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Access to Justice
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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.
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January 09, 2024
NC Agency Sued Over Child Solitary Confinement Practice
The North Carolina Department of Public Safety is violating the constitutional rights of children not convicted of crimes by locking them up alone every hour of the day with little to no relief from confinement, while breaking state law requiring education, according to a proposed class action filed in federal court Monday.
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January 05, 2024
The Issues Access To Justice Leaders Are Watching In 2024
A surge in evictions, domestic violence and child poverty last year has heightened the demand for legal services to help low- and middle-income families, and worsened a shortage of attorneys to assist in matters ranging from housing to healthcare to benefits and beyond in 2024.
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January 05, 2024
Quinn Emanuel Aids 'Sewer Service' Debt Collection Fight
Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP recently teamed up with two legal aid groups to notch a major win from a New York appeals court making it easier for consumers to challenge judgments they may have been hit with due to fraudulent service — or so-called sewer service — of debt collection complaints.
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January 04, 2024
5th Circ. Won't Block Miss. GOP Capital City Law Amid Appeal
The Fifth Circuit on Thursday refused to temporarily block a controversial new Mississippi law that would give the majority-white state government greater control over the court system in the state's majority-Black capital city while the NAACP and other groups appeal, finding that they're not likely to succeed in their challenge.
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January 04, 2024
Nonprofit, Paralegals Sue To Take Down NC Legal Advice Law
A North Carolina nonprofit is challenging a state law banning anyone but a fully licensed attorney from offering legal advice, saying in a federal lawsuit Thursday that the regulations amount to an unconstitutional restraint on free speech in violation of the First Amendment.
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January 04, 2024
Judge Lauds Trans Women Behind Colo. Prison Housing Deal
A Colorado state judge on Thursday appeared inclined to approve $2.1 million in payouts for currently and formerly incarcerated transgender women and new housing options to settle their class action against state prison officials, with a named plaintiff calling the deal a "blueprint for other states."
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December 22, 2023
Biden Issues Pardons For Federal Marijuana Offenses
President Joe Biden has announced unconditional pardons to anyone who has used, possessed or attempted to possess marijuana on federal lands, regardless of whether they have been convicted or charged.
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December 20, 2023
Pa. Justices Say State Must Notify Inmates Of Deduction Hike
The State of Pennsylvania violated an inmate's constitutional right to due process by garnishing a larger portion of the wages and gifts he received without providing him notice or the opportunity to protest the change, the state's highest court ruled.
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December 19, 2023
NC Residents Ask For Cert. In Court Software Class Action
A group of North Carolina residents have asked for certification in their proposed class action alleging the state's new digital court system has led to hundreds of wrongful arrests and detentions, with all facing common issues sufficient to satisfy class requirements.
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December 15, 2023
NJ Atty Changes History For Wrongly Executed Black Soldiers
More than a century after 19 soldiers were hanged for mutiny following trials that were marred by racism, a New Jersey attorney and descendant of one of the servicemen recently helped convince the U.S. Army to overturn the soldiers' convictions.
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December 15, 2023
New Eckert Seamans Pro Bono Chair Looks To Build Bridges
As he takes over as the new chair of the firm's pro bono committee, Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott LLC attorney Joshua Hill says he is looking to adopt a more holistic, firmwide approach to identifying and assigning pro bono projects.
Expert Analysis
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Justices' Life Sentence Ruling Is A Step Back For Youth Rights
The U.S. Supreme Court's recent refusal to limit juvenile life-without-parole sentences in Jones v. Mississippi is a break from a line of cases that cut back on harsh punishments for children and reflects a court that is comfortable with casual treatment of minors' constitutional rights, says Brandon Garrett at Duke University School of Law.
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States Must Factor Race In COVID-19 Vaccine Prioritization
In order to ensure equity and efficiency in controlling the pandemic, states should use race as a factor in vaccine prioritization — and U.S. Supreme Court precedent on affirmative action and racial integration offers some guidance on how such policies might hold up in court, say law professors Maya Manian and Seema Mohapatra.
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Chauvin May Walk, But Calls For Police Reform Must Continue
As the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the death of George Floyd nears closing arguments, the prosecution still faces an uphill battle, but what sets this case apart is its potential to change the discourse on racial justice and policing, says Christopher Brown at The Brown Firm.
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A Criminal Justice Reform Premise That Is Statistically Flawed
Underlying calls for defunding the police and numerous other proposals for criminal justice reform is the belief that generally reducing adverse outcomes will tend to reduce racial disparities, but statistical analysis shows the opposite is true, says attorney James Scanlan.
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Improving Protections For Immigrant Domestic Abuse Victims
With the slow crawl of federal immigration reform, people vulnerable to immigration status threats from domestic abusers continue to feel the effects of hostile Trump administration policies, but 2019 amendments to the D.C. blackmail statute reveal the ways state laws can provide more effective relief, say Ashley Carter and Richard Kelley at the DC Volunteer Lawyers Project.
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Tougher Petition Drive Laws Would Constrict Key Citizen Right
Several states' proposed revisions to petition drive rules would make ballot initiatives harder to pass and rein in citizens' right to enact important policy changes, says Melanie Wilson Rughani at Crowe & Dunlevy.
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Garland Alone Cannot Transform Our Criminal Legal System
Attorney general nominee Merrick Garland is an encouraging choice for criminal justice reform advocates, but the work of transforming our racially fraught institutions falls largely on prosecutors and defenders, say former prosecutor Derick Dailey, now at Davis & Gilbert, and public defender Brandon Ruben.
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DOJ Charging Memo Rescission Aids Prosecutorial Discretion
The U.S. Department of Justice's recent rescission of a 2017 memo that required prosecutors to charge federal defendants with the offenses that would carry the most severe penalties should be welcomed by prosecutors associations as supporting prosecutorial discretion, even when the new policy may lead to leniency, says Marc Levin at the Council on Criminal Justice.
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A Critical Step Toward Eliminating Profit Motive From Prisons
President Joe Biden's recent executive order to phase out the federal government's use of private prisons is a welcome start to what needs to be a broad reform of the prison system — where profit-based incentives to incarcerate run deep, says Jeffrey Bornstein at Rosen Bien.
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Judges On Race
On the heels of nationwide calls to address systemic racism and inequality, five sitting state and federal judges shed light on the disparities that exist in the justice system and how to guard against bias in this series of Law360 guest articles.
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Judges On Race: Lack Of Data Deters Criminal Justice Reform
Many state courts' failure to gather basic data on sentencing and other important criminal justice metrics frustrates efforts to keep checks on judges’ implicit biases and reduce racial disparities, say Justice Michael Donnelly at the Ohio Supreme Court and Judge Pierre Bergeron at the Ohio First District Court of Appeals.
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Judges On Race: The Power Of Discretion In Criminal Justice
Judges should take into consideration the several points of law enforcement and prosecutorial discretion — from traffic stops to charging decisions and sentencing recommendations — that often lead to race-based disparate treatment before a criminal defendant even reaches the courthouse, say Judge Juan Villaseñor and Laurel Quinto at Colorado's Eighth Judicial District Court.
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Judges On Race: The Path To A More Diverse Bench
To close the diversity gap between the judiciary and the litigants that regularly appear in criminal courts, institutions including police departments, prosecutor offices and defense law firms must be committed to advancing Black and Latino men, says New York Supreme Court Justice Erika Edwards.
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High Court Must Preserve Youth Rights In Sentencing Case
The U.S. Supreme Court must be careful not to undo 15 years of Eighth Amendment case law and expose young adults to unconstitutional life without parole sentences in its upcoming decision in Jones v. Mississippi, says Marsha Levick at the Juvenile Law Center.
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Judges On Race: Reducing Implicit Bias In Courtrooms
With unconscious biases deeply embedded in the court system, judges must take steps to guard against the power and influence of stereotypes during jury selection, evidence admissibility hearings, bail proceedings and other areas of judicial decision making, says U.S. Circuit Judge Bernice Donald.