Civil Rights Movements & the Law

"Powerful, wry essays offering modern takes on a primitive practice, from one of our most widely read death penalty abolitionists"--

Since 1996, death sentences in America have declined by more than 60 percent, reversing a generation-long trend toward greater acceptance of capital punishment. In theory, most Americans continue to support the death penalty. But it is no longer seen as a theoretical matter. Prosecutors, judges, and juries across the country have moved in large numbers to give much greater credence to the possibility of mistakes - mistakes that in this arena are potentially fatal. The discovery of innocence, documented in this book through painstaking analyses of media coverage and with newly developed methods, has led to historic shifts in public opinion and to a sharp decline in use of the death penalty by juries across the country. A social cascade, starting with legal clinics and innocence projects, has snowballed into a national phenomenon that may spell the end of the death penalty in America.

This vital addition to carceral, prison, and disability studies draws important new links between deinstitutionalization and decarceration Prison abolition and decarceration are increasingly debated, but it is often without taking into account the largest exodus of people from carceral facilities in the twentieth century: the closure of disability institutions and psychiatric hospitals. Decarcerating Disability provides a much-needed corrective, combining a genealogy of deinstitutionalization with critiques of the current prison system. Liat Ben-Moshe provides groundbreaking case studies that show how abolition is not an unattainable goal but rather a reality, and how it plays out in different arenas of incarceration-antipsychiatry, the field of intellectual disabilities, and the fight against the prison-industrial complex. Ben-Moshe discusses a range of topics, including why deinstitutionalization is often wrongly blamed for the rise in incarceration; who resists decarceration and deinstitutionalization, and the coalitions opposing such resistance; and how understanding deinstitutionalization as a form of residential integration makes visible intersections with racial desegregation. By connecting deinstitutionalization with prison abolition, Decarcerating Disability also illuminates some of the limitations of disability rights and inclusion discourses, as well as tactics such as litigation, in securing freedom. Decarcerating Disability's rich analysis of lived experience, history, and culture helps to chart a way out of a failing system of incarceration.

The Black Lives Matter group has been fighting to be heard since 2013 - and the phrase itself is now being seen on streets and screens all around the world after the killing of George Floyd. But how did the movement get here? And how did it begin? (Subscribe: https://bit.ly/C4_News_Subscribe) ------- Watch more of our explainer series here - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXjqQf1xYLQ6bu-iixvoFTVsiXQVlVniX Get more news at our site - https://www.channel4.com/news/ Follow us: Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/Channel4News/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/Channel4News

From the author of the national bestseller Dead Man Walking comes a brave and fiercely argued new book that tests the moral edge of the debate on capital punishment: What if we’re executing innocent men? Two cases in point are Dobie Gillis Williams, an indigent black man with an IQ of 65, and Joseph Roger O’Dell. Both were convicted of murder on flimsy evidence (O’Dell’s principal accuser was a jailhouse informant who later recanted his testimony). Both were executed in spite of numerous appeals. Sister Helen Prejean watched both of them die.As she recounts these men’s cases and takes us through their terrible last moments, Prejean brilliantly dismantles the legal and religious arguments that have been used to justify the death penalty. Riveting, moving, and ultimately damning, The Death of Innocents is a book we dare not ignore.

Selected letters from Incarcerated Persons requesting books from Books to Prisoners, a Prison Book Program

In 1982, Sister Helen Prejean became the spiritual advisor to Patrick Sonnier, the convicted killer of two teenagers who was sentenced to die in the electric chair of Louisiana’s Angola State Prison. In the months before Sonnier’s death, the Roman Catholic nun came to know a man who was as terrified as he had once been terrifying. She also came to know the families of the victims and the men whose job it was to execute—men who often harbored doubts about the rightness of what they were doing. Out of that dreadful intimacy comes a profoundly moving spiritual journey through our system of capital punishment. Here Sister Helen confronts both the plight of the condemned and the rage of the bereaved, the fears of a society shattered by violence and the Christian imperative of love. On its original publication in 1993, Dead Man Walking emerged as an unprecedented look at the human consequences of the death penalty. Now, some two decades later, this story—which has inspired a film, a stage play, an opera and a musical album—is more gut-wrenching than ever, stirring deep and life-changing reflection in all who encounter it.

"The job of the exert witness is to offer opinions about a case based on a subjective understanding and analysis of the evidence. It is the nature of litigation that the opposing side will always dispute those opinions and offer their own counter-opinions. The opinions offered in this book about the cases discussed have all previously been disclosed in publicly available expert witness reports and court documents. They are just that, opinions. Only a Judge or Jury can rule on the ultimate issue of guilt or innocence"--

Dead Certainty is about the challenge of judging matters of public concern without a common sense of the good or other shared criteria that validate final decisions. Examining both the philosophical and the practical aspects of this challenge, this book focuses on United States Supreme Court opinions that authorize and regulate the practice of sentencing people to death. Unlike other books that discuss capital punishment, it does not argue for or against the death penalty. Instead, Dead Certainty contributes to a larger project in contemporary political and legal philosophy: re-imagining how people in today's world give coherence and meaning to their shared experience. Culbert's work will be of interest to scholars of political theory, jurisprudence, law and society, rhetoric, continental philosophy, and ethics.

Regarder cette vidéo en français ici: https://youtu.be/10IfuOWhhpk Mira este video en español aquí: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W258VJEtNk Watch a conversation with human rights defenders working on police violence and/or systemic racism! Along with discussing the specific country-contexts including how patterns of systemic racism affect women and LGBTI+ persons, they discuss the implementation of the Human Rights Council resolution 43/1 that mandated the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights with preparing a report on systemic racism and police violence against Africans and people of African descent. Panellists: - Salimah Hankins, U.S. Human Rights Network - Mireille Fanon-Mendès France, Fondation Frantz Fanon - Douglas Belchior, Uneafro Brasil and Coalizão Negra por Direitos - Rodje Malcom, Jamaicans for Justice - Esther Mamadou, Implementation Team for the International Decade for People of African Descent Spain - Deji Adeyanju, Concerned Nigerians + Videos by Dayana Blanco Acendra,Founder and Director General of Ilex Acción Jurídica (Colombia), and Mothers against Police Brtuality (USA) More information: https://www.ishr.ch/anti-black-racism-police-brutality-human-rights-defenders-expectations-un-human-rights-council

Criminal (In)Justice: A Critical Introductiontakes an unflinching look at the American criminal justice system and the social forces that affect the implementation of justice. Author Aaron Fichtelberg uses a unique, critical perspective to introduce readers to criminal justice and encourages them to look closer at the intersection of race, class, gender, and inequality in the criminal justice system. Covering each of the foundational areas of the criminal justice system--policing, courts, and corrections--this book takes an in-depth look at the influence of inequality, making it ideal for those who want to critically assess and understand the American criminal justice system.

In a video produced by Offensive Tackle Alex Leatherwood, well-known players on the University of Alabama's football team and Coach Nick Saban speak out against racial injustice and inequalities. Subscribe to WVTM on YouTube now for more: https://bit.ly/2jvAaUD Get more Birmingham news: http://www.wvtm13.com Like us: https://www.facebook.com/WVTM13/ Follow us: https://twitter.com/WVTM13 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wvtm13/

Provides an up-to-date and comprehensive overview of efforts in the state and the federal systems to make sentencing fairer, reduce overuse of imprisonment, and help offenders live law-abiding lives. It addresses a variety of topics and themes related to sentencing and reform, including racial disparities, violence prediction, plea negotiation, case processing, federal and state guidelines, California's historic "realignment," and more. This volume covers what students, scholars, practitioners, and policy makers need to know about how sentencing really works, what a half century's "reforms" have and have not accomplished, how sentencing processes can be made fairer, and how sentencing outcomes can be made more just. Its writers are among America's leading scholarly specialists--often the leading specialist--in their fields.

The first expert and comprehensive analysis of the surprising impact of body-worn cameras Following the tragic deaths of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and others at the hands of police, interest in body-worn cameras for local, state, and federal law enforcement has skyrocketed. In Cops, Cameras, and Crisis, Michael D. White and Aili Malm provide an up-to-date analysis of this promising technology, evaluating whether it can address today's crisis in police legitimacy. Drawing on the latest research and insights from experts with field experience with police-worn body cameras, White and Malm show the benefits and drawbacks of this technology for police departments, police officers, and members of the public. Ultimately, they identify--and assess--each claim, weighing in on whether the specter of being "caught on tape" is capable of changing a criminal justice system desperately in need of reform. Cops, Cameras, and Crisis is a must-read for policymakers, police leaders, and activists interested in twenty-first-century policing.

Trevor shares his thoughts on the killing of George Floyd, the protests in Minneapolis, the dominos of racial injustice and police brutality, and how the contract between society and black Americans has been broken time and time again. #DailyShow #TrevorNoah #GeorgeFloyd Subscribe to The Daily Show: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwWhs_6x42TyRM4Wstoq8HA/?sub_confirmation=1 Follow The Daily Show: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedailyshow Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedailyshow Watch full episodes of The Daily Show for free: http://www.cc.com/shows/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah/full-episodes Follow Comedy Central: Twitter: https://twitter.com/ComedyCentral Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ComedyCentral Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/comedycentral About The Daily Show: Trevor Noah and The Daily Show correspondents tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and pop culture. The Daily Show with Trevor Noah airs weeknights at 11/10c on Comedy Central.

When Harvard-trained sociologist Peter Moskos left the classroom to become a cop in Baltimore's Eastern District, he was thrust deep into police culture and the ways of the street--the nerve-rattling patrols, the thriving drug corners, and a world of poverty and violence that outsiders never see. In Cop in the Hood, Moskos reveals the truths he learned on the midnight shift. Through Moskos's eyes, we see police academy graduates unprepared for the realities of the street, success measured by number of arrests, and the ultimate failure of the war on drugs. In addition to telling an explosive insider's story of what it is really like to be a police officer, he makes a passionate argument for drug legalization as the only realistic way to end drug violence--and let cops once again protect and serve. In a new afterword, Moskos describes the many benefits of foot patrol--or, as he calls it, "policing green."

Activist and author Kimberly Jones unpacks her emotional viral video on the state of race in America, the injustices Black people face beyond the headlines, and her novel “I’m Not Dying with You Tonight.” #DailyShow #TrevorNoah #KimberlyJones Donate to support the Equal Justice Initiative: https://dailyshow.com/EqualJusticeInitiative Subscribe to The Daily Show: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwWhs_6x42TyRM4Wstoq8HA/?sub_confirmation=1 Follow The Daily Show: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedailyshow Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedailyshow Watch full episodes of The Daily Show for free: http://www.cc.com/shows/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah/full-episodes Follow Comedy Central: Twitter: https://twitter.com/ComedyCentral Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ComedyCentral Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/comedycentral About The Daily Show: Trevor Noah and The Daily Show correspondents tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and pop culture. The Daily Show with Trevor Noah airs weeknights at 11/10c on Comedy Central.

"Every day, innocent men across America are thrown into prison, betrayed by a faulty justice system, and robbed of their lives--either by decades-long sentences or the death penalty itself. Injustice tarnishes our legal process from start to finish. From the racial discrimination and violence used by backwards law enforcement officers, to a prison culture that breeds inmate conflict, there is opportunity for error at every turn. Award-winning journalist Stanley Cohen chronicles more than one hundred of these cases from the 1973 case of one of the first death row exonerees, David Keaton, to multiple cases as of 2015 that resulted from the corrupt practices of NYPD Detective Louis Scarcella (with nearly seventy Brooklyn cases under review for wrongful conviction)."--Jacket

"Plea negotiation is rife with due process concerns, including a heightened risk of coerced pleas, ignoring mens rea, serious questions about assistance of counsel, limited discovery and little litigation of the evidence, the conviction of innocent defendants and significant questions about fairness and equity. Plea negotiation is also the fast track to criminal conviction, tough punishment, and mass incarceration. From the perspective of public policy, plea negotiation perpetuates a harm based, retribution focused system of crime and punishment. Because of the failures of public health, the justice system has become a dumping ground for hundreds of thousands of mentally ill, substance addicted and abusing, and neurocognitively impaired offenders. And because of a tough on crime mentality and lack of information and options, the justice system routinely prosecutes and punishes these offenders. The evidence is quite clear that punishment does nothing to improve these circumstances and often exacerbates them. The result, as one would predict, is extraordinarily high rates of reoffending, propelling the revolving door of the justice system. [This book] takes a close look at plea negotiation, criminal prosecution, public defense, and pretrial justice systems and identifies a wide variety of problems and concerns with each. [The authors] provide key decision makers with the tools to make better, more informed decisions regarding pre-trial detention, prosecution and plea deals, criminal defense, and diversion to treatment. Critical to this effort is redefining roles, responsibilities and the culture of criminal justice by prosecutors, judges and defense counsel accepting responsibility for reducing recidivism and embracing problem solving as a primary decision making strategy" --Back cover.

Politicians, citizens, and police agencies have long embraced community policing, hoping to reduce crime and disorder by strengthening the ties between urban residents and the officers entrusted with their protection.  That strategy seems to make sense, but in Citizens, Cops, and Power, Steve Herbert reveals the reasons why it rarely, if ever, works. Drawing on data he collected in diverse Seattle neighborhoods from interviews with residents, observation of police officers, and attendance at community-police meetings, Herbert identifies the many obstacles that make effective collaboration between city dwellers and the police so unlikely to succeed. At the same time, he shows that residents' pragmatic ideas about the role of community differ dramatically from those held by social theorists. Surprising and provocative, Citizens, Cops, and Power provides a critical perspective not only on the future of community policing, but on the nature of state-society relations as well.

"Cops, politicians, and ordinary people are afraid of black men. The result is the Chokehold: laws and practices that treat every African American man like a thug. In this explosive new book, an African American former federal prosecutor shows that the system is working exactly the way it's supposed to. Black men are always under watch, and police violence is widespread--all with the support of judges and politicians. In his no-holds-barred style, Butler, whose scholarship has been featured on 60 Minutes, uses new data to demonstrate that white men commit the majority of violent crime in the United States. For example, a white woman is ten times more likely to be raped by a white male acquaintance than be the victim of a violent crime perpetrated by a black man. Butler also frankly discusses the problem of black on black violence and how to keep communities safer--without relying as much on police. Chokehold powerfully demonstrates why current efforts to reform law enforcement will not create lasting change. Butler's controversial recommendations about how to crash the system, and when it's better for a black man to plead guilty--even if he's innocent--are sure to be game-changers in the national debate about policing, criminal justice, and race relations"--

"A renowned investigative journalist exposes the unchecked power of the prosecutor as a driving force in America's mass incarceration crisis, and also offers a way out. The American criminal justice system is supposed to be a contest between two equal adversaries, the prosecution and the defense, with judges ensuring a fair fight. But in fact, it is prosecutors who have the upper hand, in a contest that is far from equal. More than anyone else, prosecutors decide who goes free and who goes to prison, and even who lives and who dies. The system wasn't designed for this kind of unchecked power, and in Charged, Emily Bazelon shows that it is an underreported cause of enormous injustice--and the missing piece in the mass incarceration puzzle. But that's only half the story. Prosecution in America is at a crossroads. The power of prosecutors makes them the actors in the system--the only actors--who can fix what's broken without changing a single law. They can end mass incarceration, protect against coercive plea bargains and convicting the innocent, and tackle racial bias. And because in almost every state we, the people, elect prosecutors, it is within our power to reshape the choices they make. In the last few years, for the first time in American history, a wave of reform-minded prosecutors has taken office in major cities throughout the country. Bazelon follows them, showing the difference they make for people caught in the system and how they are coming together as a new kind of lobby for justice and mercy. In Charged, Emily Bazelon mounts a major critique of the American criminal justice system--and charts the movement for change"--;"The American criminal justice system is supposed to be a contest between two equal adversaries, the prosecution and the defense, with judges ensuring a fair fight. But in fact, it is prosecutors who have the upper hand, in a contest that is far from equal. More than anyone else, prosecutors decide who goes free and who goes to prison, and even who lives and who dies. The system wasn't designed for this kind of unchecked power, and in Charged, Emily Bazelon shows that it is an underreported cause of enormous injustice--and the missing piece in the mass incarceration puzzle. But that's only half the story. Prosecution in America is at a crossroads. The power of prosecutors makes them the actors in the system--the only actors--who can fix what's broken without changing a single law. They can end mass incarceration, protect against coercive plea bargains and convicting the innocent, and tackle racial bias. And because in almost every state we, the people, elect prosecutors, it is within our power to reshape the choices they make. In the last few years, for the first time in American history, a wave of reform-minded prosecutors has taken office in major cities throughout the country. Bazelon follows them, showing the difference they make for people caught in the system and how they are coming together as a new kind of lobby for justice and mercy. In Charged, Emily Bazelon mounts a major critique of the American criminal justice system--and charts the movement for change"--

"Does the criminal justice system actually help victims and offenders? What does justice look like for those who have been harmed? For those who have done harm? Twenty-five years after it was first published, Changing Lenses by Howard Zehr remains the classic text of the restorative justice field."--Amazon.com.

Pathologized, terrorized, and confined, trans/gender non-conforming and queer folks have always struggled against the prison industrial complex. Eric A. Stanley and Nat Smith bring together current and former prisoners, activists, and academics for a new understanding of how race, gender, ability, and sexuality are lived under the crushing weight of captivity. Through a politic of gender self-determination, this collection argues that trans/ queer liberation and prison abolition must be growntogether. From rioting against police violence and critiquing hate crimes legislation, to prisoners demanding access to HIV medications, and far beyond, Captive Genders is a challenge for us all to join the struggle. This expanded second edition includes a new foreword from CeCe McDonald and essays by Chelsea Manning, Kalaniopua Young, and Janetta Louise Johnson and Toshio Meronek. "Captive Genders is an exciting assemblage of writings--analyses, manifestos, stories, interviews--that traverse the complicated entanglements of surveillance, policing, imprisonment, and the production of gender normativity. Focusing discerningly on the encounter of transpersons with the apparatuses that constitute the prison industrial complex, the contributors to this volume create new frameworks and new vocabularies that surely will have a transformative impact on the theories and practices of twenty-first century abolition." --Angela Y. Davis, professor emerita, University of California, Santa Cruz "The contributors to Captive Genders brilliantly shatter the assumption that the antidote to danger is human sacrifice. In other words, for these thinkers: where life is precious life is precious." --Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author ofGolden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California "Captive Genders is at once a scathing and necessary analysis of the prison industrial complex and a history of queer resistance to state tyranny. By analyzing the root causes of anti-queer and anti-trans violence, this book exposes the brutality of state control over queer/trans bodies inside and outside prison walls, and proposes an analytical framework for undoing not just the prison system, but its mechanisms of surveillance, dehumanization and containment. --Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, author of Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? Eric Stanleyis a postdoctoral fellow at UCSD. His writings appear inSocial Text, American Quarterly, andWomen and Performance, as well as various collections. Nat Smithworks with Critical Resistance and the Trans/Variant and Intersex Justice Project. CeCe McDonaldwas unjustly incarcerated after fatally stabbing a transphobic attacker in 2011. She was released in 2014 after serving nineteen months for second-degree manslaughter.

What motivates someone to make a career out of defending some of the worst suspected killers of our time? In 'Capital Defense', Jon B. Gould and Maya Pagni Barak give us a glimpse into the lives of lawyers who choose to work in the darkest corner of our criminal justice system: death penalty cases. Based on in-depth personal interviews with a cross-section of the nation's top capital defense teams, the book explores the unusual few who voluntarily represent society's "worst of the worst." With a compassionate and careful eye, Gould and Barak chronicle the experiences of American lawyers, who-like soldiers or surgeons-operate under the highest of stakes, where verdicts have the power to either "take death off the table" or put clients on "the conveyor belt towards death." These lawyers are a rare breed in a field that is otherwise seen as dirty work and in a system that is overburdened, under-resourced, and overshadowed by social, cultural, and political pressures. Examining the ugliest side of our criminal justice system, 'Capital Defense' offers an up-close perspective on the capital litigation process and its impact on the people who participate in it.

"A paradigm-shifting investigation of Jim Crow-era violence, the legal apparatus that sustained it, and its enduring legacy, from a renowned legal scholar. If the law cannot protect a person from a lynching, then isn't lynching the law? In By Hands Now Known, Margaret A. Burnham, director of Northeastern University's Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, challenges our understanding of the Jim Crow era by exploring the relationship between formal law and background legal norms in a series of harrowing cases from 1920 to 1960. From rendition, the legal process by which states make claims to other states for the return of their citizens, to battles over state and federal jurisdiction and the outsize role of local sheriffs in enforcing racial hierarchy, Burnham maps the criminal legal system in the mid-twentieth-century South, and traces the unremitting line from slavery to the legal structures of this period and through to today. Drawing on an extensive database, collected over more than a decade and exceeding 1,000 cases of racial violence, she reveals the true legal system of Jim Crow, and captures the memories of those whose stories have not yet been heard"--

"This book analyzes the everyday actions of ordinary people in the context of extreme political and cultural polarization, distort the criminal justice system and betray the lofty ideals expressed in American founding documents and centuries of Anglo-American articulations of basic human rights"--

"Matthew Horace was a law enforcement officer at the federal and local levels for twenty-eight years, working in nearly every state in the country. Yet it was after seven years of service, when Horace found himself with a gun pointed at his head by a white fellow officer, that he fully understood the racism seething within America's police departments. Using gut-wrenching reportage, on-the-ground research, and personal accounts garnered by interviews with police, government officials, and law experts around the country, Horace presents an insider's examination of America's police culture and policies, which he concludes is an "archaic system" built on "a toxic brotherhood." In this deeply revelatory book, Horace dissects some of the nation's most highly publicized police shootings and provides fresh analysis of issues that drive disproportionate numbers of black men to be killed by police and incarcerated in cities such as Ferguson, Baltimore, Cleveland, New York City, Tulsa, and Chicago. Horace uncovers what has sown the seeds of rage and violence. Timely and provocative, [this book] sheds light on what truly goes on behind the blue line."--Jacket.

Unchained Memories is a 2003 documentary film about the stories of former slaves interviewed during the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project and preserved in the WPA Slave Narrative Collection. This HBO film interpretation directed by Ed Bell and Thomas Lennon is a compilation of slave narratives, narrated by actors, emulating the original conversation with the interviewer. The slave narratives may be the most accurate in terms of the everyday activities of the enslaved, serving as personal memoirs of more than two thousand former slaves. The documentary depicts the emotions of the slaves and what they endured. The "Master" had the opportunity to sell, trade, or kill the enslaved, for retribution should one slave not obey. ============================================= TWITTER: https://twitter.com/MybrandkJ YOUTUBE: https://tinyurl.com/karonaj FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/LearningTeachingEarning/ FANDANGO: http://www.tkqlhce.com/click-8509658-10507293 Join Prime Video Channels Free Trial: https://amzn.to/33ItqIT Try Audible and Get Two Free Audiobooks: https://amzn.to/2z2q05X AmazonFresh Free Trial: https://amzn.to/31MnGw5 ===================================================== LIKE SHARE &SUBSCRIBE!!! YOUTUBE!!! http://bit.ly/2CDwfOF Fiverr: http://bit.ly/2rgk3RS Global Moneyline: http://graymatter.globalmoneyline.com INTERNET JETSET: http://bit.ly/2m4OmVG salehoo: http://bit.ly/2zyegFT affilorama: http://bit.ly/2zB4zqq ============================================ FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/LearningTeac... FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/internetsavi... Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use. No copyright infringement intended.