Jail Walls Block The Ballot. Advocates Try To Bring It Inside

By Marco Poggio

For eligible people detained before trial across the country, the right to vote can depend on a tenuous chain of requests to the institution holding them. Across the country, however, election officials and advocates are working to ensure eligible voters can cast a ballot from jail.

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Attys Can Still Protect Voting Rights During The Midterms

By Cara Bayles

With the midterm elections approaching, a coalition of local and national nonprofits are seeking volunteers, especially lawyers, to safeguard the vote during an election with more states in play as battlegrounds and growing anxiety about federal interference in local elections.

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Q&A

Law Prof Takes Aim At Vanishing Jury Trials In Documentary

By Marco Poggio

Law professor Suja A. Thomas spoke with Law360 about the experiences that inspired her new documentary “The Best Justice System in the World," about the disappearing jury trial. Thomas discusses the challenge of using humor to explore injustice and why she believes restoring the jury's role is essential to reforming the legal system.

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Nonprofits Sue Over NC Budget Gutting Civil Legal Aid Grants

By Hayley Fowler

Three nonprofits are mounting a legal challenge to a provision of the North Carolina state budget that strips funding for civil legal aid services historically provided by the state's Interest on Lawyers' Trust Accounts program, saying the maneuver flouts directives by the Tar Heel state's top court and violates the First Amendment.

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Justices Agree To Hear Habeas Case About Circuit Splits

By Brandon Lowrey

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to consider whether prisoners can appeal denials of their federal habeas corpus petitions if there is a circuit split on the issue underlying their petition, even if their home circuit has precedent against them.

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Man Shot By ICE Refiles Habeas Case, Citing Medical Needs

By Britain Eakin

Attorneys for a New York man shot by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers while his son was in the car renewed their attempt to free him from detention, saying he is still in need of medical attention.

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High Court Won't Hear Fingerprint Analyst's Immunity Defense

By Parker Quinlan

The U.S. Supreme Court said Tuesday that it would not review an Eleventh Circuit decision stripping qualified immunity from a fingerprint analyst who is facing allegations that she fabricated evidence that sent a wrongly convicted man to death row.

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DOJ Pushes Congress To Expand Death Penalty

By Courtney Bublé

The U.S. Department of Justice has proposed a bill to Congress to bolster the use of the death penalty in both state and federal courts, in a bid to advance a related executive order President Donald Trump signed at the beginning of his second term.

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Muscogee Chief Says Court Can't Grant Freedmen Citizenship

By Crystal Owens

Muscogee (Creek) Nation Principal Chief David Hill is asking an Oklahoma federal court to dismiss a challenge that looks to block the tribe from denying citizenship to descendants of people once enslaved by the Indigenous nation, arguing that it can be achieved only through a constitutional amendment and legislative process.

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Balancing The Scales: Criminal Appeals, Sentencing Rules

By Orlando Lorenzo

The Second Circuit has been ordered to take another look at a murder-for-hire conviction in light of the high court's new miscarriage-of-justice exception for criminal appeal waivers, and the top courts in Pennsylvania and Michigan will look at the retroactivity of new sentencing rules. Here, Law360 highlights access to justice stories arising from litigation, verdicts and judgments you may have missed.

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Perspectives

3 Reforms Are Needed To Surface Hidden Evidence

The overturned murder conviction of Richard Glossip, who will soon be retried, demonstrates why several measures are needed to help protect against due process violations caused by prosecutors withholding evidence, say Marc Levin and Khalil Cumberbatch at Council on Criminal Justice.

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