Wednesday July 22, 2020

Daily Inspo I went from sitting in a jail cell to being valedictorian

Antonio Reza is a law student at Santa Clara and a ChangeLawyers scholar.

For far too long felons have been forced to hide in the shadows and become complacent with their new place and role in society. Forever branded with the scarlet letter of formerly incarcerated and thus subservient. This master status dictates that we are dumb, violent, and animals that need to be caged. Furthermore, it is more often than not used as a way to de-legitimize, dehumanize, and denounce us whenever anything bad happens to us. As if because we made a mistake or bad decision potentially decades ago it now permits abuse, mistreatment, inequity, and marginalization.

I say ENOUGH!

We have so many gifts, talents, and positive traits that are going to waste and being laid in the graveyard because we are never given the chance to give back or, give back to the extent that we are capable of doing. All of which we would bend over backwards to share with the world but, we are either flat out stopped from doing so or, the process to do it has become so convoluted and arcane that it is practically impossible to contribute.

Read the story on Medium

In Memory John Lewis wasn’t a lawyer, but he reshaped the law

For a man who didn’t have a law degree, the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis appeared a lot in a newspaper focused on the legal profession. My records show he was in the Daily Report more than 200 times.

Each of those moments—commenting on a legal issue or, often, being honored by a legal organization—-reflects his importance to the law he shaped through heroic deeds during the civil rights movement and decades as a lawmaker in Washington.
The beating Lewis endured during the 1961 Freedom Rides tested whether the U.S. Supreme Court decision of Boynton v. Virginia, outlawing segregation in public facilities for interstate travel, was being followed. (It wasn’t.)

His lead of the seminal voting rights march from Selma, Alabama—and the brutal attack he suffered at the hands of state troopers—-led directly to the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

The respect he earned in the civil rights movement led Lewis to long service for the city of Atlanta in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he spoke out against injustices as often as he could.

Read the story on Law.com

More of This The civil rights lawyer who wants American to heal

The following is an interview with lawyer + activist Bryan Stevenson. Listen to the interview here >

Ezra Klein
What is a healthy relationship for society to have with its own history?

Bryan Stevenson
Knowing the actual history. If you don’t know your history, you can’t really begin to understand what your obligations are, what your responsibilities are, what you should fear, what you should celebrate, what’s honorable and what’s not honorable.

The big problem we have in the United States is that we don’t actually know our history. We don’t know about the centuries of racial injustice. We don’t know about the native genocide. You say “native genocide” and people have no idea what you’re talking about. They think you’re saying something radical.

Once you know that history, you begin to think differently about who we are. We got comfortable with creating a Constitution that talks about equality and justice for all, but didn’t apply to millions of Indigenous people who were on this land. And so until you understand that history, you can’t begin thinking about, well, what are your responsibilities now? What are your obligations now? What would it take to recover from that kind of violence, that kind of destruction that we did to millions of Indigenous people?

And, of course, that failure to acknowledge that history is what makes us vulnerable to the two-and-a-half centuries of slavery that follow. We’ve invested a lot of time in creating false narratives about slavery, about enslavers, about the South, about the North, about emancipation, about abolitionists — many of whom didn’t believe in slavery but also didn’t believe in racial equality. And the legacy of that is very different than the legacy we’ve been taught.

So for me, it begins with honesty. If you’ve done something wrong to someone else and you genuinely don’t know what you’ve done wrong, you’re not going to be able to fully reconcile with that person. You’re not going to be able to adequately apologize. You’re not going to be able to say the things you need to say to create a path toward recovery. You have to know what you did. And once you understand what you did, you can then begin to calibrate all the things that have to happen for you to try to make peace. For you to recover. To create fellowship again.

We have committed ourselves in this country to silence about our history, to ignorance about our history, to denying our history. And that’s the first part of this relationship that has to be repaired. We’ve got to be willing now to talk honestly about who we are and how we got here.

Read the interview on Vox

More of This Too Progressive prosecutor will arrest federal agents who tear gas protestors 

After numerous reports and lawsuits in Portland regarding un-badged and un-uniformed federal officers arresting, beating, and detaining people in unmarked vehicles, the Trump administration’s response is that they’re going to do it even more, and in more cities. Saying that his federal agents are doing a “fantastic job,” Trump has suggested that he will also deploy agents in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore and Milwaukee to do the same.

In one of those cities, the city prosecutor has already preemptively warned Trump’s police forces what he will do if they bring the same tactics to Philadelphia: 

“My dad volunteered and served in World War II to fight fascism, like most of my uncles, so we would not have an American president brutalizing and kidnapping Americans for exercising their constitutional rights and trying to make America a better place, which is what patriots do,” said Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner in a statement. “Anyone, including federal law enforcement, who unlawfully assaults and kidnaps people will face criminal charges from my office.”

Trump claims the federal intervention is needed due to excessive violence, particularly around federal statues and monuments. But legal experts have said the reported federal actions in Portland far exceed legal boundaries.

Read the story on Bloomberg

Less of This Black judge has to explain to white colleague why racism is bad

The federal judiciary is experiencing a crisis of diversity. President Donald Trump has appointed mostly white men to the courts, undoing the progress his Democratic predecessors made toward building a bench that looks more like the country it serves. Diverse judges bring different perspectives to their work—a deeper understanding of racial discrimination, for instance, or a better sense of how law enforcement can oppress minority communities. These benefits were on full display when, on Thursday, a Black judge had to teach his colleague about the existence of racial profiling by police.

Because it is ubiquitous across the country, racial profiling crops up in the background of countless criminal cases. But it was the main focus of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit’s decision in U.S. v. Curry on Thursday. The facts are disturbing: Four officers responded to gunshots heard in the vicinity of Creighton Court, a public housing community in Richmond, Virginia. They drove to a field where they thought the shots originated and saw a group of Black men. An officer confronted one of these men, Bill Curry, who pointed toward the area where he believed the shots had come from. The officer abruptly forced Curry to put his up hands, then demanded that he lift his shirt. When Curry refused, the officer restrained and searched him. A struggle ensued, and the officer testified that an illegal revolver fell from Curry’s clothes.

Curry moved to suppress this evidence, alleging that the officer’s search violated his Fourth Amendment rights. To justify even a brief warrantless search, law enforcement must generally have reasonable suspicion that the suspect engaged in criminal activity. And the officers had no reasonable suspicion to search Curry, who was merely a Black man standing calmly in a public space. The police can get around this requirement by citing “exigent circumstances,” including the need to “protect individuals who are threatened with imminent harm.” But even then, officers at least need “specific information about the crime and suspect.” Here, the officers “had no reason to believe that the men walking in the field had anything to do with the gunshots they heard.” Thus, by a 9–6 vote, the court held that the search was unconstitutional.

This conclusion sent Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, a white Ronald Reagan appointee, into a conniption fit. “We face again in this day of sad and unhappy truths the divide between what are already two Americas,” Wilkinson huffed in dissent. “In one America, where citizens possess the means to hire private security or move to safer neighborhoods, the impact of judicial barriers to effective law enforcement may be minimal. In another America, though, people have no choice but to endure the unintended consequences of our missteps, as crime moves to fill the vacuum left by the progressive disablement of the law’s protections.”

The federal judiciary is experiencing a crisis of diversity. President Donald Trump has appointed mostly white men to the courts, undoing the progress his Democratic predecessors made toward building a bench that looks more like the country it serves. Diverse judges bring different perspectives to their work—a deeper understanding of racial discrimination, for instance, or a better sense of how law enforcement can oppress minority communities. These benefits were on full display when, on Thursday, a Black judge had to teach his colleague about the existence of racial profiling by police.

Because it is ubiquitous across the country, racial profiling crops up in the background of countless criminal cases. But it was the main focus of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit’s decision in U.S. v. Curry on Thursday. The facts are disturbing: Four officers responded to gunshots heard in the vicinity of Creighton Court, a public housing community in Richmond, Virginia. They drove to a field where they thought the shots originated and saw a group of Black men. An officer confronted one of these men, Bill Curry, who pointed toward the area where he believed the shots had come from. The officer abruptly forced Curry to put his up hands, then demanded that he lift his shirt. When Curry refused, the officer restrained and searched him. A struggle ensued, and the officer testified that an illegal revolver fell from Curry’s clothes.

Curry moved to suppress this evidence, alleging that the officer’s search violated his Fourth Amendment rights. To justify even a brief warrantless search, law enforcement must generally have reasonable suspicion that the suspect engaged in criminal activity. And the officers had no reasonable suspicion to search Curry, who was merely a Black man standing calmly in a public space. The police can get around this requirement by citing “exigent circumstances,” including the need to “protect individuals who are threatened with imminent harm.” But even then, officers at least need “specific information about the crime and suspect.” Here, the officers “had no reason to believe that the men walking in the field had anything to do with the gunshots they heard.” Thus, by a 9–6 vote, the court held that the search was unconstitutional.

This conclusion sent Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, a white Ronald Reagan appointee, into a conniption fit. “We face again in this day of sad and unhappy truths the divide between what are already two Americas,” Wilkinson huffed in dissent. “In one America, where citizens possess the means to hire private security or move to safer neighborhoods, the impact of judicial barriers to effective law enforcement may be minimal. In another America, though, people have no choice but to endure the unintended consequences of our missteps, as crime moves to fill the vacuum left by the progressive disablement of the law’s protections.”

Wilkinson complained that, by limiting cops’ ability to search civilians without suspicion, “courts risk inducing police officers to simply abandon inner cities as part of their mission.” The police, tired of being “wrongly scapegoated,” will flee “high-crime areas,” leaving “the least fortunate among us” to “fend increasingly for themselves.” That abandonment, in turn, will drive out “many minority-owned” businesses and “lead to the emboldening of gangs and drug rings.” Courts will doom “youngsters” to be “recruited as runners for the enticement of easy money,” then “claimed by an addiction that can lead to a lifelong chemical dependency.”

In sum, Wilkinson believed, the majority’s decision imperils “predictive policing,” which uses “big data and machine learning” to “identify likely areas of crime” and stop criminal offenses before they occur.

Chief Judge Roger Gregory, who is Black, felt obliged to respond to this warped jeremiad. (Gregory has bipartisan credentials: Bill Clinton placed him on the 4th Circuit as a recess appointee, and then George W. Bush renominated him.) “When I read the first line of Judge Wilkinson’s dissent,” the chief judge wrote, “I was heartened by the thought: well, at least he acknowledges that there are ‘two Americas.’ But this glint of enlightenment was to serve as a ‘soap box’ for his charge against the majority’s decision.” 

Read the story on Slate

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