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Courts are organized on a federal, state, and local level. Each has varying jurisdictions, nomenclature, and rules. Their judges may be selected, assigned, and disciplined in different ways. By far, most cases in the United States are handled by state court systems. Each state has its own administrative structure for courts. Statistics on case filings are collected by a voluntary association called the National Center for State Courts; national data may be several years out of date. In addition to administrators of courts themselves, officers and staff members of state and local bar associations should be good sources on basic court issues, as are faculty members at law schools and lawyers who practice before the courts. The National Center for Courts and Media, part of the University of Nevada Reno, also is a good source for many court questions. Beware of variations in court names. A prime example is New York State, where the trial courts are called the “Supreme Court”—a label that in most states is reserved for the highest appellate court. News stories often confuse federal “circuit” courts, which make final decisions in the appeals on most federal cases, with state appellate courts.
Questionable forensic testimony has kept Joseph Ramirez behind bars in Florida for 25 years. Will a fifth trial finally set him free?
When the National Academy of Sciences issued a report earlier this year saying that courtroom identifications made by forensic scientists based on evidence such as bite marks, ballistics and other tool marks are frequently [...]
The Crime Report talks funding, inertia and over-incarceration with the man who heads Vera Institute of Justice’s NOLA office.
It’s rare for an entire city to get a do-over, but after Hurricane Katrina roared through New Orleans and the levees gave way, the Crescent City became ground zero for policy makers and visionaries wanting to transform [...]
The proliferation of exonerations based on DNA has made it harder for prisoners seeking to prove their innocence in the much larger number of cases that do not involve DNA evidence, the New York Times reports. Many lawyers are more reluctant to take on these kinds of cases because they are much harder and more expensive to [...]
Criminal defendants who failed to appear in court owe Philadelphia a staggering $1 billion, yet for decades the city has done virtually nothing to collect forfeited bail money, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. At the Inquirer’s request, court officials compiled a master list of bail debtors in the city and found that 210,000 people owe bail. This is the [...]
A federal judicial panel ruled yesterday that California must reduce its prison population by up to 58,000 inmates in two to three years, saying that “the present state of overcrowding” makes it impossible for the state to deliver health care at a constitutional level, the Sacramento Bee reports.
The judges cited many avenues available to the state [...]
Criminal justice advocates are anxiously awaiting passage of the economic stimulus bill now quickly making its way through Congress. The reason? It could include up to $4 billion for justice system improvement projects. This would be a huge turnaround from December 2007, when Congress without warning deeply slashed the popular Byrne JAG program, which provides [...]
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has appointed an outside judge to review potentially thousands of cases that were handled by Luzerne County juvenile court judge Mark Ciavarella dating back to 2003. The Wilkes Barre Times Leader said the high court wants to ensure a thorough review is conducted of all cases to determine whether a “travesty of juvenile justice” [...]
A Maine man with a history of sexual assaults on teenage boys was ordered held by a federal judge yesterday as a sexually dangerous person, making him the first person in the country to be successfully committed by a federal court, Boston U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan’s office tells the Boston Globe. Jeffrey Shields, 47, of Bath, was [...]
The rate at which federal offenders are being sentenced to prison has increased by 10 percentage points in the past 10 years — from 75.4 percent to 85.3 percent since fiscal year 1997 — while the use of alternative sentences, such as probation and probation with confinement, has decreased over the same period, says a new [...]
Two class action lawsuits have been filed against two Pennsylvania judges and others who are alleged to have participated in a scheme to place juveniles at two detention centers in exchange for payoffs, reports the Wilkes Barre Times Leader. Judges Mark Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan pleaded guilty Thursday to charges they accepted more than [...]
When Tameca Griffin helped herself to a few grapes at a grocery store in 2006, she had no reason to think her nibbling would wind up before the Minnesota Court of Appeals, says the St. Paul Pioneer Press. In a ruling some legal experts warn is a sign of things to come, the appeals court threw [...]
Pacer, the government-run Public Access to Court Electronic Records system, was designed in the bygone days of screechy telephone modems. Cumbersome, arcane, and not free, it is everything that Google is not, says the New York Times. Some open-government activists have teamed up to push the system into the 21st century by grabbing enormous chunks of the database and giving [...]
The eighth Philadelphia police officer death in a crime over a three-year stretch has prompted the same finger-p0inting over who or what is responsible, says the Philadelphia Inquirer in an editorial. In addition to the individual criminals, “responsibility also lies at the feet of a criminal justice system that seems incapable of stemming the violence [...]
The budget emergency facing state governments has produced an alliance of advocates — from business leaders to public defenders and chief judges — who are urging state lawmakers not to slash funding for the courts, reports Stateline.org. They warn that the poor could go without lawyers. Businesses could take a financial hit. Court employees could [...]
The Daily Beast presents a package of commentaries and excerpts focused on Philip K. Howard’s new book, “Life Without Lawyers: Liberating Americans From Too Much Law.” In the book, Howard uses “how absurd!” examples of lawsuits to build his case: the hot-coffee case that got McDonald’s socked with $2.7 million in punitive damages (later reduced); the citizen [...]
Security screeners at Los Angeles County’s 48 court buildings last year confiscated 53,302 knives, 24,783 scissors, 21,014 razors, 8,208 pairs of handcuffs and 114 stun guns, the Los Angeles Times reports. The numbers come from the latest L.A. County Superior Court annual report. The number of banned weapons seized jumped to 245,868 from 199,015 two [...]
A judge on Texas’ highest criminal court, accused of blocking appeals for an inmate the night of his execution, is now facing formal bad-conduct charges that could result in her removal from office, reports the Associated Press. The Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct charged Sharon Keller, presiding judge of the Court of Criminal Appeals, with [...]
Baltimore prosecutors lost 21 murder cases in trial last year. The Baltimore Sun explores some of the reasons. Many elements of the criminal justice system had been changed in a bid to boost conviction rates. Prosecutors gained the power to decide how much evidence is needed to file murder charges, keeping the weakest cases from moving forward. The [...]
The Supreme Court today expanded the reach of a 1996 federal law that bars possession of guns by a person convicted of a domestic violence crime that was a misdemeanor, reports ScotusBlog. The court said the law applies whenever the battered victim was in fact the wife or other family relative of the offender. While such a [...]
At a time when funding for virtually every state agency is under siege, Connecticut’s legal aid offices are pleading with legislators to increase their funding by $8 million, reports the Hartford Courant. The state’s nonprofit legal agencies have been struggling with a dramatic drop in their primary source of funds — interest from money held in escrow [...]
