criminaljustice
Federal prosecutors are recommending a 20-year prison sentence for Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey, who was found guilty last fall of one count of international concealment of money laundering. It's an insane ask for someone whose only conviction is for one nonviolent crime, especially considering the circumstances of that conviction. Concealment?"The context for the international concealment money laundering conviction is critical," writes Lacey's lawyers in a motion seeking a less severe sentence. "This is not a case where the defendant went off on his own to hide an asset. Instead, in the...
Reason
A few years ago, Roseberline Turenne, an 18-year-old aide at a Maryland day care center, used her cellphone to take photographs showing "the naked genitals and pubic areas" of eight little girls. Seven of the girls were lying on changing tables, while the eighth was standing in a bathroom. Turenne later claimed she was documenting preexisting diaper rashes, lest she be blamed for allowing them to develop while the girls were in her care. Turenne was fired after the pictures were discovered because they violated the day care center's policies, which prohibited staff members from photographing c...
Reason
A new class action lawsuit accuses Indiana law enforcement of seizing millions of dollars a year in cash from FedEx packages without ever informing owners of what crime they're suspected of violating. Henry and Minh Cheng, who run a small California jewelry wholesaler business, allege in a class action countersuit filed in Indiana state court that police seized over $42,000 in cash from a FedEx package en route to them from a client in Virginia. County prosecutors then filed a lawsuit to forfeit their money through civil asset forfeiture, claiming the Chengs' money was connected to a violation...
Reason
Over the past five years, Chicago taxpayers have forked over nearly $400 million to resolve lawsuits stemming from officer misconduct, according to a new analysis of city data. While around 1,300 police officers were named in the lawsuits, just 200 were responsible for more than 40 percent of the total cost. This week, Chicago PBS station WTTW released the results of an extensive analysis of Chicago police misconduct lawsuits. The investigation, which covered payouts from 2019 to 2023, found that city taxpayers footed the bill for $384.2 million in settlements, damages, lawyer fees, and other ...
Reason
If Texas follows through with its plans to impose the death penalty on Robert Roberson this October, it will become the first state in the country to execute someone whose conviction was based on what's commonly known as "shaken baby syndrome." The former detective who arrested Roberson for murdering his 2-year-old daughter is no longer convinced that he did it. Roberson's attorneys say they have new evidence based on previously hidden medical records that his child really died of severe pneumonia, and they argue in a recently filed motion for a stay of execution that, since Roberson's trial, ...
Reason
I spent some time last week at the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) summit, which attracts state lawmakers and legislative staff from around the country and was held this year in Louisville, Kentucky. The event's expo hall was packed with hundreds of booths, largely featuring the sorts of associations, businesses, and nonprofits you might expect to be trying to influence state policy. Perhaps not as expected was a sex worker rights group. Not as expected, that is, if you don't know anything about Decriminalize Sex Work (DSW). Since its founding in 2018, the organization has bee...
Reason
On an early morning in 2017, Curtrina Martin inadvertently attended a pyrotechnic exhibit she compares to the Fourth of July. Except it was October, and it was inside her home in Georgia. The source was considerably less joyful. The FBI detonated a flash grenade in the house and ripped the door from its hinges in a raid to arrest a man, Joseph Riley, accused of gang activity, who lived in a different house approximately one block over. The agents would not realize their mistake until after they made their way into Martin's bedroom, where they found her and her then-fiancé, Hilliard Toi Cliatt,...
Reason
The outrageous practice of civil asset forfeiture—which allows police to seize property on the mere suspicion of a crime—is getting its moment in the spotlight in Rebel Ridge, an upcoming Netflix action movie starring Aaron Pierre and Don Johnson. According to a synopsis, Terry Richmond (Pierre) is a former Marine who "grapples his way through a web of small-town corruption when an attempt to post bail for his cousin escalates into a violent standoff with the local police chief" (Johnson). Check out the trailer: Judging from all this, Rebel Ridge is a movie in the fine tradition of First Blood...
Reason
"Criminal laws have grown so exuberantly and come to cover so much previously innocent conduct that almost anyone can be arrested for something," Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch observed in 2019. Gorsuch elaborates on that theme in a new book, showing how the proliferation of criminal penalties has given prosecutors enormous power to ruin people's lives, resulting in the nearly complete replacement of jury trials with plea bargains. "Some scholars peg the number of federal statutory crimes at more than 5,000," Gorsuch and co-author Janie Nitze note in Over Ruled:The Human Toll of Too Much L...
Reason
Not only have we adopted more criminal laws at an astonishing clip, but the punishments our criminal laws carry have also grown markedly. Beginning in earnest in the second half of the 20th century, legislatures began to adopt laws that had, as Judge Jed Rakoff has noted, "two common characteristics: they imposed higher penalties, and they removed much of judicial dis-cretion in sentencing." Notable among these laws were statutes imposing mandatory minimum terms of imprisonment for certain crimes. Today, sentencing changes like these can propel some sentences into the stratosphere. A defense a...
Reason
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