Brian Krans | KQED | April 18, 2025
"J. Gary Gwilliam, another attorney representing the plaintiffs, said the case was about the government — specifically employees of the Stanislaus County sheriff and district attorneys offices and the Modesto Police Department — going after someone for political reasons, something that is “very topical of what’s going on in our country.”
“Why did they go after Frank Carson? Because he was a very good defense attorney. He’d taken them on, he’d beaten them, and they decided to frame him, quite frankly, and go after him in years and years of litigation,” Gwillliam said. “And I guess, in one way, they may have won their battle, because ultimately it cost him his life and it ruined his family.”
In half the country, sex offense civil commitment incarcerates people after they complete their prison sentences.
October Krausch | The Appeal | April 21, 2025
"Nationally, more than 6,000 people are held in sex offense civil commitment, according to a 2024 report from the Prison Policy Initiative. While the states that run such programs say they’re focused on rehabilitation, critics have long said the systems seem to be a thinly veiled way to warehouse people instead of treating them. Such programs have long been called untransparent and stacked with draconian release conditions. Furthermore, studies have shown that sex offense civil commitment does not prevent sexual violence."
Michigan’s Supreme Court created new protections against life sentences for people up to 20, pushing the line for who gets second chances beyond age 18.
Daniel Nichanian | Bolts | April 18, 2025
"Michigan’s supreme court ruled last week that it is unconstitutional to impose an automatic sentence of life without the possibility of parole on young adults up to age 20, saying they deserve an individual judgment specific to their circumstances. This protection was already in place for youth up to age 18, but the justices ruled that the cutoff should be higher, pointing to scientific research that shows people’s brain development continues into their 20s."
Joe Eskenazi | Mission Local | April 17, 2025
San Francisco DA’s breach is ‘more egregious’ than that of L.A. prosecutor, legal experts say — but only one is facing six years in prison
"[T]he underlying material Teran is accused of accessing is not nuclear secrets or the New York Times crime-against-humanity green pea guacamole recipe. Again, these were public documents, court files written by judges, regarding potentially problematic officers who might hamper future prosecutions. This is something the Los Angeles DA’s office would want to know, and is mandated to compile by law.
You can’t say the same thing about Jenkins, who accessed private and protected records she had no business accessing, and then sent them to the personal email of a colleague who also had no business possessing them."
Delaney Nolan | The Appeal | April 14, 2025
"As U.S. homelessness rates reach record highs, President Donald Trump has pledged to ban street camping, relocate unhoused people to privately-managed “tent cities,” and arrest anyone caught violating the new laws. But while Trump’s threats certainly sound draconian, they’re not exactly novel. In recent years, several states have organized increasingly harsh homeless sweeps—perhaps most typified by Louisiana, where the governor recently oversaw a possible model for the sort of mass relocation that Trump has promised."
Records suggest Quest Diagnostics erroneously detected opiates. Lawyers say parole requests were jeopardized in the process.
Sam Levin | The Guardian | April 9, 2025
"Thousands of drug tests used by a major US diagnostic company in California prisons last year are suspected to have generated false positive results, an enormous error that has jeopardized the parole requests of some incarcerated people, according to civil rights lawyers and prison medical records.
California prison officials have known about the issue for months, but have failed to clear people’s records or reverse the consequences people have faced from the tests."
DA’s stated rationale to State Bar for downloading and disseminating privileged information appears to be a tacit admission of breaking the law
Joe Eskenazi | Mission Local | April 9, 2025
"Say what you will about the State Bar — and it is unclear how rigorous an investigation it mounted over these past 29-odd months beyond asking Jenkins questions and leaving it at that — but someone over there has a sense of humor. Jenkins, in her two years and change atop the office, has moved drastically away from the diversionary programs championed by her ousted predecessor, Chesa Boudin. Now, to borrow the line from “Pirates of the Caribbean,” she’s in one.
State Bar spokesperson Rick Coca said that the attorneys shunted into the diversion program are, by and large, “those who have not been the subject of prior discipline, who do not have a history including 15 or more complaints within the last five years, and who are the subjects of complaints alleging that they engaged in isolated misconduct with a low risk to public protection.”
Diversion, he continues, “serves many of the purposes of discipline” in part through “education, direction [and] warning.” Ultimately, the program leads to the “rehabilitating” of the “attorney receiving diversion.”
Yes — rehabilitating. Via diversion. The irony is strong with this one. No doubt about it, someone over there has a transcendent sense of humor."
In some parts of the state, misdemeanor defendants routinely face charges without representation.
Jolie McCullough | New York Times | April 4, 2025
"The right to a criminal defense lawyer is so ingrained in the American idea of justice that fans of TV police dramas can recite these two lines from the Miranda rights by memory: You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you.
But in much of Texas, that right is routinely denied. Every year, more than half of rural Texans accused of misdemeanors are left to represent themselves — five times the rate of defendants in urban areas, according to estimates from the Texas Indigent Defense Commission, which is tasked by state statute with ensuring the right to an attorney is protected."
Gustavo Arellano | Los Angeles Times | April 3, 2025
"The longtime Orange County public defender changed local history in 2013 when he presented a judge with evidence that sheriff’s deputies had illegally used jailhouse snitches for decades.
Although prosecutors and law enforcement have long used jailhouse informants, they can’t be tapped once the defendant has been charged and has a lawyer. Sanders claimed that the O.C. District Attorney’s office repeatedly and knowingly violated this constitutional protection. Prosecutors, for their part, derided Sanders in court and to the press as a desperate hack willing to lie to defend Scott Dekraai, a client accused of massacring eight people at a Seal Beach salon.
But Sanders was right."
The “crime panic” was a myth. But an analysis by The Appeal shows the narrative helped local police buy facial recognition software, drones, license plate readers, social media surveillance tech, and more.
Joey Scott | March 27, 2025
Alabama’s attorney general said he would charge abortion funds for helping people end their pregnancies in other states. On Monday, a federal judge said doing so would violate the U.S. Constitution.
Meg O'Connor | April 1, 2025
The decision by Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs to resume capital punishment aligns with a larger trend of death penalty states hiding key details about executions.
Pascal Sabino, Lauren Gill | March 17, 2025
In a predominantly Black area of Chicago, police can now directly file gun charges without a prosecutor’s approval. The new program rolls back a process that serves to check misconduct.
Shawn Mulcahy | March 14, 2025
For several years now, Oregon has been violating people’s constitutional rights to counsel.The familiar refrain, “You have a right to an attorney. If you can’t provide one, one will be provided for you” is no longer guaranteed in this state. And the problem is growing. The number of people without counsel recently reached an all-time high.
Lauren Dake | March 13, 2025
Inspections have found repeated violations of federal standards at GEO Group’s Central Louisiana ICE Processing Facility.
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg, Ethan Corey | March 10, 2025
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