A federal District Court in Ohio recently ruled that a white litigant did not have standing to assert a discrimination claim against a contest that had provided grants to Black-owned businesses. The decision in Roberts v. Progressive Preferred Insurance Co.
Trump Convicted Trump
There are a few decisions which, by law, are left entirely to the defendant. Whether to plead guilty. Whether to testify. But trial strategy is the lawyers’ domain. And with any other defendant, there is a good chance that the
Seaton: Third Grade Retention, Bad Law, Bad Test, Bad Effects
The COVID-19 pandemic severely harmed schoolchildren in ways we’re only beginning to fully understand. Loss of instruction time, socialization and structure have repeatedly shown in the past four years to have negatively affected everything from reading comprehension to basic speech.
Will Donald Trump make a statement on his behalf at his upcoming sentencing?
Though Donald Trump just prior to trial stated that he would testify at his his New York state criminal trial, he ultimately decided not to take the stand. That choice was greatly influenced, I suspect, by the fact that taking
Alabama executes by lethal injection double murderer 20 years after his crime
As reported in this AP piece, an “Alabama man received a lethal injection Thursday for the killing of an elderly couple in 2004, the first inmate put to death by the state since it became the first in the
Some sentencing basics after former President Donald Trump's convictions on 34 felony New York counts
I am not an expert on New York sentencing law and practice, though I expect a whole lot of folks will soon be opining on these topics now that former President Donald Trump has been convicted by a jury on
By 6-3 vote, SCOTUS rejects Ninth Circuit reversal of Arizona death sentence in <em>Thornell v. Jones</em>
In its one criminal decision among three new opinions handed down by the Supreme Court this morning, the Justices by a 6-3 vote reversed a Ninth Circuit ruling in the capital case of in Thornell v. Jones, No. 22-982 (S.
BJS releases two big new (and dated) reports on 2022 correctional populations and probation/parole populations
Via email, I learned that the Justcie Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics today released these two big new data reports: “Correctional Populations in the United States, 2022 – Statistical Tables” and “Probation and Parole in the United
The Uphill Raskin Solution
Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland has cred that few others in Congress can match, as he was a con law prawf at American University for 25 years before he won office. He must know things, right? So when Raskin opines
"Hidden Takings and the Communal Burden of Punishment"
The title of this post is the title of this new paper available on SSRN authored by G. Alex Sinha and Janani Umamaheswar. Here is its abstract:
The American criminal legal system is notorious for subjecting those it imprisons to