American policing is infected with a cynicism towards the very people it is supposed to protect. State and federal law enforcement see the dark, ugly and dangerous side of humanity on a daily basis. They are also trained from a…
Category: Police Misconduct
2022
Category: Federal Criminal Law | Police Misconduct | terrorism
By the turn of the 21 century, the FBI believed it had put the dark legacy of J. Edgar Hoover behind it—a legacy that included the illegal surveillance of anti-war groups, civil rights organizations, and the Black Panther Party. But…
2022
Category: Criminal Justice Reform | Police Misconduct
Police misconduct is the historical scourge of American policing. It raises its head in media from time to time with a horrific incident caught on video, but in reality, it thrives in communities across the country every day.
USAToday …
2022
Category: Criminal Justice Reform | Police Misconduct
The right to a fair and impartial trial is the bedrock of a democratic system of government. This right is enshrined in the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Article I, Sec. 10, of the Texas Constitution.
The State…
2022
Category: Criminal Justice Reform | Police Misconduct | Prosecutorial Misconduct
Justice is kaleidoscopic. Its definition generates a myriad of concepts, none of which are precise and definitive.
But the case of Adnan Syed offers a timeline of injustice inflicted by the massive power of the State.
The Syed saga began…
2022
Category: Police Misconduct | Qualified Immunity
In the early morning of August 20, 2022, a Columbus, Ohio, police officer named Ricky Anderson, along with two other white officers, entered the residence of a 20-year-old Black man named Donovan Lewis. The officers were present to serve an…
2022
Category: Constitutional Law | Police Misconduct
The recent video that captured three Crawford County, Arkansas, police officers restraining and beating a man illustrates the social value of video recording the police in public.
The cell phone video shows two officers brutally striking and kicking the man…
2022
Category: Criminal Justice Reform | Police Misconduct
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…
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 | 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…