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.
Every criminal case is part of a larger personal story—some headline-grabbing, some entirely mundane; yet each narrative is important to how the criminal justice system assesses an individual’s level of culpability.
Philosophers have long pondered the metaphysical meaning of an object’s “location” or the “where of a thing.”
When Americans break the law—whether it’s a minor offense like littering or a serious crime like felony assault—they tend to face the same financial penalties, no matter their income.
