By Jude Ortiz, Chair, NLG Mass Defense Committee, King Downing, NLG Director of Mass Defense Following a strong year’s end of mass defense support for Black Lives Matter, the Standing Rock pipeline encampments, and presidential primary/post-election protests, NLG mass defense efforts surged into 2017. While the above issues continue to receive NLG mass defense attention, […]
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BEYOND BARS: Lifers’ Group and CURE-ARM Team Up, Meet with Mass. Legislators at Prisons
By Timothy J. Muise Norfolk, MA Two groups, one an old war horse in the push for common sense criminal justice reform and the other fairly new on the scene, have teamed up in an attempt to get the voice of the informed prisoner back into the Massachusetts Sate House. The Lifers’ Group, Inc., founded […]
BEYOND BARS: Legal Espionage: The Degradation of the Brady Doctrine
By S. Gabriella Kiely Romulus, NY The US legal system is built on fair and equitable legal proceedings in criminal cases; securing fundamental rights for defendants, and restricting malicious behaviors by the lawyers. Over the years, many appellate cases have changed the face of criminal defense law; one of those cases was Brady v. Maryland […]
BEYOND BARS: Reflections on 40 Years of NLG-JHL Activism
By Iron Thunderhorse Teague, TX I began working with NLG as a jailhouse lawyer membership coordinator in the early 1970s. That was the year when the monster of all prisoner lawsuits began, and Ruiz v. Estelle was launched under the Institutionalized Persons Act. Multiple complaints were consolidated and the United States intervened as a party. […]
BEYOND BARS: Who is the Worst Fool?
William A. Larson Licking, MO I have been under the loving care of the Missouri Penal System (MDOC) since 1981 and had been previously incarcerated in 1963-64. I am 77-years-young and it is pragmatically improbable that I will live long enough to walk the streets free again. The MDOC is the exemplar of the eternal […]
BEYOND BARS: Responses to “Mississippi DOC Manipulates Grievance Procedures to Avoid Conditions of Confinement Suits”
By Gerard Niles Monticello, FL I am writing in response to “Mississippi DOC Manipulates Grievance Procedures to Avoid Conditions of Confinement Suits,” by Charles Owens, II in the Summer/Fall 2016 issue of Guild Notes. If a state prison grievance procedure is meaningful and not futile, it will contain a section of time frames, with a […]
BEYOND BARS: Pattern of Discrimination Against Disabled Individuals
Hunter Lee Weeks, Paralegal Sterling, CO In an attempt by several incarcerated individuals to regain rights they have lost, a pattern of discrimination has emerged, perpetrated by the Colorado Department of Corrections (DOC) at Sterling Correctional Facility (SCF). Several inmates have filed a Title II complaint with the Department of Justice (DOJ) alleging various instances […]
BEYOND BARS: There is Hope
By Robert L. Brown San Luis, AZ There exists so much frustration, as to a loss of light, with a sense of darkness trying to engulf one’s light, being an individual in prison means living daily on a treacherous, at times torturous terrain between doubt and faith, despair and hope. Merely, this is a mild […]
BOOK REVIEW: Len, A Lawyer in History by Seth Tobocman
Reviewed by Jim Lafferty, NLG-Los Angeles President Emeritus Len, A Lawyer in History: A Graphic Biography of Radical Attorney Leonard Weinglass by Seth Tobocman, Edited by Paul Buhle & Michael Steven Smith (AK Press, 2016) I never cared for graphic books—then I read Seth Tobocman’s fine graphic biography of the great American lawyer, Leonard Weinglass. […]
Portland City Council Adopts Police Union Contract over Strong Community Objections; Arrests Demonstrators
By Ashlee Albies & Kristen Chambers, NLG-PDX Portland, OR police accountability advocates have worked for years to change terms embedded in the City’s collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with the police union, arguing they impede oversight and accountability. On October 12, 2016, the Portland City Council adopted a CBA over strenuous community objections, surrounded City Hall […]