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Despite claiming that consideration of race violates the guarantee of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, the Supreme Court has repeatedly condoned racial profiling as a law enforcement tool that does not violate the Fourth Amendment (article available…

Public defenders face extremely heavy workloads that prevent them from providing effective legal representation to people accused of crimes, according to a new study published Tuesday.

The National Public Defense Workload…

Pro-tip to the defense bar, courtesy of the Third Circuit: If a witness to a gun fight suggests that your client shot in self-defense, and then the judge pressures the witness to testify that your client shot first, you really,…

Woman is a spectator in back row of Tiffin, Ohio municipal courtroom to watch a proceeding involving her boyfriend. Out of the blue, the judge orders her to take a drug test; when she politely refuses, the judge throws her in jail for 10 days or until she takes the drug test. The judge is later…

Missouri man is stopped by police officer for walking on the wrong side of the road, gets into an argument with cop after he refuses to give his name, and is arrested. Cop knowing this is totally wrong then scrambles to find a reason to justify the arrest, telling colleagues that the man "ran…

Fifth Circuit: A quarter of all Louisiana inmates are held past their release dates—"for a collective total of 3,000-plus years." Yikes! And it's "[c]lear as day" that the gov't can't keep someone in prison without legal…

The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit announced today that the Court has selected Rachel Brill to serve as the next Federal Public Defender for the District of Puerto Rico (…

A senior federal judge ordered a United States marshal to handcuff a crying 13-year-old girl to the jury box while she attended her father’s revocation hearing. The 72-year-old judge then told the traumatized child…

President Joe Biden’s nominee for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit defended his background as a federal public defender Wednesday amid criticism from Republican members of the Senate Judiciary…

Of the 94 federal district courts, 25 have never had a non-White judge (access full article).

It’s not just an issue in the South: Fifteen states from the Northeast to…