Latest criminal justice news, updates, and commentary 4.3.24
Top reads/listens: Olayemi Olurin took on Mayor Adams on the Breakfast Club; Police unions are on the warpath against Minneapolis DA Mary Morarity, who is prosecuting a state trooper who shot and killed a man (this is a common theme around the country); a global consulting firm subverted community-driven justice reform in Los Angeles; how the Oregon govt failed to implement drug decrim.
Media
Olayemi Olurin tackled Mayor Adams in an instantly-legendary episode of the Breakfast Club.
Worth rises recorded audio from people in prison describing what it means to them to have access to free phone calls to stay connected with their families. Worth Rises is campaigning to remove heavy phone call charges in every state. CA, CO, MA have already done it.
Law and Order has launched a new era on the show, bringing in a new District Attorney who emphasizes justice, the bigger picture, and reforms like conviction integrity. It’s a fascinating cultural nod to the changes that have happened in the last 10 years.
We rarely recognize the intense suffering of women with loved ones in prison. This art piece and commentary from the fantastic Essie Justice Group (produced a few years ago) offers a gentle way to reflect on it. Learn more here.
Elections
Reform prosecutors Sean Teare and Jose Garza won their races by huge margins in Harris (Houston) and Travis (Austin) counties last month, after millions of dollars were spent against them. And thanks to strong coverage by Bolts Magazine, some national media paid attention (though Politico was determined to ignore Texas).
Clayton Harris lost his bid to become the next elected prosecutor of Cook County (Chicago) by about 1,500 votes out of 527,000. He ran as a reformer and the successor to Kim Foxx, the magnetic trail blazer who finishes her second term this year. Reports from the ground said his campaign was underfunded and disorganized and that he was hampered by his past as a union-busting lawyer at Lyft. He was up against an well-run, well-funded campaign by Eileen Burke, heavily supported by Republican donors, who led with progressive-seeming language and promises to keep certain reform policies in place. Organizers don’t trust her to keep those promises.
George Gascón took 25% of the vote against a sea of candidates in the L.A. primary. Hochman, a well known and disliked Republican, came in 2nd with 15%, and will face Gascón in November.
In Franklin Co. OH (Columbus), Shayla Favor, who ran on a “progressive vision for public safety”, won the democratic primary for DA and is well positioned to win in November.
The campaign to recall Alameda (Oakland) DA Pamela Price failed to show enough valid signatures to get the recall on the ballot in their first round; now there’s a manual recount. Mother Jones did an in-depth profile of DA Price that’s worth the read.
In Cuyahoga Co. OH (Cleveland), young DA challenger Matthew Ahn lost against incumbent O’Malley (who beat the prior DA in 2016 on a wave of public anger over Tamir Rice’s killing). Ahn took 41% of the vote and vowed to keep fighting in the movement for criminal justice reform.
Issue 1, the California measure pushed by Governor Newsom that will radically change how mental health is funded at the country level (for the worse, according to many health leaders and advocates), won by .04% of the vote. The ‘yes’ campaign raised $23million to pass it; the opposition spent a few thousand dollars and worked through social media.
Solutions and Wins
The murder rate in 2024 is dropping even faster than it did in 2023.
President Biden’s State of the Union address was very brief on crime and justice, but quite positive in those few words. He noted that murder and violent crime rates have fallen significantly. He then called for investment in community policing, mental health workers, and community violence intervention; executive action on police reform; and marijuana reclassification. Each of these phrases is the product of years of organizing and advocacy by the field, and carries major consequences for executive action and funding.
To follow the effect of a DA election on one man’s life, read this moving twitter thread about the exoneration of a man who was wrongfully convicted, served 34 years in prison, and would have died in prison, but for Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner’s commitment to reviewing the integrity of suspect convictions. The NYTimes picked up the story too.
Partners for Justice, which sends client advocates in to supplement defender offices to give defendants a better chance of accessing services, was celebrated by local news in Pennsylvania. After they started working in Delaware County, there was a huge jump in program success rates.
The New York Times did a major piece on Ibogaine, which is coming closer to medical and regulatory acceptance as a treatment for severe opioid addiction in the U.S. (along with other psychedelics, which are gaining a real foothold in the mainstream), writing that: “According to a number of small studies, between a third and two-thirds of the people who were addicted to opioids or crack cocaine and were treated with the compound in a therapeutic setting were effectively cured of their habits, many after just a single session.” Tragically, states like West Virginia seem hell bent on throwing criminal penalties at drugs, which don’t work. It’s possible they may come around with pressure from veterans groups, who want access for PTSD.
Republican lawmakers in Oklahoma (like others around the country) are growing frustrated with deep flaws in the death penalty and are potentially moving to end it.
KQED in California won an important legal victory for police accountability; a California court ruled that the state can’t categorically withhold records on police misconduct.
Safer Cities profiled several successful Community Violence Interruption (CVI) programs that have been associated with dramatic drops in murders in Baltimore, Detroit, and Orlando
Advocacy
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has agreed to hear the appeal of a man sentenced to life without parole for a murder he didn’t commit, under the felony murder rule. If you don’t know what that is, I highly recommend reading the first six paragraphs of this Bolts article. If they overturn the rule, it could impact over 1,000 people serving life in PA.
Indigenous leaders are speaking at the United Nations, calling on Canada to redirect funding from Canadian prisons (which very disproportionately incarcerate indigenous people) to indigenous-led alternatives.
Families of people in jail in Michigan are suing to demand in-person visits, rather than being forced to use poorly-functioning and video visitation links and expensive phone calls. And Civil Rights Corps is bringing a lawsuit, also in Michigan, arguing that children have a constitutional right to hug their parents in prison.
Wall of Shame
The Supreme Court narrowly interpreted the First Step Act, significantly limiting who can get relief under the law, which was already quite limited in reach. Gorsuch dissented.
Governor Landry of Louisiana is losing no time in signing laws to expand the death penalty and eliminate parole, among other terrible policies. And he’s changing the age of adulthood so he can send large numbers of children to adult jail where there isn’t room for them, setting the state up for plenty of litigation; see the local coverage. Here are five major points of progress from the past few years that Landry is busy trying to roll back.
Governor Hochul deployed the national guard in the NYC subways last month, admitting that she was doing it in order to address the (false) perception of unsafety. There was a lot of passionate commentary on this. Here is one article I liked.
Police in San Bernardino shot and killed a 15 year old child in a mental crisis who was holding a gardening hoe (basically the size and weight of a broom). They defended their actions, saying they wouldn’t have had time to use a taser, and that the child could have hit an officer with the hoe. Deputies had previously come to the house and escorted the child to mental health treatment without incident.
Scandal-plagued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has proposed to redefine violent crime to include theft. That’s one of the more absurd components of a new rule that would place heavy reporting requirements on city DAs in Texas, which is his move to disable reform DAs from doing the jobs they were elected for. See proposed rule 56.2(5).