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Access to Justice
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February 07, 2024
Fla. Courts' Fines And Fees Trap Poor In Debt, ABA Finds
The public defense group of the American Bar Association on Wednesday released a comprehensive report lambasting the fines and fees system in Florida's county-level misdemeanor court system, recommending the courts eliminate so-called user fees and establish an "ability-to-pay standard."
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February 06, 2024
Electrocution, Firing Squad Aren't Cruel, SC High Court Told
The government of South Carolina told the state's top court Tuesday that executing death row prisoners by electrocution or firing squad does not violate the state's constitution because there isn't sufficient evidence that those methods are either too painful, gruesome or out of step with what society at large accepts.
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February 02, 2024
How Court Fees Can Keep Poor NYers From Inheriting Homes
Inheriting property in New York means going through the state surrogate’s court system, where filing fees can run more than $1,000. While state law allows low-income residents to have their fees waived, legal aid attorneys say that courts sometimes refuse to apply it.
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February 02, 2024
Birmingham, Ala., Hit with $4.5M Verdict Over Police Shooting
An Alabama federal jury hit the city of Birmingham with a $4.5 million verdict over a fatal police shooting, finding that a city officer violated the constitutional rights of two people when he fired upon them while they were immobilized in a vehicle at the end of a car chase.
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February 02, 2024
Pushing To Make The Formerly Incarcerated A Protected Class
After a pair of formerly incarcerated activists helped convince local leaders in Atlanta to extend anti-discrimination protections to people with criminal records by making them a legally protected class, they and others are now working to get more cities — and eventually maybe the federal government — to do the same.
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February 02, 2024
ACLU Atty On How To Protect Civil Liberties In The AI Era
Because artificial intelligence and algorithmic systems often operate in the shadows, there's a new need for legislation, regulation and enforcement to ensure the technology doesn't undercut civil liberties by engaging in discrimination in housing, education or employment, according to Cody Venzke, senior policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.
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February 02, 2024
3 BigLaw Firms Guide Trans Rights Groups In Pending Merger
A trio of large law firms are providing pro bono representation to help two national transgender civil rights organizations navigate a planned merger that the groups' leaders say will amplify their voices as they advocate for trans people across the country.
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February 02, 2024
Law360 Seeks Members For Its 2024 Editorial Boards
Law360 is looking for avid readers of its publications to serve as members of its 2024 editorial advisory boards.
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January 25, 2024
High Court Splits In Refusal To Stay Ala.'s Nitrogen Execution
The U.S. Supreme Court declined Thursday night to intervene in Alabama's second attempt to execute an inmate who previously survived a botched lethal injection, with the court's three liberal justices saying they would have heard the man's claims that he was being subjected to cruel and unusual punishment.
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January 25, 2024
Seattle Settles BLM Protesters' Police Brutality Suit For $10M
The city of Seattle has agreed to a $10 million settlement to end a lawsuit brought by more than 50 protesters who say they were brutalized by its police force during Black Lives Matter demonstrations in the summer of 2020.
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January 24, 2024
10th Circ. Rules Counsel Duped Client Into Guilty Plea
In a precedential ruling, the Tenth Circuit has allowed a Black Oklahoma man to withdraw his guilty plea on felony possession of ammunition charges, determining that his court-appointed lawyer incorrectly told him he would not face an impartial jury of his peers, thus robbing him of his constitutional rights.
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January 24, 2024
Justices Won't Stop Ala.'s 2nd Attempt To Execute Prisoner
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to pause the looming execution of an Alabama prisoner who survived the state's previous attempt to kill him via injection, allowing Alabama to perform the nation's first execution using nitrogen gas.
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January 23, 2024
Full 5th Circ. Probes Ruling Against Miss. Lifelong Voting Ban
The whole U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Tuesday aggressively questioned whether a three-judge panel of the same court was correct in finding in August that a Mississippi lifelong voting ban for people convicted of certain felonies violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on "cruel and unusual" punishment.
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January 22, 2024
High Court Will Review Okla. Inmate's Innocence Claim
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review the case of an Oklahoma death row inmate who defense attorneys and the state's attorney general agree was wrongfully convicted of the 1997 killing of an Oklahoma City man because prosecutors failed to turn over critical information about their key witness.
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January 19, 2024
For Immigrants, Gun Rights Debate Goes Beyond Firearms
Last month, for the first time, a federal court found that a long-standing law banning gun possession by unauthorized immigrants violates the Second Amendment. As similar challenges play out around the country, the legal and political backdrop of the case has caught the attention of legal scholars, who see in the right to be armed a fundamental question about noncitizens’ belonging in the nation and their ability to exercise other constitutional rights.
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January 19, 2024
How Bass Berry Helped Free 3 Wrongfully Convicted Men
Working alongside the Tennessee Innocence Project, Bass Berry & Sims PLC committed more than 4,000 hours of pro bono work to challenge the wrongful convictions of three Black men. Thanks to those efforts, Wayne Burgess, Artis Whitehead and Thomas Clardy all walked free last year after collectively spending 62 years behind bars.
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January 19, 2024
Ala. Inmate Tells Justices 2nd Execution Attempt Violates Rights
An Alabama death row inmate asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay his looming execution and decide whether the state, after previously failing to kill him via lethal injection, can try again with a new method, or if he is being subjected to cruel and unusual punishment.
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January 19, 2024
New Mexico Judiciary Establishes Rural Clerkship Program
The New Mexico Judiciary is launching a Rural Justice Initiative Clerkship Program, which creates four paid clerk positions for attorneys who will work with state judicial district chief judges.
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January 19, 2024
Baker Donelson Reinvests In ABA's Free Legal Answers
Baker Donelson announced on Friday a monetary and resource investment into the American Bar Association's Free Legal Answers clinic, which the law firm helped establish a decade ago.
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January 19, 2024
Texas Non-Atty Ownership Plan Fizzles As Justice Gap Fix
As the legal industry struggles to find ways to bridge the wide gap between those who can afford civil legal services and those who cannot, a proposal in Texas to allow non-attorney ownership of firms providing low- or no-cost services faces an uncertain future following opposition from lawyers who say it would create an ethical quagmire.
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January 18, 2024
AI Tool Updated To Help Immigration Attys With Legal Tasks
The American Immigration Lawyers Association and software platform Visalaw.ai released an updated version of an artificial intelligence legal research tool that now has an expanded library and a document upload feature.
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January 17, 2024
Big Law Leans Liberal In Pro Bono Amicus Briefs, Study Says
BigLaw firms don't usually advertise their political and ideological leanings, but a new study examining amicus briefs filed by the largest U.S. law firms on behalf of likely pro bono clients before the U.S. Supreme Court may offer new insights into which direction BigLaw firms tilt.
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January 11, 2024
Mich. Attys Can Now Pay For Pro Bono Clients' Travel, Clothes
Lawyers in Michigan can give impoverished pro bono clients certain kinds of financial aid under a revision to the state's professional conduct code adopted by the Michigan Supreme Court.
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January 11, 2024
NJ Jail Hit With Civil Rights Suit Over Inmate's OD Death
The mother of a 31-year-old New Jersey woman who died of a drug overdose while in custody at a Garden State county jail has sued the county and its sheriff's department, alleging it knew about her history of substance abuse but failed to place her in a protected setting and adequately monitor her or her cellmates.
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January 10, 2024
Justices Toy With New Testimony Rule In Ariz. Expert Dispute
The U.S. Supreme Court seemed to agree Wednesday that Arizona prosecutors violated a criminal defendant's Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses testifying against him by presenting a substitute expert witness at trial, and instead centered most of its questions on whether the court should revise its rule for identifying testimonial statements.
Expert Analysis
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DOJ's Boeing Immunity Deal Violated Crime Victims' Rights
The Northern District of Texas should support the arguments of 737 Max plane crash victims’ families, and hold that the U.S. Department of Justice violated the families' ability to provide input under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act when it secretly entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with Boeing, says Meg Garvin at the National Crime Victims Law Institute.
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Jackson Confirmation Hearings Should Examine Due Process
In the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings, senators should assess Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s approach to holding government actors accountable in the areas of qualified immunity and forfeiture, as revisiting shaky precedents on these topics could help guarantee due process for all, says Marc Levin at the Council on Criminal Justice.
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ABA's New Anti-Bias Curriculum Rule Is Insufficient
The American Bar Association's recently approved requirement that law schools educate students on bias, cross-cultural competency and racism, while a step in the right direction, fails to publicly acknowledge and commit to eradicating the systemic racial inequality in our legal system, says criminal defense attorney Donna Mulvihill Fehrmann.
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Justice Reforms Call For Quick Action To Fill US Atty Spots
U.S. attorneys play an important role in transforming the criminal legal system for several reasons, and they can restore integrity and independence to the U.S. Department of Justice, so President Joe Biden and Congress must move quickly to fill the remaining two-thirds of the top prosecutor seats, says Derick Dailey at Davis + Gilbert.
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Judge's Veto Of Arbery Hate Crime Plea Deal Is Not Unusual
Contrary to media commentary, a Georgia federal judge’s rejection of the plea agreement between prosecutors and a defendant charged with hate crimes in the murder of Ahmaud Arbery is not actually surprising — it simply indicates the judge’s desire to retain discretion and allow all parties to be heard before making a just sentencing decision, says Dominick Gerace at Taft Stettinius.
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Indefinite Migrant Detention Without Review Is Kafkaesque
In two recently argued U.S. Supreme Court cases, the government's position that detained migrants can't demand an immigration judge review their confinement, but can instead file a habeas petition in federal court, reads like a work of Kafka, offering only the illusion of access to a hearing before a neutral fact-finder, says César García Hernández at Ohio State University.
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2 Worthy Goals For The DOJ's New Domestic Terrorism Unit
The U.S. Department of Justice’s newly announced Domestic Terrorism Unit should include both counterterrorism and civil rights prosecutors, and would benefit from a criminal statute that is modeled after international terrorism laws and that strikes a balance between protecting the public and constitutional rights, say Emil Bove and Brittany Manna at Chiesa Shahinian.
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Justice Reforms Are Not To Blame For Waukesha Tragedy
Last month's parade attack in Wisconsin has brought into focus the fact that the accused was out of jail on a low bond — but this tragedy must not be exploited to reverse years of long-overdue criminal justice reform, when emerging data shows that new prosecutorial models are associated with better outcomes than an overly punitive approach, says Alissa Marque Heydari at John Jay College.
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Addressing Prison Risk After CARES Act Home Confinement
Home confinement eligibility, which was expanded last year due to high rates of COVID-19 in penal institutions, may soon be tightened, so house-detained individuals at risk of returning to prison should understand their various avenues for relief, as well as the procedural obstacles they may face in mounting legal challenges, say Charles Burnham and Jonathan Knowles at Burnham & Gorokhov.
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We Must Help Fix Justice Gap In Georgia's Legal Deserts
In much of rural Georgia, there are too few lawyers to meet residents’ urgent legal needs, forcing self-represented litigants to navigate an impenetrable system, but courts, law firms and nonlawyers can help address these legal deserts in various ways, says Lauren Sudeall at Georgia State University College of Law.
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Reimagining Courthouse Design For Better Access To Justice
While courthouse design has historically been driven by tradition, it is time to shift from the classical courthouse to spaces that are accessible to those with mobility challenges, serve the needs of vulnerable litigants, and accommodate pandemic-era shifts toward remote and hybrid proceedings, says architect Clair Colburn at Finegold Alexander.
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Why Law Schools Should Require Justice Reform Curriculum
Criminal defense attorney Donna Mulvihill Fehrmann argues that law schools have an obligation to address widespread racial and economic disparities in the U.S. legal system by mandating first-year coursework on criminal justice reform that educates on prosecutorial misconduct, wrongful convictions, defense 101 and more.
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Attorneys, Fight For Enviro Justice With Both Law And Protest
In this moment of climate crisis, lawyers can and should use law and protest in tandem — from urging law firms to stop serving the fossil fuel industry to helping draft laws that accelerate the transition to a sustainable way of life, says Vivek Maru at Namati.
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One-Subject Rule Strategy Can Defeat Dangerous State Laws
Attorneys at Ulmer & Berne explain how single-subject rule violation claims can thwart certain unconstitutional or controversial state statutes and protect civil rights in the face of state governments under one-party rule.
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States Must Rethink Wrongful Conviction Compensation Laws
States, counties and municipalities have now paid over $3 billion in judgments or settlements to exonerees, while policymakers lack comprehensive data on official misconduct and financial costs — but rethinking state compensation statutes can curb the policies and practices that cause wrongful convictions in the first place, says Jeffrey Gutman at George Washington University.