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Access to Justice
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August 15, 2024
Feds, NJ Judiciary Reach Deal Over Language Access Bias
The New Jersey judiciary has reached a settlement to resolve a federal investigation into alleged discrimination against non-English speakers in Monmouth County court, agreeing to increase training and translation services systemwide, according to an announcement Thursday.
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August 14, 2024
9th Circ. Appears Skeptical Of Ex-Assistant DA's Firing Suit
The Ninth Circuit on Wednesday seemed chilly to a former San Francisco assistant district attorney's claim that he was booted from his post as punishment for blowing the whistle on misconduct, with judges saying he hadn't drawn a clear connection between speaking out and getting fired.
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August 13, 2024
LA Prosecutor Sues DA Over Handling Of Sex Assault Case
A Los Angeles County deputy district attorney has filed a whistleblower retaliation lawsuit in California state court against District Attorney George Gascón and Los Angeles County, alleging that he was targeted for exposing misconduct within the DA's office over its handling of a high-profile sex assault case.
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August 13, 2024
Honduran Woman's Rape Case Against ICE Dismissed Again
A Honduran immigrant waited too long to sue over claims that a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent raped her repeatedly for seven years, a Connecticut federal court ruled for the second time, once again finding in favor of the defendants after the Second Circuit revived the case in 2023.
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August 09, 2024
Not Enough Data To Find Jury Racial Disparity, 2nd Circ. Says
The Second Circuit declined to find that the Southern District of New York's jury selection procedures cause underrepresentation of minorities, but welcomed "a future challenge with greater proof" against the district's voter registration-based system.
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August 09, 2024
NYC Prisons Face Contempt Bid Over Missed Medical Service
Inmates of the New York City prison system have rekindled a class action against the city's Department of Correction with a contempt motion claiming the department has failed to follow a court order to provide prisoners with better access to healthcare services.
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August 07, 2024
Relativity Adds AI Product To Its Justice For Change Program
E-discovery and legal software provider Relativity announced Wednesday that its social impact program Justice for Change will now include free access to its generative artificial intelligence product aiR for review beginning in September.
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August 06, 2024
Texas Justices Look To Non-Attys To Narrow 'Justice Gap'
In seeking to make legal help accessible to low-income residents of the Lone Star State, the Texas Supreme Court on Tuesday laid the groundwork for allowing nonattorneys to provide limited legal services, while remaining silent on the issue of nonlawyer ownership in organizations that provide legal services.
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July 31, 2024
Lawsuit Aims To Save Bail Overhaul In Memphis, Tenn.
A Memphis, Tennessee, criminal justice advocacy group, Just City, reached a deal with local officials in 2022 to soften cash bail rules at local jails, but this year, the conservative state Legislature passed a law to force a return to the old cash bail system, and now Just City is suing to save the deal.
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July 31, 2024
Cities, States Weigh Homeless Policies Post-Grants Pass
In the weeks since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that an Oregon city's camping ban doesn't amount to cruel and unusual punishment of its unhoused residents, municipal and state governments are rethinking their approach to homeless encampments and weighing newfound authority.
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July 29, 2024
Wash. Says At-Home Rape Kit Law Targets Harm, Not Speech
Washington pushed back against a company's bid to pause enforcement of a ban on the sale of "DIY" DNA collection kits to sexual assault survivors, saying the prohibition is meant to prevent victims from being tricked into thinking the kit results will stand up in court.
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July 26, 2024
Digital Guides And Plain Language Key To Court Accessibility
Court forms should be designed with self-represented litigants in mind, researchers at the University of Ottawa said in a recent report, which implores judicial stakeholders to consider introducing guided pathways on digital forms and to massage legal jargon into easily understood, plain-language instructions.
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July 25, 2024
Public Counsel Promotes Longtime Civil Rights Atty To CEO
Public Counsel's newly named President and CEO Kathryn Eidmann went to law school focused on becoming a professor, wanting eventually to write academic works on access to justice and other legal issues. That all changed during her first clinic in law school, she told Law360 Pulse in an interview.
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July 24, 2024
Most Think Right To Atty Includes Civil Suits, LSC Poll Finds
A majority of Americans surveyed this month said they didn't seek legal representation when faced with life-changing civil legal issues over the past three years, and more than half said they believe if they can't afford an attorney, they're entitled to free representation in civil legal matters.
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July 22, 2024
Haynes Boone Hires Dallas-Based Pro Bono Head
Haynes and Boone LLP has tapped an attorney who spent the last six years leading the legal department of a women's shelter nonprofit as the new head of the firm's pro bono efforts.
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July 17, 2024
Ohio Justices Enforce $30M Police Brutality Judgment
The Ohio Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered the city of East Cleveland to pay upwards of $30 million to satisfy a judgment in favor of a man who won a jury verdict finding that police officers wrongfully detained him and caused serious injuries in the process.
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July 15, 2024
Cook County To Double Restorative Justice Courts
Cook County Chief Circuit Judge Timothy Evans pledged Monday to more than double the county's so-called second-chance courts this year, praising their results so far in cutting recidivism by diverting young-offender prosecutions in favor of personal rehabilitation.
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July 12, 2024
Colo. Prisoners Seek Class Cert. In Slave Labor Suit
A pair of Colorado prisoners have asked a state judge to grant class certification for their suit alleging the state is illegally using them for slave labor, detailing their experiences of punishment like extensive isolation for refusing to work.
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July 09, 2024
Texas Chief Justice Calls Pulling IDs Over Fines 'Stupid'
The chief justice of the Supreme Court of Texas told the Senate Judiciary Committee during a Tuesday hearing on funding civil legal aid that the practice of revoking a person's driver's license for an inability to pay court fees was "stupid."
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July 05, 2024
How A Mayer Brown-Led Coalition Secured 143 Asylum Grants
A Mayer Brown LLP-led coalition of 20 law firms celebrated a major pro bono victory after recently securing asylum for 143 Asian University for Women students who the firm helped evacuate from Afghanistan in 2021.
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July 02, 2024
Native American Activist Leonard Peltier Denied Parole
The U.S. Parole Commission on Tuesday denied parole for Leonard Peltier, a Native American activist serving a life sentence for his conviction in the 1975 slayings of two FBI agents, despite an array of calls for clemency over the years from such luminaries as Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama, as well as tribes, civil rights groups and federal lawmakers.
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July 02, 2024
Sentencing Relief Law Gets Another Supreme Court Look
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to consider whether a sentencing reduction provision in the First Step Act can apply to defendants whose sentences prior to the 2018 law are vacated and who are resentenced with the statute in effect.
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July 01, 2024
Juror Didn't Taint Trial Before Removal, Colo. Justices Say
The Colorado Supreme Court said Monday that a trial judge's rejection of a Black defendant's challenge to a juror for alleged racial bias did not infringe on the defendant's rights, according to a majority decision that concluded the error was harmless because the juror was ultimately sent home.
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June 28, 2024
Problems Linger Amid Efforts To Clean Up Debt Firm's Mess
After the collapse of a California debt relief firm last year amid allegations of fraud, a bankruptcy judge signed off on a plan to allow a new firm to begin providing services for thousands of affected clients. While the new firm has promised to clean up its predecessor’s mess, some consumers say little to nothing has changed, and now enforcement agencies including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have started asking questions.
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June 28, 2024
Access To Justice Will Return In September
Law360's Access To Justice newsletter will be taking a summer hiatus after today's issue and will return on Sept. 7.
Expert Analysis
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11th Circ. Block Of 'Stop WOKE' Act Is Good For Public Safety
The Eleventh Circuit’s recent decision to uphold an injunction of Florida’s so-called Stop WOKE Act, a law that curtails workplace diversity training, means that law enforcement can continue receiving such training — an essential step toward more equitable policing and public safety, say Miriam Krinsky at Fair and Just Prosecution and Diane Goldstein at Law Enforcement Action Partnership.
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Prosecutors' Growing Case Backlogs Need Urgent Attention
Growing case backlogs in prosecutors' offices around the country affect the functioning of the entire criminal legal system, so the problem's root causes must be immediately addressed, say Minnesota county prosecutor John Choi and Montana county prosecutor Audrey Cromwell.
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Context Is Everything In Justices' Sentencing Relief Decision
In the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Pulsifer v. U.S. decision, limiting the number of drug offenders eligible for sentencing relief, the majority and dissent adopted very different contextual frames for interpreting the meaning of “and” — with the practical impact being that thousands more defendants will be subject to severe mandatory minimums, says Douglas Berman at Moritz College of Law.
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Passing The HALT Fentanyl Act Will Repeat Past Mistakes
The war on drugs has failed, with overdose deaths at an all-time high despite decades of criminalization, so lawmakers should vote no on the HALT Fentanyl Act's proposal to impose lengthy mandatory minimum sentences for fentanyl-related drug offenses, says Liz Komar at The Sentencing Project.
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Behind The Unique Hurdles Of Rural Access To Justice
While rural access to justice has become conflated with access to lawyers, the two are not synonymous, and in order to solve both issues, it is critical to further examine the role and impact of resident attorneys in these communities, say Daria Fisher Page and Brian Farrell at the University of Iowa College of Law.
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Compassionate Release Grants Needed Now More Than Ever
After the U.S. Sentencing Commission's recent expansion of the criteria for determining compassionate release eligibility, courts should grant such motions more frequently in light of the inherently dangerous conditions presented by increasingly understaffed and overpopulated federal prisons, say Alan Ellis and Mark Allenbaugh at the Law Offices of Alan Ellis.
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Justices' Double Jeopardy Ruling Preserves Acquittal Sanctity
The U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous decision last week in McElrath v. Georgia, barring the state from retrying a man acquitted of murder after a so-called repugnant verdict, is significant in the tangled web of double jeopardy jurisprudence for its brief and unequivocal protection of an acquittal’s finality, says Lissa Griffin at Pace Law School.
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NY Must Address Urgent Need For Immigration Legal Aid
The recent influx of migrants to New York has exposed the urgent need for state legislators to make a long-term investment in sustainable immigration legal services infrastructure, supervision and training, say Marielena Hincapié and Stephen Yale-Loehr at Cornell Law.
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911 Call Scrutiny Should Not Be Used To Identify Suspects
Though the use of 911 call analysis to identify suspects continues to spread across the country, this scientifically unproven method opens the door to wrongful convictions, so prosecutors should review investigations that relied on the technique, and lawmakers should ban it nationwide, say Miriam Krinsky at Fair and Just Prosecution and Isabelle Cohn at the Innocence Project.
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6 Practice Pointers For Pro Bono Immigration Practice
An attorney taking on their first pro bono immigration matter may find the law and procedures beguiling, but understanding key deadlines, the significance of individual immigration judges' rules and specialized aspects of the practice can help avoid common missteps, says Steven Malm at Haynes Boone.
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8th Circ. Redistricting Ruling Imperils The Voting Rights Act
The Eighth Circuit’s recent ruling in Arkansas NAACP v. Arkansas Board of Apportionment, holding that private plaintiffs don't have standing to sue in redistricting cases, creates a circuit split, and, if upheld, would nearly destroy the Voting Rights Act, says William Brewer at Brewer Storefront.
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Justices May Clarify Expert Witness Confrontation Confusion
After oral arguments in Smith v. Arizona, the U.S. Supreme Court seems poised to hold that expert witness opinions that rely on out-of-court testimonial statements for their factual basis are unconstitutional, thus resolving some of the complications created by the court’s confrontation clause jurisprudence, says Richard Friedman at the University of Michigan Law School.
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Immigration Detention Should Offer Universal Legal Counsel
Given the large backlog of immigration court cases and the more than 70% of people in immigration detention without counsel in 2023, the system should establish a universal right to federally funded representation for anyone facing deportation, similar to the public defender model, say Laura Lunn and Shaleen Morales at the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network.
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UX Research And Design Is Crucial For Justice Technologies
It’s essential that new access-to-justice digital tools incorporate user experience research and design methodologies to enhance access and accessibility, improve efficiency in processes and service delivery, and reduce risk, says Sarah Mauet at Innovation for Justice.
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Higher Juror Compensation Trend Is Good For Justice System
This year a number of states increased daily juror compensation rates after decades of stagnation — a positive development that facilitates more representative juries, aids decision making and boosts public confidence in the legal system, says Cary Silverman at Shook Hardy.