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Access to Justice
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March 08, 2024
Judge Orders Probe Into NY Atty's Secret Courtroom Meeting
A New York court will look into whether a secret meeting last year between the local attorney representing a man charged with murder and the law clerk for the judge trying his case amounted to an ethical violation and possibly infringed the man's constitutional right to a fair trial, attorneys told Law360 Friday.
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March 06, 2024
Most States Allow Abusive Debt Collection, Report Says
A majority of states lack legal guardrails preventing people burdened by debt from facing legal jeopardy and even jail time, the National Center for Access to Justice at Fordham University School of Law recently found.
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March 04, 2024
'Access To Justice Means Language Justice,' DOJ Official Says
The U.S. Department of Justice said some language barriers in the justice system have been mitigated but that more work needs to be done to ensure non-English speakers have equitable access to the courts.
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March 01, 2024
Conn. Lawmakers OK $25.2M Deal For 2 Jailed In 1985 Killing
The Connecticut General Assembly's bipartisan joint judiciary committee on Friday unanimously approved a $25.2 million settlement for two men who lawmakers agreed were improperly incarcerated for more than 30 years after a chain of failures led to wrongful convictions in a December 1985 New Milford murder.
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February 28, 2024
Justices Allow Idaho Execution, But State 'Unable To Proceed'
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday cleared the way for Idaho to execute a man for the murder of a fellow inmate, refusing to review his claim that Idaho's continued execution of prisoners whose death sentences were issued by judges and not juries violates the Eighth Amendment.
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February 26, 2024
Boston Moves To Settle Suit Over 2016 Police Shooting
The city of Boston has reached an agreement in principle to settle a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the mother of a Black man who was shot to death by Boston police officers in 2016, according to a Monday filing.
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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.
Expert Analysis
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Pandemic Should Propel New Prison Reforms
Prison releases resulting from coronavirus and earlier legislation proved that not all nonviolent offenders need to be jailed; this should spur penal system reform that includes expanded probationary alternatives, tax incentives for companies that employ ex-offenders and government transparency to ensure unbiased sentencing, says Abbe Lowell at Winston & Strawn.
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Finding A Path Forward To Regulate The Legal Industry
Gerald Knapton at Ropers Majeski analyzes U.S. and U.K. experiments to explore alternative business structures and independent oversight for law firms, which could lead to innovative approaches to increasing access to legal services.
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Remote Court Procedures Can Help Domestic Abuse Victims
Courts have recently adopted remote procedures to make domestic violence victims feel safer during the COVID-19 crisis, but they should consider preserving these trauma-sensitive adaptations post-pandemic as well, say Ashley Carter and Richard Kelley at the DC Volunteer Lawyers Project.
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Law Commission's New Idea For Confiscation Orders Is Unfair
The recent proposal by the Law Commission of England and Wales to recall prisoners who fail to settle their confiscation orders when they have already served a sentence for nonpayment would, in effect, punish them twice for the same act, says Brian Swan at Stokoe Partnership.
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Barrett Should Be Questioned On Children's Access To Courts
At a time when children's lives are so threatened by avoidable climate change chaos, understanding U.S. Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett's views on what standing future generations have to seek declaratory relief in Article III courts should be an essential part of her confirmation hearings, says Julia Olson at Our Children's Trust.
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A Smarter Approach To Measuring Prosecutorial Success
To improve their ability to dispense justice, prosecutors should measure the efficacy of their work based on metrics such as caseload distribution, timely case handling and racial disparity trends — instead of the traditionally used conviction rates and number of trials, say Anthony Thompson at the New York University School of Law and Miriam Krinsky at Fair and Just Prosecution.
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States Shouldn't Hinder Local Gov'ts In COVID-19 Tenant Aid
In the face of increasing state preemption and absent other government intervention, states should explicitly allow city and county policymakers to help renters in order to avoid a pandemic-prompted eviction crisis, say Emily Benfer at Wake Forest University School of Law and Nestor Davidson at Fordham University School of Law.
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An Abuse Of Prosecutorial Discretion In Breonna Taylor Case
The prosecution's decision in the Breonna Taylor grand jury proceedings to present a crucial, disputed fact — whether the officers knocked and announced themselves when they arrived at Taylor's apartment — as a settled question represents the partiality police officers often enjoy from prosecutors, says attorney Geoffrey D. Kearney.
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Immigration Appeals Proposal Would Erode Due Process
A recent Trump administration proposal to limit appellate review of immigration cases would eviscerate the few existing legal protections for immigrants and asylum seekers at a time when they are already routinely denied due process in court, says Lynn Pearson at the Tahirih Justice Center.
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11th Circ. Ruling Doesn't Lower Qualified Immunity Bar
While a video recording in Cantu v. City of Dothan — a recent Eleventh Circuit case involving a fatal shooting by a police officer — allowed the plaintiffs to clear the difficult qualified immunity hurdle, the court's ruling does not make it easier for most victims to surmount the defense, says Adriana Collado-Hudak at Greenspoon Marder.
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Reforming Public Defense Is Crucial For Criminal Justice
By resisting investment in public defender offices, states and counties are overlooking the best opportunity to ensure justice for vulnerable criminal defendants and ferret out police, prosecutors and judges who cut corners — but there is some movement on the ground that warrants cautious optimism, says Jonathan Rapping at Atlanta's John Marshall Law School.
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COVID-19 Crisis Should Steer NY Toward Better Court System
Over the last six months, it has become clear that many New York court proceedings can happen remotely, and we can use these new technological capabilities to create a more humane, efficient and economically responsible court system, says Joseph Frumin at The Legal Aid Society.
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Pretrial Risk Assessment Is Biased And Indefensible
The Conference of Chief Justices' continuing support for the use of problematic pretrial risk assessment algorithms designed to predict criminal behavior has exacerbated disparities in the justice system and has likely increased incarceration across the U.S., says Jeffrey Clayton at the American Bail Coalition.
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To Eliminate Food Inequality, We Must Confront The Past
To tackle low-income communities' decadeslong struggle with access to healthy food, which the COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated, we must first understand how food deserts are a product of policies that perpetuate racial segregation, says Jessica Giesen at Kelley Kronenberg.
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Cincinnati's Progress Can Be A Model For 2020 Police Reform
Cincinnati has come a long way since the 2001 unrest following the police killings of two unarmed Black men, and the city's comprehensive revision of police practices can inform local and state policymakers seeking a way forward from the current turmoil, says former Cincinnati Mayor Charlie Luken now at Calfee Halter.