The last several years have seen “a truly astounding” and “unprecedented” outpouring of scholarship and commentary decrying the large number of individuals held in pretrial detention, measuring the negative social consequences of such detention, and debating what to do about it.
In 2020, the U.S. federal government carried out ten exe-cutions, more than in any year since 1896. In a single week in January 2021, it carried out three more.
Vickie Sanders was convicted in a California state court of felony drug possession, sixteen years before California voters would pass Proposition 47. Proposition 47, which was passed in 2014, reduces most possessory drug offenses from felonies to misdemeanors, and allows California courts to retroactively redesignate individuals’ felonies as misdemeanors.
On August 30, 2019, the New Mexico Supreme Court prospectively abolished the state’s spousal communications privilege.
For the uninitiated, a brief rehearsal of the facts of the matter: The United States presently incarcerates over two million individuals, with another four million under other forms of correctional supervision.
Prosecutors seem to be the primary target for criminal justice reformers today, and with good reason: they are key gatekeepers to whether criminal charges get brought or not, and the particular charges they bring often dictate a defendant’s sentence.
