Click here for NYT Daily discussion of Supreme Court decision on Ramos vs Louisiana which involves a 10-2 jury verdict resulting in a life sentence
click here to read Washington Post on 4th Amendment Case that defines how Police Brutality is define based on this 1989 North Carolina Case
High School Students successfully petition to gather Civil Rights cold cases to facilitate solving2/24/2019
click here for Washington Post article on HS kids writing a law The Hightstown, N.J., group may be the first-ever high school class to write a successful bill, but funding must still be secured and a review panel appointed.
So the Hightstown High School Advanced Placement government and politics class set out to make sure details of the long-ago cases were not hidden forever. The students drafted a bill requiring all the civil rights cold-case files to be collected in one place and released to the public, without the bureaucracy and delay of the Freedom of Information Act. New 8th Amendment case against excessive fines levied by states results in unanimous ruling2/20/2019
click here for NYT article on state seizure of property laws The Eighth Amendment states: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” Two of those commands — regarding bail and cruel and unusual punishments — have been deemed to apply to state and local governments. But until now, the ban on excessive fines had not been. The court ruled in favor of Tyson Timbs of Marion, Ind., who had his $42,000 Land Rover seized after he was arrested for selling a couple hundred dollars’ worth of heroin.
He drew wide support from civil liberties organizations who want to limit civil forfeitures, which they say empower localities and law enforcement to seize property of someone suspected of a crime as a revenue stream. click here for Texas Monthly article about public defenders of indigent clients click here to read NYT article on Mississippi vs Flowers case of 6 trials for a black defendant in which almost all black jurors were excluded Doug Evans, a white state prosecutor in Mississippi, has worked hard to keep black people off the juries that have heard his case against Curtis Flowers, who has been tried six times — yes, six times — for the 1996 murders of four people inside a furniture store in Winona, Miss.
Next month, the Supreme Court will consider whether Mr. Evans’s use of dozens of peremptory challenges — ones that do not require giving a reason — to exclude black prospective jurors violated the Constitution. click here for description of case that limits former CIA and others from writing a book describing their own experience in CIA without governmental review. Snepp was forced to give up all royalties by Supreme Court in this 1968 case.
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