If a jury convicts a defendant of capital murder in Texas, state law requires the trial court to conduct a separate sentencing proceeding before that same jury. This proceeding is generally referred to as the “sentencing phase” of the trial.…
Category: Criminal Justice Reform
2024
Category: Criminal Justice Reform | Sex Crimes Against Children
In the May 31, 2024 edition of The Wrongful Conviction Law Review (Vol. 5, No. 1), two distinguished experts in psychology, Matthew Barry Johnson and Janquel D. Acevedo, published an article titled, ‘Sex Assaults,’ False Guilty Pleas, Stranger Rape With…
2024
Category: Criminal Justice Reform | Federal Criminal Law | Federal Sentencing
In a complicated and convoluted March 15, 2024 decision, Pulsifer v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals’ interpretation of the federal sentencing scheme’s “safety valve“ provisions—an interpretation that ensures continued restrictions on their…
2024
Category: Constitutional Law | Criminal Justice Reform | SCOTUS
The American Bar Association list Gideon V. Wainwright (1963) as one of the U.S. Supreme Court’s “landmark“ decisions. Gideon held that States must provide criminal defendants charged with serious crimes with an attorney if they cannot afford one. A serious…
2024
Category: Criminal Justice Reform | Federal Criminal Law | Federal Sentencing
On April 14, 2024, the United States Sentencing Commission (USSC) unanimously voted to pass a package of federal sentencing reforms dealing with acquitted conduct and age considerations.
The issue of acquitted conduct, and even uncharged conduct, has long been used…
2024
Category: Criminal Justice Reform | Prosecutorial Misconduct
Kim Ogg, once hailed as the “reform darling” in Texas Democratic political circles after she ousted Republican control of the Harris County District Attorney’s Office in 2016, now faces a tough uphill battle in her attempt to be elected to…
2024
Category: Criminal Justice Reform | Police Misconduct
According to the National Registry of Exonerations, between January 1, 2023, and January 31, 2024, there were 50 exonerations nationwide in fifteen states and one from the federal system. Illinois led the way with nine exonerations, while New York and…
2024
Category: Criminal Justice Reform | Death Penalty
On January 25, 2024, Kenneth Eugene Smith became the first person to be executed by a state government in this country through a method known as nitrogen hypoxia. Officials at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama at…
2023
Category: Criminal Justice Reform | SCOTUS
Billionaires buy justice, just as they buy everything else. They live by the business creed that everything and everyone has a price—even presidents, legislators, and Supreme Court justices.
Many have argued that Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas is such…
2023
Category: Criminal Justice Reform | Death Penalty
Martin Luther King, Jr. once observed, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
What the State…