Denver Police Retaliated Against Demonstrator for Recording Forceful Arrests of Other Demonstrators DENVER, March 28, 2016 – A woman who attended an anti-police brutality demonstration filed a federal civil rights suit today against a Denver police district commander for violating her First Amendment freedoms by seizing her cell phone in retaliation for recording the forceful… Read More
The United States is the only country in the world that lets voters decide who will be their prosecutors. For the most part, those elections are foregone conclusions. Prosecutors run for election unopposed 85% of the time. The incumbent wins the election 95% of the time. But what happens when the voters buck this system… Read More
We’ve talked here about how our country has a modern day debtors’ prison system that criminalizes being poor. In an earlier post, we discussed the prison-for-debt world, populated mostly by poor people of color who have essentially been shaken down by the local police force and then fined and jailed in squalid, medieval-like prisons for… Read More
As the elections heat up and many people engage in the election process, let’s think about basic voting rights. There are a huge number of citizens who are intentionally and entirely excluded from the election process because voting rights are often stripped from people who have been convicted of felonies. Most of these people are… Read More
For our final post in our three-part series focused on the 2016 presidential election, we take a look at the candidates’ views on mass incarceration and prison reform. We touched on this briefly in the previous post centered on the Black Lives Matter movement, but today we’ll dive a little deeper into specific initiatives regarding… Read More
CHICAGO — The independent journalist who forced the release of the infamous Laquan McDonald police shooting video has sued Chicago Police, the Independent Police Review Authority, and Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez to force release of their investigations into the police killing of the 17-year-old. The suits were filed on behalf of independent journalist… Read More
Any conversation with our wrongfully convicted clients opens your eyes to just how difficult reentry into society is after a period of incarceration. Of course, everyone’s story following incarceration is inherently different. Some have a large support network of family and friends; others struggle through reentry on their own. Some were incarcerated for decades and… Read More
Black History Month celebrates the contributions of Black Americans. We recognize the achievements of historical social reformers such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Frederick Douglass. As Black History Month comes to a close, I think it’s appropriate to celebrate the Black Lives Matter activists who have done a tremendous job creating social awareness to… Read More
