Defendants are regularly condemned to years, decades, or life in prison for minor infractions because of minimum sentencing statutes. If judges had more discretion in sentencing, then sentences could be more proportional to the crime, more specific to the individual defendant, and minimize the negative impact of minimum sentencing laws without inherently needing those laws repealed.
“In 2018, the state’s voters approved a constitutional amendment that requires unanimous jury verdicts in felony cases for crimes committed on or after Jan. 1, 2019. Now, the Supreme Court is considering the constitutionality of the nonunanimity rule—with prosecutors arguing that the U.S. Constitution does not require unanimous jury verdicts in criminal cases.“
The Appeal
November 15, 2019
Read More“But all too often, jurors get it wrong. Over 45 percent of innocent people on death row were convicted because of a lying criminal informant, according to a 2004 report from Northwestern University School of Law. “That makes snitches the leading cause of wrongful convictions in U.S. capital cases,” the report concluded. We know this because dozens of innocent defendants in these serious cases were eventually exonerated after jurors erroneously believed informant testimony.“
The Appeal
September 23, 2019
Read More“But new data released by the Cook County Circuit Court in May and analyzed by The Appeal suggests the PSA may be overstating the risk defendants actually pose if released. Between October 2017 and December 2018, 99 percent of people flagged as high risk for violence who were released before trial were not charged with any new violent crimes during the release, a percentage virtually identical to the one for those deemed low to moderate risk.“
The Appeal
August 8, 2019
Read More“If Vermont or Massachusetts adopted such proposals, they would be the first state to effectively bar life without parole sentences. All states but Alaska allow sentences of life without parole, and Alaska’s 99-year sentence is the functional equivalent. Last year, Pennsylvania state Senator Sharif Street launched a similar push by proposing that people serving a life sentence should be eligible for parole, but his bill did not move forward.“
The Appeal
February 28, 2019
Read More“Most is representing four other Louisianans who were held far beyond 48 hours past their release dates without input from a judge. No one knows how many people are sitting in jails or prisons across the state past their sentence, in part because no agency bothers to collect the data.“
The Appeal
September 26, 2018
Read More"Overall, replacing Kennedy with Kavanaugh will only mean fewer legal protections for people ensnared in the criminal justice system. It’s unlikely that Kavanaugh would ever provide the decisive fifth vote for a criminal defendant or victim of police brutality."
The Appeal
July 13, 2018
Read More"Fifteen states (and Puerto Rico) give judges the power to dismiss prosecutions “in the interests of justice,” or, in other words, to declare that, regardless of the strength of the evidence, a dismissal would get us closer to justice than would continued prosecution. Four states (and Guam) have de minimis dismissal provisions, which serve the same ends."
The Appeal
February 8, 2018
Read More