By Mani Dabiri | Published December 24, 2020 | Posted in Federal and State Criminal Defense, Government Subpoenas and Investigations, Post-Conviction Defense and Appeals, White-Collar and Regulatory Defense | Tagged Tags: bailandrelease, chargingdecisions, habeascorpus, innocenceprojects, juvenilejustice, overcriminalization, punishment, rehabilitation, smartoncrime, wobblers |
Making a Splash
There’s a new district attorney in Los Angeles, you may have heard, and he’s making some changes. When George Gascon took the oath of office, he issued nine policy directives that will change the way his office carries out its important mission. We summarize each of them below. Bail and pretrial release. The office will Read More
Read MoreThe Due Process Protections Act
Last week, Congress passed a new law that sharpens a fundamental rule of fairness in our system: “In all criminal proceedings, on the first scheduled court date when both prosecutor and defense counsel are present, the judge shall issue an oral and written order … that confirms the disclosure obligation of the prosecutor under Brady v. Maryland, Read More
Read MoreCalifornia Courts Must Tighten Belts Again
The state’s new budget, signed into law on Monday, cuts $200 million from the judiciary. For the fiscal year that begins today, the trial courts have $176.9 million less than last year, and the appeals courts lose $23.1 million. Overall, the budget gives $4 billion to fund the courts out of a total of $202.1 Read More
Read MoreBridgegate, Reversed
Once upon a time, you might recall, there was another kind of lockdown. For four days in September 2013, three public officials shut down two traffic lanes on one bridge from New Jersey to New York. It wasn’t just any bridge, though, but the busiest motor-vehicle bridge in the world. And it wasn’t just for Read More
Read MoreAn Impending Point of No Return
A prominent federal court of appeals has dismissed a lawsuit that aimed to compel the government to respond to climate change more urgently. It’s an interesting case. Essentially, the plaintiffs wanted an injunction that ordered the government to phase out emissions from fossil fuels and reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Or to come up with a Read More
Read MoreAnd Then There Were Six
On Wednesday, the longest-serving justice of the California Supreme Court announced that he would retire this summer. It’s a big deal for a court that seats only seven. Ming Chin, the state’s first Chinese-American justice, will hang up his robe after nearly twenty-five years on the high court. Before that, he served on the trial court Read More
Read MoreA Promise Is A Promise
Brilliant. In 2020, thirty-nine top prosecutors from across the country have promised to visit the jails and prisons in their jurisdiction and to require their line prosecutors to do the same. What’s more, they’ve pledged to make it part of the job description going forward. That’s thirty-nine district attorneys, county attorneys, or state attorneys from Read More
Read MoreYou Cannot Be Serious
The Fourth Amendment is supposed to protect your right to be secure against “unreasonable searches and seizures.” Those are the actual words of the text, which is why I put them in quotes. But earlier this month, the federal court of appeals that covers California and eight other states could not say whether it violated the Fourth Amendment Read More
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