Search Results for: california prison

In courtrooms from Birmingham, Alabama, to Santa Maria, California, Thomas Mesereau has faced some of the highest stakes in American criminal law. Renowned for his landmark criminal defense of pop icon Michael Jackson and over two decades representing clients on death row in the Deep South, Mesereau speaks with JURIST’s Senior Editor for Long-Form Content, [...]

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced in a press release on Friday that a grand jury indicted three people for doxxing an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in August. The individuals are charged with conspiracy and publicly disclosing the personal information of a federal agent. The DOJ alleges the three defendants—Cynthia Raygoza, Ashleigh [...]

A federal judge on Tuesday stripped New York City of its control over the Rikers Island jail, which will now effectively be run by a third-party “remediation manager.” This comes after the same judge held the city in contempt last November for failing to reduce violence in the notorious jail complex. Rikers Island is one [...]

JURIST Senior Editor for Long Form Content Pitasanna Shanmugathas interviews Aviva Chomsky, a historian, author, and activist whose work challenges dominant narratives about immigration, labor, and colonialism. Chomsky, a professor of history and the coordinator of Latin American Studies at Salem State University, has spent over 30 years engaged in Latin American solidarity and immigrant [...]

On his first day back in the Oval Office as the 47th President, Donald J. Trump launched an unprecedented wave of executive actions aimed at systematically dismantling policies from the previous administration. Within hours of his inauguration, the new Trump White House announced over 60 presidential actions that comprehensively targeted diverse policy areas, including immigration, [...]

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputy, Joseph Benza III, pleaded guilty to a federal civil rights charge on Friday. He assaulted a transgender man, Emmett Brock, who exercised his First Amendment rights by making an obscene hand gesture while driving. The incident occurred on February 10, 2023. Benza, stationed in the municipality Norwalk, was [...]

California announced on Sunday the unofficial result that voters in the state have rejected Proposition 6, which would have amended the state constitution to bar state prisons from forcing inmates to work. Currently, if prisoners refuse to work, it is legal for prisons to impose disciplinary measures. The ballot measure was rejected by a margin [...]

Two public interest groups implored US Attorney General Merrick Garland and Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul on Tuesday to investigate anonymous text messages sent to young Wisconsin voters threatening civil penalties and jail time for violating state voting laws. The groups described the messages as attempts at voter intimidation. Free Speech for the People wrote [...]

US President Joe Biden signed into law the Federal Prison Oversight Act Thursday which established an inspection process and ombudsman in the Department of Justice. The act warrants that inspections conducted may be announced or unannounced, where each facility is assigned a risk score. Higher-risk facilities will receive more frequent inspections than other facilities. After [...]

A San Francisco jury on Friday found David DePape guilty on all counts related to his attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. The charges against him included first-degree burglary, false imprisonment of an elder, threatening a family member of a public official, and dissuading a witness by [...]