Criminal Justice Reform

[HOF44]

Pleasblitz, what you think of this ruling??

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/23/supreme-court-ineffective-counsel-postconviction-appeals/

 

[PleaseBlitz]

On 5/23/2022 at 9:56 PM, HOF44 said:

Pleasblitz, what you think of this ruling??

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/23/supreme-court-ineffective-counsel-postconviction-appeals/

 

Just seeing this. Honestly, I don’t think this is a huge deal. Ineffective counsel arguments are notoriously hard to win; it sucks, but the fact is that defense counsel for poor folk are generally not the best and often spread way too thin. The system is imperfect and heavily weighed against poor minorities. It always has been and this holding doesn’t really move the needle. Just more evidence that Clarance Thomas exists to **** over black people. 

[PleaseBlitz]

On 5/18/2022 at 9:15 PM, PleaseBlitz said:

Today was the least satisfying “win” Ive ever had. 
 

My pro bono client has been in prison for 30 years. He killed a guy when he was 17.  During his 30 years in prison, my client has made every effort to improve himself and risked his life to **** up the dominant prison gang. For his efforts in helping law enforcement, he got stabbed 14 times and nearly killed. He got his GED and was valedictorian. He’s completed college level courses in theology and IT.  He leads bible study 3 times a week. 
 

Today I asked a judge to reduce his life sentence to time served. judge basically agreed, but asked me to engineer a home plan where he is supervised on an impatient basis., which i can do. So, assuming I can put a home plan together, which should be easy, i will get my client out of a life sentence and send him home. 
 

 

Ive been taliking about this representation a lot and just wanted to note my appreciation from ES. 

Finished this up today. Went to court with an ironclad home plan, Judge reduced my client’s sentence to time served. He’ll walk out a free man tomorrow or Tuesday. 
 

Ive spent 5 years on this. I cant even express how gratifying today is. 

[PleaseBlitz]

This was a moment that will stick with me forever. This is just outside the fence of the Maryland Correctional Institution- Hagerstown. 
 

 

[The 12th Commandment]

An outfit called Texas Organizing Project got my soon to be stepson out of the pokey in San Antonio yesterday.  He's an idiot but a month in lockup for smarting off to the cops is a bit excessive.  One call by me, instigated a process that got him out with no TX id, or fixed address in SA, something bail bondmans required.  Donated a c note this morning.  They are fighting the good fight in Gilead.

 

Nothing but love for what you did PB.  Exceptional 

[China]

Oklahoma set to resume executions at a record pace with 25 executions planned in 2 years

 

The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals set the execution dates of 25 inmates Friday.

 

It comes after the Attorney General requested the executions of death row inmates who have exhausted all appeals.

 

With the schedule, on average, 1 death row inmate will be executed approximately every four weeks.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Prosecutor Who Got Defendant Pregnant and Had Affair With Juror Is Now Running for Judge

 

Matthew Leveridge, commonwealth’s attorney of Russell and Wayne counties, was never disciplined for having sex with with Latisha Sartain in 2014. After Sartain told Leveridge’s wife about the affair, Leveridge moved to rescind Sartain’s pretrial diversion agreement.

 

Eight years on, he wants to be elected to higher office.

 

Ken Upchurch, a Republican for the 52nd District in Kentucky’s House of Representatives, told the Louisville Courier Journal he was shocked to hear Leveridge was running to be a judge. “It’s like the church head deacon having an affair with the choir director, then wanting to be the preacher,” Upchurch said.

 

Although concerns were raised that Leveridge’s actions may have constituted a breach of the Rules of Professional Conduct for lawyers, he has never been sanctioned by the Kentucky Supreme Court or charged with a criminal offense. Leveridge was the subject of a criminal investigation for allegedly having sex with jurors, however, court documents show.

 

“A few years ago I made a mistake in my life,” Leveridge told the Courier Journal. “I acknowledged the mistake, sought forgiveness, took responsibility and accepted the consequences. I learned from the mistake and have since moved on to a better life, both personally and professionally.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

What consequences were those?

[China]

 

[Captain Wiggles]

That Peter Navarro meltdown at the courthouse. 🤣

[China]

Your license plate frame is enough for police in Pa. to pull you over, court rules

 

Thousands of drivers in Pennsylvania could now be at greater risk of getting pulled over by police — all because of the frame around their license plate.

 

A state appellate court ruling this week affirmed the right of police officers to stop drivers if any part of their license plate is obscured. That doesn’t just include the unique combination of letters and numbers that make up a person’s license plate — but any lettering — including the visitpa.com URL — or, for that matter, the paint around it.

 

Critics argue the decision, by a three-judge Superior Court panel, raises concerns about racial bias and other potential abuses of power by law enforcement, and could give police another pretext to pull over a driver for a seemingly trivial reason, among other wide-reaching and unintended consequences.

 

“At a point in time when we want to do away with pretextual stops, this decision specifically opens the door to every person being stopped at the will of police for investigation,” said Philadelphia lawyer S. Philip Steinberg, who argued against the court’s decision in the case.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Judge Angered by Hidden Evidence in Wrongful Conviction of Louisiana Man

 

Sullivan Walter, 53, has been exonerated from a 36-year-old conviction in a home-invasion rape he did not commit in 1986, according to The Associated Press. Judge Darryl Derbigny was angered, finding that the evidence that could’ve cleared Walter’s name never made it to the jury. Walter spent his whole life in prison for no reason.

 

For many of the recent Black exoneration cases, the reason for the wrongful convictions were the same: hidden evidence, a botched investigation or crappy attorneys. In Walter’s case, there were a couple of “red flags” leading to his conviction at just 17 years old. First off, attorney Emily Maw said Walter was mistakenly identified in a lineup six weeks after the incident. Per court documents, the victim couldn’t see the culprit as he was masked in an unlit room.

 

Secondly, Walter’s previous counsel failed to point out conflicting statements from investigators and missteps during his appeal process. The cherry on top was finding that the blood and semen collected from the victim did not match that of Walter. This evidence wasn’t provided to the jury.

 

“To say this was unconscionable is an understatement,” Derbigny told Walter, via AP News.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[tshile]

A topic I don’t think gets enough (any?) discussion is how they’ve deployed the license reading systems in the cars. They don’t just read your license and look you up - they store where and when you were seen. 
 

Cool use of it - when the smith mountain lake shooter (the one that did it while local news was interviewing someone) was caught because when they entered the information of the vehicle he was fleeing in, a state troopers computer system went nuts telling her that the car passed her several minutes ago. It’s how they knew he got off 81 north onto 66 east she was at the intersection on the 66 side. 
 

but… it’s basically local government tracking…
 

 

[China]

Michigan police say faulty marijuana tests could impact more than 3,250 cases

 

Michigan state police say tests intended to detect THC in blood aren’t working, and haven’t for years. Several thousand criminal cases may be impacted by the revelation.

 

The agency has halted further blood toxicology testing for THC until a third-party, accredited lab can be hired, or the problem is resolved.

 

State police say the testing method that was in use caused cannabidiol, better known as CBD, a non-psychoactive compound in cannabis, to show up in test results as THC, the intoxicating compound in marijuana.

 

State police have not revealed what they believe caused the problem but say it’s existed since at least March 2019. The issue with faulty THC results was identified on Aug. 19 and prosecutors across the state were notified on Aug. 25.

 

“After further review, we now believe this discrepancy may impact cases that occurred on or after March 28, 2019, where the alleged violation is based on the finding of THC alone and there is insufficient evidence of impairment, intoxication, or recent use of marijuana to otherwise support the charged offense,” state police said in a statement issued Wednesday, Aug. 31.

 

“Laboratory data indicates there are approximately 3,250 laboratory reports that may be impacted,” state police said. “These are reports in which there was a THC-confirmed result without other drugs present or alcohol detected above the 0.08% blood-alcohol content legal threshold.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Brooklyn DA Seeks to Vacate 378 Convictions Tied to Guilty Cops, One of Largest US Mass Exonerations

 

The Brooklyn district attorney's office is asking a court to vacate nearly 400 convictions, 12% of them felonies, that were directly based on the work of 13 former NYPD officers who were later found guilty of crimes committed while on duty, Eric Gonzalez's office announced Wednesday.

 

The push to dismiss the 378 convictions -- 47 felonies and 331 misdemeanors -- marks the sixth largest mass dismissal of convictions in U.S. history, according to data collected by the National Registry of Exonerations, Gonzalez said.

 

His office's Conviction Review Unit looked at all those cases and while it did not uncover misconduct, the district attorney has lost confidence in cases where these officers served as essential witnesses, meaning the cases couldn't have been prosecuted without their testimony, Gonzalez's office said.

 

His office plans to ask Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Matthew D'Emic to begin dismissing the felony convictions Wednesday afternoon. The process for misdemeanor convictions will begin in Brooklyn Criminal Court next month.

 

Defendants will not be entitled to refunds of fees or fines. Defense lawyers and the court system have been notified of the pending dismissals, Gonzalez said.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Nitrogen gas execution: An abomination in Alabama

 

When, in October 2016, I wrote “death row inmates in Alabama are human guinea pigs” because the state’s capital punishment regime — specifically its barbaric, often bungled lethal injection protocol — is already so dark, so depraved, so outrageously cloaked in lies and officious secrecy, I never could have predicted the situation could get worse.

 

But it has. In glaring contrast to the heavily circulated, smiling picture of exonerated former Alabama death row inmate Anthony Ray Hinton, ebullient after voting for the first time in a midterm election since being freed in 2015, after a hellacious 30 years on Alabama’s death row, it’s important to understand: the death penalty in Alabama has gotten far worse since Mr Hinton’s release — not better.

 

First, because of the cynically named “Fair Justice Act,” convoluted legislation hacksawing fundamental constitutional rights of (overwhelmingly indigent) death-sentenced defendants, signed into law last year — over the varied, vociferous, published objections of the ACLU, a highly respected Harvard Law School professor, defence attorneys in the state, myself, and even Mr Hinton — it is far easier under current Alabama law, for an innocent person like Mr Hinton, to be convicted and sentenced to death.

 

Second, despite a fairly recent slew of patently botched lethal injections, including that of Ronald Bert Smith, Torrey McNabb, and Christopher Brooks — as well as the bloody, horrific, and failed execution attempt of Doyle Hamm, during which, among other atrocities, state executioners repeatedly (and futilely) jabbed multiple needles into Hamm’s groin and pelvis — Alabama has coldly, inhumanely, and, as I wrote elsewhere in June, steadfastly continued “its odious tradition of ducking and dodging transparency and accountability in how the state puts its prisoners to death.”

 

And now, as if this wasn’t all ghastly enough — this undeniable fact Alabama has been torturing poor people for a long time, and that it shows no sign of stopping — the Montgomery Advertiser’s Bryan Lyman wrote on 23 November that the state is planning to augment the barbarism involved in its executions to even greater and more unseemly dimensions; Lyman reports that plans are now underway for Alabama to develop a protocol to execute death row prisoners with nitrogen gas.

 

But, Lyman notes, because “nitrogen asphyxiation has never been used in capital punishment before,” Alabama “finds itself inventing a method of execution.” Soberly and pointedly, Lyman observes: “The American Medical Association authorises the use of the method in animal euthanasia, though only for birds and small animals.”

 

Relatedly, in March, Robert Dunham, Executive Director of DPIC, tweeted: “The World Society for the Protection of Animals lists nitrogen inhalation as ‘not acceptable’ for animal euthanasia because loss of consciousness is not instantaneous, and dogs euthanised by nitrogen gas have been observed convulsing and yelping after ‘falling unconscious’.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Yet another scientific body has debunked bitemark analysis. The courts still won't care.

 

This week, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released a long-awaited report on the use of bitemark analysis. This is the disipline in which a specialist matches an apparent bite mark on human skin and to the teeth of the person who did the biting. The field has a horrendous track record: More than two dozen people arrested or convicted with bitemark evidence have since been exonerated.

 

The NIST report has been a long time coming. In its landmark 2009 report on forensic evidence, the National Academy of Sciences singled out bitemark analysis as a forensic specialty with little to know scientific underpinnings, and called for further study. This report is the answer to the NAS report, and it's a thorough rebuke of all things bitemark analysis. 

 

The entire specialty of bitemark comparison rests on three core assumptions. The first is that each person's teeth are structured and aligned in a way that causes them to leave unique bite marks. The second is that human skin is capable of recording and preserving those marks in a way that makes them distinguishable. The final assumption is that trained analysts are capable of analyzing marks to include or exclude someone as the person who left them.

 

The NIST study found no scientific evidence to support any of these assumptions, and the evidence we do have explicitly refutes two of them. Studies have consistently shown that human skin is incapable of recording and preserving the details of a bite, and competency tests have shown that not only are bitemark analysts bad at matching bites to human subjects, they often can't even agree on what is and isn't a human bite. Members of the NIST panel will present a webinar on their findings later this month.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[PleaseBlitz]

15 minutes ago, China said:

as a forensic specialty with little to know scientific underpinnings

Little to know spellcheck, amirite?

[China]

50 minutes ago, PleaseBlitz said:

Little to know spellcheck, amirite?

 

Fun fact: spellcheck won't catch that because know is spelled correctly, it's just the wrong word.

[PleaseBlitz]

38 minutes ago, China said:

 

Fun fact: spellcheck won't catch that because know is spelled correctly, it's just the wrong word.

I no. 

[China]

The Most Lawless County in Texas

 

Suzanne Wooten did the impossible and became the first candidate to defeat a sitting judge in Collin County. What followed is the unbelievable, epic tale of the craziest case in the history of jurisprudence.
 

Suzanne Wooten had 10 minutes to decide her own fate. It was the Tuesday before Thanksgiving in 2011, and the jury just wanted to go home. Wooten did, too. The 43-year-old Collin County District Court judge was used to observing the courtroom from the opposite vantage point. Now, she was seated at the defense table, dressed not in a robe but in a conservative pantsuit, her blond hair pulled back in a basic bun. She was facing not only the loss of her career but also the loss of her family. Charged with nine felony counts that included bribery, conspiracy to engage in organized criminal activity, and money laundering, Wooten could be sentenced to anything from five years to life in prison.

 

The whole trial had felt like a terrible farce. She had been accused of taking bribes from a couple, whom she swore she had never personally met, to fund campaign expenses, which she had checks to show she had paid for, in return for favorable decisions in a custody dispute, which she had recused herself from and never heard. But that didn’t stop the lead prosecutor, Assistant Attorney General Harry White, from projecting on screen a photo of Marlon Brando as Vito Corleone in The Godfather and saying, “Not all mob bosses look like that.” 

 

Her lawyers reassured her there was no rational basis for a conviction. If there was, every judge in the state of Texas could be indicted as well. But during the trial, when the jury stopped making eye contact with her, Wooten knew she was in trouble.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Ohio Plans to Execute a Man It Knows Is Innocent—Why?

 

Anthony Apanovitch is an innocent man, and the state of Ohio knows it. But it plans to execute him anyway.

 

Apanovitch is on death row even though DNA evidence conclusively proves that he did not commit the crime for which he has been sentenced to die. He is there because of a shocking combination of prosecutorial misconduct and the desire of some supporters of capital punishment to achieve finality in death cases even if it comes at the expense of justice.

 

This almost unimaginable situation defies any semblance of justice and simple fairness. Executing the innocent is an American nightmare. It is a nightmare that Apanovitch is living.

The state of Ohio needs to end that nightmare and make sure that it doesn’t commit a state-sanctioned murder.

 

But the most startling injustice in Apanovitch’s case happened years after his trial and conviction. In 2000 the county medical examiner’s office discovered slides with biological material that had been taken from the victim during her autopsy.

 

When the medical examiner tested it for DNA, he did, he found definitive proof that Apanovitch could not have been the source of the DNA taken from in Ms. Flynn’s vagina. But the state again hid the evidence, even though Apanovitch was pursuing post-conviction relief at the time.

 

In 2008, the exculpatory DNA evidence finally came to light. Apanovitch then sought a new trial. After a hearing on that request, a trial judge acquitted him on the rape charge and ordered a new trial on the murder charge.

 

As a result, Apanovitch was released from death row and sent home after almost 32 years on death row.

 

While he was free, the state appealed the trial judge’s decision. In 2018 the Ohio Supreme Court held that the trial court “lacked subject matter jurisdiction” and sent the case back to that court which, in light of that decision, this time refused Apanovitch’s request for a new trial.

 

Even by the standards of a legal system awash in Kafkaesque technicalities which sometimes stand in the way of justice, the Ohio Supreme Court decision sets a new mark for heartlessness.

 

Although no one doubted the accuracy of the DNA results, the supreme court decided that Apanovitch could not use them to prove his innocence. It cited a state law that said DNA could only be used in cases where the defendant requested the testing. The fact that Apanovitch could not have requested testing of evidence that the state had hidden from him didn’t matter.

 

As the court itself acknowledged, in a monstrous understatement, its decision could be characterized as “unduly formalistic or unfair.”

 

Nonetheless it made that decision, as Justice Terrance O’Donnell put it, to “ensure the finality of this nearly 34-year-old judgment.” It was time to get on with the business of executing Anthony Apanovitch.

 

With no judicial remedies available to him, Apanovitch has applied for executive clemency.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

DNA evidence has freed a California man imprisoned for more than 38 years

 

A man who spent more than 38 years behind bars for a 1983 murder and two attempted murders has been released from a California prison after long-untested DNA evidence pointed to a different person, the Los Angeles County district attorney said Friday.

 

The conviction of Maurice Hastings, 69, and a life sentence were vacated during an Oct. 20 court hearing at the request of prosecutors and his lawyers from the Los Angeles Innocence Project at California State University, Los Angeles.

 

"I prayed for many years that this day would come," Hastings said at a news conference Friday, adding: "I am not pointing fingers; I am not standing up here a bitter man, but I just want to enjoy my life now while I have it."

 

"What has happened to Mr. Hastings is a terrible injustice," District Attorney George Gascón said in a statement. "The justice system is not perfect, and when we learn of new evidence which causes us to lose confidence in a conviction, it is our obligation to act swiftly."

 

The victim in the case, Roberta Wydermyer, was sexually assaulted and killed by a single gunshot to the head, authorities said. Her body was found in the trunk of her vehicle in the Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[CousinsCowgirl84]

saw this chart on last week tonight…

 

 

Eye opening. And look at that drop off at then end. How many people were sitting in jail over a roach?

 

 

 

Edited November 1, 2022 by CousinsCowgirl84

[China]

Alabama pausing executions after 3rd failed lethal injection

 

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey sought a pause in executions and ordered a “top-to-bottom” review of the state’s capital punishment system Monday after an unprecedented third failed lethal injection.

 

Ivey’s office issued a statement saying she had both asked Attorney General Steve Marshall to withdraw motions seeking execution dates for two inmates and requested that the Department of Corrections undertake a full review of the state’s execution process.

 

Ivey also requested that Marshall not seek additional execution dates for any other death row inmates until the review is complete.

 

The move followed the uncompleted execution Thursday of Kenneth Eugene Smith, which was the state’s second such instance of being unable to put an inmate to death in the past two months and its third since 2018. The state completed an execution in July, but only after a three-hour delay caused at least partly by the same problem with starting an IV line.

 

Denying that prison officials or law enforcement are to blame for the problems, Ivey said “legal tactics and criminals hijacking the system are at play here.”

 

Alabama Arise, a nonprofit that advocates on behalf of the poor, said Marshall should agree to a moratorium and urged legislators to “do their part to reduce the unfairness of Alabama’s death penalty system.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

[The 12th Commandment]

10 hours ago, China said:

Alabama pausing executions after 3rd failed lethal injection

 

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey sought a pause in executions and ordered a “top-to-bottom” review of the state’s capital punishment system Monday after an unprecedented third failed lethal injection.

 

Ivey’s office issued a statement saying she had both asked Attorney General Steve Marshall to withdraw motions seeking execution dates for two inmates and requested that the Department of Corrections undertake a full review of the state’s execution process.

 

Ivey also requested that Marshall not seek additional execution dates for any other death row inmates until the review is complete.

 

The move followed the uncompleted execution Thursday of Kenneth Eugene Smith, which was the state’s second such instance of being unable to put an inmate to death in the past two months and its third since 2018. The state completed an execution in July, but only after a three-hour delay caused at least partly by the same problem with starting an IV line.

 

Denying that prison officials or law enforcement are to blame for the problems, Ivey said “legal tactics and criminals hijacking the system are at play here.”

 

Alabama Arise, a nonprofit that advocates on behalf of the poor, said Marshall should agree to a moratorium and urged legislators to “do their part to reduce the unfairness of Alabama’s death penalty system.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

As someone who gets stuck pretty routinely, all you have to do is go into it relatively dehydrated and they're going to have a rough time finding a vein.  Made that mistake once and won't do it again (unless I'm on death row).