Today, the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. With over 2.3 million men and women living behind bars, our imprisonment rate is the highest it’s ever been in U.S. history.
Today, the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. With over 2.3 million men and women living behind bars, our imprisonment rate is the highest it’s ever been in U.S. history. And yet, our criminal justice system has failed on every count: public safety, fairness and cost-effectiveness. Across the country, the criminal justice reform conversation is heating up. Each week, we feature our some of the most exciting and relevant news in overincarceration discourse that we’ve spotted from the previous week. Check back weekly for our top picks.
Recently-passed Criminal Justice Reform Legislation in the States
In the second time in as many months, Governor John Kasich has intervened to stop an execution. Today, he commuted John Jeffrey Eley’s sentence to life without the possibility of parole. Eley was scheduled to be executed on July 26.
On July 3, U.N. delegates and NGO representatives from around the world gathered at the U.N. Headquarters in New York for an invigorating conference entitled “Moving Away From the Death Penalty - Lessons from National Experiences.” Panelists, ranging from high-level U.N. officials to state-level prosecutors to individuals directly impacted by the death penalty, shared their experiences with death penalty abolition and examined the human rights implications of the ultimate punishment.
The North Carolina General Assembly voted yesterday to override Gov. Bev Perdue's veto of SB 416, a bill that essentially guts the Racial Justice Act (RJA), meaning the destructive bill will become law. The RJA was an historic piece of legislation designed to address the disturbing role that race plays in the death penalty by allowing defendants in capital cases to use statistical evidence to show racial bias in the system. SB 416 cripples the ability of the RJA to address systemic racial discrimination by repealing the provision that allowed defendants to file claims showing statewide discrimination in sentencing and jury selection.
A man named John Gordon was hanged by the state of Rhode Island in 1845. The concern about the fairness of his execution was so great that seven years later, Rhode Island became the second state in the country to abolish the death penalty. No person in the state has been executed since. For inexplicable reasons, the U.S. Department of Justice seems hell-bent on changing that.
Almost two years ago, Jason Wayne Pleau robbed and murdered a gas station manager who was making a bank deposit in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. Pleau was taken into state custody on probation violation charges, and since then he has, through his attorneys, agreed to serve a sentence of life imprisonment without parole for this heinous crime. However, the U.S. Attorney doggedly pushed to have him turned over to federal custody (because the crime involved a bank) where he could be punished with the death penalty. Rhode Island’s governor, Lincoln Chafee, a staunch opponent of capital punishment, refused to turn over Pleau, but a federal appeals court recently ordered him to do so. On Monday, it was announced that the U.S. Government would indeed bring Pleau to trial and seek death.
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.
As states begin to realize that they can reduce their prison populations safely, the pace of reform has begun to pick up a bit this year. State legislative sessions are coming to a close, which makes it a good time to review the actions lawmakers have taken to reduce their unsustainable prison populations in 2012. Here are the some of the legislative reform highlights:
Alabama
Faced with a system of overcrowded prisons and fearing the same sort of court order that forced California to reform its prison system, Alabama took an indirect route toward depopulating its prisons. The state passed SB 386 inMay, which will allow the Alabama Sentencing Commission to set sentencing guidelines for nonviolent crimes that judges would generally have to follow. Under the new law, the Commission can make sentencing changes for nonviolent crimes, which will take effect unless the legislature takes action to reject any such the changes. The Sentencing Commission, which is insulated from the electoral pressure to reject proposals to soften criminal sentences, may now be poised to take action to reduce prison sentences for nonviolent offenses.
