Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson on Thursday, June 30, 2022, became the U.S. Supreme Court's newest justice, a historic move that makes her the first Black woman to serve on the high court in its 232-year history (access Supreme Court press release).
President Biden on Thursday announced he is commuting the prison sentences for nearly 1,500 people and pardoning 39 others in what the White House said was the largest act of clemency in a single day in modern presidential history.
The 1,500 people had been serving long prison sentences that would have been shorter under today's laws and practices. They had been on home confinement since the COVID pandemic.
The pardons went to people who had been convicted of nonviolent crimes, including drug offenses, who the White House said had "turned their lives around."
Pope Francis appealed on Sunday for U.S. authorities to commute the sentences of death row prisoners, in an unusual request during his weekly Sunday prayer in St. Peter's Square (access full article).
A coalition of District Attorneys, Attorneys General, law enforcement officials, former judges, U.S. Attorneys and other criminal justice leaders, submitted a letter to President Joe Biden urging him to commute the sentences of all individuals currently on federal death row (access full article).
A U.S. federal judicial panel has endorsed giving public defender programs greater organizational independence within the federal judiciary, a structural shift that would grant lawyers for indigent defendants greater control over their budgets, staffing and policies (access full article).
U.S. Senator Peter Welch (D-Vt.), the Senate’s only former federal public defender, joined U.S.
The US Supreme Court has agreed to weigh in on an important free speech question: What test should courts use to determine whether statements are “true threats” that are not protected by the First Amendment? The answer should inform courts what prosecutors must show to prove that a defendant intended to make threatening statements.
With warrant, Cleveland police searched a suspected drug dealer's house. Out on the street, an officer peers into the tinted windows of a car of a person found in the suspected dealer's home—but the car was not mentioned in the warrant—and sees what he suspects is a "bag of dope." Officers tow the car but don't get a warrant. Turns out it, indeed, was "dope." Man: the search of my car is unconstitutional because police need a warrant. Police: we don't need a warrant because drugs were in plain view and here's a video of officers peering into the car and the photo taken inside the car.
A heated debate played out at the Fourth Circuit on Wednesday over a Maryland defense attorney's bid to overturn his money laundering conviction connected to a drug-dealing client, with the chief judge accusing a federal prosecutor of potentially treading on the Sixth Amendment right to counsel (access full article).
In a 6 to 3 opinion written by Justice Thomas, the Court held that the First Circuit improperly vacated Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's death sentence. See United States v. Tsarnaev, No. 20-443 (Mar. 4, 2022) (access opinion). Breyer dissents with an opinion joined by Justices Kagan and Sotomayor.