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justice system
'Monday Afternoon Massacre': Trump Fires 8 Immigration Judges in NYC
"The goal is to transform an imperfect system which aimed for fairness into a rubber stamp mill, leaving only the 'deportation judges' they want," said one policy expert.
Dec 02, 2025
As the Trump administration intensifies a push to hire what officials call "deportation judges," eight judges were fired Monday from the New York City immigration court that's become the epicenter for anti-immigrant enforcement in the city.
The National Association of Immigration Judges, the union that represents judges who handle immigration cases, confirmed to the New York Times that the eight officials had been dismissed in what one recently fired judge described as a "Monday afternoon massacre."
"The court has been basically eviscerated,” said former Judge Olivia Cassin, who presided over another immigration court in New York City until being fired in November, told the Times.
The judges who were dismissed Monday had worked at the immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza, where the city's US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offices are also located.
The building has been the scene of harrowing ICE arrests in recent months, with an agent throwing an asylum-seeker to the ground in September as she pleaded with him not to detain her husband, and masked officers arresting NYC Comptroller Brad Lander in June when he tried to offer assistance to an immigrant.
The immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza employs 34 judges. Nearly 100 immigration judges have now been fired across the US this year.
Among those dismissed on Monday was Judge Amiena A. Khan, who served as the assistant chief immigration judge and supervised other jurists.
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse found that from 2019-24, Khan ruled on 620 asylum cases and granted asylum to 544 applicants. Cassin decided on 669 asylum cases from 2020-25 and granted asylum to 582 people. Immigration judges across the country denied asylum to refugees more frequently than Khan and Cassin over those same periods, according to TRAC.
After Monday's dismissals were announced, American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick posited that "the Trump administration is systematically firing immigration judges across the country for no reason other their above-average grant rates."
Last week, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) posted on social media a call for legal professionals to join the Justice Department as "a deportation judge to defend your community."
"End the invasion," urged DHS.
David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, said the Trump administration appears to want "to poison the applicant pool."
"The job of an immigration judge isn’t to 'end the invasion,'" said Bier. "It is to evaluate whether someone is eligible for relief from deportation under civil immigration law."
Immigration attorney Allen Orr said Tuesday that if an administration's goal is to "improve vetting, you don't fire eight immigration judges in NYC—the epicenter of the national backlog."
Such mass firings are done, he said, "to stall the system, punish immigrants, and create crises. Dismantling is deliberate, not security."
On Monday, former Chicago immigration Judge Carla Espinoza described to Al Jazeera how she was abruptly fired from her courtroom position in July.
The judges who have been fired this year include "attorneys who previously represented immigrants or provided pro bono help to immigrants before they became a judge," she said.
In this episode of #UNMUTE, former US immigration judge Carla Espinoza discusses the wave of firings of judges under the Trump administration. pic.twitter.com/HhT1jhxhzt
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) December 1, 2025
"For the first time," said Espinoza, "we're seeing a clear indication that there's an expectation that we do things a certain way, that we rule on motions in cases before us a certain way, that we rush through cases, which is something we've never heard before."
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'Now Imagine... You Are Suffocating': Sotomayor's Graphic Dissent Over Nitrogen Gas Execution
The liberal justice accused the majority of turning their back "on the Eighth Amendment’s guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment."
Oct 24, 2025
US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor was unable to convince the right-wing majority of the nation's highest court on Thursday night to accept a last-ditch petition from a man slated to be killed by the state of Alabama asking that he be put to death by firing squad as opposed to the more brutal and painful method of asphyxiation from nitrogen gas, a torturous process of execution experts have said amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.
Anthony Boyd, convicted of a 1993 murder and kidnapping, which he maintained until the end that he did not commit, was put to death by the state of Alabama using nitrogen gas after a request for a stay of execution and a review of a lower appeals court ruling was rejected in a 6-3 decision.
In the first four paragraphs of her dissent, backed by Justices Elana Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sotomayor departed from the majority by asking people to put themselves inside the death chamber with the mask of nitrogen strapped to their face:
Take out your phone, go to the clock app, and find the stopwatch. Click start. Now watch the seconds as they climb. Three seconds come and go in a blink. At the thirty-second mark, your mind starts to wander. One minute passes, and you begin to think that this is taking a long time. Two . . . three . . . . The clock ticks on. Then, finally, you make it to four minutes. Hit stop.
Now imagine for that entire time, you are suffocating. You want to breathe; you have to breathe. But you are strapped to a gurney with a mask on your face pumping your lungs with nitrogen gas. Your mind knows that the gas will kill you. But your body keeps telling you to breathe.
That is what awaits Anthony Boyd tonight. For two to four minutes, Boyd will remain conscious while the State of Alabama kills him in this way. When the gas starts flowing, he will immediately convulse. He will gasp for air. And he will thrash violently against the restraints holding him in place as he experiences this intense psychological tor- ment until he finally loses consciousness. Just short of twenty minutes later, Boyd will be declared dead.
Boyd asks for the barest form of mercy: to die by firing squad, which would kill him in seconds, rather than by a torturous suffocation lasting up to four minutes. The Constitution would grant him that grace. My colleagues do not. This Court thus turns its back on Boyd and on the Eighth Amendment’s guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment. Because the Court should have instead granted a stay of execution and Boyd’s petition for certiorari, I respectfully dissent.
Last year, a body of experts at the United Nations urgently pleaded with US officials to put a stop to the death penalty by nitrogen hypoxia, calling it "clearly prohibited under international law." The experts cited the killing of Kenneth Smith by the state of Alabama in February of 2024 as the "first person ever to be executed in this way," a death which reportedly took more than 20 minutes as Smith "writhed and convulsed on the gurney."
The wife of another man executed by this method—approved by seven states, but only put to use so far by Alabama and Louisiana—said watching her husband be killed this way was like “watching someone drown without water.”
Citing the seven times the method had been used before Boyd, Sotomayor said there is now a clear record of the intense pain and unnecessary suffering experienced by people put to death in this manner. All the killings, she wrote, resulted in a similar experience: "apparent consciousness for minutes, not seconds; and violent convulsing, eyes bulging, consistent thrashing against the restraints, and clear gasping for the air that will not come."
While the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution “does not guarantee a prisoner a painless death," argued Sotomayor, "when a State introduces an experimental method of execution that superadds psychological terror as a necessary feature of its successful completion, courts should enforce the Eighth Amendment’s mandate against cruel and unusual punishment."
She called for Boyd to be spared the excruciating death, given that a less cruel and painful alternative was readily available, and an end to the use of nitrogen hypoxia nationwide. While Kagan and Jackson agreed, the other six justices allowed the execution to proceed.
Before he was killed, according to CBS News, Boyd pleaded his innocence for a final time on Thursday. "I didn’t kill anybody. I didn’t participate in killing anybody,” he said. “There can be no justice until we change this system.”
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The Palestine Chronicle Case: When Truth Becomes the Crime
What is sought is not justice but intimidation—to cast suspicion on every Palestinian voice, to brand their words as weapons, their witness as crime.
Aug 27, 2025
The Palestine Chronicle is not a militant organization. It is a modest, independent publication, sustained by small donations and animated by a singular mission: to bear witness. It tells the untold stories of Palestine, documenting dispossession, resistance, and the endurance of a people condemned to silence. In a media landscape dominated by powerful conglomerates repeating the language of governments, the Chronicle insists on a journalism of proximity—grounded in daily lives, in the rubble of Gaza, in voices otherwise erased. Its true offense, in the eyes of its detractors, is not invention but truth.
At the heart of this endeavor stands Ramzy Baroud. His career is the antithesis of clandestine. For decades he has written, taught, and spoken in public, producing books translated into multiple languages, contributing columns to international publications, addressing audiences in universities and public forums across continents. He is not a shadowy figure; he is a man whose work has been consistent, transparent, and intellectually rigorous. His life is not untouched by the tragedy he describes: Many members of his family were killed under Israeli bombardments. Yet while mainstream media rushed to amplify unproven allegations against him, they remained deaf to his personal grief. His tragedy was ignored, his integrity overlooked, his voice distorted—because his engagement is unbearable to those who would prefer silence.
A Crime of Conscience, Not of Law
He is an engaged journalist in the noblest sense: independent, lucid, unflinching. His so-called crime is not collusion with violence but fidelity to memory. That is why he is demonized—not for what he has done in law, but for what he represents in conscience. America, unable to silence Palestinian voices through censorship alone, now instrumentalizes its justice system to achieve by indictment what it failed to achieve by argument. Having harassed universities, intimidated students, and punished professors for their solidarity with Gaza, it turns the courtroom into a new battlefield. And Congress, captive to the whims of its Zionist masters, joins the manhunt, targeting a journalist for the sole offense of telling the truth of his people. As for the mainstream press, it chooses cowardice: ignoring his family’s suffering, ignoring the emptiness of the charges, while echoing the accusations of power as if they were evidence.
Law Twisted into Weapon
The complaint filed against Ramzy Baroud and the organization (People Media Project) that runs the Palestine Chronicle rests on the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), grotesquely overstretched to criminalize editorial decisions rather than acts of war. It alleges that by publishing articles from Abdallah Aljamal—described by Israel as a Hamas operative killed during a hostage rescue—the Chronicle “aided and abetted” terrorism. But here lies the first fissure: This characterization of Aljamal comes exclusively from Israeli military sources, themselves a belligerent party. It has never been independently verified. The claim that he was both a journalist and a Hamas operative remains an allegation, not an established fact. To treat it as judicial evidence is to replace proof with propaganda.
Even if—hypothetically—Aljamal had, at the demand of a militant group, harbored hostages, such a circumstance would not in itself render him culpable: What ordinary civilian in a war zone can refuse the command of militants under threat of force? And even if it occurred, how could Ramzy Baroud have known of it? Even taken at face value, the allegation collapses upon scrutiny. No evidence demonstrates that the Chronicle or its editor had actual knowledge of Aljamal’s supposed operational role, nor that modest freelance payments—if any at all—bore any causal nexus to hostage taking. The federal judge, in February 2025, dismissed the original complaint precisely for lack of proof of knowledge or intent. The plaintiffs returned with an amended filing, repackaged in rhetoric and pathos, but still devoid of the material elements required under international law: actus reus (a substantial contribution to the crime) and mens rea (intent or knowledge).
To equate the publication of articles with material support for terrorism is not jurisprudence but a juridical contortion. It is the substitution of law by politics, the criminalization of journalism under the mask of counterterrorism. What is sought is not justice but intimidation—to cast suspicion on every Palestinian voice, to brand their words as weapons, their witness as crime.
Thus the legal emptiness is evident:
- Jurisdiction overstretched: the ATS was never intended to criminalize editorial contracts.
- Elements unmet: no proven knowledge, no intent, no substantial assistance.
- Factual foundation unstable: the Hamas label rests on unverified allegations from one warring party.
- Political aim transparent: to silence Palestinians and punish one of their most articulate representatives for his independence.
This case is not justice. It is intimidation. It is not law. It is propaganda dressed in the robes of a courtroom. The allegation against Ramzy Baroud rests not on proof, but on the word of a belligerent army. An army that bombs, besieges, and kills—and then dictates who is journalist, who is terrorist, who is fit to speak. To transform those claims into evidence is to surrender law itself to war.
Ramzy Baroud is not a conspirator. He is a journalist of record, a man of books, a teacher, a witness. His own family has been buried under rubble. And yet, America has not mourned them, has not spoken of them. Instead, it chooses to hunt him—to turn his grief into accusation, his fidelity into crime.
Some congressmen have joined this manhunt, eager to please their Zionist patrons. Universities have been disciplined, their students silenced. The press, that great sentinel of truth, has abandoned him, repeating only the charges while ignoring his suffering. This is not democracy. It is servitude.
The elements of law are absent. There is no actus reus, no mens rea, no causal link. There is only suspicion. There is only the will to silence.
And so the true purpose stands naked: to criminalize the Palestinian word, to punish a journalist for speaking the truth of Gaza, to make an example of him so that others will be afraid to write.
But intimidation is not justice. A trial without evidence is not law. And silencing the witness will not erase the truth.
Law or Servitude
Here one hears Thurgood Marshall’s axiom: “The Constitution does not permit the discrimination of silence.” One hears Cochran’s defiance: “If the proof is not there, the case cannot stand.” One hears Vergès exposing the colonial reflex that brands resistance as terror. One hears Vedel’s warning: that when law is bent to politics, law ceases to exist.
Ramzy Baroud stands here not accused, but accusing. He accuses a system that bends to power, a Congress that bows to lobbyists, a press that betrays its duty, and a nation that dares call itself free while shackling its own justice.
Therefore, the American judicial system has a choice: to lend its authority to propaganda, or to defend the very principle that sustains law—that guilt must be proven, not declared. To condemn Ramzy Baroud would be to condemn journalism itself. To acquit him is to restore some dignity to justice. The choice is clear.
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The Final Hours of Jessie Hoffman, Murdered by the State of Louisiana
The killing of this man, said one of his lawyers, "has been in service of no one, but the bloodlust of our state government.”
Mar 20, 2025
Three hours before he was to be murdered by the State of Louisiana, Jessie Hoffman greeted me with a strong handshake and an embrace. He stared deep into my eyes and thanked me for coming. We discussed his son, also named Jessie, and how proud he has made his dad.
Also visiting were three of the many lawyers who had been fighting for his life, Cecelia Trenticosta Kappel of the Loyola Center for Social Justice, Samantha Bosalavage Pourciau of the Promise of Justice Initiative, and Sarah Ottinger, who had been representing Jessie Hoffman for 19 years. I was there to witness the murder of Mr. Hoffman if Louisiana reversed its course and allowed one of the legal team to remain through the whole process.
Already in the room when we arrived was Rev. Reimoku Gregory Smith, a Buddhist priest Hoffman chose to accompany him. Jessie is a practicing Buddhist and has been a leader among those in prison for decades. Reverend Reimoku was in long black robes. He was serene and almost glowing in kindness.
We sat around a big wooden conference table that had the logo of the State of Louisiana carved into the middle of it. Uniformed officers from the Louisiana State Penitentiary sat in opposite ends of the room. There were two big pictures on the walls—one of Elijah on a flaming chariot and one of Daniel in the lion’s den.
The room in which Louisiana planned to murder Jessie Hoffman was steps away.
The victim’s sister-in-law specifically asked Louisiana not to murder Jessie Hoffman, saying “Executing Jessie Hoffman is not justice in my name, it is the opposite.”
Jessie Hoffman is about six feet tall and muscular. He was wearing a black t-shirt that said Life Row in white letters on it—the name that its 50+ occupants prefer to call what the outside world calls death row. He has been fasting for days and mostly sits quietly with his arms on the wooden table, staring intently at whoever was talking to him.
Jessie was holding his favorite book, "The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy and Liberation" by Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist Zen Master, author, poet, and peacemaker who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967 by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Jessie asked Reverend Reimoku to read his favorite passage from the book to us. It was called the Four Immeasurable Minds: Loving-Kindness, Compassion, Joy and Equanimity. He read and reflected as we took in these words together. Jessie occasionally closed his eyes.
Louisiana was scheduled to murder Jessie Hoffman by first immobilizing him by tying down his arms, hands, legs, and torso on a crucifix-like platform. Then, once he was helpless to resist, they would cover his face with an industrial-grade respirator and pump his lungs full of poison high-grade nitrogen gas. Nitrogen gas causes death by depriving the body of oxygen, essentially causing suffocation in a phenomenon known as hypoxia. This method is so horrible all but two states have stopped using nitrogen gas on animals declaring it inhumane. The United Nations Commissioner on Human Rights has condemned the use of nitrogen gas in executions saying its use could amount to torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment in violation of international human rights law.
Jessie Hoffman was to be murdered by Louisiana because he had as a teenager, after years of shocking physical, sexual and psychological abuse, committed a horrible murder in 1996.
Now the Louisiana Governor claimed it was necessary for the state to respond to this murder by itself murdering Jessie Hoffman to “prioritize victims over criminals.”
Yet the actual family members of the victim of Jessie’s murder were not asking Louisiana to murder him.
The victim’s sister-in-law specifically asked Louisiana not to murder Jessie Hoffman, saying “Executing Jessie Hoffman is not justice in my name, it is the opposite.”
The victim’s husband refused to attend the state execution and said he is now “indifferent to the death penalty vs life in prison without parole.” He also another reason for not attending was he was “just not really feeling like I need to watch another human being die."
Years before, Jessie Hoffman wrote a statement apologizing to the victims. Louisiana refused to deliver it to the family.
Jessie and the victim’s sister-in-law tried to talk by zoom so Jessie could apologize to her directly but Louisiana would not allow it.
As our visit continued, another long-time lawyer arrived. Caroline Tillman, who has been working to save Jessie Hoffman from state murder for 22 years, came directly from federal court in New Orleans. Teams of lawyers tried to stop the state murder of Jessie Hoffman, filing in several state and federal courts. Only the U.S. Supreme Court had not been heard from yet.
More prayers were said. The letter from the sister-in-law asking that the state murder not go forward was read aloud. More prayers. More than 250 faith leaders had recently signed letters asking Louisiana not to revive the practice of state murder with nitrogen gas.
With less than an hour to go before the scheduled murder of Jessie Hoffman, the Warden came in and politely but firmly terminated the lawyers’ visit. He refused permission to allow any lawyer to stay and witness the murder of Jessie Hoffman. Only Reverend Reimoku was allowed to remain.
After the lawyers were escorted out, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to stop the murder of Mr. Hoffman by a vote of 5-4, one vote short of the 5 votes needed for a stay.
The murder of Jessie Hoffman by Louisiana could now begin.
John Simmerman, a journalist with Nola.com, was one of two media witnesses allowed to view the execution of Jessie Hoffman. He reports that at 6:21 pm the ultra-high-grade nitrogen was pumped into the immobilized Mr. Hoffman. His breathing became uneven. His chest rose. He made a jerking motion. His body shook. His fingers twitched. He pulled at the table. His hands clenched. His breathing slowed. His head moved inside the mask. He jerked slightly around 6:27 pm and stopped moving. Louisiana officials reported the poison gas was pumped into Jessie Hoffman for 19 minutes until he was pronounced dead. The last view of Jessie Hoffman with his face now uncovered showed “his head was tilted back, teeth exposed in a grimace.”
The murder of Jessie Hoffman by Louisiana was now complete.
Samantha Pourciau, who was with Jessie Hoffman on his final day on earth, said: “Tonight, while many in our state cannot afford groceries, the state used countless resources to kill one man. The governor cannot cloak this in fighting for victims, because today we learned that this is not, in fact, what this family wants. This is what the governor wants. This has been in service of no one, but the bloodlust of our state government.”Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump Attacks the Right to a Lawyer
The presidential assault on the lawyers and law firms representing his litigation adversaries is an attack on the very foundation of the legal system.
Mar 12, 2025
In America’s legal system, both sides to a dispute are entitled to counsel. President Donald Trump rejects that premise because he prefers a one-sided battle that he is more likely to win.
To that end, he is using his special ability to combine vindictiveness with strategy. Wielding the power of the presidency, he is penalizing the attorneys who represent his opponents. Even more troubling, other lawyers are helping him undermine the foundation of our justice system.
Throughout his campaign, candidate Trump railed against his supposed “enemies.” In addition to prosecutors who pressed charges and judges who presided over cases against him, he promised “retribution” against private-sector lawyers who had represented his political adversaries. As president, he’s keeping that promise.
President Trump is not a lawyer, but he did swear to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Who will hold him to that promise?
The president’s first attack came in early February when he revoked the security clearances of Mark Zaid and Norm Eisen—outspoken Trump critics. For decades, Mr. Zaid has represented whistleblowers in Republican and Democratic administrations, including the whistleblower at the center of President Trump’s first impeachment. Mr. Eisen helped House Democrats develop the articles of impeachment. Because the president “flooded the zone” with tariffs, terminations, and tantrums, those suspensions received little news coverage.
His second blow landed on February 25, 2025, when he issued an executive order suspending the security clearances of all attorneys and employees at Covington & Burling—a premier 1,300-attorney global law firm representing former special counsel Jack Smith. During the campaign, he had threatened Smith repeatedly with deportation and worse. Smith retained Covington, which represented him pro bono before he resigned as special counsel. The firm is still his defense counsel.
The executive order prevents Smith’s attorneys from accessing important government materials and makes defending him more challenging. Perhaps more importantly, it was also a warning to other attorneys contemplating the representation of anyone the president does not like.
The third attack occurred with the executive order of March 6. He suspended the security clearances of individuals at Perkins Coie—a global law firm of more than 1,200 attorneys worldwide. Among other penalties, the president instructed the heads of all federal agencies to limit Perkins employees’ access to federal government buildings.
At their core, the executive orders are a transparent effort to intimidate other attorneys who represent the president’s adversaries. For example, his stated justifications for the Perkins suspension are nonsensical. He complains about work that two partners at the firm, Marc Elias and Michael Sussman, did on behalf of the Clinton campaign in 2016. But both lawyers left Perkins years ago. Trump’s order also criticizes the firm’s involvement in successful challenges to voter restriction laws in Republican-controlled states. And he even includes the firm’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion as a reason for its suspension.
The presidential assault on the lawyers and law firms representing his litigation adversaries is an attack on the very foundation of the legal system. The American College of Trial Lawyers (ACTL)—an elite body of litigation attorneys—responded immediately to his executive orders:
Lawyers throughout the country should unite in condemning these actions in the strongest possible terms.
The White House’s retaliating against a law firm merely because it represented a client against whom the Executive Branch has a grievance, threatens the bedrock principles of our system of justice. Under those principles, everyone is entitled to legal representation. In criminal matters, that right is enshrined in the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution.
The ACTL’s statement outlined the broader consequences of the president’s assault:
Lawyers cannot be denied access to the courts nor should their advocacy be throttled merely because the government disagrees with the positions asserted or because litigants seek to enjoin Executive actions that may violate statutory and constitutional rights of a free people. When government retaliation is grounded in efforts to punish lawyers for the parties that they represent or the positions that they assert, our system of justice is undermined.
Likewise, speaking for the entire profession, the American Bar Association declared, “These government actions deny clients access to justice and betray our fundamental values.”
To become a licensed member of the bar, every attorney swears an oath to uphold the Constitution. Every attorney is bound by rules of ethical conduct requiring them to support the rule of law. Every attorney has an obligation to enhance public confidence in the legal system. Yet attorneys drafted, reviewed, and approved the executive orders that are undermining the bedrock principles of our justice system.
President Trump is not a lawyer, but he did swear to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Who will hold him to that promise? Asking for a friend of democracy.
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If Trump Doesn’t Change, Judge Merchan Will Have No Choice But to Lock Him Up
The key to obtaining leniency in criminal sentencing, even in cases where guilt is a close call, is to show respect for the system and the judge, and to demonstrate remorse, something Trump has failed to do.
Jun 14, 2024
The most important date on Donald Trump’s July calendar isn’t July 4, when the nation celebrates its independence. Nor is it July 15, when the Republican Party convenes its national convention to christen Trump as its official standard-bearer for 2024. The most consequential date is July 11, when Trump will appear for sentencing hearing before New York state judge Juan Merchan.
Merchan will be faced with the historic task of deciding whether a former president should be sent to prison after being found guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in a prosecution brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Once thought to be the weakest of the criminal actions taken against Trump, the case has succeeded beyond expectations in holding Trump to account for his history of skirting the law. But while millions of Americans will be rooting for Merchan to throw the proverbial book at Trump, Merchan’s sentencing decision will not be easy, legally or politically.
From a purely legal standpoint, Merchan’s decision will be one of first impression that will invite close scrutiny on appeal after a hotly contested six-week trial. The decision will also reverberate politically, exacerbating the country’s partisan divides, and strengthening Trump’s stranglehold on the GOP and the neofascist movement he leads.
The worst part of the entire process is not that a former president is now a convicted felon, but that he has convinced nearly half the country that the justice system is so thoroughly corrupt and rigged that the rule of law itself isn’t worth saving.
Under New York law, falsifying business records is ordinarily a misdemeanor. The offense is elevated to a class E (low-grade) felony when the falsification is undertaken for the purpose of committing or concealing an additional crime. The additional crime in Trump’s case is another New York statute that makes it an offense for two or more persons to conspire to influence the outcome of an election by “unlawful means.”
Trump’s co-conspirators include his one-time attorney and “fixer” Michael Cohen; former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker; and Allen Weisselberg, the erstwhile chief financial officer of the Trump Organization. Together with Trump, they hatched a “catch and kill” scheme in August 2015 to prevent the publication of any stories unfavorable to Trump as he campaigned for president in the 2016 election. As part of the scheme, Cohen paid adult film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to suppress her alleged sexual encounter with Trump in 2006. The hush-money amounted to an illegal in-kind campaign contribution because it exceeded the 2016 limit of $2,700 placed on individual contributions by the Federal Election Campaign Act, and the contribution was never reported to federal regulators.
Given the jury’s unanimous verdict, Merchan will have several sentencing options. Each of the 34 counts carries a potential four-year prison term, with a maximum cap of 20 years. Merchan has the authority to impose any period of incarceration within the statutory maximum, but class E felonies carry no mandatory minimum sentences. Instead of sending Trump to jail or prison, Merchan will have the discretion to place Trump on formal probation, requiring him to report periodically to a probation officer, or grant him a “conditional discharge,” a type of sentence that sets conditions on his release but doesn’t involve in-person supervision. He could also sentence Trump to a term of home confinement or require him to perform some kind of community service plus a fine.
Although Merchan will make the final decision, Trump will play an active and possibly decisive role in determining his punishment. In a very real sense, depending on how he behaves before July 11, Trump will hold the keys to his own future prison cell.
Prior to pronouncing Trump’s sentence, Merchan will receive recommendations from the defense, the district attorney, and the city’s probation department. The probation department conducted a virtual interview with Trump from his Mar-a-Lago home on June 10, and in the coming weeks, it will prepare a pre-sentence report for Merchan’s review. As in other felony prosecutions, the report will focus on such items as the nature of the offense, Trump’s personal history, and his willingness to comply with the terms of probation.
At the sentencing hearing, Merchan will balance and weigh the mitigating factors that militate in favor of a light disposition against the aggravating factors that point to incarceration. As attorney Norm Eisen, who served as co-counsel for the House Judiciary Committee in Trump’s first impeachment trial, has written, Merchan will begin with “the base line against which judges measure all sentences: how other defendants have been treated for similar offenses.”
Eisen’s research shows that since 2015, the Manhattan district attorney’s office has filed over 400 cases of felony falsification of business records. Only 1 in 10 convictions, however, has resulted in incarceration.
The infrequency of jail, along with Trump’s advanced age (he will be 78 at the time of sentencing); the absence of a prior criminal record; and his service as a former president will count as mitigating factors.
On the other side of the ledger, Trump has been found civilly liable for sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll. In addition, he has been ordered to pay $364 million ($454 million with interest) in damages as a result of the massive business-fraud lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James that concluded earlier this year. He also has violated the limited gag order Judge Merchan imposed on him 10 times, resulting in two findings of criminal contempt. Even more significantly, he has shown absolutely no remorse for his conduct, and has vowed to exact revenge on his political rivals should he be reelected.
On balance, the scales clearly tip against Trump. The key to obtaining leniency in criminal sentencing, even in cases where guilt is a close call, is to show respect for the system and the judge, and to demonstrate remorse. Aware of this cardinal rule, Trump’s lead lawyer Todd Blanche has obtained an order from Merchan permitting him to be present at any pre-sentence interviews to soften his client’s image and demeanor.
It is all but certain that Blanche’s efforts will fail. Trump, according to many mental-health professionals, is a “malignant narcissist” who suffers from a disorder marked by paranoia, narcissism, antisocial personality, and sadism. He is incapable of admitting fault, much less criminal responsibility.
If Trump remains true to form, Merchan will have no choice but to sentence him to jail at Rikers Island or prison at one of New York’s 41 state correctional facilities for men. The sentence will likely be stayed while Trump’s appeal plays out, but will be imposed if the appeal fails.
In the interim, Merchan can be expected to follow standard judicial practice in white-collar prosecutions and grant Trump bail on appeal, allowing him to run unfettered for reelection, and accelerate his unhinged attacks on the rule of law. The worst part of the entire process is not that a former president is now a convicted felon, but that he has convinced nearly half the country that the justice system is so thoroughly corrupt and rigged that the rule of law itself isn’t worth saving.
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On Imprisoning Presidential Candidates: From Eugene Debs to Donald Trump
It is hard to imagine Trump serving even any time in prison for the alleged felonies he has committed, let alone anywhere near the 2.5 years served by Debs, the American socialist leader imprisoned for speaking out against war and in favor of civil liberties like free speech. How's that for justice?
Jun 03, 2024
Now that a New York jury convicted Donald Trump of 34 counts of falsifying business records in order to conceal hush money paid to a porn star and to evade campaign financial regulations, speculation has begun about his sentencing. Even though his outrageous behavior towards and slander of the district attorney, the judge, the witnesses, and the jury should warrant a punitive sentence, up to and including prison, it is highly unlikely that he will spend any time in jail.
However, for those who argue this is a first-time offense for a white-collar crime, this neglects the whole pattern of lying and fraud for which he and his business associates have already been convicted in a civil case. Moreover, given the credible allegations of rape, and the guilty judgment in the E. Jean Carroll defamation and sexual abuse case, Trump clearly is a serial offender against a whole host of individuals and institutions.
As much as Trump rails against a “rigged” justice system, he has been treated with the kind of latitude and privilege befitting a wealthy white member of the ruling elite.
It is, of course, Trump’s political crimes that constitute other egregious felonies for which he has already been indicted. Unfortunately, through delay and the intervention of a politically compromised U.S. Supreme Court, the Orange Blob has avoided wearing the Orange Suit of a jailed prisoner. In addition, because of the feckless Merrick Garland, Trump’s incitement to insurrection and efforts to overturn the 2020 Presidential election were not immediately prosecuted. Thus, it may be that Trump avoids going to prison for any of these political crimes.
As much as Trump rails against a “rigged” justice system, he has been treated with the kind of latitude and privilege befitting a wealthy white member of the ruling elite. However, over a century ago, another presidential candidate was not as fortunate when it came to what passed for justice during World War One. While there may be some oblique reference in the mainstream media to the 1920 presidential candidate of the Socialist Party sitting in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, it is important to recount the context in which Eugene V. Debs was sentenced to a ten-year prison term.
Debs, like the majority of the members of the Socialist Party of the United States, opposed the U.S. participation in WWI and denounced conscription as a vehicle for providing “cannon fodder” for the slaughter-fest. The presumption of a constitutional right to free speech, however, was contravened by the passage in 1917 of Espionage Act and in 1918 of the Sedition Act. Under these acts, the Wilson Department of Justice arrested hundreds of prominent opponents of the war and conscription. Indeed, when Debs came to Canton, Ohio in June 1918 to address the Ohio Socialist Party convention, three of its leaders were already serving sentences and being tortured in jail for antiwar speeches.
Addressing the thousands gathered to hear his talk on June 16, 1918, Debs defended the right to free speech during wartime even as he attempted to lay out a carefully constructed criticism of conscription. Nonetheless, there was enough in the address for a Cleveland federal grand jury on June 29, 1918 to indict Debs for alleged violations of both the Espionage and Sedition Acts. During the September 1918 trial, he reminded a jury composed of well-to-do residents of rural and small Ohio towns that “the right of free speech” should be upheld “in war as well as in peace.” Debs did not try to obscure the fact that he opposed the war precisely because it was the “ruling classes that make war upon one another, and not the people.”
Unmoved by Debs’s arguments, the jury found him guilty on all the charges and the judge then sentenced him to ten years in prison. Released on $10,000 bail (nearly a quarter of a million in today’s dollars), he began an appeal process that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Writing for the unanimous decision of the Court on March 10, 1919, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. re-affirmed that Debs’s Canton speech was “seditious.” A little more than one month later, Debs was sent to a maximum-security prison before being transferred to the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary on June 14, 1919. It was in that facility that Debs received over 900,000 votes in the 1920 presidential election.
Upon being sent to prison, there were requests from progressive and liberal voices, including from AFL union members, for President Wilson to pardon Debs. All those appeals were rebuffed. When Warren Harding took over the presidency in 1921, there was even a louder chorus urging a general amnesty for all those languishing in prison as a consequence of their vocal opposition to WWI. Although rejecting a general amnesty, Harding pardoned Debs in December 1921, commuting the reminder of his ten-year sentence.
It is hard to imagine Trump serving even any time in prison for the alleged felonies he has committed, let alone anywhere near the two and a half years served by Debs. Moreover, if Trump manages by hook or crook (and the arcane electoral college is definitely an antidemocratic hook) to recapture the White House, one can imagine self pardons for federal crimes and the overturning of state crimes. Finally, given Trump’s avowed intentions to punish his political opponents, round up and deport migrants, and to shape his own “Justice” Department, any prospect of a Trump presidency must be viewed with alarm.
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Right-Wing ALEC Bolsters Destructive For-Profit Bail Industry
"Restricting the operations of charitable bail organizations is like closing down a food pantry and claiming you’re curing hunger."
Mar 19, 2024
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is helping the for-profit bail industry push legislation in four states to restrict or outright eliminate charitable bail funds, which provide those unable to afford bail with enough cash to avoid being imprisoned while awaiting their day in court.
Led by the American Bail Coalition (ABC), the commercial bail industry sees the growth of charitable bail funds as a threat. The national trade group, which opposes bail reform efforts across the country, is also one of ALEC’s key corporate members. Last fall, ABC provided platinum-level sponsorship of ALEC’s ritzy 50th anniversary gala; its chairman, Bill Carmichael, is the vice chair of ALEC’s private sector board of directors; and an ABC representative sits on ALEC’s Criminal Justice Task Force. Since joining the pay-to-play legislative bill mill in the early 1990s, “ABC has written 12 model bills fortifying the commercial bail industry,” the group claimed in a 2010 newsletter.
Charitable bail funds post bail to secure pretrial release for people who couldn’t otherwise afford it. Many groups, such as the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, also operate with the specific purpose of assisting activists who often face arrest for public protests and end up in jail when unable to pay steep cash bail amounts.
Model policy developed by the ABC cautions that “in the past few years, the [charitable bail] funds have nationalized, and are now operating in [a] fashion to destabilize the bail system.”
The bills targeting charitable bail funds — which are currently being considered by lawmakers in Georgia, Kentucky, Washington, and Virginia — call for imposing general reporting and registration requirements, setting a maximum amount of bail that a fund can cover, and/or limiting the number of times a charity can post bail to just three per year, which would effectively shutter its operations.
“Restricting the operations of charitable bail organizations is like closing down a food pantry and claiming you’re curing hunger,” says Jeremy Cherson of the Bail Project, a national nonprofit that advocates for the elimination of cash bail while also providing bail and support services.
Instead of investing in support services, “lawmakers in these states have pursued shortsighted solutions that stick with the status quo of cash bail,” he points out. That, in turn, “leads to unnecessary incarceration and all its attendant consequences like job loss, family separation, and housing instability, which only makes cities and states less safe.”
Critics of the cash bail system repeatedly warn that curtailing the operations of bail funds disproportionately impacts poor and working-class Black and brown people.
The for-profit bail bond industry generates as much as $2.4 billion in annual revenue, according to U.S. industry estimates, with more than 2 million people entering into contracts with private bail bondsmen every year. The top six bail insurers control 76% of the market, according to reporting by Reuters.
The U.S. and the Philippines are the only countries in the world with commercial bail industries. Bail bond agents charge people who can’t afford bail a non-refundable fee — usually 10% of the set amount — to ensure that bail will be paid in full if the defendant doesn’t show up in court. Defendants frequently borrow money from bail bondsmen at predatory interest rates to cover their fees. The profits from these exorbitant rates are split between the bail bondsman and the insurers that provide the financial backing.
The heightened focus on charitable bail organizations comes amidst other corporate-funded assaults on the right to protest and ongoing threats from 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump to deploy the military against civilian protesters.
A Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) analysis of current and recent bills that seek to curtail the operations of charitable bail funds found that the ABC has likely used its ALEC connections with state lawmakers to advance these pieces of legislation.
The Bail Industry’s Playbook
The number of bills seeking to regulate or restrict the operations of charitable bail organizations skyrocketed in 2020 after nationwide protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in June of that year. When donations poured in to bail funds across the country, some of the accompanying media attention focused on certain funds that had bailed out individuals accused of committing violent crimes.
By the end of the year, the ABC had published a briefing document calling for the regulation of charitable bail funds. “During 2020, these funds grew in popularity due in large part to celebrity and political endorsements aimed at posting bail for those arrested during the violent protests across the country which began after the George Floyd incident,” the document states. “With a warchest perhaps as high as $200 million nationally, these funds are now a major issue in bail and pretrial release,” and are being used “to destabilize the bail and criminal justice system.”
Critics of the commercial bail industry counter that the for-profit business is far more detrimental.
“The payment plans, the 10% fees, the collateral bail bonds agents extract — those are the types of disruptions that take people years to recover from,” the Bail Project’s Cherson told CMD.
The ABC, which has an annual revenue of $2.3 million according to its most recent tax filings, consists of five surety insurance companies that pay steep membership dues.
In late 2021, the coalition published a model policy on how to regulate the charitable bail industry. The aim of the model bill was to hamstring charitable bail funds by putting into place preliminary reporting and regulatory requirements. It was based on a bill that passed in New York — the first state to enact restrictive legislation — along with legislation introduced in Texas and Indiana.
ABC has gone so far as to suggest that charitable bail funds may not be legal because they leave “the defendant [with] zero financial incentive to show up in court.”
The coalition spent more than $1 million on lobbying in 2022, according to its most recent tax filings, nearly double what it spent in 2020. A Reuters investigation found that in 2020 insurance companies spent $17 million “to defeat proposals to weaken or abolish the for-profit bail industry in the United States” — an industry that “brings insurers $15 billion in business a year.”
Georgia’s Crackdown
Georgia’s SB 63, which has been passed in both legislative chambers, would prevent charitable funds from posting more than three cash bonds per year and require them to have their application approved by a local sheriff’s department. It would also dramatically expand the number of bail-restricted violations — including unlawful assembly, which is often used as a dragnet to include peaceful protest. A previous, less expansive version of the bill was proposed in 2022, but failed to pass.
A spokesman for Governor Kemp’s office said that the legislation is “undergoing a thorough review process.”
In a recent statement about the bill, Tiffany Williams Roberts, public policy director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, notes that “given the history of bail funds in many civil and human rights movements in Atlanta, SB 63 represents another violent attack on the right to political dissent, which, unfortunately aligns with Atlanta’s current repression of social movements that challenge the criminal legal system.”
Two of the bill sponsors, Republican senators Frank Ginn and Stephen Gooch, are members of ALEC, with Gooch serving as an ALEC state chair. Its House co-sponsor, Rep. Houston Gaines (R), is also an ALEC member who has delivered on other ALEC priorities such as preempting local democratic control over law enforcement budgets.
Speaking on the House floor earlier this month, Gaines repeatedly referred to defendants — regardless of what they were charged with — as criminals who are “not showing back up for court, and staying on the streets,” framing his attack with rhetoric that echoes the industry’s talking points.
According to a recent ABC statement, “Georgia has come up with what is really a very simple floor for these dangerous criminals — they aren’t getting out of jail free without some assurance that they will show up for court and answer for the charges.”
Charitable bail funds are “unaccountable,” Gaines said in claiming that these organizations are responsible for releasing “violent criminals on our streets.”
The ACLU of Georgia has said that it will sue the state if Kemp signs the bill.
Other States with Pending Legislation
Kentucky
In Kentucky, a sweeping piece of legislation called the Safer Kentucky Act, which rewrites and expands much of the state’s criminal code, has widespread support among Republican lawmakers. It would limit bail payments by charitable bail organizations to a maximum of $5,000 and prevent those organizations from posting bail for people accused of certain violent crimes. The component targeting charitable bail organizations has been recycled from a previous bill first proposed in 2022.
Washington
In Washington, state Senator Mike Padden (R) reintroduced SB 5116, which would impose registration and reporting requirements on charitable bail funds. Padden, who is also a founding member of the state’s conservative Freedom Caucus, has served as a member of ALEC’s Criminal Justice Task Force. When he was a state representative in the 1990s, he served on ALEC’s board of directors.
In the early 2000s, Padden used his influence to secure $7.5 million in fees and interest payments via favorable county contracts and special interest legislation for his former employer, a debt collection agency. This session, the senator has also sponsored bills to repeal a state ban on contracting with private prison companies and authorize the use of chokeholds by police.
Virginia
Virginia’s HB 846, introduced by conservative delegate Wren Williams, would similarly regulate charitable bail funds by implementing steep registration fees and other requirements. The bill also prevents bail funds from assisting anyone previously convicted of a violent crime.
Legislative Successes
Beyond New York, Indiana is the only state to have put in place significant restrictions on charitable bail organizations with the passage of HB 1300 in 2022. The law requires charitable bail organizations to be certified by the state, prevents them from receiving state funding, and prohibits them from bailing out any defendant who has been charged with a violent crime or a felony, or has a prior conviction for a crime of violence. The Indy Star reported how a misinformation campaign that misrepresented the number of reoffenders bailed out by bail funds helped propel the proposed legislation into law.
In the wake of its passage, the Bail Project teamed up with the Indiana ACLU to sue the state over what it argued was unjust targeting of its organization. The Bail Project came under intense media scrutiny in Indiana after three of the individuals it bailed out committed violent crimes on pretrial release, making it the industry’s strawman for arguing in favor of maintaining the status quo.
Although neither the bill’s author, Rep. Peggy Mayfield (R), nor its coauthor, Rep. Donna Schaibley (R), are known to be ALEC members, reporting by CNN found that Mayfield had contact with the ABC while drafting the legislation. In addition, the three Senate sponsors of the bill are all affiliated with ALEC.
“Unlike licensed bail agents, bail funds do not have the ability to recover defendants who skip court, and their involvement should be limited to cases that don’t impose a significant risk to the public’s health and safety,” ABC Executive Director Jeffrey J. Clayton wrote in an op-ed when a previous version of the legislation was under consideration.
Cherson disagrees, telling CMD that “charitable bail organizations make a small but meaningful impact on the incredible devastation wrought by this system. And the more legislatures pursue these types of restrictions, the more broken these systems become.”
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'Dead Man Walking': Truth and Justice Through Art
Art is the perfect vehicle for helping us recognize the humanity of those who seem separate from us—but it can’t be the only one.
Oct 04, 2023
Based on our pasts, we—Ryan McKinny and Jamila Hodge—are unlikely allies. One of us got into trouble as a youth, became entangled with the justice system but, coming from a privileged community, received leniency. The other survived violence, and despite negligible support from that justice system, ultimately became a federal prosecutor.
Today, we are an international opera singer and the leader of an organization building new approaches to community safety—in a movement to redefine justice and safety for those who truly lack it. The intersection of the arts and social justice has brought us together.
Today, 2,400 people sit on death row in the U.S. Our society has deemed them expendable and beyond redemption.
Despite years of reform and recognition of the significant racial disparities, and nearly 3,400 exonerations (194 from death row) showing the legal system’s susceptibility to error or corruption, we still have nearly 2 million people incarcerated—and the highest rate in the world.
When curiosity enables us to see ourselves in each other, we can recognize the basic needs we share.
It’s happened through dehumanization: ignoring the qualities, vulnerabilities, and innate dignity of those involved in the justice system and the people they’ve harmed.
The reverse—recognizing the humanity in everyone, asking not “What’s wrong with you?” but “What happened to you?”—is key to evolving from a system rooted in slavery that has inflicted immeasurable harm on families and communities, especially Black and other marginalized people.
This is where the arts and social justice intersect. What we seek together is understanding, both in terms of who we are as human beings and what has the potential to unite us.
When I, Ryan, take the stage next week as Joseph De Rocher, a character sentenced to death in “Dead Man Walking,” it’s most important to portray the “bad guy” as fully human, flawed but also shaped by all that is around him. The hope is to let the audience feel and understand the sweep of human experiences of those touched by capital punishment: those who committed the violence, the victims’ family members, the communities devastated by chronic violence.
The justice system we have, focused solely on punishment, does not have the same aspirations and won’t ever deliver true safety or healing for everyone. Ryan’s friend Terence Andrus was an extreme example of that limitation.
He grew up neglected in a broken home, suffered from psychosis, and experienced extraordinary trauma when he was in juvenile detention. But jurors knew none of that when they sentenced him to death for murders he committed under the influence of drugs. Earlier this year, after learning his appeals had been rejected, Terence killed himself after growing into a person who was an empathetic artist who cared about others.
As a prosecutor, I, Jamila, can’t remember a case that didn’t involve someone without a history of trauma. The near certainty that a person who had caused harm had been harmed convinced me we needed to build a new justice system.
The work required to do this is extraordinary. The dominant narrative around justice—there are good people and bad people, and we punish bad people to protect the good—runs deep throughout our culture.
In reality, though, there are people, and entire communities, that don’t have access to a quality education or good jobs, who can’t afford housing or access physical and mental health care. This deprivation has powerful traumatic consequences—and feeds our prison system. For them, safety isn’t just the absence of violence, it’s the presence of well-being.
We have to envision what our world would be like if we ensured that everyone, regardless of our differences, had access to what they need, if we invested in healing and programs that addressed the root causes of violence.
Leaders in these communities have been building solutions for years now. Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is a model. Community members are working with police to explore trauma and build trust. A team of violence interventionists de-escalates conflict and addresses underlying issues. Grassroots organizations identify gaps in the community and fill them.
Community members want their needs, and their solutions, to be seen and supported because they understand their path to safety.
System leaders must play a critical role, too. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards recently signaled that he understands the causes of extreme violence when he requested the state parole board consider clemency for everyone on death row. It’s an opportunity to explore the humanity of those 59 people, and their ability to change and be redeemed.
Art is the perfect vehicle for helping us recognize the humanity of those who seem separate from us—but it can’t be the only one. When curiosity enables us to see ourselves in each other, we can recognize the basic needs we share. Then we can begin to break down social barriers in the pursuit of healing and build a new system that recognizes our shared humanity, and roots its policies in the essential worth of all people.
But that is just the start. We need to extend our imagination and curiosity into the practical realm. We have to envision what our world would be like if we ensured that everyone, regardless of our differences, had access to what they need, if we invested in healing and programs that addressed the root causes of violence. That’s the type of justice that we could all sing about.
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Public Defender Meltdown in Louisiana
Feb 25, 2016
Louisiana, which has the highest incarceration rate in the country, no longer provides public defenders to all its people accused of crimes; within months over half its public defender offices are expected to become insolvent.
"It's a nightmare," according to James Dixon, the chief Louisiana Public Defender. "You have people in jail that don't have lawyers. It's that basic." In Louisiana, public defenders are appointed to represent nearly 250,000 people each year. Dixon has been warning of a constitutional crisis for years due to inadequate funding. The ACLU recently sued his office in a federal class action.
The state public defender indicated that 24 of the 42 local public defender offices will become insolvent and restrict services in the next few months. Many already have broken down. Public defenders in 13 of Louisiana's 42 judicial districts are already restricting services.
For example, the Lafayette Parish public defender has laid off 35 of its 52 attorneys, and imposed salary cuts of 20 percent on those who remain. The constitutional guarantee of speedy trial is gone and death penalty cases are grinding to a halt. The remaining public defenders face caseloads of 1000 felonies a year, a rate more than five times as high as recent Texas legislature mandated caseload study which concluded that public defenders should represent no more than 175 felonies a year.
New Orleans public defenders have been refusing to represent the most serious cases since January. The highly respected Marshall Project reports their budget has been cut from $9.5 million to $6 million in the past four years. That office, which represents 85 percent of those charged in criminal court, has already laid off lawyers, and cannot replaced the many lawyers who have resigned because of a hiring freeze. The office handles 10,000 misdemeanors and 8,000 felonies a year. One public defender wrote in the Washington Post that brand new lawyers have to handle cases with life sentences, carry double the number of cases that the American Bar Association recommends, do not have the time to even see their clients and are forced to plead people out to felony convictions on the day they meet them.
In an oped in the New York Times, the head of the Orleans Public Defender explained that Louisiana funds two-thirds of its public defender system with fines and fees from people convicted of traffic offenses and crimes.
Budgets for public defenders were small to begin with. In New Orleans, the budget of the public defender is less than half that of the prosecutor. The state spends somewhere around $3.5 billion on police, prosecutors, courts and jails, versus less than 2 percent of that on public defenders.
Cardozo Law Professor Ellen Yaroshefsky told a New Orleans court that the New Orleans public defender's office was being run in an unethical manner. "I'm very troubled by the situation this public defender's office is in," Yaroshefsky testified. "To call this a 'justice system' is really a misnomer. ... I believe this entire office is operating as a conflict of interest. The lawyers here are compromising some clients in other to represent others. They make a decision to triage, and triage is a conflict of interest. This is a problem now that is a judicial problem, and I believe needs to be dealt with on that level."
Meanwhile, Louisiana is facing a huge overall budget deficit of nearly a billion this year and double that next year due to fiscal problems left by departing Governor Bobby Jindal.
The meltdown of the Louisiana public defender system makes it criminal to call it a justice system.
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