ACLU: A Model Act for Regulating the Use of Wearable Body Cameras by Law Enforcement
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Showing posts with label ACLU. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ACLU. Show all posts
Sentenced to a Slow Death
If this were happening in any other country, Americans would be aghast. A
sentence of life in prison, without the possibility of parole, for
trying to sell $10 of marijuana to an undercover officer? For sharing
LSD at a Grateful Dead concert? For siphoning gas from a truck? The
punishment is so extreme, so irrational, so wildly disproportionate to
the crime that it defies explanation.
And yet this is happening every day in federal and state courts across
the United States. Judges, bound by mandatory sentencing laws that they
openly denounce, are sending people away for the rest of their lives for
committing nonviolent drug and property crimes. In nearly 20 percent of
cases, it was the person’s first offense.
As of 2012, there were 3,278 prisoners serving sentences of life without parole for such crimes, according to an extensive and astonishing report
issued Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union. And that number
is conservative. It doesn’t include inmates serving sentences of, say,
350 years for a series of nonviolent drug sales. Nor does it include
those in prison for crimes legally classified as “violent” even though
they did not involve actual violence, like failing to report to a
halfway house or trying to steal an unoccupied car.
This is a New York Times editorial. Tom
Prisoners Denied Medical Care, Told To Pray Instead
A year after a lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties
Union alleging grave medical neglect of prisoners by Arizona’s private
prison health care providers, prisoners have continued to die or endure
unnecessary suffering after lack of basic treatment. After asking for
medical assistance, many prisoners were told to “be patient” or “pray,”
according to a new report. In a particularly tragic case, a man with
lung cancer, Ferdinand Dix, issued multiple requests for medical
treatment. Instead of receiving proper attention, Dix was told to drink
energy drinks. The cancer ultimately moved to the rest of his body,
severely impacting his liver and lymph nodes, and resulting in Dix’s
death.The new report by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) issued this month found that medical neglect included “delays and denials of care, lack of timely emergency treatment, failure to provide medication and medical devices, low staffing levels, failure to provide care and protection from infectious disease, denial of specialty care and referrals, and insufficient mental health
treatment.”
Read on...
23 Petty Crimes That Have Landed People in Prison for Life Without Parole
As of last year, according to a report
released today by the American Civil Liberties Union, more than 3,200
people were serving life in prison without parole for non-violent
crimes. A close examination of these cases by the ACLU reveals just how
petty some of these offenses are. People got life for, among other
things...
- Possessing a crack pipe
- Possessing a bottle cap containing a trace amount of heroin (too minute to be weighed)
- Having traces of cocaine in clothes pockets that were invisible to the naked eye but detected in lab tests
- Having a single crack rock at home
- Possessing 32 grams of marijuana (worth about $380 in California) with intent to distribute
- Passing out several grams of LSD at a Grateful Dead show
- Acting as a go-between in the sale of $10 worth of marijuana to an undercover cop
- Selling a single crack rock
Supreme Court will tackle affirmative action once again
An affirmative action backlash that began in California and migrated
to Michigan has now reached the Supreme Court, with university
admissions and more potentially on the line.
In one of the new term’s highest-profile cases, the court on Tuesday will consider a Michigan ballot measure that bans the use of race in public university admissions. Inspired by a similar measure in California, the Michigan policy has divided other states, while giving court conservatives their latest chance to roll back race-based preferences.
“This measure was so polarizing that it created a racial divide,” Mark Rosenbaum, the chief counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said Thursday. “Instead of healing the nation’s wounds, it actually opens those wounds.”
Read on...
In one of the new term’s highest-profile cases, the court on Tuesday will consider a Michigan ballot measure that bans the use of race in public university admissions. Inspired by a similar measure in California, the Michigan policy has divided other states, while giving court conservatives their latest chance to roll back race-based preferences.
“This measure was so polarizing that it created a racial divide,” Mark Rosenbaum, the chief counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said Thursday. “Instead of healing the nation’s wounds, it actually opens those wounds.”
Read on...
Victory for College Students! Court Strikes Down Mandatory Drug Testing for All Students
ACLU's win should be a warning to colleges and universities
Today, in a class-action lawsuit brought by the ACLU and the ACLU of Eastern Missouri, a federal district court told a Missouri college to end its unconstitutional program of requiring all of its students—irrespective of their course of study—to submit to suspicionless drug-testing. Jason Williamson, staff attorney at the ACLU's Criminal Law Reform Project, and co-counsel on the case, said:
"Linn State required every incoming student to be tested for drugs, even though many of them would not be engaged in dangerous activities, and the college had no reason to believe any particular student was using drugs. Any student who refused to submit to the drug test—which is considered a search under the Fourth Amendment—would be denied the opportunity to pursue their education at Linn State.
"Students should not be required to sacrifice their constitutional rights in order to further their education, and we're thrilled that the court has struck down the policy. Our victory should serve as a warning to colleges and universities across the country: mandatory, suspicionless drug testing of the entire student body has no place in education.”
Read on...
Today, in a class-action lawsuit brought by the ACLU and the ACLU of Eastern Missouri, a federal district court told a Missouri college to end its unconstitutional program of requiring all of its students—irrespective of their course of study—to submit to suspicionless drug-testing. Jason Williamson, staff attorney at the ACLU's Criminal Law Reform Project, and co-counsel on the case, said:
"Linn State required every incoming student to be tested for drugs, even though many of them would not be engaged in dangerous activities, and the college had no reason to believe any particular student was using drugs. Any student who refused to submit to the drug test—which is considered a search under the Fourth Amendment—would be denied the opportunity to pursue their education at Linn State.
"Students should not be required to sacrifice their constitutional rights in order to further their education, and we're thrilled that the court has struck down the policy. Our victory should serve as a warning to colleges and universities across the country: mandatory, suspicionless drug testing of the entire student body has no place in education.”
Read on...
ACLU Seeks Accountability for Police Violation of the Rights of Domestic Violence Victims
In 2008, 66 year old Baerbel Roznowski sought a protection order to
keep herself safe from her estranged boyfriend, Chan Kim, who had a
history of violence. A court issued the order, which said that Kim must
stay away from Roznowski and her home and stop contacting her. The order
included instructions for law enforcement explaining that Kim did not
speak English well and would need an interpreter to fully understand
what was happening, and that Kim would likely react violently against
Roznowski when he received news that they would be separated.
Unfortunately, the police officer who brought the order to Kim didn't
bother to read these instructions. He gave the order to him at
Roznowski's home, did not bring an interpreter, and left them together
without ensuring that they were safely separated. Just hours later,
Baerbel Roznowski was dead. Her boyfriend had stabbed her 18 times,
murdering her in her own home.
This tragic loss is just one example of a widespread and serious problem. Police in the United States frequently do not take domestic violence seriously. Gender-based violence, and domestic violence in particular, are often viewed as less serious crimes, with law enforcement believing that disputes can be resolved with no or minimal police intervention, even in situations where there is a protection order in place. This perception is more than just inaccurate; it is discriminatory against women, results in negligent behavior by law enforcement, and can end in serious injury, or even death.
Read on...
This tragic loss is just one example of a widespread and serious problem. Police in the United States frequently do not take domestic violence seriously. Gender-based violence, and domestic violence in particular, are often viewed as less serious crimes, with law enforcement believing that disputes can be resolved with no or minimal police intervention, even in situations where there is a protection order in place. This perception is more than just inaccurate; it is discriminatory against women, results in negligent behavior by law enforcement, and can end in serious injury, or even death.
Read on...
Shhhh – What The FBI Doesn’t Want You to Know About its Racial Profiling Program
The FBI is using a racial and ethnic mapping program to collect
intelligence on American communities – and it doesn’t want you to know
which ones it’s spying on, or how it’s using census data to do so. The
ACLU and the ACLU of Michigan filed a brief in federal court on Friday to challenge the FBI’s secrecy over its profiling practices.
FBI documents we already secured show that the Bureau is profiling some communities for intelligence collection based on false stereotypes that ascribe certain types of crimes to entire minority communities. Targeted groups include Muslims and Arab-Americans in Michigan, African-Americans in Georgia, Chinese and Russian-Americans in California, and broad swaths of Latino-American communities in multiple states.
Read on...
FBI documents we already secured show that the Bureau is profiling some communities for intelligence collection based on false stereotypes that ascribe certain types of crimes to entire minority communities. Targeted groups include Muslims and Arab-Americans in Michigan, African-Americans in Georgia, Chinese and Russian-Americans in California, and broad swaths of Latino-American communities in multiple states.
Read on...
The Justice Department’s White Paper on Targeted Killing
Michael Isikoff at NBC News has obtained a
Justice Department white paper that purports to explain when it would
be lawful for the government to carry out the extrajudicial killing of
an American citizen believed to be affiliated with a terrorist
organization. Many of the white paper's arguments are familiar because
Attorney General Eric Holder set them out in a speech at Northwestern University in
March of last year. But the white paper offers more detail, and in
doing so it manages to underscore both the recklessness of the
government's central claim and the deficiencies in the government's
defense of it.
The 16-page white paper (read it here) is said to summarize a 50-odd page legal memo written in 2010 by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel to justify the addition of U.S. citizen Anwar Al-Aulaqi to the government's "kill lists." That legal memo is one of the documents the ACLU is seeking in an ongoing Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Needless to say, the white paper is not a substitute for the legal memo. But it's a pretty remarkable document.
Read on...
The 16-page white paper (read it here) is said to summarize a 50-odd page legal memo written in 2010 by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel to justify the addition of U.S. citizen Anwar Al-Aulaqi to the government's "kill lists." That legal memo is one of the documents the ACLU is seeking in an ongoing Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Needless to say, the white paper is not a substitute for the legal memo. But it's a pretty remarkable document.
Read on...
The Reality of Life Inside Immigration Detention
In the last 15 years, we've witnessed a dramatic expansion in the
jailing of immigrants, from about 70,000 people detained annually to
about 400,000. In the mid-1990’s, during the height of an
anti-immigrant backlash, Congress passed a series of harsh measures that
led to a vast increase in unnecessary detention. This trend has been
exacerbated by the private prison industry and county jails looking to
exploit immigrant detention for profit.
The cost of this system today is 1.7 billion dollars at taxpayer expense.
In detention, immigrants continue to be subject to punitive treatment, and are denied basic needs, such as contact with lawyers and loved ones, inadequate food and hygiene, and access to fresh air and sunlight. They continue to get injured, sick, and die without timely medical care. They continue to endure racial slurs and discriminatory treatment by prison staff, and are vulnerable to rape and assault. Since 2003, a reported 131 people have died in immigration custody.
These conditions are unacceptable and not in the spirit of the Administration’s promised reforms.
Read on...
The cost of this system today is 1.7 billion dollars at taxpayer expense.
In detention, immigrants continue to be subject to punitive treatment, and are denied basic needs, such as contact with lawyers and loved ones, inadequate food and hygiene, and access to fresh air and sunlight. They continue to get injured, sick, and die without timely medical care. They continue to endure racial slurs and discriminatory treatment by prison staff, and are vulnerable to rape and assault. Since 2003, a reported 131 people have died in immigration custody.
These conditions are unacceptable and not in the spirit of the Administration’s promised reforms.
Read on...
In Court Today: Fighting Judicial Secrecy in the WikiLeaks Investigation
In another round of the legal battle
over the records of Twitter users sought by the government in
connection with its WikiLeaks investigation, the ACLU and the Electronic
Frontier Foundation (EFF) are appearing before a federal appeals court
in Richmond this morning, arguing that the public has a right to know
about secret court orders and other documents related to government
efforts to obtain Internet users’ private information without a warrant.The ACLU and EFF represent Icelandic parliament member Birgitta Jonsdottir. She first learned about the government’s efforts to obtain her information—including her mailing addresses, billing information, email addresses, credit card and bank account numbers, and IP address information (which can show physical location)—after a court order requiring Twitter to provide the information was unsealed. But when Birgitta and others targeted by the Twitter order asked U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady to unseal and publicly list similar court orders sent to other Internet service providers, he refused their requests.
Read on...
Boston Police Caught Spying on Local Peace Groups
ACLU reveals mass of surveillance data on First Amendment activities
Boston police have been caught red-handed spying on citizens engaged in lawful, protest activities. Documents and surveillance videos show local law enforcement routinely monitoring demonstrations and "internal dynamics" of activists groups, even if there is no indication of criminal activity.
The ACLU cites a specific report detailing an anti-war rally at a congregational church featuring the late Boston University Professor Howard Zinn, former city councilor Felix D. Arroyo and war activist Cindy Sheehan. The document was categorized under the label: "Criminal Act: Groups-Extremist."
According to a press release from the ACLU:The documents reveal that officers assigned to the Boston Police Department's regional domestic spying center, the Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC), file so-called "intelligence reports" mischaracterizing peaceful groups such as Veterans for Peace, United for Justice with Peace and CodePink as "extremists," and peaceful protests as domestic "homeland security" threats and civil disturbances."The collection of information by BPD contributes to Homeland Security fusion centers storing of details on constitutionally-protected activities being engaged in by citizens", writes Kevin Gosztola for Firedoglake. The officers are said to monitor activities such as "protestors plans to 'pass out fliers promoting their cause,'" and document communication "between officers from BRIC and the Metro DC Intelligence Section during which the officials discuss how many activists from the Northeast attended a Washington, DC peace rally."
Read on...
How America Came To Torture Its Prisoners
I read nearly 140,000 formerly classified documents about America’s abuse of prisoners since 2001. Here is what I learned.
On Sept. 17, 2001, six days after the terrorist attacks in
Washington, D.C., President George W. Bush sent a 12-page Memorandum of
Notification to his National Security Council. That memorandum, we know
now, authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to set up and run secret
prisons. We still don’t know exactly what it says: CIA attorneys have
told a judge the document is so off-limits to the courts and the
American people that even the font is classified. But we do know what it
did: It literally opened a space for torture.
Thanks to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit—a lawsuit the New York Times has called “among the most successful in the history of public disclosure”—we now know much of what happened in those secret spaces the Bush administration created. Under that litigation, the American Civil Liberties Union
gathered nearly 140,000 formerly classified documents from the
Department of Defense, the Justice Department, and the CIA that detail
the abuse of prisoners in U.S. custody in the “War on Terror.” My job,
as the author of the website www.thetorturereport.org and then of the book The Torture Report: What the Documents Say About America’s Post-9/11 Torture Program, was to dig through that incredible trove of documents and figure out for myself what, exactly, my country had done.
"A Picture of Such Horror as Should Be Unrealized Anywhere in the Civilized World"
This week, a federal judge in Southern Mississippi gave new life to the words, "Let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream."
Judge Carleton Reeves — only the second African-American to serve on the federal bench in Mississippi's history — entered a blistering order giving final approval to a consent decree that bans the horrendous practice of subjecting kids convicted as adults to solitary confinement and requires the state to move such kids out of the brutally violent privately run prison where they are currently housed.
The consent decree settles a lawsuit brought by the ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of 1,200 Mississippi youth, ages 13 to 22, confined to the Walnut Grove Correctional Center. That prison is operated by the GEO Group, the second-largest private prison operator in the world. The lawsuit detailed monstrous abuses by GEO staff — including peddling drugs to the teenagers in their custody and subjecting them to brutal beatings, sexual exploitation and solitary confinement.
Thought Crime in Washington: No Free Speech at Mr. Jefferson’s Library
George Orwell, Philip K. Dick, and Ray Bradbury Would Have Recognized Morris Davis's Problem
Here’s the First Amendment, in full: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”Those beautiful words, almost haiku-like, are the sparse poetry of the American democratic experiment. The Founders purposely wrote the First Amendment to read broadly, and not like a snippet of tax code, in order to emphasize that it should encompass everything from shouted religious rantings to eloquent political criticism. Go ahead, reread it aloud at this moment when the government seems to be carving out an exception to it large enough to drive a tank through.
As the occupiers of Zuccotti Park, like those pepper-sprayed at UC Davis or the Marine veteran shot in Oakland, recently found out, the government’s ability to limit free speech, to stopper the First Amendment, to undercut the right to peaceably assemble and petition for redress of grievances, is perhaps the most critical issue our republic can face. If you were to write the history of the last decade in Washington, it might well be a story of how, issue by issue, the government freed itself from legal and constitutional bounds when it came to torture, the assassination of U.S. citizens, the holding of prisoners without trial or access to a court of law, the illegal surveillance of American citizens, and so on. In the process, it has entrenched itself in a comfortable shadowland of ever more impenetrable secrecy, while going after any whistleblower who might shine a light in.
ACLU Sues Oakland Police Department to Stop Violence Against Protesters
The Oakland Police Department (OPD) was sued in federal court yesterday by the ACLU of Northern California and the National Lawyers Guild for trampling (repeatedly!) on the constitutional rights of Occupy Oakland demonstrators. The lawsuit asks for an immediate relief from the court to stop police violence against political protesters, because the OPD has shown that it will continue to violate protesters’ rights unless a court intervenes (again).
The case is before U.S. District Court Judge Richard Seeborg, who immediately issued an order requiring the city to respond by 5 p.m. today. The case is only one day old, but OPD already has to start explaining to the Court why it used excessive force against protesters.
One of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit is Scott Campbell, a videographer who was shot with a lead ball-filled bag (dubbed "bean bags" — a complete misnomer given the pain and injury they can inflict) while filming police presence during Occupy Oakland on the nights of Nov. 2 and 3. He has filmed repeated cases of excessive force by police.
Racial Profiling on an “Industrial Scale”: FBI Using Census Data to Map and Police Communities By Race
The ACLU uncovers an FBI program that pairs Census data with "crude stereotypes" to map ethnic communities.
New documents obtained by the ACLU show that the FBI has for years been using Census data to “map” ethnic and religious groups suspected of being likely to commit certain types of crimes.
New documents obtained by the ACLU show that the FBI has for years been using Census data to “map” ethnic and religious groups suspected of being likely to commit certain types of crimes.
Much is still not known about the apparent large-scale effort in racial profiling, partly because the documents the ACLU obtained through public records requests are heavily redacted.
The FBI maintains that the mapping program is designed to “better understand the communities that are potential victims of the threats,” but the ACLU says it is plainly unconstitutional.
ACLU Report Calls For Immediate Reform of Mississippi Drug Enforcement System
Excessively Harsh Sentences for Minor Drug Offenses and Misuse of Confidential Informants Undermines Criminal Justice System
JACKSON, Miss. - March 28 - Overly harsh and punitive sentences for low-level, non-violent drug crimes feed a racially discriminatory criminal justice system in Mississippi that fails to protect the public’s safety, according to a new report released today by the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Mississippi.
According to the report, “Numbers Game: The Vicious Cycle of Incarceration in Mississippi’s Criminal Justice System,” black Mississippians are three times more likely than whites to go to prison on drug charges, even though drug use rates across the state are virtually identical for blacks and whites. And because the state’s drug task force funding is contingent upon securing convictions, low-level drug offenders ensnared in the system feel compelled to become confidential informants who are used indiscriminately to ramp up the quantity of drug arrests with little regard to the quality of the cases they help to build.
“There is an urgent need to reform the policies that govern the drug enforcement system as a whole in Mississippi,” said Nsombi Lambright, Executive Director of the ACLU of Mississippi. “Arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement tactics need to be replaced by policies that actually enhance our public safety, protect civil rights and ensure the state’s fiscal solvency.”
We Can End Prison Rape
There is a terrible irony in the experience of incarcerated women: the lives of abuse and subordination that frequently brought them to prison are most often replicated behind prison walls. Women’s experience of prison as a place of abuse, violence, psychological deprivation and physical harm is both a human rights tragedy and an indictment of our justice system. Although many aspects of prison life produce tangible harm to women prisoners, their families and ultimately the community, the crisis proportions of sexual violence behind bars demands our immediate attention.
Institutionalized sexual abuse is an all too common experience for incarcerated women in this country. It is a practice well documented by leading human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. The problem is so pervasive that in its recent national survey of prisons and jails, the Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated that 88,500 adult prisoners were sexually abused in their current facility in the past year alone. But despite the acknowledged problems of sexual violence in correctional facilities across the country, the abuse continues largely unabated. This abuse takes the form of rape, but it also includes verbal harassment, improper groping during pat-down searches, improper visual surveillance while women bathe and perform personal hygiene tasks, and "consensual" sex for protection and material exchange.
Stopping Frisky Business
Eight men of color sue the City of Brotherly Love over its “stop-and-frisk” policy—the latest in a group of federal civil rights cases.
PHILADELPHIA—A controversial police policy instructing officers to randomly stop and frisk suspects they deem potentially threatening may soon face the scrutiny of a federal judge.In early November, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) joined a local law firm to file suit on behalf of eight plaintiffs, all men of color, who say the Philadelphia Police Department is misusing the policy to conduct racially motivated stops of black and Latino men in the city.
The plaintiffs in the current case include attorney Mahari Bailey, who says he was stopped and searched by police on four occasions between 2008 and 2010 for driving with tinted windows, a charge subsequently dropped. A Pennsylvania state representative who was handcuffed and detained for questioning the allegedly illegal stop of two of his elderly constituents is also part of the suit.
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