On Tuesday, the ACLU of Southern California, along with a criminal defense law firm and two law professors, announced a major law suit that charges that the LA District Attorney’s policy regarding what exculpatory evidence it chooses to hand over to defense attorneys, violates the law—and may have tainted hundreds—or even thousands—of cases.

At Tuesday’s press conferences, the ACLU also challenged the policy of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department having to do with tracking complaints filed against specific deputies by inmates, charging that the LASD’s present policy is illegal in that it makes it impossible for defendants to discover such complaints for trial, when evidence of previous deputy misconduct could have a huge bearing on their defense.

“CLEAR AND CONVINCING EVIDENCE”

First let’s take the DA’s side of the lawsuit: In 1963 the US Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision known as Brady v. Maryland. In plain English, Brady placed an affirmative constitutional duty on a prosecutor to disclose exculpatory evidence to a defendant—-”exculpatory” meaning that it could help clear the defendant from blame.

Put another way, if the prosecution runs across some piece of evidence that favors the defense, even if it torpedos the prosecutor’s case, the DA is legally bound to fork the evidence over. Period. No wiggle room.

A district attorney’s first mission and sacred mandate is to seek justice. The mission is not winning at all costs.

However, according to the ACLU lawyers, the LA District Attorney’s office has a written policy stating that all Brady evidence, before it is turned over to the defense, must be determined to be true “using a standard of clear and convincing evidence which is higher than a preponderance of evidence but less than beyond a reasonable doubt.”

(You can read the rest of the LA DA’s policy on their website.)

In other words, rather than allowing a judge and/or jury to assess whether the exculpatory evidence is true and righteous—the DA’s office gives itself the power to make that call when it comes to any evidence it runs across that might harm one of its cases.

This is something that the cynical among us might see as a little conflict-of-interest-y.

“They’ve usurped power that is not theirs,” is how Peter Eliasberg, the ACLU’s Legal Director, puts it.

THE LA COUNTY JAIL FACTOR

Which brings us to the LASD side of the lawsuit.

First, however, it helps to know the legal underpinnings for the ACLU’s charges against the sheriff’s department:

In 1974, the California Supreme Court ruled on a case known as Pitchess v. Superior Court, which resulted in the legal tool called the Pitchess motion. This is the request made by a defendant in a criminal case for access to information in the personnel file of an arresting police officer to see if he or she has received previous allegations of misconduct.

Since the 1974 decision, a defendant’s right to information about alleged officer misconduct or dishonesty has been established by statute in California Evidence Code.

But, although a defendant’s attorney may successfully file a Pitchess motion to find out about citizen complaints of brutality or misconduct against an LAPD officer or an LASD deputy, if the sheriff’s deputy is working in the LA County jails, all the rules change.

It turns out that jailhouse complaints—reports the ACLU— are not filed in the deputies’ personnel folders, nor are the complaints tracked in the sheriff’s department database created for that purpose, the Personnel Performance Index, or PPI.

In the jails, said the ACLU’s Peter Eliasberg, incredibly, the inmates complaints of deputy abuse are filed under the inmate’s name—not under the deputy’s name.

So if defense attorneys use a Pitchess motion to request the complaints made against a particular deputysaid Eliasberg, “they get nothing.” Since a pattern of such complaints could be vital evidence in cases where an inmate has been beaten by a deputy or deputies—and then charged with assault by that same deputy.

The ACLU’s lawsuit contends that this policy is a glaring violation of state law, and may have had a damaging affect on a huge number of cases.

Interestingly, even the DA’s office appears to agree with the ACLU that the Sheriff’s Department is in the wrong with its policy.

WitnessLA has obtained a copy of a June 22 letter sent by Steve Cooley’s office to the director of LA’s Indigent Criminal Defense Appointment saying that “upon learning about this practice” DA Cooley had contacted Sheriff Lee Baca “to express his disapproval.”

Sheriff’s Department spokesman Steve Whitmore said the department disagreed with what it had heard of the ACLU’s charges. “I don’t know if we’ve had a chance to really study their lawsuit,” Whitmore told me. “But we’ve done nothing illegal, nothing secret, nothing inappropriate. We’re not withholding evidentiary information.”

Both the Office of Independent Review and Special Counsel Merrick Bob have pushed to have inmate complaints put in a deputy’s file, as citizen complaints are for patrol deputies, but as of their June 2012 newsletter, ALADS, the LASD deputies union, vehemently opposed the move.

JONATHAN GOODWIN: A CASE IN POINT

Jonathan Goodman, a 30 year-old who was released from jail two months ago, told how he had been an inmate at Men’s Central Jail when, on December 4, 2010 he was beaten by Sheriff’s Deputies, and that a Deputy Beas, in particular, had started the assault without any provocation.

As has been frequently reported in such cases, although Goodwin was injured in the beat down, it was he who was charged with assault.

From what Goodwin described of what had happened, his attorney thought there might be other inmates who’d also run afoul of Deputy Beas. But she got nothing from a Pitchess motion. However, when she contacted the ACLU she found that that they knew of some inmates who’d had reportedly been beaten up by the same deputy whom Goodwin said had been his attacker.

Two of those inmates testified on Goodwin’s behalf in trial and, in an unusual turn of events, the judge and jury believed the inmates, not the deputies. Goodwin was acquitted two months ago, on May 8, 2012.

But it was just luck and the persistance of his public defender, Goodwin told those assembled for the press conference.

He was to find out later that, although multiple inmate complaints had been filed on Deputy Beas, Goodwin’s antagonist, the LASD still did not produce them in response to a Pitchess motion. “Nor did the DA give [his attorney] sworn statements about Deputy Beas,” he said.

“I stand before you a free man,” Goodwin said at the ACLU press conference, ” But the Sheriff’s Department and the District Attorney’s office tried to deprive me of my right to a free trial. …Had it not been for some good fortune and the hard work of my defense attorney…If the Sheriff’s Department “had succeeded in suppressing evidence that Deputy Beas had assaulted other inmates…I could have done as much as 19 years in prison,” he said.

“I’m sure there are a lot of others out there who weren’t as lucky as I was,” Goodwin said.

ON LARRY MANTLE’S AIR TALK ABOUT SHERIFF’S LATEST REALIGNMENT STRATEGY

On Tuesday morning, I was on Larry Mantle’s Air Talk talking about realignment and jail overcrowding in response to an LA Times article on the topic. (It was just a quickie interview, and was still somewhat flu-ridden but I think I completed at least most of my sentences. Listen for yourself, if you’re in the mood.)

OH, AND THERE’S THIS STORY ABOUT 200 BADGES FOR BOZOS BEING RECALLED BY THE LASD... Yes, yes, I realize that not all of the badges handed out—and now recalled—went to….you know….bozos. But the aliteration was tempting and the photo accompanying the story by the LA Times Robert Faturechi and Jeff Gottlieb suggests severe bozo-oisity.

Photo’s courtesy of the ACLU

FED. PRISONS TO BEGIN ARMING GUARDS WITH PEPPER SPRAY

The Federal Bureau of Prisons has made the controversial decision to arm guards at the Atwater Penitentiary in CA and six other turbulent federal prisons with pepper spray. The decision was due, in part, to the 2008 murder of an unarmed Atwater guard by inmates and other instances of serious assaults on prison guards.

McClatchy Newspapers’ Michael Doyle has the story. Here are some clips:

Urged on by lawmakers, U.S. Bureau of Prisons officials are currently training selected officers to use the spray canisters that can drop a violent inmate from up to 12 feet away. Although described as a “pilot program” that will formally start in several weeks, the decision marks a policy shift for officials who until now have warned against the dangers of arming prison guards.

Under the prior no-weapons policy, Atwater guard Jose Rivera carried only a radio and body alarm when two inmates turned on him June 20, 2008. They ran Rivera down, tackled the 22-year-old Navy veteran and stabbed him repeatedly, a prison videotape shows. The two accused inmates are awaiting trial.

[SNIP]

While state prison guards in California and a number of other states are armed with pepper spray, federal authorities until now have reasoned that the potential disadvantages outweigh the benefits.

Arming guards, even with a non-lethal weapon like pepper spray, would impede communication with inmates, officials have stated. Officials also have warned that unruly inmates could seize the three- to four-ounce pepper spray canisters and turn them against the guards.

“Management at one (federal) institution explained that, regardless of the amount of equipment officers carry, inmates will always outnumber officers. Therefore, the officers’ ability to manage the inmates through effective communication, rather than the use of equipment, is essential to ensuring federal safety,” the Government Accountability Office noted in a 2011 study.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Both the officers at LA County’s juvenile probation camps and the deputies in the LA County Jail system use pepper spray or, more precisely, OC (Oleoresin Capsicum) spray.

WHICH WAY WILL SCOTUS RULE ON IMMIGRATION LAW?

Next week, the Supreme Court is expected to rule on Arizona’s immigration law–the second most prohibitive in the US (after Alabama).

Washington Post’s Pamela Constable has the story. Here’s a clip:

Hispanic and pro-immigrant groups say they are preparing for a major disappointment from the high court, which they believe is likely to uphold the right of state and local police to question and detain suspected illegal immigrants. But they also plan to use the expected blow to rally immigrant communities to defend their rights, seek legal assistance and sign up to vote.

“Arizona will become hotter now, and this will give permission to other states to pursue their own laws, but we are already working to ensure it makes the Latino community stronger and more engaged,” said Ben Monterrosa, executive director of Mi Familia Vota, a civic-action group based in Phoenix that is co-organizing public forums and media messages across the state in anticipation of the ruling.

“We have only just begun to fight,” said Justin Cox, a lawyer in Atlanta with the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a lawsuit last year against laws in Arizona and five other states that allow police to check the status of suspected illegal immigrants and mandate other sanctions that may conflict with federal law. Cox said legal opponents will now challenge the laws on other grounds, including due process and civil rights.

On the other side of the divide, sponsors and supporters of get-tough laws against illegal immigrants say that if the high court upholds Arizona’s statute — which makes it a crime to be in the United States illegally and allows the state to use police as immigration-law enforcers — lawmakers who have been rebuffed in more cautious states will leap into the fray and push for similar crackdowns.

FORMER PROP. 8 BACKER NOW SUPPORTS GAY UNIONS

A once major advocate of Prop. 8, David Blankenhorn, recanted his opposition to gay marriage via the NY Times. Blankenhorn said the debate has become less about marriage and parenthood than about equal rights for gays.

The Chicago Tribune’s (Reuters, C) Alex Dobuzinskis has the story. Here’s a clip:

In 2010, Blankenhorn was the final witness called to defend California’s ban on gay marriage, which was passed by voters in the state in 2008 in a ballot measure called Proposition 8. Six states and the District of Columbia now allow same-sex marriage. Blankenhorn began his testimony by asserting that the best environment for children is to live in a house led by a man and a woman.

But in a surprise to observers of the trial, Blankenhorn seemed to concede certain points to gay marriage advocates under persistent cross-examination from veteran litigator David Boies, who helped launch the legal challenge to Proposition 8.

Blankenhorn said on the witness stand he believed “adopting same-sex marriage would be likely to improve the well-being of gay and lesbian households and their children.”

In his New York Times opinion piece, Blankenhorn maintained gay marriage “has become a significant contributor to marriage’s continuing deinstitutionalization.”

“I have written these things in my book and said them in my testimony, and I believe them today,” he wrote in the piece. “I am not recanting any of it.”

But Blankenhorn went on to argue that he has changed his view due in part to the public’s coming to believe gay marriage is about accepting gays and lesbians “as equal citizens.”

You can read David Blankenhorn’s op-ed for the NY Times here. Here’s a clip:

I had hoped that the gay marriage debate would be mostly about marriage’s relationship to parenthood. But it hasn’t been. Or perhaps it’s fairer to say that I and others have made that argument, and that we have largely failed to persuade. In the mind of today’s public, gay marriage is almost entirely about accepting lesbians and gay men as equal citizens. And to my deep regret, much of the opposition to gay marriage seems to stem, at least in part, from an underlying anti-gay animus. To me, a Southerner by birth whose formative moral experience was the civil rights movement, this fact is profoundly disturbing.

I had also hoped that debating gay marriage might help to lead heterosexual America to a broader and more positive recommitment to marriage as an institution. But it hasn’t happened. With each passing year, we see higher and higher levels of unwed childbearing, nonmarital cohabitation and family fragmentation among heterosexuals. Perhaps some of this can be attributed to the reconceptualization of marriage as a private ordering that is so central to the idea of gay marriage. But either way, if fighting gay marriage was going to help marriage over all, I think we’d have seen some signs of it by now.

So my intention is to try something new. Instead of fighting gay marriage, I’d like to help build new coalitions bringing together gays who want to strengthen marriage with straight people who want to do the same.

LOS ANGELES TAGGERS REACH AGREEMENT IN MONUMENTAL VANDALISM CASE

The City Attorney’s office brought suit against 11 members of the LA tagging crew, Metro Transit Assassins, which could have resulted in the taggers paying upwards of four million dollars for multiple acts of vandalism, including a ginormous, 3-story high tag on the LA River walls. Both parties agreed to a deal that eliminates fiscal responsibility, but requires 100 hours of graffiti clean-up per crew member, an adult curfew, and a ban on associating with each other in public–a condition usually reserved for gang members.

(City Attorney Carmen Trutanich has been eager to use legal sanctions like gang injunctions on taggers, a move that, thus far, has largely been blocked by the ACLU among others.)

By the way, one of the more famous of the MTA crew, artist Cristian Gheorghiu, a.k.a. Smear, says he was not present for the creation of the monster tag.

You can peruse Gheorghiu’s online art gallery here.

LA Times’ Richard Winton has the story. Here’s how it opens:

The settlement was announced Wednesday, the resolution of a landmark lawsuit against the taggers that sought to restrict their behavior and force them to pay $1.2 million in penalties and $3.7 million in damages for “500 documented incidents of graffiti vandalism.”

The lawsuit against 11 alleged members of the crew was filed in June 2010 in response to a quarter-mile-long graffiti “bomb” of its acronym along the Los Angeles River.

Initially, city lawyers also sought to prevent the individuals — including artist Cristian Gheorghiu, a.k.a. Smear — from profiting from the sale of any related art.

Attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California challenged the proposed injunction on 1st Amendment grounds, but a judge found that the constitution “does not protect destruction of public or private property by graffiti vandalism, trespass and illegal activities.”

Under the deal, defendants are prohibited from associating with other members of the tagging crew in public and possessing graffiti tools. They must also obey an adult curfew, according to Deputy City Atty. Jim McDougal.

CALIFORNIA REALIGNMENT FACES OBSTACLES

As most American states struggle to reduce the giant bite that prisons take out of cash strapped state budgets, all eyes are on California where a Supreme Court-mandated reduction in our prison population has resulted in the massively consequential strategy known as realignment, in which the counties are being handed the oversight of many of the state’s lower level law-breakers—the “non-non-nons, as they have come to be called. (They are those convicted of non-violent, non-serious, non-sexual crimes.) Much of the rationale behind, realignment, is the idea that the county structure is better suited to rehabilitation than the state prison system, which has generally failed miserably (hence, California’s awful recidivism rate).

This week, in a keynote address to the National Institute of Justice’s annual conference in Arlington VA, Stanford law criminologist, Joan Petersilia, perhaps the leading national expert on parole and reentry, talks about the necessity of effective ex-inmate rehabilitation programs if California is to successfully meet the huge challenges and opportunities that our realignment experiment brings.

The Crime Report’s Ted Gest has the story on Petersilia’s speech. Here’s a clip:

Even many Californians are not aware that in the last 18 months, the state’s prison population has dropped from 172,000 to 135,000, and the number of parolees has plummeted even more sharply, from 132,000 to 60,000.

While this sounds promising to corrections reformers, Petersilia says it is happening so fast that officials and offenders alike are just beginning to understand the impact.

Many former inmates complain that they have been taken off the parole rolls so quickly that they are losing government benefits that are reserved for parolees. Some are being asked to get back on parole as a result, she says.

In addition, many prosecutors and law enforcement officials oppose aspects of realignment, contending that it will lead to rising crime rates.

One big problem is that government agencies are not pouring sufficient funding into ex-inmate rehabilitation.

Petersilia’s Stanford Criminal Justice Center, which is receiving a federal grant to evaluate the California prisoner realignment program of Gov. Jerry Brown, is building a database of how the state’s 58 counties are spending the $2 billion they are getting from the state to perform corrections-sytem functions that the state formerly did.

So far, only 10 percent of that money is going to treatment programs, with the bulk going to sheriff’s office, local jails, probations staff, and court services. That bodes ill for keeping ex-inmates from returning to crime, Petersilia says.

“We can’t just sit and watch this go off the train track,” she told fellow researchers at the NIJ conference.

THE NEED FOR  THE COLLECTION OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE STATISTICS

America extensively compiles data for sports, the health care, schools, and many more industries, but there is a large gap in data collection and analysis between the different branches of the criminal justice system. Collecting, processing, and studying that data would provide a substantial sketch of the parts of the system that work–and those that don’t work–and might create more direct routes to a better justice system, eliminating some of the guesswork and trial and error in corrections reform.

The Atlantic’s Anne Milgram has the story. Here’s a clip:

One area in which the potential of data analysis is still not adequately realized, however, is criminal justice. This is somewhat surprising given the success of CompStat, a law enforcement management tool that uses data to figure out how police resources can be used to reduce crime and hold law enforcement officials accountable for results. CompStat is widely credited with contributing to New York City’s dramatic reduction in serious crime over the past two decades. Yet data-driven decision-making has not expanded to the whole of the criminal justice system.

But it could. And, in this respect, the front end of the system — the part of the process that runs from arrest through sentencing — is particularly important. At this stage, police, prosecutors, defenders, and courts make key choices about how to deal with offenders — choices that, taken together, have an enormous impact on crime. Yet most jurisdictions do not collect or analyze the data necessary to know whether these decisions are being made in a way that accomplishes the most important goals of the criminal justice system: increased public safety, decreased recidivism, reduced cost, and the fair, efficient administration of justice.

Even in jurisdictions where good data exists, a lack of technology is often an obstacle to using it effectively. Police, jails, courts, district attorneys, and public defenders each keep separate information systems, the data from which is almost never pulled together and analyzed in a way that could answer the questions that matter most: Who is in our criminal justice system? What crimes have been charged? What risks do individual offenders pose? And which option would best protect the public and make the best use of our limited resources?

HOUSING AGING PRISONERS COSTS TWICE AS MUCH, SAYS REPORT

A newly released ACLU report says that the average cost to states of housing elderly inmates amounts to twice as much as housing inmates under the age of 50. The report suggests that the growing number of feeble, elderly prisoners, most of whom, who no longer pose a threat to society should be released and turned over to their families for their remaining days.

Here is a clip from the report, which you can download and read here:

This increasing warehousing of aging prisoners for low-level crimes and longer sentences is a nefarious outgrowth of the “tough on crime” and “war on drugs” policies of the 1980s and 1990s. Given the nation’s current overincarceration epidemic and persistent economic crisis, lawmakers should consider implementing parole reforms to release those elderly prisoners who no longer pose sufficient safety threats to justify their continued incarceration.

State and federal governments spend approximately $77 billion annually to run our penal system. Over the last 25 years, state corrections spending grew by 674%, substantially outpacing the growth of other government spending, and becoming the fourth-largest category of state spending. These corrections costs are mainly spent on incarceration, and incarcerating aging prisoners costs far more than younger ones. specifically, this report
finds that it costs $34,135 per year to house an average prisoner, but it costs $68,270 per
year to house a prisoner age 50 and older. To put that number into context, the average
American household makes about $40,000 a year in income.

States can implement mechanisms to determine which aging prisoners pose little safety
risk and can be released. Releasing many of these individuals will ease the burden on
taxpayers and reunite prisoners with their families to care for them. This report conducts
a fiscal impact analysis detailing the cost savings to states in releasing the average aging
prisoner. While some of these prisoners may turn to the government for their healthcare or
other needs, government expenditures on released aging prisoners will be far cheaper than
the costs of incarcerating them. Based on statistical analyses of available data, this report
estimates that releasing an aging prisoner will save states, on average, $66,294 per year per
prisoner, including healthcare, other public benefits, parole, and any housing costs or tax
revenue.

CRUCIAL EVIDENCE MISSING IN TEXAS DEATH ROW CASE

The state of Texas finally granted death row inmate, Hank Skinner, a hard-won post-conviction DNA test to include over 40 previously untested items from his 1993 murder case. One of the most important pieces of evidence in the case, a jacket that was photographed exhibiting blood and sweat and that Skinner had always maintained would exonerate him, was lost with no explanation from the state or law enforcement officials.

The Austin Chronicle’s Jordan Smith has the story. Here are some clips:

Among the key pieces of evidence never before tested, and that Skinner has sought access to for more than a decade, is a blood- and sweat-stained windbreaker found near the body of his girlfriend Twila Busby. The windbreaker is now apparently missing. “We are pleased to have reached an agreement that finally secures DNA testing in this case, but there remains reason for grave concern,” Skinner’s attorney Rob Owen said in a press statement. “According to the State, every other piece of evidence in this case has been preserved. It is difficult to understand how the State has managed to maintain custody of items as small as fingernail clippings, while apparently losing something as large as a man’s windbreaker. To date, the State has offered no explanation for its failure to safeguard the evidence in this case.”

[Snip]

…The state had objected to the post-conviction DNA testing, arguing before the Court of Criminal Appeals last month that to allow the DNA testing now would be to incentivize defendants charged with capital murder, and facing the death penalty, to delay DNA testing at trial in order to have grounds for a post-conviction death row appeal. That argument did not seem to impress the generally state-friendly CCA and less than a month after the hearing the state reversed its course to agree that, in the interest of justice, Skinner should be allowed access to DNA testing.

CA INMATES GRADUATE CDCR SUBSTANCE ABUSE PEER MENTOR PROGRAM

Twenty-seven inmates at CA State Prison, Solano, received certification to work as substance abuse counselors for other inmates. The Offender Mentor Certification Program, which is a collaboration between the CDCR and the California Association of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Counselors, in an effort to cost-effectively expand treatment to more California prisoners.

The CDCR Star’s Bill Sessa has the story. Here’s a clip:

All of the inmates chosen for the program had previously addressed their own problems with drug and alcohol use, problems shared by 58 percent of male inmates and 64 percent of females, by completing a Substance Abuse Treatment Program administered by CDCR.

“By addressing their own problems with substance abuse, these inmates are role models and a source of hope for other inmates who also struggle with addiction,” said CDCR Undersecretary Terri McDonald. “When they become fully certified professionals, these graduates will enable the department to expand substance-abuse treatment to more inmates in a cost-effective way, which is especially valuable during these times of lean budgets.”

(WitnessLA reported on an earlier incarnation of this program here.)

In January of this year, the ACLU of Southern California brought a massive class action suit, known as Rosas v. Baca, against the Sheriff’s Department charging that Sheriff Lee Baca and his top command staff had looked the other way in the face of a long-standing, widespread pattern of violence by deputies against inmates in the Los Angeles County Jails.

Naturally, the sheriff’s lawyers tried to find legal ways to make the lawsuit vanish.

(FYI A class action suit of this nature doesn’t look for any kind of financial payout, but for “injunctive relief.” In other words, the suit is designed to investigate wrongdoing through the discovery process, and then to force reform.)

In any case, when the LASD’s attorneys’ first stab at getting the suit dismissed was a nonstarter, they next tried to get the ACLU removed as counsel from the suit, saying that the fact that the ACLU folks had discovered all this alleged abuse when they were jails monitors, meant that the incidents of abuse they discovered were privileged, and thus couldn’t be used in a lawsuit—or legal jargon to that effect.

(In other words, the wrongdoing you discovered while you were legally monitoring the jails for another kind of wrongdoing, cannot be used to bring a class action suit alleging massive wrongdoing in the jails now. Sure, that works.)

Judge Dean Pragerson has been the most recent jurist overseeing the long standing Rutherford agreement, the result of a 1978 decision on a 1975 class action suit, that resulted in the ACLU being assigned to send monitors into the jails in the first place. This means that Pragerson is not unfamiliar with the reports of abuse that have been bleeding out of the jails in the last few years.

Perhaps for this reason, the judge flicked away the notion of the ACLU being prohibited from bringing suit as counsel.

“And so now the case goes forward,” said a very pleased Peter Eliasberg, the So Cal ACLU’s legal director. “The decision means that we can seek relief systemwide.”

Yep. And that’s a good thing.

APPEALS COURTS AGRESS SOUTH PARK’S WHAT, WHAT (IN THE BUTT) PARODY IS FAIR USE

In an important victory for free speech, on Thursday, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that South Park’s parody of the raunchy-ish and very viral internet hit song by Samwell was permissible under the Fair Use. (Warning on that link: NSFW.)

Corynne McSherry has the story over at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed an amicus brief in the case Here’s a clip:

South Park aired the “What What” parody in a 2008 episode critiquing the popularity of absurd online videos. Two years later, copyright owner Brownmark Films sued Viacom and Comedy Central, alleging copyright infringement. Recognizing the episode was an obvious fair use, a federal judge promptly dismissed the case. Brownmark appealed, claiming that fair use cannot be decided on a motion to dismiss, no matter how obvious. Viacom fought back, and EFF filed an amicus brief in support, explaining that being able to dismiss a case early in litigation—before legal costs can really add up—is crucial to protect free speech and discourage frivolous litigation.

The appeals court agreed, calling the district court’s decision “well-reasoned and delightful”

[SNIP]

These rulings are important not only to protect speech, but also in fighting back against copyright trolls. Trolls depend on the threat of legal costs to encourage people to settle cases even though they might have legitimate defenses. Citing EFF’s brief, Seventh Circuit acknowledged the problem:

[I]nfringement suits are often baseless shakedowns. Ruinous discovery heightens the incentive to settle rather than defend these frivolous suits.

Thank you to the 7th Circuit and to the EFF. (And down with copyright trolls.)

IS PEPPER SPRAY A GOOD IDEA IN YOUTH FACILITIES? NEW YORK SAYS NO, LOS ANGELES AND SAN DIEGO SAY, OH, HECK YEAH!

San Diego City Beat’s Dave Maas explores the use of OC Spray or Pepper spray, as a control technique in juvenile detention facilities, after finding through a public records act request that, last year, SD’s youth facilities used OC spray 491 times.

Here’s a clip:

According to the Council of Juvenile Correctional Administrators (CJCA), only 14 states allow the use of pepper spray in juvenile facilities, but in most cases, it’s a last-resort measure, limited to riot-level emergencies. Only five of those states, including California, allow staff to carry it on their person, as is the case in San Diego. CJCA notes in its 2011 report on the issue that no studies have been conducted on the safety of using pepper spray on juveniles and that most juvenile correctional agencies shun its use “because of the harm it causes to youths and the negative impact on staff-youth relationships.”

Gladys Carrión, commissioner of the New York State Office of Children and Family Services, which oversees 49 youth-detention programs, says that’s why New York has never used it.

“It’s dangerous,” Carrión says. “I think it doesn’t teach the young person a thing about how to manage their behavior. It really doesn’t teach staff any skills to be able to engage with young people. I don’t see it as an effective tool.”It recent years, many states have voluntarily traded OC spray for new interpersonal techniques designed to de-escalate conflicts. For other jurisdictions, it’s taken lawsuits, federal investigations and court orders. In 2006, San Diego County Probation told The San Diego Union-Tribune that it was weighing sweeping revisions to its pepper-spray policies after a prisoner-rights group threatened legal action.

LA County probation camps used to use OC spray at a rapid clip, but there has been some slowing of the use due to demands made by federal monitors.

This is a good issue to look into further.

JAMES AUSTIN PLAN…MEET THE VERA REPORT

by Matthew Fleischer

The mood outside of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department was cheerful on Tuesday at a press conference announcing the debut of a report by nationally-renowned corrections expert Dr. James Austin. After Austin made his presentation, LA County Sheriff Lee Baca spoke about shuttering violence-plagued Men’s Central Jail by 2013–without demanding a new $1.4 billion super-jail to replace it. It was the first time Baca had ever agreed to close CJ in its entirety without the precondition of a new jail, and his announcement visibly pleased the ACLU members. Even some of the normally jaded TV journalists in attendance, seemed excited, as if something new was afoot.

For the variety of reasons we have reported on here at WitnessLA, CJ is arguably the most dangerous jail in America. Virtually everyone–the LASD, the ACLU, the LA County Board of Supervisors, the Office of Independent review, LASD civilian monitor Merrick Bobb, the LA Times and WitnessLA—agrees it needs to be shuttered. Austin’s plan has created a roadmap for that to happen. Among other recommendations, the plan calls for the release of selected non-violent inmates awaiting trial, the transfer of inmates to lower-cost fire camps, expanded release opportunities through the sheriff’s Education Based Incarceration program, and the expansion of capacity at the North County Correctional Facility. If enacted, these proposals would help free up enough space in the system to close CJ permanently.

Asked why he has suddenly come around to the idea of closing the whole of CJ, without demanding a wildly expensive new jail, Baca replied, “I didn’t have an Austin plan before.”

True. But he did have a Vera plan. In September of 2011, the Vera Institute released a report, sponsored by the Los Angeles Board of County Supervisors and the Countywide Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee, that included 30 recommendations for how to alleviate population pressure in the LA County Jail system. Many of those recommendations dealt with enacting a more efficient system of pretrial release and the blended release of non-violent offenders—just like the Austin plan.

How many of Vera’s recommendations were acted upon since the report’s release? Exactly zero. And when Dr. Austin brought up the Vera recommendations Tuesday’s press conference, he said he didn’t expect any of them to be implemented.

If Vera’s recommendations were ignored, what assurances are there that the department will take the Austin report any more seriously?

When I asked Austin that question, he said he believed that we wouldn’t see a repeat.

“This plan has four very pragmatic recommendations instead of 30. Vera didn’t apply risk assessments to their release proposals. We did. I have full confidence our proposals can work, even with the various political considerations.”

One of the primary “political considerations” at issue is the rest of LA County’s government and several of its agencies. The Sheriff’s Department is limited in what it can do without the cooperation of the LA County Board of Supervisors, the county probation department and the judiciary. In other words, to implement most of Austin’s blueprint requires buy-in by various other county entities. The only thing Baca does have the legal power to do is to free inmates as he chooses–which is not exactly politically palatable.

“That’s not something anyone wants to see happen,” says Austin.

Sheriff’s spokesman Mike Parker wouldn’t comment on what aspects of the plan—if any— could be implement by the LASD alone.

“The public wants us to work together,” he said “And right now we are working together. So now is not the time to focus on hypothetical scenarios.”

Sources close to the board of supervisors say the Austin plan is something the supes will consider, but not commit to without a lot of additional study. Supe Mike Antonovich won’t even go that far. “While Men’s Central Jail is old, shutting it down without a comparable replacement threatens public safety and makes a mockery of our criminal justice system,” Antonovich said in a statement.

If the supervisors seem hesitant, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office, the Probation Department, and various members of the Los Angeles judiciary haven’t haven’t taken any kind of initiative on reform. Like the Sheriff’s Department, all had the option of embracing Vera’s recommendations and chose not to—if they read the report at all. ←–

I called Peggy McGarry, Director of the Vera Institute’s Center on Sentencing and Corrections to ask her what, if anything, the sheriff could accomplish on his own without buy-in from everyone else. “There’s been a lot of focus on the sheriff and the conditions inside the jail But the reality is the Sheriff does not control the population inside the jail. It’s the rest of the [county] system. The jail is overcrowded because of the way the rest of the system behaves. Bails are determined by the judges. [Even if Baca institutes reforms, the rest of the county system] can bypass the Sheriff, which is what it’s consistently done.”

McGarry said she hadn’t yet read the Austin report, nor did she want to comment on why Vera’s findings were not put into place.

“No institute makes recommendations with the expectation they would sit on the shelf,” says McGarry. “We were hired by the county to give them advice. Not to implement our recommendations. Inaction is always a risk.”

Even so, the ACLU’s Peter Eliasberg was confident that this plan was not the second coming of the Vera study.

“When you tell everyone they need to cooperate, no one does,” he said. “When someone takes a leadership role, it’s easier to make things happen. Dr. Austin has created a path for the Sheriff to take a leadership role. And [Baca] has made it very clear that he is ready to make this plan happen.”

Sheriff’s Department spokesman Steve Whitmore didn’t sound so sure. “The sheriff is not committed to implementing the Austin plan,” he told WitnessLA. “The ACLU should not oversell this.”

Since last fall Sheriff Lee Baca has insisted to the LA County Board of Supervisors that the county needs to spend $1.4 billion to build a state of the art jail facility, so that the notorious and violence-plagued Men’s Central Jail can be closed and torn down.

Now, however, Baca has tentatively signed on to what many are calling a ground-breaking plan that is far more progressive—and far less expensive—than his earlier building extravaganza, yet one that it is hoped will result in the closing of the decrepit and difficult to guard Men’s Central, while employing what experts describe as a fresh approach to criminal justice policy and practice.

At a Tuesday morning press conference held at the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department headquarters in Monterey Park, Baca stood with nationally known corrections expert, Dr. James Austin, and the ACLU’s Peter Eliasberg and Margaret Winter, for the presentation of Austin’s innovative roadmap that charts the ways that the County’s jail population may be lowered enough to shut down CJ completely as soon as 2013.

The much-anticipated Austin report titled “Evaluation of the Current and Future Los Angeles County Jail Population,” lays out in 32 pages of intensely researched text, graphs and charts, all of the elements that its proponents say are needed make the jail closing happen, while also keeping in mind public safety. The plan also factors in the state’s AB 109 realignment plan that kicked in last October, and that is estimated to bring an influx of 7000 extra inmates into the county jail system by the end of 2014.

Among the points made in Austin’s blueprint are the following:

The biggest chunk of the County’s jail population is pretrial at 45 percent. These are people who are waiting to go to trial, but have not been convicted. (The rest are: sentenced with a pending charge, 18%, sentenced, 37%)

Most of that pretrial 45 percent are in for felony charges, about half of which are violent or sex related.

However, as Austin notes, this leaves a big chunk of people who are in jail while awaiting trial for more minor charges. Many of this group are in jail, not because they are considered a public safety risk, or a flight risk, but because they simply don’t have the money or the assets (like a house) that will allow them to make bail.

Austin estimates that, by the end of 2014, the projected jail population of 21,000 can be safely reduced by about 3,000 inmates by implementing an “innovative” system pretrial supervision—meaning certain people will get out—pretrial—without having to post bail, but they will have some element of supervision to insure that they show up for their court dates.

The blueprint also calls for some reorganization of the county’s existing facilities including the North County Correctional facility in Castaic, which would be renovated to replace the maximum-security beds lost at Men’s Central, which currently houses 4,000 inmates, and the possible utilization of
five county conservation camps to increase the number of minimum-security beds. The county’s Mira Loma Detention Center, which is presently contracted to ICE, is another facility listed as an alternative option in the Austin plan.

In addition, the multi-part strategy would include another leg that allows low-risk convicted felons to be supervised in the community if they complete education-oriented programs shown to cut down on recidivism—namely LASD’s Education Based Incarceration (EBI) program, that also happen to be Baca’s pet project. (At present, the EBI program serves approximately 1,200 inmates who receive counseling and education services in order to cut down their risk of recidivism, a strategy that statistically has been shown to be successful.) Austin estimates that the EBI part of the strategy, if properly implemented, could lower the future jails population by another 1000 inmates.

The ACLU, which paid for the Austin report, had tried in past years to get the LASD to allow Austin to study the LA County jail system and to make recommendations for lowering the jails population. Always before, Baca had declined the offer.

Then after news of the FBI investigation into jail violence broke, combined with the ACLU’s harshest jails report yet, and ongoing critical coverage by such media outlets as WitnessLA, the LA Times and others, Baca agreed to let Jim Austin in. (Baca’s cooperation was necessary in that large parts of Austin’s report is based on analyses of LASD’s internal figures.)

“The sheriff has said to us that he’s committed to the proposal, and It’s a huge step,” said Peter Eliasberg, the So Cal ACLU’s legal director, speaking about Baca’s degree of sign-on to the Austin-crafted strategy. “We may disagree about a lot things, but where we can agree, we should be able to make real progress.”

The ACLU’s national jails expert, Margaret Winter, goes even further. “That Sheriff Baca strongly supports the Austin report and these recommendations indicates a seismic shift in attitude,” she wrote this morning in a blog post, “a shift likely to reverberate and help trigger change around the nation.”

Whether Baca’s cautious sign-on on Tuesday will translate into action is something that we will continue to track.

UPDATE: SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT SPOKESMAN STEVE WHITMORE, while reiterating that the sheriff was “going to consider the Austin report,” was far less upbeat in his take than the ACLU.

“The sheriff is not committed to implementing the Austin plan,” said Whitmore. “The ACLU should not oversell this.”

Whitmore said that Baca had been exploring the pretrial release option for some time, but that it took cooperation from the court system, which the sheriff has not secured. Plus there’s a cost factor and the DA factor.”

District Attorney Steve Cooley has, thus far, not been enthusiastic about pretrial release.

So has progress been made?

For a functional answer to that question it appears that we are, once again, all going to have to…

…stay tuned.

Photo of CJ by Jay Clendenin/Los Angeles Times

EDITOR’S NOTE: Starting today, the very smart and talented Taylor Walker is helping me gather stories. Eventually Taylor will be doing a story-gathering and commentary section of her own. But right now, she’s helping me curate and write these multi-story posts. More about—and from—Taylor Walker soon.

NEARLY 50 PERCENT OF AMERICANS SAY THAT TOO MANY PEOPLE ARE IN PRISON & WE COULD LET 20 PERCENT OF ‘EM OUT….SAYS NEW PEW STUDY

The Pew Center on the States has the results of a new survey out that measures attitudes by Americans about who we should incarcerate and for how long.

Turns out that the majority of Americans think that there are “more effective, less expensive alternatives to prison for non-violent offenders and expanding those alternatives is the best way to reduce the crime rate.”

There’s lots more and it’s quite interesting. So check out the summary of the rest of the report here.

ANTONIO GOES LOOKING FOR GANG PREVENTION AND INTERVENTION $$ IN D.C.

The LA Times reports that mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was in Washington DC this week for a gang-violence reduction summit meeting with leaders from Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Memphis, San Jose and Salinas.

Sunday, he also met with Attorney General Eric Holder, to hit up Holder for some federal money to help to fund LA’s GRYD programs (Gang Reduction and Youth Development), These were the programs that were gathered under the mayor’s umbrella in 2007, and got up and running in 2009.

Last year, the combined prevention and intervention GRYD programs were budgeted at $26 million, made up of federal, state and local monies. Villaraigosa wants the feds to come across with a good chunk of those millions.

Hopefully he’ll get the money he/we need. I just wish that when the mayor made his pitch he didn’t have to try to attribute LA’s drop in gang crime to GRYD, since even his own evaluators from the Urban Institute say otherwise (namely since the parts of Los Angeles that aren’t served by GRYD have had exactly the same drop).

Yeah, yeah. Picky, I know.

ACLU ISSUES REPORT SHOWING HOW MANY POLICE DEPARTMENTS ARE TRACKING US THROUGH OUR CELL PHONES WITHOUT ANYTHING PESKY LIKE, SAY, A WARRANT

A huge pile of information gathered by the ACLU on law enforcement cell phone tracking protocols was released to the New York Times on Saturday. The report returned results that differed considerably between about 200 agencies that agreed to provide information about how they were using our cell phones to track us. Departments across the U.S. are grappling with the lack of concrete boundaries set in place for officers in regard to cell phone tracking. While some agencies state that they are only using tracking without a warrant in life-threatening situations (and sometimes it does save lives), others are using it when they damn please, including in California where state prosecutors advised local police departments on ways to get carriers to “clone” a phone and download text messages while it is turned off.

(About that text downloading function, unreasonable search and seizure anyone? Seriously, how in the world is that not a 4th Amendment violation?)

In order to get the information, 35 ACLU affiliates filed over 380 public records requests with state and local law enforcement agencies to ask about their policies, procedures and practices for tracking cell phones.

This is from the ACLU’s statement:

What we have learned is disturbing. While virtually all of the over 200 police departments that responded to our request said they track cell phones, only a tiny minority reported consistently obtaining a warrant and demonstrating probable cause to do so. While that result is of great concern, it also shows that a warrant requirement is a completely reasonable and workable policy.

They’ve got a point. And, given this recent SCOTUS decision, I think the SUPREMES may think so too.

LGBTQ BOX TO CHECK MAY SHOW UP IN CAL STATE COLLEGE APS…SO IS THIS A GOOD IDEA? BAD IDEA? MANY ARE NOT SURE

Within the next year, students may see optional sexual orientation check-boxes on their application forms for California state colleges. While the purpose may be to gauge the size of the LGBTQ community on campus, and thus offer better services, some fear it may be an invasion of privacy or that the information may be improperly used or wrongly divulged. The LA Times reports.

On Tuesday, the ACLU filed a class action lawsuit alleging that the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC) houses thousands of prisoners in solitary confinement conditions so harsh they violate the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

This is from Tuesday’s statement:

While other states also use solitary confinement, Arizona has added features that seem designed to gratuitously increase suffering. The cells in that state’s supermax Special Management Units (SMUs) were deliberately constructed with no windows to the outside, so prisoners — many of whom have no means of telling the time — become disoriented and confused, not knowing the whether it is day or night. The cells are often illuminated 24 hours a day, making sleep difficult and further contributing to prisoners’ disorientation and mental deterioration.

Some prisoners in solitary spend all but six hours a week alone in their cells. Their only respite occurs when they are taken to a slightly larger windowless cell, with no equipment, for “exercise.” Many prisoners refuse to go, because the cell is so small that it doesn’t allow meaningful exercise, and because prisoners are placed in restraints and strip-searched when going to and returning from the cell. And in a final cruelty, ADC reasons that because prisoners in solitary don’t get much exercise, they don’t need much food — some receive only two meals a day….

…..…“The prison conditions in Arizona are among the worst I’ve ever seen,” said Donald Specter, executive director of the Berkeley, Calif.-based Prison Law Office. “Prisoners have a constitutional right to receive adequate health care, and it is unconscionable for them to be left to suffer and die in the face of neglect and deliberate indifference.”

Arizona has the 6th highest incarceration rate in the nation.

The ACLU was joined in the filing by the Prison Law Office, the Arizona Center for Disability Law, and the law firms Jones Day and Perkins Coie.

LATEST REPORT FROM VERA INSTITUTE SHOWS LESSONS FROM 14 STATES WHO HAVE SENTENCING REFORM, AND INCARCERATION ALTERNATIVES

Here’s a clip from the executive summary:

Most states are facing budget crises, and criminal justice agencies are not exempt. With fewer dollars available, they are challenged to increase public safety while coping with smaller budgets. This report distills lessons from 14 states that passed research-driven sentencing and corrections reform in 2011 and is based on interviews with stakeholders and experts, and the experience of technical assistance staff at the Vera Institute of Justice. It is intended to serve as a guide to policy makers and others interested in pursuing evidence-based justice reform in their jurisdiction.

Legislatures throughout the United States enacted sentencing and corrections policy changes in 2011 that were based on data analysis of their prison populations and the growing body of research on practices that can reduce recidivism. Although this emphasis on using evidence to inform practice is not new in criminal justice, legislators are increasingly relying on this science to guide the use of taxpayer dollars more effectively to improve public safety outcomes.
In highlighting important legislative

Sadly, California hasn’t, as yet, joined these forward looking fourteen. But check it out. The details are interesting.

NOTE: VERY LIGHT POSTING TODAY as my Interwebs have been down and are still behaving strangely. (Wind? Ghosts? Disgruntled public officials with garden sheers?) Good things coming tomorrow, I promise. So stay tuned.

Photo of Colorado’s SuperMax by Chris McLean/AP

On Wednesday morning, The ACLU of Southern California filed a federal class action suit against the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department with the idea of getting a sharp-toothed federal injunction that will force the department, at legal gunpoint, if necessary, to make the changes necessary clean up its desperately troubled jails.

The suit makes it clear that it’s not looking merely for symptomatic tinkering, that it views the problems as systemic, and that they start at the top.

With this in mind, in addition to suing the LASD in general, the suit charges that Sheriff Lee Baca, Undersheriff Paul Tanaka, Assistant Sheriff Cecil Rhambo, and former Chief of Custody Operations Dennis Burns all knew about “a longstanding, widespread pattern of violence by deputies against inmates in the county jails” —but when confronted with the abuse by concerned supervisors (as we reported here and here and here in Matt Fleischer’s Dangerous Jails series), Baca, Tanaka and company basically told the supervisors to buzz off—and the abuse was allowed to continue.

The 77-page complaint details an avalanche of horrific alleged incidents of inmates being slugged, tased, kicked, head-bashed, slammed and, in one case, scalp-carved by deputies—with several of the reported incidents occurring in front of witnesses, or while the inmate was handcuffed, or both. Many of the beatings reportedly resulted in multi-day hospital stays and permanent injuries.

At a press conference Wednesday morning, So Cal ACLU legal director, Peter Eliasberg, and Margaret Winter, the associate director of the ACLU National Prison Project, both said they expect the lawsuit to result in a federal injunction—likely in the form of a consent decree—- that will force the LASD into “real accountability.”

When I asked Winter whether or not she thought the ACLU had a good chance of getting the desired injunction, Winter answered strongly in the affirmative.

“I have really seldom felt more confident that litigation is going to result in a consent decree.” she said. “I mean, we have massive evidence even before discovery. And during the discovery phase of all this, we’re going to get everything. Everything. ”

(Just in case you’ve forgotten, discovery is the period of formal investigation — governed by court rules — that is conducted before trial. At that time one party may force the other to produce requested documents or other physical evidence, even if the second party really would rather not.)

Until very recently, said Winter, the department refused even to fork over its guidelines for use of force inside the jails. “We tried for years to get that.”

(For the record, I know from personal experience that one can easily get this kind of information from the LAPD, while the Sheriff’s Department is bothersomely withholding about trivial things.)

“Now [through the discovery process] we’re going to open the book and go into all the dark corners of the jails and shine a light on the fantastic secrecy that’s been the rule in the past.”

In reading over the just-filed 77 pages of the “Complaint for Injunctive Relief”—known formally as Rosas v. Baca— it does appear that the ACLU already has a lot of potent ammunition to get the court’s attention.

Some random examples of the allegations include:

In July 2011, two deputies beat a handcuffed inmate about the head and neck, the beating so severe that he required hospitalization outside the jail, and has permanent hearing loss in one ear.

In March 16, 2011, three deputies beat an African American inmate until he was unconscious then carved the letters M – Y into his scalp, the first two letters of “MYATE,” (or more commonly “MAYATE,”) a racial street slur meaning “black.”

In March 2011, deputies slammed a handcuffed inmate’s head into a cement wall, leaving him with a concussion and a gash that took 35 stitches to close, then beat him around the head and face when he came to, resulting in 2 days of hospitalization and four additional days in the jail’s medical unit. The ACLU reports that were several witnesses to this incident.

In February 2011, deputies severely beat a mentally ill inmate who was in jail on two warrants: for failure to pay his subway fare, and driving without a license. The beating resulted in a collapsed lung, two broken ribs, a nasal fracture and four broken teeth.

The list goes on from there, including the alleged 2008 rape by a deputy of Frank Mendoza, who was in LA County jail on a charge of public drunkenness. (That’s Mendoza in the video above.)

These are, of course, only allegations. But there are a lot of them. And included in the filing are accounts from a list of civilian witnesses, including two jails chaplains, and a former FBI agent.

LASD Commander James Hellmold was present at the press conference and answered reporters’ questions afterward. (Interestingly, Hellmold admitted he’d not been invited by the ACLU to the Press Conference, but saw a PR release announcing its existence, and simply decided he’d show up, like the rest of us, to find out what was being said. We, in the press, of course, were delighted that he chose to do so.)

In response to inquiries about the alleged beatings, Hellmold said that he “hoped deputies would be given the same courtesy given the inmates, of being considered innocent until proven guilty.”

(Winter said later, than if any deputies weren’t given due process, she guaranteed she’d be the first in line to bring suit to defend their constitutional rights.)

About the reported “culture of violence” inside the jail system, Helmold said that there was “a culture of violence,” inside the jails, but that it was “among the inmates,” more than half of whom he said, “are in jail on violent charges.”

When pressed on the topic by a TV reporter who asked what he thought about the sign-throwing, tattoo-sporting deputy gangs inside the jail, groups like the now-infamous 3000 Boys inside the jails, he said, “I have no comment.”

Hellmold is one of the three recently promoted commanders who are heading up the Sheriff’s special task force that was formed last fall to look into the accusations of inmate abuse by deputies. (As we have reported in the past, Hellmold is also part of Undersheriff Paul Tanaka’s inner circle, and a longtime donor to Tanaka’s political campaign outside the department. We also reported that Paul Tanaka was the one who was repeatedly obstructive when concerned department supervisors tried to institute reforms to curb the deputy on inmate violence.)

Oh, and Hellmold was one of those who told the LA Times back in October that reports on jail violence never reached the Sheriff.

Bring on the lawsuit—and the discovery.

PS: Matt Fleischer and I were happy to note that loads of material from our Dangerous Jails series was woven all through the ACLU’s 77-page lawsuit. (Just thought you’d like to know.)