Reform criminal justice now. That was the core message US Attorney General Eric Holder delivered recently to the American Bar Associationand
our nation. He declared that "too many Americans go to too many prisons
for far too long, and for no truly good law enforcement reason" and at
great public expense.
Seeking to cut imprisonment rates and spending while protecting the
public, Holder has directed the Justice Department to charge non-violent
drug offenders with less severe federal crimes. Beyond reducing the use
of mandatory minimum sentences and shortening prison times for
lower-level drug felons, while reserving more serious charges and longer
sentences for violent and higher-ranking drug traffickers, the Justice
Department supports sentencing more people to rehab than
(re-)imprisonment for crimes rooted in drug abuse and addiction.
Those reforms, among others, according to Holder, will do more for
"the lives being harmed, not helped, by a criminal justice system that
doesn't serve the American people as well as it should". There is one
group of Americans that couldn't agree more – the children of the imprisoned.
Read on...
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Showing posts with label U.S. Justice Department. Show all posts
Showing posts with label U.S. Justice Department. Show all posts
Racism, the U. S. Justice System, and the Trayvon Martin Verdict
What happens when African Americans don’t get a jury of their peers?
While the unquestionably unfair verdict in the Trayvon Martin case, rendered in Florida by five whites and one Latina, should be deeply troubling to persons of all races who care about racial justice, U. S. history, as well as the current racial reality in this country, teaches that it should not come as a surprise.
The jury, simply put, decided that a white police wannabe could justifiably profile an unarmed African-American 17-year-old as a criminal, hunt him down, and fatally shoot him.
Martin family attorney Benjamin Crump likened the case to that of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old Chicago boy who was kidnapped and brutally murdered in Mississippi in 1955. Others have posited the question: What would the result have been if the accused was African-American and the victim was white? The Scottsboro case—nine black boys wrongfully accused of raping a white woman in Alabama in the 1930s—comes to mind. In both cases all-white juries delivered clearly racist verdicts, acquitting Till’s murderers and convicting the Scottsboro Boys.
Read on...
While the unquestionably unfair verdict in the Trayvon Martin case, rendered in Florida by five whites and one Latina, should be deeply troubling to persons of all races who care about racial justice, U. S. history, as well as the current racial reality in this country, teaches that it should not come as a surprise.
The jury, simply put, decided that a white police wannabe could justifiably profile an unarmed African-American 17-year-old as a criminal, hunt him down, and fatally shoot him.
Martin family attorney Benjamin Crump likened the case to that of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old Chicago boy who was kidnapped and brutally murdered in Mississippi in 1955. Others have posited the question: What would the result have been if the accused was African-American and the victim was white? The Scottsboro case—nine black boys wrongfully accused of raping a white woman in Alabama in the 1930s—comes to mind. In both cases all-white juries delivered clearly racist verdicts, acquitting Till’s murderers and convicting the Scottsboro Boys.
Read on...
The Justice Dept. and a free press
The Obama administration stumbled badly in recent months as it
repeatedly overstepped its authority in seeking information from news
organizations. Prosecutors swept up phone records tracking calls by
reporters and editors of the Associated Press, suggested that a Fox News
reporter might be criminally prosecuted and continued their vigorous
pursuit of information held by reporters in ferreting out alleged leaks.
For that, the administration has been properly excoriated.
On Friday, however, Atty. Gen Eric H. Holder Jr. unveiled new guidelines to govern the department's behavior in cases involving news organizations. Those guidelines represent a historic step toward restraining the reach of government and affirming the rights of a free press. The administration got to this place only because of the outrage it brought on itself, but it got to the right place anyway.
Most important, the new guidelines ensure that news organizations, in almost all instances, are given notice when prosecutors seek records related to news gathering. Notice, which was not given to the Associated Press, allows organizations to discuss the request with the Justice Department and, if necessary, to contest it in court.
Read on...
On Friday, however, Atty. Gen Eric H. Holder Jr. unveiled new guidelines to govern the department's behavior in cases involving news organizations. Those guidelines represent a historic step toward restraining the reach of government and affirming the rights of a free press. The administration got to this place only because of the outrage it brought on itself, but it got to the right place anyway.
Most important, the new guidelines ensure that news organizations, in almost all instances, are given notice when prosecutors seek records related to news gathering. Notice, which was not given to the Associated Press, allows organizations to discuss the request with the Justice Department and, if necessary, to contest it in court.
Read on...
Justice Department Fights Release of Secret Court Opinion Finding Unconstitutional Surveillance
In the midst of revelations that the government has conducted extensive top-secret surveillance operations to collect domestic phone records and internet communications,
the Justice Department was due to file a court motion Friday in its
effort to keep secret an 86-page court opinion that determined that the
government had violated the spirit of federal surveillance laws and
engaged in unconstitutional spying.
This important case—all the more relevant in the wake of this week's disclosures—was triggered after Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate intelligence committee, started crying foul in 2011 about US government snooping. As a member of the intelligence committee, he had learned about domestic surveillance activity affecting American citizens that he believed was improper. He and Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), another intelligence committee member, raised only vague warnings about this data collection, because they could not reveal the details of the classified program that concerned them. But in July 2012, Wyden was able to get the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to declassify two statements that he wanted to issue publicly. They were:
Read on...
This important case—all the more relevant in the wake of this week's disclosures—was triggered after Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate intelligence committee, started crying foul in 2011 about US government snooping. As a member of the intelligence committee, he had learned about domestic surveillance activity affecting American citizens that he believed was improper. He and Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), another intelligence committee member, raised only vague warnings about this data collection, because they could not reveal the details of the classified program that concerned them. But in July 2012, Wyden was able to get the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to declassify two statements that he wanted to issue publicly. They were:
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...
Justice Department Closes the Book on CIA Torture and Deaths in Custody
The Justice Department has closed a probe on Bush-era torture and killings by CIA agents, and has decided against prosecuting anyone.
Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement that the Justice Department “declined prosecution because the admissible evidence would not be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt.”
The probe was opened in 2009, and looked at the cases of about 100 prisoners. The last two cases looked at are now officially closed, with no charges coming.
The probe of the CIA was the Obama administration’s only effort to look at prosecuting those who implemented the Bush regime of torture on alleged militants and terrorists captured in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the administration never considered going after those top-level administration officials who crafted the rationale behind the torture of prisoners, which violated US and international law.
Read on...
Seems the only people getting prosecuted in the U.S. these days are protestors, and demonstrators. Tom
Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement that the Justice Department “declined prosecution because the admissible evidence would not be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt.”
The probe was opened in 2009, and looked at the cases of about 100 prisoners. The last two cases looked at are now officially closed, with no charges coming.
The probe of the CIA was the Obama administration’s only effort to look at prosecuting those who implemented the Bush regime of torture on alleged militants and terrorists captured in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the administration never considered going after those top-level administration officials who crafted the rationale behind the torture of prisoners, which violated US and international law.
Read on...
Seems the only people getting prosecuted in the U.S. these days are protestors, and demonstrators. Tom
Defining Deviancy Away: How the Justice Department Adopted "See No Evil" approach to corporate crime
Gretchen Morgenson and Louise Story have a must-read article in the New York Times on an important aspect of our two-tier justice system, in which only little people seem to be subject to the full force of the law. The article describes how, starting with the Bush Administration and continuing under Obama, the Department of Justice decided to exit the business of prosecuting suspected corporate criminals.
This section is stunning:
But by 2005, a debate was growing over aggressive prosecutions, as some business leaders had been criticizing the approach as perhaps too zealous.
That May, Justice Department officials met ahead of a session with a cross-agency group called the Corporate Fraud Task Force…
In the meeting, the deputy attorney general at the time, James B. Comey, posed questions that surprised some attendees, according to two people there who asked to remain anonymous because they were not supposed to discuss private meetings.
Was American business being hurt by the Justice Department’s investigations?, Mr. Comey asked, according to these two people, who said they thought the message had come from others. He cautioned colleagues to be responsible. “It was a total retrenchment,” one of the people said. “It was like we were going backwards.”
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