Press Releases
about Criminal Law Reform

Shelby County (Memphis), Tennessee, historically set cash bail in criminal cases without stopping to ask whether people would be able to bail out. This practice unnecessarily detained people who could not afford to pay for release, but who would otherwise return to court and live peacefully in their communities. The ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project negotiated a historic settlement with Shelby County to end this practice. In retaliation, the Tennessee legislature passed HB 1719, which prohibits judges from considering an arrestee’s ability to pay when setting bail. This law is unprecedented. Our lawsuit seeks to enjoin Shelby County officials from enforcing it.

This case asks whether Georgia’s insanity defense statutes can be construed to contain an exception for cases where defendants allegedly triggered their own insanity by discontinuing their medication weeks before the alleged crimes. The State argues for such an exception, even though the text of the insanity defense statutes expressly pins the availability of the defenses to the defendant’s mental condition “at the time of” the alleged crimes. The ACLU’s State Supreme Court Initiative, along with the ACLU of Georgia, filed an amicus brief arguing that even if the State’s interpretation of the statutory text were reasonable, its argument should still be rejected because it contradicts the rule of lenity. The rule of lenity is a well-established canon of statutory construction requiring that, if a criminal statute can reasonably be interpreted in different ways, courts must adopt the interpretation most favorable to the accused.

This case asks whether the state can arrest, charge, and convict someone under Montana’s obstruction statute for exercising their federal and state constitutional right to record police officers in public spaces. The defendant was filming a traffic stop when police instructed him to move farther away. When he did not move as far as they wanted, they arrested him for obstructing a peace officer. The ACLU’s State Supreme Court Initiative, along with the ACLU of Montana, filed an amicus brief in support of the defendant arguing that the officer’s refusal to allow the defendant to peacefully record police activity from a public sidewalk was, in effect, a content-based restriction on speech that could not be justified under strict scrutiny. Even if the restriction was not content-based, our brief argues that it is not a reasonable time place or manner restriction.

On December 20, 2024, CLRP, along with ACLU-DC and Jenner & Block, filed a federal lawsuit against the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and its Director for incarcerating thousands of people longer than the law allows under the First Step Act.