should grant such motions more frequently in light of the inherently dangerous conditions presented by increasingly understaffed and overpopulated federal prisons, say Alan Ellis and Mark Allenbaugh at the Law Offices of Alan Ellis.
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Justices' Double Jeopardy Ruling Preserves Acquittal Sanctity
The U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous decision last week in McElrath v. Georgia, barring the state from retrying a man acquitted of murder after a so-called repugnant verdict, is significant in the tangled web of double jeopardy jurisprudence for its brief and unequivocal protection of an acquittal’s finality, says Lissa Griffin at Pace Law School.
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NY Must Address Urgent Need For Immigration Legal Aid
The recent influx of migrants to New York has exposed the urgent need for state legislators to make a long-term investment in sustainable immigration legal services infrastructure, supervision and training, say Marielena Hincapié and Stephen Yale-Loehr at Cornell Law.
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911 Call Scrutiny Should Not Be Used To Identify Suspects
Though the use of 911 call analysis to identify suspects continues to spread across the country, this scientifically unproven method opens the door to wrongful convictions, so prosecutors should review investigations that relied on the technique, and lawmakers should ban it nationwide, say Miriam Krinsky at Fair and Just Prosecution and Isabelle Cohn at the Innocence Project.
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6 Practice Pointers For Pro Bono Immigration Practice
An attorney taking on their first pro bono immigration matter may find the law and procedures beguiling, but understanding key deadlines, the significance of individual immigration judges' rules and specialized aspects of the practice can help avoid common missteps, says Steven Malm at Haynes Boone.
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8th Circ. Redistricting Ruling Imperils The Voting Rights Act
The Eighth Circuit’s recent ruling in Arkansas NAACP v. Arkansas Board of Apportionment, holding that private plaintiffs don't have standing to sue in redistricting cases, creates a circuit split, and, if upheld, would nearly destroy the Voting Rights Act, says William Brewer at Brewer Storefront.
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Justices May Clarify Expert Witness Confrontation Confusion
After oral arguments in Smith v. Arizona, the U.S. Supreme Court seems poised to hold that expert witness opinions that rely on out-of-court testimonial statements for their factual basis are unconstitutional, thus resolving some of the complications created by the court’s confrontation clause jurisprudence, says Richard Friedman at the University of Michigan Law School.
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Immigration Detention Should Offer Universal Legal Counsel
Given the large backlog of immigration court cases and the more than 70% of people in immigration detention without counsel in 2023, the system should establish a universal right to federally funded representation for anyone facing deportation, similar to the public defender model, say Laura Lunn and Shaleen Morales at the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network.
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UX Research And Design Is Crucial For Justice Technologies
It’s essential that new access-to-justice digital tools incorporate user experience research and design methodologies to enhance access and accessibility, improve efficiency in processes and service delivery, and reduce risk, says Sarah Mauet at Innovation for Justice.
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Higher Juror Compensation Trend Is Good For Justice System
This year a number of states increased daily juror compensation rates after decades of stagnation — a positive development that facilitates more representative juries, aids decision making and boosts public confidence in the legal system, says Cary Silverman at Shook Hardy.
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The Pop Culture Docket: Judge D'Emic On Moby Grape
The 1968 Moby Grape song "Murder in My Heart for the Judge" tells the tale of a fictional defendant treated with scorn by the judge, illustrating how much the legal system has evolved in the past 50 years, largely due to problem-solving courts and the principles of procedural justice, says Kings County Supreme Court Administrative Judge Matthew D'Emic.