The Supreme Court Made a Death Penalty Decision in the Dead of the Night and Justice Breyer Is Pissed
Associate Justice Stephen BreyerJ. Scott Applewhite/AP At approximately 3:00 a.m. Friday morning, the US Supreme Court issued a ruling that allows the execution of an Alabama death row inmate to move forward, after a lower court had issued a stay of execution. The order itself was only a paragraph, but Justice Stephen Breyer responded with…
A 72-Year-Old Juvenile Lifer Won a Landmark Supreme Court Ruling, But Louisiana Won’t Let Him Out of Prison
Henry Montgomery at the time of his arrest in 1963 /Baton Rouge Morning Advocate, courtesy of the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange In 2016, Henry Montgomery won a landmark Supreme Court case that gave him and thousands of other inmates hope for a second chance. The 72-year-old was locked up in Louisiana at the age of…
Texas Asked Judges to Stop Throwing People in Jail for Unpaid Parking Tickets. They Didn’t Listen.
Hiob/Getty After Emily Gerrick became a lawyer in 2014 in Austin, Texas, one of her first clients was a mother who was jailed for 21 days because she couldn’t afford to pay her traffic tickets. “She was just beside herself because she didn’t know where her kids were,” she recalled. Gerrick, now a senior attorney…
Jurors Thought a Gay Man Would Enjoy Prison. So They Sentenced Him to Death.
imaginima/Getty When Charles Rhines, a gay man, was convicted of the murder of Donnivan Schaeffer in January 1993, the jurors at his trial in South Dakota were tasked with deciding whether he would serve life in prison without the possibility of parole, or to sentence him to death. During deliberations, some jurors wondered if life…
Vigilantes Not Welcome: A Border Town Pushes Back on Anti-Immigrant Extremists
In late August last year, 39-year-old Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer exited La Gitana bar in Arivaca, Arizona, took out his phone, and started recording a video for his Facebook page: “So down here in Arivaca, if you like to traffic in children, if you like to make sure women and children have contraceptives before handing…
Trump Is Throwing a Party to Celebrate His Paltry Criminal Justice Reform Efforts
President Trump participates in a signing ceremony for the First Step Act in December.Martin Simon/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. President Donald Trump is hosting a party at the White House on Monday to celebrate the First Step Act, the first major criminal justice reform bill to pass Congress…