On October 17, 2019, a 24-year-old black man named Demonte Ward-Blake was driving a vehicle in Oxon Hill, Maryland, with his girlfriend’s six-year-old daughter as a passenger in the backseat. The car had expired tags. A Prince George County Police…
Category: Criminal Justice Reform
2022
Category: Appeals | Criminal Justice Reform | Police Misconduct | Prosecutorial Misconduct
As of July 21, 2022, the National Registry of exonerations reports that there have been 3,184 exonerations in criminal cases since 1989.
These numbers reinforce what many over-policed communities have known for generations: the nation’s criminal justice often fails in…
2022
Category: Criminal Justice Reform | Criminal Law | Due Process | Jury Selection
Texan and former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark once said, “The jury system improves the quality of justice and is the sole means of keeping its administration attuned to community standards.”
The Constitution of the United States and…
2022
Category: bail reform | Criminal Justice Reform | Criminal Law
The COVID 19 pandemic (“pandemic”) taught the American criminal justice system one thing: the nation’s cash bail system is a for-profit practice that has nothing to do with public safety. …
2022
Category: Criminal Justice Reform
17-year-old high school student Trayvon Martin was murdered in Sanford, Florida, on February 26, 2012. Seventeen months later, his killer, George Zimmerman, was acquitted. In response to this travesty of justice, three Black organizers created the social movement known as…
2022
Category: Criminal Justice Reform | Police Misconduct
The National Registry of Exonerations announced on March 15, 2022, that 33 of the 45 exonerations announced in February involved people falsely accused of crimes by former Chicago police Detective Ronald Watts and the team of officers he supervised. This…
2022
Category: Criminal Justice Reform | Death Penalty | Prosecutorial Misconduct
After her November 2016 election as district attorney of Harris County, Kim Ogg said she would reduce the use of the death penalty with all its racial discrimination and unfairness.
Five and one-half years into the Ogg administration has taught…
2022
Category: Criminal Justice Reform | Prosecutorial Misconduct
There has always been, and will always be, a legion of rogue criminal prosecutors who, with tunnel vision to win at all cost, kill innocent people through the power of the state.
That is not hyperbole. It is an indisputable,…
2022
The tragic shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in 2015 by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, triggered nationwide protests and the eventual trend to elect “reform-minded” district attorneys to deal with countless inequities in the country’s criminal justice…
2022
Category: Criminal Justice Reform | Police Misconduct | Qualified Immunity
THE PERILS OF A TRAFFIC STOP
The Stanford Open Policing Project (SOPR) reports that police conduct 50,000 traffic stops daily. These traffic stops result in more than 20 million American motorists interacting with the police each year.
At best, traffic…