on the Border

Operation Lone Star, a Texas effort to secure the border, leverages the trial penalty to secure plea bargains. 

No matter what side of the abortion debate you find yourself, as defenders we must appreciate the fact that reversal of Roe would profoundly impact our capacity to defend clients from arbitrary or excessive government power in three significant ways.

We should celebrate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s elevation to the U.S. Supreme Court. She is one of the most qualified judges to have been confirmed to the Court. Her brief service as a public defender, however, does not redress the lack of professional diversity and balance needed for our courts to police the line between government authority and government abuse at the state and federal levels.

Expanding the Reach of Criminal Laws Without Increasing the Burdens on the Prosecution

Many voices have sounded the alarm and are mobilizing to untangle the complex web of laws, rules, and culture that authorize coercive plea bargaining practices.

We tell ourselves that we are protected from government abuse by a system of jury trials in which jurors decide guilt or innocence and judges determine sentences. What is the reality? We have abandoned the system of public jury trials established in the Constitution and Bill of Rights in favor of a shadow system of guilty pleas driven by the logic of prosecutorial power.

Arkansas set out to execute eight men in 11 days in April 2017. Barry Pollack gives a brief description of the men and their cases.

When the court appoints standby counsel, should the court limit the role of standby counsel to a consultative one, as the court did in the Dylann Roof case?

Recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions illustrate how the continued use of the death penalty will inevitably invite arbitrary results and fails to serve any legitimate sentencing purpose.

The imposition of the death penalty is on the decline. However, 40 execution dates have been scheduled by seven states and the federal government for 2020.

Public sentiment continues to turn in favor of abolishing the death penalty. The death penalty remains a national embarrassment. It is racist, classist, and anachronistic.

in Modesto

Frank Carson is a classic example of a defense lawyer who stood strong and held the line for liberty every day in courtrooms across the United States.

The Long Shadow of the Trial Penalty

Thanks to the trial penalty, criminal trials no longer offer sufficient opportunities for the community to evaluate the conduct of the police during citizen-officer encounters. Police and prosecutors can effectively coerce guilty pleas thereby obscuring, even deliberately shielding, unlawful police conduct from public exposure and review by the courts.

Why the Trial Penalty Does Greater Violence to People of Color and the Poor

The trial penalty – the difference between a pretrial settlement offer and a post-trial sentence – punishes everyone caught in the machinery of the criminal legal system but injures people of color and the poor more than others.

While the United States remains deeply divided over many issues, a broad consensus is emerging that the country must face the profound injustices – particularly racial and socioeconomic injustice – in the criminal legal system.

NACDL has launched a 12-month celebration of the Gideon v. Wainwright decision.