The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/policy-politics/state-politics/)
The summons apparently came as a surprise to the local county attorney, raising concerns that the timing was politically motivated. The charge, a Class A misdemeanor, carries a maximum sentence of one year in jail.
To force through a restrictive election measure, Texas House empowers their sergeant-at-arms to bring democrats back in handcuffs.
A Republican lawmaker running for lieutenant governor refused to submit to ethics questions after releasing a rape accuser’s personal information via social media .
GOP lawmakers in 34 states have introduced 81 anti-protest bills during the 2021 legislative session. The wave of legislation embracing increasingly punitive measures for governing the right to peacefully assemble is a response to the protests spreading around the country in the 11 months since George Floyd’s death.
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.