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Access to Justice
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June 20, 2023
Young Thug Trial Illustrates System's Strain On Jurors
Prospective juror No. 1,616 sits in the witness box of the downtown Atlanta courtroom and tells the judge he has three children, ages 2, 4 and 6, making it especially difficult for him to serve in what is expected to be Georgia's longest trial.
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June 16, 2023
Justices Say Gun Crime Sentences Can Run Parallel To Others
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday unanimously ruled that criminal defendants convicted of certain federal gun crimes could be allowed to serve concurrent sentences if they were also convicted of other crimes, rebuking the government's view that sentences must run consecutively.
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June 15, 2023
Wash. High Court Asks If Police Evictions Trigger AG Scrutiny
Washington Supreme Court justices asked Thursday how far-reaching local civil rights violations needed to be before the state attorney general could get involved, as they considered the state's claims that a small city police force had a practice of illegally evicting residents.
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June 15, 2023
Arizona Releases Man Who Spent 29 Years On Death Row
An Arizona man who spent 29 years on death row for the murder of a little girl he said he didn't commit was freed on Thursday after the state admitted that he was never given a fair trial.
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June 13, 2023
Conn. AG Talks Unregulated Cannabis 'Danger,' Abortion
Explaining that unlicensed and unregulated THC products pose a "danger" because they could subject consumers, especially youths, to medically unsafe doses, Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said during a wide-ranging interview with Law360 that his office would continue to target cannabis sellers who try to skirt his state's recreational marijuana laws.
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June 08, 2023
Businesses Sue Seattle Over 2020 Protest Response
A Seattle-based ice cream chain and a property owner sued the city in federal court this week, accusing officials of encouraging and condoning a protest zone in 2020 that shut down parts of the business's neighborhood, which they say resulted in lost revenue and an illegal taking by the local government.
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June 07, 2023
Homeowners Say NY Courts Defy Law On Foreclosure Aid
Two Brooklyn homeowners accused New York's court administrators and justices of the state's Supreme Court in Brooklyn of failing to implement a state law requiring courts to assess if homeowners who are facing foreclosure and cannot afford an attorney should be given free legal representation, according to court documents filed Wednesday.
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June 06, 2023
Legal Ethicists Back Inmate's Innocence Case At High Court
A group of renowned legal ethics scholars has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case of an Oklahoma death row inmate whose murder conviction has been deemed by the state's attorney general to be plagued by errors and possible prosecutorial misconduct, court filings show.
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June 05, 2023
Davis Wright Among ABA's 2023 Pro Bono Honorees
Davis Wright Tremaine LLP and four individuals are set to receive honors from the American Bar Association later this year for their pro bono efforts in areas such as gender-based violence and Social Security disability fraud, the ABA announced Monday.
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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.
Expert Analysis
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Death Penalty Return May Undermine Criminal Justice Reform
The last two years have been a watershed moment for bipartisan criminal justice reform, but with one swift edict — the July 25 announcement that federal executions will be reinstated after 16 years — the Trump administration risks throwing this forward momentum into reverse, says Laura Arnold of Arnold Ventures.
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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.