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When Forgetting Kills a Child
In late June, 38-year-old Nicole Engler unintentionally left her only child to die of hyperthermia in a hot car. Hours later, tearing her hair out and begging police to let her commit suicide, she was in the county jail, facing second-degree manslaughter charges. Her attorney picked up the phone and called neuroscientist David Diamond in…
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The Silencing of Prison Legal News
A resource that civil rights attorneys say is critical for prisoners across the country who are fighting abuse and neglect behind bars has just become off-limits to Florida inmates. Last month, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Alabama, Georgia and Florida, upheld the state’s decision to ban Prison Legal News (PLN), on the grounds…
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District Judge Rejects Pleas in Favor of Juries
In an opinion published Thursday, a federal judge announced that he is rejecting plea deals that transfer criminal adjudications from the public arena to the prosecutor’s office just “for the purpose of expediency.” Sentencing Law and Policy blogger Douglas Berman flagged the decision as “remarkable” and a must-read, suggesting it may signal more jury trials…
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‘Buy American’ Campaign Boosts Private Sector Use of Prison Labor
The populist slogan “Buy American” increasingly means buying goods produced by America’s thriving prison-based industries, says a new report. In Made in America: Race, Trade, and Prison Labor, Chapman University Law professor Lan Cao argues that public sentiment against outsourcing labor has offered cover for prison labor programs to expand “under the rubric of providing…
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For Some Conservatives, the Death Penalty is Another Big-Government Failure
Heather Beaudoin is a Michigan native who has spent the last decade working with conservative and evangelical communities to repeal state death penalty laws. She is now the National Director of Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty (CCATDP), a project of the Brooklyn-based organization Equal Justice USA, which grew out of her work with the Montana Abolition…
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Can a Jury Alone Decide Guilt?
Is it easier to take a second look at suspect convictions when crime rates have declined, and the public is no longer clamoring for tough-on-crime strategies from their prosecutors and police? Brooklyn (NY) District Attorney Eric Gonzalez argues that prosecutors in fact should beware of the opposite problem: when crime rates accelerate, critical evidence that…
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Sex Workers Decry ‘Moral Panic’ Over Human Trafficking
At the height of national outrage over what government officials and activists call a human trafficking epidemic, sex workers are challenging what they say are misleading and harmful efforts to link prostitution to sex trafficking. “People have used this moral panic, this idea that there is a trafficking epidemic, to create so much funding and…
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Who’s policing counterfeit airplane parts?
A tide of defective and potentially counterfeit airplane parts has been making its way into U.S. aircraft unreported and unchecked, according to senior aviation specialists and whistleblower attorneys. Earlier this spring, a government audit of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)—the agency responsible for ensuring airline safety—said the FAA had consistently failed to alert federal law…
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The Price of Water
Plagued by droughts and coastal flooding from hurricanes, Cuba is struggling to deliver drinkable water to its people—as well as to the tourists who drive the country’s economy. The country’s aging water and sanitation systems desperately needed upgrades even before Hurricanes Irma and Maria battered the island in September, overloading faulty drainage systems and flooding…
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Enforcement Can’t Stop Fake Chinese Drugs: Report
No amount of enforcement can stop the torrent of fake drugs and active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) coming into the U.S. from China, says the author of a paper forthcoming in the Columbia Science and Technology Law Review. China is the world’s largest supplier of counterfeit pharmaceuticals and APIs, and the source of 79% of all counterfeit…
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The Dirty Data Feeding Predictive Police Algorithms
The ability to predict crimes before they happen has long been a topic of fascination for science-fiction writers and filmmakers. In real life, predictive policing is getting a similar buzz, as dozens of police departments experiment with algorithm-driven programs to help them deploy resources more effectively. But more attention should be focused on problems with…
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White Collar Crime: Why Top Execs Escape Prosecution
When Pulitzer Prize-winner Jesse Eisinger covered capital markets for the Wall Street Journal and Conde Nast Portfolio in the early 2000s, he began to see early hints that the subprime market bubble was close to bursting. When the inevitable crash happened, he probed further into the roots of the disaster for ProPublica. His exploration of what he terms “bad…
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Rise of the Young Programmers
Since the 1980s, Cuba has been producing skilled programmers who ultimately seek opportunities with leading companies overseas. Now, some of Cuba’s young entrepreneurs are choosing to stay and develop onshore startups. Will economic reforms and a government-controlled internet keep pace with the rising global demand for tech talent?
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The Smell of Success
The Cuba Mountain Coffee company looks to new foreign markets—including the U.S.— as it moves forward with a deal to revive production in Eastern Cuba.
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Fraud and the Elderly: Is Anyone Paying Attention?
Paul Greenwood, San Diego’s Deputy District Attorney, has been investigating crimes against the elderly for over two decades. As head of San Diego’s Elder Abuse Unit, he’s been a front-row witness to the tragedies such crimes have left in their wake. “I have seen for myself many instances where victims in their seventies, eighties, nineties,…
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America’s Oldest Crime Victims
Last spring, 75-year old Kanda Aromdee walked into a Chase bank in upper Manhattan and withdrew $10,000, while two men waited for her outside. By this time, she was afraid. The men had approached Kanda (a pseudonym) around the corner outside a 99-cent store, with an old con that has a hundred postal and telephone…
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Cuba Debt Deal Signals Re-engagement With Intl. Financial Markets
Cuba took another conciliatory step toward international financial markets in recent months with a $40 million payment to its Paris Club creditors, less than one year after signing a monumental debt restructuring agreement. Following decades of default, 14 member-states of the Paris Club agreed to waive $8.5 billion of Cuba’s outstanding $11.1 billion debt. Now,…