New York Times-EDITORIAL June 29, 2011 The 1986 federal drug law that punished people caught with crack cocaine far more severely than those caught with powder cocaine was a disaster on many levels. It undermined faith in the justice system by discriminating against poor and mainly minorit...
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By Roger Parloff, January 6, 2010 (Fortune Magazine) -- When it comes to fighting white-collar crime, the sharpest arrow in the federal prosecutor's quiver is a law most non-lawyers have never heard of, known as the "honest-services fraud" law. In essence, the law ...
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June 11, 2012 Katharine Mieszkowski - The Bay Citizen Faced with an influx of inmates, sheriffs across the state are backing a bill that would allow some felons to leave jail before they have completed serving their sentences. The legislation would apply to inmates who are dying or are so phys...
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Walter Pavlo 7/19/2011 When the feds come calling, there is a certain fear that comes over those who once felt above the law. This causes a mad rush to the courthouse to see if a member of the once thriving conspiracy can get a better deal than the others involved. In our justice system, the fir...
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Clarence Aaron Case: Pardon Attorney Torpedoes Plea for Presidential Mercy 05/14/2012 ProPublica's Dafna Linzer reports: A version of this story was co-published with The Washington Post. Clarence Aaron seemed to be especially deserving of a federal commutation, an immediate release from pri...
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The New York Times can't quite grasp the concept, but there's a stunningly simple explanation for the huge drop in crime rates: The villains are behind bars. Dan Seligman - 05.23.05A big story, inadequately memorialized by the media, is that crime in America has become a much smaller story. Cr...
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The U.S. Supreme Court this week rejected mandatory life without parole for juveniles. The ruling could mean hope for hundreds of Florida inmates sentenced as teenagers.June 28, 2012 Hundreds of convicted murderers in Florida could get a chance to convince a judge that their terms should be re...
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The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 S.1789 SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. This Act may be cited as the ‘Fair Sentencing Act of 2010’. SEC. 2. COCAINE SENTENCING DISPARITY REDUCTION. a) CSA- Section 401(b)(1) of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 841(b)(1)) is amended– (1) in subparagraph (A...
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The Second Chance Act of 2007 The Second Chance Act of 2007 is one of the most misunderstood and over-hyped law to be enacted in over a decade. The rumor mill in prison has inmates thinking that the application of this statute will reduce their sentence sufficiently that they are lite...