Criminal Justice
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Suspect Who Brutally Assaulted 78-Year-Old Homeless Woman on Subway Arrested, Charged
For the past few days, social media has been consumed with outrage at a clip circulating online in which an elderly woman is brutally assaulted on a subway. But thankfully, because God is rather averse to ugly, the coward in question has been apprehended and charged with second and third-degree assault and harassment. Which means…
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In Baltimore, 6 Babies Died in Their Sleep in 6 Weeks. Most of Them Were Black
Baltimore, a city that has some serious disparities in almost every measure but remains a beautiful black city nonetheless, saw six infants die in their sleep in as many weeks, the worst rate of such deaths since a 2009 campaign to prevent these kinds of tragedies began. The Baltimore City Health Department confirmed to The Root…
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ACLU and Center for Media Justice Sue FBI for Records on Surveillance of Black Activists
America has a history of secretly surveilling black organizations that gather in the name of equal rights. It happened during the 1950s and 1960s, through the notorious Counterintelligence Program (“COINTELPRO”). It happened with the Black Panthers and during the black uprising of negro leaders including Ida B. Wells, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King Jr, and…
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Supreme Court to Hear Whether ‘DC Sniper’ Lee Boyd Malvo Deserves New Sentencing
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the appeal of Lee Boyd Malvo, who participated in one of the most notorious, murderous shooting sprees in U.S. history, to determine if he should be re-sentenced because he was a minor at the time of his crimes. In September and October 2002, 17-year-old Malvo and…
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Supreme Court Declines to Hear Case of Man Sentenced to Death by a Racist Juror
The Supreme Court agreed that at least one of the jurors who convicted a Georgia man of murder was a virulent racist. They previously came to the conclusion that racism may have affected a juror’s decision. But in a unanimous no-decision, the Supreme Court declined to take up the prisoner’s death penalty appeal, effectively sending…
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While Stop & Frisk Has Decreased Significantly in NYC, Young Men of Color Are Still Hit Hardest: Report
The good news is that Stop and Frisk—the NYPD’s practice of stopping and patting down people in New York City—has dropped by more than 98 percent since its height and the rate of violent crime continues to drop. The not-so-good but, frankly, not surprising news is that the percentage of people of color stopped—young black…
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ACLU Sues Philadelphia Courts Over Money Bail Practices
In 2015, Eugene Lee spent three months in jail for a botched armed robbery. While that might not seem like a long time, you should know that Lee was not convicted before being sent to jail. He was also not the gunman in the incident. In fact, the robbery involved a toy gun that someone…