Everyday Injustice

In their book, Suspect Citizens, Frank Baumgartner and his colleagues looked at a massive amount of police stops in North Carolina over a number of years. The findings shed light on the nature of police stops and one of the remarkable features is that the findings have held outside of North Carolina as well. In short, Black and brown drivers are disproportionately stopped. When they are stopped, t...

Marc Bookman, Co-founder of nonprofit Atlantic Center for Capital Representation in Philadelphia and author of the book, A Descending Spiral: Exposing the Death Penalty in 12 Essays. This book, a collection of essays that highlights the injustice of the death penalty. Listen as he discusses some of the worst aspects of the criminal legal system. Bookman discusses among other things: racist judges...

Aasha Ealy was a law student accused of a crime that she didn’t commit. What should have a simple case has dragged on since 2016. During that time, she has finished law school and passed the bar. And still, her case languishes in the system. Listen to her amazing story as she was pressured into taking a plea, ended up rescinding that plea agreement, lost her attorney and ended up representing hers...

This week on Everyday Injustice, Jessica Henry talks about people who are convicted of crimes that never happened. There are a whole class of wrongful convictions – some based on flawed forensic science, such as shaken baby or arson investigators. Henry also chronicles suicide being mislabeled as a homicide. And more nefarious problems such as corrupt police planting drugs on an innocent suspect....

As most observers are well aware by now, the US incarcerates a much higher proportion of its population than any other nation. In Jeffrey Bellin’s book, “Mass Incarceration Nation,” he conceives of the system as having two distinct levels. The criminal justice system where the public seeks “justice” in response to serious crimes like murder and rape. And the criminal legal system, “where the gover...

Pamela Price made history on Monday, being sworn in by Oakland Mayor-Elect Sheng Thao, who herself made history as the first Hmong to be elected mayor of a major US City. Price became the first Black elected DA in Alameda County, birthplace of the Black Panthers. Also speaking during the ceremony in front of at least 200 enthusiastic supporters in Downtown Oakland was Wanda Johnson, mother of Osca...

This week on Everyday Injustice we have NCAJ (National Center for Access to Justice) Policy Director Lauren Jones talking about their work on behalf of criminal justice reform. “NCAJ uses data, research and policy analysis to expose how the justice system fails to stand up for equal justice- and all too often, functions as a source of oppression.” We talk about their creation of the Justice Index...

This week on Everyday Injustice we talk with Joanne Scheer, whose son’s incarceration on felony murder, special circumstances led her to create the Felony Murder Elimination Project. Under the felony murder law, if someone committee a felony and a person died during the commission of that crime, all individuals are held accountable for that death and are legally guilty of murder. Even if they were...

Today on Everyday Injustice we talk with Talitha Floyd from Sacramento Area Congregations Together (Sac ACT). Sacramento ACT empowers ordinary people to identify and change the conditions that create economic and racial injustice. Among the work we discussed was their Live Free program, whereby Sac ACT works to increase transparency and accountability with law enforcement, addressing implicit bias...

Justin Brooks, the director of the California Innocence Project has spent his career freeing the innocent from prison. He told Everyday Injustice that after 30 years, he decided to put his insights into a book. His message to all of us: it could happen to anyone – it could happen to you. At the same time, there are inequities and flaws in the system that disproportionately mean that people of colo...

Following the primary elections, reformers were braced for setbacks in the reform prosecutor movement – but a strange thing happened this November, that set back never came. Everyday Injustice spoke with Miriam Krinsky of Fair and Just Prosecution. She discussed the formation of her organization, and why she believed that reform prosecutors fared much better than expected in the midterm elections....

This week on Everyday Injustice, Brian Hofer of Secure-Justice discusses the surveillance state, and the abuse of state power as well as the current state of criminal justice reform. A recent incident in Berkeley, where the leak of text messages showed the president of the police officers union making racially charged remarks and calling for arrest quotas. The leak was made public by Secure Justic...

This week on Everyday Injustice we talk with Elliot Hosman, the Prison Advocacy Coordinator at Ella Baker Center on their work on behalf of resentencing. California has some of the most severe sentence enhancements in the nation. But with the help of some key legislation, including SB 1393, the Fair and Just Sentencing Reform Act, and 1170(d), the Recall of Sentence and Resentencing there are mech...

One of the important ways to disrupt mass incarceration is to get formerly incarcerated people to get college and graduate degrees. Such programs help to greatly reduce recidivism rates. Popping up all over the state at Underground Scholars Programs. Organizations that help “create pathways into higher education for formerly incarcerated and justice system-impacted individual” by providing support...

The advent of DNA testing has transformed the criminal legal system since 1989. For the first time, DNA testing provided absolute proof that people were convicted of crimes that they did not commit. The National Registry of Exonerations has tracked over 3200 exonerations since 1989, by creating a dataset and narrative they have been able to study common factors, statistically analyze, and have all...

In the 2010 landmark decision Padilla v. Kentucky, the Supreme Court held that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel demands that criminal defense attorneys inform their clients of adverse immigration consequences that may flow from a guilty plea. UCLA Law Professor Ingrid Eagly and her colleagues asked the critical question of whether public defenders are have adequately incorporated Padilla into...

On August 4, Andrew Warren, the twice-elected State Attorney for Florida’s Hillsborough County was about to announce a major breakthrough in a 39 year old cold rape and murder case when he was informed by armed deputies entering his office that Gov. Ron DeSantis had suspended him from office. Why? Warren believes that the move was politically motivated by stances he took on prosecuting abortion ca...

Governor Newsom and the state legislator recently enacted CARE Court to help address chronic homelessness and mental health problems. But reformers believe that the program, while well intentioned, will exacerbate rather than solve existing problems. Criticisms range from the compulsive nature of the treatment to the lack of new money put into mental health treatment – a system stretch way too thi...

Stephen Liebb spent 33 years behind bars for first degree murder. 19 of those years were spent at San Quentin. He earned his release on parole in 2013. Now he works as a legal assistant at the San Francisco Public Defender’s office on the Freedom Project, helping to free others from prison. Listen to Steph’s remarkable story – hired by the legendary Jeff Adachi in 2018, but a lawyer at the time of...

On October 13, James King will receive a Vanguard Justice Award as a formerly incarcerated individual. James King is the Campaign Manager for the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. Prior to joining the organization, James worked to build recognition of the value of people who are being held in carceral spaces. In 2016, he organized a symposium at San Quentin, where he and other incarcerated stude...

Max Szabo has been on the forefront of the criminal justice reform movement for years – hired as the communications director for George Gascón in San Francisco, he then left to start his own firm. Max Szabo joins Everyday Injustice this week to discuss Gascón, the Boudin recall, the Pete Hardin race against Todd Spitzer in Orange County, his work at the Prosecutor’s Alliance and the future of crim...

Northeastern University Professor Daniel Medwed’s book “Barred” comes out on September 20. The book focuses on the wrongly convicted people who are unable to overcome the criminal legal system and prove their innocence in the eyes of the system. As others have noted – due to systemic problems, it is easy to wrongly convict and very difficult to correct on the back end. Medwed discusses both ways t...

A new report released in August by the nonpartisan California Policy Lab (CPL) found “that thousands of Californians saw their prisons sentences lengthened because of this law, and more than one-third (36%) of people currently incarcerated in California are serving a longer sentence because of Three Strikes.” The report provides an in-depth look at the impact of California’s Three-Strikes Law, whi...

Retired Judge LaDoris Cordell joins Everyday Injustice to discuss her experience as a woman of color, appointed to the bench in Santa Clara County at a time when there were not many women of color who even went to law school. Judge Cordell is releasing a book – Her Honor – which is in part a memoir, in part a critique of the criminal legal system. We also discuss her experience on the San Francisc...

Since 2019, Everyday Injustice has brought you interviews with the leaders of the criminal justice realm as well as the tragic stories of everyday injustice. In this brief compilation, among other things we talk about disturbing police incidents, the use of junk science to wrongly convict people, and police torture among other things. Listen to some of our most compelling interviews this week.