The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/policy-politics/state-politics/)
Ending cash bail will have “major public safety issues,” one GOP leader claimed. House Republican Leader Jim Durkin said the state must “thoroughly and carefully address police reform and criminal justice reform. It is the right thing to do.”
Following the failure of an initiative to eliminate cash bail statewide, state lawmakers introduced a pair of bills Wednesday in a bid to chip away at California’s bail system.
Spurred by the public outcry over the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other African Americans at the hands of police, state lawmakers on Wednesday passed a sweeping overhaul of the state’s criminal justice system.
The bill, authored by then-Attorney General Eric Schneiderman last year after the FBI raided the house of former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, was explicitly written to address fears that President Donald Trump might use his pardon power to interfere with criminal investigations.
In a bracing analysis of the country’s third largest state prison system, the Crime and Justice Institute identified serious disparities in sentencing policy, and called for a major overhaul to bring Florida into alignment “with current research on public safety and recidivism reduction.”
The state becomes the eighth to allow terminally ill people to end their lives with prescribed medication.
Eligible felons already can restore their voting rights in Tennessee, but the process is complicated.
The Appeal newsletter is building a new site that maps pending legislation in the states on criminal justice policy. First up: voting rights for people with felony convictions, among many other bills.
“What began as consensual kissing quickly turned into a sexual assault,” said Vanessa Tyson, a fellow at Stanford University and associate professor at Scripps College. She accused Fairfax of forcing her to perform oral sex during the encounter, which took place during the Democratic National Convention in Boston.
Victims’ rights, gun violence and—no surprise— marijuana legalization are among the criminal justice issues appearing on state ballots in next Tuesday’s midterm elections. Here’s why you should pay attention to the outcomes.