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Access to Justice
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February 26, 2024
Murder, Robbery Exoneree Seeks $1M For Lost Years
A Massachusetts man who spent more than half his life in prison before being exonerated for a 1994 murder and robbery has filed a lawsuit seeking $1 million in compensation under a 20-year-old state law.
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February 23, 2024
Mass. Ruling Seen As 'Sea Change' In Young Adult Sentencing
A first-of-its-kind ruling by Massachusetts’ top appeals court recently declared sentences of life without parole for anyone under 21 to be unconstitutional, and advocates say the decision and the science backing it up could provide a road map for young adult sentencing reform nationwide.
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February 23, 2024
New Group Aims To Help Attys Meet Middle Class Legal Needs
For middle-class Americans who may make too much money to qualify for legal aid services, affording an attorney to assist with civil matters like divorces and estate planning can still be a financial impossibility. The recently launched Above The Line Network, however, is on a mission to promote cost-conscious lawyering models to put legal services within economic reach for a big and underserved middle market.
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February 23, 2024
WilmerHale Scores Win For Hearing Impaired Mass. Prisoners
After an eight-year legal fight, WilmerHale and several nonprofit legal advocacy organizations recently won a major ruling from a federal judge to help change how deaf and hard-of-hearing Massachusetts prisoners receive emergency notifications and other announcements.
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February 23, 2024
ABA Report Says Electronic Monitoring Of Migrants Is Punitive
The electronic monitoring of noncitizens by immigration authorities amounts to a form of detention that imposes a "considerable human toll" on immigrants and their families and may even violate constitutional guarantees of due process, according to a report commissioned by the American Bar Association that was released Friday.
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February 23, 2024
ACLU Kicks Off Clemency Project To Reduce NJ Incarceration
The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey has launched a new initiative aimed at reducing sentences for incarcerated victims of domestic violence and people facing extreme trial penalties, advocating for a framework that calls on the governor to holistically consider injustices facing those groups of people when making decisions on clemency.
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February 23, 2024
How Jenner & Block Is Living Up To $250M Pro Bono Pledge
After pledging four years ago to provide $250 million in free legal assistance through 2025, the co-chair of Jenner & Block LLP’s pro bono committee told Law360 recently that the firm was already 80% of the way toward its goal as attorneys tackle matters involving immigration, humanitarian parole, voting access and more.
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February 21, 2024
Justices Reject Ga.'s Bid To Retry Man Acquitted Of Murder
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday blocked Georgia's attempt to again prosecute an accused murderer whose trial ended in contradictory verdicts, finding that "an acquittal is an acquittal" regardless of a simultaneous guilty verdict for the same offense.
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February 20, 2024
Jurors' Death Penalty Views Not Tied To Race, Colo. Justices Say
The Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday unanimously rejected a Black man's efforts to reverse his 2008 murder conviction for a drive-by shooting, with the justices finding that prosecutors' dismissal of two Black jurors did not amount to improper racial bias.
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February 20, 2024
Alito 'Concerned' Jurors Can Be Axed For Religious Beliefs
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said Tuesday he is "concerned" about the prospect of potential jurors being dismissed because of their religious beliefs, as the justices declined to hear a case in which Christian jurors were excused over their views on homosexuality.
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February 16, 2024
Inmate Suicides Linked To Federal Prison Bureau's Failures
Federal prisons have for years been plagued by "a multitude of operational failures" that have resulted in inmates dying, many of them by suicide, a federal watchdog has found.
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February 15, 2024
What Rescheduling Pot Would Mean For Criminal Justice Reform
While federal drug enforcers mull a recommendation from health regulators to loosen restrictions on marijuana, criminal justice reformers are warning that rescheduling the drug would not realize President Joe Biden's campaign promise to decriminalize marijuana.
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February 14, 2024
San Francisco's Ankle Monitor Rules Put On Hold
A federal judge in California has halted the San Francisco Sheriff's Office from enforcing rules that forced criminal defendants released pretrial under electronic monitoring to agree to be subjected to warrantless and suspicionless searches at any time and allow their GPS data to be shared among law enforcement agencies, court documents show.
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February 13, 2024
Colo. Justices Struggle To Draw Lines On Jury Race Bias Rule
Colorado Supreme Court justices acknowledged Tuesday that current rules allow prosecutors to improperly strike people of color from juries for reasons linked to their race, but they grappled with whether they could revise the standard without going too far.
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February 13, 2024
4th Circ. Won't Upend Life Sentence Over Trump Phone Call
The Fourth Circuit refused Tuesday to disturb the life sentence of a man convicted of murder and drug trafficking, holding that even if former President Donald Trump said he intended to commute the sentence during a phone call, that intent isn't enough.
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February 13, 2024
Milbank, Perlmutter Center Pair Up To Fight Injustices In Court
Milbank LLP has pledged $1 million to create an exoneration and resentencing review unit at Yeshiva University's Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law's Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice as part of an alliance aimed at fighting inequities in the criminal justice system, the firm said Tuesday.
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February 12, 2024
BigLaw Slams Hochul Plan To Divert Client Trust Interest Cash
A long list of BigLaw attorneys, firm leaders and legal groups have urged New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to reconsider her plan to divert $100 million in interest earned on lawyer trust accounts that typically goes toward legal aid for low-income New Yorkers, calling the move "misguided" and cautioning that it could create "an existential threat" to civil legal services.
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February 09, 2024
New York Teacher Pays $75K For Mock Slave Auction Harm
A northern New York teacher will pay $75,000 for holding a mock slave auction of Black students in her classroom, settling a federal suit over a lesson a 10-year-old student's mother said emotionally damaged her son.
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February 08, 2024
NYC Police Union Can't 'Veto' NYPD Protest Deal, Judge Says
A federal judge on Wednesday shot down a bid by New York City's largest police union to block a sweeping reform of police protocols for handling protests, saying the union could not torpedo a settlement that ended a high-profile, sprawling legal case arising out of the 2020 demonstrations against police brutality.
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February 07, 2024
Fla. Courts' Fines And Fees Trap Poor In Debt, ABA Finds
The public defense group of the American Bar Association on Wednesday released a comprehensive report lambasting the fines and fees system in Florida's county-level misdemeanor court system, recommending the courts eliminate so-called user fees and establish an "ability-to-pay standard."
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February 06, 2024
Electrocution, Firing Squad Aren't Cruel, SC High Court Told
The government of South Carolina told the state's top court Tuesday that executing death row prisoners by electrocution or firing squad does not violate the state's constitution because there isn't sufficient evidence that those methods are either too painful, gruesome or out of step with what society at large accepts.
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February 02, 2024
How Court Fees Can Keep Poor NYers From Inheriting Homes
Inheriting property in New York means going through the state surrogate’s court system, where filing fees can run more than $1,000. While state law allows low-income residents to have their fees waived, legal aid attorneys say that courts sometimes refuse to apply it.
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February 02, 2024
Birmingham, Ala., Hit with $4.5M Verdict Over Police Shooting
An Alabama federal jury hit the city of Birmingham with a $4.5 million verdict over a fatal police shooting, finding that a city officer violated the constitutional rights of two people when he fired upon them while they were immobilized in a vehicle at the end of a car chase.
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February 02, 2024
Pushing To Make The Formerly Incarcerated A Protected Class
After a pair of formerly incarcerated activists helped convince local leaders in Atlanta to extend anti-discrimination protections to people with criminal records by making them a legally protected class, they and others are now working to get more cities — and eventually maybe the federal government — to do the same.
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February 02, 2024
ACLU Atty On How To Protect Civil Liberties In The AI Era
Because artificial intelligence and algorithmic systems often operate in the shadows, there's a new need for legislation, regulation and enforcement to ensure the technology doesn't undercut civil liberties by engaging in discrimination in housing, education or employment, according to Cody Venzke, senior policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.
Expert Analysis
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Time To Fix Legal Industry's Environmental Pro Bono Problem
As we observe Earth Month, it's sobering to note that pro bono environmental law work lags behind other practice areas — but the good news is that there are numerous organizations that can help lawyers get connected with environment-related pro bono projects, says Matthew Karmel at Riker Danzig.
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How Prosecutors Can End Cycle Of Intimate Partner Violence
With 10 million people in the U.S. reporting that they experience intimate partner violence each year, it’s clear that traditional forms of prosecution are falling short, especially in small and rural communities, but prosecutors can explore new ways to support survivors and prevent violence, say Alissa Marque Heydari at John Jay College and David Sullivan, a district attorney.
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DOJ's Boeing Immunity Deal Violated Crime Victims' Rights
The Northern District of Texas should support the arguments of 737 Max plane crash victims’ families, and hold that the U.S. Department of Justice violated the families' ability to provide input under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act when it secretly entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with Boeing, says Meg Garvin at the National Crime Victims Law Institute.
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Jackson Confirmation Hearings Should Examine Due Process
In the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings, senators should assess Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s approach to holding government actors accountable in the areas of qualified immunity and forfeiture, as revisiting shaky precedents on these topics could help guarantee due process for all, says Marc Levin at the Council on Criminal Justice.
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ABA's New Anti-Bias Curriculum Rule Is Insufficient
The American Bar Association's recently approved requirement that law schools educate students on bias, cross-cultural competency and racism, while a step in the right direction, fails to publicly acknowledge and commit to eradicating the systemic racial inequality in our legal system, says criminal defense attorney Donna Mulvihill Fehrmann.
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Justice Reforms Call For Quick Action To Fill US Atty Spots
U.S. attorneys play an important role in transforming the criminal legal system for several reasons, and they can restore integrity and independence to the U.S. Department of Justice, so President Joe Biden and Congress must move quickly to fill the remaining two-thirds of the top prosecutor seats, says Derick Dailey at Davis + Gilbert.
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Judge's Veto Of Arbery Hate Crime Plea Deal Is Not Unusual
Contrary to media commentary, a Georgia federal judge’s rejection of the plea agreement between prosecutors and a defendant charged with hate crimes in the murder of Ahmaud Arbery is not actually surprising — it simply indicates the judge’s desire to retain discretion and allow all parties to be heard before making a just sentencing decision, says Dominick Gerace at Taft Stettinius.
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Indefinite Migrant Detention Without Review Is Kafkaesque
In two recently argued U.S. Supreme Court cases, the government's position that detained migrants can't demand an immigration judge review their confinement, but can instead file a habeas petition in federal court, reads like a work of Kafka, offering only the illusion of access to a hearing before a neutral fact-finder, says César García Hernández at Ohio State University.
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2 Worthy Goals For The DOJ's New Domestic Terrorism Unit
The U.S. Department of Justice’s newly announced Domestic Terrorism Unit should include both counterterrorism and civil rights prosecutors, and would benefit from a criminal statute that is modeled after international terrorism laws and that strikes a balance between protecting the public and constitutional rights, say Emil Bove and Brittany Manna at Chiesa Shahinian.
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Justice Reforms Are Not To Blame For Waukesha Tragedy
Last month's parade attack in Wisconsin has brought into focus the fact that the accused was out of jail on a low bond — but this tragedy must not be exploited to reverse years of long-overdue criminal justice reform, when emerging data shows that new prosecutorial models are associated with better outcomes than an overly punitive approach, says Alissa Marque Heydari at John Jay College.
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Addressing Prison Risk After CARES Act Home Confinement
Home confinement eligibility, which was expanded last year due to high rates of COVID-19 in penal institutions, may soon be tightened, so house-detained individuals at risk of returning to prison should understand their various avenues for relief, as well as the procedural obstacles they may face in mounting legal challenges, say Charles Burnham and Jonathan Knowles at Burnham & Gorokhov.
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We Must Help Fix Justice Gap In Georgia's Legal Deserts
In much of rural Georgia, there are too few lawyers to meet residents’ urgent legal needs, forcing self-represented litigants to navigate an impenetrable system, but courts, law firms and nonlawyers can help address these legal deserts in various ways, says Lauren Sudeall at Georgia State University College of Law.
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Reimagining Courthouse Design For Better Access To Justice
While courthouse design has historically been driven by tradition, it is time to shift from the classical courthouse to spaces that are accessible to those with mobility challenges, serve the needs of vulnerable litigants, and accommodate pandemic-era shifts toward remote and hybrid proceedings, says architect Clair Colburn at Finegold Alexander.
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Why Law Schools Should Require Justice Reform Curriculum
Criminal defense attorney Donna Mulvihill Fehrmann argues that law schools have an obligation to address widespread racial and economic disparities in the U.S. legal system by mandating first-year coursework on criminal justice reform that educates on prosecutorial misconduct, wrongful convictions, defense 101 and more.
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Attorneys, Fight For Enviro Justice With Both Law And Protest
In this moment of climate crisis, lawyers can and should use law and protest in tandem — from urging law firms to stop serving the fossil fuel industry to helping draft laws that accelerate the transition to a sustainable way of life, says Vivek Maru at Namati.