Appeals Court Denies New York City’s Motion to Annul Landmark Stop and Frisk Ruling

On Friday (Nov. 22, 2013), an appellate panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit denied the City of New York’s request to vacate District Judge Shira A. Scheindlin’s ruling in the class action lawsuit Floyd v. the City of New York. The Center for Constitutional Rights made the following statement in response:

Silent march to end stop and frisk and racial profiling.
(Photo: Long Island Wins)

“Following the appellate panel’s shocking decision to remove the district court judge from our case, the City sought to double down and ask that the entirety of the judge’s decision be vacated without further briefing on its merits. 

The appellate panel has correctly rejected this request and will allow full briefing on the appeal to move forward as scheduled. 

We hope Mayor De Blasio will drop the City’s desperate appeal to undo the district court’s carefully considered ruling and work with plaintiffs and the community to enforce every aspect of the remedial order. He has an extraordinary opportunity to use the expertise of a court monitor and policing experts to end discriminatory policing in NYC."

Read the order here

Reprinted with permission from the Center for Constitutional Rights

Prison-Industrial Complex: High Bail for the Poor Is Kidnapping - 3 Yrs In Jail For Teen Who Wasn't Even Convicted | Lawsuit

Military Industrial Complex: Faked Forensic Evidence Taints Thousands of Cases - Hundreds Released From Prison, Chemist Gets Jail Time

This is not the only case where sloppy forensics may have sent thousands to prison on flawed "evidence."  The FBI is also guilty of mishandling forensic evidence, calling into question cases relying on the FBI's hair and fiber analysis going back to 1985.

Broadway - Alcatraz Prison. (Photo: Derek Key)

Annie Dookhan, the former state chemist whose mishandling of evidence in drug cases threw the state’s criminal justice system into turmoil, pleaded guilty today in Suffolk Superior Court and was sentenced to three to five years in prison.

“You plead guilty here because you are guilty?” Judge Carol S. Ball said as she explained the rights Dookhan was giving up because of her guilty plea.

“Yes, Your Honor,” Dookhan said meekly.

Dookhan’s falsification of drug tests, in an attempt to look like a highly productive employee, prompted the release of hundreds of convicts, raised questions about thousands of cases, and forced the state to spend millions to address the problems.

READ MORE...

A Living Death: Life Without Parole for Nonviolent Offenses

Extreme Sentencing: The "New Normal?" - An ACLU Report

"Of the 3,278 prisoners doing life for nonviolent crimes, 63% were sentenced by federal courts; the rest are in nine state prison systems. Click here to meet some of the individual prisoners waiting to die behind bars and see where they’re serving time. These accounts include interviews with prisoners' parents, children, and spouses who have been punished emotionally and economically by their loved ones’ permanent absence." —American Civil Liberties Union.

Prison Industrial Complex
(Illustration: Natasha Mayers)

By Vanita Gupta, Center for Justice & Chloe Cockburn, Advocacy and Policy Counsel, ACLU  
It should outrage us that a homeless man will be in prison for the rest of his life because he was the middleman in the sale of $10 worth of marijuana. We can all pretty much agree that the punishment of growing old and dying behind bars for such offenses is a wildly extreme, tragic and wasteful overreaction to the crime.

But it should not surprise us. Cases like this man's are just the tip of the iceberg.

Hundreds of thousands of people in American prisons are serving decades-long sentences that are far out of proportion to their crimes. They comprise an increasingly aging prison population that costs more and more to maintain as their health deteriorates, increasingly strapping state budgets. In many cases, the person incarcerated could have been effectively held accountable in the community with no prison time at all. In other more serious cases where incarceration may be warranted, the person incarcerated could successfully return to the community after a much shorter time in prison, especially if job training and education were available to ease reentry. But this is not the norm.

Instead, in jurisdictions all around the country, incarceration has been touted as the solution to scores of problems it is ill equipped to address, pushing the number of people in jail and prison to over 2.3 million people. That's more than the number of people living in New Mexico.

READ MORE...

Check out the complete report: Here

Check out the interactive story map "Map: A Living Death"