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.

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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03/20/2012
Drug-Testing Welfare Recipients

Editorial: Drug-Testing Welfare Applicants Nets Little

By Rachel Myers, ACLU at 4:00pm

An editorial in yesterday's USA Today takes a hard look at the recent push to drug-test applicants for public assistance across the country. The verdict? "Until states can come up with a smarter way to ferret out the abusers while protecting children, the testing craze will be just another program that appeals to stereotypes in hard economic times while producing little value in the real world."

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05/18/2011

Sentencing Children to Die in Prison

By Rachel Myers, ACLU at 1:23pm

One year ago this week, the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that sentencing youth who have committed non-homicide offenses to life in prison without some meaningful opportunity for review of that sentence is unconstitutional. Although the ruling does not guarantee that juvenile offenders will eventually be released, it requires that they be provided with some realistic opportunity to obtain release before during their lifetime. The ruling in the case, Graham v. Florida, was an important step in the right direction. It recognized that juvenile offenders are fundamentally different from their adult counterparts, that they have a greater capacity for change, growth and rehabilitation, and that they should not, therefore, be punished with the harshest sentence that can be imposed on adults.

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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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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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03/08/2012
Private Prisons

Stop Incarceration for Profit in Your State

By Rachel Myers, ACLU at 3:28pm

A private prison company, Corrections Corporation of America, wants to buy your state's prisons and keep them full. Help us stop them.

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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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01/18/2012
L.A. County Jail

ACLU Lawsuit Challenges Violence in Baca's L.A. County Jails

By Rachel Myers, ACLU at 3:25pm

The lawsuit filed today charges L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca and his top commanders condoned a longstanding, widespread pattern of violence by deputies against inmates in the county jails.

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01/05/2012
Arizona

Arizona Medical Marijuana Law Survives Attack by Arizona Governor

By Rachel Myers, ACLU at 12:37pm

A federal judge granted the ACLU's request to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer seeking to strike down her own state's voter-approved medical marijuana law.

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05/23/2011

ACLU Lens: Supreme Court Orders California to Reduce its Prison Population to Alleviate Overcrowding

By Rachel Myers, ACLU at 1:47pm

The U.S. Supreme Court today ordered the state of California to reduce its prison population in order to alleviate extreme overcrowding that endangers the health and safety of the state’s prisoners and prison staff. The decision in Brown v. Plata affirms a lower court ruling in two long-running cases in which the medical and mental health care provided in California’s prisons was found to be so deficient that it endangers the lives of prisoners and violates the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

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