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Access to Justice
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June 02, 2023
Venable Wins Resentencing For Last Md. Death Row Inmate
The last Maryland resident on federal death row is now awaiting resentencing for the fatal 2002 kidnapping of a Washington, D.C., police officer's son after a Venable LLP team recently helped persuade a judge to vacate his death sentence and three firearms convictions.
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June 02, 2023
More States Turn To Paraprofessionals To Fill Justice Gap
The number of states implementing programs to license paraprofessionals to practice law has swiftly multiplied over the last three years, growing from two states to six and counting as courts seek ways to meet the legal needs of low- and moderate-income residents.
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June 02, 2023
COVID Bottleneck Continues To Delay Federal Courts
Though new filings fell dramatically over the course of the pandemic, the length of time it took cases to resolve rose, a sign that though the public health emergency has ended, COVID’s effects are still being felt in federal courts, raising access to justice concerns for both litigants and criminal defendants.
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June 01, 2023
NY Legal Aid Orgs. Cheer New Law Ditching Civil Notarization
New York could soon become the latest state to eliminate the process of requiring documents to be notarized in civil matters, a move that civil legal aid organizations say will improve people's access to the state's court system.
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June 01, 2023
40 DC Firms Honored In Effort To Improve Access To Justice
Forty law firms in Washington, D.C., have qualified for an annual campaign recognizing those that donate a certain percentage of their revenue to local legal services organizations, the D.C. Access to Justice Commission announced Thursday.
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May 30, 2023
Ariz., Utah OK Nonlawyer Program For Housing Advice
A new legal service model that aims to keep more low-income families in their homes has received approval from the Arizona and Utah supreme courts — which have waived restrictions on the unauthorized practice of law.
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May 25, 2023
Texas Man Exonerated Of Sex Assault After 26 Years in Prison
Tyrone Day inside Dallas County Criminal Court on May 24, 2023 after a judge exonerated him from sexual assault charges for which he spent 26 years in prison. (Montinique Monroe/Innocence Project)
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May 22, 2023
Civil Rights Suit Against NYC Cop Tossed After High Court Win
A New York federal judge dismissed a civil rights suit against a New York City Police Department officer brought by a Brooklyn man who won the right to present his claims last year by the U.S. Supreme Court, ending a nearly decade-long legal battle, attorneys confirmed on Monday.
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May 19, 2023
Debt Firm's Flameout A Cautionary Tale For Consumers
The collapse of a California debt resolution law firm has impacted tens of thousands of consumers across the country, leaving many deeper in debt and with ruined credit. It’s an extreme example of predatory behavior across an industry where marketing companies and law firms urge vulnerable debtors to pay big money for services that advocates say have little to no real value.
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May 19, 2023
Texas Riding Growing Wave Of Bail Reform Rollbacks
Amid a wave of harsher bail laws sweeping through the nation, Texas is considering bills that would give judges more power to set bail for people charged with serious offenses and a constitutional amendment that would categorically deny bail for those accused of the most serious crimes.
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May 19, 2023
Study Shows NYC Judges Who Are More Likely To Incarcerate
A recent study by decarceration advocates analyzing public pretrial data identified 14 New York City judges who are more likely than their peers to order defendants held in jail while awaiting trial.
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May 19, 2023
Willkie, Freshfields Help Score NY Medicaid Dental Expansion
Attorneys with Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP and Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP partnered with the Legal Aid Society to secure a recent class action settlement that will expand dental care coverage to an estimated 5 million Medicaid recipients in New York. Here’s how they did it.
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May 18, 2023
NYC Faces Suits Alleging Racial Bias In Child Removals
Bronx Defenders and Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP filed two lawsuits Thursday against New York City's Administration for Children's Services, accusing the agency of discriminating against parents of color in its child removal decisions.
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May 17, 2023
Calif. Judge Halts Some Pre-Arraignment Cash Bail In LA
A California judge temporarily blocked Los Angeles city and county from enforcing cash bail systems against arrestees detained for low-level offenses before arraignment, finding the system's constitutional harm is "pervasive in that each year it likely affects tens of thousands of impoverished persons detained solely because they are poor."
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May 15, 2023
Justices To Hear Cases On Gun Sentencing For Repeat Felons
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to clarify the legal standards used to determine whether repeat felony offenders convicted of federal gun charges must receive prison sentences of at least 15 years.
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May 11, 2023
Calif. County To Pay $7.5M In Fatal Shooting Of Black Man
Orange County, California, has agreed to pay $7.5 million to the family of a homeless Black man who was shot and killed by a sheriff's deputy in San Clemente in 2020, an attorney confirmed to Law360 on Thursday.
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May 05, 2023
Judge Pauses Miss. GOP's Foray Into Capital City Courts
A state judge in Mississippi has ordered a temporary halt to a controversial new law that would give the majority-white state government greater control over the court system in the majority-Black capital city, Jackson.
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May 05, 2023
Old Pot Felonies Hard To Erase Despite NY's New Law
Confusion about New York's law legalizing marijuana — and a possible typo — means some judges are denying requests to clear old felony pot convictions. Defense attorneys, meanwhile, claim what they're really doing is denying the legislature's intent.
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May 05, 2023
Justices Halt Execution Of Okla. Man After AG Admits Errors
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday halted the looming execution of an Oklahoma man after the state's attorney general conceded his murder conviction was riddled with constitutional errors and possible prosecutorial misconduct.
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May 05, 2023
New Legal Aid DC Leader Faces Growing Needs, Budget Cuts
Vikram Swaruup is settling into his new role as executive director of Legal Aid of the District of Columbia at a time when the organization's clients have been hit hard by inflation, the end of enhanced safety-net benefits and the halting of pandemic-related protections against evictions, foreclosures and debt collection.
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May 05, 2023
After 29 Years, 'The Poster Child For Clemency' Comes Home
In December, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul granted clemency to 12 convicts. Last month, several of them finally made it home, including Bruce Bryant, whom advocates call "the poster child for clemency" and who spent nearly 30 years in prison for a murder he's always maintained he didn't commit.
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May 05, 2023
Justice At Guantanamo: Atty Attends Bali Bombing Hearings
Pretrial motions are moving forward for three detainees who have been held at Guantanamo Bay for two decades on charges related to a deadly terrorist bombing in Bali in 2002. Here, trial lawyer George Donnini shares his experience traveling to Cuba to be a witness to the proceedings on behalf of the American Bar Association.
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May 05, 2023
14-Year Restraining Order Battle Shows Court Reporter Need
When a faulty audio recording left a New Jersey judge unable to rule on a bid to dissolve a decade-old restraining order, the couple embroiled in the dispute was forced to relive their trauma as part of a court-ordered bid to recreate the record in their 2004 restraining order hearing. Experts say the case highlights the important role of court stenographers amid a growing national shortage.
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May 03, 2023
3½-Hour Ala. Execution Was Needlessly Cruel, Suit Says
The family of an Alabama man killed in what is believed to be the longest recorded execution in U.S. history has accused the state of subjecting him to unnecessary cruelty in violation of his constitutional rights, according to a suit filed Wednesday.
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April 27, 2023
Family Gets $7M Settlement Over Texarkana Jail Death
The family of a 46-year-old woman who died in the custody of a private East Texas jail has reached a $7 million settlement in what attorneys say is the largest known jail death settlement in the state's history and one of the largest reached nationwide over an in-custody death.
Expert Analysis
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A High Court Win Will Not End Discriminatory Jury Selection
Although the U.S. Supreme Court reversed and remanded Curtis Flowers' murder conviction in Flowers v. Mississippi, history may simply repeat itself once again unless the legal industry does more as a profession to combat discrimination and use ethics rules for their intended purpose, says Tyler Maulsby of Frankfurt Kurnit.
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Secrecy Agreements And 1st Amendment: Finding A Balance
The divided decision by the Fourth Circuit issued earlier this month in Overbey v. Baltimore raises many concerning questions about the potential First Amendment implications of nondisparagement clauses in government settlement agreements, says Alan Morrison of George Washington University School of Law.
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Risk Assessment Tools Are Not A Failed 'Minority Report'
Contrary to Wednesday's op-ed in the New York Times, which refers to pretrial risk assessment tools as "a real-world 'Minority Report'" that doesn't work, these tools and the promise they hold to improve judges’ and magistrates’ decision-making processes should not be dismissed simply because they aren’t yet perfect, say professors at North Carolina State University and Duke University.
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Looted-Art Heirs May Find A Sympathetic Forum In NY Courts
The New York Appellate Division decision last week in Reif v. Nagy — in favor of the heirs in a Holocaust looted-art claim — is noteworthy because of the manner in which it rejected the defendant’s claim of laches, just a few weeks after the Second Circuit had dismissed a Holocaust looted-art claim on those very grounds, says Martin Bienstock of Bienstock.
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Addressing Modern Slavery Inside And Outside The UK
As the problem of modern slavery persists, U.K. companies must take a broad approach when rooting out slave labor in their supply chains, and should not ignore the risk posed by suppliers within the U.K., says Maria Theodoulou of Stokoe.
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High Court's Juror Exclusion Ruling Does Not Do Enough
In Flowers v. Mississippi, the U.S. Supreme Court extended the rhetoric that exclusion of even one juror based on race is unconstitutional, but without further guidance, the principle the court seeks to uphold will continue to falter, says Kate Margolis of Bradley Arant.
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Artisanal Miners' Roadblocks To Justice: Is A Path Clearing?
Efforts to give small-scale gold miners, who face displacement, pollution and violence at sites around the world, access to fair and functioning justice systems have met with apathy from politicians and fierce resistance from powerful business lobbies, but there are signs that this may be changing, says Mark Pieth, president of the Basel Institute on Governance.
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High Court Ruling Highlights Double Jeopardy Complications
Although the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in Gamble does not change the application of the double jeopardy clause as interpreted by federal courts, the decision reinforces the significant impact of dual prosecutions and the risks for corporate and individual defendants, say Laurel Gift and Randall Hsia of Schnader Harrison.
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High Court's 'Separate Sovereigns' Ruling Is Good For Tribes
The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Gamble v. U.S. — reaffirming the so-called separate sovereigns doctrine — preserves tribal prosecutors' autonomy and ability to respond promptly to offenses without worrying about the legal repercussions on federal prosecutions, say Steven Gordon and Philip Baker-Shenk of Holland & Knight.
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Border Phone Search Questions Continue In Federal Court
A Massachusetts federal court's eventual decision on cellphone searches at the U.S. border in Alasaad v. Nielsen will further illustrate the differences in how federal courts apply the U.S. Supreme Court's 2014 decision in Riley v. California to the warrant-requirement exception for border searches, says Sharon Barney at Leech Tishman.
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US Misdemeanor System Should Honor Principles Of Justice
The U.S. misdemeanor system — which represents the vast majority of the country’s criminal system — is under-regulated, rarely scrutinized and rife with official rule-breaking. It's time we brought this enormous aspect of our democracy into the modern legal era, says Alexandra Natapoff of University of California, Irvine School of Law.
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Does Multidistrict Litigation Deny Plaintiffs Due Process?
Judges in multidistrict litigation consistently appoint lead plaintiffs lawyers based on their experience, war chests and ability to get along with everyone. But evidence suggests that these repeat players often make deals riddled with self-interest and provisions that goad plaintiffs into settling, says Elizabeth Chamblee Burch of the University of Georgia School of Law.
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NLRB Case Hinders Workers' Path To Justice
A little-noticed National Labor Relations Board filing has taken the U.S. Supreme Court's 2018 class action waiver decision and turned it into a justification for further limiting workers’ access to courts, says Sharon Block, executive director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School.
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Immigration Enforcement Under Trump Neglects Rule Of Law
What President Donald Trump and his administration have described as a “humanitarian crisis” at the U.S. southern border is, in reality, a Trump-exacerbated crisis — which demands real solutions, not incendiary rhetoric, cruelty and lawlessness, says David Leopold of Ulmer & Berne.
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Calif. Lawmakers Should Stay Out Of USC Sex Abuse Case
A pending settlement between the University of Southern California and 17,000 former students would resolve claims over the actions of a sexually abusive gynecologist. But proposed state legislation could undermine the settlement, says Shook Hardy partner Phil Goldberg, director of the Progressive Policy Institute’s Center for Civil Justice.