criminal justice

Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Attorney General Eric Holder said that one reason he decided to try the five suspected 9/11 co-conspirators in federal court is because that was where he would most likely be able to win a conviction. As he said later in the hearing: “Failure is not an option. These [...]

On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will consider legislation designed to overhaul the nation’s criminal justice system by creating a commission to examine that system and make reform recommendations to Congress. The bill, sponsored by Sens. Jim Webb (D-Va.) and Arlen Specter (D-Pa.), is designed to confront the problem of the nation’s incarceration rates, which [...]

When the Supreme Court ruled last week in a controversial 5-4 decision that prisoners have no constitutional right to obtain available DNA evidence that could prove their innocence, retiring Justice David Souter wrote an eloquent dissent.
This excerpt below (I’ve omitted the citations) explains how the majority’s “conservatism” in this case became just a form of [...]

Here’s an interesting, under-reported twist on Sonia Sotomayor’s judicial record: she’s apparently a conservative when it comes to criminal justice.
The Wall Street Journal reports today:
New York criminal-defense lawyers say she is surprisingly tough on crime for a Democratic-backed appointee — a byproduct, they believe, of her tenure as a prosecutor.
Makes sense. She may also have [...]

Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ statements yesterday that he expects the United States will have to transfer up to 100 prisoners from Guantanamo Bay to the United States, where they’d be held indefinitely without trial, was an odd juxtaposition with yesterday’s guilty plea of Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri.
On the one hand, Attorney General Eric Holder said [...]

For anyone who’s heard about the controversy over renegade Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who parades undocumented immigrants in pink underwear and houses them in tents where temperatures reach 150 degrees, it will come as little surprise to hear that a Government Accountability Office report today concludes that a controversial program to have border patrol agents [...]