How Interest Groups Try to Influence Governmental Officials

 

- International Association of Chiefs of Police.

- Fraternal Order of Police.

Ask ChatGPT: What rights do you lose if you are charged with a felony?

This question came up in a conversation about an hour ago. No need to give you details :)

It seems to fit in with our conversation today about the need to educate people in order to preserve civil liberties. Many rights and liberties are lost however if someone is charged - not even found guilty - of a felony. 

You become a second class citizen.

The problem with this answer is that it does not distinguish between being charged with a crime and being convicted of a crime, so it doesn't accurately answer the question I asked. 

Check it out: 

If you're charged with a felony, several rights may be affected, depending on the jurisdiction and whether you're convicted. Some of the common rights lost or restricted after being charged or convicted of a felony include:

1. Right to Vote: In many states, individuals convicted of felonies lose the right to vote while incarcerated, and in some cases, even after they have completed their sentence or parole. The rules vary by state.

2. Right to Own Firearms: A felony conviction generally prohibits you from purchasing or possessing firearms. This is a federal law, though some states may allow certain rights to be restored after a period of time or through a pardon.

3. Right to Serve on a Jury: Felony convictions can disqualify you from serving on a jury. This is based on the belief that convicted felons may have biases or credibility issues in determining the facts of a case.

4. Right to Hold Certain Jobs: Some careers, particularly in government or law enforcement, may be unavailable to individuals with felony convictions. Licensing for certain professions, such as healthcare, law, or education, can also be restricted.

5. Right to Receive Government Assistance: Convicted felons may be ineligible for certain government benefits, such as food stamps (SNAP), public housing, or student loans. Some restrictions may vary depending on the type of felony.

6. Right to Travel: Convicted felons may face restrictions on international travel, especially if they are on probation or parole. Certain countries may also deny entry to individuals with felony convictions.

7. Right to Access to Public Services: Some states have laws restricting access to public services, such as certain public housing programs, for those with felony convictions.

8. Parental Rights: In certain situations, felony convictions, especially those involving abuse, neglect, or violence, can result in the loss of parental rights or restrictions on custody and visitation.

These restrictions are often tied to the conviction itself or the completion of certain conditions (like parole or probation). In some cases, felons may have the opportunity to restore certain rights through legal processes such as pardons or expungements, but this depends on local laws.

_____

If you are up for it: 

AskChatGPT: 
- When were individual rights first recognized?
- Do all citizens have the same rights and liberties?
- Do citizens and non-citizens have the same rights and liberties in the United States?

Think of a few.

From Politico: ACLU: Trump’s gag order in federal case is unconstitutional

Interesting.

- What is a gag order? 

- What are the constitutional arguments for and against them?

- How have they been applied in this case?

- Click here for the article.  

For four years during former President Donald Trump’s presidency, the American Civil Liberties Union was one of his biggest courtroom adversaries. Now, the group is taking his side in a high-profile fight over what Trump can say as a criminal defendant.

The ACLU on Wednesday stepped into the battle over Trump’s federal gag order, arguing that U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan violated Trump’s First Amendment rights as well as the public’s right to hear him when she issued the order earlier this month. Chutkan is presiding over the criminal case special counsel Jack Smith is pursuing against Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.

“The obvious and unprecedented public interest in this prosecution, as well as the widespread political speech that it has generated and will continue to generate, only underscores the need to apply the most stringent First Amendment standard to a restraint on Defendant’s speech rights,” ACLU attorneys wrote in a friend-of-the-court brief.

The group urged Chutkan to reevaluate her order, calling it both vague and overbroad, with aspects of its meaning “unknown and perhaps unknowable.” One particular uncertainty the ACLU seized on was the meaning of Chutkan’s prohibition on statements that “target” Smith, his prosecutors, court personnel, defense attorneys or witnesses.

“Reading the order, Defendant cannot possibly know what he is permitted to say, and what he is not,” the group wrote.

Trump’s lawyers opposed the gag and have appealed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Chutkan has temporarily lifted the gag order while she mulls a request to keep it on ice during that appeal.

Trump has also run into trouble in connection with a separate gag order issued by a judge in New York overseeing a civil case involving Trump’s business empire. After Trump used his social media platform to attack the judge’s law clerk, the New York judge ordered Trump not to make comments about court staff. Last week, Trump was fined $5,000 for violating that order, and he racked up another $10,000 fine Wednesday.

From the ACLU: How Officials in Georgia are Suppressing Political Protest as ‘Domestic Terrorism’

Political commentary from an influential advocacy group.

Again note the strategic use of terminology.

- Click here for the article.

Over the past few months, 42 activists have been charged with “domestic terrorism” under Georgia state law. Their acts of “terrorism”? Alleged property damage and trespassing while protesting. These prosecutions exemplify a highly problematic trend of both the federal and state government: using domestic terrorism powers to punish dissent.

In Georgia, the arrested activists are part of a movement seeking to stop the construction of a $90 million police training facility located in a forest in Southeast Atlanta. Since late 2021, protesters under the banners of “Stop Cop City” and “Protect the Weelaunee Forest” have raised concerns over climate justice, displacement of Black communities, and increasing militarization of police forces. Protesters have camped out in the forest, staged marches, and hosted community events. At times, a small minority of protesters have allegedly damaged property.

Georgia police have responded with overwhelming and disproportionate force. Police killed one protester in January. They have arrested dozens more, including a legal observer associated with the Southern Poverty Law Center and the National Lawyers Guild. And prosecutors have levied severe charges under Georgia’s rarely-used domestic terrorism statute.

Until 2017, Georgia’s domestic terrorism statute criminalized acts intended to or reasonably likely to kill or injure at least 10 people. In the wake of the massacre of nine Black parishioners by a white supremacist gunman in Charleston, South Carolina, the Georgia legislature amended the statute to vastly expand its reach. The new law broadened the state’s definition of “domestic terrorism” to include certain property crimes committed with the intent to “alter, change, or coerce the policy of the government” by “intimidation or coercion.”

Do we have a Right to Travel?

- Texas highways are the next anti-abortion target. One town is resisting.

- https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/01/texas-abortion-highways/

- Dalen v The State.

- Constitution Annotated: Interstate Travel as a Fundamental Right.

- LII: Durational Residency Requirements.

The doctrine of the “right to travel” actually encompasses three separate rights, of which two have been notable for the uncertainty of their textual support. The first is the right of a citizen to move freely between states, a right venerable for its longevity, but still lacking a clear doctrinal basis.1 The second, expressly addressed by the first sentence of Article IV, provides a citizen of one state who is temporarily visiting another state the “Privileges and Immunities” of a citizen of the latter state.2 The third is the right of a new arrival to a state, who establishes citizenship in that state, to enjoy the same rights and benefits as other state citizens. This right is most often invoked in challenges to durational residency requirements, which require that persons reside in a state for a specified period of time before taking advantage of the benefits of that state’s citizenship.

 

From the Dallas News: How police felt stonewalled by Dallas Diocese at every turn in sex abuse investigation

An example of due process, specifically a search and seizure. The back and forth between Dallas police and the Diocese interests me.

- Click here for the article.

An affidavit Dallas police used to obtain a search warrant Wednesday to raid Dallas Catholic Diocese offices laid out allegations against five priests and suggested the church subverted police efforts to obtain more information.

The affidavit, signed by Detective David Clark, who is working full-time on sex abuse allegations within the Diocese, sought to seize Diocese records because the church hadn’t handed over all the records it had about allegations against the priests.

All five priests are on the Diocese’s list of 31 “credibly accused” priests, which the church released in January. That list included only accusations against priests that the Diocese concluded were credible after a review by former law enforcement officials and the Diocean Review Board.

From the Texas Tribune: U.S. Supreme Court rules in favor of Texas death row inmate

For our look at federalism and civil liberties in both 2305 and 2306.

The case is Moore v Texas.


- Click here for the article.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Texas death row inmate Tuesday, sending his case back to the appeals court and invalidating the state's current method of determining if a death-sentenced inmate is intellectually disabled and therefore ineligible for execution. Texas' method relies on decades-old medical standards and a controversial set of factors.

The high court's 5-3 ruling in the case of Bobby Moore, a 57-year-old man who has lived on death row for more than 36 years, said Texas’ refusal to use current medical standards and its reliance on nonclinical factors violates the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the opinion, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissenting.

As the court has previously instructed, "adjudications of intellectual disability should be ‘informed by the views of medical experts.’ That instruction cannot sensibly be read to give courts leave to diminish the force of the medical community’s consensus," Ginsburg wrote.

. . . In 2014, a Texas state court used current medical standards to determine Moore was intellectually disabled and could not be executed. But the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overruled the decision, claiming the lower court erred by using those standards instead of the state’s test.

The test, commonly known as the Briseno standard, was established by the Court of Criminal Appeals in 2004, two years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that executing the intellectually disabled was unconstitutional. The court defined the test using a medical definition from 1992 as well as several other factors to help courts determine adaptive functioning. The Court of Criminal Appeals claimed, based on those factors, that Moore doesn’t have the disability.

Included in those factors is a controversial reference to Lennie, a character from John Steinbeck’s novel “Of Mice and Men.” The Briseno opinion written by the Court of Criminal Appeals said most citizens might agree a person like Lennie should be exempt from execution. The state has argued the reference was an “aside;” critics say it exemplifies the arbitrariness of defining intellectual disability in Texas.

For more:

- Scotusblog: Moore v Texas.
- The decision.
- Oyez: Moore v Texas.

From Slate: Should Police Bodycams Come With Facial Recognition Software? A technology embraced to protect citizens could have major civil liberties implications.

The latest from the intersection of technology and civil liberties.

How are due process and privacy rights secured in during a time when its so easy to identify and track people?

- Click here for the article.

Imagine you’re at a large protest, thousands of demonstrators gathered. Police stand nearby, tasked with protecting those speaking out and maintaining safety. At each officer’s chest, a red light shows a body camera is recording, ensuring the officers do not engage in improper conduct. But what if that red light also meant a program was scanning, recording, and cataloging the face of every person in the crowd. Would you feel safe?

It would be a sad irony if police body cameras, brought into communities to check police power, became tools that improperly expanded it. But as they are rapidly being deployed in cities across the country, often without clear policies designed to protect privacy, we may be failing to fully consider the risks of pervasive surveillance these devices pose. And in addition to existing concerns, a huge new issue is rapidly approaching: body cameras that use facial recognition technology.

And body cameras that incorporate facial recognition technology are certainly on the horizon. This summer Taser International, by far the nation’s biggest producer of police body cameras, announced plans to incorporate facial recognition technology into its cameras in the future. And so far, not a single city places adequate limits on its use. Even if these enhanced technologies don’t lead to a world where “every cop will be RoboCop,” as Taser vice president Steve Tuttle once suggested, we need to talk about the real ways in which facial recognition devices could be used—and misused—and what limits should be put on their use.

. . . The least controversial use of facial recognition would be to identify individuals in relation to emergencies—setting police cameras to scan the city for the face of a missing child or a suspect in an ongoing kidnapping during an Amber Alert, for example, or for an active shooter. It’s hard to imagine persuasive objections to this specific use of the technology, since responding to an imminent threat is a commonly accepted exception to Fourth Amendment rules that generally require warrants for certain police action.

Law enforcement agencies might also use this biometric data to try to identify other fugitives at large in nonemergency situations—sending out face prints of individuals that have outstanding arrest warrants to body cameras, which could then scan police footage for chance matches. Such a system could take “Most Wanted” posters into the 21st century and help catch dangerous fugitives much more efficiently. The requirement of an active warrant would also give judicial oversight to the technology’s deployment.

. . . Beyond ability to target anyone with an outstanding warrant, this technology could also offer a powerful new means for location tracking and monitoring of the entire public. Law enforcement agencies commonly use location tracking for investigations—following an individual in public, attaching GPS tracking devices to cars, or obtaining cellphone locations from telecommunications companies, for example. But each of these methods requires intensive resources or, with some methods, a warrant.

By enhancing police-worn body cameras with facial recognition technology, beat cops themselves could be turned into a citywide mass automated tracking tool. But without judicial oversight, location tracking will not necessarily be limited to suspected wrongdoers. Law enforcement could use the technology to identify, monitor, and intimidate individuals involved in nonillicit activities absent any judicial review or prior arrests.

Most disturbingly, this could occur not only by tracking an individual, but also by targeting sensitive locations or events. Think if police were able to review body camera footage and use facial recognition to catalog every participant in a protest or every person that walked into a local mosque. Facial recognition and body cameras could quickly create a much more powerful, digital version of J. Edgar Hoover’s secret “enemies” lists.

From the Washington Post: The New York Times risked legal trouble to publish Donald Trump’s tax return

Will this be the Pentagon Papers of 2016?

- Click here for the article.

Dean Baquet wasn't bluffing.

The New York Times executive editor said during a visit to Harvard in September that he would risk jail to publish Donald Trump's tax returns. He made good on his word Saturday night when the Times published Trump tax documents from 1995, which show the Republican presidential nominee claimed losses of $916 million that year — enough to avoid paying federal income taxes for as many as 18 years.

Federal law makes it illegal to publish an unauthorized tax return or "return information":

It shall be unlawful for any person to whom any return or return information (as defined in section 6103(b)) is disclosed in a manner unauthorized by this title thereafter willfully to print or publish in any manner not provided by law any such return or return information. Any violation of this paragraph shall be a felony punishable by a fine in any amount not exceeding $5,000, or imprisonment of not more than 5 years, or both, together with the costs of prosecution.

The term "return information" covers not only return documents themselves but also the "amount of his income, payments, receipts, deductions, exemptions, credits, assets, liabilities, net worth, tax liability, tax withheld, deficiencies, overassessments or tax payments."

The Times published the first page of Trump's 1995 New York state resident income tax return, the first page of his New Jersey nonresident tax return and the first page of his Connecticut nonresident tax return.

Under New York law, it is unlawful "to divulge or make known in any manner the amount of income or any particulars set forth or disclosed in any report or return." Non-government employees face fines of as much as $10,000 and imprisonment for as long as one year.

In New Jersey, "any person ... divulging, disclosing or using [tax] information shall be guilty of a crime of the fourth degree," which carries a maximum sentence of 18 months in prison.

Connecticut's law against disclosure of tax information is more narrowly worded and, as the Hartford Courant reported, appears not to apply to the Times.

Baquet said during a panel discussion at Harvard that if the Times' lawyers advised him not to publish Trump tax returns, he would argue that such information is vital to the public interest because the real estate mogul's "whole campaign is built on his success as a businessman and his wealth."

Two weeks later, Times reporter Susanne Craig found tax documents in her mailbox.

Is there a constitutional right to protest?

The word does not exist in the Constitution, so it requires interpretation.

- From the ACLU of Oregon:

You have a constitutionally protected right to engage in peaceful protest in “traditional public forums” such as streets, sidewalks or parks. But in some cases the government can impose restrictions on this kind of activity by requiring permits. This is constitutional as long as the permit requirements are reasonable, and treat all groups the same no matter what the focus of the rally or protest.

The government cannot impose permit restrictions or deny a permit simply because it does not like the message of a certain speaker or group.

- More from the ACLU of Northern California.

How far doe this right extend? Did it apply to the Occupy Movement?

- Detail from ProPublica: Just How Much Can the State Restrict a Peaceful Protest?

The First Amendment is not absolute. Government can make reasonable stipulations about the time, place and manner a peaceable protest can take place, as long as those restrictions are applied in a content-neutral way.

But what constitutes a reasonable time, place and manner restriction? "It depends on the context and circumstances," said Geoffrey Stone, a professor specializing in constitutional law at the University of Chicago. "Things like noise, blockage of ordinary uses of the place, blockage of traffic and destruction of property allow the government to regulate speakers."

Stone gave a few examples of impeding ordinary usage: disturbing patients at a hospital, preventing students from going to school, or, more relevant for the Occupy movement, disrupting the flow of traffic for a long period of time.

Protests are fine, occupation is not.

- So says the Federalist Blog.

. . . the federal right to assemble was “to protect the petitioners in their right to get up the petition, circulate it for signatures, and have it presented.” The Supreme Court case of United States v. Cruikshank observed the purpose of assembly was for petitioning government: “The right of the people peaceably to assemble for the purpose of petitioning Congress for a redress of grievances, or for anything else connected with the powers or the duties of the National Government.”

In England, the right of assembly existed from early times and was strictly tied to the right of petitioning Parliament for political purposes, which the crown had always strongly contested. Different acts of the Tudors and Stuarts sought to limit and restrict assembly.

There is a big difference between gathering to draw public attention to some grievance or message through disruption of the public peace and peacefully gathering to address common public concerns and to circulate a petition for signature. The later requires no mob occupation or disruption of the peace or laws.

From a purely historical standpoint, “Occupy Wall Street” is nothing more than rebellion, and as such generally been dealt with by use of the militia to suppress.

From the NYT: Major Supreme Court Cases in 2015

For 2305 today, so we can see recent rulings related to constitutional language.

- Click here for the article.

From the Washington Post: Supreme Court refuses to hear challenge to Connecticut’s ban on ‘assault weapons’

This addresses a question posed last week about whether the Supreme Court might decide whether the Second Amendment applies to assault rifles. Their refusal to hear the appeal implicitly means that a majority thinks it does not.

- Click here for the article.

The Supreme Court declined Monday to review bans on a lengthy list of firearms that Connecticut classified as “assault weapons,” the latest example of the court’s reluctance to be drawn into an emotional national debate on gun control.

The justices decided without comment not to review a lower court decision that upheld the laws; Connecticut’s was enacted shortly after a gunman used one of the military-style semiautomatic weapons on the list to kill 20 students and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown in 2012.

The decision was not a surprise, as the court has previously declined to review other court decisions that uphold bans passed by cities and states. Maryland, California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York, as well as many cities and towns, have similar laws. None of the legal challenges to them have been successful in lower courts.

They were enacted after a federal ban expired in 2004. Attempts to revive the federal ban have failed. But Congress is once again embroiled in a debate over gun control after the massacre at an Orlando nightclub left 49 victims dead.

Like other laws, Connecticut’s ban includes semiautomatic guns and high-capacity magazines, and covers popular weapons such as AR-­15s and AK-­47s.

. . . The court’s action Monday continues a pattern. After recognizing the individual right for the first time in Heller, which covered the federal enclave of the District, the court made clear in a subsequent case that state and local governments, like Congress, could not prohibit individual gun ownership.

But since then, the justices have avoided all cases that might clarify whether that right is more expansive or which restrictions are too burdensome.

- Here is a link to the decision made by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

From the Washington Post: Fifty years later, the Miranda decision hasn’t accomplished what the Supreme Court intended

For out look at civil liberties - as well as the power (or lack thereof) of the courts.

- Click here for the article.

Fifty years ago today, the Supreme Court handed down the landmark case Miranda v. Arizona. The decision requires police to inform suspects of their constitutional rights to remain silent and obtain an attorney before being questioned.

Miranda remains perhaps the most well-known case in criminal law, thanks in no small part to such TV shows as “Law and Order” and movies like “21 Jump Street.” But that’s a bit like saying the electoral college is widely familiar. Most Americans know it’s important, but they are a little fuzzy on the details.

So, in honor of the anniversary, here are two underappreciated sides to Miranda.

1 - Miranda is an important test of how much power and influence the Supreme Court actually has.

2 - But the Supreme Court’s achievements in Miranda may be less than meets the eye

For a look at the case itself click here for Oyez's page on it.

And a few other cases related to the rights - which conservatives have been trying to overturn for years.

- The right to remain silent, brought you by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI.
- Miranda rights for children?
- You have a right to a lawyer — but can’t assert it yet.

From the New York Times: This Is Our Country. Let’s Walk It. In much of Europe, walking wherever you want is perfectly legal. Not in America.

There's lots of undeveloped land in the US - much of it out west - that is privately owned. Which means you can't walk on it legally. This is a policy choice we make here. Other countries do. It might be worth considering what this says about political culture in the US.

We have no right to roam.

But there is a right to exclude.

- Click here for the article.

Might we be better off if we could, like a Scot or a Swede, legally amble over our rolling fields and through our shady woods, rather than have to walk alongside unscenic, noisy and dangerous roads? The organization Smart Growth Americareported that from 2003 to 2012 over 47,000 pedestrians were killed and an estimated 676,000 were injured walking along roads. Our lack of safe and peaceful walking places may also contribute to the nation’s status as one of the more sedentary countries in the world. According to a 2012 study by The Lancet, over 40 percent of Americans don’t get the recommended amount of exercise per week.

If we want to create more safe and scenic walking spaces, we should look to Europe’s roaming laws for ideas on opening up our countryside. But would a European “right to roam” law work in the United States?

Jerry Anderson, a Drake University Law School professor who has studied American and British property law, says that emulating Britain’s right-to-roam laws would be difficult because of the takings clause of our Fifth Amendment, which declares that private property cannot “be taken for public use, without just compensation.”Continue reading the main story

“It’s not impossible,” said Mr. Anderson. “You would have to compensate the landowners, and then the question would be, ‘How much compensation is a public right of access worth?’ ”

The amount of compensation is difficult to determine because Britain and other countries with roaming laws don’t have anything like our takings clause. In Britain, landowners were not compensated when their exclusionary rights were compromised by roaming laws. Laws like those in England, Wales and Scotland would probably be declared unconstitutional here.

America, though, started off with an expansive set of roaming rights and traditions. Brian Sawers, a visiting scholar at Emory University School of Law, says that the right to roam — specifically the right to hunt on private, unenclosed land — was cherished by early Americans because it distinguished them from the English, whose aristocracy held exclusive hunting rights and owned the great majority of the country.Photo

The right to roam “was something we had and lost,” said Mr. Sawers.
Roaming rights began to erode in the late 19th century, according to Mr. Sawers. In the South, states passed trespassing laws for racial reasons, seeking to keep blacks from hunting and fishing so as to starve them into submission. Elsewhere, wealthy landowners of the Gilded Era became concerned with game populations, and trespassing and hunting laws were passed to restrict immigrants, he said.

In 1922, the Supreme Court in McKee v. Gratz ruled that in areas where there is a “common understanding,” the public may be permitted to hunt, fish and travel unenclosed land. However, this right is revoked the second the landowner posts a “No Trespassing” sign, according to Mr. Anderson. This is referred to as a landowner’s “right to exclude,” which, over the years, has grown only more powerful and absolute in a series of Supreme Court decisions.

- Click here for the decision in McKee v. Gratz.

From Vox: These states let police take and keep your stuff even if you haven't committed a crime

A bit more for out look at criminal justice.

- Click here for the article.

Most states in America let police take and keep your stuff without convicting you of a crime.

These states fully allow what's known as "civil forfeiture": Police officers can seize someone's property without proving the person was guilty of a crime; they just need probable cause to believe the assets are being used as part of criminal activity, typically drug trafficking.

Police can then absorb the value of this property — be it cash, cars, guns, or something else — as profit, either through state programs or under a federal program known as Equitable Sharing, which lets local and state police get up to 80 percent of the value of what they seize as money for their departments.

But the restrictions in some states, such as California and New Mexico, make it so they can't keep that property without a criminal conviction under many circumstances, under state law. And, therefore, they won't be able to take people's property as easily for personal profit.So police not only can seize people's property without proving involvement in a crime, but they have a financial incentive to do so. It's the latter that state restrictions on civil forfeiture attempt to limit: Police should still be able to seize property as evidence.

And in case you are curious - and as you would suspect - Texas is one of the states thatcan take your stuff without a conviction.

From CityLab: The Death of Jeffrey Pendleton: A homeless man was found dead in a jail cell in Manchester, New Hampshire. What killed him? The criminalization of poverty.

Something to think about as we cover the due process of the law. I posted a similar story below about whether we have de facto debtor's prisons in the United States. Do criminal justice procedures place additional burdens on the poor?

Might low pay be a civil rights issue?

- Click here for the article.

New Hampshire has no state-set minimum wage, so it abides by the federal government’s woefully low $7.25 per hour rate. State legislators killed bills last month that would have established state-issued minimum wages—livable wages. It can’t be ignored that Pendleton would probably still be alive if he made enough money to afford his bail.
 The federal government has recently come to accept that that the criminal justice system’s policies around bail and court fines are exacerbating the nation’s poverty and incarceration crises.

“When bail is set unreasonably high, people are behind bars only because they are poor,” said U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch at a White House convening last December. “Not because they’re a danger or a flight risk; only because they are poor.”

After dressing down Ferguson, Missouri, for the city’s reliance on fining low-income residents into jail and to death, the U.S. Justice Department realized that Ferguson was no anomaly. Many cities and their court systems have been imposing exorbitant fines and fees on people who’ve been arrested for the pettiest of crimes, like jaywalking. Lynch said at the White House in December that it has become “painfully clear” that “in so many instances, an individual’s access to justice has become predicated on their ability to literally pay for it.”

This point is made more disturbing by the fact that cities are increasingly using criminal justice debt—court fines and fees—to service municipal debt, with low-wage individuals bearing the brunt of these economic burdens. A report from the White House’s “Council of Economic Advisors on Fees, Fines, and Bail” points out the ways this has built up over time:

From the Seattle Times: Hate speech is often free speech, but how can we stop it?

The author does a good job - in my opinion - laying out the dilemma hate speech presents in a free society, but doesn't provide strong solutions. Maybe there are none.

- Click here for the article.

Those who favor laws prohibiting hate speech cite human dignity and the psychological damage it has on its victims, as well as its historical relationship with genocide, as the main reasons for censorship. In the United States, however, free speech is considered an essential component of democracy. In order to govern ourselves effectively, we believe we need access to all ideas regardless of their effect.

In a recent Supreme Court case involving the Westboro Baptist Church, whose members picket the funerals of fallen soldiers with signs reading, “God hates fags,” Chief Justice John Roberts said that hurtful speech on public issues must be protected to ensure that public debate is not stifled. While this argument is valid, it is worth noting that the majority of judges responsible for drawing the fine line between expression and true threats or incitement, have likely not been the targets of hate speech themselves.
The question now is: What do we do about it? We value free expression but loathe government restrictions on speech. How do we address the undeniable impacts of hate speech while preserving the free flow of ideas required for an effective democracy?

Private social-media companies can limit hate speech on their sites. Activist organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center could lobby to expand the current federal statute to punish threats aimed at broader racial or religious groups. On a more personal level, individuals with the privilege to do so can confront the people in their lives who use hate speech.

Regardless of the approach, the time to act is now. Just because hate speech is legal, does not make it right. This presidential election season, and Trump’s candidacy in particular, highlights the need for greater civility in political discourse. And civility is a choice.

From the American Thinker: Trumping Free Speech

The candidate wants to make it easier for people to sue the media - like in Britain. The author thinks this is a bad idea.

- Click here for the article.

The American view is that there are inevitable journalistic errors if we want to give freedom of expression the “breathing space” it needs. The idea is to allow most speech, including some false statements, to be vetted in the “marketplace of ideas.”

In medieval England, as in other cultures, duels, armed raids and other violent retaliation were regarded as natural, honorable responses to defamation.” A peaceful alternative was needed, and so the king's court criminalized political or seditious statements against aristocrats. The law evolved as time went on, but this English notion of criminalizing political or seditious libel was on the minds of those who drafted the U.S. Constitution.

Even in the U.S. there was briefly a law, the Sedition Act of 1798, that made it a crime to write or speak anything “false, scandalous and malicious” against the United States government. If you could prove the allegation was true, you would not be penalized. The Act was attacked as unconstitutional. It expired by its own terms in 1801, but not before it had crystallized the idea that discussion of public matters was guaranteed by the Constitution and that neither good-faith errors nor even libels could overcome this right.

. . . Back to Trump: Would he like to be sued by George W. Bush for claiming that Bush lied to get us to go to war in Iraq? We lose if we suppress speech that in some cases can avert threats to our safety or prevent bad policy.

Ironically, the media itself interferes with its own freedom when for example, out of cultural sensitivity, it describes "jihadist attacks on American citizens at home as ‘work-related accidents’ and, elsewhere, as ‘militant attacks.’" The idea that Islam inspires these attacks is not one that the media wants to spread.

Freedom of speech is not a universal value. Jihadists don't believe in it, Marxists don't believe in it, dictators and their henchmen don't believe in it. Given that it is a core American value, we should be willing to be different than much of the world and accept the tradeoffs that go with it.

The right to video record police is conditional, according to a court.

Smells like a Supreme Court case.

- Click here for the article.

In recent years, lower federal courts have generally held that the First Amendment protects a right to videorecord (and photograph) in public places, especially when one is recording public servants such as the police.

Because recording events that you observe in public places is important to be able to speak effectively about what you observe, courts held, the First Amendment protects such recording. (By analogy, spending money on speech is likewise protected by the First Amendment, because such spending is important to be able to speak effectively; likewise, associating with others for expressive purposes is protected by the First Amendment, because such association is important to be able to speak effectively.) Some restrictions on such recording may be constitutional, but simply prohibiting the recording because the person is recording the police can’t be constitutional. This is the view of all the precedential federal appellate decisions that have considered the issue. (The Supreme Court hasn’t expressly considered this question.)

But Friday’s federal trial court decision in Fields v. City of Philadelphia takes a different, narrower approach: There is no constitutional right to videorecord police, the court says, when the act of recording is unaccompanied by “challenge or criticism” of the police conduct. (The court doesn’t decide whether there would be such a right if the challenge or criticism were present.) Therefore, the court held, simply “photograph[ing] approximately twenty police officers standing outside a home hosting a party” and “carr[ying] a camera” to a public protest to videotape “interaction between police and civilians during civil disobedience or protests” wasn’t protected by the First Amendment.

For more: Why so little video of Houston police shootings?

Security trumps Civil Liberties

I guess there's no better verb to use.

This part of an occasional series looking at how the general public handles this seemingly inevitable trade-off between freedom and security. Little surprise that during times of crisis people are willing to yield on civil liberties like free speech and press, and procedural freedoms against unreasonable search and seizures and self incrimination.

Given that there have been no large scale attacks sustained in the nation in some time, and ISIS has been out of the news for a while, it's worth figuring out what's driving this attitude. Language used on the campaign trail is a likely suspect.

- Views of Government’s Handling of Terrorism Fall to Post-9/11 Low.

Concern over government restrictions on civil liberties has fallen dramatically since July 2013, following Edward Snowden’s leaked details about NSA surveillance programs. At that time, more expressed concern that government policies had gone too far restricting civil liberties (47%) than that they did not go far enough to protect the country (35%).

The share expressing greater concern that policies do not go far enough to protect the country is now roughly the same as the historical high seen in early 2010, shortly after the failed Christmas-Day terrorist attack on an airliner en route to Detroit (when 58% said policies did not go far enough).

Both Republicans and Democrats have become more likely to say that the government’s anti-terrorism policies do not go far enough to protect the country (rather than that they have gone too far restricting civil liberties) since Snowden’s disclosures in 2013. But the shift has been more pronounced among Republicans. Slightly more than seven-in-ten Republicans (71%) now say their greater concern is that anti-terrorism policies do not go far enough, up 14 points since January (57%) and 33 points since July 2013 (38%).