Washington, DC (May 22, 2013) – NACDL is pleased to offer, as a resource for its members and as a service to the public, a collection of individual downloadable documents that summarize for each U.S. state the key doctrines and leading court rulings setting forth constitutional and statutory limits on lengthy imprisonment terms and other extreme (non-capital) sentences. The resource – Excessive Sentencing: NACDL’s Proportionality Litigation Project – is available at www.nacdl.org/excessivesentencing

NACDL President Steven D. Benjamin said: “The United States now leads the world in incarceration, with more than 2.2 million people behind bars, as a result of overcriminalization and excessive sentencing. NACDL’s Excessive Sentencing Project being launched today is the type of resource for practitioners, judges, policy advocates, and the general public that embodies NACDL’s tireless work to fulfill its mission. The tools provided in this expansive online resource will be deployed to improve America’s criminal justice system and will result in more humane, rational and proportional sentencing of those convicted of a crime.”

Development of this new resource was inspired in part by the Supreme Court’s recent landmark constitutional decisions in Graham v. Florida, 130 S. Ct. 2011 (May 17, 2010), and Miller v. Alabama, 132 S. Ct. 245 (June 25, 2012), which pronounced new Eighth Amendment limits on when and how states can impose life without parole prison terms on juvenile offenders. The state profiles and related materials provide a detailed snapshot of existing proportionality doctrines and jurisprudence as of fall 2012. They are intended as a resource for practitioners in all phases of the criminal justice system, for sentencing and appellate courts, for policymakers and advocates concerned with the high economic and human costs of excessively long terms of imprisonment, and for defendants facing or serving extreme prison terms.

The primary academic supervisor of this resource is Professor Douglas A. Berman of The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, who is also the creator, author and editor of the leading Sentencing Law and Policy Blog, an affiliate of the Law Professor Blogs Network. He is also the co-author of the case book, Sentencing Law and Policy: Cases, Statutes and Guidelines. Professor Berman intends to update these materials regularly as developments in the law warrant and new information becomes available.

On the project’s landing page – www.nacdl.org/excessivesentencing – there is a free, nearly 90-minute sentencing skills webinar featuring Professor Berman and Stephen Hardwick, an assistant public defender in Columbus, Ohio, where he specializes in appellate advocacy on behalf of clients convicted of capital offenses and other felonies.

TOPIC: The U.S. Sentencing Commission’s February 2013 Child Pornography Report
DATE: May 01, 2013
http://afda.org/web/videos/AFDA_Defense_Strategies_In_Child_Pornography

CLEVELAND — A Cleveland man was arraigned Thursday on charges of rape and kidnapping after three women missing for about a decade and one of their young daughters were found alive at his home earlier in the week.

Full article:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/09/ariel-castro-charges_n_3244333.html?utm_hp_ref=daily-brief?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=050913&utm_medium=email&utm_content=NewsEntry&utm_term=Daily%20Brief

DENVER — The man accused in the deadly Colorado theater shootings wants to change his plea to not guilty by reason of insanity, his lawyers said Tuesday, despite their fears that the plea could severely hamper his ability to mount a defense against the death penalty.

Read the full article here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/07/james-holmes-enters-insanity-plea_n_3232660.html?ir=Crime&utm_campaign=050713&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Alert-crime&utm_content=FullStory

Bipartisan Effort Establishes House Judiciary Committee Overcriminalization Task Force

Washington, DC (May 7, 2013) – The House Committee on the Judiciary this morning voted unanimously to create the “Overcriminalization Task Force of 2013.” According to Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), “The task force will be authorized for six months and will be led by Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner and Ranking Member Bobby Scott.” It will “conduct hearings and investigations and issue a report on overcriminalization in the federal code, as well as possible solutions.” The task force is made up of five Democrats and five Republicans, and will include Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers (D-MI) and Chairman Goodlatte as ex-officio members.

NACDL’s Executive Director Norman L. Reimer, who was present in the hearing room when the resolution unanimously establishing the task force was adopted, said: “This is an important step forward in the movement to combat overcriminalization. It is a bipartisan effort to look at America’s infatuation with criminal law as the solution to every problem, and to address the mass imprisonment it causes. And it shows that despite the partisan divide, overcriminalization is one problem that most everyone agrees needs to be fixed. NACDL is hopeful that the establishment of this task force represents the beginning of the very serious work required to turn today’s words into tomorrow’s deeds.”

At a press briefing this morning, Judiciary Committee and Overcriminalization Task Force leaders appeared in agreement on the need to address several important issues, including the erosion of the mens rea (or criminal intent) requirement in federal criminal law, the often unnecessary duplication of state law in the federal code, extreme overincarceration, and the explosion of regulatory offenses that some estimate may now number as high as 300,000, among other issues. Members also expressed the need to address mandatory minimum sentences. Of course, these are all among the issues on which NACDL has focused in its tireless work on overcriminalization, including in its groundbreaking joint report with the Heritage Foundation, Without Intent: How Congress is Eroding the Criminal Intent Requirement in Federal Law. Indeed, just before the vote creating this task force, Ranking Member Bobby Scott (D-VA) specifically recognized NACDL’s role, as well as that of others across the political spectrum, in the important work being taken up by the task force.

To learn more about NACDL’s work and leadership in the effort to combat and roll back overcriminalization in America, please visit www.nacdl.org/overcrim.

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers is the preeminent organization advancing the mission of the criminal defense bar to ensure justice and due process for persons accused of crime or wrongdoing.  A professional bar association founded in 1958, NACDL’s approximately 10,000 direct members in 28 countries – and 90 state, provincial and local affiliate organizations totaling up to 40,000 attorneys – include private criminal defense lawyers, public defenders, military defense counsel, law professors and judges committed to preserving fairness and promoting a rational and humane criminal justice system.

National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers

1660 L St., N.W., 12th Fl, Washington, D.C. 20036 * Tel. 202-872-8600 * Fax 202-872-8690

(CNN) — Lauryn Hill told the judge who sentenced her to prison that she planned to pay her taxes; it was just a question of when.

Read full article here:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/06/showbiz/lauryn-hill-prison/index.html

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/enchantedlifesalon/2013/05/05/baby-boomers-going-global–working-overseas–importexport

But the main reason Congress has upped the penalties for men who possess child pornography is the deep-seated belief that many of them physically abuse children and that they are highly likely to keep doing so because they can’t stop themselves.  Is that true? I’ve heard it so many times it’s hard to think otherwise.  Yet that premise is contested in a new 468-page report by the U.S. Sentencing Commission (the body Congress established to advise it about federal sentencing law).  The commission did its own research.  It says the federal sentencing scheme for child pornography offenses is out of date and argues that this leads to penalties that “are too severe for some offenders and too lenient for other offenders.”…

http://sentencing.typepad.com/sentencing_law_and_policy/2013/04/passive-pedophiles-are-child-porn-viewers-less-dangerous-than-we-thought.html