NACDL, on the House Committee on the Judiciary’s “Overcriminaliztion Task Force.” Bless. Let’s stop wasting our resources on drugs and other petty crimes and work on safety and rehabilitation.
We’re counting down the worst prisons in America. Today: Men’s Central Jail and Twin Towers Correctional Facility (Los Angeles)
With the state of California under strict orders to keep sending state prisoners to local jails, this situation is worsening. Although new leadership is on its way in, there is a long road ahead.
(Source: motherjones, via legallypresent)
Women rescued in Cleveland after missing for years
Three women, who were reported missing at separate points in time ranging up to 11 years ago, were rescued from an unassuming Cleveland home yesterday.
Celebrations errupted in the surrounding streets, and the trio is in good health and have left the hospital, but the scope of the abductions is nonetheless harrowing.
Amanda Berry was 16 when she disappeared on April 21, 2003, after calling her sister to say she was getting a ride home from her job at a Burger King. Gina DeJesus was 14 when she disappeared a year later. Michelle Knight vanished on Aug. 23, 2002, when she was 21
Three men, reportedly all brothers and ages 50, 52 and 54, have been arrested. A girl, age 6, was also taken from the scene, and is reportedly Berry’s daughter.
From the dramatic 911 recording:
“Help me, I’m Amanda Berry.… I need police.… I’ve been kidnapped. I’ve been missing for 10 years; I’m here, I’m free now.”
Keep tabs on the latest developments over at Nation Now.
Photos: FBI / AFP/Getty Images, Scott Shaw / The Plain Dealer / Associated Press
I am obsessed with this story. How amazing is Charles Ramsey?
This is amazing.
npr:
(via She Works: The Only Woman in the Room : NPR)
NPR’s Nina Totenberg on being the only woman in the room:
“My first piece of advice is get another woman in the room. And my second is demand respect. You should get it. You don’t have to be a man to get it. You don’t have to be a flirt to get it. Just be yourself and if it’s not working for some reason, just say so.”
Photo Courtesy of Nina Totenberg
When have you been the only woman in the room? — Heidi
The last time I was the only woman in the room was at a case conference a week ago with four other lawyers. One of them, I’m not kidding for a minute here, made a Girls Gone Wild joke and then looked at me, like he was asking for permission to be sexist and gross. I simply said “that’s rude,” and turned back to the conversation. I was proud of myself, both for not letting it slide and for not making a fuss about it. I just called him out and went right on with the actual work.
The thing that bugs me, though, that is still bugging me a week later, is that he made the comment at all. Is this guy’s normal work so absent of women that he freely makes jokes about pornography? Or does he simply not care how he treats his female colleagues?
Criminal defense is very much a boys’ club, still — my husband and I attended a professional reception recently and many of my colleagues addressed him, not me, assuming he was the lawyer — but I see more women in the criminal courts every day, especially young women my age. We’re getting more women in the room.
Two border-patrol officers attempt to keep a fugitive in the U.S. in this photo from National Geographic’s archive (Luis Marden/National Geographic). Click through to see more.
In case you missed it, here is David Bianculli’s review of ‘The Central Park 5’:
The case, by now, is anything but a whodunit; the actual rapist and attacker eventually stepped forward and confessed, and DNA samples from the crime scene proved a perfect match. But that didn’t happen until five teenage boys had been convicted of the crime and spent seven years in prison. They claim to have been coerced into giving false confessions, and the documentary makes a compelling case on their behalf.
You can watch the documentary online here.
A 12-year-old in his cell at the Harrison County Juvenile Detention Center in Biloxi, Mississippi. The window has been boarded up from the outside. The facility is operated by Mississippi Security Police, a private company. In 1982, a fire killed 27 prisoners and an ensuing lawsuit against the authorities forced them to reduce their population to maintain an 8:1 inmate to staff ratio.
(via neil-gaiman)
Supreme Court hears arguments on Prop. 8 ban on gay marriage
The debate between both sides of the argument and the Supreme Court has come to an end, with a final decision on the fate of California’s contentious Prop. 8 expected to be announced at some point in June.
Though any prognostications made based on Supreme Court arguments must be taken with a grain on salt, liberal justices were particularly intent on critiquing the defense of the gay marriage ban.
From Supreme Court reporter David G. Savage:
Justice Anthony Kennedy, while acknowledging that the long-term effects of legalized gay marriage are unknown, suggested that the tens of thousands of children of gay and lesbian couples in California have a voice in the case as well. “They want their parents to have full recognition,” he said.
Read more over at Politics Now.
Photos: Nicholas Kamm, Karen Blier, Jewel Samad, Win McNamee / AFP/Getty Images, Molly Riley / MCT, Dana Verkouteren / Associated Press
Like I said, I will reblog anything with a courtroom sketch.
Associated Press, in a post about its changes to “illegal immigration” and labels used to describe mental health issues in the AP Stylebook. ‘Illegal immigrant’ no more.
Via Slate:
This is a victory by activists who you may never have paid attention to. For more than two years, the writer and reporter Jose Antonio Vargas—who discovered in his teenage years that he had come to the United States illegally from the Phillippines—has been on a crusade to literally “define ‘American.’” One of his slogans and causes was “no human being is illegal.”
FJP: The AP’s Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll explains in the post that the changes reflect the evolution of the English language.
(via futurejournalismproject)Change communication, change the culture.
ROME (AP) — In his most significant break with tradition yet, Pope Francis washed and kissed the feet of two young women at a juvenile detention center — a surprising departure from church rules that restrict the Holy Thursday ritual to men.
No pope has ever washed the feet of a woman before, and Francis’ gesture sparked a debate among some conservatives and liturgical purists, who lamented he had set a “questionable example.”
"I’m proud to have been raised Catholic. From now on I am referring to horrible misogynists as “Liturgical Purists”
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/pope-washes-feet-young-detainees-ritual
(via rexsaucy)What a beautiful gesture of humility. My lapsed Catholic heart is warm.
See each Justice’s most memorable line in the Prop 8 and Defense of Marriage Act cases, as nominated by Amy Davidson: http://nyr.kr/10dgrrc
I will reboot anything with a courtroom sketch in it. Also, good read.
