“Gonzalez was so hurt by the experience and so embarrassed by the media coverage of her arrest,” the petition says, that “she gave up her council seat and swore off organizing petitions or criticizing her government.”
Category: Criminal Justice
Don’t Let Crime Fears Undermine Americans’ Rights
Be careful what new laws we pass. They can take decades to undo—and can obliterate our rights in the process.
https://reason.com/2024/02/23/dont-let-crime-fears-undermine-americans-rights/
If You Spend Time in Jail Because the Government Lied, You Should Be Able to Sue
The Sixth Circuit’s rule gives police and prosecutors a perverse incentive to overcharge defendants, because the more charges are brought the greater likelihood that at least one will be found to have probable cause.
https://www.cato.org/blog/you-spend-time-jail-because-police-officer-lied-you-should-be-able-sue
Prisoners in the US are part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands
Enshrined in the Constitution by the 13th Amendment, slavery and involuntary servitude are banned – except as punishment for a crime.
That clause is currently being challenged on the federal level, and efforts to remove similar language from state constitutions are expected to reach the ballot in about a dozen states this year.
Nice Dig at Qualified Immunity, by Judge Don Willett (5th Cir.)
Turns out, ignorance of the law is an excuse—for government officials. Such blithe “rules for thee but not for me” nonchalance is less qualified immunity than unqualified impunity.
https://reason.com/volokh/2024/01/24/nice-dig-at-qualified-immunity-by-judge-don-willett-5th-cir/
Trumbull County grand jury declines charges in miscarriage case under national spotlight
Watts’ lawyer, Traci Timko, said in an Associated Press story in December that her client was sitting at St. Joseph Warren Hospital for eight hours awaiting treatment while officials there tried to decide how to treat the symptoms of her pregnancy under Ohio’s abortion laws.
Study Estimates Roadside Drug Tests Result in 30,000 Wrongful Arrests Every Year
…as many as 30,000 innocent people a year may be wrongly arrested for drug possession based on their results, making these tests “one of the largest, if not the largest, known contributing factor to wrongful arrests and convictions in the United States.”
212 people pleaded guilty between January 2004 and June 2015 to drug possession based on Houston Police Department field tests that were later invalidated by crime labs.
The Ongoing Legal Battle: Biometrics, 5th Amendment, and Phone Decryption
With modern smartphones, screen locks like passcodes or biometric locks, such as fingerprint or facial recognition, encrypt the data on the phone. This encryption means that the data from the phone’s hard drive is largely inaccessible without the screen being unlocked, making this issue all the more potent.
Would certifying Issue 2 destroy Ohio values?
Would certifying Issue 2 destroy Ohio values? No, it would not. In fact, one could conclude that with the passage of issue 2, Ohio would return to core American values of personal freedom and responsibility.
Building on the values of our nation’s founders shouldn’t scare the citizens and families of Ohio. After all, the values taught within your family are up to you, and not through authoritarianism of your government. The stigma of marijuana consumptions has changed immensely over the last few decades, and the choice to consume is completely personal. The harms of marijuana prohibition have had an enormous impact on our society and destroyed families through mass incarceration of Americans, for many times, victimless crimes.
The war on drugs has been incredibly harmful to our community. Although I suspect it’s called the “war on drugs” to convey the image of a evil drug dealer in a crime movie make no mistake, like any war, it has impacted, and continues to impact co-workers, neighbors, and family members. It doesn’t sound so fun to support if it’s called “the war on your uncle and cousins.”
In the year 2022 there were 208,192 people arrested for marijuana possession according to the FBI’s crime data explorer. The real numbers may be even higher, as not all agencies throughout the country report data to the FBI.
Many of us personally know how some of the existing marijuana possession laws can cause a life to spiral and ruin family structures. Once someone’s record is stained by drug charges, the path to gaining employment and decent housing can become nearly impossible, thus thrusting many into the black market and shadows of our society and economy beginning a horribly viscous cycle.
While I believe that there are many other factors of the drug war, and criminal justice reforms need addressed, I hope that those who are tasked with serving and protecting their neighbors can focus on harmful and violent crimes in our communities. I understand that issue 2 is an important step in the right direction, making a simple step forward within the constraints of a ballot initiative.
I encourage everyone to vote yes on Issue 2 on Tuesday November 7th. Let’s make a move against the recent onslaught against our rights and take a step towards returning to American values. Let’s take one step towards the American ideals of personal privacy, liberty, and freedom. Vote yes!
Sincerely,
Joshua A Umbaugh
Chair
Libertarian Party of Montgomery County Ohio
https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crime/arrest
A SWAT Team Destroyed an Innocent Man’s Shop. Then the City Left Him With the Bill.
Carlos Pena’s livelihood has been crippled. It remains to be seen if he’ll have any right to compensation.
The police-power shield invoked by some courts is a historical “misunderstanding,” says Jeffrey Redfern, an attorney at the Institute for Justice, the public interest law firm representing Pena in his suit. Judges have recently held that so long as the overall action taken by the government was justifiable—trying to capture a fugitive, for example—then the victim is not entitled to compensation under the Fifth Amendment.