Blog of Rights
Rachel
Myers

Rachel Myers is a senior communications strategist at the ACLU focusing on criminal justice issues. She worked previously at the ACLU of Maine and the Portland (ME) Education Partnership, where she trained teachers, students and community organizations to use service learning in the public schools. She is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin.

11/07/2012
2012 State Ballot Measures Results

Marijuana on the Ballot

By Rachel Myers, ACLU at 7:29pm

Last night brought exciting signs that America is finally ready to choose sensible policies over draconian ones that deny sick people access to the medicine they need, and others that clog our criminal justice system with nonviolent marijuana users. ACLU affiliates across the country worked hard to support the passage of three important measures. 

Voters in Colorado and Washington made history when they took a stand for sensible drug law reform, choosing to legalize small quantities of marijuana for adults.Arrests for possession of small amounts of marijuana constitute one of the most common drug-related points of entry into the already bloated criminal justice system anddisproportionately target people of color despite the fact that white people use marijuana at higher rates. 

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11/05/2012
U.S. Death Penalty

Replace the Death Penalty in California

By Rachel Myers, ACLU at 2:55pm

Imagine for a minute that all the public busses in California sat dormant in a parking lot, never to run again. Imagine that the public schools sent all the kids home for good. Imagine also that state’s hospitals shuttered their doors and turned the ill away. Now imagine that, despite a total shutdown of the transportation, education and health care systems, California taxpayers still paid millions every year to fund these non-functioning systems.

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10/17/2012
Juvenile Detention

New Support for Ending the Solitary Confinement of Youth

By Rachel Myers, ACLU at 10:48pm

Last week the ACLU and Human Rights Watch released a report about the solitary confinement of young people in America’s jails and prisons. Kids in solitary often spend 22 to 24 hours a day alone, sometimes without access to books, let alone other people. The isolation can last for days, weeks, or even months at a time.

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08/13/2012
Overincarceration

Extreme Sentencing

By Rachel Myers, ACLU at 6:12pm

Snatching a purse off the arm of an elderly woman is one of the nastier offenses I can think of – the kind of thing that might make you shake your head and say to yourself “I hope whoever did that gets what’s coming to him.” And then you think for a second about just what he ought to have coming to him: community service, maybe – or even a night in jail. Stealing from an old lady is pretty mean, after all, and you’d want whoever did it to learn a lesson.

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06/18/2012
Solitary Confinement

Senators To Hear Dangers of Long-Term Solitary Confinement

By Rachel Myers, ACLU at 10:53am

The first-ever (and long-overdue) congressional hearing on solitary confinement convenes tomorrow, June 19, at 10 a.m. before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights. You’ll be able to watch a webcast of the hearing on the Senate website, and follow our live tweeting using #stopsolitary.

Among others, the committee will hear from Mississippi Department of Corrections Commissioner Christopher Epps, who is rethinking the use of solitary in Mississippi correctional facilities; Anthony Graves, who spent years in solitary on Texas’ death row before being exonerated; Dr. Craig Haney, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz who has studied and written about psychological trauma among prisoners held in long-term solitary confinement; and Pat Nolan of the Justice Fellowship/Prison Fellowship Ministries, a leader in the conservative movement for criminal justice reform.

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06/14/2012
U.S. Death Penalty

Spared From a Death Sentence Based On Falsehoods

By Rachel Myers, ACLU at 5:52pm

An almost-certainly innocent man was spared from death at the hands of the state of Texas yesterday when the highest criminal court in Texas threw out the death sentence of ACLU client Manuel Velez, ruling it was based on the false testimony of a state expert.

Velez was awaiting execution after the state’s expert witness falsely told the sentencing jury that, if sentenced to life without parole instead of death, Velez would be permitted lenient prison conditions and thereby pose a greater threat of danger to the public.
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05/24/2012
Stop-And-Frisk

Fix Stop-And-Frisk

By Rachel Myers, ACLU at 3:40pm
The pressure on the New York Police Department to reform its stop-and-frisk program is mounting, led by the New York Civil Liberties Union and other advocates and now the New York Times.
 
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05/17/2012
Medical Marijuana

Op-Ed: A Judge’s Plea for Pot

By Rachel Myers, ACLU at 4:53pm

Today, in a powerful and brave opinion piece in the New York Times, Judge Gustin L. Reichbach tells of how he relies on marijuana to tame the abysmal effects of chemotherapy and radiation, which in turn are meant to tame the cancer that ravages his body. Nausea and pain, he says, are constant companions of the treatment, and none of the drugs his doctors can prescribe him are any help. The only thing that helps is marijuana, which his doctors can’t prescribe – even when they, his doctors, know it is in his best interest – because lawmakers prohibit it.

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04/18/2012
Medical Marijuana

Medical Marijuana Patient Fired by Wal-Mart Deserves His Day in Court

By Rachel Myers, ACLU at 5:07pm

Some readers may recall the story of Joseph Casias, the model employee who was fired from his job at Wal-Mart for using medical marijuana in accordance with state law. The ACLU was in court today to argue that an appeals court should reinstate a lawsuit we filed on Casias' behalf, charging Wal-Mart and the manager of its Battle Creek, Mich., store with wrongfully firing him.

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04/12/2012
Connecticut

ACLU Lens: Connecticut Poised to Become 17th State to Repeal Death Penalty

By Rachel Myers, ACLU at 4:58pm

The passage late Wednesday by the Connecticut House of a bill to repeal the death penalty is the latest sign of growing momentum in favor of ending the use of executions nationwide.

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