Audio from AILA: Putting Padilla v. Kentucky into Practice

With the stroke of a pen the United States Supreme Court opened a window of relief for thousands of immigrants facing deportation because of ill-advised criminal pleas. Join AILA Members Dan Kowalski, Maria Baldini-Potermin and Kristin Etter as they discuss Padilla v. Kentucky. Our immigration and criminal defense experts discuss strategies for preserving and pursuing Padilla issues in removal proceedings and how you can work with criminal defense counsel to make the most effective use of post-conviction relief for ineffective assistance of counsel.

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NY Times - Impact of high bail on misdemeanor defendants

N.Y.C. Misdemeanor Defendants Lack Bail Money

“Here we are locking people up for want of a couple of hundred dollars,” said Jamie Fellner, senior counsel with the domestic program of the advocacy group.

“Pretrial liberty should not be conditioned on the size of your bank account,” Ms. Fellner said.

The report raised the possibility that many of the poorer defendants pleaded guilty at arraignment for sentences with no jail time, simply to avoid being behind bars while awaiting trial.

“The client is placed with a choice of staying out of jail and being on Rikers Island and fighting their case,” said Robin Steinberg, the director of the Bronx Defenders, a nonprofit group that provides legal representation to Bronx residents charged with crimes. “Almost anybody would plead guilty. It creates a pressure on poor people in the criminal justice system for them to plead guilty without regard to whether they were guilty or not guilty.”

Rundown of other states looking at reducing prison costs from Gritsforbreakfast

States seek to slash prison spending to stem budget shortfalls

In Florida, incoming Governor Rick Scott wants to reduce prison spending - currently at $2.5 billion per year - by a whopping $1 billion annually.

In Washington state, the governor and the Senate Republican Caucus have endorsed $55.4 million in cuts to the Department of Corrections "through staff reductions and program and prison consolidation." The state has also implemented inmate lockdowns one day per month as a money saving measure.

In Ohio, the prison system faces budget cuts even though "at 100 percent of current funding, the agency said it would have to cut 339 corrections positions and close prisons because of the expected increase in payroll costs"

In Oregon, a task force on the budget "proposes a re-examination of criminal-sentencing policies — Oregon has mandatory minimum sentences for some violent offenders, doubling the prison population in the past 15 years."

Michigan is closing prisons in part thanks to a successful reentry initiative that has reduced parolee recidivism by 27%. Overall, "during the past three years, the number of state inmates in Michigan has shrunk by 12 percent, reversing a sixteen-year trend of steady prison population growth"

In Rhode Island, "the state Department of Corrections is proposing to close high- and medium-security facilities."

In Vermont, "On the campaign trail, Gov.-elect Peter Shumlin said reducing corrections costs will be a cornerstone of his administration." (Of course, their entire prison population would fit inside one of Texas' larger units.)

In Indiana, lawmakers are "evaluating probation and parole supervision practices, community corrections and transition programs, the use of issue-specific courts including drug and family courts, and sentencing guidelines and requirements. Changes could include decreasing prison time for certain crimes; moving more offenders to community corrections and revamping the state's earned credit rules."

According to a recent report (pdf) from the Vera Institute of Justice titled "The Continuing Fiscal Crisis in Corrections," at least 15 states expect "to close facilities or reduce their number of beds in fiscal year 2011," and I suspect that number will continue to grow.

Time Magazine Opinion Piece about Stevens and the Death Penalty

Stevens' Case Against the Death Penalty: Shirking the Blame

His revisionist history has been widely praised — including by TIME.com's legal columnist — and that's understandable. Stevens is an excellent writer and a charming talker, and he says a number of true things about the death penalty. The system consumes an extraordinary amount of judicial resources to resolve a vanishingly small number of cases. Meanwhile, more than 3,000 condemned prisoners languish indefinitely in expensive death-row lockdowns — many of them for more than a quarter-century and counting. This makes a mockery of the idea of finality in the justice system, and makes our legal institutions look feckless. Stevens hits the nail on the head when he writes, "While support of the death penalty wins votes for some elected officials, all participants in the process must realize the monumental costs that capital cases impose on the judicial system."

 

Huffington Post on Death Penalty constitutionality challenge in Texas

Death Penalty May Be Ruled Unconstitutional In Texas

At a hearing scheduled for Monday, December 6, a district court in Texas will decide whether the death penalty is unconstitutional in the state based on the disproportionately high risk of wrongful convictions in Texas. This is the first time in the state's history that a court will examine the problem of innocent people being executed in a Texas capital trial.

NLADA Gideon Alert: Michigan lawsuit reinstated

Gideon Alert: As Michigan Supreme Court again reinstates ACLU Duncan lawsuit, the Race to the Bottom continues in Chippewa and Bay counties

On April 30, 2010, the Michigan Supreme Court unanimously ordered the American Civil Liberties Union class action lawsuit in Duncan v. Michigan to move forward, only to reverse itself on July 16, 2010 in a 4-3 order issued on reconsideration.  By granting summary judgment in favor of the Governor and State of Michigan at that time, most people (including this author) assumed the court had put an end to any opportunity for the plaintiffs to prove they are being denied the effective right to counsel as a result of Michigan’s inadequate and ineffective system of public defense.  (For more information on the Duncan case and orders, see our earlier Gideon Alerts here and here.)  However, on November 30, 2010, the Court issued a third order, reversing itself yet again with another 4-3 vote, that reinstates the original unanimous April 30th order. 

One dissent from the November 30 Order clearly suggests that politics were the motivation behind this latest turn-about.  “The Court’s decision to suddenly expedite this case seems designed to prevent the new Court after January 1, 2011 from considering a motion for reconsideration.”  Politics does appear to be at the heart of all these reconsiderations.  Despite the original unanimous decision, the first reconsideration broke down on partisan lines with the three Republican and one Independent jurists switching positions, seemingly without any new evidence being presented by the defendants as to why their votes should be reconsidered.  At the time, the three Democratic jurists said as much in their dissent: “Today’s order slams the courthouse door in plaintiffs’ face for no good reason.”

Arizona delays execution due to drug importation questions

Court stays execution over drug origin from UPI.com

The Arizona Supreme Court says it has delayed an execution until the state answers questions about how it obtained a lethal injection drug made overseas.

Sodium thiopental is used in Arizona and other states as a sedative in combination with two other drugs in lethal injection executions. But because it is not made in the United States anymore and there is no legal mechanism for it to be imported from its British manufacturer, lawyers for condemned prisoner Daniel Wayne Cook contend acquiring sodium thiopental from abroad may be illegal, The Arizona Republic reported Wednesday.